The Seven Hills (27 page)

"I want no unfavorable omens spread about," he told
them tersely. "If you see any, keep them to yourselves. People here are on edge as it is. Until our legions arrive from the|
south, or else we know that the Carthaginians are not on the march toward us, let's see nothing but approval from the gods." The rest nodded. Augurs were not priests, but elected officials co-opted into the college of augurs. They read the omens according to an ancient list and did not believe themselves to be divinely inspired.

"How could this have happened without a single unfa
vorable omen?" asked one of them. "Since leaving Noricum,
we have had an unbroken series of favorable omens. What has happened?"

A thought struck the princeps. "The gods gave us no
sign because this is not a serious defeat. Jupiter and Juno
would have given us warning had this been a true disaster,
threatening the city. The gods do not consider the deaths of
a few thousand mortals to be of great account. Only had it
signaled the fall of a great nation would they have considered it worthy of their notice." !

"That is very true," said the head of the college, one of
the elders of the great clan of Brutus. "I'll wager our scouts
return with word of the Carthaginians in full retreat, or if
they come here and invest the city, our legions will come up. from the south and crush them against the walls like bugs."

Gabinius nodded eagerly. "That's the way to talk! Let the citizens hear that and all will be well. They're Romans, after all. It's just that, as Romans, they have never known news of
a defeat in generations."

That evening, the princeps and consuls convoked a special meeting for further military planning. As always, Gabinius spoke first.

"Conscript fathers," he began, "I need hardly point out that the reconquest of our old empire has proven an even more formidable task than we had anticipated. It is clear that our legions will not be sufficient to the task unaided.

At the moment, we have no allies. We have drained the manpower pool of Noricum to build all these new legions. We need many cohorts of auxilia and where are we to find the men?" He paused for rhetorical effect, then went on. "Here in Italy, that is where!"

The Consul Scipio stood. "Princeps, Italy lost its manhood when our ancestors went north in the Exile! Those who stayed bent their necks to the Carthaginian yoke. They are little more than slaves! Early on it was proposed that they earn their way back into our good graces and limited
citizenship by serving as rowers in our new navy. But to give
them arms and place them in the battle line with our citizen legions? That is to give them too much honor." Applause greeted this.

"Honor can be earned," Gabinius answered, "and let us not fool ourselves. We have no alternative. We know from the battle of the Arnus that we were defeated not through
the weakness of our legions, green though they were, but for
lack of sufficient auxilia to support their flanks. We need light infantry, archers, slingers and, above all, cavalry!" He held their attention with his intensity and went on.

"North of the Rivet Arnus is what used to be Cisalpine
Gaul. The people there were our allies in the old days. By all
accounts, they suffered little from Carthage, and most of them never even saw a Carthaginian. I'll wager they have not lost all of their warrior heritage. Let's start there. Then
we can scour old Latium and central Italy, paying special at
tention to the mountainous regions; the places where living is rough and the Carthaginians never went. Let's call in those bandits who infest this peninsula. Yes, I know what you'll all say: 'What! Bandits in Roman service?' And to
that I say: 'Yes!' These are men of spirit; men who refused to
till the soil for absentee landlords, who found more honor in taking arms and raiding. Were Romulus, Remus and their followers any different? Offer them amnesty with no demand that they lay down their arms. Offer them limited cit
izenship in exchange for service in our auxilia. I promise you
we will quickly raise a sizable force of first-rate skirmishers and foragers!"

There were howls of protest but Gabinius smiled grimly.
He knew he could bring them around. There was no question about it, because he and they knew that there was no choice. They were registering their protests for the sake of form. They knew now that Roman legions could lose a battle. He would get his way.

For a few days the city remained tense, until the scouts came pounding back down the Via Clodia with word that
the Carthaginian force had, indeed, returned from whence it
came. There was no jubilation, but a general sense of relief settled over the city. Sacrifices and omen taking resumed, and further scouts were dispatched to shadow Mastanabal's army and report upon its every movement.

When two legions arrived from Campania, they were sent north to the Arnus, there to undertake construction of extensive fortifications. It was defensive warfare, the sort Romans hated the most, but unavoidable since the main Roman forces had to be concentrated in the South. The legions in the North were also to raise, arm and train as many auxilia as they possibly could.

One question plagued the consuls, the princeps and the Senate: Where were Titus Norbanus and those four veteran legions?

The legions landed on the little pirate cove like a thunderbolt from heaven. By their thousands, the armored men poured over the narrow pass in the inland hills during the hours before dawn, moving with their now-accustomed quiet. By the time the village was awake, the
soldiers were upon it, killing wherever they met resistance,
taking prisoners where there was none. The pirates were sturdy men and tough fighters, but they had neither the numbers, the equipment nor the discipline of their pitiless conquerors. A few minutes of vicious fighting saw the utter destruction of the pirates; then came the sack of the town. The prisoners, mostly women and children, were herded into a compound and kept under guard.

Titus Norbanus rode in and inspected his latest acquisi
tion. First, he assured himself that not a single pirate had es
caped by sea. It would not do to let anyone spread the word of his coming to the many other pirate towns along the coast. Satisfied, he rode into the little town square and dismounted. His men had already secured the town's finest house for his use, and he seated himself upon its spacious, covered porch, sipping wine while his men piled the loot before him.

Norbanus was outrageously pleased with this stage of his
march. It was proving incredibly profitable. The march north through Syria had been tense but uneventful. They
had been shadowed the whole way by native soldiers, not a
real threat but in enough strength to discourage any at
tempts upon the cities of the coast. Norbanus had sent word
to the Seleucid governor that he meant no hostility, that he and his soldiers just wanted to get home. The governor had made no offer of help, but neither did he make any aggres
sive move. They passed within sight of the walls of splendid
Antioch, and Norbanus was greatly tempted to sack the place, but that might have been more than the Senate could stomach, so he merely used its crossing of the River Orontes, paying the ferry companies meticulously and paying also for all the necessities they needed.

Then they turned westward, along the south-facing coast
of Cilicia, and the Syrian troops had halted at the border.
This rugged country was claimed by the Seleucids, but they
had never occupied the place in any meaningful fashion.
The only major city was Tarsus, which regarded itself as in
dependent and was mainly Greek rather than native. Norbanus was diplomatic with the fathers of Tarsus and his army availed itself of the excellent water there.

Most of Cilicia was too mountainous and primitive for
any kind of rule save the tribal sort. Its towns were virtually
independent, and on the coast the only trade practiced was piracy. This was what made the Cilician stage of the march so lucrative.

Nearly every day's march brought them to a range of
hills, and on the other side of those hills there was nearly al
ways a little cove, with its own village and its own pirate fleet. There were never more than a few hundred to a few thousand men in each town. Except for the practice of piracy, these would have been nothing but squalid fishing villages. With it, they were fine little towns, their warehouses stuffed with the loot of the sea, taken in raids on coastal towns and from captured ships, and their treasuries
filled with gold and silver, most of it ransom money, for the
most profitable enterprise of the pirates was the capture of wealthy persons. All over the Inner Sea, there were factors
that arranged for the ransom of captives on a fixed scale.

When all the loot had been counted, a group of about twenty men and women were brought before him. They wore clothing of good quality, although some of their garments were very much the worse for wear. They stared about them apprehensively, clearly alarmed by these outlandish
soldiers who had appeared from nowhere and displayed such
ferocity.

"You are the captives of this little band of pirates, are you
not?" Norbanus asked them in Greek.

"We are," said one of them, a tall, distinguished man who appeared to be Greek.

"Are you the spokesman of this group?"

The man looked at the others, who looked back at him blankly. "It would appear so."

"Excellent. I am Titus Norbanus, proconsul of Rome. You have heard of us?"

The man inclined his head. "We have heard reports of
your return to Italy, Proconsul. We scarcely expected to see
you in Cilicia. Might I inquire of our fate?"

"You may well rejoice in our advent among you. Rome is
mighty, and Rome is orderly. I am offended by the disorder of this pirate business. Rome will correct this evil, in time. In the meanwhile, like the other captives in the other pirate
towns we have liberated, you will be returned to your homelands by the first available transportation. Rome is just, and
Rome wants only friendly relations with the people of the Middle Sea." He paused a moment. "Except, of course, for Carthage. We will destroy Carthage."

The tall man bowed, as did the rest. "Rome is merciful, indeed."

"I said just, not merciful," Norbanus corrected. "Mercy is
an attribute of weakness. Justice and clemency are attributes
of the strong. Nothing is stronger than Rome."

A woman stepped forward. "Proconsul, I am Atalanta, from Herakleion, on Crete. My ransom of two thousand
Athenian drachmas has already been delivered. I was wait
ing on the next ship bound for Crete."

"Your ransom will be returned to you," Norbanus said grandly. "If any others among you have already been ransomed, report the sum to my quaestor and you will be repaid.
Of course, I will want to see receipts. These pirates seem to be
meticulous in their accounts, so there should be no problem." No sense letting them take him for a fool, he thought.

The liberated captives were led away, thanking him pro
fusely, some of them coming forward to kiss the hem of his
cloak.

"Nice bit of diplomacy, that," Lentulus Niger commented.

"It costs us nothing," Norbanus said, "and it spreads goodwill. These people we liberate will spread word
throughout the eastern half of the Middle Sea that Rome has
arrived and Rome is their friend, if they are wise. Without conquering a foot of ground, we've put much of the East in
Rome's debt and made the rest terrified of us. When Roman
armies show up for the real conquest, our enemies will already be half-defeated by their own fears."

By afternoon, Norbanus had sold all the captives to the
Syrian slave traders who followed the army like vultures. He made arrangements for the liberated prisoners to be taken to the nearest port city, where they could take a ship for home,
and as always reminded the escort what a terrible fate awaited them should their charges not reach their destination safely. Norbanus found it a wise policy always to assume the worst of foreigners and took precautions accordingly.

Preparations for dinner were well under way when look
outs stationed on a headland jutting into the sea signaled that a ship approached. Shortly thereafter the vessel appeared and they saw at once that it was not a pirate ship returning to its base. It was a small galley under sail in a favorable wind, and upon its square sail was painted Jupiter's eagle, clutching thunderbolts in its talons.

Cato set down his cup. "The Roman navy appears at
last!" Previously, they had seen only Greek ships comman
deered by Rome, usually carrying orders from the Senate
which Norbanus always found excuses to ignore.

"Whatever does the noble Senate want now?" Norbanus grumped. "Does anyone want to wager that it's something other than 'come home right this minute'? As if I weren't hurrying there as fast as I can!"

The others maintained detached expressions. Norbanus had had plenty of opportunity to arrange for sea transportation to Italy. He just had no intention of doing so. He was embarked upon his own personal epic and wanted no interference with it.