John Stack: Captain of Rome

‘Follow me,’ Hamilcar said brusquely, cutting off the captain before he could utter another word.

Himilco hesitated for a second, his mind racing to comprehend Hamilcar’s attitude, before he hurried after his commander.

Hamilcar pushed open the door of the main cabin under the aft-deck and walked into the middle of the room. It was sparsely furnished, as befitting a battleship, with a map-strewn table in the centre and a cot on the starboard side. A large personal chest stood on the opposite side of the cabin. Hamilcar closed his eyes and dropped his head until his chin rested on his chest, breathing deeply in an effort to control the urge to run the captain through with the blood-stained sword at his side, to wipe the asinine smile off his face. ‘Congratulations,’ the fool had said and Hamilcar’s hand moved instinctively to the hilt of his sword. He heard Himilco’s footfalls behind him and the heavy sound of the door closing. They were alone.

With a speed that defied the eye Hamilcar spun around, drawing his sword in a single swipe as he did, the blade clearing the scabbard with inches to spare, its once smooth edge nicked and scored from the previous day’s combat. Himilco’s reaction was measured only in his face, his every defence too slow to respond to the unexpected attack as Hamilcar covered the gap between them before Himilco’s eyes could blink in surprise. The blade stopped an inch from the captain’s throat; its vibrating point the only outward sign of the immense self-control Hamilcar had exercised in staying its thrust.

‘Where is the rest of the fleet?!’ he shouted, his anger forcing the point of the blade against the skin of Himilco’s throat, drawing blood from the sallow skin.

‘My lord?’ Himilco asked, his confusion entangled with fear.

‘The fleet,’ Hamilcar roared. ‘The one hundred galleys I assembled in Panormus with orders to sail to Thermae. I saw only forty here yesterday. Where are the rest?’

‘Off the coast of Malaka in Iberia,’ Himilco stammered, his expression one of bewilderment, his hands now raised reflexively in a futile gesture.

‘By whose orders?’ Hamilcar barked, readying himself to run Himilco through in anticipation of his answer.

Again confusion broke through the captain’s expression of fear. ‘By your orders,’ he replied, a plea in his voice, ‘Councillor Hanno issued them on your behalf three days after you left Panormus.’

Now it was Hamilcar’s face that showed shock and the tension in his sword arm lessened without conscious thought, the point of the blade moving down to rest against the captain’s chest.

‘Hanno?’ he said, almost to himself.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ Himilco replied, relief rushing through him as the answer the commander had sought was finally found.

‘He told you it was my order?’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ Himilco repeated.

Hamilcar stepped back and sheathed his sword, his mind now ignoring the captain, its focus instead on the discovery of the man who had ruined his trap and rendered it incomplete.

‘Assemble a squad and set sail for Panormus immediately,’ Hamilcar said.

Himilco sensed his commander’s intentions and spoke with a renewed sense of safety, conscious that Hamilcar’s sword was no longer at his throat.

‘The councillor sailed for Carthage the day we left Panormus,’ he ventured.

‘Then we follow,’ Hamilcar replied after a second’s thought. ‘All speed to Carthage.’

Himilco saluted and left the cabin, his steps almost breaking into a run in an effort to put distance between himself and his commander’s sword.

Hamilcar watched him go, replaying the captain’s words in his mind as he did. In by-passing Panormus he would miss a prearranged meeting with one of his senior officers, Belus, a man to whom Hamilcar had already entrusted a vital component of a greater scheme and for a moment he worried that Hanno might have also obstructed those orders. He immediately dismissed his concern, confident in Belus’s loyalty and he turned his full attention to Hanno once more. The councillor’s actions were inexplicable and his subterfuge, his use of Hamilcar’s authority, was an act of treachery that any man who was ranked less than Hanno would pay for with his life. The depth of Hamilcar’s thoughts were undisturbed even as the dull thud of the drum beat began, its sound reverberating through the timbers of the Alissar as the galley got underway, her crew bringing her about on a course that would take her to the city of Carthage.

Gaius Duilius sat silently in the centre of the semi-circular forum of the Curia Hostilia, the senate house of Rome, his eyes ranging over the faces of the other senators of the house, their attention focused on the potent, almost hypnotic words of the speaker, Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus. Outside, the afternoon sun was suspended in the western sky; the shadows and shapes it created across the marble floor of the inner chamber transfixed in the still air.

Duilius looked upon friend and foe alike, on the undecided and the resolute in each group, his mind calculating odds and testing scenarios. As he watched, many of the senators nodded with a practiced look of sagacity at the words Longus was speaking and Duilius smiled inwardly, awaiting the applause he knew would follow, approbation for the keynote of the speech that he had written for Longus. The senators applauded on cue and once again Duilius used the opportunity to search beyond the outward displays of approval and agreement on the senators’ faces to try to divine their true intentions.

The elections were less than three days away and although Duilius was confident of victory, he was acutely aware of the limits to his knowledge, conscious that although his accession to the senior consulship was assured, the size of his majority in the secret ballot was yet unknown as were the true strength and numbers of his adversaries. As the victor of Mylae, Duilius was still exploiting the residual gratitude of the people of Rome and the Senate and he had used his influence to engineer Longus’s nomination to the junior consulship, his speech a carefully crafted manifesto that Duilius hoped would win favour with the undeclared majority of the house.

As Duilius’s gaze reached the far end of the forum, he swept his gaze around again, this time in search of Longus’s main rivals. They were scattered sporadically amongst the 300 strong senate, each one an ear of wheat amidst the chaff, some rising higher than the others, but all members of the ancient conservative Patrician class against whom Duilius had battled during his entire career in the Senate. That contest had reached its zenith the previous year when Duilius had been junior consul to Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, the patriarch of their pompous faction. The open rivalry had brought to the surface the supporters of each man, and by extension each philosophy, conservative verses progressive, and the house had divided along those lines with the centre occupied by a fickle majority whose votes were bought and extorted by the opposing forces. Now however, with Scipio discredited and in absentia, his supporters had dispersed and were once more hidden amongst the confusion of the malleable centre, their concealment reducing Duilius’s ability to judge the outcome of each vote.

As Longus finished his speech, many in the house stood to applaud the young senator and he smiled boldly at his supporters. Duilius stood also as an overt sign of his endorsement, moving his clapping hands from left to right as if to display this approval to the entire house. He caught the young senator’s gaze for a brief instant and Longus nodded his thanks, his fawning devotion evident to even the most obtuse observer and Duilius looked away quickly, hoping to wipe the sycophantic smile from Longus’s face, the expression unwise given that the majority of senators believed in the tradition that each consul, both junior and senior, should be their own man, each one, at least overtly, acting as a check against the power of the other.