The Seven Hills (39 page)

The Roman encampment had been a ruse. Mastanabal
cursed himself for falling for such a trick. They had marched all night to get here. Such a night march was in itself a con
siderable feat. But to get out onto that field and form up
from marching order to battle order in darkness, completely undetected save for a keen-eared Spartan soldier? Who was capable of such a thing? Certainly not a Roman general like
the one he had already beaten. Then he knew.

"It's Norbanus," he said quietly.

"Can it be he, my General?" said a subordinate. "The spies said he was back in Italy, but to come all the way here—"

"It can be no other. I came to know him on the Egyptian campaign. He is wily and imaginative. Only he could have done this."

"I knew him, too," said a Libyan commander. "He can make men march, but he has little reputation as a fighting general. His part in the battle outside Alexandria was well done, but it was just a field maneuver that gave us the advantage. His men did little fighting."

That was true, and the words put heart in the Carthaginian leader. "Counting standards, I make his strength at
eight legions. We still have superior numbers, and we are far
stronger in cavalry. And the gods of Carthage are stronger than the gods of Rome. He's taken the best ground, naturally, but we won't fight him there. He can come here and
fight us, where we have the fortified camp at our backs and the river on our flanks. The advantage is all ours here."

"What if he refuses to give battle, My General?" asked the Libyan.

Mastanabal smiled wolfishly, showing sharp teeth. "Then we will take our ease right here. Soon the shofet will join us,
with an army twice our size. Norbanus can fight us then, if
it pleases him." His commanders chuckled. That was better.
The unexpected shock to their nerves was receding. "Order the men to breakfast. We'll send out a delegation to parley, then make our battle dispositions when the sun is high—"

"My General," said the phlegmatic Spartan, "you had better look over there."

The sun had risen behind the Romans, casting its glitter from standards and spear points and polished armor. At first, nothing seemed to have changed. Then he saw the rhythmic flashing along the line. It came from the polished greaves worn by the centurions. They were walking. With
the same incredible precision, without the sound of so much as a single trumpet, the Roman army was
advancing.

"My General," said someone, "I don't think they want to parley."

They had given him no time! No time to plan, no time
to feed his men, no time for a harangue, no time to make the
customary sacrifices. Were he to rush through the ceremonies now, he would look like a half-beaten man, no longer in control of his and his army's fate.

"Do we meet them here or on the field?" demanded the Libyan. "We must know now."

"There is no time to deploy properly. They would catch
us with half our men outside the camp, half in. We will meet
them here on the walls. It will just take longer to kill them all this way. They must be exhausted after marching all night, and our men are well rested. This is just like Norbanus. What he is doing is bold, but it is foolish. He wastes
his men needlessly." It galled him but he had little choice. It was safe enough, but from here he could not concentrate his strength as he pleased. He could not take advantage if he saw a weakness in the Roman formation. There was no scope for generalship in such a fight. On the walls, the ferocity of his Gauls and his Spaniards would be wasted. His splendid cavalry would remain penned up like sheep, completely useless.

Remorselessly, the legionaries came on. He scanned to their flanks and rear. They seemed to have no siege-train. That was excellent. With no heavy missile hurlers or specialized assault equipment, they must attack the rampart with infantry alone. That would prove very costly to them.
It was the worst possible way to assault a fortification, sim
ply hurling human flesh against steel.

He looked along his own wall. It was only earth and tim
ber, but the earth was heaped eight feet high and topped with sharpened stakes. He had not entrenched. He had not dug a ditch lined with traps and foot stakes. But he had
never expected to have to defend this place. It was merely a temporary camp for amassing a force to renew the attack on
Rome.

It was no matter. He had beaten Romans before. He would beat this army as well. Already, his men were over their first astonishment. All up and down the western wall,
tribal war chants boomed out. Spaniards waved their vicious
falcatas
and Gauls whirled their long swords. Slingers were
taking their positions, their pouches full of lead slugs. Archers arranged their arrows tidily. At the southern end of the wall the Greeks stood silent and ready, superbly armored and holding their long spears.

Mastanabal was satisfied. There were few recruits in his army. Most were men with long experience of war. The Ro
mans were raising legions too fast. They had too many untried boys, not enough veterans. It had led them to disaster before, in Hannibal's time and now in his own. He squinted toward the approaching Romans and tried to make out their dispositions. The rising sun at their backs made this difficult. They had chosen the right direction from which to make their assault.

This one leaves little to chance,
Mastanabal thought.

Norbanus watched the advance with greatest
satisfaction. All had worked out perfectly. The ruse with the false camp had paid off handsomely. His greatest worry had
been that the scouts would leave some men behind to make a count of the arriving legions. They would have seen that the army did not halt at the camp and would have known the truth. His own horsemen might not have caught them. But the scouts had been satisfied with what they had seen and they had been too lacking in initiative to wait to see more.

And, as always, the gods of Rome were watching over their favorite, Titus Norbanus.

His men made a splendid show as they marched in per
fect silence. They had stripped the covers from their shields, displaying bright new paint, the colors and devices identifying the various units. Those who had crests and plumes had
mounted them on their helmets, the bright feathers and horsehair nodding to their steps. Armor and weapons were polished bright. Brightest of all were the standards. His four old legions, veterans of the long march, had turned in
their old standards and been given the new, standardized ea
gles of silver and gold. The men who carried them were
draped with the skins of lions. The bearers of the lesser stan
dards wore pelts of wolf and bear.

And, he reflected with some satisfaction, the ruse and the
night march had not been his only inspired decisions. The silent advance had been his idea as well. He had instructed his men carefully that there would be no trumpets, but all orders must be given with the voice, in words quietly but clearly spoken. Here the oratorical training of the officers had paid off, for they knew how to make themselves heard without shouting. He knew that to the enemy on the wall opposite, the sight would be awesome and frightening.

The crowning achievement was his decision to attack at first light without negotiation. It looked foolish, but he
knew that it made the best possible use of his strength while
crippling his enemy. Mastanabal could not know that his fortified camp was, to the Romans, nothing but a big Gallic oppidum, and they had taken hundreds of such by storm. It
was one of the most basic tasks given to legionary trainees.

They had marched all night, but he had given them two days of rest before beginning it. This had been risky, since they might have been reported by locals anxious to curry favor with Carthage, and it gave Hamilcar more time to link up with Mastanabal's army, but he had deemed the risk acceptable.

No doubt about it, he thought, his planning and execution had been without flaw and without peer. The name of Titus Norbanus would live forever. And this was only the beginning.

First, though, to reduce this fortification and exterminate this army that had the impudence to exist upon what was, by
right and the will of the gods, Roman territory. His battle
plan was fully formulated and was even now being implemented. It was unique and, of course, it was risky. But a man proved his greatness only by pressing his luck relentlessly.

And, did the Carthaginian but know it, this was just one part of a two-part battle. The other phase was even now being fought. It galled Norbanus that he could not be in control of that battle as well.

Decimus Arrunteius,
duumvir
of the fleet al
ready called the Norbanian, paced the long deck of his flagship,
Avenging Mars.
The deck itself was a new innovation.
The traditional warship had a mere catwalk stretching its length between the benches of the upper banks of rowers. Romans liked room for soldiers to maneuver, so they had raised the catwalk above the rowers' heads and widened it into a true deck. The Greek shipwrights had protested that this would destroy the ships' stability and make them prone
to capsizing. The Romans' answer had been swift and impa
tient: Build the ships wider. The Greeks had said that this would make the ships slow and unwieldy. The Romans an
swered that men were cheap: Add more rowers.

The result Arrunteius surveyed all around him: a fleet of ships larger and more powerful than the traditional Greek trireme that had been supreme on the Middle Sea for centuries. The ships might not be quite as quick or maneuverable as the Greek ships, but he had confidence that their superior qualities would more than make up for this.

And confidence was needed. He knew that a Carthaginian fleet lay ahead of him, not far away. That nation had reigned supreme on the sea since the expulsion of Rome from Italy. The Carthaginians and their many seagoing allies were long experienced and tested in sailing, in rowing, and in battle upon the waters. The Romans were none of these things. But once before Rome had bested Carthage at sea, and they counted on Carthaginian arrogance, that Carthage would have forgotten the lessons learned at such cost.

Arrunteius walked forward and mounted the "castle," a
strong tower erected near the prow
of Avenging Mars.
Similar towers adorned the foredecks of the larger warships. Be
hind each tower stood a long bridge, one end hinged to a circular pivot on the deck, the other featuring a three-foot spike of iron. In battle it would be swung outboard and dropped so that the spike sank into an enemy deck; forming a boarding bridge for the marines manning every Roman ship. It was called a
corvus:
"crow."

In addition, every ship was built atop an extra-massive keel, its fore end tipped with a heavy ram of cast bronze.

The Romans had little confidence in their ability to maneuver in action and to ram, but they wanted both to be decisive when accomplished.

In all, the new, Italian-built fleet had nothing like the
wildly imaginative innovations of the Alexandrian fleet, but its improvements had been well thought out, and some, like the tower and the
corvus,
had proven successful nearly two
centuries before, in the first war against Carthage.

About the men, Arninteius was not so certain. The sailors were mainly Greek, each with an Italian understudy learning the craft. The rowers were Italians, working their
way into Roman favor in the most arduous way imaginable.
They had mastered the skills of the oar and now took pride in their work. They had formed their own guild with its
special gods, rituals and sacrifices. Their loyalty they would
prove in action.

The marines, likewise, were mostly Italians, with a leav
ening of legionaries for stiffening: They had been drilled with great intensity in the arts of Roman close combat.
Every man was armed with heavy and light javelins, a short,
razor-edged gladius and a dagger. They wore iron helmets
and shirts of Gallic mail. These last were shorter than the le
gionary type, extending only to the waist, and they lacked
the distinctive shoulder doublings of legionary armor. Their
shields, likewise, were somewhat smaller and far lighter than those used on land. These changes had been deemed expedient for warfare at sea. The shields were painted blue for sea service, and adorned with pictures of tritons,
Nereids,
hippokampi,
the trident of Neptune and other nau
tical designs.

"Admiral!" called the sailing master, a Greek like most
of them. "Around that point," he jabbed a finger at a cape of
land that jutted into the sea to the southwest, "lies a cove near the mouth of the Iberis. If the Carthaginian army is
anywhere nearby inland, it is a natural place for their fleet to
put in."

"Then we will go around the cape in battle order. If there are no hostile forces in sight, resume cruising as usual." The
requisite orders were passed by flag, and the fleet prepared
for action, as it had numerous times before: Yards and sails were lowered and stored away, but the masts were left stand
ing, for the
corvi
were slung from them. Arms were prepared; the sky was scanned for omens. The ships took up position abreast with the heavy triremes in the first line, the
smaller, swifter biremes in the second and the smallest vessels and the transports well astern. In a slow and stately ma
neuver, like a legion changing front on the parade ground, the great line of ships swept around the cape. On the other side they found the Carthaginians.