The Seven Hills

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Senate held silence while Publius Gabinius read out the dispatches. They had arrived that morning, two of them at once and both wreathed in laurel. It was a thing unprecedented in Roman history. First, he read the report of the duumvir Decimus Arrunteius. The senators gasped and broke into spontaneous clapping as he detailed the battle, the enemy ships destroyed, the loot taken. Otherwise, they remained quiet.

The princeps came to a momentous passage: "My marines and sailors behaved with uniform valor and discipline. I cannot commend their behavior too highly. Most of them are men from the towns and countryside of Italy, with only a few citizen legionaries to act as their officers. I believe that our Italian allies have rediscovered their manhood forfeited by their ancestors when ours accepted the Exile."

Gabinius looked around him. Some of the senators looked pleased to hear this; others did not. Hostility against the Italians went deep in this body. Most had agreed that the Italians should do the dangerous but menial work of rowing in the new fleet. Many had protested their bearing arms as marines. While sea service was inferior to that of the legions, it was honorable, and many believed the Italians had forfeited all claim to honor when they knuckled under to Carthage in the days of Hannibal the Great. But there had been no choice. They were embarked upon a war of unprecedented magnitude and every citizen was needed for the legions. If they were to have a fighting navy, the Italians had to be enrolled.

Next, Gabinius brought out the dispatch from Norbanus. This time the senators could not keep quiet. The faction that supported the Norbani cheered lustily, and even the old family adherents who despised them made sounds of approval, lest they seem churlish. The totality of the victory lost nothing in the telling, as young Norbanus detailed his ruse, his night march to the battlefield, his daring direct assault upon the Carthaginian camp and his novel assault plan, culminating in the suicide of Mastanabal and his principle officers, the destruction of his army and the sack of his camp. The loot was described in great detail, along with the information that the eagles and other standards captured at the disaster of the Arnus had been recaptured and were returning to Rome with an honor guard, to be deposited in the Temple of Saturn.

Finished, Gabinius closed the wooden case with a snap. "Senators, I propose that we declare ten days of thanksgiving for these great victories. The gods must be thanked properly."

A new family senator stood. "Ten days? These victories deserve a month of thanksgiving!"

Old Scipio Cyclops stepped forward. He had just returned from a tour of inspection in the South. "I agree with our princeps. These are fine victories and I rejoice that the standards have been taken back. But the main Carthaginian fleet is still afloat. The main Carthaginian army is still intact, under the personal command of Hamilcar. Carthage itself still stands. Let us not celebrate foolishly, when so much is left to be done."

"Sour grapes, Cyclops?" jeered the same new family senator. "You are just jealous because our new family commanders are winning glory while your grandson luxuriates in Alexandria, accomplishing nothing!"

Scipio looked at the man scornfully, his single eye glaring 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 declare 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 arguing. 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 Centuriate 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 lictors 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 Senate and the assemblies and now sure to woo the Italian communities 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 villages 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 something 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 ourselves 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 victory against all our foreign enemies and regaining our old empire on the Middle Sea, we should discover that the real threat, the real enemy, 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," Selena 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 Carthaginian 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 incomparably 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. "Disaster? 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 replace 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. Hamilcar had attended their interrogation closely before ordering that all of them be crucified.

"Now your army will be weaker when you confront Norbanus," she insisted. "It is weaker by several thousand men." The shofet astonished her. He seemed to be absolutely impervious to his folly. She began to doubt the wisdom of allying herself with him. His previous setbacks had been the workings of chance or bad luck, but this was a disaster of his own making. From the moment they crossed the Strait of Hercules, she had urged him to march with all possible speed, so that they could link up with Mastanabal and fall upon the Romans with their combined forces. Instead, he had dawdled, making one excuse after another. Now she could see that it was deliberate. He did not want to share the glory with a possible rival. Arrogance and willfulness she could forgive in a king, but not stupidity.

"Norbanus," he mused, seeming only to halfhear her. "That man needs to be humbled."

A letter had accompanied the general's head from the Roman.

From Titus Norbanus, proconsul of Rome, to Hamilcar, shofet of Carthage, greeting.

Shofet, I rejoice that you and I will meet again so soon. I have found a splendid battleground, well watered and with plenty of room for both armies to camp. The ground is level, not too stony and with plenty of grass. Personally, I cannot think of a finer spot to add you and your army to my battle honors.

Of course, certain formalities must be honored. I am charged by the Senate of Rome to order you to turn around and march your army back to Africa. Should you choose that course, I will follow you, but not too closely. I will not hinder your crossing of the Strait of Hercules.

However, I know that you are a soldier and a man of spirit, so I fully expect you to choose honorable battle rather than ignominious retreat. I await your pleasure, here on this excellent field near the aptly named town of Cartago Nova.

"He actually tells you that he has picked his ground for battle. Does he seriously expect that you will comply?"

"It would keep matters simple. A fight on level ground to decide the contest in a day. And to avoid battle might be taken for cowardice."

"You cannot mean it! Your ancestor Hannibal never let the Romans choose their own ground for fighting. On some occasions he retreated before them for days, until he found the ground that suited him, and then he fought, on ground and terms of his own choosing. Did anyone ever accuse Hannibal of cowardice for this?"

"My ancestor was glorious, but he never had numerical superiority. Always, his numbers were inferior. I have here a far larger army than Norbanus commands. And doubtless he lost many men in the fight with this fool." He waved contemptuously toward the oil-gleaming head.

"I think he lost very few," she said.

"No matter. Many or few, I will crush his contemptible legions and march on, destroying any Roman force that dares to defy me. Then I will destroy Rome, and I will not be as merciful as my ancestor was. I will pulverize every last stone of the city and I will kill or enslave every Roman in Italy. Then, when I am ready, I will march north, to their capital of Noricum, and destroy that and every other vestige of those misbegotten people."

"Excellent words," she said. "I think there are better ways to put them into effect."

"That will be enough. I will not have men saying that the shofet of Carthage is following the advice of a woman, even a queen and distinguished ally."

With an effort, she restrained herself from answering. She knew now that she had done her work too well. She had set out to convince him that he was the new Alexander and greater than Hannibal, and that his destiny and hers were linked. Now it seemed that he accepted the first part, but thought that she was somehow his inferior, a mere woman rather than a queen of more than mortal status. She would have to correct this.

Titus Norbanus rode over the battlefield he had chosen, and it was not for the first time. It looked level and consistent throughout, but this was not quite so. A narrow stream ran through it, and certain pieces of ground near the stream were boglike. He had had horses graze upon these patches, to crop the longer grasses down to the length of the rest. There were stony bits of ground, too. The stream itself was deceptively deep in spots. He had had it sounded along the whole length of the field, and knew exactly where all the deep spots were. When the time came for the battle, he would know the field intimately, and his enemy would not.

He looked southward along the stream. He could just make out the fine city of Cartago Nova. He had not bothered to besiege the city, nor had he even sent envoys to demand its surrender. He had an immediate use for that city, and it was not as mere loot. His officers were mystified by his actions, and he had not enlightened them. He had ordered his admiral to stand his fleet well up the coast, out of sight of the city with its fine harbor. This, too, puzzled everyone, and that was exactly how he wanted it.

Satisfied that he knew precisely the nature of the ground, he rode back to the Roman camp. He had ordered its rampart to be raised higher than usual, and had denuded a nearby hill of trees to construct its palisade. He wanted to give the appearance of a defensive posture.

He rode through the gate and along the via principalis to the praetorium, where he dismounted and passed inside. A slave took his helmet and others stripped off his armor so efficiently that he did not have to pause as he strode through the huge tent. He pushed aside a leopard skin hanging and went within his women's quarters. Within, the two Judean princesses sat at a table, poring over their everlasting astrological charts. At his entrance they knelt and pressed their foreheads to the carpeted ground, an unusual thing to see from the proud sisters. He grasped a shoulder of each and raised them to their feet.

"Little princesses, what have the stars in store for me?"

"Master, we are sorely puzzled," Glaphyra said, her eyes downcast. "Until now, all our forecasts were favorable. Now something is wrong."

"Wrong? How? Do the stars say I will be defeated?"

"Not exactly," Roxana said. "But you must not fight tomorrow. The signs say that you will not win glory tomorrow."

"Is that all? Do not trouble yourselves. I expect Hamilcar to arrive this afternoon, and I will fight him tomorrow, and all will go as I have planned."

"Master!" Glaphyra gasped. "Do you not trust in our art and our gifts? You must not fight tomorrow!"

"I believe implicitly in your predictions and your mastery of your art. But, you see, all battles are not fought to win glory."

"We do not understand, Master," Roxana said.

"That is very good. You do not understand what I intend and neither do my officers. That means that Hamilcar will never guess what I have in store for him."

That afternoon, Norbanus stood atop the battle tower he had had erected at the edge of the field. It was higher than usual, shaded with an awning and equipped with all the signaling gear he would require. As his scouts had foretold earlier that day, the army of Hamilcar was marching onto the far side of the field, regiment after massive regiment of them. With great interest, Norbanus studied the units as they arrived, peering through Selene's unique gift. As always, he marveled at how the device made distant things seem so much nearer. With it he could make out the details of standards, the shapes and colors of shields, making it easy to identify the units as they arrived and deployed to their camping sites.

This was very important, for he knew that the camping arrangement would correspond closely with their order of battle. Old Hannibal had made it a doctrine of Carthaginian military practice that, in deployment for battle, no unit should cross another's path of march unless it be for purposes of deception.

On the extreme left of the Carthaginian camp he saw Spaniards: famed not only for their savagery but for toughness and endurance. In the middle was a huge mass of Gauls. These were ferocious in the attack, but had a reputation for faltering if the first mad rush failed to carry the day. On Hamilcar's right, the southern end, the Greek and Macedonian professionals were setting up a neat and orderly camp. These were the principal nations, but many others were there as well, most of them skirmishers, slingers, archers and horsemen. They were men of Libya and Numidia, of the desert and nameless nations of the African interior. There were light cavalry of a sort he had never seen before: men in trousers and long-sleeved jackets and pointed caps. He guessed these might be the Illyrians. Norbanus paid them little attention. Controlling Hamilcar's main battle line was the key to tomorrow's fight.

"General," said Cato, "I make their numbers to be at least twice our strength."

"No matter. We've destroyed barbarian armies many times our own numbers before." He handed the magical little device to Niger, who snatched it and scanned the enemy camp feverishly.

"What I see over there isn't a great mob of disorganized tribesmen. Those are hard-bitten professional soldiers and warriors under tight discipline."

"If their strength doesn't bother you," Cato said, "what about the news that his navy showed up in the harbor of Cartago Nova this morning?" He jabbed a finger toward the city, just visible in the distance to the south. "Why didn't we take that town when it would have been easy?"

Norbanus sighed. "Because it did not suit my purposes. I have a plan for that city."

Niger handed the device over to Cato. "Perhaps it's time for you to explain just what that plan is."

"All in good time." Norbanus leaned over the railing and called for a herald. An olive wreath encircling his brow, the man appeared on the platform minutes later, draped in a white robe, holding a staff of hazelwood. "Go to the camp of Hamilcar," Norbanus instructed. "Extend to him my invitation to confer just before sunset at the stream. Neither of us is to be accompanied by more than two companions, the armies to remain in their camps." The herald repeated the message, bowed and left to deliver it.

"Don't go, General," Niger advised. "He'll do something treacherous. Let some of us go to deal with his officers."

"But that would be unworthy," Norbanus said. "And he won't do anything to besmirch the victory he is sure he will win. Now he's seen our army, and he has every confidence in his chances."

Niger closed the optical device with a horny palm. "He buggering well has a right to be confident."

That evening, as the sun lowered in the west, Norbanus rode out, accompanied only by Niger and Cato. His spectacular armor was freshly polished to reflect the rays of the setting sun and cast them back toward the enemy. His splendid cloak, Jonathan's gift, billowed out behind him. He rode a gleaming black stallion and was perfectly aware of the picture he made. His companions, more soberly attired, frowned, but as they approached the stream their faces smoothed into the impassive Roman mask, drilled into them since youth as the only proper expression to assume when dealing with foreigners.

Hamilcar arrived at the stream at the same time as the Romans. He, too, was splendidly arrayed, in golden boots, gold-embroidered purple tunic and robe. On his brow rested a circlet of gold attesting his royal status. Behind him rode an armor bearer who held his sword and helmet, in token of his military mission. Beside him rode a woman who was bizarre even to the now well-traveled Romans: a veritable Amazon with yellow hair and blue eyes and tattooed all over. She looked more like a goddess of some savage race than a proper companion for a civilized monarch.

"Greetings in the name of the noble Senate of Rome," Norbanus said. "I have not seen you in far too long, Shofet."

"You have come up in the world, Norbanus," Hamilcar said, taking in the lion-mask helmet and the abundance of royal purple the Roman general wore. "I would remind you that I was already at the crest of the world when you were still living in some obscure German fort."

"And this must be the famous Queen Teuta of Illyria, of whom we have heard so much." He bowed slightly. "Greetings, Your Majesty. I rejoice to meet you at last."

She glared at him with the coldest eyes he had ever seen in a female face. "You are a jumped-up peasant from the North. Perhaps you are empowered to speak on behalf of your Senate, but do not presume to address us on your own behalf."

Norbanus smiled. "I believe I am here to confer with your ally, the Shofet Hamilcar."

Hamilcar radiated boredom. "Speak, Roman. It grows late."

"Well, then. Would you like to surrender to me now?"

"Don't be absurd!"

"I had to ask. Protocol, you know. Then shall we fight tomorrow?"

"Why should I fight at a time and in a place of your choosing?"

Norbanus made a show of looking all around. "Does this field not suit you? I couldn't find a better. It's level; there are no nearby hills to hide surprise reinforcements; there's a clear field of view for miles in all directions. If you know of a better place, I am willing to listen. As for the time, it makes little sense for us to sit here with our two camps glaring at each other, our men eating up all the food in the area and the horses devouring all the grass. More convenient all around to fight it out now."

"It hardly matters, since I will crush your contemptible little army in an hour."

"Tomorrow morning, then, at first light?"

Teuta snorted. "And fight with the sun in our eyes, like Mastanabal?" She ignored Hamilcar's irritated glance.

"Noon, then," Norbanus said. "With the sun at zenith, nobody will have the advantage."

"Tomorrow, then," Hamilcar said impatiently. "Tomorrow at noon I will destroy you, and the gods of Carthage will prevail over the gods of Rome."

"We'll be looking forward to it," Norbanus said. He made a sketchy but graceful double bow toward the shofet and the queen, then wheeled his mount and trotted away.

"The arrogance of that man!" Teuta said. "Did you see that helmet? It's the one Alexander wore in his portraits. He thinks well of himself.

"I did not fail to notice that little detail," Hamilcar said. "It is degrading to speak with such an upstart. At least Alexander was a king, and the son of a king, although of an obscure country."

Teuta forbore to snap back at that, knowing that Illyria was an obscure country. That man Norbanus intrigued her. She could not quite name what it was, but the Roman had something that Hamilcar lacked: some essential quality that raised him above the level of ordinary men. What a pity this Norbanus comes of an upstart, soon-to-be-extinct nation instead of a great empire, she thought. And too bad his army is so small by comparison. Otherwise, I might have done better to choose him as my companion, rather than Hamilcar.

The Roman party rode back toward the camp and discussed matters as they went.

"We'd better keep an eye on that wild woman," Cato advised. "She strikes me as twice the man Hamilcar is."

"So I noticed," Norbanus agreed. "Remember the story of Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus at the battle of Salamis? The warrior-queens can give you a nasty surprise."

"Are you going to tell us what you intend now?" Niger demanded.

"Tonight. And I want no surprises tomorrow, so everyone is to be out on that field, in battle order, in silence as before. It will mean a long, hot wait until noon, but I've given them two days of rest, so they'll be up to it."

On the next morning, at first light, Norbanus was again atop his command tower. Before him was ranged his army, the legions in neat, elongated rectangles, extended to keep Hamilcar's much-larger army from overwhelming its flanks. It gave them very little depth, but Norbanus was confident in the Roman legionary's ability to hold formation, no matter how heavy the pressure.

On his extreme left, the southern end, were the Gauls and Spaniards that had joined him, hearing that this Roman was extremely clever and lucky, a clear favorite of the gods who could make his friends rich. To the extreme north was the formation upon which so much of the coming battle depended: the Greek and Macedonian mercenaries he had inherited from the defeated Mastanabal. They were specialists in close-order fighting. Unlike the Romans, they hurled no javelins and placed little reliance on the sword. Instead, they fought with overlapped shields and long spears, overcoming their enemy through the weight of their formation and their own iron discipline. Those men had a crucial role to play.

It did not bother him in the least that both armies included so many Gauls, Spaniards, Greeks and Macedonians. The civilized men were professionals, and the savages just didn't care. All of them fought among themselves constantly.

His men sat on the ground, their shields propped up by their spears, while the noncombatant slaves distributed breakfast. Norbanus knew that it was folly to send men into battle on empty stomachs. He watched through his optical glass as Hamilcar's army marched from its encampment in leisurely fashion, two hours before the sun reached zenith.

They took up their positions exactly as they had encamped: Hamilcar's Greek and Macedonian units on the south, facing Norbanus's Gauls and Spaniards, Hamilcar's own Gauls facing the legions, his Spaniards fronting the northernmost legion and the massive block of the Greek-Macedonian phalanx.

"Splendid!" Norbanus said, marveling as always at how much the gods loved him. "If he'd allowed me to make his dispositions myself, I couldn't have done a better job."

"Maybe," Niger grumbled. "But it still seems a strange way to fight a battle."

Norbanus turned and addressed the officers crowding the platform behind him: all his cohort commanders and the senior centurions. "Gentlemen, you will never see me fight a battle that looks other than strange. It's the key to winning."

"But general," said a grizzled old centurion, "this business of keeping the legions purely on the defensive-the boys won't like it, sir. It goes against their training and their instincts."

"They'll like it when the battle is over," Norbanus assured them. "Believe me, soldiers love it when you don't get them killed. If anybody has any doubts when all this is over, I will deliver a speech that will let them know what this is all about." He turned and saw that Hamilcar's army was finally in full array-a terrifying sight in its great numbers. "Now go to your places. You all know what to do. Just watch and listen for my signals."

In order of rank, the officers filed from the platform. Norbanus watched them rejoin their units, saw the men stand and take up their shields and pila. He savored the moment. This was where he would lay the foundations for his future. Up until now, he had built a reputation, first as a daring commander, then as a victorious general. Here, on this field, he would establish his true greatness. And he would do it by eschewing glory for once.

By the time the sun was high, Hamilcar had his own observation and command platform erected. It was not as high as the rather Spartan Roman construction, but it was far more splendid. Its fine wood was richly carved and inlaid with ivory and shell. It was draped with beautiful cloth and adorned with bronze tripods in which burned incense to fend off the disagreeable smells of battle. His own throne, and the slightly lower throne of Queen Teuta, were covered with the skins of rare animals. At the shofet's right hand stood an altar consecrated to the gods of Carthage.

Hamilcar had performed all the prayers and sacrifices; he had seen to the final dispositions of his troops, and now he was ready to observe the battle and enjoy the pleasures of victory.

Opposite him, on the far side of the stream, the Roman army was thinly stretched, grown attenuated as Norbanus extended his line to avoid outflanking. It only thinned at the center, where his own troops would punch through by their sheer weight.

"Why," Hamilcar mused, "did this man Norbanus choose such an exposed field? I have studied the old Roman tactics, you know. In the old days, a Roman commander, faced with an enemy so much larger, would anchor his flanks with a swamp or a rocky hill or other terrain that would make it difficult for the enemy to flank him. That way he could achieve maximum depth all along his line of battle. I think Norbanus is overrated."

"I don't doubt he fancies he has a surprise for us," Teuta said, "though I can't imagine what it might be."

"No matter." Hamilcar stood, a resplendent sight in his golden armor and crown-shaped helmet. An attendant handed him a golden spear and Hamilcar held it high, then slowly lowered it until it pointed toward the center of the Roman line.

The horns brayed and the drums thundered and an enormous shout rose from the huge army. With a great surge, it began to advance toward the enemy. In front of the rest, the missile troops went forth at a run, singing tribal war songs. The Romans stayed where they were. The missile troops ran into the stream and began to flounder across.

Teuta felt the first feathery touch of apprehension along her spine. "That stream is deeper than it looks."

Hamilcar shrugged. "As long as it is fordable, that means nothing."

The missile troops halted before the Roman lines and began raining arrows, javelins and lead sling-bullets among them. The Romans replied by raising their customary shield roof. The more lightly equipped Gauls and Spaniards suffered more, but most of them obeyed Norbanus's instructions and stayed in place. A few high-spirited warriors ran out and attacked on their own, to little effect.

"This is tedious," Hamilcar complained, watching the missiles fall upon the shields. As far as he could see, not a single Roman had been harmed.

"Let them keep up their fire," Teuta advised. "Their arms have to get tired. Soon gaps will appear and the arrows will get through."

"No, I've seen them practice this formation before, outside Carthage and in the siege at Alexandria. It would take too long. I will send my army in and finish this." He nodded to an officer, who called out to the trumpeters, and the call went out from them for the missile troops and skirmishers to fall back. These men scrambled to find gaps for themselves to fade back within the advancing ranks.

Now the shield roof came down and the Roman legions began to advance, very slowly and deliberately, keeping their lines strictly dressed, in what was almost a parade-ground maneuver. The cavalry force rode to the right flank next to the Greek-Macedonian block and, strangely, halted there, keeping up with the advance at a walking pace. Hamiicar's lead regiments entered the stream and trudged across, many stumbling, some falling, thrashing briefly as the men behind trod them under.

On the eastern side of the stream they paused to dress their lines. At this point the Roman army had halted, foot and horse, barely fifty paces away. The Romans stood in utter calm, making no war cries, sounding no trumpets; neither did they wave weapons aloft. Only at their southern flank was there any uproar, for the Gauls and Spaniards had a noisy way of displaying their warrior spirit, and they did not depart from it now. Their countrymen in Hamilcar's army made similar demonstration.

Their order restored, Hamilcar's men advanced at the double-quick, and so many of them were of warrior races that soon they were half-running. When twenty paces separated the two armies, the arms of the first three Roman ranks rocked back as one, then shot forward. The terrible, heavy, viciously barbed pila arched briefly skyward, then plunged downward with awful force, sending men tumbling, skewered, pierced, bleeding, to the ground. Men had their shields nailed to their bodies, their bodies pinned to the ground. So tightly were the men packed that scarcely a Roman spear failed to kill or wound an enemy soldier. The weight of the heavy javelin at such close range carried it through armor, helmet or shield. Even when a shield was stout enough to resist the weapon, it could not be dislodged, forcing its bearer to abandon it and fight henceforth unprotected.

For crucial moments the attack faltered as men fell and others tripped over the fallen. Shaken but confident and valiant, Hamilcar's men reordered themselves and prepared another charge. But the men behind them, still crossing the stream and unaware of what was happening ahead, pressed forward. Hamilcar's army grew very dense. Men were still waiting to step into the stream, the bottom of which was being churned to a deep, clinging mud.

Maddened, the bloodied warriors charged again. But during the lull, slaves and rear-rankers had passed more pila forward. Again, the arms of the first three ranks went back, shot forward and again men tumbled like wheat before the scythe. Slowed, many hurled lighter javelins of their own, but these were easily fended off by the large, heavy Roman shields.

After a shorter pause, the massive army resumed its advance and a third volley of pila fell among them. Now the front lines were barely twenty feet apart, but so many corpses and writhing, wounded men littering the ground slowed the advance to a crawl. Still, their anger and the terrible pressure from behind drove Hamilcar's men on.

Teuta was filled with a terrible apprehension. What sort of fighting was this? The army before them, small as it was, was like some sort of terrible machine. In moments she had seen thousands of men go down before the simple but devastating Roman javelin. And then it happened again and yet again and the mad rush was stalled, and the Romans had hardly lost a man yet. Now she saw the glitter all along the Roman lines as thousands of their short swords, worn so strangely on the right hip instead of the left, were drawn in a singular, upward-and-forward motion. Instantly, distracted though she was, she knew the reason for the strange carry and draw. The man is not hindered by his shield and his draw does not disturb the men to either side. These people think of everything.

And still the men were crossing the stream, churning the ground on the far side to mud, crowding the ranks against one another. The army was losing cohesion and turning into a mob. She looked north and saw that Norbanus's small cavalry force was confining its activities to keeping the much larger Carthaginian force from flanking the Greek contingent.

"Hamilcar," she said, her voice sounding hoarse in her own ears. "Stop your men from crossing the water. They can do no good and the pressure over there will not let up until the Romans begin to retreat."

The shofet just looked annoyed. "They will break very soon. Look, I am already victorious on the south."

She looked that way and indeed the Gauls there were being driven back in confusion by the orderly lines of the Greeks and the Macedonians. Soon they would flank the Romans at that end and roll up the line. This looked encouraging, but a nagging thought assailed her: He knowingly left his south end weak and vulnerable. He did not take the city and port to the south. The road south is wide open. What can this mean?

Then she was appalled to see Hamilcar order his reserve regiments across the stream, into the center. "Shofet! You tire your men to no cause!"

"That will be enough, woman!" he snapped. "They are engaged all along the front now. Soon the weight of my army will crush them underfoot!"

Frustrated, she sat and watched. It occurred to her that Hamilcar had not studied his battles as closely as he thought. His ancestor, Hannibal, had once won a battle something like this: beating a larger army with a smaller. That was Cannae, his greatest victory. She was sure that Norbanus was using some form of the Cannae strategy, but the battles were so dissimilar that she could not understand what he intended.

She did see, plainly, that the Romans were not distressed by the vaunted "weight" of Hamilcar's army. Only the men of the front lines could engage actively. The Romans had a well-drilled maneuver by which, every few minutes, the front-line men stepped back and those behind them stepped forward, keeping fresh, untired men at the fighting line. If the rear men of Hamilcar's army pushed, they merely drove the front-line men into the Roman swords. At intervals, more of the murderous pila would arch out above the heads of the legionaries and plunge into the struggling' mass of Hamilcar's men.

She saw men detach from the rear of the Roman formation, form a neat, orderly rectangle and march to the southern end of the Roman line, there to form a thickened, south-facing line just as Hamilcar's Greeks had their flanking maneuver almost concluded. The Gauls, caught between the two forces, were slaughtered. But the Roman line held. They inflicted few casualties on the orderly Greeks, but the phalanx was stymied.

Teuta stood and paced before the glowering shofet. She saw how long her shadow had grown and turned to look at the sun. She was amazed to see how low it stood in the west. To the north she saw a new movement. The block of Norbanus's Greek-Macedonian phalanx was moving, pushing against the lightly armored Iberians, shoving them back, spearing them, striding over their bodies. Already, men were breaking away from the battle, frustrated at being unable to come to grips with the Romans, unable to take heads and win glory. Slowly, a step at a time, the Greeks were cutting themselves a strong position at Hamilcar's left flank.

"Look!" she said, grasping the shofet by the shoulder and shaking him. "You are being flanked!"

He shook off her hand. "They can accomplish nothing! There are not enough of them."

She knew now that Hamilcar was seeing only the ideal battle in his head, the battle that he wanted to see. Immediately, she determined to extricate her men from this disaster. Hamilcar did not even glance in her direction as she walked to the rear of the platform and leapt upon her horse. Her bodyguard rode behind her as she pelted northward, toward the cavalry action. Beside her rode her standard-bearer. Atop a long pole he bore a golden dragon, its long, waving tail a silken tube that filled with air as he galloped, making the queen conspicuous to her men.

She rode through thousands of wounded men, seeking to put distance between themselves and the battle. She saw that not all were wounded. Idly, she axed a few of these deserters down when they strayed too near. She did not plan to stay on this field, but neither was she deserting. She knew when it was time to withdraw an army to fight another day.

She found her men engaging the Roman cavalry. They were greatly frustrated that the smaller Roman force refused to engage them in a mass and obligingly allow themselves to be slaughtered. Teuta shouted and her trumpeter sounded his horn, and swiftly, the Illyrian horsemen rallied to their queen's banner.

"Come with me!" she yelled to them. "You are needed in the south!" Without question they obeyed, ignoring the dismayed cries and jeers of the other cavalry. They followed their queen, not some foreign king. They cared nothing for his hired lackeys and their fate.

While they assembled, she studied the progress of the battle. The Greeks at this end were now at the stream, able to spear with contemptuous ease the men still trying to cross. When their enemy gave up and ceased trying to cross, the Greeks raised their spears upright, then performed an elegant left-facing maneuver and lowered their spears once again. This time the formation, and its spears, faced south. Then the Greeks began their slow, inexorable push.

They have us, boxed! she thought. There is no way out but south. Now she could see what Norbanus intended. Why he was doing it remained a mystery. With her men behind her, she made a wide half circle around the now-disintegrating army. Whole units were pulling away and retreating to the west, unwilling to cross the stream into what was now nothing more than a slaughter yard. With just a few more men, he could have bagged this whole army, she realized. Yet another doubt assailed her on this day full of doubts. She had a suspicion that the utter destruction of the Carthaginian army and its shofet was the last thing Norbanus wanted. But why?

She found Hamilcar pacing on his platform. His face was worried, his glance straying every few seconds to the city on the southern horizon. She dismounted and climbed to the carpeted deck. "Hamilcar," she said quietly. "It is time to go. You are doing nothing to harm them. You still have the bulk of your army. Break off and retreat. Fight this man somewhere else, some other time. You won't beat him here, today, no matter how many men you sacrifice."

"It cannot be!" he cried. "He has a paltry little army and I have a great host. He should be at my feet begging for his life!"

"That is not going to happen. If you stay here, he will grind all your men to blood sausage and then it will be your turn to beg. Get away from here, now!"

Abruptly, his face went slack. "How did this happen?" he said with little expression.

"You allowed him first to destroy the army of Mastanabal, that otherwise would have been here this day, making you truly invincible. You allowed Norbanus to choose the time and the ground for this battle, then you gave him all the time he needed to make his preparations." She saw no reason for merciful words. Now she was sure that she had chosen the wrong man. Perhaps that could be rectified. In the meantime, it was up to her to salvage what she could from this debacle.

He said nothing for a while, then: "You are wise. I should have listened to you."

She nodded. Perhaps he was beginning to show some sense.

"But that cannot be all of it," he said further. "I must have offended the gods in some fashion. When I return to Carthage, I shall order a Tophet. The children of the highest families of Carthage shall be sacrificed in the fires of Baal-Hammon."

She rolled her eyes. Like every other man who could not face the reality of his own failure, he was passing responsibility to the gods. "Then let us go now. Back the way we came. The Romans will pause here to loot your camp. With your men reorganized, we can make a fighting retreat."

"No," Hamilcar said. "Do you not see that the way south is unimpeded? My fleet is in the harbor of Cartago Nova. We will take ship from there."

"Notice?" she said, frustrated. "I've been noticing it all day! He left Cartago Nova untouched! He put his weakest forces on his south flank, opposite.your strongest! His Macedonian phalanx is pressing your men southward! In the name of all the gods, Hamilcar, can't you see when you are being herded?" She all but screamed the last word.

Oddly, he took no offense at her tone. He pointed to the mass of Gauls and Iberians now trudging westward, away from the battlefield. "Those men will regain their spirit and their senses soon. It will occur to them that they can curry favor with Rome by attacking us. It will be that way all the long road to the Strait of Hercules. I can rely only on my Greek professionals, and I do not have enough of them."

She calmed herself. His words were not without sense. At least that was something. "Very well. But we don't wait and try to defend Cartago Nova. He's already thought of that and has something planned. I don't care about the rest of your army. I want my men and their horses embarked on the first transports, along with you and me. We don't wait for the rest of the army to go. We leave as soon as we're aboard. The rest can follow, if they can contrive to. You can raise another army when we get to Carthage."

A dusty, bloody man climbed the steps to the platform. It was Euximenes, the commander of the Greeks. "Shofet," he said, "we've won our part of the field, but everywhere else is chaos. My men are in good order and haven't taken many casualties. Let us get you out of here. There is no time to waste." He looked back and forth between the two, as if unsure where his orders were to come from.

"Prepare a retreat to Cartago Nova, Commander," Hamilcar said, sounding firm and decisive again.

"Then if Your Majesties will come with me, you'll be safest among my men."

The two mounted, and surrounded by Hamilcar's honor guard and Teuta's Illyrians, they crossed the stream and joined the solid, orderly mass of the Greek-Macedonian mercenaries. The officers called their orders, and the standards waved and the trumpets sounded. They turned southward and walked away from the field. Behind them, the survivors of the army followed them, some throwing away shields and stripping off armor to move more easily. Far in their rear, the other phalanx kept up its steady pressure. The Roman legions had not advanced a step from the battle line they had established at the outset of the fight.

Atop his own high tower, Norbanus watched them go. His highest officers stood with him. Although they understood everything that had happened, they were still amazed.

"General, we could still bag the lot and finish this," Cato said, his fingers working feverishly on his sword grip.

"Finish what?" said Norbanus. "Finish this battle? It is finished. Killing every man out there, including Hamilcar, would not finish the war. Another war, perhaps, but not this one, because we have sword to destroy Carthage utterly and Carthage still stands. That is why we will now invest Cartago Nova, but we will not hinder his escape."

"It seems a pity just to let him go," said the commander of one of the new legions, one of the younger Caesars.

"Long ago," Norbanus explained, "a defeated shofet could be crucified. But old Hannibal put an end to that. He abolished the republic and made the shofet a true king. If we kill Hamilcar now, as we easily could, who knows what might happen? He has no heir. The Council of One Hundred might choose a really capable man to lead them. They could raise up another Hannibal. But as I have arranged things, when we arrive before the walls of Carthage, who do you think will be in charge there?" He looked around at them, smiling. "Why, none other than Hamilcar Barca, the man whose fat backside we've just flogged bloody and sent running back to Africa!"

The men on the tower laughed uproariously, that swords-on-shields Roman laugh that struck terror into other nations. "General," Niger said, pointing to the natives who had abandoned Hamilcar and now fled westward, "shall we send out men to kill those fleeing savages?"

"No," Norbanus said. "I will treat with them later. They'll listen to me, because today they saw us accomplish the impossible. They will have the choice of being slaves or being allies of Rome. It will be the same choice the rest of the world will have, and I think they'll choose wisely. We can add their numbers to our army as we continue our march. There's nothing wrong with them as warriors. They were just badly led and they know it."

Now the officers looked at one another blankly with the same question in all their minds: Continue this already endless march?

That night, encamped outside the walls of Cartago Nova, Norbanus addressed his men, who were sorely puzzled about the events of the day-exhilarated by the victory that had cost so few of their lives, but baffled by its strange incompleteness.

"My soldiers," Norbanus began, "today you have won a great victory, one that shall shine in the annals of Roman history. Twice I have led you against the armies of Carthage. Twice I have crowned your standards with laurel!" He paused to let them cheer. "Today we could have annihilated that army whose numbers were so much greater than our own. It would have been glorious. It would have been satisfying. But it would have been foolish."

His men were silent, waiting for him to explain this enigma.

"Suppose we had wiped them out. What then? A great mass of Gauls and Iberians of all sorts would have been slaughtered. Hamilcar would have ridden away on his swiftest horse, or perhaps he would have been killed, and to what end? Carthage would have suffered little, and it is Carthage we have come so far to destroy!

"Carthage is not like Rome! Carthage does not send forth armies of its best, of its citizens. Carthage is rich in gold, and with this gold Carthage hires great masses of foreigners, and if they are wiped out, Carthage suffers little for it, because the hired soldiers are doled out only a pittance until the end of the war, when they are paid off." His men booed and jeered at the idea of such unmanly warmaking, of citizens so lacking in pride that they did not take up arms to fight their country's wars.

"So we will let this failure, this whipped dog, go back to Carthage to conduct its defense. We have nothing to fear from this man, this unworthy descendant of the great Hannibal. So, as soon as his ships have departed, to be shadowed by my own fleet, we shall resume our march. We will go west to the Pillars of Hercules and cross to Africa. And when we cross, we march on Carthage. And when we get to Carthage, we'll have done something nobody has ever done before. My veteran legions, who have been with me since the Alexandrian campaign, will have marched clear around the Middle Sea, making it Our Sea once again. How does that sound?" He gazed around at their silent, stunned faces, and he broke into a broad, orator's grin, so that his teeth reflected the torchlight to the men in the farthest ranks.

"I know. Sounds like a long, buggering walk and nothing to show for it but the bragging rights, eh? But listen to me, and I will tell you how you will be rewarded and exalted over all other citizens. Have any of you given thought to what you will do after this war is over?" More silence, but he knew he had their full attention.

"I can tell you. We will celebrate a fine triumph in Rome. You will get a vote of thanks from the Senate and the people. And that is all. For so long have we concentrated upon destroying Carthage, that we've given no thought to what happens next. I tell you, my soldiers, that when Carthage is nothing but smoke in the skies and rock dust at our feet, the noble Senate will have no further use for most of you. You, who have given so much to the state, will have nothing!" He watched their expressions of puzzlement turn to concern, then anger.

"Yes, those who were on the first part of this march did well. There was plenty of loot to be had. But what of the rest of you, and the others who will join us in destroying Carthage? Is there land for you to retire to? Not in Italy! And why not? You know very well. When Rome crossed the Alps and retook Italy, the first thing the old families did was to lay claim to their ancestral lands, which comprised most of Italy! All the finest, most fertile lands of the peninsula went right back to those families that claimed to have owned them before the Exile! None was left for the new family men, the men those old senatorial families so desperately needed to take those lands back for them. They would cast you off like an old, broken sword as soon as they had no further use for you!" Now there were grumbles and shouts of protest. Behind Norbanus, his senior officers looked at one another uneasily. This was beginning to sound ominous. Was their commander going to propose war on the Senate?

"I will not allow this to happen!" Norbanus shouted, silencing the grumblers. "The soldiers of Rome, the very backbone of our new empire, must not go unrewarded! If you stay with me, if you swear an oath to support me against all rivals, I will force the Senate's hand. At my demand, there will be rich lands for all of you in Africa. We will not allow the old families, those senators who are already unthinkably rich, to divide up the former possessions of Carthage among them. Those of you who joined us in Italy, ask the men of my old legions what those lands are like. They marched through them from Carthage to Alexandria. They are lands as fine, as fertile and well watered as any in Italy, lands where grain and grape and olive grow in abundance. The natives are docile and industrious and will make excellent slaves and work that land for you." He watched their faces as they lit up with hope, with determination, with greed. He knew now that he had them.

"You men know how these things work. You are citizens and voters. We will make the marches and do the fighting. We will fight our way to the very gates of Carthage. We will have the war all but won. And then what will happen? Why, the Senate, that glorious body of old men, will send out one of their own to take over command. They will set me aside and put some fat-bottomed old politician over you, the hardest-fighting army Rome has ever seen, so that some old family time-server can be in on the kill and claim all the loot. Are you going to let this happen?" First the men grumbled, then they shouted, "No! Never!"

Niger turned to Cato and said in a low voice: "I thought he had already extorted this command from theSenate. That he and his father were to have control of the war until its conclusion."

Cato, more politically astute than his friend, answered: "These men don't understand senatorial politics. They just know that their vote doesn't count for much. He's making them co-conspirators with him. When the time comes, they will back him against the Senate itself."

"But will we back him then?" Niger asked, deeply disturbed.

"That will depend upon where our interests lie. This is the new age. We will never betray Rome. But this is a new Rome. Will we side with the Rome of the Senate and the old families? Or with the new Rome of Titus Norbanus? We will have to see when we stand before the gates of Carthage. In the meantime, I suggest that we take direction from those men out there. Let's agree with what they decide, if we value our lives."

Lentulus Niger nodded, but he was still unsettled. Things were changing too fast. He had begun this campaign when Rome was united in purpose, in devotion to the will of the gods and in obligation to the revered ancestors. Now it was breaking up into the squabbles of rival families, of rival voting blocs, of old and new families, of-he could think of no other term-rival warlords.

The soldiers made their decision plain. Once again, they chanted: "Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor!"