said, was torn out by Zaracas, his ears cut off by a dark-skinned Libyan they knew as Mathos. Then they put his eyeballs, his ears and his tongue on a rope of pearl they tore from Gisco’s litter and they placed it round the neck of Silenus of Caleacte and sent him back alone to Carthage to tell the Council of their terms.
Silenus left the Sufet living still and all his clerks and Twelve and Legionaries lying in a rubbish pit where pigs snarled for scraps. First Spendius had had them tied together, a collar of iron round each neck in the manner of the caravans of slaves that cross the trackless deserts of the south. Silenus saw the camp boys come, filthy, naked, uncircumcised and verminous and urinate upon their heads. Spendius brought the quartered azure standards of the Sufet and threw them down upon their heads.
I was in my father’s hall, its floor of polished lapis-lazuli, when that night the Elders came to hear from Silenus of the mercenaries’ terms. The night was dark. A grey mist filled the sea which beat against the wall of Carthage with a noise of sobs and dying breath. The Elders came into the hall bearing their sticks of narwhal horn. In mourning for the shame upon the Sufet, some had torn their robes. Others bore their beards enclosed in mauve leather bags fastened round their ears with silken blackened string.
They heard from Silenus of terms they could not meet, had they even wanted. Outrageous sums were asked, gold and silver, mines in Spain, ten zeters too of land for every man. For their leaders they demanded in marriage virgins of the great families of Carthage. This outraged the Elders that our Punic blood should even be presumed to mix with that of barbarians. Meantime they wanted from our stores amphorae of wine and guinea fowl, mackerel and meat and spice and seasonings, all this within two days.
Baalhaan, the senior there, spoke out for all and ordered Astegal himself, High Steward of the Council, to leave that night and find Hamilcar my father. Safe for many months within their walls, the Elders of the Council could not speak for peace. So they spoke for war.
Those were oppressive days. Silenus was too weak to teach or talk. He stayed in his room, seeking solace in Euripides. The city gates were barred to all. The people of Carthage were terrified and tense, our household servants sullen and recalcitrant. There was dark talk of a holocaust, a tophet in our tongue, the burning alive of children to appease Melkarth and Tanit-pene-Baal. Even Tunis, our subject city just across the bay, had, we learned, revolted, its Elders opening their gates, its merchants their stores and its women their legs to the mercenaries.
Two days later, the supplies unsent, we heard the mercenaries were before the wall, just out of bow shot or of javelin. No Carthaginian would have fired, though, for this is what we saw, those many of us high and safe upon the wall. Twenty of the Sacred Legion were lined up, tied to short and sharpened stakes.
Six mercenaries approached the first. Spendius the Campanian was there, his skin gleaming with woad, his amulets of silver gleaming in the sun, and Mathos and yes, Zaracas, Silenus said. The bonds of the first Legionary were cut. Spendius and Mathos seized his legs and stretched them out. Two others took his shoulders and his arms. They lifted him up and, muscles heaving, brought him swiftly shuddering down, impaling him between the legs and upwards through his guts upon the stake. Taking his shoulders from behind, the giant Spendius pushed him down again and then again, laughing a crazed laugh and each time the Sacred Legionary screamed a scream that filled the air.
It can only have been worse for the other nineteen, knowing what awaited them. I have had many men impaled. How long they live depends on many things. If the stake is long, it penetrates the heart and death is swift. If the impaled is old or frail or weak of will, their ordeal is soon ended.
The mercenaries’ stakes were short, their victims young and strong in body and mind. I am then sure they were alive when, one by one, Zaracas cut their throats before us all and caught some blood of each within a bowl. By Melkarth and Eschmoun, by all the brightening stars, by moon and sun and sea, each tribe on earth has customs and has ways which, though peculiar to itself and strange to others, is no less wrong for that. Yet what Zaracas did next, no man should have done or do again.
Turning to the walls of Carthage, stepping forward to us all, he raised the bowl and moaned and drank in one great draught the blood of twenty of the Sacred Legion. Beside me, Silenus retched, turned and hurried away. Raising his head towards the sun like a stag drunk newly from a stream, Zaracas sang a weird and sickening song, a war paean, a dirge.
Baalhaan had called for catapults to fire. Too late. I stood and watched as the missiles of the catapults kicked up the empty and the blood-stained sand.
The sky was dark for days thereafter, rank with smoke, shutting out the sun. The mercenaries were burning the country villas of the rich, some no doubt of the house of Barca among them. Their numbers grew, swelled by slaves who joined them to be free. Wild bands of Nomads, dressed in white cloaks of wool with leather necklets, wooden earrings, their boots of hyena skin, came on quadrigas and joined the waxing camp. Bandits, broken men from Cape Phiscus and the promontory of Derna, Garamantians mounted on their painted mares, Atarantes who curse the sun, locust-eating Auseans riding zebras and wild asses, Gysantes who eat lice and Zuaces, covered in ostrich feathers and masked with black veils, all these came to join the mercenary host and destroy Carthage.
The trumpet heralds signified that, once again, there were mercenaries before Khamon’s Gate. Hundreds of us climbed the walls to watch. Silenus this time would not come. My brothers Mago and Hasdrubal were with me. What we saw was mercenaries digging a pit. To this they brought their prisoners, already emaciated, foul, tufts of hair torn out, and last Gisco, carried in his frame, a monstrous tiara of hippopotamus hide on his head. They had daubed unguents on his wounds, his knees, his hands, his eyes, his ears to stave off infection, keep him alive for suffering.
Into this pit were thrown the ambassadors of Carthage, but not until the legs of each were broken by bronze bars. Then came donkeys, bearing Gisco’s gold. The mercenaries poured this basket by basket over the men below until they lay gleaming in the sun, all but drowned in gold. Huge Spendius reached down and took up some coins. These he stuck to an arrow-shaft smeared with tar and with his great bow of yew he shot the arrow swiftly at the city gate before him. We did not understand, until a sentry brought the arrow to Baalhaan on the wall.
The coins were not of gold, but gilded lead. Gisco had played and lost.
Discovering this duplicity seemed to change the mercenaries. Now, day by day, they marshalled and wheeled upon the plain. Their archers for practice shot at flamingoes on the lagoon. From their camp we heard no more the sound of drunken revelry but, instead, that of their smiths, forging swords and shields. Piles of lances soon were to be seen, stacked like sheaves of corn and in their pit before the walls before our eyes the Sufet of Carthage and those who had gone with him died from thirst and sun and leaden gold.
Some messengers reached the Council, passing in the night through wicket gates to bring the news of widespread insurrection. Of our subject cities, all but Utica and Hippacritae had risen up, murdered their Carthaginian garrisons and opened their gates to Spendius and Mathos, now acclaimed as joint Schalischims, Generals of the Free. The two loyal cities were besieged, and from our walls all could see the carpenters and masons, smiths and wrights among the mercenary host prepare for siege the catapults and rams, ballistae, onagers and tollenones that would soon, we thought, be turned on Carthage.
Yet the city was impregnable, all knew that, standing within its mighty walls on its own peninsula almost surrounded on three sides by sea and on the last by a lagoon. The mercenaries might straddle the neck of land which joined the city to the continent and on which they were camped beside the river Macaras, but we would wait. We had water, food enough to wait for Hamilcar, my father, who would come and lead an army to destroy the hubris of the mercenaries.
Baalhaan, acting Sufet, grew impatient. He appointed to command one
