"Tomorrow morning, then, at first light?"
Teuta snorted. "And fight with the sun in our eyes, like Mastanabal?" She ignored Hamilcar's irritated glance.
"Noon, then," Norbanus said. "With the sun at zenith, nobody will have the advantage."
"Tomorrow, then," Hamilcar said impatiently. "Tomorrow at noon I will destroy you, and the gods of Carthage will prevail over the gods of Rome."
"We'll be looking forward to it," Norbanus said. He made a sketchy but graceful double bow toward the shofet and the queen, then wheeled his mount and trotted away.
"The arrogance of that man!" Teuta said. "Did you see that helmet? It's the one Alexander wore in his portraits. He thinks well of himself.
"I did not fail to notice that little detail," Hamilcar said. "It is degrading to speak with such an upstart. At least Alexander was a king, and the son of a king, although of an obscure country."
Teuta forbore to snap back at that, knowing that Illyria was an obscure country. That man Norbanus intrigued her. She could not quite name what it was, but the Roman had something that Hamilcar lacked: some essential quality that raised him above the level of ordinary men. What a pity this Norbanus comes of an upstart, soon-to-be-extinct nation instead of a great empire, she thought. And too bad his army is so small by comparison. Otherwise, I might have done better to choose him as my companion, rather than Hamilcar.
The Roman party rode back toward the camp and discussed matters as they went.
"We'd better keep an eye on that wild woman," Cato advised. "She strikes me as twice the man Hamilcar is."
"So I noticed," Norbanus agreed. "Remember the story of Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus at the battle of Salamis? The warrior-queens can give you a nasty surprise."
"Are you going to tell us what you intend now?" Niger demanded.
"Tonight. And I want no surprises tomorrow, so everyone is to be out on that field, in battle order, in silence as before. It will mean a long, hot wait until noon, but I've given them two days of rest, so they'll be up to it."
On the next morning, at first light, Norbanus was again atop his command tower. Before him was ranged his army, the legions in neat, elongated rectangles, extended to keep Hamilcar's much-larger army from overwhelming its flanks. It gave them very little depth, but Norbanus was confident in the Roman legionary's ability to hold formation, no matter how heavy the pressure.
On his extreme left, the southern end, were the Gauls and Spaniards that had joined him, hearing that this Roman was extremely clever and lucky, a clear favorite of the gods who could make his friends rich. To the extreme north was the formation upon which so much of the coming battle depended: the Greek and Macedonian mercenaries he had inherited from the defeated Mastanabal. They were specialists in close-order fighting. Unlike the Romans, they hurled no javelins and placed little reliance on the sword. Instead, they fought with overlapped shields and long spears, overcoming their enemy through the weight of their formation and their own iron discipline. Those men had a crucial role to play.
It did not bother him in the least that both armies included so many Gauls, Spaniards, Greeks and Macedonians. The civilized men were professionals, and the savages just didn't care. All of them fought among themselves constantly.
His men sat on the ground, their shields propped up by their spears, while the noncombatant slaves distributed breakfast. Norbanus knew that it was folly to send men into battle on empty stomachs. He watched through his optical glass as Hamilcar's army marched from its encampment in leisurely fashion, two hours before the sun reached zenith.
They took up their positions exactly as they had encamped: Hamilcar's Greek and Macedonian units on the south, facing Norbanus's Gauls and Spaniards, Hamilcar's own Gauls facing the legions, his Spaniards fronting the northernmost legion and the massive block of the Greek-Macedonian phalanx.
"Splendid!" Norbanus said, marveling as always at how much the gods loved him. "If he'd allowed me to make his dispositions myself, I couldn't have done a better job."
"Maybe," Niger grumbled. "But it still seems a strange way to fight a battle."
Norbanus turned and addressed the officers crowding the platform behind him: all his cohort commanders and the senior centurions. "Gentlemen, you will never see me fight a battle that looks other than strange. It's the key to winning."
"But general," said a grizzled old centurion, "this business of keeping the legions purely on the defensive—the boys won't like it, sir. It goes against their training and their instincts."
"They'll like it when the battle is over," Norbanus assured them. "Believe me, soldiers love it when you don't get them killed. If anybody has any doubts when all this is over, I will deliver a speech that will let them know what this is all about." He turned and saw that Hamilcar's army was finally in full array—a terrifying sight in its great numbers. "Now go to your places. You all know what to do. Just watch and listen for my signals."