Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (19 page)

‘How did they receive his embassy in Rome?'

‘There are important alliances still to be had in Asia Minor, with Pergamon, for example, but hardly anyone had heard of Aeolis, let alone Adramyttium. The embassy was pretty well laughed away.'

‘Except, it seems, by Metellus,' Scipio said.

Polybius nodded. ‘Metellus had just been told of his Macedonian posting and evidently thought that Andriscus might have his uses. There are rumours that as well as the forests he offered Andriscus some kind of administrative position, as a mediator between the Macedonians and himself. Andriscus has agreed to lead an irregular force of Thracian mercenaries to keep the Macedonian people in check.'

‘To do Metellus' dirty work for him, you mean,' Scipio said testily. ‘It sounds like a set-up to me, for the benefit of Metellus and of Andriscus but not the people of Macedonia. In the end it will not work out in Metellus' favour. He does not know the Macedonian people as I do. I have given them my word of honour in my negotiations with them, and they have been satisfied. With Andriscus in my place as chief mediator with Rome, some will feel betrayed.'

‘That may be,' Polybius said. ‘They may begin by resenting him as a Roman subordinate. But we should not underestimate the man. He and his followers will play on past Macedonian glory, and on his claim to be the son of Perseus. His subservience to Metellus could be seen as cunning exploitation of the Romans to gain a foothold back in Macedonia. Before you know it, Andriscus will be the pretender to the Macedonian throne.

‘Metellus may have more on his hands than he bargained for,' Scipio said.

‘Or the basis for an easy victory and a spectacular triumph. We shouldn't underestimate Metellus either. He is a man who can engineer a war for his own ends.'

‘He was the most cunning strategist in the academy.'

‘If Andriscus is allowed to develop a power base, then we should take more seriously the other embassies I know that he sent. One went to your old friend Demetrius in Syria, soliciting military assistance from the Seleucid kingdom to expand his area of influence in Asia Minor.'

Scipio grunted. ‘Demetrius has enough on his hands. Do you remember him at the academy? He'd spent his whole boyhood as a captive in Rome, and then my grandfather Africanus decided to send him to the academy to make a good ally of him, like Gulussa and Hippolyta. It never really worked, though. He was always receiving shifty delegates from the east, trying to sway him this way or that. When the authorities did eventually turn a blind eye and let him escape Rome, none of us held out any hope for him sorting out the Seleucid kingdom. It was another mess left in the wake of Alexander. The court at Damascus is a rats' nest, with everyone always murdering each other.'

‘Then you'll be more concerned about Andriscus' other embassy. This time, he went himself. To Carthage.'

Scipio reined in his horse and stared at Polybius. ‘
To Carthage.
Whatever for? The Carthaginians barely have the military strength to hold their borders against the Numidians, let alone entertain an alliance with an obscure city-state in Asia Minor. I hardly think the Carthaginian navy is going to sally forth and go to his rescue when he decides to march against Rome, or whoever he intends to confront. At last count, they had about ten ships, and none of them had gone to sea for years.'

‘Don't be so sure of it, Scipio. Many in Rome saw the war against Hannibal as the war to end all wars and, when Carthage finally capitulated, Rome was too exhausted by decades of bloodshed to take the war to its conclusion and destroy Carthage once and for all. As a result, many in Carthage felt that the end was an armistice, not a defeat. Despite the war reparations, the confiscation of their territory and the reduction of their army and navy, the Carthaginians were still able to hold their heads high, and look to a resurgent future. Your adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus saw the danger, but he was hamstrung by the Senate. They were too concerned about his own power, about how presiding over the destruction of Carthage might have made him a figure too big to be contained by the constitution of Rome, a king in the making. After his death, when you were a small boy, Rome took her eye off Carthage, and the old enemy has grown powerful again. Under the guise of rebuilding their commercial harbour, the Carthaginians have also rebuilt their circular war harbour, surrounding it with shipsheds.'

‘You are certain of this?'

‘Of the rebuilding programme, yes. Of the details, only through second-hand accounts from merchants. To provide certainty, to truly persuade the Senate of the threat and to allow planning for an assault, we would need someone to infiltrate Carthage who could assess her strengths and the tactical challenges posed to a Roman assault force, someone who himself might hope to be intimately involved in planning an attack.'

‘Are you trying to tempt me, Polybius?'

‘It is a mission for a time when Cato has drummed up enough support by his persistent call to finish Carthage, and when you yourself have attained the status in Rome needed for people to listen to you, to tip the balance in favour of war.'

Scipio stared pensively ahead, and then turned to Polybius. ‘Tell me, when Metellus comes to Macedonia, will Julia come with him too?'

‘She will remain in Rome.'

‘Have you seen her?'

Polybius eyed him shrewdly. ‘At a dinner in the house of Cato. She asked after you. She said that she had not heard from you since your father's triumph almost ten years ago.'

Scipio was silent for a moment, and then spoke quietly. ‘How is she?'

‘The
gens
Metelli is at the centre of the social scene in Rome. The matriarchs are known for controlling the younger women marrying into their
gens
with an iron fist, and Julia will be fully occupied with visitations and matchmaking. There are lavish feasts in her household almost daily.'

‘She will be bored,' Scipio said. ‘That is not the life for which she was intended.'

‘She has a son,' Polybius said, cocking his eye at Scipio. ‘Born the year after the triumph of your father. And a daughter, born last year.'

‘Metellus will be pleased to have a son.'

‘Metellus is rarely in Rome and has changed little in his ways, except that he now carouses his way through the wives and daughters of the aspiring
novi homines,
while not forgetting the
meretrices
of Ostia and the dockside taverns.'

‘Julia has done her duty. She has borne his children.'

‘And by turning from you, she has saved your reputation. Your wife Claudia Pulchridina is unblemished by scandal, keeping the matriarchs of her
gens
satisfied with her union with the
gens
Cornelii Scipiones and the
gens
Aemilii Paulli.'

‘Except that the union has produced no offspring,' Scipio said darkly.

‘Hardly surprising when you haven't shared a bedchamber with her in the entire ten years since your marriage, and haven't even seen her since your father's funeral games four years ago when you were obliged to appear alongside her with your
gens
at the public sacrifices in his honour.'

‘You disapprove, Polybius?'

‘Questions will be asked. You must obey the conventions of Rome if you are ever to reach a rank where you can break free of them.'

Scipio snorted. ‘Well, this is one convention that I'll flaunt. Everyone in Rome knows that I loved Julia, but that I am a man of
fides
and will not behave as Metellus does. If Pulchridina had lived up to her name then I might at least have satisfied my loins with her, but that will never happen. I'd rather live as a celibate priest in the Phlegraean Fields halfway to Hades.'

Polybius gestured around them. ‘To some, that's what your sojourn in Macedonia looks like. An escape from reality.'

Scipio urged his horse forward. ‘Nothing will induce me back into my wife's bedchamber in Rome.'

Polybius was silent for a few minutes, steering his horse up a difficult section of track. Fabius knew that he would not have exhausted his attempts to persuade Scipio to leave, that like all good orators he would have one final argument to make his case. He prayed that could only be one thing. Polybius reached the top of the rock, and then pulled up his horse and turned. ‘There is something else you should know,' he said. ‘I haven't mentioned it yet so as not to raise false hopes, but here it is. There are early rumblings of war in Spain. There is discontent among the Arevaci of Numantia, who have rebuilt the fortifications around their
oppida.
'

Scipio reined his horse in, his eyes gleaming. ‘Tell me more.'

‘Unlike Carthage, where they are flouting Roman restrictions by rebuilding, the Roman procurator in Hispania Citerior has allowed the Celtiberians to do so, on the grounds that earthworks are an important symbol of strength and that allowing them to rebuild might boost the martial pride that took a battering when a Roman army defeated them during the first Celtiberian War, when you were a boy. The hope is that the grateful Celtiberians will be persuaded to become our allies rather than hire themselves out to our enemies as in the past. But another view is that the procurator will claim that they fortified too extensively, beyond their allowance, an excuse for war by those in Rome aspiring to the consulship who see the prospect of an easy triumph.'

‘There is nothing easy about fighting the Celtiberians,' Scipio said. ‘My father said that they were among the most formidable warriors in Hannibal's army.'

‘Which brings us back to Carthage,' Polybius said. ‘With the city newly rearmed and defiant, she will be seeking mercenaries to bolster her army. A war against the Celtiberians could be a war against those who would confront us on the walls of Carthage. It could be a first step to reclaiming the legacy of Scipio Africanus.'

Fabius watched Scipio squint ahead into the mist, then straighten in his saddle and take a deep breath. There was fire in his eyes.
Polybius had won.
Scipio turned to him. ‘Before I tell you my decision, I will finish this hunt. There may be no boar to be found, but I will not be satisfied until I reach the edge of the forest. The weather is closing in. Let's move.'

9

After a final difficult climb the horses broke through the treeline and they were on open ground. Ahead of them the slope lay covered with huge fragments of rock, shattered and jagged, like the weapons of giants from some prodigious battle at the dawn of time. Beyond that, Fabius could see the first patches of snow, and then a bank of cloud far above that obscured the snow-capped peaks he had seen on clear days from the forest clearings below. It was a forbidding place, and he could see why the ancients had thought it the abode of the gods. He remembered the last time he and Scipio had climbed this high, almost ten years ago on the eve of the Battle of Pydna, when they had raced up the slopes of Olympus and stood at the summit like gods themselves, surveying a world that seemed theirs for the taking. Far below them the battleground had appeared laid out like the strategy games that Scipio and the others had played in the academy only months before, as if real war could indeed seem little different from a game, far above the smell of blood and the anguish of the wounded they were to experience when they came down again. But that had been a long time ago, and things now were different. Scipio was no longer a young blood yearning for his first command, but had made himself an outcast, dismissive of the career path laid out for him in Rome and tormented by his love for Julia. And there would be no thought of climbing a mountain peak today. If they were to stand any chance of catching a boar, they were going to have to remain on the edge of the forest, skirting the undergrowth where the great beast was said to lurk, keeping on guard all the time for its frenzied attack.

Scipio saw something on the ground, slid off his horse and drew his cloak around him. A flurry of snow swept over them like a cold exhalation from the mountains, and Fabius shivered. Soon the temperature would drop below freezing and this place would be under many feet of snow, impassable until spring. Scipio knelt down and pointed to an upturned rock and a patch of a fresh disturbance in the soil, and then looked up at Polybius. ‘Boar?'

Polybius leaned forward in his saddle, staring. ‘It's just where I'd expect a boar to dig for roots, along the treeline. We need to see if there's a scent trail. Fabius, where's your dog?'

Fabius started, and looked around. He had forgotten about Rufius in the last awkward stretch up the path. He stood up in his stirrups, peering into the mist that was now rolling down and enveloping the fringes of the forest, reducing the visibility to less than fifty feet. He put his fingers to his mouth to whistle, but then thought better of it. Some instinct told him not to give their position away, or reveal that they knew the dog was missing. The feeling of unease he had experienced earlier returned, stronger than before. ‘Rufius never goes off by himself,' he said. ‘That's why I never bother keeping an eye out for him.'

‘Wolves?' Polybius said.

Fabius shook his head, frowning. ‘They've been shadowing us in the forest, but if they'd taken Rufius there would have been a fight and we'd have heard it. You can hear Rufius' bark for miles.'

Scipio stared at him, and then at Polybius. ‘Could somebody have been following us?'

Fabius felt the blood course through him, and he no longer felt cold. His senses were sharpened, and he suddenly seemed to hear noises more clearly in the forest, branches wavering in the wind, crackles in the undergrowth. He was Scipio's bodyguard again, no longer just his hunting companion. He slipped off his horse, gave the reins to Scipio and pointed up the slope. ‘Take the horses into the mist and conceal yourselves among those rocks. When it's safe to come out, I'll blow three times on my horn.'