Masters of the Sea - Master of Rome (18 page)

Atticus instinctively braced himself for the strike but his frustration refused to allow him to focus. A sudden crash of timbers caused him to turn and again he watched with dread as another Roman galley fell victim to the Carthaginians. The sound was repeated twice more in as many seconds and Atticus felt the weight of regret crush him. The
Orcus
would claim a second prize, maybe a third, but all the while other Roman ships would be lost, and Atticus was powerless to defend them all.

Panormus had fallen, the town was theirs, but in the harbour the Carthaginians were exacting a measure of revenge, slowly drawing a blade across the exposed incompetence of the Roman navy, turning the waters red with their blood. The Carthaginians were once more claiming what was rightfully theirs: mastery of the sea.

H
amilcar watched impatiently as the small bird circled the tower, its wings flapping slowly in the updraught. It dipped suddenly, dropping to the height of the coop, but still it refused to enter and it wheeled away to continue its flight, oblivious to the annoyance of the observer below.

It was only by chance that Hamilcar had seen the bird arrive fifteen minutes before. He had been standing at the window of his room, staring at the distant hills to the east of Lilybaeum, his thoughts focused, as they had been for weeks, on the stronghold of Panormus beyond the natural divide. The carrier pigeon had caught his eye as it flew in close to the ground, a grey-white flash against the verdant background. Hamilcar had immediately raced to the battlements beneath the coop, anxious to receive an update on the siege.

The pigeon flew in close once more, but this time it landed on the protruding ledge of the coop. It stretched out its wings, the tips trembling slightly before they finally came to rest, and then the pigeon gracelessly stumbled through the entrance and out of sight. Hamilcar looked to the door at the base of the tower and a moment later the handler descended with the tiny brass cylinder that had been attached to the pigeon’s leg. He came up short in surprise as he encountered the commander waiting for him; he handed the cylinder over. Hamilcar, resisting the temptation to open it there and then, retraced his steps to his room, rolling the tiny capsule between his thumb and forefinger as he walked.

He entered the quiet of his room and closed the door. It had been more than a week since he had received news and he noticed his hand was trembling slightly as he placed the cylinder on the table. Lilybaeum, on the northwestern coast of Sicily, was only a day’s sailing from Panormus, but the Roman siege, on land and sea, had placed a stranglehold on the town. The paucity of news, most of it from ships passing at a distance from the port, made the reports carried by the pigeon all the more important. He opened the cylinder and withdrew the tiny scroll from within. The message was encrypted, an overcautious step considering the Romans were as yet unaware of the unique ability of the carrier pigeons, an ingenious method of communication that the Carthaginians had learned from the Persians a generation before, and one Hamilcar’s predecessor had brought to Sicily. He decoded the report and read it through twice, the necessary brevity of the sentence in marked contrast to its weighty content.

‘Attack on siege towers failed. Roman assault imminent. Galley captains informed of your last order.’

Hamilcar found that he was holding his breath and he exhaled. Panormus was doomed. The attack on the siege towers was a last desperate gamble that Hamilcar had ordered once he had learned of their existence, knowing the garrison commander did not have enough men for the task, hoping that Tanit, the goddess of fortune, might take a hand; but she had deserted Panormus, leaving it to its fate.

The attack on the town had been a surprise move by the Romans, in hindsight a typically aggressive and ambitious step, but one Hamilcar had not planned for. The fleet from Gadir had arrived in Sicily, but with his army under Hanno’s command in Africa, he had no effective way to lift the siege. He had hoped for more time, to realize a strategy he had already put in motion, but, sensing defeat, he had prepared for its eventuality, and his lips soundlessly mouthed the last words of the report: ‘your last order.’ He had penned it more than a week before for the galley captains, and it had read:
‘If Panormus falls, scuttle or engage, but galleys must not fall into enemy hands.’

Hamilcar knew three of the captains personally. They would consider it a grave dishonour to scuttle their own ships, but Hamilcar had wanted to give them the option, knowing the odds against them. In his heart he knew they would engage the enemy blockade. It was the course he would take in the same situation. As he reread the report he whispered a silent prayer to Baal to watch over the sons of Carthage.

He stood up and slowly rubbed the thin slip of paper between his calloused fingers, the fibres breaking down quickly. He let the remnants fall to the floor. The Romans had defied him. He had sent them an ambassador with lenient terms and they had dismissed his magnanimity, compounding that insult with an aggressive attack that had taken Hamilcar by surprise. He looked to the scraps of paper at his feet and felt the heat of indignant anger build within him. He would not be made a fool of again. After Panormus, the Romans would surely turn their attention to Lilybaeum and here, Hamilcar vowed, he would break their arrogance against the walls. There would be no more talk of peace, no more benevolent terms, and to make this decision irrevocable, Hamilcar knew there was one symbolic act that needed to be made, one superfluous element that needed to be eradicated. He strode from the room, his decision hardening with each step into cold determination.

The group of horsemen moved slowly through the deserted street, the unnatural silence broken only by the occasional sound of iron-shod hooves hitting random stones beneath the loose straw that was strewn across the hard-packed soil of the road. The horses were skittish and they snorted nervously, sensing the mood of their riders. The group closed ranks, keeping to the centre of the street.

Ahead they spotted the crumpled body of a woman on the road. She was naked below the waist, her legs twisted grotesquely, and she had been savagely beaten, the pool of blackened blood beneath her drawing a swarm of glistening bluebottle flies. Her face was hidden by her matted hair, making her age difficult to guess, but she had the slender lines of a younger woman and the riders looked away as they passed, their own faces pale with shock.

Further on a man was hanging by the neck from an upper storey window, his face blackened from the fire that had consumed his clothes and scorched his flesh. His body twisted slowly in the gentle wind. Beneath him the door of his house stood open and the riders peered in as they passed, unable to resist the animal instinct that compels a man to gaze with morbid fascination upon the very thing that he abhors. The room was mercifully dark, obscuring the fate of the family the man had tried to protect, but the meagre light reflecting off the naked flesh of tiny limbs created a terrible scene in the mind’s eye and again the men looked away in horror.

A sudden shriek broke the near silence and the tribune beside Scipio jumped with fright, his mount darting forward ten yards before the young man could bring it under control. Scipio scowled at the officer, a silent admonition, although he too had been startled by the sound. Panormus resembled the far bank of the Styx, a cursed place where the damned lay awaiting their passage to the inner depths of Hades. It had been forty-eight hours since the walls had been breached and the carnage was absolute. No inhabitant had been spared and the outnumbered garrison had been butchered to a man.

Scipio had allowed the men to gorge themselves on the town, wanting to set an example to every other town in Sicily, but even he was shocked by the level of savagery to which the legionaries had descended. In his youth, when he’d served his time as a tribune, Scipio had witnessed the brutality of close-quarter fighting, the fury men displayed in battle when the instinct to survive overrode all others, and where barbarity separated the living from the slain. But never before had he seen that fury unleashed on a civilian population. Although Scipio had long since hardened his heart to the plight of his enemy, he knew that few deserved the fate meted out to the inhabitants of Panormus.

That morning Scipio had ordered in the remainder of the Second Legion to take charge. These men, an unneeded reserve, had not taken part in the assault. They had marched through the open gate in disciplined ranks, tasked with gathering up the scattered legionaries within the walls and ensuring no enemy strong points remained. They had taken to the task with a ruthless efficiency, many of them no doubt angry that they had missed the spoils of victory, and within hours every legionary had been banished from the town, save a garrison force that now occupied a barracks near the docks.

Scipio spurred his horse to a canter and his tribunes came up to match his pace, following the slight downhill slope that led to the docks. They quickly reached the wide expanse of beaten earth that straddled the shoreline and Scipio reined in his mount, his gaze sweeping across the bay. Nearby, a group of legionaries stood guard as Carthaginians, brought ashore from the captured trading ships, gathered up the corpses that lay about the ground, loading them on to carts to be taken outside the town walls, where they would be cremated in an effort to stave off the dreaded pestilence that followed on the heels of every battle.

Scipio ignored them, focusing instead on the galleys anchored fifty yards from the docks. He instinctively searched for the Greek’s ship, looking for the prefect’s masthead banner; his eyes narrowed as he spotted the
Orcus
in the midst of the fleet. Their losses had been heavy, nineteen galleys in total, although the blockade had been a success and no enemy ships had escaped, vindicating Scipio’s decision to leave the Greek in command. He smiled coldly, remembering a story his father had told him as a child of how Dionysius II of Syracuse had demonstrated the precariousness of life by suspending a sword over the head of a retainer, held by a single horse hair. It was an appropriate image, although in this case the Greek was totally unaware of how immediate the threat was.

He turned his back on the fleet and looked again to the town that straddled the shoreline. It was a rich prize, the Carthaginians’ main port on the northern coast, and Scipio had already dispatched instructions to his wife in Rome to hire orators to spread the news of his great victory across the entire city. From out of the corner of his eye he saw his tribunes looking at him, their expressions now edged with respect. He was no longer just their consul, he was a victorious commander; triumphantly, Scipio turned to them to reveal the next town that would fall to his sword: Lilybaeum.

*

Regulus paced the floor of his room, stopping occasionally to peer out of his window to the streets of Lilybaeum many storeys below. Each time he looked, his instinct told him that something was wrong. He sensed it in every squad of soldiers he saw moving quickly through the streets of the town, or in the galleys and trading ships entering and leaving the port, all moving with undue speed, their haste signifying some crisis.

He was living in isolation, an enforced seclusion that had begun without warning. It had been five weeks since he had returned to Lilybaeum. He had sailed from Ostia on a Roman military galley to the prearranged rendezvous on the island of Lipara, and from there the Carthaginians had escorted him back to Sicily. He had been taken immediately to see Barca, whereupon he had told the Carthaginian commander of Rome’s refusal to make peace. Initially Barca had been furious, but within a few days he had calmed down. Although his demeanour remained cold, he had continued to visit Regulus in his room, questioning him on the reasoning behind Rome’s decision.

Three weeks before, however, Barca’s visits had stopped, and thereafter Regulus had not seen or spoken to him. In addition, the proconsul’s guards had become overtly hostile, refusing to be drawn into any conversation when they delivered his food. Regulus’s sense of foreboding had increased with each passing day.

The sound of approaching footsteps alerted Regulus and he turned as the door was thrown open.

‘Barca,’ he began, but he stopped as he saw the Carthaginian’s murderous expression. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, his apprehension growing.

Hamilcar stood rock still, anger and hatred coursing through him, finding focus in the Roman standing before him, the very enemy he had foolishly thought to parley with. As if for the first time, he saw the arrogant stance of the proconsul, the air of conceit that he had come to associate with – and loathe in – his Roman enemy.

‘Seize him,’ he said over his shoulder, and two guards rushed in to grab Regulus by the arms.

‘What is the meaning of this, Barca?’ Regulus said angrily.

‘Your usefulness has come to an end, Roman,’ Hamilcar said coldly, and he nodded to his soldiers, who jostled Regulus out of the room. Hamilcar followed, watching impassively as Regulus fought against the grip of his captors, shouting over his shoulder, protesting against his treatment.

Regulus turned away from the glare of the noon sun as he was led out into a courtyard. He looked about him, all the while trying to suppress the rising fear he felt in the pit of his stomach.

‘Barca,’ he shouted, his voice steady, hiding his fear with anger, ‘what do you mean? What’s happened?’

Hamilcar ignored him and Regulus was led forward. He immediately saw the four spikes in the ground, each one at the corner of an invisible square. He pushed back against his captors, his feet sliding on the loose surface, but they forced him to the ground, pushing him on to his back. Rough hands spread-eagled his limbs, tying each one to a stake.

Regulus kept his eyes shut tightly against the sun, his breath coming in shallow gasps as panic threatened to overcome him. He fought to keep the tone of his voice even, but he heard the tremor in his voice as he called out for Barca, beseeching him to explain what had happened. He sensed someone approach and stand over him, but when he tried to open his eyes to see, the glare of the sun forced them shut.

‘I have been blind,’ Hamilcar said slowly, ‘blind to the true nature of my enemy, into believing there could be a peace.’

‘There
can
be peace,’ Regulus said, struggling against his bonds, turning his head in Hamilcar’s direction. ‘The Senate just needs more time. I can get them to see sense—’

‘No,’ Hamilcar continued. ‘My eyes are open, Roman, and now I will open yours.’

Suddenly Regulus felt hands holding his head tightly. He struggled hard, trying to twist away, but they held him fast. Terror swept through him as his eyelid was pinched and held away from his eye and he screamed in pain as the tip of a knife sliced away the thin veil of flesh, his cries reaching a higher pitch as the other eyelid too was cut away.