The Seven Hills (42 page)

Scipio looked at the man scornfully, his single eye glar
ing down his long nose. "Which one are you? Oh, yes, I remember. I believe I flogged your grandfather's blue-painted
backside at the battle of Five Forks."

The senator went scarlet while half the Senate growled and the other half roared with laughter.

The Consul Hermanicus stood. "Gentlemen! Let's not disgrace these proceedings with partisan bickering. The Roman people expect better from us. I propose that we de
clare fifteen days of thanksgiving, to commence at once and
to conclude with the dedication of the recaptured standards at the Temple of Saturn. I further move that the Italian communities that sent men to serve in the fleet be awarded with the status of
socii,
with full rights of citizenship to be conferred at the successful conclusion of the war, should their actions continue to prove as valorous as they were in this instance."

There was approval and disapproval. There was more ar
guing. But in the end the proposals carried. Then Herennius, followed by the rest of the Senate, went out into the Forum, mounted the Rostra and read out the dispatches to the assembled citizens, concluding with the actions declared by the Senate. With so many citizens away with the
legions, ratification by the Plebeian Assembly and the Cen
turiate Assembly was impossible, but the tribunes of the plebs carried the vote by acclamation. The mood that had oppressed the city since the defeat at the Arnus lifted, and the name of Norbanus gained yet new luster.

It gave Gabinius much to think about as they all trooped up the winding Clivus Capitolinus, past the restored Archive, up to the crest of the Capitoline Hill. First the lic
tors with their fasces, preceding the senior magistrates—the consuls and the praetors—followed by the lesser officials,
the priests, then the rest of the Senate, and last of all the great mass of citizens.

As they stood upon the great terrace before the Temple of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Gabinius pondered upon this new phenomenon: the Roman warlord. For that was what they were, he knew. The younger Titus Norbanus with his fanatically loyal soldiers—men loyal to Norbanus himself rather than to Rome. His father, now with the other great military command, leading the new family bloc in the Sen
ate and the assemblies and now sure to woo the Italian com
munities as they gained limited citizenship rights through military service. There was justice in that, Gabinius knew. It was the bullheaded members of his own peers, the old families, who were so stubbornly prejudiced against the Italians, as if a dispute between great-grandfathers had the same immediacy as the present war with Carthage.

And then there was young Scipio, who had no Roman soldiers at his command, but who was a potent force
nonetheless. Gabinius had a great fondness for young Scipio and that whole remarkable, irascible family, but the boy was
making his own foreign policy in Egypt and playing some dangerous game with the Princess Selene. And that redoubtable woman was playing manipulative games of her
own. Word had long come back to Rome, whispered by his
many enemies, of Scipio's dalliance with the Egyptian
princess. There were strange stories of statues erected in vil
lages and cities all up and down the Nile—statues of Marcus Scipio adorned with the curling ram's horns of Zeus-Ammon. These were attributes of divine kingship.

Alexander the Great had had just such statues erected to himself, to remind people of his divine and royal status.

A Roman god-king? The idea was unthinkable! What had the boy got himself into? But the position of young
Norbanus was far more worrying. As he looked about him,
Gabinius could see how the people's faces lit up at mention of Norbanus, how they spoke that name with near reverence. He was acquiring something close to divine regard.

Gabinius tried to puzzle it out. Perhaps there was no explaining such things. The boy had come out of nowhere and
wangled himself an unearned army command. He had performed a truly remarkable march that was little more than a plundering expedition, meddling in the affairs of Eastern kings. He had fought a cleverly managed battle and turned in a victory. And now the people thought he was a son of
Mars. Men who had campaigned hard all their lives, fought
in many battles, won greater victories and saved the Romans from dangers far greater, simply had not won such adulation from the citizens.

Young Norbanus, he knew, had some gift. It was a thing some men had and it could not be explained. It was some
thing that made men want to serve him loyally, made others
want to worship him, made them regard him as something
more than human, whatever his real deserts. Alexander had
had such a gift. The Macedonian golden boy had taken the superb army forged by his father and attacked the rotten, tottering old Persian Empire, and it fell into his hands like overripe fruit. He'd fought a few battles with the incredibly inept Darius and gained half the world, then had gone on a pointless march all the way to India, taking land he hadn't a prayer of governing. He'd acted like a drunken fool and murdered close friends, and in the end his own once fanatically loyal soldiers rebelled. Now, more than two hundred years later, men still worshipped him as a god.

For generations we fought Gauls and Germans to carve for our
selves an empire in the North,
Gabinius thought.
For all those generations we brooded on the insult Carthage had done us and
plotted our return. All we thought about was defeating barbarians and destroying Carthage. How ironic that now, on the verge of vic
tory against all our foreign enemies and regaining our old empire on
the Middle Sea, we should discover that the real threat, the real en
emy, is Roman.

Marcus Scipio studied the map he had ordered
made. It depicted the whole world around the Middle Sea and what was known of the lands farther east: India and the
land of the Silk People and the islands rumored to lie beyond. It showed Arabia and the land mass of Africa down to coastal Punt. It even had the legendary Tin Isles to the north. He had
wanted a large map, perhaps ten feet wide and covering a
wall. Selene had had it made in the typically overdone
Alexandrian fashion, covering a floor fifty feet by one hundred
feet, everything inlaid in mosaic. It was so large that he
needed a platform made so that he could take it in all at once.
Just now, though, he didn't need the whole map. He was concentrating on Spain. Spain was where the next great chapter of this epic would unfold. As soon as word of the
naval battle had arrived, the artisans had torn up a section of mosaic depicting that part of the sea and created a picture of
hundreds of little ships fighting, sinking and burning. The
site of the land battle was also marked, with a Roman sword
wrapped in laurel.

"Where is Hamilcar?" Marcus fretted. He felt frustrated and impotent while all the important events were going on so far away.

"The latest word has him dallying at Cartago Nova," Se
lena said, not for the first time.

"Why is he waiting so long?" Marcus muttered.

"Isn't it obvious?" Flaccus said. "He wanted Mastanabal to soften up the Roman army first, so he declined to reinforce the man. What has he lost? A handful of Carthagin
ian officers and a great many barbarians. It is nothing to him
and he is weakened in no way."

"Flaccus is right," Selene concurred. "I don't know how you Romans go about it, but in most of the world kings regard successful generals as dangerous rivals. Mastanabal won a battle against Rome, so his days were numbered. I was fairly certain that it would turn out this way."

"But that is infamous!" Marcus said. "What sort of loyalty can men have to such a sovereign? I detest Titus Norbanus, but never would I leave him and an army of Roman soldiers without support in the face of a strong enemy! No Roman commander could ever do such a thing!"

"Perhaps the rest of us cannot contest with the Romans on points of virtue," Selene said, sighing as the barb sailed
right over Marcus's head, as usual. She had never met such a
combination of intelligence and obtuseness as Marcus Scipio. She also caught Flaccus's grin and returned it with a smile of her own.

"They have to meet soon," Scipio said. "Where?" He studied the map. It showed the major rivers and mountain ranges, but gave no sense of any other terrain. In the great Library he had studied the books concerning Spain, but
those were concerned mainly with the coastal cities and had
few tales of the peoples of the interior. The historians and geographers had never considered Spain to be a very interesting place.

"I don't know where," Flaccus said, "but I know who will
choose the time and place: Norbanus. He won't wait, Marcus. He will be on top of Hamilcar before he knows it. Hamilcar is hesitant and cautious. Titus Norbanus is not. He loves action and he believes himself to be invincible."

"I agree," Scipio said, nodding. "He's bold and he'll move before anyone else has a chance to win glory. They may have fought already." That was what galled him the most: that great things were happening and he had no way
of knowing about them until many days afterward. Even the
swift new courier ships could travel only so fast, and they
were as vulnerable to storms and calms as other vessels.

"I wish you would stop fretting here," Selene said to him.

"What?" He seemed to drag his thoughts from far away as he turned and looked at her. "What am I to do?"

"This isn't like you, Marcus," she said. "You always have a plan of action. Very well, if you lack one, I'll suggest one:
Go attack Carthage."

Both men looked at her as if they had been struck by Jupiter's thunderbolts. "What?" Scipio said. "Unless you haven't noticed, I don't have an army."

"You don't have a
Roman
army," she said, "but I have rather a large one. It sits around eating up my substance without doing me any good, so you may as well take it and put it to some use. March it to Carthage with my blessing.
Take all those toys you've been playing with at the Museum as well. At least they will make the war a fine spectacle, even if you lose. You've been saying for months that your legions
are about to cross from Sicily to attack Carthage. If you go immediately, you might get there before they do, with
Hamilcar and his army away from the city. That will do you
no end of good at the next elections."

They gaped at her. "Majesty," Flaccus said at last, "are we
to understand that you desire a full military alliance with
Rome?"

"Of course it's an alliance!" she yelled. "Do you think I am going to let you take my army away as your personal property?" Then she added, more quietly: "Naturally, there is something I want from Rome in return."

"The Senate is to recognize you as full sovereign of Egypt,"
Marcus said. "You are queen, and your brother is deposed."

"I knew you were not as stupid as you sometimes pretend."

Flaccus whirled on his heel and strode off. "I'll get the papers ready right now. They'll be on their way to the Senate under your seal with the morning's first wind."

"There goes a man who understands things and does not waste time," she said, smiling.

"Selene," Scipio said, "I am overwhelmed."

She had never expected to hear this from the incompara
bly arrogant Roman. "I will be honest with you. As long as you are here, I am not queen. I am just another member of the court, playing power games. I want to be queen in truth
and I want to be an ally in your own legal sense of the word.
I can call upon you for aid and you can call on me, but I want Rome out of Egypt. I will do nothing against your interests but I want no Roman occupation. Agree to this, and my army is yours."

"I'll need your navy, too," he said.

She closed her eyes. "You Romans make my head hurt. You shall have the navy, too. And before you ask, you shall
have all the material support of Egypt, which you know to be incomparable, for your use during the campaign. What allies I have in Libya will be yours as well. I'll even send
along my best beasts for your sacrifices. Is that satisfactory?"

"Eminently, Majesty."

Hamilcar studied the head of his late general,
Mastanabal. It had arrived that morning by courier, under a
flag of truce, packed neatly in a cedar box and preserved in
aromatic oils. It was disfigured by the general's method of suicide, but was quite recognizable.

"If we had marched faster," Queen Teuta said, "this need
not have happened."

"What need not have happened?" he said, still musing
upon the ruined features, the faintly reproachful expression.

"The disaster, of course!" she said impatiently. "We have lost a fine army and many capable officers because we were
too slow."

Her use of the word "we" did not escape his notice. "Dis
aster? The man was not worthy and his army consisted of nothing but hired scum. Where is the disaster in this? The
naval battle was more costly. Ships are more expensive to re
place than men. But it was a small affair." His scouts had rounded up a number of the surviving sailors and marines. They had spoken of the Roman innovations: the taller ships
with their heavy timbers and their castles and
corvi.
Hamil
car had attended their interrogation closely before ordering that all of them be crucified.