The Seven Hills

CHAPTER EIGHT

The walls of Syracuse were formidable but, Scaeva thought, they could have been a far more daunting prospect. Carthage had seized the city almost one hundred years previously in. a siege of great brutality, concluded with massacres and mass crucifixions. With the city and its harbor in their hands, they had repaired the walls but had done nothing since to improve the fortifications. Rome had been eliminated as a foe several years before the siege and there was no enemy left in the western sea to threaten the primacy of Carthage. More powerful walls might only tempt what was left of the native population to rise against their masters in a future generation.

From his command tower, erected at the northern end of the island in the Great Harbor, Scaeva surveyed the works being erected against the southern wall of the city. There the bulk of the Carthaginian garrison had been concentrated in a massive fort built directly into the wall in the approved fashion developed by Carthage's military engineers.

"It's a tough one," said Fabius, his praefect of the camp. "Walls inside walls, forts inside forts, that's their style. Crack one nut, and there's another nut inside to be cracked. It's a lot of work."

"It suits me," Scaeva said. "It means that they've lost their taste for battle. They think only of defense now. It means a great deal of labor, but we're good at that. A Roman soldier is as handy with his spade and pickaxe as he is with sword and pilum."

Not that the Romans were doing all the digging and pounding. Over against the great wall, men swarmed like ants, digging trenches, erecting shelters for the workers, pounding heavy pilings into the marshy ground on the west side of the city, making an artificial island to support the great rams and catapults that soon would pound the walls. But many of these workers were locals rounded up by the Romans in the surrounding countryside. Some were mercenaries captured when the Romans took the smaller cities and forts of the island. Men working directly beneath the walls of a besieged city took awful casualties, and the Romans preferred that somebody else do the suffering.

Titus Scaeva was the proconsul sent by the Senate to reduce the island of Sicily, and he took great satisfaction in knowing that he had done a superb job of it. Against a conservative bloc of senators who had wanted to attack Syracuse at the outset of the campaign, he had insisted on a strategy of encirclement, snapping up the smaller forts and cities, seizing all the ports and fortifying them against the inevitable Carthaginian attempt to retake the island. By taking the most productive land and grabbing all the storehouses, he had made his campaign self-sustaining, so that all his shipping could be used to bring in more men and necessary military supplies instead of using precious cargo space for food, for man and beast.

He had left Syracuse till the last. True, it had given the Carthaginian commander time to improve the defenses somewhat, and concentrate his forces within, but that would work against him in the long run. More men inside would strain his resources, and Scaeva had cut him off from any hope of resupply.

"Still," Fabius said, "I wish they'd come out and fight. We'd crush them handily then."

"That's exactly why they won't opt for open battle. They think that Hamilcar will be here soon, to relieve them. If they can just hold out long enough."

The capture of Syracuse would make him the most distinguished military man in Rome, he thought with great satisfaction. He had been a famous soldier all his life, having won the Civic Crown at the age of sixteen, at the siege of Mogantum. He had risen in rank and honor up the cursus honorem, holding each civil office and military command in approved fashion, and had had the great good fortune to be a serving consul when the auguries had shown that the gods wanted Roma Noricum to retake Rome of the Seven Hills.

Taking the nearly demilitarized Italian peninsula had been a walkover for a few veteran Roman legions, but everyone knew that the war against Carthage itself would be another matter entirely. He had pushed for the immediate seizure of Sicily, and the command had fallen to him naturally. Already he had earned the right to petition the Senate for a triumph: the ultimate vindication for a military man. His supply ships returned to Italy with endless cargoes of loot. Just take Syracuse, he reminded himself, and your name will live forever.

This meant much to him. Like all Romans, he was ambitious for personal fame and prestige, but in his case he wanted glory for his family as well. The Scaevae were among the new families: clans of German and Gallic descent whose ancestors had helped the Roman refugees to found Roma Noricum. There was great rivalry between the old families and the new. With such a campaign to his credit, capped with the capture of Syracuse and a grand triumph in Rome of the Seven Hills, no one could claim that the new families were less patriotic, less Roman, than the old.

"Do you think they can?" Fabius asked. "Hold out long enough for Hamilcar to get here, I mean?"

"Not a chance," Scaeva said. "Those boys we sent to spy out Carthage did their job well. We know more about the capabilities of his military than Hamilcar does himself. He's under the impression that he's Hannibal come again, but we know better." Both men chuckled, but Scaeva knew well the worry that gnawed at his subordinate: Hamilcar or his designated commander would appear by sea, with an immense navy. The Roman navy was new and untried, all but untrained. The Carthaginian navy was the most powerful in the world. Scaeva had to take Syracuse before the navy could appear.

Despite their distance from the fighting, both men wore full military gear, down to belted sidearms. This was Roman military regulation, just like fortifying every camp and posting sentries even in peacetime, with no enemy within hundreds of miles. Regulations were to be obeyed, even by generals. Sunlight glittered on their polished bronze, which was collecting dust, raised by all the marching, pounding and digging. The two cut the dust in their throats by sipping at cups of posca: the traditional soldier's drink of vinegar diluted with water.

The soldiers working beneath the walls of Syracuse did not glitter. They toiled in full armor, again according to regulation, but their mail was dusty and dingy from the long campaign, greased against the salt sea air. Most of them wore the new iron helmets turned out by the Gallic armorers for the unprecedented expansion of legions demanded by the war of reconquest. These helmets.with their deep, flaring neckguards and broad cheekplates, completely unadorned, still looked strange and ugly to Roman eyes, but they had proved their battle-fitness repeatedly.

The battlements of Syracuse were lined with expert slingers from the Balearic Islands; They hurled lead sling-bullets the size of a boy's fist, with enough power to dent a bronze helmet deeply, often fracturing the skull beneath. The bullets merely glanced from the harder iron. Men from the older legions frequently tried to trade their beautiful old bronze helmets for the new ones, but they found few takers.

The trumpets sounded and the noise lessened for a few

minutes as one legion retired to the camp on the island and

another went out to take its place. By working each legion

four hours at a time, the Romans were able to keep the work

going day and night. The impressed labor worked in gangs

for twelve hours at a stretch. Attrition among them was

high, but plenty of prisoners arrived every day to replace the

fallen. -

"Here comes old Cyclops," Fabius said.

"He can observe, it's his duty," Scaeva said. "But don't let him try to give orders. You know he'll try. The old bugger's been giving orders all his life."

Moments later they were joined by Publius Cornelius Scipio, only living grandson of the hero of Cannae and second oldest man in the Senate. Wearing some forty-five pounds of old-fashioned armor, he climbed the steps of the command tower with the springy step of a man one-third his years. A broad eyepatch covered one side of his face.

"Proconsul," he said, nodding to Scaeva. "Praefect." Another nod, toward Fabius. "Any progress?" The old man wasted few words. He had been sent out by the Senate as special observer, with no command authority but with the right to see every aspect of operations and report in regular dispatches. He had already made forays inland to see the progress of Roman forces on the island and had been stunned by the beauty of the landscape and the richness of its farm and pasture land. The Romans were soldiers from birth, but they were agriculturalists to their bones and loved fine farmland above all else. They fought to protect their farms and they conquered to gain more land. It was that simple.

"The sappers are undermining the base of the big tower over there," Scaeva said, gesturing with his cup. "They'll have it down in a few days."

Cyclops squinted with his remaining eye at the activity opposite. "What about the rams? Are they doing any damage?"

"They're a feint," Scaeva said, "to distract the enemy from the mines. By afternoon we'll have the catapults in action; then there'll be a little relief from those damned slingers and archers. They've been the real danger in this fight, not the Carthaginians."

Cyclops nodded. "That being the case," he said, "the men will probably massacre them when the city is taken." He chose his next words carefully so that he was making a suggestion, not giving an order. "You might consider passing the word to spare them, much as it might grieve the men to let them live. We'll need every missile soldier we can get when we assault Carthage."

"Already done," Scaeva told him. "I've promised ten silver denarii a head for every archer or slinger brought in alive."

"Very well," Cyclops said, far from satisfied and showing it.

Scaeva knew what rankled the old man: Roman soldiers should obey orders. They should not be bribed. But Cyclops was an old-fashioned man, filled with antique, old family tradition. Scaeva knew that the world had changed irrevocably when the Romans crossed south of the Alps. It was a new world, a new age and a new army. The disciplines of the old legions campaigning in the savage, austere North would not prevail in the unbelievably rich and luxurious kingdoms surrounding what the Romans had gone back to calling Our Sea.

"Senator," Fabius said, wanting to change the subject and ease the tension, "has a timetable yet been set for the assault against the African mainland?"

Cyclops shook his head. "First Sicily must be secured. The new navy must be tested. We've moved so fast, accomplished so much already. There are many who want to slow down and consolidate."

"Fools!" Scaeva spat. "We've accomplished so much precisely because we've moved so fast. Because the gods have told us that now is our time!"

"You'll hear no argument from me," Cyclops assured him. "We must seize the favor of the gods when it is offered. The gods can always change their minds. But I am not a majority. Some want the new legions blooded gradually, not thrown into immense battles before they've even seen a skirmish. Others want to wait until young Norbanus returns with his four legions."

"They'll wait a long time, then," Scaeva said. "Where, is he now, or does anyone know?"

"In Judea at last report, mixed up in a civil war between brothers."

"Judea," Scaeva mused. It was a name from old books: an obscure place, but much fought over. At least Norbanus was making progress, not least because he had cut himself loose from the authority of the Senate. Scaeva could sympathize. Senatorial meddling was the curse of commanders in the field. If the boy finished his epic march with his legions intact, he would win unprecedented glory, perhaps eclipsing that of Titus Scaeva. He pushed the thought aside as unworthy. Opportunities for winning glory would be boundless in the coming years.

"Any idea who will get the command in the African campaign?" Fabius asked.

"That depends upon who pleases the Senate and the Assemblies in the months preceding," Cyclops said.

A great shout and a roaring of masonry distracted them. A section of the wall opposite was toppling, raising a huge cloud of dust as men scrambled to get away, running for their lives, soldiers and laborers alike.

"Has it fallen?" Cyclops cried eagerly. "Are the men ready for an assault?"

Scaeva shook his head, his face worried. "This is too soon. This was not supposed to happen yet."

"There may have been a weak spot," Fabius said hopefully. "We'd better signal an assembly to take advantage instantly if there's a breach."

But already the dust was clearing and Scaeva cursed loudly. A ragged section of cut-stone facing had broken away from the wall, leaving the concrete-rubble core exposed but solid. The wall was very little weakened.

"Mars curse them!" Scaeva cried. "Now they know where the danger lies and they'll countermine, if they haven't begun already! I'll have some heads for this."

Cyclops said nothing, but he was not greatly surprised. The Romans had read all the old military books and knew the theory, but reducing large, stone fortifications was | something with which they had no practical experience. The Gauls and Germans they had been fighting for generations built earthwork and timber forts at best.

"Get the awnings up!" Scaeva called to the slaves attending the command tower. Then, to the others: "It looks like we have a long day ahead of us up here."

Beneath the battlements of Syracuse, the soldiers were already driving the work gangs back before them. Work had already resumed, repairing the shelters and now clearing away the rubble of fallen stone, all under the hot sun and the merciless pelting of missiles from above.

From her litter atop the gate of Melkarth, Princess Zarabel, sister of Hamilcar, shofet of Carthage, watched as her brother inspected his army on the plain beyond the city. Since his return from the Egyptian debacle, Hamilcar had fretted and busied himself with his preparations for the coming war to take Sicily and Italy back from the upstart Romans.

It was splendid; there was no denying it. The tents of the host stretched out of sight to the east, and this was only a part of the force. The full army was too vast to encamp by one city, even so great a city as Carthage. The rest were quartered upon the subject cities.

Hamilcar, mounted on a beautiful horse, rode along the lines of" a formation of Lacedaemonian spearmen: still soldiers of high repute though Sparta had ceased to be a power of military importance generations previously. Their antiquated linen cuirasses glittered with scales of bronze, their round shields were bright with new paint, their long spears held in perfect alignment as the officers, identifiable by their crests of white horsehair, saluted the shofet.

As always, the armies of Carthage were a polyglot assemblage of conscripts levied on the subject cities and mercenaries hired from every corner of the world surrounding the great Central Sea. Greeks from both Greece proper and the cities of Magna Graecia and Asia Minor formed a large part of the force. The Greek cities squabbled endlessly with one another, and between wars their soldiers hired themselves out to whoever was paying. Besides the hard core of Spartans, Hamilcar had Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans and soldiers from the Asian towns of Ionia. There were men from the Greek islands of Lesbos, Delos, Crete, Rhodes and Corcyra.

There were great pike formations from Epirus on the Ionian Sea, home of the oracle of Dodona. Their repute as professional soldiers was matchless. From the Adriatic coast came Illyrians: tough, barbarous men with tattooed bodies. Their ruler was a queen named Teuta, and this formidable woman had accompanied her soldiers, determined to extort favorable concessions from Hamilcar in return for their services. She was in a position to bargain because her land, usually of little strategic significance, lay across a narrow arm of the sea from Italy.

The bulk of Hamilcar's forces here consisted of the army he had raised to invade Egypt and had brought back with him. Further forces were being raised far from Carthage. In Spain, Hamilcar's subordinate commanders were rounding up an army from the warlike tribes of the interior and from the Greek colonies of the coast. This army would never come to Africa. Instead, it would assemble at New Carthage on the southern coast, march eastward along Hannibal's old route past the Pyrenees and into southern Gaul, picking up allies as it progressed, and enter northern Italy. This army would distract the Romans from the main thrust into Sicily and southern Italy, stripping the Romans of some of those surprisingly numerous legions that seemed to be springing up like weeds after a rainstorm.

This was the special genius of Carthage: to raise and lead armies so diverse in nation, language and custom that at any other time they would happily have massacred each other. They accomplished this by educating the most capable of the noble youth of Carthage in schools that turned out professional officers of terrible force and efficiency. Hannibal had kept such an army intact through years of campaigning, with never a murmur of mutiny, no matter how awful the hardships. His men had been ferocious on the battlefield, meek as lambs in camp.

Of course, not every Carthaginian general was a Hannibal. After the first war with Rome, the wealthy men of the city, the ruling caste at that time, had balked at paying the huge mercenary army camped immediately without the walls of Carthage. This foolishness had resulted in a rebellion and brought about a war so terrible that the rest of the world, hardened by many merciless wars, had looked on, appalled. Even Rome had offered aid.

This had been the last time that the gods of Carthage had demanded a Tophet: the supreme sacrifice to Baal-Hammon and the myriad of other deities who had made Carthage mistress of the world. In the ordinary, everyday sacrifices, men and women of the subject peoples supplied the victims. But, when a Tophet was required, Carthaginians were sacrificed. In extreme cases, the children of the greatest families, from newborns to boys and girls of ten years, were thrown into the fires that raged in the bellies of the merciless bronze idols.

The sudden reappearance of the Romans, the abortive campaign against Egypt, were clear signs of the displeasure of the gods, so said the priests. It had been too long since a great Topbet had been held: True, there had been a lesser such sacrifice held during a time of plague in the reign of Hamilcar's father. It had been effective and the pestilence had abated, but the priests were determined that the gods hungered for the flesh of the noble children of Carthage.

So far, Hamilcar had resisted their entreaties. He was a Hellenizing monarch and did not wish his nation to appear barbarous in the eyes of the civilized world. He also wanted to suppress the power of the priests over the minds of the people. The shofet should rule; the priests should tend to the rituals of the gods and stay out of the affairs of state.

All of these things passed through Zarabel's mind as she watched the martial display. Her brother was a competent shofet, in her estimation, but his attempts to be a great war leader like their ancestor Hannibal the Great were ludicrous. He had not been trained in the officer schools, but raised in the palace. Like so many men born to rule, he thought he was a great natural military genius and that, confronted with an enemy in the field, he would know with unerring instinct exactly what to do.

During their sojourn in Carthage, she had come to know these Romans far more intimately than her brother, who was ever surrounded by a buffer of his courtiers. She knew that they laughed at such amateurism. Not only did they insist upon absolute professionalism among military men, but also they taught that even great generals could be the victims of mere bad luck, and they planned for such eventualities. It was how they had survived defeat after devastating defeat by Hannibal, with their nation intact, though just barely. They did not intend to be defeated, but one defeat, or even several, did not demoralize them. They just analyzed what had gone wrong and took steps not to let the same thing happen again.

"When will they depart for Sicily?" she said, annoyed.

"My brother could exhaust his whole army with his endless

inspections."

"The winds have not been favorable, Princess," said Echaz, eunuch priest of Tanit.

"Our ships have oars. They shouldn't need to worry about winds."

"Against winds that blow untimely from the north, even the oared galleys of Carthage cannot prevail," he said. "It is further proof of the displeasure of the gods. We have neglected our duties toward the baalim for too long."

She nodded, absently running a gilded fingernail along the line of blue tears tattooed from the corner of her eye down one cheek, the ritual tears shed for Adonis. She was high priestess of Tanit and the goddess's champion in the eternal rivalry between Tanit and Baal-Hammon. She led the priestly party in its own rivalry with the secular Hellenizing court, upholding the ancient customs and religion of Carthage against the incursions of foreign philosophy.

"To the harbor!" she said to the litter slaves. Then, to Echaz: "I want to look at this inert fleet of ours."

The slaves raised the great litter to their brawny shoulders and set out at a brisk trot, their gait skillfully broken to provide a smooth ride. The litter was large enough for the princess, a dozen of her serving women and a few priests. Runners armed with staves preceded the litter, clearing away any who stood in its path. Their efforts were scarcely necessary: The moment the unique vehicle came into view, all citizens and slaves immediately went down on their faces. Only the sentries at their guard posts remained standing.

The walls of Carthage were broad enough to race chariots along the top, and tunneled through with barracks, storehouses for supplies, magazines for arms and stables for horses, oxen and elephants. It overlooked the Great Harbor from an immense height, and the circular Naval Harbor, with its artificial admiralty island, lay within the wall's protection.

Now the water and the ship sheds of the Naval Harbor were jammed with the triremes assembled for the war, and the commercial harbor was almost full with the spillover. There were warships and transports of all kinds. Some ships had been lost at Alexandria, victims of the outlandish defensive works envisioned by the School of Archimedes, and carried out under the direction of the Roman, Marcus Scipio. But these losses had been trifling. Carthage could build more ships in a day than had been lost in the Egyptian war.

But the contrary winds kept them penned here. Zarabel wrinkled her shapely nose at the stench of their refuse, dumped into the water to linger there until winds from the south should blow once again, allowing the ships to leave and the waters to refresh themselves in the accustomed fashion.

"What would happen," she wondered, "if a fire should break out on one of those ships? They are packed together like wooden tenements of the poor. A fire could sweep them all and spread to the Naval Harbor. The sea power of Carthage could be more than halved in a single hour."

"One supposes," Echaz piped dryly, "that our shofet has made all necessary sacrifices to secure us from such a disaster."

"Even so," she murmured. "Yet, as you have observed, the gods are no longer pleased with our sacrifices."

The priest lowered his gaze. "That is very true, Princess."

"Let us implore Tanit," she said, "that no such evil befell us."

"I shall pray and sacrifice daily, Princess."

"But," she amended, "the decision lies with the goddess. Should she desire to humble Baal-Hammon by striking a blow at his overweening devotee, the shofet, we can only acquiesce to her will."

"That is also true, Princess," said the priest.

The next evening, after a seasonal banquet in honor of Patechus, the god of terror and guardian of naval vessels, Zarabel spoke to her brother more sharply than was her usual custom.

"Brother," she said, speaking down a table lined with courtiers, now replete with food and wine, "you know that the people call for a Topbet to win back the will of our gods." Instantly the convivial hubbub quieted.

"I have heard no such thing from the people," Hamicar said. "Only from certain priests, who would do well to hold their tongues if they wish to keep them." He wondered what his sister was up to. She had been meek for some time, itself a suspicious circumstance.

"The baalim are angry with us," she asserted.

"How so? I was forced to retire from Alexandria, but we suffered no military disaster in Egypt. These Romans have come to plague us with their outrageous aggression and their lying alliances, but that is because our ancestor Hannibal the Great neglected to destroy them when he had the opportunity. I will finish the task and will not be moved to clemency, as he was." The courtiers made sounds of agreement and tapped the table with their flywhisks in applause.

"Yet your great host stays here eating up the substance of Carthage because you cannot get a favorable wind. This alone is proof of the gods' displeasure."

"Winds favorable or unfavorable are a matter of luck at any time. They obey laws of nature that we do not understand and will blow northward when it is time for them to blow that way."

"That is Greek philosophy, not the wisdom of Carthage," she answered with the hint of a sneer in her voice.

His face darkened. "Then let us be instructed by another Greek example, one from a time before the Greeks took up philosophy. The Greek king Agamemnon assembled a great fleet, very much like mine, to sail against Troy, which had insulted him much as these Romans have insulted me. But the winds were unfavorable. To secure a good wind for Troy, the gods demanded the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia. The sacrifice was duly performed and Agamemnon got his wind, but the sacrifice caused him much trouble later."

In the ensuing silence he took a sip from his jeweled cup. "Nevertheless, I might be persuaded to risk his sad fate for the good of Carthage. But, as you know, sister, I have no daughter. In fact, I have only one close kinswoman." He glared at her until she lowered her eyes.

Later, when the guests were gone and Zarabel had retired to her quarters, far from his, Hamilcar stood on his great terrace and brooded upon the evening's disturbing turn. He was tall, handsome, with the pale complexion and black hair shared by all highborn Carthaginians. His hair and beard were dressed in the Greek fashion, and his robes were Greek in design, although embroidered with gold in Carthaginian figures and befitting his lofty rank.

He wondered what his sister's outspokenness portended. She had obviously wanted to be heard by others. Why else wait until a banquet? It had not escaped his notice that she had paid more than proper attention to the Roman delegation when they visited Carthage. He was all but sure that she had been more than intimate with the one named Norbanus. Norbanus and Scipio had been the ranking men of the mission. His sister had identified Norbanus as the weaker and more corruptible of the two and had set out to exploit him. Hamilcar could only approve of her strategy, if not of her motives. Might his sister be contemplating treachery, even treason? If so, he would not be totally displeased.

For some time after returning to Carthage he had kept an eye on his sister's waistline. If she was with child by a foreigner, he could put her aside without incurring censure. But she was too clever for that and had a vast knowledge of medicines and every sort of abortifacient. Much as she provoked him, her position as royal princess, direct descendant of Hannibal and high priestess of Tanit, made her invulnerable, lacking proof of the most egregious crime.

His gaze was drawn north, past the twin lighthouses that flanked the harbor entrance. What were the Romans doing up there, to the north? The Romans he had taken to Egypt had shown themselves to be terribly effective in battle, but they were cut off from Italy, last reported somewhere in Judea. Surely, he thought, they would all die or desert long before they could reach Italy to reinforce the usurping Romans there.

But the rich and strategic island of Sicily, long a Carthaginian possession, now swarmed with Romans, more of them than he had dreamed existed. Incredibly, the sheer number of legions seemed to surpass those faced by Hannibal. Where had they all come from? Could the ragtag, beaten nation that chose exile north of the Alps have bred so many sons in a mere four or five generations? It did not seem possible, unless they had the reproductive capacity of hares.

In truth, he was not entirely displeased with his new challenge. Once, he had thought that conquering Egypt would win him undying fame. Now he knew that it would have made him merely one conqueror among many. But he would beat the Romans, annihilating them utterly, as his ancestor Hannibal had failed to do. Then he would march on and finish Egypt and, with his empire restored and the wealth of Egypt added to that of Carthage, the world was his. He would go on to swallow up the Seleucid kingdom and drive the Parthians back to their steppes, crush Macedonia and Greece, and then the sea would be his own personal lake. He would be master of the world, greater than Hannibal, greater than Alexander.

He was distracted from these pleasant musings by a glimmer far out in the darkness of the harbor. It was brighter than the oil lamps used to illuminate ships at night. The reflection of one of the beacons on polished metal? It seemed to flare brighter with each gust of wind from the north.

"Shofet?" said a feminine voice. He turned to see one of his banquet guests, Queen Teuta of Illyria.

"Please use my name," he said, smiling. "Fellow monarchs need not observe the formalities while sharing a roof. Could you not sleep? Is there anything you require? Please regard me as your personal servant." He could be as gracious and urbane as any Athenian with his peers, even this rather primitive queen of a barbarous land.

She smiled, a strange sight because it made her facial tattoos writhe. She wore a proper gown of Greek design, but it left head and neck, arms, shoulders and the upper surface of her breasts exposed. Every square inch of visible flesh was covered with exquisitely rendered designs of twisting vegetation and bizarre, elongated animals in vivid colors.

"I lack for nothing, Hamilcar. In fact, I never knew the meaning of abundance until this visit. No, the night is fair and I am not tired and I thought that this might be an opportunity for us to speak candidly." Her accent was heavy, but her Greek was excellent. There were a number of prosperous Greek colonies on the coast of her nation, and where there were Greek cities, there were Greek teachers of language and rhetoric. It annoyed Hamilcar that the eternal rival of Carthage had such a monopoly on culture, but it was certainly convenient that all educated people had a common language.

"Then this is my good fortune. Will you sit?" He gestured toward the fine table and chairs in the center of the terrace, pure Carthaginian in their drapings of precious fabrics and exotic animal skins.

"Thank you, but I come of a people more at home in tents than in palaces. We are always on horseback or afoot, surveying our herds. I think and converse better while walking."

"Excellent. I, too, find myself pacing when I have anything serious to ponder." Idly, he wondered what this chieftainess might have on her mind. He knew little about her people save that they were largely nomads, that some had founded settlements but only in recent generations, and that they seemed to be a mixture of Thracian, Scythian and perhaps Gallic in blood heritage. The woman herself was tall, strongly built and had abundant hair as white-blond as he had ever seen. Her face was handsome, with broad cheekbones, and her brilliant blue eyes had a distinctive tilt that hinted of Eastern ancestry. As for her complexion, he had no idea.

She walked to the parapet and ran a palm along its polished marble. "I was struck by your exchange with the Princess Zarabel late in the banquet."

"My sister lacks tact and regards the goddess she serves as the rival of Baal-Hammon. You needn't take her words seriously."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I know all about troublesome siblings, never fear. I had to put aside a few brothers and sisters to win my throne."

"You have a refreshing directness of speech," he observed.

" 'Directness' meaning I am blunt. I agree. My tutors taught me the Greek tongue. I never learned the subtleties of innuendo and indirection. Such things are alien to the customs of my people."

"All the better."

"No, what intrigued me was one of your own replies. You said that you have no close kinswomen. Have you no sons, either?"

"Nor wife," he said, striving for a Spartan terseness to match her own.

She nodded. "As I thought. Yet the survival of the Barca family must be assured, must it not? The seed of Hannibal must not be allowed to die out."

"As you can see, I am not elderly yet. There is plenty of time."

She stepped closer and held his eyes with hers. "Let me be even more blunt. If you marry a Carthaginian noblewoman, she must be of one of the other great families. With a consort and in time an heir of their own blood, that family will feel itself greater than the Barcas. Some of the great houses probably do already, is this not so?"

He nodded. "Every one of them. You studied us before making this visit, did you not?"

"I would have been a fool not to. Do I seem like a fool to you?"

"Not at all," he said, enjoying this immensely. "In fact, I wondered why a reigning queen wished to accompany what amounts to a band of mercenaries. I suspect that you have a proposal for me."

"Precisely. I have no husband and am in much the same position as you. Chieftains of other clans and their sons swarm around me, pressing their suits. If I marry one of them, he will regard himself as my master as soon as he has bred a son on me. If that happens, I will have to kill him and then there will be trouble. I am young and can breed many sons. You need a royal wife. In all the lands surrounding the sea there are only two royal women suitable for you. One is Selene of Egypt. I am the other. A match with Selene is unlikely."

"There would be obstacles to such a match," he said, stalling for time to think. "While the Barcas have never adopted the obscene Egyptian practice of brother-sister marriage, wives have always come from Carthaginian families, dating from our emigration from Phoenicia."

"And no queen of Illyria has ever wed outside the ancient clans of our people. What care the likes of you and I for such rules? They are the customs of a world as dead as that of Agamemnon and Hector. That mold was broken for good when Alexander made the world his footstool and united West with East when he wed his best men with princesses of the old Persian Empire."

It had been the right thing to say. It put him on a level with the greatest. It told him he was above the strictures of ancient custom and could dictate his own rules to the world. It was what he had suspected all his life, and it was good to hear it affirmed by a peer. Then she stared past him and pointed. "What is that?"

He turned and saw that the flickering glimmer he had noticed just before her arrival was now a discernible fire. Then a tongue of red flame shot skyward, twisting in the wind until it was a writhing, spiral pillar. All around the harbor, alarm gongs began to thunder.

Teuta stepped to the parapet and swept the jammed expanse with her gaze. "How bad is this?"

"Our firefighters are very expert. Ship fires are a common occurrence." But he was deeply alarmed.

"It is at the northern end of the harbor and the wind is strong from that direction. Have your men ever been faced with this? Has the water ever been so packed with kindling-wood?"

"Never in living memory," he told her. "I'd better go and take personal charge."

"I'll come with you," she said.

"I appreciate it, but you cannot help."

"I do not intend to. I just want to view the spectacle at close hand." She said it with a hint of pleasurable anticipation. This one will bear watching, he thought as he shouted to his servants, demanding that swift horses be brought.

With a roar, a ship erupted like a volcano. Great amphorae flew through the air, spewing liquid fire over neighboring vessels. An oil ship, he thought. Already this was out of control.

Minutes later they were mounted and pelting down the wide, paved street that ran from the palace to the harbor. Before them rode guardsmen who cleared the street ahead, swinging huge whips to drive pedestrians from their path. The hour was late and at first there were few citizens abroad, but as they neared the harbor the crowd grew dense. The clamor of the gongs awakened sleepers and they rushed outside to see what was happening. Word of a fire in the harbor sent them down toward the water to view the flames.

Gawkers began to go down beneath the hooves of the guardsmen's mounts, and whips bit into flesh. The uproar from the harbor was so loud that few heard the royal party's approach until it was too late to get out of the way. The smell of smoke and blood and the general uproar made even the trained warhorses nervous, and the guardsmen resorted to using the weighted butts of their whips to drive them forward.

Hamilcar fretted impatiently. Already, the flames towered over the rooftops ahead. He looked to his side and saw Teuta, her horse under perfect control, her face ablaze. "I had not anticipated such excitement until we should see battle!" she told him. "This is proving a most entertaining journey!" Her Greek gown was not designed for riding and it bunched almost at her hips, baring her legs immodestly, but considering the density of her intricate tattoos, she looked fully clothed.

At last they burst from the streets onto the great plaza that separated the warehouses of the port from the water and the long, stone wharfs that ran far out into the harbor. The harbormaster stood atop a twenty-foot platform, shouting orders through a huge funnel of thin silver, one of the insignia of his office. Under his direction, firefighters ran along the wharfs carrying buckets of water and sand, some holding the axes and poles and long rakes used in their demanding profession. Hamilcar noted with approval their excellent discipline and courage. The men wore heavy fire cloaks of leather or linen and wide-brimmed helmets of painted rawhide.

Hamilcar and Teuta dismounted at the base of the platform and dashed up its steps. "How far has it spread?" Hamilcar shouted.

"The northeast quadrant is ablaze," the harbormaster said. He was a white-bearded man of many years' experience. He did not bow to his shofet or even look in his direction. At this moment his authority in the harbor was absolute. It was a law enacted before the days of Hannibal. Hamilcar stood behind him and to one side and motioned for Teuta to stay near him.

"Can the balance of the shipping be saved?" Hamilcar asked.

"We'll be lucky to save the harbor itself. If we do, you may thank your ancestors who decreed that only stone be used for construction here. We have enough firefighters to handle a fire perhaps one-tenth this size. Even that would be a large fire. This is unimaginable."

"How did it start?" Hamilcar asked grimly.

"It may have been an overturned lamp, or a cooking fire that burned after dark in violation of the law." Now he turned and looked at Hamilcar. "But if that is the case, it happened at the very worst time, and in the very worst spot, that it could have: among ships laden with oil and pitch, at the very spot where the wind would sweep the flames over the harbor."

"Then it was deliberate?"

"Either that or the gods are angry with Carthage. If it was set by an enemy, we will know in the morning. I know what to look for." Then a new battalion of firefighters arrived, their capes dripping from recent soaking, and the harbormaster turned away to shout his orders at them.

Through the night they watched as the immense flames roared across the water. A very few skippers managed to get their vessels out of the harbor before the fire cut off escape in that direction. Flames leapt from ship to ship, and in time the heat grew so intense that vessels burst into flame before they were actually touched by fire. At that point, all effort at control had to be given up. The plaza itself had to be abandoned and the shofet and the harbormaster went atop the great wall, where the population had assembled to gape at the unprecedented sight. The surviving firefighters were sent to the naval harbor to prevent the fire from spreading there. Above all, the military fleet had to be preserved.

Toward morning, the flames became a single column of fire, sucking into the center of the harbor whatever remained to burn. The fire drew a great gust of wind down the streets of Carthage, pulling leaves from the trees, scraps of papyrus, wicker furniture, domestic fowl, even a few scrawny beggars into the great central inferno. After that, the fire itself died swiftly.

The sun rose to reveal a harbor that was nothing more than an expanse of floating charcoal and ash. Charred corpses and the pale undersides of innumerable boiled fish provided variety, and for hours the stones of the wharfs were too hot to tread. In the late afternoon Hamilcar accompanied the harbormaster to the northeastern end of the harbor along the great seawall that separated the sheltered harbor from the open sea. The heat still rising from the stones was intense but bearable. The stench of burned wood, oil, pitch and bodies was bad, but no worse that the usual sacrifices. Teuta came with them, and both monarchs held sachets of perfume and spices beneath their nostrils.

"It began here," the harbormaster said. A row of bodies lay stretched upon the wharf. There were twelve of them looking half-cooked, their arms and legs drawn up and inward in the usual fashion of burn victims. "They were the crew of an oil ship named Dagon-Gives-Abundance, from Tyre. It was anchored between other oil ships and pitch and bitumen carriers, here next to the seawall. The wind blew inland, so these bodies were spared the intense heat that would otherwise have reduced them to ashes.

"They did not leave the ship when they lost control of the fire," Teuta noted. "That is what sane men would ordinarily have done."

"Quite true, Your Majesty," the harbormaster said. "These men could not go overboard because they were already dead when the fire started. If you will come closer you will see how they died."

Hamilcar and Teuta bent low and examined the charred bodies without revulsion. Both of them were accustomed to far worse. Cruelty was a commonplace, and both war and religion demanded it.

"As you can see," said the harbormaster, lecturing like a schoolmaster, "the necks of some are cut deeply. Others have large wounds in the chest, probably made by sword or spear. These men were asleep on the deck. The throats of sleeping men were cut easily. Some awoke, and they were stabbed or speared. Three or four skilled men could have accomplished this efficiently, making very little noise. If any on other ships heard," he shrugged, "it would have meant nothing to them. Drunken brawls among sailors are frequent."

Hamilcar and Teuta straightened. "What do you think, Shofet?" she asked. "Was it the Egyptians or the Romans? Or have you other enemies who would profit by this?"

Hamilcar thought for a while. This woman had impressed him greatly, and she clearly was able to follow his thoughts. Whether or not she was a suitable bride for him, she was a valuable ally and possibly a sagacious counselor. He could not be seen taking advice from a woman, not even an allied queen, but he was already thinking himself above these old customs.

"Please come aside with me, my lady," he said. They strolled to the sea side of the wall, where it was cooler and the salt-smelling breeze carried the offensive smells away from them. She waited for him to speak first.

"I am at war with Egypt and with Rome," he began, "but any king with imperial ambitions has an abundance of enemies, some of them posing as allies or as neutrals."

"That is very true," she said.

"Such a king also has enemies within his own land, within his own family and household."

"These are my own thoughts."

"The might of Carthage is based upon sea power. Our fleets, both merchant and naval, dominate the waters from the Gates of Melkarth to the Euxine Sea. Attack my fleet, and you attack my greatest power. Egypt, which is also a maritime power, has much to gain by such an act and understands this. Rome, a landlocked power until recently, likewise has a great interest in forcing me to confront them on land, where they fancy themselves unbeatable."

"So much for your open foes."

"Closer to home, the subject cities are always a threat: Utica, Sicca and others, even the colonies such as New Carthage in Spain are jealous and want more independence, more profit for themselves."

"And within Carthage itself?"

He paused, then: "Since the day of my ancestor Hannibal the Great, there has been a constant struggle for power between the shofet and the priesthoods. Every king must have a divine sponsor and mine is Baal-Hammon. His priests have grown wealthy and influential and have no stake in weakening my position. Tanit has lost power since Hannibal's day. Her priests are a wretched, weakly lot. They are mostly eunuchs who cling to power by cultivating the women of the royal household."

"Do they stand to gain by burning your support fleet?"

"Not directly. They cannot believe that giving victory to Rome or to Egypt will better their lot. But it will be much to their advantage to put it about that Baal-Hammon has abandoned me. They will cry out again that the gods are angry with me for adopting foreign ways. They will demand a Tophet. Zarabel will be their cat's-paw."

Her advice was simple and direct. "Kill her. Then kill the priests and suppress the cult of Tanit."

He smiled upon her. "If only it were that simple. In times of our accustomed peace and prosperity, I could take such extreme measures. But now I must have the people with me, both the commons and the wealthy. A quick war with fat, indolent Egypt was one thing. A swift victory against Selene would have made my position unassailable. But a double war that includes her new Roman allies is very different. I must take back Sicily and Italy. It will be a long, costly war, and the wealthy hate to sacrifice, while the commons adore the gods above all things. In the end, I will give Carthage the world. But for a while, they must all suffer, and the priests will take advantage of that."

She nodded. "I understand. So you think the priests of Tanit are the most likely culprits?"

"I believe so. I further believe that Zarabel put them up to it. She is far more intelligent than any of them, and she has studied the politics of world power deeply, while they understand it only as fought within the temples, the city and the court."

"But you will not take immediate action against them?"

"I cannot. That would be a mistake. I must plan against them as carefully as they have plotted against me. In the meantime, the people must be given someone to blame, and I must not allow them to think that the gods of Carthage have forsaken me."

She inclined her head toward him. "You are sagacious as well as bold. Please allow me to help in any way you think proper."

He walked back across the seawall and spoke to the harbormaster: "I find no fault with your conduct during this emergency. It was enemy action, and so I shall report it to the Assembly. The firefighters and others who died will receive all the proper rites." He gestured toward the line of bodies. "You and your men may speak freely of what you have seen here. It was a treacherous act perpetrated by Rome, seeking to weaken the sea power of Carthage."

The harbormaster bowed. "My shofet is gracious." He spoke as calmly as if the specter of the cross had never intruded upon his thoughts. "I shall see to the cleaning and repair of the harbor."

"See to it. Now go."

For a while Hamilcar and Teuta stood alone upon the seawall, save for the corpses and the guardsmen, who stood a little way off.

"What will you do when you move against your sister and the priests?" Teuta asked him.

He pondered this a while. "You come from a far place and have traveled widely. Do you know of a punishment even worse than crucifixion?"