The morning came quickly, all memory of sleep forgotten as we waited for action. Eating bread and dried fish under a cool winter sun, we spied a flurry of activity as one of our cavalry scouts hauled his mount to a stop in front of the headquarters group, where the Scipio brothers and their aides were huddled in a small circle. The rider dismounted, saluted sharply, and made his report. Tantalising wisps of conversation drifted our way, but even Mattias, who had the best hearing of any of us, could not catch what was said. He shrugged, looking at me, and then went back to gnawing at his fish.

            Only a few moments passed, though, before we saw Aelius jogging over.

            ‘Get ready to move, lads. Combat formation. You know your places.’ He kicked me, with a smile. ‘Forget your lover, Marcus!’

            I jumped to my feet. ‘Yes sergeant!’ I said, gathering my equipment, all thoughts of Caelia and warm evenings lying in my bunk vanishing as quickly as the first snow of autumn. I prepared my gear quickly but carefully, and then turned to my bunk-mate, a fellow named Stertorius. In Spain since the beginning of the war, he had been the one in the formation behind me when I had killed my first man in combat, and had taken a fatherly interest in my well-being. Stertorious was ancient by our standards: a face grizzled by the Spanish sun, four years of combat patrols and sentry duty under his belt, on his third shield and his fourth sword. The only original piece of equipment he claimed to still have was his helmet, which he tended to lovingly, burnishing it each day and patching breaks with great care. He told me once that it had saved his life in the shield wall, and that he could never part with it.

‘After your shield, lad, your helmet is your most important item. All it takes is even one glancing blow to the head to drop you to the ground, and then you’re easy meat. Staying on your feet in combat is essential. Never lose your helmet.’

‘Now’, he said, tightening the straps of my armour, ‘check mine’. Finishing my examination of his gear, I tugged on his helmet straps. He laughed.

            ‘Don’t worry too much about those, lad. I sleep in my helmet.’

Our bags and pack animals had been taken to our rear, and our officers and sergeants mustered us into our centuries and then we formed centuries into maniples. As a young man I took my place in the front line along with Mattias, while Stertorius, with his years of experience making him a veteran, took his place at the rear of the formation. To our front the skirmishers took up their positions with the loose arrogance that characterised their lot. Their job would be to break up the enemy line, kill the enemy’s officers and sergeants, and then retire through the maniples, leaving the rest to us.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

Father, let me live up to you, I uttered to myself alone. The night patrol had been a skirmish, but here was a real fight, I was certain of it. I touched the Spanish dagger that I wore in my belt. Caelia.

Mattias, next to me, nudged me in the ribs. ‘Look at this, Marcus! Just look!’

‘By the gods’, I breathed. A full legion, the Glorious Second, three maniples deep, four ranks to each maniple, stretching into the distance, and on our left flank, the Fifth legion, Publius Cornelius Scipio resplendent on his white horse, a scarlet cloak billowing in the wind.

‘How many are we?’ a voice came from the rank behind. Mattias turned.

‘Ten thousand, I reckon’, he said, ‘not to mention the Spaniards, if they’ll fight.’

‘The buggers had better fight’, came a growl from the rear.

I watched as horses galloped back and forth along the crest of a low hill to our front, carrying reports to our commanders. Gnaeus had command this day, having drawn lots with his brother for the privilege.

A ripple of anticipation went along the line, along with the news we had so desperately wanted.

‘It’s Hasdrubal, lads! Hannibal’s own bastard of a brother! Let’s send the fucker to Hades!’

Aelius, watching for a signal, turned and crisply ordered us to move.

‘Steady, lads, watch your intervals and keep your lines straight.’

Aelius strode back and forth behind us in the gap between our third and fourth lines. He kept a sharp eye on our movement, chivvying and pushing when necessary to ensure that we moved in step with the maniples to our right and left, communicating by hand signals with his fellow sergeants on each side.

And then came the edge of the hill, and we found our quarry. Beneath us, perhaps a mile away, stood a densely packed group of men, their burnished spears and iron-bound shields glittering in the weak sunlight. Their right flank—our left—extended almost to the shoreline. My heart quickened, and behind me someone vomited into the dirt. Aelius pulled the man up and pushed him back into line.

‘Courage, lad’, he murmured kindly, but with mettle. ‘Have courage. Trust in your comrades and your training, and you’ll be alright.’

A heartbeat later, a huge cheer went up from the enemy to our front, and then a new sound met our ears: the trumpeting of elephants. Straining to see through the dust drifting over the battlefield, I could see seven of the beasts, steady in front of the enemy line, their trunks swinging insolently and mailed armour protecting their sides and necks. Now the Carthaginians hammered sword on shield, letting out a shrill battle cry. We answered with our own. Trumpets bellowed in the midst of the legion, standards were held higher, and then, as we had been trained to do, we went quiet, and increased the speed of our march ever so slightly, pushing on towards the enemy in a deadly and terrifying silence.

Our calm unnerved the enemy. In fact, more than any sustained yelp or cheer, it was calculated to scare the living shit out of the opposition. The clamour of weapons on shields had died down, and to some of us it seemed as if the front rank of the enemy was faltering. We were now barely a quarter of a mile off.

‘Ready javelins!’ Aelius ordered.

‘Look at those bastards go!’ I said to Mattias, as we watched the skirmishers mixing it up with the enemy in the no-man’s land that separated us.

‘Brave, damned brave, to go out there’, he agreed. Their favourite weapon was a slingshot, absolutely lethal in the right hands. I saw several of the enemy drop down, hit in the head or in the eyes by the small pebble-like missiles that our skirmishers used. But now the enemy replied in kind—their own skirmishers tackled ours, and several Roman bodies fell hard onto the ground. The elephants bellowed, straining to be let loose.

Soon our trumpets sounded once more, and our skirmishers were recalled. Gaps opened in the ranks and they flitted through to the rear. My throat went dry.

By now I could clearly see the eyes of the men to my front, huddled beneath metal helmets and buttoned up behind oval wooden shields. The metal sheen of weapons glinted all across their line. My heart pounded. I closed my eyes and crabbed forward, willing myself to focus on my training. The red handprint on my armour glittered in the sun. My hands, clammy with nervous fear, gripped shield and javelin, ready for the order.

‘First rank, javelins!’

We let fly with all our might. I watched my first missile arc into the sky, and take an enemy in his shoulder. As soon as I saw the hit, my fear dissipated, and my confidence returned.

‘Second rank, javelins!’

The enemy was now replying with archers, but their arrows were poorly directed, going long over our formation, even as yelps of pain sounded from the rear. I readied my second javelin, feeling the smooth wooden shaft, the weight of the iron tip.

Aelius waited for the signal from the commander. Then, it came.

‘First and second ranks, second volley! Go! Go!’

All across the line, thousands of javelins were hurled towards an enemy already reeling under the impact of our first assault. I drew my sword now and pulled my shield in tight. The warrior facing me had been impaled by one of our deadly projectiles, and I watched as his replacement stepped into his place. Under a glimmering helmet, a snarling face challenged me over the rim of an oval shield with a wolf motif. His skin was darkened by the African sun, and I realised I was probably facing one of the original group of Libyan soldiers, the core of the Carthaginian army who had accompanied Hannibal’s family to Spain when Hannibal was just a boy.

Our ranks met theirs with a sickening crunch. I punched with my shield boss, but the enemy was ready and met my shield with his. A blur of iron whipped over the top, glancing off my armour. To my right, one of my comrades went down with a sword twisting into his gut, and the man behind immediately stepped forward to take his place. The skirmishers, now working as stretcher bearers, somehow managed to get him out and pull his writhing body to the rear, leaving a slick trail of blood and shit in the dirt. The iron tang of blood was everywhere, along with the stench of sweat, vomit, and piss. All along our line I felt and heard the desperate struggle of men trying with singular determination to break the fellow to their front. My breath rasped in my throat.

I felt the hand on my back, and knew the whistle was not far off. I pushed again with my shield and feinted around the right side with my sword. Sure enough, my enemy shifted his shield to counter my blow, exposing his right side, protected only by a leather jerkin. My comrade to my left saw the opportunity and delivered a lightning-fast thrust into his shoulder, severing his arm. Blood sprayed several feet into the air from the wound and the man collapsed in the dirt, and now I was facing a new man, bearded, older, and solid on his feet. The ground beneath us was slick, but I dug my sandals into the soil and still we fought, pressing the enemy line. The warning whistle sounded, and shortly afterwards I pulled back out of formation, falling back to the third rank, breathing heavily and doused with sweat, despite the chillness in the air.

‘You alright, Marcus?’

Catching my breath, I saw the kindly face of Stertorius, a piece of straw at the corner of his mouth, gazing down at me from beneath his helmet. He was resting on his shield, looking relaxed and calm. I nodded.

‘Good lad. You did well there, kept up the pressure. Take a moment, and then get ready to do it all over again.’

In the third rank, I rested, waiting for the whistle to summon me forward once again. From time to time I cautiously peered up and down the line. To my left the ranks of legionnaires extended until they vanished into a cloud of dust. I saw Gnaeus Scipio mounted on his bay gelding behind the headquarters maniple, surrounded by runners and message riders ready to carry his orders across our vast formation. And then, to the front, I spied a marvellous looking man—tall, handsome, erect on horseback, closely guarded by a mounted bodyguard. I felt a thrill.

‘Look, Mattias! Look at that glorious bastard!’

‘Hasdrubal!’ We had all seen him now, and the shout went up from our line, a lethal bloodlust coursing through us.

I looked back around to my left, and then I saw Gnaeus again, spying a problem, it seemed, on our flank. From his group a rider leapt forward, galloping straight for us. For indeed, on the right, Gnaeus—and now I—saw the instrument of our deaths.

A cry went up from the extreme right of our line, where Tarro and his men were fighting an uneven contest.

‘Elephants!’ a man shouted. ‘Get some help over here!’ yelled another.

‘Fuckers!’ growled Stertorious, spitting out the piece of straw. I heard Aelius calling back to his centurion.

‘Sir! Three beasts on the flanks! Tarro’s in trouble!’

Unease rising in my belly, I looked about and saw the messenger pulling up in front of our company centurion on a foaming black horse. To my front, the mass of men continued to push, groan, and die horribly. With a clatter of hooves, another rider pulled up, dismounting from his horse in a cloud of dust and jingling armour.

‘Sir!’ I said automatically, seeing the crest of an infantry centurion. The officer ignored me.

‘You’, he barked at Rufus, the sergeant of the fourth line in our maniple, an older man with skin tanned to a leathery complexion by years campaigning under the hot sun. The sergeant turned and came to attention.

‘Your orders, sir!’

‘Take your men and the evens of those who just came off the line and get over to the flank! Hurry, man!’ He turned and singled out Aelius.

‘Sergeant, keep the odds of those who came off engaged with the maniple. Hold this position. Do not break! I’ll see if I can get you some more men from the left flank.’ The officer looked to the rear, singling out one of the officers from the second rank of maniples. He beckoned him over; the man, a boy, really, came at a run, sword and shield held close to his body, eyes alive with nerves and excitement.

‘Second rank of maniples holds at all costs. Support the first rank and don’t let them break. Help is on its way. Go, and stay firm!’

The centurion nodded his understanding and rushed back to his men.

At our position, Rufus walked briskly along the fourth rank, ordering his men to about turn and form up into a marching column. He then looked at us men who had moments earlier been in the thick of it, and who were bloodied, bruised, and still catching our breath.

‘Evens, join this formation. Odds, take your place to support your comrades on the line.’

I was an even, my place in the front rank counted off earlier as we formed our battle lines. I obeyed the order and saw my comrades hurrying to do the same.

‘Move it!’

 At a trot, we scuttled along.

‘Fuck me, look at those elephants!’ someone murmured from our midst. We were close enough now to see one of the beasts pick up a Spanish warrior with his trunk and throw him bodily into the ground. Arrows rained down from archers on the elephants’ backs, as their drivers rammed them into the men below. Tarro’s crew was being slaughtered, I thought, and then came an even more horrific sight, as the same elephant reared up, and hammered down with his massive front legs on a wounded man desperately trying to crawl clear. He emitted a ghastly scream as his side took the full force of the blow, popping open like a bad flask of wine, guts and shit spraying the ground around him. His cry of pain died suddenly, and with tusks dripping with gore, the elephant roared, looking around for new victims.

I must hand it to Rufus. He didn’t skip a beat, and if he was as terrified as we were at this spectacle, he didn’t show it. All of his own men, the soldiers from the fourth line, Stertorius among them, still carried their javelins. The sergeant called a halt and dressed us into two ranks.

‘Right lads, this is what we’re going to do. Remember our hallowed forefathers and their wars against Pyrrhus?’ Heads nodded in understanding. ‘We have to take these beasts down, now, or the whole line will fold and our comrades back over there’—he pointed straight at the legionnaires, straining to hold the enemy in check—‘will be trampled. So, you, Cornelius, and you, Caecilius’—here he pointed to two of his corporals—‘take your squads and get around to the rear of the elephants.’ He grinned wickedly, and laughed despite the desperate situation.

‘Go for their balls.’

The two men nodded and called their men out of formation. We all, of course, knew about Pyrrhus. In his wars against the Romans, he had brought with him scores of deadly war elephants, which, it was said, had come all the way from a place called India at the edge of the world. The great general Alexander went there once, and there he met warriors so fierce, and elephants so terrifying that his Macedonians, men who had felled the Persian empire, cried like babes, shitting their pants and refusing to fight. Alexander gave up then and there and went home to Babylon. As for our grandfathers, the elephants had terrified the Roman horses and wrought carnage amongst the legions, until it was discovered that by spearing them between their hind legs, they could be driven mad with pain, trampling their own. Other Roman generals set pigs on fire, and beat them towards the elephants. By Jupiter, I am telling the truth. This happened in Italy, I swear on the gods.

Rufus rapped the top of my helmet.

‘Wake up!’ he growled in my ear. Then he looked about, and yelled ‘the rest of you, to Tarro!’

We moved back into a swift trot. The Spaniards were being assailed by Carthaginians on one side and elephants on the other. Rufus now led us to Tarro’s left, which was under heavy pressure from Carthaginian troops, and there we could take some of the burden off his crew. Rufus sought out the Spaniard in the mass of men in front, in the very centre of the action, his sword arm rising and plunging repeatedly as he hacked away at an enemy’s head.

‘Come on, lads!’ Rufus yelled.

We pushed in, strengthening the front of the line, calling out to the Spaniards as we moved in to help them. Taking position, I felt horribly exposed. Only a few feet away, bloodied tusks ripped into a Spanish warrior. The noise of the animals was terrifying, and always the arrows rained down, hammering our shields. One glanced off my arm, drawing blood, while another bounced harmlessly off the armour of the man next to me.

Come on, Caecilius, Cornelius, I urged as I made myself as small as possible behind my shield, pushing against the man to my front and probing his defence with my blade.

Our arrival caused a momentary lull in fighting as the enemy sensed our new threat. The arrows intensified and I went down behind my shield as a group of Carthaginian infantry worked their way back, away from the elephants, and tried to rout us.

But then a wry smile crept to my lips, even as the trunk of an elephant slapped my shield and the searching point of a sword momentarily came through my guard. Rufus, the old dog, was springing the same trap on the Carthaginians as they had tried to do to us. Next to me a man went down, impaled between the eyes, and my attention was snapped back to the greying warrior who had delivered the blow. A fresh soldier stepped into place next to me, but to my right, another man went down and now there was nobody at my side. From the corner of my eye, I saw an archer mounted on the nearest elephant draw back, sighting down the wicked notched blade of his arrow. Time slowed: I was finished. If I moved my shield to counter this new threat, the fellow to my front would take off my head.

Rufus saved me. I never saw his hand signal, for it was not intended for me: it was the order for Caecilius and Cornelius to strike. I sensed a rush to my right as the Roman ambush was sprung. They broke cover, advancing rapidly. At the same time, Tarro’s lines finally shattered, and our entire formation collapsed inwards. The arrow hissed past my shield as I fell back, burying itself in the earth, and the elephants surged forwards, so sure of their success that our ambush achieved complete surprise.

A shout of consternation went up from the legionnaires around us, quickly drowned out by an ear-splitting trumpeting from one of the three elephants. His driver pushed him on, forward towards Tarro’s desperate ranks. Rufus gave a long blast on his whistle and Caecilius and Cornelius waved their men forward. Javelins at the ready, their squads closed to within ten paces of the elephants. On the backs of these great beasts, archers suddenly recognised their peril and yelled at the drivers. Arrows shot down and I saw two of Caecilius’ men collapse onto the dirty ground.

Two dozen iron-tipped javelins arced into the air, hitting the elephants all across their unarmoured rear and sending them into a frenzy. Screams of their pain drowned out all other noises, and the enemy soldiers to our front hesitated for a moment and looked frantically over their shoulders.

            Tarro and Rufus urged us back into formation.

‘Press, men! Push!’ Rufus called. The cries of agony from the elephants pierced the air, while the men who fell from their mounts were speared mercilessly where they lay. Still, the enemy had fight left in them; the man I was facing took advantage of the confusion to punch hard with his shield, and I was down in the dirt, my sword torn from my hand. A leering face came over me, the blade ready to strike. Twisting hard, I pulled the dagger Caelia’s mother had given me, and in one quick motion, buried it into my opponent’s belly, right up to the horn grip.

‘Marcus!’ cried Stertorious, stepping past me and covering me with his shield, his sword thick with blood.

‘Pick up your sword, man’, came another shout, and I saw Rufus stalking towards me. Seeing their elephants flee, the enemy was streaming from the battlefield. I stood and recovered my sword, and then fell hard as Rufus hit me across my helmet.

‘Never drop your sword! What the hell is wrong with you! Wait until Aelius finds out about this, you stupid shit!’

But I didn’t care, and just lay there in the dirt and the gore, staring at the blue sky above. I was alive, and my enemies were dead.

Next Chapter: Chapter Six - Saguntum