Hannibal's Children (41 page)

The only problem with the wonderful device, Marcus thought sourly, was that it couldn't hit anything closer than a hundred paces. And it was dreadfully slow to reload: capable of delivering only about four missiles per hour. The speed might be improved with intensive drill, but oxen could not be speeded up. And if the siege should prove to be lengthy, the oxen would be eaten and they would have to use men for the labor.

As he mused, it struck him how strange this was: advising a foreign queen on how best to defeat his fellow Romans. Not that she or anyone else had a prayer of doing that. Even moving all those catapults to the southern wall would probably produce few if any Roman casualties. Nonetheless, it felt strange.

In the gallery, the chief engineer, Mucius Mus, was urging his men to ever-greater speed. Legionaries, auxilia and slaves mingled indifferently, busy as ants as they passed the timbers and lead sheets and pins of wood or iron from hand to hand and the team of artisans fitted them together with wonderful skill.

"Hurry up with those timbers!" Mucius shouted. "Do you think we've all the buggering livelong day to finish this? I've seen half-tamed Gauls work harder than this and Gauls
hate
work! Do you want those buggering Alexandrians to think you're a bunch of buggering
Greeks!"
In truth he was well pleased with the men and their work, but his many long years as a centurion forbade his saying so. Customarily, soldiers only received praise from their general and then only
after
the battle was won.

Cato and Niger came down the shoreline behind the shed. Since only the north side of the shed would receive fire, the south wall was left open for the sake of light and ventilation, and to conserve material.

"When will it be finished?" Niger asked Mucius.

"If we can maintain this pace, I can have it extended all the way to the southeastern corner of the city wall by tomorrow morning," Mucius reported. "That is, if they allow us to keep up the pace. There could still be trouble. Matter of fact, if there's going to be trouble, we're going to see it soon. Look." He pointed to what was just beyond the end of the shed: Here the soft ground stopped and the pavement began. It was the city's river port. Its docks were deserted. The merchant vessels were headed for the Nile and even the fishing craft had withdrawn to the lake's southern shore.

"You see that big arch there?" Mucius went on. "That's the canal that connects the lake with the Eunostos Harbor. If I was the man in charge of defense, I'd send a warship or two out here to block us, maybe a sally of infantry to catch us while we're still at work and burn the gallery."

"If it happens, it won't be Parmenion that thought of it," Cato said. "Look up there." The others looked up through the archer's loop he indicated. They could see a man in Ro-man armor talking to a woman.

"Is that Scipio?" Niger said. "If it is, the woman must be Selene, the queen. Leave it to a Scipio not only to get himself appointed defender of Alexandria, but to bag himself a queen to warm his bed."

"I don't care what his job is or who he sticks it to," Mucius told them, "but if he gets just one of my men killed, I'll have him up before the Centuriate Assembly on charges of high treason."

Cato frowned. "I don't know what he's up to, but no Cornelian ever betrayed Rome."

Niger turned to Cato. "Send down a cohort of heavy infantry auxilia and another of skirmishers and all your archers. They can stand down here behind the gallery and be ready to take care of whatever comes through the arch."

Mucius scratched his chin. "That'll help. You know, to send ships out they'll have to raise the gate. If we're fast, we could get some men inside and keep it open. Get just one legion inside and we could take the city."

Niger and Cato looked at one another. "Only if Titus Norbanus orders it," Cato said. "We're not here to hand Alexandria to Hamilcar at the cost of Roman blood. And there'll be blood, never doubt it. A fight through the streets, with the enemy on the walls and the rooftops—we'd be giving away our biggest advantage by splitting up into a hundred units to take the city one street and one block at a time."

"Not to mention," Niger said, "giving Titus Norbanus eternal glory as the man who conquered Alexandria. He's not my patron that I owe him such favors. The man's never even held the office of praetor and here they've given him proconsular imperium. Let's just invest this south wall as we've been ordered and leave it at that."

"Suit yourselves," Mucius said, "but get those cohorts down here quick." When they were gone, he returned to tongue-lashing his men. Buggering senators, he thought. Always playing their buggering politics with my boys' lives.

The cohorts arrived in short order. The heavy infantry were mostly Germans from settlements now earning their citizenship: sons of wild tribesmen defeated by Noricum and sent to colonize the Gallic territory around Lake Lemannus. They were equipped much like the legionaries except for their flat, oval shields and their handheld spears that they wielded at close quarters instead of throwing them like pila. They were ideal for this job, Mucius thought.

The skirmishers were young Gauls who wore short, sleeveless shirts of mail and skullcap helmets and bore small, round shields. They were armed with short swords and javelins.

The archers were mostly Suebi, a Germanic tribe that favored the bow. Theirs were man-height and shot arrows a yard long, tipped with small, barbed points and fletched with goose feathers. The Suebi wore no armor, and no helmets covered their long hair, which they wore on the left side of the head in an elaborate knot. Their only other weapons were knotty-headed clubs.

Early in the afternoon the trouble Mucius had predicted arrived. Even above the din of hammering and the roars of battle from the west, he could hear the clank and rattle of a massive bronze grate being raised.

"They're coming!" he shouted. "Get your men ready!"

The officer in charge of the auxilia was a young man of the Caecilian clan. This was his first command of soldiers and he was eager. "On your feet!" he shouted. "Half of the heavies to the open end of the gallery with your shields up! I don't want these Greeks to bag so much as a single slave. Skirmishers, prepare to follow me. Archers, I don't need to tell you what to do."

The heavy infantry rounded the end of the gallery and formed a barrier six ranks deep. They held their shields high, for the moment they came around the end of the gallery, they came under a storm of arrows from atop the wall. Within seconds they formed a sort of testudo of overlapping shields to protect both themselves and the men laboring behind them. As each new yard of the gallery was added, they could take a long pace forward to make room for the next.

Amid much shouting from attackers and defenders, a pair of galleys emerged from the arch, side by side. Their decks were crowded with soldiers and these leaped ashore under cover of heavy missile fire from archers and slingers. The skirmishers, with young Caecilius leading, bounded forward to meet them. There were none of the usual slow, methodical Roman advancing tactics. With their small shields they had to get through the missile storm swiftly.

In moments, shield smashed into shield and the Gallic spears and Roman short swords began to take a toll. The Suebi picked off the archers and slingers aboard the ships while others aimed their fire at the walls to make the archers up there keep their heads down. Medical slaves came forward with litters to bring out the wounded.

The attackers fought desperately, for they had nowhere to retreat except back onto their ships. They had reinforcements coming, but these could only arrive slowly and awkwardly by filing from one ship to another, for the tunnel that gave access through the city wall to the lake had no walkway.

When the first fury of the attack was broken, Caecilius disengaged himself from the fight. "The rest of the heavies, come push them back! Archers, use fire arrows!" The skirmishers fell back and the remaining half-cohort of heavy infantry pressed forward, the weight of their arms toppling the attackers, driving them, step by step, back onto the ships. Arrows tipped with flaming tow arched over their heads and struck the wooden ships. Most were extinguished, but there were too many for the crews to fight effectively.

With a creaking of ropes, the burning galleys were towed back within the tunnel. The bronze grate came grinding down, narrowly missing the bow of one of the galleys. Fully half the sortie lay dead upon the ground and the Roman force set up a raucous, jeering cheer.

Throughout the fight, the gallery continued to grow.

Titus Norbanus saw none of the fighting at the southern wall, but messengers brought him periodic reports. In the meantime, there was more than enough to see from his vantage point atop the battle tower. Assault after assault against the western wall was repelled with terrible losses. This was only to be expected. The situation was somewhat better on the Pharos.

By midday Hamilcar was looking sour. He had not gained the swift victory for which he had so unrealistically hoped. It was clear that Alexandria would not fall this day, nor for many more days to come. He was contemplating the crucifixion of a few laggard officers in order to encourage the rest, when a distant cheer drew his attention. His banner hung waving from atop the great lighthouse. Hamilcar leaped to his feet in his excitement.

"The Pharos is mine!" He turned to Norbanus. "Did you know that the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria was named one of the Seven Wonders of the World by Antipater of Sidon? The Great Pyramids are another, and soon they shall be mine, too."

"My congratulations, Shofet," Norbanus murmured. "With two in your possession, can the other five be far behind?"

Hamilcar glanced at him sharply. Had he detected a sardonic note in the Roman's words? It was difficult to tell when the two of them were conversing in a language that was native to neither.

"This is enough for today," Hamilcar said. "I will call the main assault force back. Tonight we will bring up the heavy siege equipment under cover of night and resume in the morning."

Norbanus wondered if Hamilcar even remembered that this had been his own recommendation. "Very wise, Shofet."

"And now I want to see what wonder you have worked at the southern wall."

"I think you will find it pleasing."

Indeed, Hamilcar was more than pleased. "This is wonderful," he said, studying the ever-growing gallery. It was already well beyond the river port and on its way to the southeastern corner of the city wall. "So this was why you requisitioned all that timber and lead back at Carthage. Making use of that city model of yours, no doubt."

"It is our custom to be prepared for all contingencies," Norbanus informed him. "It goes against our sense of fitness to allow an enemy control of such a resource as this lake, when it lies within our power to seize it for ourselves."

Hamilcar nodded. "I see. Let me tell you about my own sense of fitness. Now that I have three sides of the city in my power, it offends me to leave the fourth unguarded. I shall send a landing force ashore to the east of the city and seal it off from the world."

"This is, indeed, the Shofet's decision to make," Norbanus said.

"If Alexandria refuses to fall to assault, then she can fall to starvation or pestilence. With her fleet bottled up in the harbor and her major forces reduced to throwing rocks at me from the walls, I can afford to detach a large part of my army to go southward down the Nile and secure the larger cities. They are very rich cities, Roman. Perhaps you shall have a part in this new phase of the campaign."

Norbanus bowed. "I am, of course, at the Shofet's service.”

On the tenth day of the siege, Selene came to Marcus’s quarters. She was accompanied only by a maidservant and she left the girl in an anteroom. She found Marcus in the courtyard, drafting one of his inevitable missives to the Senate.

"How do you intend to get a message through?" she asked him. "The city is surrounded."

"Not very expertly," he said. "I've cultivated a few well-traveled and adventurous young men here, men who will take a great risk for a great reward."

"How long is this going to last?"

"The siege? It could go on for months, but I don't think it will."

"Why not? My brother's advisers are all but whipped. They talk boastfully of how difficult Alexandria is to take, meaning that they have no intention of carrying the war to Hamilcar. They're defeated. Are you aware that the Roman legions have left?"

"Of course. They pulled out last night, marching along the southern shore of the lake. I suspect that they are headed south down the river. There is nothing to stop them except sheer distance. They can take every city down to the First Cataract if they feel like it. Personally, I doubt they'll want to do Hamilcar that big a favor."

As always, his calm confidence both infuriated and bewildered her. "Why do you think the siege will be over soon? Because we will be defeated?"

"No," he said. "I think that Hamilcar will get some very bad news soon, news that will force him to break off the siege and the war."

"What? What news could do that?"

"Let me keep that to myself for the moment. Rest assured that it will happen. One morning soon we shall look out over the western wall and see nothing but the remains of Hamilcar's camp and nothing but a plume of dust in the air to show us where they've all gone."

She considered this, weighing many factors in her mind: matters of politics and greed and ambition. "If that is true," she said, "then we must deal with my brother and his advisers first. Otherwise, the moment Hamilcar leaves, we are both dead. If we strike now, we are safe. Parmenion and the eunuchs are in disgrace and no one will mourn their passing. We can't let them convince people that they've won some sort of victory."

Marcus smiled. "Spoken like a true Ptolemy."

"How else would I talk," she said. "I am a Ptolemy."

"The only one worthy of the name," Marcus told her. "You must hide. Go to the temple of Serapis. He's the patron deity of the city and a great mob of the citizenry are camped out on the temple grounds. The citizens love you and they will protect you there. Go now. I have to consult with Chilo. He's figured out a way to use the big new catapults against that gallery on the southern wall. Now that it's not full of Romans, I won't mind destroying it."