Hannibal's children

Chapter 10

The ship was not the magnificent flagship of the Egyptian fleet, but neither was it one of the tubby cargo vessels. Instead, it was one of the warship escort; a two-banked cruiser called a bireme. It was longer and broader than the Carthaginian ship that had brought them from Italy, with a spacious deck and sizable cabins in the stern. Its gracefully curved bow was armed with a bronze ram cast in the shape of a dragon's head, the single horn sprouting from its brow stout and sharp enough to gut an enemy vessel. Just above the waterline its painted eyes sought out a safe path through the waters. Its name was Drakon.

As they voyaged along the African coast, they observed and made notes: Every cape and headland, every dangerous looking outcropping of rock, every town, every fort, went into their notebooks. Marcus had laid in a good supply of papyrus because they were running short of parchment.

"I don't like using this stuff," Flaccus had complained.

"No help for it," Marcus answered. "But it's a good sign. We're gathering far more intelligence than we anticipated when we left Noricum."

"It isn't smooth," Flaccus protested. "First of all, it is full of fibers. Second, these reeds or whatever they may be are laid down in strips and the joins always catch the tip of my pen. It does dreadful things to my penmanship."

"Learn to use it," Marcus advised without sympathy. "It's what we have."

Hamilcar had put no obstacle in their way when Marcus broached the subject of an embassy to Egypt. He had been most diplomatic when suggesting that a few of the more prominent members of the Roman party be left behind as his "guests." He had furnished letters of introduction and assured the cooperation of all Carthaginian officials wherever their travels should take them.

Zarabel had given them letters of her own to deliver and had arranged for passage on the Egyptian warship. The fleet, she explained, would be another month finishing its unloading and reloading and refitting for the journey home, while the warship was ready to carry dispatches or passengers at any time.

They were, in short, entirely too helpful and Marcus knew that they were playing their own games. That was only to be expected. He had a few games in mind as well. He knew far better than to trust barbarians, no matter how civilized they might seem to be. Just before the ship sailed, she gave him some parting advice.

"Be sure to deliver my letter, in confidence, to Queen Selene at your earliest opportunity. She is the ruler of Egypt and will be the only person at court whose word you can trust."

"Selene? I thought the ruler of Egypt was Ptolemy XIV."

"In name only. Ptolemy Alexander Philadelphus Eupator is Selene's brother and husband. He is seven years old, so you won't be doing any serious business with him."

He mused upon this as he watched the coast drift leisurely by. As a Roman, he found the concept of hereditary monarchy rather laughable to begin with. That a great nation would acknowledge a child as its ruler was doubly absurd. Such a child-monarch, not reared by a stern father, must inevitably be the creature of his ministers. Romans had severe standards for the upbringing of youth and he doubted that any such standards were applied by the royal house of Egypt.

Between bouts of contemplating politics and monarchy, he discussed naval tactics with the skipper of the Drakon. Use of the ram turned out to be less obvious than it first seemed.

"You have to gauge your target vessel carefully," the man explained. He was a Cypriote named Aeson. The great island of Cyprus had for centuries been a province of Egypt. For incomprehensible dynastic reasons the ruler of Cyprus was a brother of the king of Egypt. At the moment a royal minister ruled the island, since the current king had no living brothers.

"By what standard do you gauge them?" Marcus asked.

"Size and structure, mostly. The ram is a tricky thing, and can sink your own ship as effectively as an enemy's. For instance, if you're going after a light vessel, a one-banker, you put on all speed. That's for two reasons: They're fast ships and you need speed to catch them, and if you have enough speed built up and ram them just right, you can break them in two, capsize them, run right over them. Their sides are too thin to resist the weight of a two-banker. You don't want to try that with another two-banker and certainly not against a really big ship."

"Why not?" Marcus asked. "I would think that to ram such a ship you would want all the speed at your disposal."

"No. Those ships have heavier hulls and keels. Ramming is a terrible shock to a ship no matter if you're on the giving or receiving end. It stresses the planks and springs leaks. Worst of all, you could hole the enemy vessel and get stuck there. Then the enemy drags you under as she sinks."

"So what is the answer?"

"You have to maneuver so she can't get away, then as you're almost on her, you down oars and hit her dead slow, not much more than a walking pace. With the whole weight of your ship behind the ram, it'll smash in the side of the enemy without actually penetrating. Then you back oars and get away fast, because the men on that ship will get really anxious to board."

He spoke of other tactics, how ships could approach almost bow to bow, then swerve. If your timing was right, you could haul in your oars while the enemy ship's were still out, shearing them away like a scythe going through wheat. The flailing oar-butts inside the enemy vessel would reduce the rowers on that side to blood-soaked carcasses. An enemy thus crippled could then be destroyed at leisure.

He showed how stone-hurling engines, cleverly operated at close range, could be used to smash the enemy's steering oars. There was even a way to use oars offensively, when your vessel was higher in the water than the enemy's. When the ships drew alongside, the lower bank of oars were drawn within the hull and the upper bank raised as high as possible, then dropped. As the ships dragged past one another, the oars could sweep the enemy deck clean of men, hurling them overboard, crushing limbs and skulls.

"Yours is highly skilled work," Marcus said.

"It is that," the skipper agreed.

"The warships I have seen seem to carry few marines. Do you not favor boarding?"

The Cypriote snorted. "That is for lubbers who can't make a ship fight for them. Marines are there to operate the engines. And," he allowed, "they repel boarders when we have an enemy fond of such tactics, like pirates. Boarding is a pirate specialty because they prefer capturing ships to sinking them."

This, too, Marcus filed carefully in his memory.

Military matters were not all that concerned the Romans. Marcus explained to his companions about the peculiar situation at the court of Alexandria.

"I never thought when we set out," Flaccus said, "that we would be dealing with women, first Zarabel, now Selene. I shall have to brush up on my seductive skills."

"You will need all your arts of dissimulation if that is your idea of diplomacy," Marcus told him. He drew out his purse and searched among its contents, selecting a broad silver coin. It was an Alexandrian tetradrachm, splendidly struck, bearing a portrait on one side and an eagle on the other. He tossed it to Flaccus. "Here's what she looks like."

Flaccus studied the portrait, dismayed. The other Romans crowded around and burst into laughter. The coin showed a hatchet-faced matron, her beetling brows and wattled neck displayed in a clean-cut, merciless profile.

"I hereby appoint you official seducer of the Roman delegation," Marcus said.

"Is it possible such a hag has a seven-year-old brother?"

"They are probably half-siblings," Brutus said. "The Ptolemies have degenerated into oriental potentates. The last king probably bred the child off a fifteen-year-old granddaughter when he was an old man."

"Disgusting," said young Caesar. He came of a famously straitlaced family.

"Our mission is not to assess or judge the moral tone of the Alexandrian court," Marcus reminded them. "It is to make the best use of whatever opportunities we find there to the advantage of the Republic. I warn you not to underestimate any of the powerful people we meet there. To us they may be ludicrous buffoons, but these are the descendants of Alexander and his generals, and they have kept control of tremendous power and riches for a very long time. Even if they are not hardened warriors, they understand their own world far better than we."

"This court, these half-Greeks," Brutus said. "Are they really Egypt? The native population must be vast to make the country so productive. What of them?"

"A good question," Marcus said. "I intend to find out. We Romans have subdued native peoples far more numerous than we, but we have not truly remained a separate people. We absorb our conquests and turn the people into Romans. They breed sons for the legions and in time become full citizens.

"The Carthaginians, as you all observed, are different. Wherever they go, they remain conquerors in an alien land. Subject cities ten miles from Carthage are still natives with differing language and customs. The Alexandrians may be something like that, or they may be something else entirely."

"We would do well to remember," Flaccus pointed out, "that the Ptolemies are not truly Greek, but Macedonian. The real Greeks regarded the Macedonians as little more than barbarians. When Philip conquered Greece, he forced them to acknowledge him as a Greek and his son Alexander made it his life's work not just to conquer the world, but to spread the light of Greek culture wherever he went. When he died, his generals divided his conquests among themselves and ruled as Greek monarchs in foreign lands, but they remained Macedonians and the backbone of their armies was always Macedonian troops.

"These were not the sort of Greeks to swoon over the plays of Sophocles or chat about philosophy beneath shaded porticoes. They were tough mountain tribesmen and superb soldiers."

"Men much like our own ancestors," Marcus said. "It would be best to keep that in mind."

By the time Drakon was waling along the coast of Cyrenaica, the Romans were almost accustomed to the rolling motion of the vessel and even Flaccus was no longer pale-faced and shaky. Despite the volume of coastal traffic, the sea was immense and they often sailed or rowed for hours without seeing another vessel. This changed abruptly as they rounded a rocky cape and found two lean, predatory ships waiting for them on its far side. The instant Drakon came into view, the smaller ships, both single-bankers, began rowing toward her at speed.

Drakon was under sail with a favorable stern wind, headed straight for the others. Immediately, Aeson shouted for the sail to be furled, the yard lowered, the mast unstepped and the oars run out. The Romans marveled at the lively efficiency with which this complex set of orders was carried out. Sailors scrambled to the mast as rowers unshipped their oars and marines sprang to the war engines.

"Who are they?" Marcus demanded.

"Pirates!" Aeson said. "But what can they want with us? They never attack a warship unless they're cornered, and I'm not pirate hunting. Now get away and let me fight my ship."

Marcus beckoned the Roman party to him. "Arm yourselves. There is going to be a fight."

"Should we wear armor?" Flaccus asked. "If we do and fall overboard, we'll sink like bricks."

"Might as well," said Brutus. "Drowning is the least of our hazards, I believe."

"Full gear," Marcus ordered. "The Greeks don't favor boarding and deck-fighting. The pirates will want to board. Hand-to-hand fighting is our specialty, isn't it? Now get your shields. The missiles should be arriving soon."

As he spoke, the frantic activity continued all around them. The catapults and ballistas began to launch missiles with a deafening clatter, but the pirate vessels were low in the water and difficult to hit. To make matters worse, with the yard lowered but the mast still up, the ship began to wallow, making accurate fire impossible and the task of the rowers more difficult. Getting the mast down required the coordinated effort of every sailor on the ship and the job was unfinished when the first arrows began to arrive.

The Romans were mailed, helmeted and shielded in a matter of moments. Unlike other forms of armor, the Gallic mail shirt slipped on over the head like a cloth garment and could be donned in seconds. With helmets on and shields up, the Romans were invulnerable to the storm of missiles that rained on the ship: not only arrows, but lead sling pellets that could crush in an unprotected skull. The nearly naked sailors began to take heavy losses, as did the marines who worked their engines in armor but without shields.

Marcus had been impressed with Aeson's tales of sea fighting, but it was clear that the man could put little of his experience to work when caught so completely by surprise. The pirates, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing. Marcus knew all too well that surprise and sheer luck determined the outcome of a fight more often than strategy or tactics.

Before Aeson could get his ship properly ready to fight, the first grapples sailed across the distance separating the ships. The surviving marines ceased work on the futile machines and picked up their small shields.

"At least they're not trying to ram," Flaccus said, his face rigid between the cheek plates of his helmet.

"We could cut the grappling ropes," Caesar suggested.

"No," Marcus said. "We want them to get close."

"Why?" Flaccus asked.

"Because our swords are short!" Brutus said, raising a raucous laugh among his companions. The sailors and marines stared at them as if they had gone insane.

The pirates were attacking from the starboard side. Marcus guessed that this was because they would have to face only half of the ship's artillery this way. The pirate's deck was crowded with men, all screaming and waving their weapons. Most were armed with small shields and short curved swords or wicked-looking axes. Some wore helmets but only a few had body armor. Many were entirely naked except for their weaponry.

"What are you fools doing?" Aeson shouted.

"We're going to board them," Marcus said.

"You are going to board them? You will do no such thing! If you want to make yourselves useful, try to repel them when they start to board!"

"We don't fight that way," Marcus explained. He turned to address his followers. "We won't try to board until the ships are actually touching. Too much chance of falling between the hulls if we try to jump across, and we'll be unbalanced at best when we land on their deck. Let's have two staggered lines. At my command, the first line throw their pila, then the second. We're going to board amidships, so that's where you throw. The second the hulls touch, the first line steps across. Second line, wait until the first is firmly established, then come across. We'll clear the center of the deck, then the first line will face left, the second face right and clean the decks from the center to each end. Then we'll see about the other ship."

Aeson gaped at this demonstration of lunacy for a moment, then barked orders at his oarsmen. They leaned on their sweeps for the oar-battering maneuver he had described but the pirates were expecting it and the general chaos robbed the tactic of effectiveness. Pirates seized the oars and dragged them from the hands of the rowers or hacked through them with axes. Only a few were injured by the flailing wood.

When the ships were no more than five paces apart Marcus pointed at the mass of men crowding the rail opposite. "Your spears go between that tattooed lout with the axe and the black man with the red shield. Now throw!"

As if controlled by a single brain, the right arms of the first line rocked back, paused, then snapped forward. The Roman pilum was a heavy javelin with a thick, four-foot shaft of wood and another two feet of iron shank tipped with a small, barbed point. It was designed to nail an enemy's shield and deprive him of its protection. At this range, the terrible missiles went through the light shields of the pirates as if they were made of parchment, skewering the men behind them. So crowded was the deck that some of the spears pierced the man behind the primary target as well.

While the pirates were reeling from this unexpected onslaught, the men of the second line hurled their weapons. The result was consternation on the opposite deck and suddenly there was a gaping hole in the wall of men along the rail opposite. Two seconds later the ships crunched together and shuddered.

"Now!" Marcus shouted. The Romans already had their swords out. Marcus stepped onto Drakon's rail, then made the short hop to the deck of the pirate vessel two or three feet below. The Romans had been drilled from early youth in the procedures for assaulting an enemy parapet, and this was nothing more than the familiar drill in an unfamiliar setting. The surprised pirates rallied when they realized that the line of strange warriors before them had no more than ten men in it, with ten more lined up on the rail behind them. With savage howls, they assaulted the small line of Romans.

At this point, the murderous Roman gladius began to do its work. The sword was no more than twenty inches long, but its twin edges were viciously keen, the blade as broad as a man's palm and tapered to an acute point. While the pirates assaulted the line with their all but unprotected bodies, the Romans ignored the flailing weapons and concentrated on killing. Their long shields did not overlap or even touch, but were separated by about eight inches. The swords darted through this gap in underhand thrusts, each thrust gutting a man or opening his neck to the spine. Even the merest stroke from one of the terrible blades was sufficient to open an arm or leg to the bone.

"Shove!" Marcus shouted. Each man took a step forward, thrusting out with the boss of his shield, pushing the pirates back. Then the metronomic thrusting of the swords began again, littering the deck with bodies and parts of bodies. Each thrust was delivered with incredible speed, the arm drawing back instantly within the protection of the shield, making a hit on the sword arm all but impossible.

Crowded together and unable to achieve proper distance or balance, the pirates could not strike effectively. With their bodies covered by their shields and armor, the only real target offered by a Roman was his head, and this was protected by the superbly designed Gallic helmet. Only when a weapon came straight for his face did a Roman even bother to take defensive action, and then it was only to incline his head slightly so that the enemy blade slid off the brow or cheek plate of his helmet.

With the first shoving maneuver, the second line boarded. The two end men of the second line used their shields to protect the flanks of the first line, which were growing exposed as they advanced. The lines began to lose their fine cohesion as they trod on bodies and the deck grew ever slipperier with blood. But by this time the pirates were already beginning to lose heart. This was like fighting some sort of reaping machine. Every man who got within an arm's reach was eviscerated.

The marines and sailors aboard Drakon began raining javelins and slingstones among the pirates not engaged by the Romans and within a few seconds the center of the pirate deck was secured. Then the Romans did their facing movement and the butchery resumed in a different direction.

Marcus engaged each enemy that came before him, his shield raised to just below eye level. He dispatched each with a short, upward jab. The years of drill and practice made this second nature, allowing him freedom to assess the situation and maintain such control as was necessary over his line. As leader, he held the right flank of the first line. It was the post of honor and it carried an extra danger: He was vulnerable to attack on his unshielded side.

A naked pirate, painted scarlet all over and armed with an axe, came screaming at him. The axe presented a problem. Brought straight down with full force it could cleave even his fine helmet. For this special peril, Marcus deviated from the usual underhand thrust, instead raising his sword overhead, the blade horizontal as he thrust with his shield and leaned in close. As the axe came whistling down, his blade sheared through both of the pirate's forearms, and arms and weapon went flying. The maimed pirate howled in horror, staggering back, waving what remained of his arms and spraying fountains of blood from his severed arteries.

Soon the pirate attack lost its brainless ferocity and the freebooters began to fall back, unable to cope with this unprecedented killing machine. Some dived overboard and began swimming for the other ship. As the pirate mob broke up, the Romans gave a savage shout and waded into them, the line widening as they began to wield their blades in short chops and slashes, foregoing the exclusive use of the point. It was time for the slaughter.

Marcus saw the man who had to be the captain, waving a sword, shouting and trying to make his men resume the fight, but the heart was gone from them. This man wore a fine Greek helmet and a corselet of crocodile hide. Strangely to Roman eyes, he wore heavy facial cosmetics, his lips and cheeks rouged, his eyes outlined with kohl. Enraged, the man came for Marcus, perhaps hoping to break the Romans by killing their leader.

The line had opened so that Marcus fought alone, engaging the enemy captain man to man. The pirate was too wily to obligingly expose himself to the short sword for which he had quickly gained respect. He wielded his curved blade in short, zigzag cuts while protecting himself adroitly with his small, round shield. Marcus advanced against him, forcing him back. The man had no choice but to retreat unless he wanted to go shield to shield. He had only a short space of deck in which to retreat.

When he was almost against the bow rail, the pirate chief lunged forward, diving to the deck and rolling, trying to amputate Marcus's leading foot. It was a clever and effective move, but Marcus merely grounded his shield and the curved blade clattered off its bronze rim. Marcus stabbed downward through the man's neck, his point sinking into the deck beneath. He jerked the blade free and the pirate chief thrashed on the deck for the space of a few heartbeats, his blood fountaining across the planks, then he lay still.

The Romans found themselves to be the only living creatures aboard the ship. They raised a cheer, taunting the pirates who were still floundering in the water, striving frantically to reach the other vessel, which was already backing off, its oars churning the water to foam.

Even as they cheered, the surviving marines aboard Drakon finally got their incendiary missiles prepared and their engines working. With an immense clatter, five of them fired at once and five balls of roaring flame converged on the second pirate vessel. The same wind that had sped Drakon along the coast now spread the fire with incredible swiftness the whole length of the ship. Men screamed and burned and jumped into the water. The destruction was as complete as it was rapid. For the Romans, the vicious hand-to-hand battle had been no more than ordinary legionary's work, but this fire at sea was appalling.

When they reboarded Drakon, the sailors were already erecting the mast while the oars flailed the water. Under Aeson's frantic orders the sail was hoisted in haste.

"Aren't you going to put a crew aboard the ship we captured?" Marcus asked him.

"Ordinarily," said the skipper, "I'd do exactly that, or at least take it in tow. It would fetch a fair price at auction in Alexandria. But, if you'll notice, there's a ship afire just to windward and the flames and sparks are blowing this way. We're getting away from it as fast as possible."

"What about the survivors?" Marcus said, pointing to the men flailing in the water.

"Pirates are worth practically nothing. Only the mines and quarries buy them. We'd get a handful of drachmae for the lot. It's not worth the risk."

"I meant we could use a few for questioning."

"We're getting away from here, Ambassador," Aeson said. "They can be our offering to the sea gods."

"I quite agree, Marcus," Flaccus said. He was watching the burning ship with horror. The heat was intense even at a distance of fifty paces and the sailors were sluicing the ship with buckets of seawater as glowing cinders landed on the deck and sail. "Let's leave our captain to his work."

The Romans were already cleaning the blood from their gear. In the close confines of the deck fight they had all been liberally splashed with it, and blood was notorious for corroding fine steel. They carefully washed every trace from their metal and only then did they bother to clean their bodies and treat their wounds. The sailors and marines regarded them with wonder and Marcus had a feeling there would be no more landlubber jokes from them.

"Who is hurt?" he asked. Flaccus had a bad gash on his sword arm. Others had minor nicks and cuts, and some had trod on the dropped weapons that littered the pirate deck. Their hobnailed caligae protected their soles, but there were some cut ankles. Marcus looked at unwarlike Flaccus disgustedly. "I might have known you'd get hurt."

Flaccus shrugged. "I'm a philosopher by nature, not a soldier." His sword arm was red to the shoulder, but only a little of the blood came from his wound.

Marcus commandeered a bucket of seawater from a sailor and dipped his blade into it, carefully sponging the steel until it was bright again. He sighted along the edges but found no nicks or notches. This was another reason the Romans favored stabs to the belly or throat. They were much easier on the blade than cuts that might land on armor or metal shield rims.

They stripped off their tunics and plunged them into buckets of water to soak the blood out and as they did this, they discussed the action just past.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" said Brutus. "Those thieves weren't attacking a warship for the prospect of loot."

"They were waiting for us," Marcus said. "I would speculate that Hamilcar put them up to it. He acts the generous host but he doesn't want us dealing with Egypt. Not while he's preparing for war."

"I knew we shouldn't have trusted a Carthaginian!" Caesar said.

The older men laughed. "Who was trusting anybody?" Flaccus said.

They entered the great harbor of Alexandria from the west on a glorious morning so windless that the smoke from the great lighthouse towered straight up like an offering ascending to the gods. The lighthouse itself was at the eastern tip of the island of Pharos, but even from the western end it bulked huge, standing a full four hundred feet high, ornate with marble columns in every Greek style. It was built in four stepped-back sections, the terraces green with lush plantings that hung over the railings, bedizened with dazzling flowers.

"A lighthouse makes sense," said Brutus. "But why tart it up with all that decoration?"

"It's a matter of aesthetics, Brutus," Flaccus informed him. "You wouldn't understand."

The western harbor was called the Eunostos, the harbor of "happy return." Within, it proved to be even greater than the harbor at Carthage. As if the lighthouse were not wonder enough, the island was connected with the mainland by a causeway called the Heptastadion, because it was seven stadia in length. The causeway was raised and pierced with arches so that ships could sail beneath it to the smaller Palace Harbor on the eastern side.

Lining the shore they could see broad plazas, gigantic warehouses, statues of gods and kings, ships without number from all parts of the world. Their skipper pointed out some of the wonders of the city. The vast temple that hulked a half-mile inland in the eastern part of the city was the Serapion, temple of Serapis, patron god of Alexandria. The strange, conical hill near the center of the metropolis was the Paneum, an artificial mound planted with the flora of Thessaly and topped with a circular shrine to the goat-footed nature god. Beyond the Heptastadion lay the sprawling palace and museum complexes. The whole city was built of white stone and it shone in the morning light like a philosopher's dream of a city, not a real city where men and women lived out their lives.

They did not moor in the Eunostos but rowed beneath one of the arches pierced through the causeway into the Palace Harbor. Here there were few commercial vessels but many warships, royal galleys and pleasure barges of stunning size and luxuriance. In the harbor was a small island with its own miniature palace, a marvel of perfect proportions.

Marcus noted that, while Alexandria lacked the architectural chaos of Carthage, its predominantly Greek design had an Egyptian overlay. While the buildings were almost exclusively Greek, some were ornamented with Egyptian hieroglyphics and the statues of gods and kings, while Greek in execution, were often arranged in traditional Egyptian poses; stiffly seated or striding, wearing items of Egyptian dress or bearing the attributes of Egyptian gods.

Drakon steered a course toward the structure that dominated the waterfront: a palace wing built on the scale favored by the Successor kings. It looked like a place where giants would live. The Ionic columns were at least fifty feet in height, the pediment they supported featuring a battle between gods and titans, the figures twice human height.

The wharf to which they made fast was adorned with marble facing, carved with stone wreaths alternating with cattle skulls, the bollards to which the ship moored carved in the shape of giant scarab beetles. To Marcus's question the skipper explained that this beetle was a creature sacred to the native Egyptians. Its habit of rolling balls of dung along the ground suggested the passage of the sun across the sky.

"They think a shit-rolling bug represents the sun god?" Brutus said with wonder. "Barbarians are a strange lot."

"It certainly lacks the majesty of Apollo's solar chariot," Flaccus agreed.

Marcus had more important things than dung beetles on his mind. Before him lay the huge and ancient land of Egypt. It lay between Carthage in the west and the Seleucid Empire and the Parthians to the east. All his political and military instincts told him that Egypt could hold the balance of power in the world. If he performed his task here properly, Egypt could deliver that world to the upstart, returning Romans.