unique advantage of stealth that an anonymous trading galley possessed.
He was loyal only to his profit, and smuggling cargo rapidly gave way to skirmishing and even piracy as each side in the conflict became more embittered against their enemy. His reputation as a mercenary grew and he commissioned his own ship, the Ares, specially designed and built by the finest ship-wrights of Greece and manned by a select crew. With his new ship, stealth was no longer his weapon, but speed and agility.
He pursued only the most lucrative of contracts, and so, a week before, when he was approached by a member of the Council of Carthage, he had quickly accepted the task, ensuring that the price was commensurate with the risk.
Just then Calix sensed a slackening of the wind and ordered his crew to stand ready. They moved quickly and within minutes the Ares was poised to sail. The galley became still again, each man turning their faces to the wind, trying to judge the eddy and flow, the steadfast breeze teetering on the edge of change. The wind shifted suddenly, swinging wildly to the west before reverting back to its original course, and then again to the new heading, stubbornly hanging on until it became steady once more. Calix smiled. He could not have asked for better timing and he looked to the falling sun behind him. He nodded to the helmsman and his gesture was seen by every officer on board, who issued their orders almost as one, the fluidity of command bringing the Ares up to standard speed within a ship length, its course now firmly fixed for the besieged city of Lilybaeum.
Septimus wiped the sweat from his face as he looked to the fading sun. The glare stung his eyes but he continued to stare, savouring the sight of its slow demise, knowing his day was almost complete. He turned back to his men and barked an order, his voice as hard as it had been at dawn, neatly hiding the weariness he felt, seeing that same exhaustion in the faces of his men.
They had arrived at Lilybaeum two weeks before and again their task was almost complete, with four new siege towers standing resolute before the walls of Lilybaeum, silently observing their prey. They had been constructed at a faster pace, utilizing the remnants of the towers at Panormus, but again the work had been carried out by the Ninth. The Second had been awarded a battle honour for their assault on Panormus, with the Ninth mentioned only in dispatches, an injustice Septimus had brushed aside, persuading his newer recruits to do the same. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that the deeds of men in battle were overlooked.
The speed of construction had also been augmented by the men’s eagerness to complete the siege. Panormus had been surrounded by pasture land and tillage, solid ground with good drainage, ideal for siege lines and the necessary congregation of so many men in semi-permanent camps. At Lilybaeum, however, the confluence of two streams behind the town walls had created a marshy swamp that girdled the walls and, although it was late summer and weeks before the arrival of the autumn rains, the ground was soggy underfoot and at dusk huge swarms of mosquitoes rose up to torment the legionaries.
The men of Septimus’s maniple complained bitterly under their breath each evening as they slapped the exposed flesh of their bodies, waging a constant battle against the tiny insects. Septimus let them moan, knowing it was better that they should vent their frustration, but all the while his own worries mounted. He knew nothing of the mysteries of pestilence, why some men escaped while others were fated to be struck down, and, of those, how Pluto decided which men would succumb to death and which would recover. But Septimus was well aware, as were many others, of the deadly plagues that dwelled in the toxic vapours of marshes. Years before he had fought in the battle of Agrigentum, a Romanled siege where the legions themselves had been besieged by a relief army, and for weeks they had been imprisoned on marshy ground between the outer walls of the town and a line of contravallation. Casualties quickly mounted, not from blades and arrows but from pestilence, and Septimus remembered how roll call each morning quickly became a butcher’s bill of men who had breathed their last during the dark hours of night.
The memory caused Septimus unconsciously to hold his own breath, and he coughed as he finally inhaled the warm, fetid air into his lungs. It tasted of the deep muskiness of earth, and he suddenly craved the clean, salt-laden air that swept over the deck of the Orcus. He had not thought of that life in days, and he was surprised, as before, what triggered his memories. He recalled how he had at first hated that raw sea air, the cool wind that blew perpetually across the exposed galley, but now, as he filled his lungs with the humid air of the marsh, he missed the unsullied air of the sea.
He brushed the memory aside, suddenly angry at himself. That life was behind him now and to think of it fondly was a weakness that undermined his loyalty to the Ninth. His future lay with the IV maniple, not with the marines, and he forced his mind to focus on his command.
He looked to the siege towers, their wheels buried to the axle in the soft ground. They would be ready in less than three days and Septimus muttered a prayer to Mars that Scipio would grant the Ninth the honour of leading the assault. He knew, however, that it was a forlorn hope. The Ninth was a newly formed legion. The Second was the veteran formation. They had taken Panormus, even if in reality the ragged charge of the Ninth had pushed them over the battlements, and they would lead the assault again. The Ninth would watch from a distance and, as Septimus kneaded the hilt of his sword, he wondered if he would get a chance to draw his blade in the battle for Lilybaeum.
Hamilcar looked over the shoulder of the engineer seated in front of him, trying to read the tiny script of the annotations, but he could not, and so he concentrated on the sketch itself. He glanced out over the battlements to the Roman siege towers four hundred yards away, beyond effective arrow range. The engineer’s sketches were impressive, considering the distance, and Hamilcar questioned him on some of the details, knowing the engineer was using his judgement to draw what he could not see. He nodded slowly as the explanation was given, looking again to the siege towers, wondering when they would be ready.
The Romans’ ability to build effective siege engines was one of their military strengths, and to have siege towers constructed within sight was an opportunity Hamilcar could not allow to pass. The Carthaginian army had little knowledge of such modern technology and normally relied solely on time to force a besieged town to capitulate. The Romans had appropriated the design of the Carthaginian quinquereme. Perhaps Hamilcar could return the gesture by constructing siege engines of Roman design for his army. Panormus had fallen to such devices, and although Lilybaeum had more complex and stronger defences, Hamilcar knew that — should the infernal towers be brought to bear against the city walls — the outcome could not be predicted with any certainty. That was why Hamilcar had already put his plan of defence in motion and why the sketch of the towers was important.
Hamilcar looked at the sea beyond the harbour of Lilybaeum. He could see the blockade fleet of the Romans, their galleys moving slowly across his view. The width of the bay, and its unique approaches, had removed both the ability and the need for the enemy to form an unbroken blockade line, and so they were concentrated on the flanks, with smaller squadrons sailing continuously back and forth across the bay. Their numbers had been estimated at one hundred and fifty, a figure that had surprised and troubled Hamilcar, as he had thought their fleet to be a fraction of that number. Reports from Panormus spoke of a blockade fleet of seventy ships. He had surmised that some of them were destroyed in the ensuing battle in the harbour, and so expected only the remnants to arrive at Lilybaeum.
At first he had thought that many more Roman galleys had survived the storm after the battle of Cape Hermaeum, but then he began to hear disturbing rumours, second-hand reports from traders, that the Romans had constructed a massive new fleet north of Rome. He had dismissed the rumours out of hand, but then he had received confirmed reports that the bulk of the ships blockading Lilybaeum were part of a Roman fleet, over a hundred strong, that had been seen sailing southwest past Lipara towards the Aegates Islands weeks before.
The report had staggered him. What manner of men were these Romans that they possessed such self- belief, that they could endure the loss of so many ships and men and rebuild again so quickly. Their confidence and commitment to the war seemed indomitable and Hamilcar wondered if the Romans stood in awe of any men or gods. He thought of Carthage, how its forces were divided across two fronts, fully committed to neither, its political leaders split into competing factions, while the Romans stood squarely behind a single purpose.
Hamilcar had resolutely brushed his doubts aside. Others might believe that Carthage’s destiny lay elsewhere, but he was fully committed to the war against Rome, and to that end he was determined that Lilybaeum would not fall. With the arrival of a larger Roman fleet the odds had changed, but the foundation of Hamilcar’s defensive plan remained solid.
Weeks before, when the first reports confirmed the Roman encirclement of Panormus, Hamilcar had quickly dispatched a galley to Carthage carrying two requests to his father. The first of these was for men, land forces, to strengthen the garrison, preferably Carthaginians if he could procure them from Hanno’s army or, failing that, the
