Treachery (Mercenary of Rome Book 3) by John Stack

Author:John Stack [Stack, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2021-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Despite the dry heat, Atticus pulled the wool kaross more tightly around his shoulders as he watched the noon sun make its zenith. It had been six days since the city of Tunis had fallen, and the rising smoke of funeral pyres rose lazily across the plains of Tunis, forming a wind-borne canopy. Above it the sky was cobalt blue, and it was as if the gods of paradise were denying the soldiers who had fought over the doomed city the right to ascend.

The rape of the city had lasted two full days. The screams of men, women and children never abated during that time. The mercenaries, desperate to protect the camp-followers, their wives and children who had come with them to Tunis, had created a further strongpoint in the city’s main temple after the walls had fallen. It was quickly overrun and the Carthaginians, who had lost so many in the conquest, sealed the doors and put the temple to the torch, precipitating a conflagration that consumed a quarter of the city.

The common inhabitants of Tunis were devoured in the same barbarity, the Carthaginians making no distinction between innocent bystanders and foe, and it was only on the third day, when the victors began to fight amongst themselves for the last remaining women and spoils, did Hamilcar order the city to be cleared.

The Roman legionnaires and the soldiers of the standing army of Carthage had maintained their discipline after the walls were breached, standing apart from the sack of Tunis. The Romans had rushed the city’s garrison and prison, seeking their remaining comrades, only to find the cells empty. A swift interrogation of the gaolers revealed their fate and in a blinding rage, Septimus had ordered the gaolers garrotted.

Hamilcar Barca had searched the city for Mathos with ruthless efficiency. The mercenary commander was nowhere among the living, and the city elders were dragged out to sift through the piles of dead beneath the battlements to identify his body. He was never found. To ensure the head of the serpent had been severed for good, Barca had stood before the hundreds of prisoners taken and told them their lives would be spared in exchange for every leader amongst them. Scores of men were condemned on the spot, given up by their own men, their cries of protest and innocence silenced with swift execution. After Tunis, there would never be another like Spendius or Mathos.

The bodies of the Roman hostages had been taken down with reverence and cremated, along with the forty legionnaires who had died in the storming of the city walls. Septimus had put the torch to Drusus’ pyre himself, standing back as the flames intensified, and then drawing in closer as the mound collapsed inward, staying with Drusus until his body had turned to ashes.

A shouted command signalled high noon and the changing of the guard. The order sounded hollow in the nearly deserted Roman camp. The bulk of the Roman forces, over three hundred men, along with all the wounded, had marched back to Carthage and the Roman fleet two days before.

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