John Stack: Captain of Rome

Septimus gritted his teeth as he ran, almost stumbling as he favoured his right leg. All around him the sound of officer’s commands filled the air, their voices raised above the sound of five thousand men running towards the outer buildings of Thermae; their orders tightly controlling the panic that lingered just under the surface of every Roman infantryman at the thought of being caught in the open against enemy cavalry.

Septimus’s vision was filled with the throng of men in front of him but his senses also picked up the advance of the Carthaginians behind; the approaching thunder that infused the very air and his mind calculated their proximity from the sound. Less than two hundred yards. They weren’t going to make it and Septimus heard the legate issue a desperate order to try and check the Carthaginian charge.

‘Hastati! Prepare to form ranks!’

Septimus ran on through the assembling ranks of the junior soldiers, each one preparing to deploy their pila javelins over the heads of the retreating legionaries, the decision to deploy them a desperate gamble to give the rest of the legion time to take cover. The troops were crowded together in the gaps between the buildings and on the main road into the town. Septimus pushed himself out of the throng and into an island of calm against the bare whitewashed wall of a house. He drew his sword and immediately began to command the men at the crush points to his left and right, his voice reprimanding the soldiers who were pushing those in front, ensuring that panic did not ripple across the men frantically vying for the safety of the town. He looked back towards the approaching enemy, their primeval war cries almost drowning the orders of the centurions commanding the hastati. The junior soldiers stood with their feet apart, braced for the throw of their weapons against the enemy bearing down on them. It was a sight to see and Septimus felt his pride swell at the fortitude of the younger men, many of whom had never faced down a cavalry charge. His trained eye judged the distance between the forces, counting the yards off in his head. At thirty yards they would release and the hastati would break for cover. Whether they reached it or not depended on the enemy’s courage.

Septimus instinctively muttered the command a heartbeat before the shouted order of ‘Loose!’ released fury upon the enemy.

Twelve hundred javelins were released as one, their trajectory almost flat at the short range and they hung in the air for a mere second before crashing into the enemy ranks, the iron point of each six foot spear slamming indiscriminately into the exposed flesh of the enemy with Fortuna’s hand separating the lucky from the damned. For an instant the force of the charge was repressed, its momentum struck as horses and men fell under the weight of Roman iron. Time slowed as Septimus locked his gaze on the front ranks of the enemy. From where he stood he could see the individual expression of each man and witness the critical moment when their courage would either rear up in defiance or collapse. It passed and his body moved before his mind could fully register the outcome, his survival instinct faster than his conscious mind.

Septimus was already through the now empty gap between the houses behind him when the order for the hastati to break was given. Only then did he replay in his mind the sight he had just seen, the moment to which he had borne witness. The Carthaginians had never wavered. They had run over their own dead and injured without check and the air behind Septimus was ripped by the terrible sound of the enemy cavalry striking the exposed ranks of the hastati as they scrabbled the remaining yards to the cover that many of them would never reach.

Hamilcar roared in triumph as a spray of Roman blood fell across his face, the legionary beneath his blade pitching backward with his arms outstretched; his chest slashed open, his defiant stand when all around him fled, ended by a Phoenician blade. Hamilcar continued the swing of his blade over his head as his mount thundered on, the momentum of their combined charge bringing the sword down with savage speed onto the helmet of another fleeing soldier, the forge-welded blade slicing cleanly through the thin metal helmet, dropping the legionary instantly.

All around Hamilcar the Carthaginian line enveloped the fleeing Romans, the slaughter unopposed as the exposed hastati ran for cover, many of them dropping their weapons in a futile attempt to speed their flight, the front ranks left with too far to run. They paid for the precious seconds they had given their comrades with their lives. Hamilcar violently reined in his mount only yards short of one of the outer buildings of the town while to his left and right more Carthaginians continued to butcher the bottlenecked legionaries. He drew his forearm across his mouth, tasting the blood of his enemy as he wiped the stain away, his heightened senses capturing each second of his first close-contact fight with the Romans.

A cheer erupted from the Carthaginians as the last of the Romans fell or fled, the men wheeling their mounts in tight circles as they held their swords aloft in triumph. Hamilcar scanned the scene around him. Fifty yards to his rear he spied his fallen men, their number laid out in a line marking the fall of the Roman spears, their loss repaid fourfold by the number of dead Romans who littered the horse-trampled ground and the Roman cavalry so easily dispatched in ambush only an hour before. Cries and alarm cut through the cheering and Hamilcar spun around to see a flight of Roman spears erupt from the confines of the town, the untargeted volleys falling loosely amongst his troops.

‘Withdraw!’ he roared, his men instantly obeying, galloping out of range of their unseen foe.

‘Commander!’ Hamilcar shouted as he spun his mount around fifty yards from the town. A senior cavalry officer was immediately by his side.

‘Re-form the line,’ he ordered. ‘Have your men rush any Roman who appears but do not attempt to breach the town.’

The officer saluted and galloped down the line, shouting orders as he did, the men falling back once more into a battle line that effectively imprisoned the Romans in Thermae. Hamilcar watched the officer for a minute, his gaze ranging over the extended formation, the expressions of his men still manic from the frenzied attack only moments before. They would need a firm hand to keep them in check and the uneasy stomp of their horses’ forelegs betrayed the pent-up aggression of the riders. Let loose they would charge the very heart of the town, their blood lust blinding them to the danger of attacking infantry in enclosed streets where their superior speed and manoeuvrability would count for naught. He watched as discipline reasserted itself, and turned his attention back to the town. Between the buildings and on the entrance road he could see a multitude of red cloth and burnished steel, the Romans rushing across his line of sight as their officers fought to regain control of their shattered formations. Hamilcar smiled although his eyes remained cold. No fewer than four hundred Romans lay dead before him and yet the wound to his pride was still raw, his heart calling for greater vengeance. He spurred his mount and raced off towards the southern end of the town and to the flank that would take him quickest to the shores of the inner harbour. As he rode he looked back once more over his shoulder and to the cavalry that had wrought such slaughter. Their fight was fought and won. Now Hamilcar would unleash the next wave, the attack that would wipe out the Romans and restore his honour.

‘By the Gods…’ Atticus whispered as a horde of Carthaginian soldiers suddenly emerged from the hatchways of the Carthaginian galley now transfixed to the Aquila. There were scores of them, many more than the normal complement of a Carthaginian galley; a multitude rushing towards the thin battle line of Drusus’s men. They stormed forward as one, the weight of their charge barely checked by the disciplined legionaries as they were pushed onto the defensive by a number three times their own.