‘All right. Try not to be spotted.’
Scipio nodded at Fabius, and they both went in. The entranceway led through a narrow passage towards a wider opening behind some columns. Fabius spoke quietly to Scipio. ‘That was a risk. What do you intend to do with these men?’
Scipio replied quickly, his voice low. ‘Polybius said that if at all possible, we should coerce one or two soldiers to provide eyewitness descriptions in an attempt to persuade the Senate. They wouldn’t believe Carthaginians, doubting their sincerity, but they might believe mercenaries who have no vested loyalty to the place. Once we’re on the ship and I tell them who I really am and that I will guarantee their safety and reward, they’ll still agree to go along with us, I’m sure of it. They’d have no choice — to return to Carthage after deserting would be to face certain execution. But before that they’ll also be useful when we march down to the harbour together, making us into a more credible unit. The Thracian can claim to the customs police that we are on a mission from Hasdrubal himself to inspect the newly arrived ships, and in the darkness with our cheekpieces down we might go unrecognized even if the alarm has been raised. By the time they know that the Thracians are also on the run, the ship should have slipped away.’
‘Do you think they have the intelligence we need?’
‘Already this man has given us valuable hints about the morale of the mercenary force and how it’s likely to be depleted by desertion by the time a Roman army arrives. I believe there may be enough of them to defend the harbour area, putting up a stout resistance, but once we break through the harbour defences the way will be clear through the city until we reach this point, where the final defenders will be Carthaginians prepared to die for their city.’
Fabius pointed ahead. ‘Here we are.’ They stared into a wide space about the size of a stadium, reminiscent of the training arena in the gladiator school in Rome. Ahead of them was a unit of soldiers in drill formation, about the size of a century, stomping forward and sideways and hollering in unison, slapping their sword blades against their shields. Their armour and weapons were burnished like silver, dazzling even in the fading light. They were equipped like nothing Fabius had seen before, with muscled cuirasses and Corinthian-style helmets, the nose guards and cheekpieces extending below their chins. They looked like a vision from the past, like Greek hoplites, soldiers Fabius had only ever seen before in carvings and paintings.
At a barked command the soldiers turned and faced them directly; Scipio and Fabius quickly pulled back behind the columns before peering out again, cautiously. Their shields were white all over, except for a painted red crescent moon over a truncated triangle on the boss. Fabius recognized it from the entrance to the Tophet sanctuary they had passed on the way up, the symbol of the goddess Tanit. He remembered what the mercenary had said, that these were men who had been given a second lease of life, who had escaped sacrifice at birth only to spend their lives training for another kind of sacrifice, a debt owed to the goddess whose symbol they wore so defiantly on their shields.
‘Jupiter above,’ Scipio whispered. ‘It’s the hieros lockos, the Sacred Band.’
The soldiers stomped again, turned and marched towards a cluster of men below the walls fronting the Byrsa that Fabius could see included white-robed priests as well as officers in armour. He turned to Scipio. ‘But I thought the Sacred Band was ancient history.’
‘They were destroyed almost two hundred years ago at the Battle of the Krimissus in Sicily against Timoleon of Syracuse, and then again by Agathocles a generation later outside Carthage,’ Scipio replied. ‘They were the elite of the Carthaginian citizen army, but since then Carthage has relied on mercenaries.’
‘Yet from what the Thracian tells us, the mercenaries will no longer defend Carthage.’
‘So the Carthaginians have reformed the Sacred Band,’ Scipio said grimly. ‘For all these years while Rome has turned a blind eye, Carthage has not only rebuilt her naval might but also her most feared infantry force.’
‘If they fought to the death twice, that will be part of their sacred history and they will be prepared to do so again.’
‘They are training for war in these streets, in the narrowing alley leading to the Byrsa and the old houses of the Punic quarter. When an assault force reaches this place, they will know that they stand no chance of survival, that war is about selling victory at the highest possible price. These men are being trained to throw themselves into death. They are suicide warriors.’
‘Yet if an assault does not come soon and Carthage regains her strength, such a force could swiftly be turned into an offensive unit, a spearhead force or a special guard for Hasdrubal.’
There was a sharp blast from a pair of trumpets and they turned to look at the entrance in the wall where the priests and officers had been standing. The trumpeters moved aside and a figure walked through, followed by several others. The first figure was a huge man, broad shouldered and muscular, wearing a lionskin with the gaping head draped over his own, his beard square-cut and braided. Fabius stared, and reeled. Only one man in Carthage wore a lionskin cloak. It was Hasdrubal. He seemed a physical embodiment of everything that made Carthage a place to fear: the hardiness of a Phoenician and the strength of a Numidian. It was extraordinary to think that he was within a stone’s throw of Scipio, heir of the Roman who had brought Carthage to her knees, the one whose destiny since childhood had been to stand before these very walls and confront the successor to the great Hannibal.
Hasdrubal came down the steps and stood with his feet planted firmly apart, staring at the ranks of warriors facing him. From another entrance to the south a throng of slaves pulled a bullock towards him, its legs kicking and eyes red with fear. A priest handed Hasdrubal a sword, a huge, curved shape that Fabius had never seen before, and he turned towards the bull. The slaves dragged it to a halt, several of them hanging on each leg and another two at the neck. Two priests pushed a wide metal bowl beneath it and stood back as Hasdrubal himself came forward, standing in front of it. He suddenly lunged at the bull and held its neck with one arm in a lock, twisted it up and pulling it off balance. With his other hand he thrust the sword through the bull’s neck from the bottom up, ripping the blade outwards so that its head was nearly severed. The bull emitted a terrible hollow belch as a gush of bile came up from its stomach, and fountains of blood poured into the bowl. After a few seconds the flow of blood abated and Hasdrubal let the carcass fall heavily into the dust, and the priests pulled away the bowl, now brimming. One of them scooped a drinking horn into it and held it high in the direction of Bou Kornine, the twin-peaked mountain just visible in the distance above the rooftops to the east.
One by one, the soldiers came up and drank deeply from the horn, letting the blood flow freely down their faces and breastplates, the priest replenishing it frequently. As they walked away, each warrior took off his helmet, and Fabius could see that the Thracian had been right. These were mere boys, sixteen or seventeen years old, some of them barely able to grow a beard. Fabius felt a sudden frisson of familiarity. They looked just like the boys in the academy in Rome all those years ago, the age that he and Scipio had been when they first went off to war in Macedonia. If Rome did not attack Carthage, if the trainers of these boys were able to look beyond their suicide, then they could be groomed as the next generation of Carthaginian war leaders, just as Scipio and the others had been for Rome.
He knew what Scipio had to do. He had to harden himself against the innocence of these boys, against their enthusiasm for war and thirst for honour, qualities that Scipio himself rated more highly than anything else. Scipio had to return here before they got much older, at the head of an army that would drive up the streets of this city like a tidal wave. He had to ensure that the darkness for which these boys had been trained came to pass. He had to kill them all.