Eventually, he took a deep breath and stood up. Those around him immediately turned and spoke animatedly to his face, smiling and slapping him on the shoulder as he passed through them on to the floor of the chamber. He strode to the podium and stood purposefully behind it, his eyes staring straight ahead to a point above the heads of the three hundred senators facing him. The noise in the chamber was strident and Scipio held up his hand for silence. His gesture was quickly obeyed and the Senate came to order. Scipio paused in the silence that followed. He did not smile and his eyes remained cold. There was no feeling of joy, no spark of satisfaction, only an intense brooding sense of vindication, of a victory achieved that was fully deserved. He was once more the leader of Rome, and what would follow would be merely a reclamation of his full measure of pride and honour.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Regulus walked slowly across the main deck of the Alissar, his thoughts skipping from one subject to another, his concentration undermined by the inner voices of his conscience. He yearned for a way out of the predicament the Carthaginian commander had placed him in, or, failing that, a way to regain control of his fate. He longed for the counsel of a fellow Roman.
There was no hope. The campaign against the Carthaginians was in ruins. Two full legions had been lost in Africa, the fleet was totally destroyed; and whereas the Punici were now able to call on reserves, the Republic simply did not possess the ships to replace her losses. Sicily had been put beyond the grasp of Rome, and Regulus was forced to concede that the proposed terms for peace were fair and reasonable, merely a demand for a full withdrawal of all Roman forces from Sicily. Given that those remaining forces were negligible, the end result of the peace treaty would be the surrender of cities that would have inevitably fallen to the Carthaginians in due course.
And yet, despite the hopelessness of the Roman cause, Regulus could not bring himself to embrace the proposed peace treaty fully. Surrender, however reasonable, was anathema to the Roman spirit. The Republic had faced and suffered defeat in the past, but always it had fought on, never relenting until the fight was won. He looked at the ship around him and his mind skipped to another thought, one that had struck him the moment the Alissar had set sail from Carthage.
Regulus had never sailed on an enemy galley before, and he was stunned by how different it was to a Roman galley. The ships were identical in type and design, but the Carthaginian crew operated with a level of competence and skill that Regulus had never before witnessed. They seemed to work without supervision or command, as if each man not only knew his own task, but also that of the men around him, their overlapping experience creating a fluent efficiency that put the Roman crews to shame. Regulus now believed that the ability of the lowest Carthaginian crewman would easily match the seamanship of any Roman captain and, despite his own victory at Ecnomus, he couldn’t assuage his growing conviction that eventually the Carthaginians would fully reclaim their rights to the sea, a dominion they had controlled for generations.
Hamilcar watched Regulus from the aft-deck and realized the Roman was still struggling with some internal conflict. The fleet from Gadir had arrived in Carthage only the day before and was currently restocking for the final leg to Lilybaeum in Sicily, while the transport fleet was also undergoing its final preparations. Hamilcar had persuaded Hanno to relinquish twenty elephants and five hundred mercenaries from the Numidian campaign, and had arranged for Regulus to witness their arrival in the military port, the sight of the colossal animals giving Regulus a harsh reminder of his defeat at Tunis and the vulnerability of the legions to their power. Even the departure of the Alissar had been carefully engineered, the flagship sailing slowly past the massed galleys of the Gadir fleet, and although Hamilcar would have preferred to sail with his fleet, he had hastened his departure to Sicily in order to impress upon Regulus the inevitability of his task, the step closer to Rome merely the first leg of a journey he would be honour bound to take.
Even in his own heart, Hamilcar knew that any peace treaty with Rome would be a charade. Only twenty-five years before, the two cities had been allies against Pyrrhus of Epirus, and a treaty had been signed wherein each city recognized the other’s sphere of influence. That was before Rome blatantly ignored its terms and invaded Sicily, a Carthaginian domain, in a treacherous act that had precipitated the current conflict. By all that was right, and given their weakened state, Hamilcar believed he could impose a harsher treaty on Rome, but he had chosen his terms on the realization that a more lenient approach would lead to a swifter conclusion.
Carthage was fighting a war on two fronts against different enemies. This separation of its forces had already cost Hamilcar the army he had commanded at Tunis, a loss that would inevitably hamstring his efforts to finally defeat the Romans in Sicily, and one he had carefully hidden from Regulus. The key to the island was its cities, and while the most important of these were on the coast, they could not be taken from the seaward side alone. Any siege would have to include land-based forces, and so Hamilcar needed to buy time — time for Hanno to defeat the Numidians and release the army to his command.
The war between Rome and Carthage would continue but, in the meantime, the enemy would retreat from Sicily and Hamilcar would be granted a golden opportunity to fortify the island against their inevitable return. Carthage had been ill prepared when the Romans had first invaded Sicily and had lost Agrigentum as a consequence. That mistake would not be repeated.
Hamilcar left the aft-deck and strode over to Regulus, who greeted him with an irritated expression, as if Hamilcar had interrupted an important conversation, and he felt his annoyance rise once more.
‘We will be in Lilybaeum tomorrow,’ he said, in an effort to draw Regulus into a discussion that would finalize his trip to Rome.
‘I will need more time to make my decision,’ Regulus replied, his tone one of hollow determination.
Hamilcar kept his expression neutral and he nodded to show his understanding, while underneath he fought an almost overwhelming urge to throttle Regulus. What concept of defeat did the Roman not understand? They were beaten; the Roman fleet was no more. What thread of reason was Regulus grasping that prevented him from accepting the benevolence of Hamilcar’s offer?
He decided to plant one last seed in Regulus’s mind, one last piece of logic that might persuade the Roman to accept his proposal.
‘It has been a long war,’ he remarked, and Regulus nodded cautiously, surprised by Hamilcar’s comment. ‘I will welcome peace when it comes,’ Hamilcar continued. ‘If nothing else, it will allow my city to regain the strength this war has cost her.’
Regulus nodded in agreement and looked beyond Hamilcar as the idea began to form in his mind. The opportunity that the Carthaginian spoke of would be available to Rome too. It would cost them little, merely a couple of cities, cities that could be retaken when the time was right. Regulus unconsciously nodded as he carried the idea to its conclusion.
Hamilcar saw the gesture and he turned away, confident now that Regulus would do his bidding and carry his terms to his Senate. Thereafter, it was only a matter of time before Rome bowed to the will of Carthage.
‘Hard to starboard, ramming speed!’
The Orcus banked into the sharp turn, her deck tilting precariously, and Atticus felt the muscles in his legs contract as he fought to keep his balance. He counted off the seconds until the bow swung through a full ninety degrees.
‘Centre your helm,’ he ordered, and Gaius put his weight behind the tiller.
The Orcus accelerated as the resistance of the rudder fell away. The drum beat began again, anticipating the surge that accompanied each pull of the oars through the calm water, and the crewmen on deck rocked back and forth on their haunches, many glancing to the formidable figure of the prefect standing motionless on the aft-deck, his eyes locked on some distant point beyond the bow.
Atticus cleared his mind and let the sound of the drum beat dominate his consciousness, allowing it to fuel his undirected aggression. He breathed in the salty air, holding his breath to allow the taste to penetrate the back of his throat, and then exhaled slowly, pushing the last vestiges of air from his lungs in an effort to quell the bitter acid that clawed at his stomach.
‘That’s one minute, Prefect,’ Gaius said behind him, and Atticus called for all stop, allowing the rowers to ship oars and rest.
‘I make that turn two seconds faster,’ Gaius said, his hand now resting lightly on the tiller as the Orcus rose
