AN: So I visited this place last Saturday, and they told me all about its history, and I really loved it. The visit had barely started and I'd already decided I was going to write this — in fact, it wrote itself in my head as I saw the place. I hope you like it! I'll be adding some notes at the end regarding the history or to explain some aspects in more detail.
Also, thanks to Shadowcatxx for helping me edit it! n_n
RESISTANCE
A strong wind blows from the north.
This one is always the worst. It's sharp and cold; if one isn't careful, it might actually sweep you off your feet. Up there, on top of the hill, its effect is ten times worse. Or it would be, were the Numantians a little less resourceful. The streets of the town are designed in such a way that the wind can't freely blow through them, effectively reducing its drastic pass.
The wind blows and blows, but it won't expel those folk from the hill.
They are warriors. There are good reasons why the town was erected on such an inhospitable hilltop. Surrounded by rivers, which provide a good natural defense, the hill stands practically alone, offering a view of everything around it, as far as the eye can see.
A strong wind blows from the north, but Numantia is even stronger.
She carries a few centuries upon her back.
Her eyes are as blue as the sky above them; her hair, the same shade as the copper they use for ornaments. Her skin, fair and smooth, presents many war scars that she's proud to show. Many others have already vanished.
She is Numantia, rightfully labelled the strongest among the strongest. No one in Iberia dares to challenge her. She stands proud on her hill, certain that she'll live forever.
~{§}~
The men arrive early one day. They are refugees from Segeda, a town not far away; they seek protection inside Numantia's strong walls. They talk of a powerful enemy, one that had long ago set its eye on Iberia; one mighty enough to subdue Carthage. "They're coming," the men cry to the elders' council. "The Romans are coming!"
Numantia smiles, confident. "Let them come." She knows Rome — she was there when he and Carthage tried to destroy each other on Iberian lands. A powerful enemy, indeed, but not one she fears.
She's a warrior. So are her people.
Rome will come, and he will be met with fire and blood.
The refugees are not convinced by her determination, but respectfully bow to her and swear to aid in the battle, as exchange for the hospitality they've been shown. Numantia nods in acknowledgement and then dismisses everyone.
Now it's time for the warriors to start planning their defenses.
~{§}~
"I'm sorry I'm late," Numantia calls softly as she enters her house. It's dark and silent.
And then she hears the tapping of small feet on the ground. The boy toddles to her, a happy smile on his face, and squeals in delight when she picks him up and kisses his rosy cheeks. He doesn't appear to be upset at her for having left him alone for much longer than usual.
"How have you been?" she asks, bouncing him.
The boy responds with some incomprehensible gibberish.
"Oh, that's nice." She puts him on the ground again, next to her round shield, and goes to light a fire. "Aren't you cold?"
Baby-speech again.
To a foreigner, this would be an odd scene. The boy is already a toddler; a regular child his age should already talk, speak at least basic sentences.
But Numantia knows better.
The boy is far from a regular child.
She's not sure how, but from the moment she first saw him she could tell that the boy is like her: a quasi-immortal being bound to a people.
He only looks three, but he's older than that. He was brought to her for protection many years ago and has barely grown up since. Numantia isn't sure why his development is so slow — she grew up fast, almost like a regular human. If she were to guess, she'd say it has to do with the state of his people. They must still be in the earliest of their development, just like him. She can't confirm her theories, though, for she doesn't know who his people are.
The boy doesn't have a name. Numantia wasn't told one when she agreed to look after him, and she's slightly scared of giving him one.
To her, he's just the boy.
"There's a war coming," Numantia tells him as she tries to bring the flames to life. "I'll face a greater enemy that I ever have before. But don't worry, boy—I am a warrior." The fire awakens and she smiles at its warmth. "You will be a great warrior, too, some day. I can tell."
The boy is being unusually quiet.
Numantia turns to find him chewing on her shield.
Sensing her gaze on him, the boy stops mid-chew and stares back. From behind his long eyelashes, his eyes gleam unapologetically. Numantia shakes her head. Slowly, the boy moves away from the shield, a thin string of saliva still connecting it to his mouth.
And then he laughs joyfully, clapping his hands together.
It's hard to be mad at him.
"Alright, you." Numantia picks him up again; the boy grabs a lock of her hair and puts it in his mouth. "Bed time."
~{x}~{§}~{x}~
When the news reaches Rome, he goes livid with rage.
The mightiest empire, the one who has conquered all the Mediterranean, has suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a small Iberic town. His legion of thirty thousand soldiers has been repelled by two thousand defenders.
The generals babble excuses: they knew the area better than us; we were ambushed; they fight like maddened beasts.
Rome doesn't listen. "We will crush them!" he roars.
Such humiliation can't be accepted. If he wants to conquer the entire peninsula—which he does—he can't let a small town become a symbol of resistance.
Numantia is strong-minded, he'll give her that.
But he'll raze her to the ground.
She'll be an example.
~{x}~{§}~{x}~
The second time Rome's army attacks, Numantia meets it in the field.
At first, everything goes her way. While her enemies carry a heavy armour and big shields, her warriors are lighter, faster. They wreak havoc among the enemy lines; their swords, double-edged and sharp, cut through armour, flesh and bone. The Numantians, heated by the warmth of the caelia they've drunk before the battle, chop their way through the Roman army, roaring and screaming.
It won't be that easy, though.
Rome has an ace up his sleeve.
Hidden at the rear of his army, he has sent ten beasts into battle. They are big as a mountain, with long tusks and noses; their grey skin is thick, and they can crush a whole man under their feet.
Numantia has heard of them before, though she doesn't have a word in her tongue for them. She knows they come from faraway lands beyond the sea. It wasn't too long ago that a mad general from Carthage attempted to bring many of those across the mountains to attack the heart of Rome. However, this is the first time she's seen one of those creatures in flesh and bone.
And she's terrified.
Upon seeing the bests charging in their direction, her warriors turn around and run back to the city, to the relative safety behind the walls.
~{§}~
Once she's back in the town, Numantia climbs to the top of the walls, ready to lead the defense, and is surprised to find the boy there. He's playing with a horn, blowing on the incorrect end and pouting when it won't make a sound.
"You shouldn't be here, boy," she scolds him.
"Prrrt," he replies, handing her the horn. Make it sound.
Numantia takes it without a thought and blows into it. The horn produces a loud, grave sound that covers the entire battlefield. The beasts stop for a moment and flap their large ears.
The boy giggles.
Numantia blows the horn again, and this time she's joined by many other warriors. The uproar that comes from the walls unnerves the beasts; they stop, shake their heads, move hesitantly.
A rock is tossed with precision from the walls. It hits one of the beasts on the head; it rears up, bellowing, and its panic spreads to the others. All ten beasts lose control.
Numantia watches in awe how the mighty weapon of Rome turns against him. Beside her, the boy claps, amused by the loud noise of the horns.
She smiles at him. "Great warrior," she says, ruffling his hair.
Then she raises her sword and lets out a powerful scream.
It's time to go hunt Romans.
~{§}~
Sunset is near when the enemy has retired and the Numantians can go out to the battlefield to aid their injured. They are hard to find in the sea of Roman bodies; Numantia fears some of her men might have perished under the bodies of the three beasts they've managed to kill.
She roams around the battlefield with the boy in her arms. She'd rather leave him inside, but he had refused to leave her side. Now he looks around with big eyes wide open, though Numantia can't tell exactly how he feels. Maybe he's still too young to understand.
"They died an honourable death," she finds herself saying; who she's trying to console, the boy or herself, she doesn't know. "Dying in battle is the greatest honour we can aspire to."
The boy squirms in her arms and she puts him on the ground. There, he crawls next to a body. Numantia recognizes one of her oldest warriors, a nice man with a permanent smile who often played with the boy. He lays on the ground, his chest pierced by a Roman spear, but his characteristic smile forever frozen on his lips.
The boy shakes the body, whining, and then looks at Numantia with sad eyes. "Fuuush?" he mumbles.
That's the sound he's come to associate with fire. He has seen quite a few funerary rituals to know this is what comes next.
But Numantia shakes her head. "Not this time, boy." She picks him up again and points at the sky, where vultures fly in circles over the carnage. "Look at them. They will eat the bodies of our fallen, our brave warriors, and carry their spirits straight to the Sun God."
The boy looks up for a short time. Then, he hides his face in the crook of her neck and starts to sob.
~{x}~{§}~{x}~
The terror of Rome.
That's what Numantia is being called.
Nearly twenty years after the first attack, the small town still stands, resisting every single attack Rome launches. The tale spreads across the empire, and Rome is angry. Terror? No, Numantia doesn't scare him. But he'd be lying if he said he doesn't dream of the day when the town finally falls. It will happen sooner or later: he has already subdued all nearby populations; he has equipped his armies with winter clothing (the cold took its toll on his soldiers on the first occasions); and, while his armies keep growing, the population of Numantia only decreases. For each soldier he loses fighting them, he can get ten new. Numantia can't do that.
She'll surrender soon, and when that happens, Rome will be sure to give her what she deserves.
No one will dare to stand up to him again after he's done with her.
~{§}~
General Scipio presents his action plan to Rome, and he listens intently. The man is experienced and lives up to the legend of his grandfather, who defeated Hannibal and won victory over Carthage. He intends to achieve equal fame by being the one who finally subdues Numantia.
And his plan in flawless.
Rome smiles, confident. "Lead the troops, general," he commands. "I'll accompany you.
"I want to be present when she falls."
~{x}~{§}~{x}~
Numantia instantly knows something isn't right when the Roman army arrives but doesn't attack. From the top of her walls, she watches how the big army divides itself in seven groups, and how each of them builds a different camp, all of them surrounding the hill.
They want to shut her in.
In her arms, the boy looks at the Romans with a curious blend of fascination and fear. He has grown up in the last decade, and while he has started to speak, he doesn't talk much. He needn't, though. Numantia has learnt to read his silences.
"Don't be afraid," she says to him. "We'll be alright."
That's a lie.
~{§}~
Not happy with the camps, the Romans connect them with tall wooden walls, whose stone foundations go in deep. Powerless, Numantia watches as she's imprisoned in her own home. "Those cowards…" she growls from time to time. They're scared of her; that's why they won't fight. They're just going to sit and wait until hunger pushes her to surrender.
Well, they can take a seat, because that's not happening anytime soon.
Numantia doesn't know the meaning of surrender.
But time passes, and she starts to run out of food.
First, they eat their animals, even the horses. When that happens, the boy looks at her with a question in his eyes. Holding his cape in place, he wears a horse-shaped golden brooch. He wants to know why they're eating the animals he's been taught to worship. Numantia just hugs him close and lies.
When there are no animals left, they eat their spare clothes. Numantia stopped eating a while ago so that her people had more food. The boy has a sad pout on his face as he chews a strip of cooked leather. He doesn't like to see Numantia in that state.
She puts on a brave smile for his sake.
~{§}~
One evening, Numantia stands on top of the walls, staring down at one of the Roman camps. She can't tell why she knows, but Rome himself is in there. She just feels it. He has come in person to watch her fall.
Numantia clenches her fists in rage. She won't surrender. She won't let her people be sold as slaves. She won't become Rome's trophy.
Oh, if only she could go down there and scream all of that to his face…
Sadly, she doesn't speak Latin.
She only knows five words; five words she memorized not so long ago.
As much as she hates to admit it, the time to use them might have come.
~{x}~{§}~{x}~
At night, Rome is enjoying a good wine with Scipio when he feels a presence drawing near.
It can only be Numantia.
He leaves his tent and then the camp, following his instinct, which takes him uphill, close to the walls. The thought that it might be a trap doesn't even cross his mind. This can only mean that they're going to surrender.
Finally.
It takes him a while to find Numantia.
She's very thin and pale, so much that she looks see-through. Her hair has lost its natural glow and what before was bright copper now looks like dry mud. Only her eyes remain like they used to: fierce and focused, and bluer than the sky and the sea. Her gaze burns into Rome's.
He smiles.
She walks a step closer to him.
He waits for her to announce that she surrenders.
She opens her mouth.
His smile grows wider.
But the words that leave her lips aren't what he's expecting to hear.
"You will never have me," she spits in accented Latin.
Furious, Rome leaps forward and closes his hand around her bony wrist. The eagle has his prey, and he's not letting her go.
The prey doesn't fight back. She just… glares. Her eyes, ice cold, never leave his. She's not afraid of him. "You will never have me," she repeats.
Suddenly, Rome realizes he's no longer holding her arm. Surprised, he looks down. There's no arm. He looks back at her and realizes that it hadn't been his imagination: she really is see-through.
That's when he finally notices the fire.
Numantia, the city, is burning.
And Numantia, the woman, is vanishing.
She has chosen death over him.
Rome roars in rage and attempts to grab what's left of the floating image of Numantia. That only accelerates the process and makes her completely vanish. Rome is standing alone on the hill, next to a burning town, and the victory he's been after for twenty years has a bittersweet taste.
~{§}~
He finds the boy by pure chance.
Refusing to believe that all Numantians have really chosen mass suicide over being captured and sold as slaves, Rome decides to walk around the burning town, in case he finds some last enemies attempting to escape in the middle of the chaos.
There's none of that.
But he does stumble upon something unexpected.
A child, barely a toddler, standing very still, his gaze fixed on the fire.
Even from the distance, Rome feels the child is special. He walks closer. The boy's messy hair is dark brown, not so different from his own. In his eyes, green like the forests around them, Rome can see the reflection of the dancing flames.
He doesn't know who the child is, but he's got a hunch. "Hispania," he calls, softly.
The boy turns to look at him and Rome has to choke back a gasp. The fire wasn't reflected in his eyes — it is in his eyes. The boy carries a raging fire within him, such a strong will to fight that is not unknown to Rome.
The child is still young, but when he grows up—if he grows up—he'll have it in him to rise above all others, to have the world at his feet.
Rome has no doubt he's inherited that from Numantia. She's given him pure, raw potential. Now it's his turn to help the boy master it.
"Hispania," he calls again, this time offering him his hand. "Come."
The boy stares at him for a long time.
And then, slowly, wraps his small hand around his fingers.
AN: Numantia (Numancia, in Spanish) was located in what today is the province of Soria, in Spain. It famously resisted the constant attacks by the Roman Empire for twenty years (153 – 133 BC), and though it was pretty much abandoned after it finally fell, we're lucky to have a lot of information about it thanks to Roman historians from back then. (For example, we know that the date of the first humiliating defeat (August 23rd, if I recall correctly) became a bad omen in Rome—no general would willingly engage in a fight on that day after 153 BC). This, however, is a double-edged sword, since all we know is the tale of the victors. For instance, their records say that their first army of 30,000 who disastrously lost against the Numantians faced an army of 25,000. Archaeology tells us there wasn't that number of locals in the whole area—the city would've had a population of 2,000 at most (including elders, women, and children). There are other "facts" that we aren't sure about: for instance, it appears to be true that Rome sent ten elephants; what isn't so certain is how Numantia managed to defeat them. What everyone seems to agree on is that the Numantians, refusing to surrender to the Romans, commited mass suicide and burnt down the city.
More details! Numantians crafted some incredibly good swords that Rome would end up copying and naming gladius hispaniensis (i.e. Hispanic sword). They also brewed a beer they called caelia, which they liked to drink before battle. Another important detail of their war against Rome is the cold. You may picture Spain as all warmth and sunshine, but that's just the Mediterranean coast. That's not Soria. It's fucking cold in Soria. And, since Rome was used to battling in the Mediterranean, the soldiers were dressed in summer fashion. It's estimated that, in the first battles, more Romans died of hypothermia than by the sword. (Forget about Russia—Numantia is the real MVP.) In fact, as Rome subdued neighbouring populations, one thing that was always present in peace treaties were warm clothes.
To end this note on a more cheerful note than the fanfic did (sorry about that), I'll just add that Numantia's story outlived it by far. Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, wrote about its heroic fight. Nowadays, it's Soria's pride and joy: the province's symbol is a horse modelled after the brooches Numantians used to keep their capes fixed (capes that, by the way, the Romans copied as well); and Soria's football team is named after Numantia. Even in our language! We have the expression "resistencia numantina", "Numantian resistance", which... I suppose you can guess the meaning. ;)
I'll stop now before I write a longer note than the actual story. Thanks for reading; reviews are always welcome! :D