Their most striking equipment was their helmets, made of highly burnished iron with a bulbous crown that rose and extended forward, and detachable cheekpieces; the cheekpieces covered the face entirely, leaving only apertures for the eyes and mouth, and were embossed to represent facial hair. Seeing those helmets made Fabius catch his breath and remember the dreams of his boyhood. They were exactly as his father had described them from the Battle of Zama more than fifty years before, the last time the Romans had encountered the Carthaginians in a set-piece battle. Polybius in his Histories had derided the Carthaginians for using too many mercenaries and for fielding an untrained conscript force of their own citizens, but Fabius knew from his father that Polybius’ sources had exaggerated to deflect attention from deficiencies in the Roman line, especially the division of forces within each legion according to experience and the quality of their weapons and armour. Seeing these guards here today, confident in their poise and the way they held their weapons, so similar in appearance to his father’s description of those supposedly ill-trained levies, Fabius could begin to understand how the infantry battle at Zama had raged for hours before Masinissa’s cavalry had arrived and tipped the balance in favour of the Romans. Yet these men today did not look like shadows from the past, a token police force allowed to a vanquished foe, but like highly trained, toughened warriors, men who had probably been blooded in the border clashes of the last three years with Gulussa’s cavalry and the Roman expeditionary force. If there were more men like this mustered inside the walls of Carthage, then an assault on the city by the Romans would not be the walkover that some might have predicted.
The kybernetes returned from talking to the customs officer, nodded at Scipio and gestured to the entrance in the city wall beyond the guard tower. ‘You are authorized to go through to the merchants’ hall, the name they give to the colonnaded space between the outer harbour where we are now and the two inner harbours, the rectangular harbour for state-controlled trade and the circular war harbour. Officially you cannot gain access to those inner harbours or the city beyond. Whether you find a way of doing so is up to your own devices. I will set sail as soon as you return. Your stated purpose here is to conclude a deal with a Carthaginian wine merchant, no more. If you linger any longer than you need to, the port guards will become suspicious. And if I come into the merchants’ hall with you I’m liable to be press-ganged into the Carthaginian navy. The only place where sailors have immunity is out here, and I’ll busy myself with the chandlers’ stores to stock up on supplies for my ship. Whatever happens, you must never reveal your name. For the Carthaginians to have caught the heir of Scipio Africanus on a covert mission within their walls would be to sound the death-knell for any Roman attempt to take this city. They would demand an extortionate ransom, hold you up as a laughing stock that would undermine Roman prestige everywhere, and shatter the morale of the legions. Far better, if you are threatened with capture, to die fighting, or to fall on your own sword. Good luck.’
He scurried off towards a cordage seller beside the quay. Scipio walked confidently past the soldiers, Fabius an appropriate distance behind, and in a few moments they were through the city wall. The colonnaded space they had entered was long and narrow, lined not with warehouses like the quay outside but with small officinae fronted by marble tables and seats. The place seemed less like the animated chaos of the merchants’ square that Fabius knew well from the port of Rome at Ostia, a favourite haunt of his as a boy, than one of the law courts in the Forum, with clusters of men engaged in solemn discussions. Sitting in the office next to the entrance was a man wearing a robe dyed deep purple, the colour that the Phoenicians extracted from a rare species of seashell; it was the easiest way to spot a Carthaginian state official. On the stone table in front of him was a steelyard weighing scale and a line of balance-pan weights resting in carved-out depressions in the stone, and in the back of the officina was a stone strongbox guarded by two burly soldiers. It was evidently an exchange facility, and Fabius could see others interspersed among the colonnades. This place was clearly run by Carthaginian officials, not by free merchants, and their transactions were not the small deals built up piecemeal of a typical shipper’s business in Ostia, but instead high-value exchanges, evidenced by a transaction a few offices down, where the pan in the scale was piled high with gold coins.
Scipio walked along the colonnade, looking to the left and right as if searching for a specific merchant, and then turned casually to Fabius and nodded at the opposite colonnade. ‘There’s an entrance between the columns,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a narrow passage guarded by two soldiers about halfway along, out of sight of anyone here unless they were really looking. It must lead to the landlocked harbours. Our disguise as a merchant and his servant is no use to us any more if we want to get in there. Our only chance is to go as Carthaginian soldiers. When I give the signal, you deal with the one on the right.’
Fabius followed Scipio as he turned down the alley and walked up to the soldiers, who wore the same style of armour and equipment as the men at the entrance. They both had their cheekpieces down, obscuring their faces, but by their long beards they looked to be eastern mercenaries, perhaps Assyrian. The man on the left stood forward, slamming his spear butt on the ground. ‘You are not allowed through,’ he said, his Greek barely comprehensible. ‘By order of the high admiral.’
‘The high admiral?’ Scipio said, pretending ignorance. ‘So this is the way to the circular harbour?’
‘Yes, but it’s not the harbour you want,’ the man growled. ‘Your harbour is back the way you came. You merchants are even bigger fools than I thought. You have no sense of direction.’
Scipio turned, affecting a puzzled expression, but in reality looking down the alley to make sure they were not being watched. He caught Fabius’ eye, and nodded almost imperceptibly. In a lightning movement he swivelled round and punched the soldier hard in the throat, catching him as he fell and twisting his head violently to one side until he could hear his neck break. In the same instant Fabius did the same to the other man, keeping hold of his head afterwards and lowering him gently to the ground. There had been no noise, and there was no blood. They dragged the two men out of the alley into a dark space behind a wall, and then quickly stripped them, taking off their own clothes and donning the soldiers’ armour, pulling on the helmets and snapping the cheekpieces shut over their faces. The bodies lay with their eyes wide open, caught in the shock of instant death. Scipio kicked their discarded clothes over the corpses so that it looked like a pile of cloth. They picked up the spears, walked out into the alley, turned and moved swiftly along the columns of a portico that extended at right-angles from the merchants’ hall for several hundred feet, and then veered right through an opening towards a shimmer of water.
Scipio stopped for a moment, listening for any sign of pursuit, hearing nothing. Fabius took a deep breath, and saw that his hands were shaking. It always happened after he killed, the energy rush, like taking a deep draught of wine at the end of a long run, his heart pumping the nectar through his veins and making him shake. And it was not that he had come to relish killing for its own sake. Taking out those two men had seemed like the first act in the endgame, as if the assault on Carthage was finally in train.