‘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.
A cheer emanated from the Carthaginian galley on the Aquila’s left flank and Atticus spun around to see the Roman line of the Minerva collapse under a similar assault, the legionaries retreating across the corvus as the enemy followed them onto the deck of the Roman galley. Atticus spun around to the waters of the outer harbour behind him. The Carthaginian galleys were forming a battle line across the width of the harbour, but Atticus noticed that they were slowing their advance and he hesitated, his mind racing to understand the enemy’s rationale, why they were not attacking. He swept aside the question and turned once more.
‘Lucius!’ Atticus shouted, his voiced raised above the Punic war cries that carried from the Minerva not thirty yards away, ‘All hands forward, send a runner across to Drusus and tell him to withdraw. We’ll cover his retreat!’
‘Yes, Captain.’ Lucius replied and was away.
As Atticus ordered his crew forward, the first flight of arrows from the enemy on board the Minerva flew across the narrow gap between the galleys and struck the main deck of the Aquila. A shiver ran down Atticus’s spine as an arrow swept past him and he fought to suppress it, standing resolute in the centre of his ship. He muttered his familiar prayer to Fortuna, knowing that if her hand was upon him this day he would live to see another. If not then Hades, the Lord of the Dead, would take him across the Acheron before the sun set. He felt his nerve strengthen as he ended his prayer, the initial panic every soldier felt at the start of close combat quickly subsiding within him and like countless times before, with a warrior’s heart, he gave his life to fate.
Atticus looked beyond the fight before him to the buildings surrounding the docks of Thermae and his thoughts strayed to Septimus. If the fleet had been baited into a trap then surely the legion had suffered the same fate. He turned to the town beyond the inner harbour and as his eyes strayed over the whitewashed buildings he saw a fire arrow take flight, its golden orange tip followed by a black tail of smoke that stood out against the cobalt sky. Even above the noise of battle all around him, Atticus clearly heard the visceral war cry emanating from the bowels of the town and he instinctively recited his prayer once more, this time for his friend. The dread war cry of the Punici whipped through the still air, the sound causing Septimus to turn his head to the western end of the town and the source of the cry, the men who roared it as yet unseen beyond the confines of the narrow streets now crammed with legionaries. High above his head he spied a lone fire arrow, its purpose immediately clear as a roar emanated from the eastern end of Thermae and the enemy on the reverse flank. Septimus immediately began to form the men around him, his officer’s voice joining the confusing disharmony of commands as centurions and optios fought to bring a semblance of order to the chaos.
The Ninth had run into Thermae in confusion, the ordered formations created on the open space at the edge of the town destroyed as the men fled the Carthaginian cavalry. Septimus searched around him for the banner of the IV maniple and the men under Marcus’s command but it was nowhere to be seen within his field of vision, a scene choked with men pushing and shoving to regain their own units.
The war cries to the west intensified and Septimus charged his shield in that direction, the men around him following suit, many taking their lead from the taller centurion in their midst. Septimus frantically looked for a unit of hastati, the sequence of defence ingrained into his command psyche but none were intact and he realised that even if a unit were available there wasn’t enough room for them to deploy and release their spears in the crush of men. With a rush of understanding he realised the brilliance of the Carthaginians’ trap. A Roman legion was born and bred on an open battlefield where her ordered formations were impenetrable. In the narrow confines of a town, without room to manoeuvre, the disciplined structure that made the legions near unbeatable was lost.
The blare of a Roman military trumpet reverberated through the streets, Septimus spinning around to find its source. An order rippled down through the street. ‘Fighting retreat to the docks!’ a centurion shouted and Septimus repeated the order to all within his own earshot, continuing the relay of the order. Soldiers began to push back past Septimus as they made for the centre of the town and the road to the docks while others stood confused and dazed, lost without their unit. Septimus stood firm, his eyes locked on the street ahead of him, unable to see beyond the abrupt turn to the right not thirty yards from his position. A number of principes, the battle-hardened core of the legion, spotted Septimus’s stand and fell in behind him, creating a wedge of men that separated the flow like the cutwater of a galley.
The sound of the oncoming enemy filled the air around, their voices now intermingled with the sound of their running footfalls, the noise ricocheting off the walls of the town, tricking the ear so Septimus was forced to turn his head left and right to judge the distance of direction of the oncoming onslaught.
‘Form line!’ he roared, the soldiers spreading out across the twenty foot wide street to form a shield wall.
Septimus took his place immediately behind the first line, his gaze sweeping over the men around him, their insignia from a dozen different maniples marking them as strangers but their uniform making them one. The wall of sound to their front increased in intensity and Septimus focused his attention on the corner to their front.
‘Steady, boys!’ Septimus growled, ‘Steady!’
The men in front of Septimus visibly bunched their shoulders into the back of their shields, bracing themselves against the rush of enemy that was bearing down on them.
‘Here they come!’
Septimus watched with a determined expression as the first of the Punici raced around the corner towards them. Their pace checked for a heartbeat at the sight of the shield wall but their expressions of pure aggression never varied and they ran headlong without pause.