Thearos
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The ammunition party left camp before dawn: a dozen mules with their drivers, twenty Balearic slingers, a squadron of Numidian cavalry. They marched an hour to the dry river bed spotted by the scouts the previous day, and the slingers immediately set about collecting the dun round stones, weighing and choosing and rejecting, with quick rough skilled hands. They worked quickly and filled the two panniers on each mule with egg-sized stones. There was some delay, while the Carthaginian officer counted and recounted the total: the orders were for twelve thousand stones, and he would be sure before he left. The slingers amused themselves by aiming shots at a boulder in the river bed, while the Numidians watched, but soon the sun became too hot, and they sat in the shade. Finally the officer was done, the panniers closed and sealed and numbered and listed, and the party set out on the return road, mules trotting, the Numidians in front, the slingers marching behind the mules.
The ambush was well laid and it helped that the column had grown confused and too close so that the first volleys of arrows and javelins down from the olive grove on the hill caught the horsemen, the mules and the slingers all together. Before the Numidians could rally, a wedge of Roman cavalry rode round the hill and made straight for them and the Numidians did not stand, but turned, and they hadn't the speed to escape the first javelins and spear thrusts, and some of them fell and vanished in the dust and their horses rode on. The mules had bolted, and the Roman cavalry turned back from the Numidians and cut down the muleteers and the slingers, singly. A small group of Baleares grouped together and waited for the cavalry to charge close and threw each a brace of javelins at twenty paces and brought down the first rank of the Roman horsemen, the remainder wheeling off, and leaving the knot of Baleares to die under the arrows.
Soon round shields appeared among the olive trees, Roman javelin-men, with wolf-skins on top of their helmets, the old enemies of the Baleares in the line. Behind them, long shields, the gleam of bronze helmets, mail coats: a full centuria of legionaries. The Romans came out into the open, in skirmish order, with javelins cocked, stepping high though the long summer grass, but the slingers were all dead or wounded or cowed and awaiting the swords, and the Romans moved out quickly, the rest was easy work, flushing the remaining Baleares and shooting them in the back and finishing off the wounded and mutilating the dead, hacking at the faces and the limbs. The usual afterbattle music had arisen, the whirring cicadas not quite blotting out the grunting and the cleaving, the short barked orders, and the pleading and the weeping and the cries of the wounded. The Roman cavalrymen had galloped off in pursuit of the Numidians.
Just a few more feet. Keep crawling. Head down. Dont look up. That mule isnt dead yet. Watch for the kick. The pannier's broken but still full. No need to cut the ties. Which is good since I seem to have dropped my knife. We should have set out earlier and we shouldnt have returned the same way we came No use thinking of that now. My head's bleeding but thats just when I threw myself down. I'm fine. My right arms fine. A few more feet. I'll take down the first Romans quickly. All body shots. Nothing fancy. The rest will freeze then scatter behind shields Shoot anyone who raises a javelin within forty paces. Shoot anyone with a bow. Then just anyone close. Break shields. Make them run. There now. Just me and my sling and a full pannier of ammunition and lots of Romans. Ive done this before. Ive done this for Hannibal. Ive even done this for the Barca when I was young. If only I were twenty years younger. Stand up now and start shooting.
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