Master of Rome. John Stack

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СКАЧАТЬ man, the harsh campaigning of the previous twelve months having stripped his frame of the softness that had accumulated over many comfortable years in the Roman Senate.

      He was thirsty, the meagre amphora of brackish water he had been given the night before long since gone, and he licked his lips to moisten them, conscious that his first words should not be spoken with a cracked voice. He watched the door shudder as a harsh metallic sound cut through the near silence; the room was flooded with harsh sunlight as the door was opened. Regulus squinted against the light but he resisted the urge to wipe the blindness from his eyes, instead staring directly ahead to the two figures facing him. They were both soldiers, but senior in rank, their bearing revealing the arrogance and confidence of command.

      The younger man entered first. He was Carthaginian, his uniform of the style that Regulus had come to loathe over the previous months. He looked the proconsul in the eye, staring at him as if in fascination, studying him, and Regulus returned the gaze, suddenly conscious of the soiled, sweat-stained tunic he was wearing. The other man stepped in. He was taller than the Carthaginian, his skin a paler complexion, and his gaze wandered the room before settling on the Roman, a half-smile of disdain creasing the edge of his mouth.

      ‘You are Regulus,’ the Carthaginian said; more a statement than a question, but the proconsul nodded in reply regardless.

      ‘I am Hamilcar Barca,’ the Carthaginian continued. ‘And this is Xanthippus.’

      Regulus held his tongue, taking the moment of silence to study the men anew. He had heard their names many times over the course of the year-long campaign – from ally and captured foe alike. Hamilcar Barca was the overall commander of the Carthaginian forces, and Xanthippus, the Spartan mercenary, hired to command their army after their overwhelming defeat at Adys over a year ago, the man who had given the enemy victory only two days before at Tunis.

      ‘What of my men?’ Regulus asked, speaking for the first time, his voice low and hard in an effort to instil authority in his question.

      ‘Sit down,’ Hamilcar replied, indicating the single chair against the far wall.

      Regulus glanced over his shoulder but remained standing. He stared into the Carthaginian’s face, keeping his expression unreadable. Hamilcar stepped forward.

      ‘Sit down,’ he repeated menacingly. ‘Or I will have my men come in and strap you to the chair.’

      Regulus hesitated a second longer and then moved slowly to the far wall, sitting down in one fluid movement as if by choice.

      Hamilcar smiled, although the gesture did not reach his eyes. ‘For now your men are in the prison beneath this fortress,’ he replied, his eyes never leaving those of the proconsul’s. ‘I have not yet decided their fate.’

      ‘They are soldiers captured in battle,’ Regulus said, leaning forward. ‘Their lives must be spared.’

      ‘They are Roman,’ Hamilcar shot back. ‘And their lives are forfeit to the whim of Carthage.’

      Regulus made to retort but again he held his tongue, sensing that to antagonize the Carthaginian further was to risk the lives of the five hundred legionaries who had been captured with him. He repeated the number in his mind. Five hundred out of an army of twelve thousand. He whispered a prayer to Mars, the god of war, as he struggled to keep the burden of the terrible loss hidden from his enemy.

      ‘You are defeated, Roman,’ Hamilcar said, as if reading Regulus’s thoughts. ‘Your army is no more and your invasion is finished.’

      ‘Is that why you have come here, Carthaginian?’ Regulus retorted. ‘To tell me this. To mock me?’

      ‘No,’ Hamilcar replied, stepping forward once more until he stood over Regulus. ‘Your light infantry escaped our grasp at Tunis and have fled to Aspis. I have come here to demand you order those forces to surrender.’

      ‘Surrender?’ Regulus scoffed. ‘The fleet at Aspis will already have evacuated them. There will be no surrender.’

      ‘You are wrong, Roman,’ Hamilcar replied, the arrogance of the proconsul stirring his anger. ‘The port is blockaded and your fleet is trapped, and if you do not order those men to surrender, I will kill every last one of them.’

      Regulus was stunned into silence, his mind racing to devise an alternative.

      ‘You have until tomorrow to decide,’ Hamilcar said, and he turned and left the room, Xanthippus following without a backward glance.

      Regulus stood up as the door was closed, the room once more plunging into semi-darkness. He breathed in deeply, trying to clear his thoughts, but the warm air caught in his throat and he coughed violently. He reached out instinctively for the amphora and picked it up, remembering immediately that it was empty, and he threw it at the wall in anger, the clay shattering into a dozen pieces.

      Over a year ago he had sailed south in triumph from Cape Ecnomus. He had met the Carthaginian army at Adys and swept them aside, had taken Tunis without a fight and had plundered the land around Carthage. The war was won, the enemy beaten on all fronts and, conscious that his consulship was nearing its end and that a successor could arrive any day from Rome to steal his victory, he had confidently sent envoys to Carthage with his terms for their surrender: abandon Sicily, disband the navy and admit total defeat.

      Even now Regulus remembered the anger he had felt when the Carthaginians refused his terms. Thereafter he had spent every waking hour preparing his army for the moment the enemy would dare to step outside the city. They had emerged, a new leader at their head, and Regulus had marched on to the plains south of Tunis, ready to deliver the fatal blow that would finally subdue the Carthaginians.

      But that victory had been snatched from him, replaced with ignominious defeat, and Regulus cursed Fortuna for the ruination of his fate. He strode to the shuttered window and squinted through a crack in the timber to gaze at the city of Tunis spread out before him. In the distance, a dark pall of smoke rose from the plain, the funeral pyre of the battlefield, and Regulus whispered a prayer once more for the lives of twelve thousand men.

      ‘We should attack now,’ Xanthippus said as he followed Hamilcar across the battlements, ‘before the enemy becomes entrenched.’

      ‘No, I cannot risk the destruction of the Roman fleet. I need those galleys intact. We will wait,’ Hamilcar replied, turning to look out from the heights of the fortress over the city of Tunis, the late evening sunlight reflecting off the taller buildings. His gaze settled on the pillar of smoke to the south, its tentacles reaching towards the city, borne on by the eternal wind, the ghibli. The fires had been burning since dawn the day before, when Hamilcar had witnessed the lighting of the pyres under the Carthaginian slain, their bodies ceremoniously committed to Mot, the god of death, while nearby the Roman carrion were put to the torch, a separate fire to which Hamilcar had added ten more bodies – those of the members of the council of Tunis who had opened the gates of the city to the Romans.

      ‘You think this Roman will order his men to surrender?’ Xanthippus asked, following the Carthaginian’s gaze.

      ‘Regulus will comply,’ Hamilcar said with certainty. ‘He knows their situation is hopeless.’

      ‘Then surely those men know it too,’ Xanthippus replied. ‘Perhaps they have already surrendered.’

      Hamilcar turned to the Spartan, a smile on his face. ‘They have not surrendered,’ he said. ‘Nor will they under force of СКАЧАТЬ