Hannibal's Children (34 page)

Hanno nodded and smiled and acted as if he believed these outrageous falsehoods. He had little choice. Once again he wrote letters. To Hamilcar he reported that the Romans were in his territory in unnecessarily large numbers and asked for instructions, knowing that he would get none from the preoccupied Shofet. To Zarabel he wrote the unvarnished truth: Italy was back in Roman hands and there was nothing to be done about it short of a major war.

For his temporary command post Titus Norbanus had chosen a spacious villa situated just without the walls of Carthage. It had belonged to a minister who had fallen afoul of the Shofet and earned the cross thereby, along with the immolation of his family in a sacrifice to Baal-Hammon. The main building was situated on a slight rise of ground on the otherwise flat coastal plain. Its terrace afforded a fine view over a grassy field where his legions could be assembled and inspected. Its many rooms and outbuildings served as quarters for those of his under-officers who chose not to camp with their soldiers and the Senate representatives attached to the expedition.

On an afternoon just after inspection, ten days before the legions' scheduled departure for Libya where they would join the greater Carthaginian army, Princess Zarabel had her litter borne to the villa. After ascertaining that Norbanus could receive her in privacy, she alit and entered his staff room with stiff, angry strides, making the bells on her silver-mesh leggings tinkle.

"Titus!" Zarabel hissed. "What are you people up to?" Even visiting him in his command quarters she felt compelled to keep her voice down.

"What do you mean?" Norbanus lounged in a chair by a table stacked with documents. His rigid bronze cuirass lay on the floor beside him and he was dressed in the lightly padded arming tunic that he wore beneath the armor. It included pendant straps of decorated leather at the shoulders and a skirt of the same straps that hung from his lean hips almost to his knees. His ornate military sandals were made of red leather and came to just below his knees, their tops banded with lynx skins from which the paws and tails dangled. She thought him handsome as a Greek god but just now she was enraged at him.

"My agents report that you Romans have reoccupied all of Italy!"

"Your agents? I suppose you must refer to that fat fool Hanno. Your brother seems to have received no such report."

She seethed, having to remind herself for the hundredth time that these Romans were not fools and their minds could work as subtly as her own despite their uncouth words.

"What my brother knows is of no account. Italy is a part of the Carthaginian Empire. Your people were forbidden by Hannibal himself from ever returning. I see that you have taken this temporary military alliance to set aside that law and seize our territory."

He stood and stepped across the room to stand very close before her. "We were coming with or without this alliance, Zarabel. Our gods commanded it. Do you disobey the will of Tank?"

"Of course not." She found his nearness overpowering and cursed her weakness. He always knew how to turn her to his will.

"Then don't expect such impiety from us." He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head back. "Be honest. What is Italy to you? Have you ever visited the place? What is Italy to Carthage? A place that produces fairly cheap wool, wine and oil? Some quarries producing rather nice green and white marble? What is that to you? The slave-worked plantations don't produce one fourth what Italian peasants used to get out of the same land, so the grain business is uneconomical. All of Italy's wealth together isn't a fraction of what Hamilcar hopes to seize from Egypt. What is Italy to you?"

"Italy is nothing," she admitted. "But I resent your duplicity. If you wish to plot against my brother, that is one thing. It is another to betray me." She felt that her words were weak. She had chosen him from among the Romans for his weaknesses, but she had not understood his strengths. Most of all, she had not counted upon her own frailty nor foreseen the way her body would respond to his presence, with her mind and spirit following helplessly.

"There is no betrayal, little princess," he said, stroking her shoulder, his hand sliding down. "Your nation and mine follow courses laid down for them centuries ago. We can do nothing about that. What we can do is bend these things to our own greatest benefit. What do you want more than anything else?"

"To be Queen of Carthage," she said. "To replace my brother on the throne and raise the cult of Tanit to its rightful primacy."

"An excellent ambition. Mine is to be Dictator of Rome. Not merely Dictator for six months like those of the past, but Dictator for life. I want to humble the Old Families and set Rome on a course that will guide her for the next thousand years. Between us, we can realize both our dreams."

He slid his hands over her body, making her quiver and gasp. She was skilled in all the erotic arts, but before this man she had practiced on slaves and eunuchs. The nobles who surrounded her at court were for the most part barely men at all. The few men she had ever encountered who seemed masculine to her were too terrified of her to be interesting.

The Roman was different. He was as masculine as any stallion, he was highborn by the standards of his nation and to him she was a woman, not a semi-divine princess. The first time she had shared her body with him she had expected to control him as she always had other males. She was shocked by her own response to his brutal entry and her own ecstatic surrender. What he lacked in finesse he more than made up for in furious energy and oxlike endurance.

Her need for him had grown but she had forced restraint upon herself. She had to be discreet. Her brother would seize any excuse to imprison or kill her. It had now been the better part of a month since she and the Roman had shared a bed and she cursed herself for a weakling. The provocation had been severe, but she knew that she had seized upon it as an excuse to be with him again.

Somehow, she was not certain just how, he had lifted her, carried her back and half-reclined on his chair. There was a quick, deft movement of both their hands, and silver chains, cloth and leather straps were moved aside and she sank onto his maleness, impaling herself as the breath surged from her lungs. For a long time she had no thoughts at all, only sensations. When their coupling came to its shuddering finish, she gathered her thoughts and disengaged herself from him. He seemed disposed to affectionate afterplay but she was having none of it. She needed to retain what ascendancy she had remaining to her.

"Very well," she said. "For the moment, I will keep silent about what I know. Your seizure of Italy will be a great humiliation for my brother and of that I approve. But if you ever play me false, I will make you pray for the cross as a mercy."

"Why should I play you false?" he asked, seeming puzzled at her vehemence, as if they were two children playing a game without consequence. "You are my path to power and I am yours. Together we can rule the world."

"Only if you are completely candid with me. Otherwise, we are enemies and you know how Carthage treats enemies. Both of us tread the most perilous of roads. My brother will kill me if he suspects duplicity. Your Senate will do the same for you if they suspect your ambition. Yes, I have studied your history and I know how the Romans hate the very concept of a king."

"Indeed they do. I shall have to be very careful not to assume that title. We do, however, accept the concept of Dictator. Our custom of divided leadership has its drawbacks so in time of emergency the Senate may appoint a man of supreme, unaccountable power to guide the state until the emergency is over. I intend to win that office and perpetuate it."

"Why should your countrymen be willing to tolerate a man who is king in all but name?" She tugged her clothing back into place and walked to the silver mirror set into one wall. Her cosmetics did not seem to have been disarranged by the hurried coupling.

"It is just a matter of getting them used to the idea. My family is powerful in the Senate, they will agitate for a prolongation of my office and the people will back them." He did not add that the best way to get the Romans used to the idea of a perpetual Dictator was to keep them in a perpetual state of war. The expedition had given him a vision of conquest that stretched far beyond anything now contemplated by the Senate and people of Noricum: first Carthage, then Egypt, and with that power base secured, on to Syria and Parthia, perhaps all the way to India like Alexander. Once the Romans saw the riches to be had and the quality of his leadership, they would beg him to assume supreme power. It now amused him to think that once, like most of the New Family senators, he had thought that the destiny of Noricum lay in the dank forests of the north.

Zarabel was distracted by sounds from without. "Who is coming?"

"Probably your brother." He picked up his cuirass and swung it open on its shoulder-hinges. "He is coming to review the troops this afternoon." He put the cuirass on over his head, closed it and fastened its side-buckles, then tied the white sash of command around his bronze-girt waist, tying it in the ritual knot. From his desk he took his white-plumed helmet and put it on, tying the laces of its cheek plates beneath his chin. "Let's go say hello to him." He picked up his sheathed sword and slung it from his shoulder by its ornate leather baldric.

Zarabel took a deep breath to calm herself and assumed the hieratic demeanor she always employed among the courtiers. Satisfied that she was as chilling as always, she followed the arrogant Roman out onto the terrace.

Hamilcar was borne from the Palace on his military litter. In deference to his current warlike stance, this conveyance was adorned with gilded shields, racks of spears and arrows, its sides painted with battle scenes, its canopy in the form of a ship's sail. At the prow-shaped front the god Patechus squatted over a warship's ram. For the sake of symbolism and good fortune, the bearers wore Egyptian dress.

The Shofet himself wore military uniform: His helmet and cuirass were of hammered gold; the greaves on his shins of hardened leather stitched all over with plaques of carved amber. His military tunic was made of scarlet silk, a marvelous new fabric only recently imported from the Far East at incredible cost. The tunic alone was worth far more than the rest of his sumptuous rig combined. Behind him such of his senior commanders as were not already with the main army rode less splendid litters, along with a number of ministers.

This was to be his final inspection before taking his army to Egypt. He was not a king, and it was the duty of a Shofet to lead the army personally, even in advanced age. At last he was to view his new Roman legions. They had appeared with commendable, indeed almost incredible, dispatch. He hoped that the Romans had not, despite their vaunting words, sent him hastily raised levies of farm boys. If that should prove to be the case, his displeasure would be terrible. He determined that rather than be seen for a fool, he would crucify all the Roman leaders, then use the troops to haul his siege engines up to the walls of Alexandria, work that was certain to get most of them killed.

But when he reached the villa assigned as the Roman headquarters, he found the legions drawn up in fine array. The bearers carried him onto the terrace and the commander Norbanus greeted him with a martial salute. Hamilcar returned it, then frowned when he saw his sister standing in the shade of a portico, dressed indecently, as usual.

He stepped down from the great litter. "Good day, Senator." Then he turned to Zarabel. "I scarcely expected to find you here, Sister."

"I wouldn't miss a spectacle such as this," she said with her maddening calm. "At last we are to see these Roman legions."

"Yes. Well, Commander, shall we begin?"

Norbanus conducted them to the front of the terrace, where sumptuous chairs had been arranged. Hamilcar took the highest, Zarabel one lower and to one side. His officers and ministers arranged themselves as protocol demanded. Norbanus and a few other Roman officers on the terrace declined to sit.

Before them, the legions and auxilia stood in lines that might have been laid out by an architect. Each legion stood formed in a rectangle, its men divided into smaller rectangles formed by cohorts, smaller rectangles yet forming each cohort's centuries. The lines were separated by a pace, the rectangles by about three paces. Before each legion stood its commander, its tribunes, its senior centurion and its standard-bearers. Four golden eagles flashed in the sunlight. Next to the eagle-bearers stood men with huge curving trumpets and others with long straight horns. By each legion its attached cavalry stood mounted, each unit with its own standard-bearers and trumpeters. The cavalry had a special trumpet: straight except for its flaring mouth, which was curved back into a U-shape. It seemed that the Romans did not march to flutes, like Greeks, or to drums, like Carthaginians.

"We will begin with the Consul's review," Norbanus said. "This is how the legions parade before the consuls at the annual muster on the Field of Mars, when they renew their oath." He signaled to the trumpeter who stood before the terrace, and the man played a tuneless series of notes upon his long, straight instrument. It was an astonishingly complex musical construction to emerge from so simple an instrument. Other horns picked up the signal and repeated it.

With incredible speed and cohesion, the soldiers began their evolutions. As the trumpets performed their complex calls, the four legions and their auxilia came together to form a single rectangle, from which forward lines detached themselves to march ahead as if to engage an enemy. When the trumpets called again, these withdrew and the next lines stepped forward and seemed to pass through by magic, for neither the advancing nor the retreating lines were disarranged by the maneuver.

"This is how we keep fresh men at the front lines," Norbanus explained. "Only a small part of the army can actually come to grips with the enemy at any one time, so it is best that the bulk of the army rest. Each line goes ahead to fight for a few minutes, then it retreats and is relieved. While the others fight, those men rest, take care of their wounded and get fresh javelins."