The king of Iberia was in a terrible fix. Holding together his national alliance of different clans and tribes was never an easy thing at the best of times. Early victories over invaders had led to a sense of overconfidence, and the result had been the painful defeat in his one adventure in Gaul in which his general (and favourite cousin) had been killed by the same cheerful Gauls that he had been buying wine and melons from a month before. They had even sent his head back, packed in snow from the Pyrenees, as what they claimed was a kindly gesture.
Now the temporary truce with Carthage had broken down again as the Sea People decided they wanted to try again to lay claim to a northern holiday spot and trade entrepot. And with severe losses sustained in the last few battles, the Iberian armies were just not up to defeating the might of the sons of Phoenicia.
So the Iberians hunkered down and looked for an opportunity to strike at the invaders on their own terms. An opportunity of sorts presented itself in the hills outside the hill town of the Oretani. The Iberian army, which had been lurking around the flanks of the Carthaginian host, came close enough to threaten the enemy's rear, which caused the Carthaginian army to deploy for action, trying to chase off what they thought was a force of banditti.
Instead, they found a small army (small, but still an army) lurking in the hills above them. Surprisingly steep hills. Very rocky too. As the line of advance troops (auxilia and warbands) climbed up the slope to "chase off those rascals" as their commander had ordered, they found themselves getting short of breath and losing formation. Just as the leader of the warband contingent was beginning to realise that his supports weren't keeping close enough to, well, provide support), their front ranks found themselves in contact with javelin-throwing infantry hidden int he rocks above them. Infantry whose slingers seemed to be able to pick just the right space between files to shoot a stone or two before the ranks closed up again. Things suddenly started looking dicey. They should have fought these savages on level ground. The problem was that level ground seemed very hard to find in these hills.
Below, the leader of the Numidian scouting force was also shaking his head. He hoped that the mission he'd been sent on--to circle around behind the enemy and attack their rear--was feasible. It seemed as if all the Iberians he could see were up on the stony higher ground, a place he wasn't about to lead his scouts. Then ahead he saw a force of light horse. Somethign odd about them, but they were someone he could fight. He turned and waved to his column leaders to spread out. They could envelop the enemy's right and sweep them up, if they moved quickly.
The Carthaginian general frowned. Things on the hill seemed to be progressing slowly, if at all. He gestured to the polemarch commanding the phalanx to send some of him men up there to help with the fight. Where were the Numidians? They should have ridden all the way around the enemy by now; the Spanish had no horse to fight, so the scouts should be in position to ride down the stragglers his foot would surely be chasing off those hills any time now.
The foot were not so sure. First their allied scutarii had been beaten and fled the field. Then the leader of the warbands and his leading troops had been cut off in a ravine and decimated by enemy who rolled rocks downhill on them peppering them with light spears and sling stones. Now the spearmen who had come up from the main army were finding it nearly impossible to keep their formation on the difficult ground of the mountainside. Screams from the other side of the hill resembled horses being hamstrung and gutted--normally just a part of battle, but they knew the Iberians had no horse, so it could only be their own troops suffering. Now... another avalanche of boulders were followed by a screaming horde of swordsmen. The last of the warbands fled...
As they trailed back down the coast, the Carthaginian general pondered how things could have gone so wrong. Sending the warband up into the hill to figh the Spanish auxiliaries had not worked out well, admittedly, and reinforcing them with spearmen had been his only option, but a poor one in retrospect. He still could not puzzle out what had happened to his Numidians. The survivors insisted they had driven back a force of light horsemen only to be ambushed and broken when the lighthorsemen turned back to fight again and a band of swordsmen had appeared from the rocks on the Numidians' flank and started hamstringing their horses. An ambush like that was typical of Iberian mountain fighting and their adroit use of combined arms. But eh Spanish *had no horse*! All his scouting reports had confirmed this.
And as for the story of their being led by a warleader with no head...
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