Pride of Carthage (16 page)

Hamilcar heard them both out, standing with his arms folded, the bunched muscles of his arms prickled with cold bumps, his breathing phlegmy and difficult. He pointedly did not comment on the question of his health, but he did overrule Hannibal. It was not simply a matter of pleasure, he explained, but an opportunity to build political alliances.

They set out with a mounted company two hundred strong, leaving some behind to maintain the siege. Hamilcar rode at the side of the Iberian, sharing a skin of warmed, spiced wine between them. He honestly seemed to enjoy the other man's company, although Hamilcar was such a statesman that it was hard to say for sure. The sky was slate-gray and so thick that one could not sight the orb of sun in it. It rained steadily, as it had done all week long, not freezing on the ground and yet so unrelenting as to chill one to the bowels. Hasdrubal, following the muddy flanks of his father's horse, wished only that they would move faster. He had notions of native girls in his head, of wine and warmth and all the tastes he had developed a liking for. Silly things to think on, he knew, not worthy of his consideration. Glancing to his side he saw his brother and knew from his focused, stern face that no such desires clouded his thoughts. Hasdrubal remembered thinking an ill thought of his brother at that moment. It was something he might well have forgotten, but it was welded into his consciousness by the actions that interrupted it.

A Massylii scout came galloping in from the rear and beckoned anxiously for Hamilcar's council. He said something in his own tongue that got the commander's complete attention. He pulled up and moved off to hear the scout. What the Massylii said was this: A mixed company of Iberian infantry and cavalry had dropped into the valley behind them, cutting them off from Ilici and trailing behind them. What number? The Numidian was not sure for the visibility was poor, but he estimated a thousand, perhaps half that again concealed by tree cover. He believed they had seen him and would be fast behind.

“What people?” Hamilcar asked.

The Numidian, without raising his gaze but using only his chin, indicated those he believed responsible.

Hamilcar snapped his gaze around at Orissus. Meeting his eyes was all the confirmation he needed. The Iberian recognized this. He yanked his horse into motion, followed at once by the rest of his company. Hamilcar barked an order. Monomachus and a small contingent of cavalry went off in pursuit. But before Hamilcar could speak another command—with divots of mud thrown high from horse hooves still falling around them—the ambushing army breached the far horizon.

It was not even a battle or a running skirmish but simply pure flight after that. There was no time to consult maps save the internal one that Hamilcar had etched inside his skull. They rode west at a dead run, vaulting over the bodies of Orissus and his men, not even pausing to comment on their betrayers. The opening of a valley to the north brought with it yet another band of attackers. The Carthaginians raced past and forded the river without a pause. They emerged on the other side under a barrage of arrows, some hitting their targets, most skittering across the stones. They were at this for the better portion of the winter afternoon.

By the time they reached the impassable river the horses were lathered beyond all health. Before them churned an unnamed river that would have been easily crossed in summer. But now it was in full spate, high enough to cover the base of trees and churn brown water through branches usually the home of birds and squirrels, not fish. His father gave a command then, the only one of his that Hasdrubal wished he had disobeyed.

“You two,” he said, “ride south with the Sacred Band. Go now, at all speed. Meet me in a week's time in Acra Leuce.”

With that, Hamilcar spun his horse and rode, yelling to the rest of the soldiers to follow him. Hasdrubal glanced at his brother and for a moment saw the same concern on his face. To go upriver was madness. With the Iberians fast behind him, Hamilcar would have no escape route, for the river in its higher sections would surely be a tumbling torrent. Hasdrubal wanted to cry out for his father to stop, to halt, to reach forward and grasp the great man by the hair and stop him. He wanted all this, but turning once more to his brother he found Hannibal's face had changed. The visage now directed at him was set in stone, unkind and pitiless.

“You heard,” Hannibal said. “Turn and ride as ordered. Wipe the questions from your face.”

And so he had. He could no more disobey his brother than he could his father.

It was in a warm chamber in Acra Leuce that Monomachus brought them the news. Hamilcar Barca was no more. Drowned in crossing the upper reaches of that mad river. He and his horse flung and battered until lifeless, pushed and shoved and tossed by the muscle of water around the bone of stone. His father died so that his sons might live, for surely Hamilcar had chosen his route in full awareness of the risks. He had led the pursuers on and thereby sacrificed his own life.

Hasdrubal refused to look at Hannibal, though they heard the news together. He felt a hot anger toward him like nothing he had felt before or since, but it lasted only until he felt his brother's hands on his shoulders, then his arms around him. With that the anger went unmasked and betrayed what it truly was, the shocked sorrow of one who is suddenly an incomplete link in a chain, an orphan not yet ready to lose his father because he has not yet become completely a man of his own. Neither a child nor a father but a brother still. For some reason it was this last realization that set him to tears.

These memories did not leave him until late in the morning, when the preparations for Hannibal's address to the mass of returning soldiers took precedence. Hasdrubal, attending his brother in the last moments before his speech, could hear the gathering crowd outside the city walls: the entire army, some ninety thousand strong, brought together to hear Hannibal's plan for the upcoming campaign. Certainly the men knew whom they were going to war with, and knew that they would take the battle to Rome, but only now, on this morning, would the commander reveal the entirety of the plans to them.

Hannibal dressed with more care than he usually allowed, more attention to luxurious detail. He even accepted suggestions from his vain younger brother. He wore a breastplate with an image of Elissa—Carthage's founder—at its center. The woman's face was beautiful and ferocious and vacant all at once. Beneath this, his tunic was pure white, sewn with red thread and embroidered along the shoulders in gold. Even his sandals were carefully chosen, fine leather tanned to near black, adorned with silver studs. Hasdrubal had never seen him look finer, but Hannibal's mind was on other things.

“At the end of that corridor I will look out across a vast and well-trained army,” Hannibal said. “But can I tell them what the future holds? No, because I do not have that power unless they give it to me. In fact, I'll propose a future, and they'll tell me if I've imagined correctly. And then over this, Fate will sit in judgment.”

“Brother, they would follow you anywhere,” Hasdrubal said.

“Perhaps. The Persian kings believed their troops to be nothing but instruments of their will, yet their numbers were no match for the anger of free men. No, when I step onto that platform I am posing a question. It is they who answer.”

Hasdrubal heard this in silence and nodded his eventual acceptance of it. Still watching the empty corridor, he asked, “May I ask you one last thing?”

“Of course.”

“I don't know whether it's been asked, and I would hear your answer. Is there no other course than war with the Romans? Some say that if we ignored them we could enjoy the empire we've built here. We could expand further, equals to the Romans and alongside them. I don't run from battle. You know that. I am your student in all things. I question you only because I would understand completely. Do we hate them so much?”

Hannibal watched his brother's downturned face. “Do you remember when, as boys, we used to chase the shadows of clouds across the land? Mounted, we would outrace the wind and smite whole legions of foes made of nothing but white vapor.”

Hasdrubal nodded. Hannibal smiled and left the thought; he did not pick it up again or explain its significance.

“You ask an honest question, and in answer to it I will speak of two points. Yes, I do hate them. I had the joy of spending more years with our father than any of his sons. He burned with a hatred for the Romans. They have robbed us of so much. They are treacherous and remorseless and cunning. I believe our father to have been among the wisest of men. He hated Rome; I do as well.”

Mago and Bostar appeared from the corridor leading to the landing. They indicated with nods that all was ready. The men were waiting. Hannibal nodded and motioned them back along the corridor.

“But I'm no fool,” Hannibal said. “Hatred is to harness, not to be harnessed by. I wouldn't attack Rome simply out of hate. The truth is we've no choice. The Romans have a hunger different from any the world has yet seen. I have many spies among them. They bring me the pieces of a puzzle I've been fitting together for some time now. I have enough of it clear before me to know that Rome will never let us be. Perhaps they'd allow us five years of peace, perhaps ten or fifteen, but soon they'd come for us again. They grow stronger yearly, Hasdrubal. If we don't fight them now, on our terms, we will fight them later, on theirs. Father knew this as well and schooled me in it while young. Nothing he said on this matter has proved mistaken. We all want power, yes. Riches, yes. Slaves to satisfy us. Carthage is no different. But in their secret hearts the Romans desire more than just these things. They dream of being masters of the entire world. Masters of something intangible, beyond mere power or riches. They'll settle for nothing less. In such a dream, you and I would be but slaves.”

He let this declaration sit a moment, then continued, inhaling a breath and gathering himself up. “So my answer is twofold. I hate Rome, yes, but I accept this war because I have no choice. We'll be fighting for nothing less than the world, my brother. Nothing less than everything there is. We chase clouds no longer. We couldn't, even if we wished to.”

The commander rose and placed a hand on his brother's shoulder and squeezed the bunched muscle there. Without another word he moved away, across the room and into the corridor. His sandals scraped across the grainy stone. The sound of them faded and Hasdrubal listened on. He knew the moment Hannibal stepped out onto the platform above the waiting army. The roar that greeted him was deafening.

I
n her own way Aradna had been born to war. To be a follower of war, that is. One of the ragged many who trailed behind the machinery of carnage, scavenging a life from dead bodies and burning villages and the strewn chaos of spent battlefields. She never knew her mother, but her father had been almost good to her. With the help of a single mule, he had driven a cart laden with found objects for sale, trinkets so inconsequential that soldiers in the passion of battle failed to strip them from the bodies of the slain: silver rings, shot pellets for the slingers, sandals, strips of leather, healing ointments, talismans from various countries, figures of gods significant only to the faithful of certain sects. He was a gruff man, a Greek, big-shouldered and well known among the horde. He was famous for having punched a Bythian mercenary so hard during an argument that the man was left literally speechless—he who had been a loudmouthed creature could no longer form words with his unwieldly tongue. Aradna's father might have been a warrior in his own right, but he chose to live by exploiting other men's follies, not joining them.

While he lived, Aradna's childhood was one of relative safety. He might not have known kindness and how to show it, but in his way he was soft on her. He spoke quietly at night, told her of her mother, of the small village they had fled from years ago, of the great wrong done to them that pushed them from the island he loved dearly and so wanted to return to. All this wandering was nothing, he told her. These were simply the trials he must face as an actor in the drama that was his life. He wanted only to return to Greece. He prayed daily that the writer of his story would provide the means, would make his tale a saga but not a tragedy. He watched her in the morning so that sometimes she awoke to his gaze above her and was comforted by it.

He was taken by an illness that came upon him quickly and simply killed him. She was twelve and was first raped that evening by the very man who had helped her bury him, her father's friend of many years. It was payment, the man said, and if so the bill was a large one, for he claimed her as his own and traveled with her tied to the back of the cart that had been her father's. He took her nightly, calling out another woman's name as he came and always angry with her afterward. She did not mourn when he died, taken slowly by a pinprick wound that started in his foot and ate up his leg to the center of him.

She was in farm country south of Castulo and found temporary peace in a village. She worked for an elderly man who loved to look at her but could do no more. He spoke to her as he said he could not to his own daughters. It was hard work, farming, but a far cry from the life she had thus far lived. She felt in the daily work some distant familiarity, an ancestral memory. She might have stayed on there after the old man's death but his daughters ran her from the property, fearful that their husbands would be drawn to her. She might have asked those two to think of her as a sister but she knew they could not. They were not kin, and they saw nothing in her except their own lacks.

She was fourteen then and became a scavenger once more. She left childhood behind and quickly grew hard in her woman's body. She became lean with muscle, and thick-skinned. Her mind had a sharpness of purpose that never rested, for neither did the carnivores sniffing around her. She was not the only female on the battlefields, but her face was prettier than most and her slim, androgynous form attracted men's stares. Her eyes were the color and quality of opal. Set against her tanned skin and even features they were two curses from behind which she viewed the world.

She walked from Gades to the Tagus and traversed the spine of the Silver Mountains and the whole coastline of Iberia as far as New Carthage. She was present at the fall of Arbocala and witnessed firsthand the cruel power of the Carthaginians. Everywhere she found men the same, their desires as predictable as her need to repel them. They came at her in the night and during the day and during sunrise and dusk: she fought them equally. She permanently damaged one man's sight by dragging a jagged fingernail across his eye; another she stabbed in the abdomen with a spearhead; still another she bit in the cheek and half-pulled the flesh away. For this last she was beaten insensible and raped with a retributory violence.

But for all these trials she was not defeated but tempered, fired to new strength. She was the victim, yes, but she saw within men's behavior a frailty that made them weak. Men might have been the stronger sex, but when they were filled with lust they were the more vulnerable, too. To sate themselves they must bear their naked, upraised clubs before them. Perhaps this was the final thing that defeated many women, seeing that member engorged, one-eyed and hooded like the evil serpent that it was. She had this thought during her waking hours but it came to her again while dreaming. A dead woman spoke to her and said that serpents—no matter how venomous—could be squashed beneath a well-placed heel.

When Aradna joined the train behind Hannibal's army she did so with little interest in the war's outcome. She walked behind the men but not out of devotion to them. This was simply the next campaign: either side might provide her the things she sought. She kept a treasure in a bag around her neck. She wore it like a talisman, and indeed it did contain within it the bones of an eagle taken from the egg, cloves of garlic often replaced to keep the scent strong, a single lock of hair said to have been snipped from Clytemnestra's murdered body so many years before, a tiny statue of Artemis carved from whalebone. But also within were several gold coins, the beginning, she hoped, of the small fortune she would need to buy herself a plot of land in that faraway country she had never seen but from which she had sprung. She followed Hannibal's army, but she was concerned with no destiny save her own.

Publius Scipio was much like any other young noble at the start of the war with Hannibal. He was of medium build, not bulky of musculature, but well sculpted and fit from training. His face was cut close to the bones that formed it, topped with light brown hair. Indeed, his friends often joked with him that his profile was fine enough to be minted on a coin, though why anybody would want to do that none of them could imagine. His father had already arranged for his marriage to the daughter of a prominent senator, Aemilius Paullus, a sure sign that his future shone brightly. He had every intention of honoring the distinguished family from which he sprang—through service in the Senate, through the acquisition and generous sharing of wealth, through noble comportment, and through distinguished conduct in war. He was, considering all this, quite receptive to the news of a coming conflict with Carthage. He had been schooled since boyhood that only through arduous struggle could a man truly make a name for himself. Struggle, therefore, was something to be sought out.

Publius believed—as much as is possible in a vibrant young man sniffing out his own view of the world—that his father was superior to other men in all matters of importance. Cornelius Scipio had been elected consul in a moment when the Roman Senate anticipated war. Thereby the people themselves had demonstrated their confidence in him. When the elder Scipio laid out his plans for a two-pronged attack—himself sailing for Iberia while the other consul, Sempronius Longus, aimed at Carthage itself—the young soldier believed it could not fail. Even when the threatened uprising among the Boii and Insubres detained them in the region of the Padus, Publius did not doubt that the delay was of little significance. The barbarians' pretensions needed to be checked. All knew that not that far back in the history of Rome the likes of them had sacked the city itself. But those were different days. A different Rome. And the Gauls needed to be reminded of it by occasional demonstrations of force.

They burned villages and seized property, fought skirmishes with the wild creatures, and watched dry-eyed as the particularly recalcitrant hung to their suffocating deaths upon wooden crosses. They suffered some casualties, felt seething animosity behind all those blue eyes, but never truly met the anticipated armed, organized resistance. The younger Scipio was later to recall that a Gallic woman he bedded for a casual evening's entertainment had uttered Hannibal's name as she crept from his tent. This made little sense at the time and was soon forgotten, only to be remembered later with the significance of a curse belatedly understood.

Confident that the would-be rebellion had been squelched before it began, Cornelius and his legions sailed for Massilia, on the coast just west of the Alps. The consul was fighting with the latter stages of a cold, felt feverish, and complained that his feet had never recovered from the rot of a wet spring. He sent his son to meet in council with the city's magistrates, and then retired to the comfort of his chambers. It was there that Publius found him that evening, relaxing in his brother's company.

Cornelius sat on a low couch, his toga drawn up high on his thighs, bare legs propped up on a wooden stool. Even in repose the consul had about him an air of authority. He was lean, his face the model for his son's sculpted features. A teenage boy knelt before him, with one of the man's feet clasped in both hands. The young man held the foot just before his face, as if smelling it. His energy was concentrated in his fingers, in the balls of his thumb and the kneading they were administering to the consul's insole and toe pad.

Cornelius, noticing his son, said, “Do not think me turning into some vile old soldier. These feet will be the death of me. They were spoiled in years past, and spring campaigns are ill to them. This boy has fine hands and he soothes them. I take some pleasure in it, though I am not yet a Greek.”

Publius nodded a greeting at his uncle, who stood near the far wall, contemplating the world through a tiny window, holding a goblet of wine just under his nose. Gnaeus was of medium height, but thick in the legs and torso, with long, powerful arms some compared to a blacksmith's. He bore little resemblance to his elder brother except in speech: the brothers' voices were nearly identical even to ears accustomed to them both.

“I've nothing ill to say against Greeks,” Publius said.

“That is true. I forget you associate with a fair number of them when at leisure. Perhaps it is your decency we should be concerned with. You bring me news, don't you?”

“I bring you a report,” Publius said. “It's news if it is reliable, but that I'm not sure of. Apparently some of the Volcae claim that Hannibal has crossed the Pyrenees and is approaching the Rhône.”

Gnaeus jerked his head toward his nephew, spilling a few drops of wine on his toga. “That can't be!”

Cornelius received the news more calmly, with little expression save for the skeptical wrinkling of his lips. “What does Marius make of this claim?”

“The governor credits it. He heard this from a trusted informer, with the blessing of tribal leaders of importance. He says they have no reason to lead us astray. Since he's been posted in Massilia, they have caused no real trouble. And the Volcae seem to need no convincing of Hannibal's threat. They have their own reasons to hate Carthage, it seems. Also, this is in keeping with reports from Catalonia.”

“Catalonia is not the Rhône valley,” Gnaeus said. “How is this in keeping with such reports?”

“It's possible, I mean. He may have been able to cross the Pyrenees—”

“True enough,” Cornelius said, “but why would he? Our spies have confirmed that he means to fight within Iberia, where he is strong. I understood him to have planned an Iberian war in detail. Why change his plans now?”

“Perhaps our spies were not worth the gold we paid them,” Gnaeus said.

Cornelius tugged his foot away from the servant, who parted his hands and knelt immobile, waiting instruction. The consul set his feet on the ground and pushed himself upright. He was a tall man among Romans, a brow's height above his son, not an old man although in the later years of his military service. Though he was no longer in his physical prime one could forget this at moments when he gathered his stature around him. He did so just then, shooing the servant away and placing an arm on his son's shoulder to walk him toward Gnaeus.

“Why would the brute cross the Pyrenees?” Cornelius asked again. “Easy enough to believe he would make a grab for all of Iberia up to the Pyrenees, but into the land of the Volcae? Too much at once, and too close to our interests. He would have to know that we would not allow it. Why stretch himself so when he knows we are preparing to attack him? Sempronius queried me in writing whether I feared Hannibal intended to cross the Alps. The idea gave me pause, but I had to dismiss it. It would be absurd, and—impetuous though Barcas are—Hannibal is no madman. So what then . . . ?”

The consul let the question hang. Some might have found it an invitation to answer, but Publius knew it was not meant for him. He took a goblet of wine, swirled it beneath his nose, and awaited the continuation of his father's musings.

“Perhaps it is a ruse,” Gnaeus offered.

Cornelius tipped a few droplets into his brother's goblet, drank a long draft from his own, and then nodded agreement. “It may well be a trick to keep us occupied here instead of focused on a direct attack of New Carthage. He knows he overstepped himself, but he is bold. He has decided to pull back by pushing forward, if you understand me. If he keeps our attention here, he may yet save his city. He might, at the end of the year, withdraw into Iberia and so end the year retreating, but with more gained than lost. This is why I am still resolved to press on into Iberia. Gnaeus will land at Emporiae to prepare the way. I'll follow with the bulk of the army. Let Hannibal get word that his own city is besieged, and that Sempronius is sailing for his homeland. He will see then that ruses are nothing against determined might. Don't you agree?”