Certain of his spies who were men of some military experience were able to give him the most suggestive of insights. They said that some of these alien soldiers carried and wore arms and armor that displayed all the marks of hasty manufacture but excellent quality. Most were very young men under the authority of obvious veterans of long experience.
Hanno was no soldier, but the implications were plain even to one such as himself: A mighty army had been raised up north at incredible speed. What sort of people were these Romans (for he was by now accustomed to thinking of them as such)? The usual princes of the world commonly took many months to raise even a modest army and many months more to move them in the desired direction. When emergency required the mobilization of great masses of men for war, such formations were almost always ill equipped and poorly trained and disciplined. The results were sometimes catastrophic, as witness the experiences of the kings of Persia when their immense armies encountered the small but superbly equipped and disciplined armies of Greece and Macedonia.
Then a report arrived with the news he had been dreading. A consortium of cattle buyers, among them some of his spies, had traveled in central Italy north of Campania to the Tiber, long a backwater of little consequence. They found that much had changed, and quickly. Lands once cultivated but long reverted to pasture for sheep and cattle were now being surveyed and laid out for agriculture once more. Bewildered peasants, most of them shepherds, had been barred from land where they were accustomed to grazing their stock and were told to move south. Their animals had been bought from them at a reasonable price, but they had been left in no doubt that they were no longer welcome in the territory that had once been Latium.
Even more ominous things awaited on the Tiber plain. In open defiance of the solemn curse pronounced by Hannibal, Rome and its surrounding countryside were being reoccupied. First, traveling north along the Appian Way, they had seen old, dilapidated tombs being restored. As they neared the city, they saw men at work restoring shrines and hoisting new roof beams onto temples fallen into near-ruin. Even the painting and landscaping of the temples and their grounds were being set to rights. Oddly, soldiers, who were kept busy as ants even when they were not drilling, performed much of this work.
Most alarming of all was Rome. They were not allowed to enter the city, but even from a distance they could see that the place was all but reborn. The ancient walls were under reconstruction, river port facilities were being restored even as new roofs were placed on the temples. What looked like vast military camps covered what had once been the Field of Mars. Here gangs of slaves had been brought from somewhere to do much of the work, particularly the digging and drainage work.
Hanno put down this last report with hands that trembled. He knew the truth now: He was "governor" of a territory now under foreign occupation. And yet, the Romans blandly persisted in acting as if nothing of the sort was going on. No, their intentions were only the friendliest. Yes, they had brought along a few extra troops and left them here and there to the north, but that was only to protect their lines of supply and communication. Besides, their new friend the Shofet Hamilcar might require more soldiers for his war, and by this means they could supply the need more quickly.
Hanno did not dare admit that he had sent spies, but remarked that certain travelers recently returned from up north had spoken of a heavy military buildup and a reoccupation of Rome. No, the Romans had said, these amateurs exaggerated, as people inexperienced in military matters so often did. Naturally, the Romans had established bases and of course they had laid out adjacent fields for cultivation and had bought livestock from the local people. Roman legions were expected to be self-supporting to the greatest extent possible. That only made military sense, did the Governor not agree? As for a reoccupation of Rome itself, that was simply untrue. Doubtless some of the soldiers and attached staff went to visit their ancestral tombs and shrines, perhaps touched them up with a bit of fresh paint, but that hardly constituted a reoccupation.
Hanno nodded and smiled and acted as if he believed these outrageous falsehoods. He had little choice. Once again he wrote letters. To Hamilcar he reported that the Romans were in his territory in unnecessarily large numbers and asked for instructions, knowing that he would get none from the preoccupied Shofet. To Zarabel he wrote the unvarnished truth: Italy was back in Roman hands and there was nothing to be done about it short of a major war.
For his temporary command post Titus Norbanus had chosen a spacious villa situated just without the walls of Carthage. It had belonged to a minister who had fallen afoul of the Shofet and earned the cross thereby, along with the immolation of his family in a sacrifice to Baal-Hammon. The main building was situated on a slight rise of ground on the otherwise flat coastal plain. Its terrace afforded a fine view over a grassy field where his legions could be assembled and inspected. Its many rooms and outbuildings served as quarters for those of his under-officers who chose not to camp with their soldiers and the Senate representatives attached to the expedition.
On an afternoon just after inspection, ten days before the legions' scheduled departure for Libya where they would join the greater Carthaginian army, Princess Zarabel had her litter borne to the villa. After ascertaining that Norbanus could receive her in privacy, she alit and entered his staff room with stiff, angry strides, making the bells on her silver-mesh leggings tinkle.
"Titus!" Zarabel hissed. "What are you people up to?" Even visiting him in his command quarters she felt compelled to keep her voice down.
"What do you mean?" Norbanus lounged in a chair by a table stacked with documents. His rigid bronze cuirass lay on the floor beside him and he was dressed in the lightly padded arming tunic that he wore beneath the armor. It included pendant straps of decorated leather at the shoulders and a skirt of the same straps that hung from his lean hips almost to his knees. His ornate military sandals were made of red leather and came to just below his knees, their tops banded with lynx skins from which the paws and tails dangled. She thought him handsome as a Greek god but just now she was enraged at him.
"My agents report that you Romans have reoccupied all of Italy!"
"Your agents? I suppose you must refer to that fat fool Hanno. Your brother seems to have received no such report."
She seethed, having to remind herself for the hundredth time that these Romans were not fools and their minds could work as subtly as her own despite their uncouth words.
"What my brother knows is of no account. Italy is a part of the Carthaginian Empire. Your people were forbidden by Hannibal himself from ever returning. I see that you have taken this temporary military alliance to set aside that law and seize our territory."
He stood and stepped across the room to stand very close before her. "We were coming with or without this alliance, Zarabel. Our gods commanded it. Do you disobey the will of Tank?"
"Of course not." She found his nearness overpowering and cursed her weakness. He always knew how to turn her to his will.