"Notice?" she said, frustrated. "I've been noticing it all day! He left Cartago Nova untouched! He put his weakest forces on his south flank, opposite.your strongest! His Macedonian phalanx is pressing your men southward! In the name of all the gods, Hamilcar, can't you see when you are being herded?" She all but screamed the last word.
Oddly, he took no offense at her tone. He pointed to the mass of Gauls and Iberians now trudging westward, away from the battlefield. "Those men will regain their spirit and their senses soon. It will occur to them that they can curry favor with Rome by attacking us. It will be that way all the long road to the Strait of Hercules. I can rely only on my Greek professionals, and I do not have enough of them."
She calmed herself. His words were not without sense. At least that was something. "Very well. But we don't wait and try to defend Cartago Nova. He's already thought of that and has something planned. I don't care about the rest of your army. I want my men and their horses embarked on the first transports, along with you and me. We don't wait for the rest of the army to go. We leave as soon as we're aboard. The rest can follow, if they can contrive to. You can raise another army when we get to Carthage."
A dusty, bloody man climbed the steps to the platform. It was Euximenes, the commander of the Greeks. "Shofet," he said, "we've won our part of the field, but everywhere else is chaos. My men are in good order and haven't taken many casualties. Let us get you out of here. There is no time to waste." He looked back and forth between the two, as if unsure where his orders were to come from.
"Prepare a retreat to Cartago Nova, Commander," Hamilcar said, sounding firm and decisive again.
"Then if Your Majesties will come with me, you'll be safest among my men."
The two mounted, and surrounded by Hamilcar's honor guard and Teuta's Illyrians, they crossed the stream and joined the solid, orderly mass of the Greek-Macedonian mercenaries. The officers called their orders, and the standards waved and the trumpets sounded. They turned southward and walked away from the field. Behind them, the survivors of the army followed them, some throwing away shields and stripping off armor to move more easily. Far in their rear, the other phalanx kept up its steady pressure. The Roman legions had not advanced a step from the battle line they had established at the outset of the fight.
Atop his own high tower, Norbanus watched them go. His highest officers stood with him. Although they understood everything that had happened, they were still amazed.
"General, we could still bag the lot and finish this," Cato said, his fingers working feverishly on his sword grip.
"Finish what?" said Norbanus. "Finish this battle? It is finished. Killing every man out there, including Hamilcar, would not finish the war. Another war, perhaps, but not this one, because we have sword to destroy Carthage utterly and Carthage still stands. That is why we will now invest Cartago Nova, but we will not hinder his escape."
"It seems a pity just to let him go," said the commander of one of the new legions, one of the younger Caesars.
"Long ago," Norbanus explained, "a defeated shofet could be crucified. But old Hannibal put an end to that. He abolished the republic and made the shofet a true king. If we kill Hamilcar now, as we easily could, who knows what might happen? He has no heir. The Council of One Hundred might choose a really capable man to lead them. They could raise up another Hannibal. But as I have arranged things, when we arrive before the walls of Carthage, who do you think will be in charge there?" He looked around at them, smiling. "Why, none other than Hamilcar Barca, the man whose fat backside we've just flogged bloody and sent running back to Africa!"
The men on the tower laughed uproariously, that swords-on-shields Roman laugh that struck terror into other nations. "General," Niger said, pointing to the natives who had abandoned Hamilcar and now fled westward, "shall we send out men to kill those fleeing savages?"
"No," Norbanus said. "I will treat with them later. They'll listen to me, because today they saw us accomplish the impossible. They will have the choice of being slaves or being allies of Rome. It will be the same choice the rest of the world will have, and I think they'll choose wisely. We can add their numbers to our army as we continue our march. There's nothing wrong with them as warriors. They were just badly led and they know it."
Now the officers looked at one another blankly with the same question in all their minds: Continue this already endless march?
That night, encamped outside the walls of Cartago Nova, Norbanus addressed his men, who were sorely puzzled about the events of the day—exhilarated by the victory that had cost so few of their lives, but baffled by its strange incompleteness.