Pride of Carthage

It was a harsh country they wintered in, cold beyond reason. The Cavares welcomed them in their simple manner, but the rough customs by which they lived provided little in the way of comforts. When it was not snowing it was sleeting; when it was not sleeting, a chill rain fell, perhaps worse than the frozen stuff. It seemed to seep deeper into the skin and settle in the bones, in the chest cavity, under the eyes. Days of clear brilliance occasionally scattered the clouds, but the nights after such days were colder still, all the heat rushing up into the heavens.

Silenus caught a cough while crossing the higher reaches of the Pyrenees. He nursed it throughout the long season along the Rhône. He spat up bile that changed color from one day to the next. For a time his body burned with fever. He lay sweating, head spinning; at the mercy of a Cavaris mystic who draped his naked body with shreds of animal fur drenched in various unguents. At first Silenus tried to swat the hooded creature away, especially when he saw the sores festering on his hands and caught a glimpse of the conglomeration of features from behind which he viewed the world, a face as wrinkled and bulbous as if it had been baked of lumpy dough. Later, he grew too weak to move. He closed his eyes and cursed the man in long Greek diatribes that went wholly ignored. Nor did he thank the mystic when he regained his health. Of course he was going to recover, he said. He would have done so sooner if that ogre had not harassed him so.

From then on Silenus ventured out only rarely. When he did, he found the frozen world a strange place indeed. He spent a portion of each day writing down his observations. The bare branches of trees that dipped down into the frigid stream currents fascinated him. The water flowed by in its liquid form, but it clung to knuckles of wood in knobs of ice. He had noticed that men sent to reconnoiter the mountains during clear spells came back with faces and hands as sunburned as they would have been in Africa. And he found certain fishes frozen in chunks of ice. Testing an assertion of the local children, he set them to thaw in a bowl beside his cot and found they returned to life as they warmed, flapping a tail or fin as each came free, rolling their eyes. These northern lands made no sense. He would have rather stayed with Hanno, whom he thought of often. But such a decision was not his to make, and the priority was for him to get back to Hannibal.

The state of Hasdrubal's health began to worry him. He suffered no physical infirmity, but his spirits sank so low that he sometimes received no visitors at all for a day or two at a time. When Silenus did gain the man's tent, he invariably found him in the same position, hunched at the edge of his cot, a black bear fur draped over his shoulders. The upper skull and jaw of the beast rested on Hasdrubal's head. The creature's teeth pressed against his forehead. He had even gone so far as to run the bear's legs down his arms and secure the paws to the back of his hands. He spent the day scratching figures into the dry dirt of the floor, wiping them clean, and then drawing again on some other inspiration. Silenus never figured out just what he was doing. He thought the pictures might be charts, battle plans, a map of the territory they were entering. Sometimes he caught suggestions in the lines that reminded him of parts of the human form—an eye, a lock of hair draped over a forehead, contours that could have etched a chin. But Hasdrubal always scratched through the images before he could really make sense of them.

When asked about his health, his thoughts on the situation they found themselves in, the coming year, the state of the men's morale, the best way to communicate with Hannibal, the prospect of negotiating the Alps in early spring—when asked anything—Hasdrubal, if he responded at all, answered with the same phrase.

“Bears sleep in winter,” he said.

Silenus found no comfort at all in this answer, even apart from the wild smile that accompanied it, the great bulbous swell of his eyes, and the way he chewed on one corner of his lips with teeth that—in the dim light—seemed inordinately large. Asked to explain the statement, Hasdrubal merely repeated it. Then he grunted a few times, as the creature might. Silenus stopped asking questions. Instead, he reminisced about the things he had seen with Hannibal and conjectured with willed optimism about what the future held for them all. He tried to remind Hasdrubal that a world of possibility lay beyond this Gallic hell: people and places and joys yet to be discovered.

He was not sure whether he succeeded in these attempts, but with the first thawings of spring the bear stirred into motion. Hasdrubal gathered together the ragged remainder of the troops he had escaped Baecula with. All told, just over eleven thousand of them had survived the winter, far fewer than Hannibal had at his command at the same geographical point. None of them looked eager to fight, but all wanted out of that cold place and they knew they had mountains to cross no matter what. So they accepted their general's lead.

Hasdrubal pushed the army across the upper Rhône, where the river was narrow and posed only a moderate obstacle. He moved ready for trouble, his lookouts vigilant and his soldiers marching with spears at hand. Silenus had sworn that he could be of no aid in negotiating the Alps, but this was mostly because he wanted no responsibility for errors. In actuality, he managed to have an opinion every step of the way. For some time Hasdrubal joked with him that his only aim was to avoid any route that even remotely resembled the one he had taken with Hannibal. Silenus did not dispute it. Actually, he was happy to see the Barca find humor again. Perhaps his winter-long concern had been unnecessary.

The Gauls, remembering the first passing horde, greeted this new one with curiosity instead of fear. And perhaps with a measure of pity, for Hasdrubal's men looked none too impressive. Even the wild people who perched on the crags offered little trouble: stolen livestock, a camp follower snatched here and there, an occasional trap set more for amusement than to do real damage. The Allobroges would undoubtedly have proved more menacing, but the Carthaginians avoided them.

And they had chosen their route well. The crossing was—by Silenus' reckoning—blissfully uneventful. Much happened, certainly. Avalanches; days spent trekking into dead-end valleys. A blizzard howled over them for three days straight, then vanished. Stores of grain were ruined by damp; a pack of wolves that had a taste for human flesh attacked stragglers. But there was nothing to match the epic struggles he remembered from Hannibal's venture. They just progressed. Up and up. And then, at some point subtle enough that Silenus failed to notice it, they began their descent, at a moderate incline, via a different pass altogether. Before he dared to believed it they were out of the mountains and onto blessedly even terrain.

On arriving in the region of the Padus River, Hasdrubal sought to correspond with Hannibal. He did not know exactly where his brother was, or in what condition, but above all he wanted to unite their forces. He dictated a longer letter than Silenus would have expected. It seemed, actually, that he had more to discuss than just the logistics of war. He had been so long without his brother that he wished to explain everything that had passed in the years that separated them. So he did. Silenus transcribed it faithfully for him.

This completed, Hasdrubal gave orders for the dispatch of a group of skilled riders. They were to ride south at all haste, to weave their way secretly through the long stretch of Italy, through Apulia, and on into the region of Tarentum, where they hoped to find Hannibal. As soon as the riders thundered out of camp—their horses throwing up divots of soil—Hasdrubal ordered the march commenced.

They approached Placentia as if to lay siege to the place, but as they had no siege equipment the display was really for show. Instead they sat outside the city, taunting the Romans, who refused to climb down from the battlements and fight them. The greater show he made of spoiling for a fight, the more the local Gauls felt the call of war in their blood. Representatives trickled in at first, testing the possibilities for new alliances with the Carthaginians, new promises. Hasdrubal made grand projections about the coming year. He had left Iberia, he said, to join his brother and finish this war. In the ports to the south, he would be joined by tens of thousands of reinforcements from Carthage. He would unite with Hannibal to crush Rome itself. He would drench the streets in blood, a hundred killed for each wrong he could recall: each soldier unjustly killed, each woman raped, each treaty disregarded, every pompous Latin word. He would see the city in flames, loot the place, and drag Roman women through the streets by fistfuls of their hair.

By the time he left, fifteen days after he had arrived, a horde of thirty thousand Cisalpine Gauls trailed behind him. Apparently, they liked what they heard. Outside Mutina, they picked up guides who claimed to know all the best routes south and how to connect one to another for maximum devious effect. With them in the fore, they marched south. At first, the guides hardly seemed worth their pay: The army simply trotted down the Via Flaminia, a road like none any of them had ever beheld. So wide and flat, the stones set with such precision. Initially, they made almost double their normal time, so enthused were the men by their progress, by the fact that the enemy's own handiwork was helping them on. They passed Ariminum undisturbed. The townspeople gathered on the fortifications and watched their progress. The soldiers of the garrison held their positions, pikes jutting up into the sky. But they stayed shut behind the town's gates, so Hasdrubal carried on toward his goal. They followed the coastal road past Fanum Fortunae. The guides had them cross the Metaurus River and proceed along the relatively open ground toward Sena Gallica.

It was here, finally, that they discovered the Romans were not going to let them stroll on indefinitely. An army under Livius Salinator waited for them, encamped in a wide valley mostly cultivated with grain. For four days the two armies sat assessing each other. Cavalry units skirmished on a couple of occasions. The Romans shifted the position of their camp, although it was unclear what advantage this offered them. By his assessment, Hasdrubal's forces slightly outnumbered the enemy's. With so much of his force composed of unruly Gauls, however, he hesitated to engage on such open terrain. He tried to find traps hidden in the land, but the position was not one suited to wily tactics. It favored open battle. Noba volunteered to lead the Libyans on a night march to circumnavigate the Romans and surprise them from the rear at an agreed-upon moment. But as they debated this an individual arrived who changed everything with the news he bore.

This spy had barely escaped the Roman camp with his life. Indeed, a sentry had noted his solitary departure. Before he had made contact with Carthaginian forces he had found himself running from a band of Roman cavalry. He was bashed about his helmeted head with a sword, cut on the shoulder. He swatted away a flying javelin with one hand, gashing his palm in the process. He escaped by plunging down a ravine too steep for his mounted pursuers. The fall was nearly vertical. He bounced from rock to rock, ricocheted off the trunks of trees, and ended his flight suspended in a clump of shrubs so thick that he only broke free of them with some difficulty. For all this, the Roman cavalry was still chasing him when he sprinted into sight of the Carthaginian outposts. The Romans drew up at the last moment, considered the view of the amused Carthaginians and of the Numidians riding out from the main camp. And then they bolted, suddenly recalling that there was a more substantial threat to their safety than anything that lone man might represent.

When all this was reported to Hasdrubal he had the bound man brought to him. He studied the pox-scarred olive skin, the squat build, the wide forehead, and the simple garments that marked him as a legionary. He turned and waved Silenus nearer, as a translator. One of the guards standing at the man's side said that was not necessary: The man spoke their tongue. Hasdrubal's forehead creased at this, four jagged lines that did not relax until he asked, simply, “What have you to say?”

The man bowed his head and kissed his fingertips in the way of the Theveste people. He spoke perfect Carthaginian, laced with rich tones that matched his greeting. He offered himself as a servant of Baal and praised all those who were likewise. He said that though he was of Roman blood and could speak Latin he had been loyal to Carthage since his father had been captured in the first great war. He was born of an African mother in the same region as Didobal, wife of Hamilcar. He had trained from birth in the ways of his father's people so that he might eventually be of some service to his adopted nation. In the second year of this war he had found his way into the Roman ranks, having received instructions that issued from Bostar himself. But since that man's tragic death, he had been orphaned inside the enemy host with no connection to Hannibal and no one to report to. He bided his time and stayed true to the gods they shared and waited for the right moment to break free. He had found that now, and the news he brought was grave beyond any he had held before.

“And what is that?”

The man bowed his head again, kissed his fingertips. Then he pushed his hand out to either side in a gesture that meant he pushed away deceit and now spoke pure truth. “You are sitting in a trap,” he said. “The messengers you sent did not reach Hannibal. Nero captured them near Tarentum and found the correspondence meant for your brother. He knows everything. I am a soldier in his army, one of the six thousand he selected. He left the south seven days ago, claiming to march on Lucania, but he turned north once out of your brother's sight. He marched us like a madman and two days ago joined our forces with those of Livius Salinator.”

“Six thousand men?” Hasdrubal asked.

The man nodded. “And a thousand cavalry.”

“I saw no such thing,” Noba said.

“We arrived at night. Not all of us have mustered on the field. Many stay among the camp followers. We sleep cramped in the other men's tents or on the open ground. We await only Lucius Licinius. He's shadowed you down from Placentia and now blocks the Via Flaminia. When he arrives with his ten thousand, all will be in place.”

“They'll outnumber us by fifteen thousand,” Hasdrubal said quietly, his voice tinged with disbelief.

“What Nero is this?” Silenus asked. “If you speak of Claudius Nero, I don't believe you. He has a long record and none of it as bold as what you describe.”

The man regarded the scribe, then turned back to Hasdrubal to answer. “The Greek speaks the truth. But so do I. I cannot explain it, but please believe me, my lord.”

“And Hannibal knows nothing of this?” Noba asked.

The man shook his head. “Not from the mouths of the men you sent. They talk no more.”

Hasdrubal received this last statement with the slightest shake of his head. He looked up at Noba, at which sign the Ethiopian stepped close to interrogate the man further. To each question the man had a reasonable answer. And each answer boomed like a mighty drum struck in the distance, moving closer with each blow. If he spoke truly, they found themselves in an even graver situation than Baecula. For now they were in the enemy's land, Hannibal still far away, unaware of them. . . . But only if the spy spoke truly.

“We don't know him,” Noba said, after the man had been taken away. “He says he reported to Bostar, but I've never heard of him before. Perhaps this is a ploy.”

“To what purpose?” Hasdrubal asked.

“To confuse us. To make us flee. To lead us into some error.”

The creases of Hasdrubal's brow fixed in a way that Silenus found uncomfortable just to look at. He bit one corner of his lips, chewed on it, gnawed like a mongrel at a scrap of sinew. “He knew of my message,” he said. “He knew the number of men and where I sent them. His speech was accented with the tongue of the Theveste.”

“There are numberless means of deceit,” Noba said. “Can he not be made to prove himself? What thing could we ask him—”

“No,” Hasdrubal snapped. “If he's been coached in how to lie to us, how can we prove it for sure? Do we torture him? If he tells the truth, then he can only tell the truth. If he lies, he can only keep on lying, because he'll know the worth of his life if he confesses. I cannot see my way clear of this. Why is nothing straightforward? Not one thing happens as it should. Not one thing . . .”

He bit off his words, bit his lip again, turned, and fixed the scribe in his glare. “Silenus, what does your heart tell you?”

The Greek raised his hands, palm upward, and groaned at being brought into the discussion. He looked between the frame created by his hands and shook his head. “These things are not for me—”

“What does your heart tell you? Just say it!”

“I believe the man,” Silenus said.

“Noba?”

The Ethiopian said, “We must be cautious. Send scouts—”

“The same question I asked the Greek! Answer it.”

“If I must . . . The spy is true. I believe him.”

“I do, as well,” Hasdrubal said. “So we withdraw. Noba, send your scouts to prove or deny the man's story, but unless they do so conclusively we withdraw this very night. That's my decision.”

At the first call to march, the guides slunk away into the dimness, never to be heard from again. Hasdrubal damned them, but then said it did not matter. They would follow the Metaurus River through the night, then chart a better course in the light of the next day and ascend into the Apennines to find cover in the rougher terrain. But from its first moments the retreat went foul. Even in the full light of day the river's course would have been difficult to follow. The channel cut a deep meandering confusion of a trench through the plain; the ground was thickly wooded, with sloping banks, with stones tilted at strange angles and roots that looped up from the earth and grabbed men's feet. In the pitch dark the forest came alive with malicious intent. Men could barely take a step without stumbling under the packs, spilling food and weapons around them, cursing. The river became a giant serpent, flexing and squirming, never where it should be. Groups lost their way and shouted to one another, but the uneven landscape played tricks with their voices and led them into greater confusion.

The Gauls did not fear the woods as much as the Africans did, but they grew frustrated and lit torches to see by. Others yelled for them to douse the lights, complaining that the patches of wavering brilliance just made the dark more frightening, distorting the land even more, casting shapes about so that some yelled that the Romans were upon them. Then someone dropped a torch and failed to pick it up fast enough. The flame scorched through the pine needles, to the dry bark of several trees, and up them as quickly as a squirrel fleeing. Within moments the forest was afire above their heads. Horses went wild with fear beneath them. Cattle yanked free of the tenders and searched out dark places and then grew frightened there and ran back toward the light.

For much of the night, Silenus walked slowly, paused often, held his hands either out in front of him to ward off branches or to his temples to calm himself. This was all wrong. They should have kept to the open ground, away from the river. Even if they had marched without direction they would have made better time than they were now. He knew this, and he knew that Hasdrubal must know it. That was why the general worked so hard. His voice rang through the trees, pulling lost men in, redirecting their course. Several times he rode splashing through the river itself, urging men on, keeping sanity with the power of his voice alone.

Hasdrubal did not sleep at all that night. He should have been exhausted, drained, senseless from the continuous labor. But the next morning he shone with vigor Silenus had never seen in him. He seemed to feed on the direness of the situation they found themselves in and showed no sign of the melancholy that had plagued him through the winter. When Silenus commented lightly on this, Hasdrubal answered seriously. He said, “I suffer. I wish Rome to suffer with me.”

In the first light of the new day, Hasdrubal explained to all the men just what was going to happen. The Romans were upon them. They would fight that day. If they did not, they would be slaughtered as they ran, and he had no desire to run anymore. He led them away from the river and onto the clearer, undulating ground upon which the day would be decided. As soon as they were out of the trees they could see the waiting mass of the joined Roman forces. The great numbers testified to the truth of the spy's information. They were already in position, drawing up into battle formation.

Hasdrubal called for his forces to do the same. Before long he strode before the front ranks with his sword unsheathed. He seemed taller than ever he had, hardened from his normal physical perfection into something still more statuesque. He wore no leg or shoulder armor, but walked with his chiseled arms and legs bare; they flexed and quivered and jerked with energy. Even the muscles of his neck snapped into and out of view as he lifted his chin and called out his instructions over the masses. He ordered a narrower front line than usual, as the terrain would hamper the wings.

Hasdrubal's gaze met Silenus', but before the Greek could acknowledge him with a gesture the general turned away and the battle commenced. Silenus stood some distance behind Hasdrubal's command position, but the view he got of things to come was much the same. The two forces collided as if each were nothing but a barbarian horde. The Romans hurled their mighty timed volleys, but Hasdrubal had his men rush through these opening maneuvers and draw in to close quarters quickly. Order broke from the early moments and there was nothing of art in the combat. Nothing resembling finesse or strategy. Nothing except for the pure slashing panic of men trying to kill before they were killed. The Gauls bellowed their war cries and blew their animal-headed horns and swung with such force that their braids snapped about them like whips. The Libyans worked with their spears, thrusting overhand like the quiet killers they were, piercing a face here and a shoulder there, twisting the prongs as they withdrew so that Roman flesh tore free of the tendons and bones that held it. The Iberians worked with their double-bladed swords, cutting arms and legs to the bone, and then through the bone, slitting unprotected bellies, spilling loops of guts about the ground. To all of this, the Romans gave as good as they received.

And so it might have carried on until one side gradually tipped the balance in its favor. But Nero, Silenus saw, played one move that changed the balance in an instant. He must have realized that the troops of his right wing, nearer to the river, were tangled in the broken ground there and could find no one to fight. Nor could they progress and keep formation. He had several of these cohorts withdraw, turn, and march behind the bulk of the army to the far end. They then turned again, moved forward, and fell upon the opposite Carthaginian side. In a few moments they caused so much mayhem that the whole battlefield shimmied away from them, rocked by a wave of confusion that must have meant little to those fighting in the center. The move, it was clear, had decided the battle. The Romans seemed to recognize that the advantage was theirs, and they fought the harder for it.

Silenus drew his eyes in nearer and searched out Hasdrubal. For some time he could not see him, but then he saw his standard and picked out his form and that of Noba beside him, both rushing to join the mêlée. His throat tightened so much that he could barely breathe. For the first time in his life, Silenus called upon the gods to intervene. He asked them to prove themselves just this once, to save Hasdrubal Barca from that pack of wolves. He wanted to look away. He wanted to avert his gaze so that the gods might work their magic with subtlety. And also he wanted to grasp up what he could of his scrolls and records and run with them clutched to his chest and put all the distance his bowed legs could between him and this scene.

But he did not. He could not move except with his eyes, which followed that lion standard and Hasdrubal's helmet so near it. He saw him join the thick of the fighting and saw how quickly he became the center of the battle. The Romans must have recognized him for who he was. They swarmed toward him. Silenus saw him fall, engulfed in a mass of enemy soldiers. Ten and then twenty and then more of them surrounded the spot into which he had disappeared, all of them stabbing, thrusting, shoulders and elbows popping into and out of view, reaching over each other to pierce Barca flesh over and over, as if they so feared that he would rise again that they could not stop.

Hanno had visited Cirta, the Libyan capital, as a child. Now, as his quinquereme rowed into its harbor, the city seemed smaller than it had back then. It sat low on the horizon, not so imposing as Carthage, nor as breathtaking in its situation as many of the Iberian fortresses. It was the same dull color as the soil around it, with few embellishments other than inlaid shells outlining certain portions of the walls, and bright red and orange tapestries hanging to seal out the heat of the sun. The Libyans might have grown powerful in recent years, but to Hanno's eyes they were not yet completely committed to abandoning their nomadic traditions in favor of city-building.

There was something about the place that he despised from the start, although this may well have been a product of the circumstances that brought him here. Both he and Mago had been beaten by Publius, deserted by allies, expelled from Iberia, and forced to abandon the expanse that their father had once called his empire. At least they were persevering; none could fault them for that. They had not given up. Despite their fatigue, both of them had embarked on new missions. When he left Iberia, Mago and Masinissa had been preparing for a voyage to the Balearic Islands. They hoped to recruit soldiers there, to inspire them with tales of Hannibal's victories, and then to land a force on the Italian mainland. To Hanno fell this return to Africa. First, he was to call on Syphax, the Libyan king, and find some way to bring him and his thronging army into the conflict. Libyan mercenaries had long been the backbone of the Carthaginian army, but Hanno intended to push for more—not just soldiers, but a true allegiance that would commit Syphax to their cause completely. After this, he intended to go home to Carthage, to report all to the Council. If they did not crucify or behead him, he would do everything he could to sail another army toward Rome. Now more than ever he craved victory. They had lost so much; they had no choice but to fight on.

He did not notice the Roman ships until his feet were on the stones of the dock and he had begun a brisk walk toward the city. The sight of the two vessels stopped him in his tracks. Roman galleys, one flying the flag of a consul, moored and at rest in an African harbor. Never had he expected such a thing. For a moment he considered dashing back to his ship and sailing for Carthage. Before he could decide to do this, he saw the dignitaries walking out to meet him. They moved in grand formality, a small, tight pack of men surrounded by all manner of servants, clearing the way for them, fanning their every step with palm fronds. They gave no sign that things were amiss, so Hanno carried on toward them, behind a procession of his own—men bearing presents to honor the king. He had allocated all he thought he could spare from the treasures he had managed to leave Iberia with, but already he wished he had more.

In the hours to come he found himself in a stranger situation then he could have imagined. At the main meal, where he was to meet Syphax for the first time, he found himself introduced to a man whose face he had many times tried to imagine, a nebulous visage ever changing in his mind, that he had found a thousand ways to hate. Now before him was the real face: thin-lipped, with a crooked nose, and eyes that were intelligent if slightly uneven. Dark hair framed the features in a manner that made the whole more handsome than the parts might have indicated separately. Hanno stared at the man until he opened his mouth and spoke, in Latin.

“Believe me, General,” Publius Scipio said, “I am as surprised by this as you. My mission here is diplomatic, as I'm sure yours is. Let us be statesmen just now, warriors later.”

Hanno looked around the room. Syphax was nowhere to be seen. Cats roamed the chamber at their ease. They were large specimens, well fed and not too far removed from their feral ancestors. They wore bells on their necks, which tinkled as they moved or preened themselves or snapped bits of meat from the table. There were other guests, but these hung off at a distance, propping up the walls, speaking in whispers and with shifting eyes. Hanno ignored them and spoke, knowing that his voice would carry around the room.

“Fine,” he said.

He sat down on the other side of the low table and studied the bowls of dates and grapes set there. His mind reeled from one thought to the next, one question to another. He knew Publius had returned to Rome and been elected consul, but what, what, what was the consul doing in Africa? Had something happened to Hannibal, so that he was no longer a threat? Had Syphax already struck a deal with Rome? Was he dining in the enemy's lair? Would he ever get out of it? Did Rome now have designs on Africa?

“You have affection for Greek things, don't you?” Publius said, his tone familiar and conversational. “I recognize this in your eyes.”

As if seeking to refute this, Hanno lifted his gaze and stared straight at him. “I might have once, but no longer. Now I take little joy from life except that which comes from slaying my people's enemies.”

The consul laughed. “Then you must be an unhappy—” But even before finishing the sentence, Publius raised a hand in apology.

Syphax entered then, flanked by attendants, men of various ages, some armed and some cloaked as civilian advisers. Hanno turned and solemnly faced the king. He was not a tall man, but his shoulders were wide and the thin fabric of his gown highlighted the strength of his chest. His skin and eyes were of the same grainy brown as the walls of the city, as if he were made of the same stuff. Knobs of curled locks reached up out of the tight weave of his hair. He wore a beard of sorts, made up of tiny balls of hair tied with string, running down his jawline to under his chin.

“Please, sit,” he said, grinning and speaking his native tongue. Over his shoulders he wore a necklace of beads, cheetah fur, and gold, an indicator of his rank. He touched this as he said, “We are all equals here. We should speak as such. Perhaps Syphax will one day be famed for mediating the peace between Carthage and Rome.”

Neither visitor smiled at this, as Syphax obviously wished them to do. Publius, after hearing a translation, cordially managed to say that the differences he had with Carthage were not such as could be talked through on this occasion. Hanno did not dispute this, and Syphax, clearly amused by the position he found himself in, sat them down and commenced the banquet.

Throughout the meal Publius managed to keep the conversation lively, always complimentary to the host, but amusing also, quick to find humor, tactful in steering clear of the matter of war. Amazingly—despite everything—Hanno found himself enjoying the man's company for the brief moments during which he forgot just who he was and what suffering he had caused.

The king, on the other hand, was somewhat less engaging. As he drank more of the thick malt he favored, he grew loquacious, self-congratulatory, almost maudlin. He had tattoos on the backs of his hands. They were stylized drawings that looked familiar, but Hanno could not quite place them. He rubbed each with the fingers of the other hand, changing hands occasionally, with something feline in his gestures. Though neither guest spoke openly about seeking his alliance, he seemed to believe himself on the verge of a great advance in fortune and spoke as if his past were fading into history.

“Do you know that I was always ambitious?” he asked. “Even as a boy, I tested myself against other boys. There was one in particular who always bested me and my peers at games. He was the fastest afoot, the nimblest with a staff. He had a man's hand and feet even before he sprouted hair on his groin. You know the pure hate one boy can feel for another?”

The two guests nodded.

“Such was the hate I felt for him. One day I had an idea, yes? A small cruelty. I could've been no more than six, seven years of age. I saw Marcor walking toward me across a courtyard. It was crowded with men, and I saw a chance to embarrass him greatly. As our paths crossed I stuck out my foot to trip him. I thought to catch him unawares and spill him flat on the stones. But his foot was better rooted than mine. It was as if I'd kicked a tree stump. I went tumbling instead, landed like a fool, sprawled out and ashamed. Marcor turned and stared at me as if he thought me mad. He knew my intentions and yet was amazed that I was foolish enough to believe I could upset him. He stuck out his hand and helped me rise.”

When the king paused, Publius asked, “And what became of this Marcor? Did he grow into as strong a man as he was a boy? I sense some moral soon to be revealed.”

Syphax studied on the question. He twirled a massive ring around his thumb, tugged on it, and twirled it again. “Yes. He was my superior in many ways. In most things, really, all but one very important thing. He wasn't my father's son. So on the day that I stepped in to rule my people I had Marcor beheaded. I impaled his body on a stake and set it to rot outside the city. Vultures pecked at him and then hyenas and jackals, and within a few days there was not even flesh left for maggots to eat. So I would say that in the end I tripped him after all.”

“I'm sure there is a lesson in this,” the consul said.

“Moral?” Syphax asked. “Lesson? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It's just something that happened. Many things happen, don't they?” He dropped the subject and turned to Hanno. “How's that sister of yours? I trust she grows in health?”

“Sapanibal?”

The king laughed through his nose. “No, not that one. The beauty, Sophonisba. Why am I asking you, though? You've not been home in years.” The king leaned forward. He motioned Hanno closer with his fingers, his hand like a cat's paw. “I caught a glimpse of her the last time I visited your homeland. Several years ago, this was. She was just a girl, really, but she wore a woman's gown. Her breasts were firm like fruit just about to ripen. Her face . . . Her face was like . . . It was something you could stare at and stare at. I mean no offense to your family, but had I the chance I'd fuck that one till her legs bowed. A mystery of beauty like that should be possessed.”

Syphax broke off and flopped back against his cushions. He seemed drunker now than he had just a moment before. Without a thought to his guests he scratched his groin, lingered a moment on the stirring there. He looked up and fixed his gaze on Hanno, the first time that evening that he had looked at him with particular import. “Truly, Sophonisba could drive a sane man crazy. Remember that I mean no disrespect, friend. But she's been in my dreams, waking and sleeping. I've seen bits and pieces of her in other women, but never the whole. Never has a bitch stirred me like she does. I'd even marry her if that's what it took.”

Out of the corner of his eye Hanno could tell that Publius, just having gotten the translation of the king's words, was shifting his gaze between the two of them. He knew that the artery on his forehead was beating visibly. There flashed before him the sudden image of him clamping one hand around Syphax' neck and bashing his face in with the other. He wanted to look away, but he held the man's bloodshot gaze for as long as he had to.

Syphax broke away. He moved his chin to the side, toward Publius. The rest of his face seemed to follow a moment after. “But he wouldn't know about this, would he?” he asked the Roman. “She is his sister. He's not an Egyptian, after all. . . .”

Syphax cupped his large hands over his knees. At the gesture, Hanno realized that the tattoos were a stylized rendering of lion's claws, the pattern they made on wet soil. The king rose, saying he needed a woman. They would talk more on the morrow, he promised. They would talk much more.

But in his three days in Cirta, Hanno never had more than a few moments alone with the king. They met briefly in the mornings and in passing in the afternoons; both he and Publius shared the man's table for the main meal, required to sit across from each other, to speak politely, neither one wanting to show his hand or to flare up in frustration. He was not sure whether the consul managed any more genuine discussion himself, but still he could barely contain the simmering anger this kindled in him. Syphax, a petty king, was exploiting the situation to feed his own pride. He seemed to have forgotten the strength of Carthage and to be ignoring the old history of Roman treachery, living in the short glow of his own self-importance. He was a fool, Hanno thought, but he kept this opinion decidedly to himself.

By the time Syphax escorted the two guests out toward the harbor to depart, Hanno still was not sure where his nation stood in relation to Libya. Were they allies or not? It seemed that both sides had tacitly agreed not to press the issue while in each other's company, and as far as he could tell, neither had either of them gained anything certain. Syphax seemed as he had when they arrived—an amused, neutral party. Not wanting to discourage the Roman's departure, Hanno decided to pretend to leave, and then to circle back as soon as he could. He hoped the consul would not attempt the same.

“We have concluded our business, then?” Syphax asked.

Hanno nodded. “As ever, you have the best wishes of Carthage,” he said. “May we always be brothers.”

Syphax smirked at this. “Fine. Fine. Take my blessings to your countrymen, and to the women of your family.”

Hanno half-turned, one arm vaguely pointing toward the docks. It was an invitation for Scipio to precede him, but the other did not do so. The consul scanned his face quickly, and then stepped close to Syphax. He spoke softly, but with no real attempt at secrecy.

“Good king,” he said in the Libyan tongue, “since your business with Carthage is now concluded, I would speak to you of a few more matters. Just a few moments of your time in private. You will find interest in what I have to say.”

Hanno, fuming, watched the men ascend toward the palace, the Roman close beside the Libyan, their heads bent in toward each other. He almost set out after them, but he had already been beaten, in diplomacy as in the field. Before he sailed, though, he composed a letter to the king. He stated his wishes in the clearest of terms and alluded to all manner of grand rewards for his friendship. He admitted that he had no power to agree to anything on his own, but he assured Syphax that his nation valued his friendship above all others. Staying true to it could only serve Syphax' people, and make the king rich beyond his present imaginings, and as powerful as he had the capacity to become. Carthage would give him anything he asked. Anything it was within the city's power to give. He wrote that he would dock near Hippo Regius.

Only a few days later, a messenger brought word of the possibility that—despite the generous overtures Rome had made to him—Syphax would become an ally to Carthage once more. Little was needed to secure the bond, because they were two nations with roots deep in the same land. Theirs was a partnership to be nurtured, to be enlarged, to be sanctified. They were old friends, but they could be more. There were just two things he must have in return. First, he wanted a guarantee that Carthage would recognize his dominion over the Massylii. King Gaia was ill and sure to die soon. Syphax wanted his nation as his own, and Carthage must acknowledge him over Masinissa.

This was bad enough, but as he read the second demand Hanno felt his pulse through the fingers that touched the parchment. There was one sure way to unite them, Syphax wrote. One way that they could truly merge their two peoples forever.

Each morning, Imco awoke with a start. As soon as his eyes fluttered the world into existence and his conscious mind recalled the dream of a life he had been living for some weeks now, he flung himself upright. He cast around, searching for the woman to confirm that she was real. If she lay nearby he would stare at her in awe. He would move closer, trying not to wake her, his gaze roaming over her long, muscular legs, over the gentle curve described by her hip; he would imagine the weight of her breast so innocently resting on the soft skin of her inner arm. He would study the fall of her dark hair over her golden skin, the intake and exhalation of her breathing, the flecks of sunburned skin on her nose, the tiny ridges of her lips. Then, as her stillness always made him nervous, he would jab her with a finger until her eyes opened, slowly, clear in their opal grandeur from the first moment, as if she had never truly slept but had simply rested in imitation of slumber. If—as on several occasions already—she was not inside his tent, he was on his feet in an instant. He charged outside—clothed or naked, it did not matter—calling the name she had mouthed for him with her own precious lips. Aradna. Aradna!

The simple truth was that he did not fully believe in her. Did not trust that he had actually found her or that she was anything other than a phantom created in his own wandering mind. It had all come from his walk behind the donkey. The creature took him up onto a ridge of wooded hills, down along a lentil field. For a time they walked one each in the two ruts of a wagon road, and then they crossed a flat, fallow field. At times it seemed the donkey stood just near him; at other moments he realized the creature was far away, hurrying him on. He lost sight of it several times, only to find it again. When he stopped at the edge of a settlement and could not see the donkey he had the feeling that he had reached whatever it was the creature was leading him to.

He entered the settlement nervously. The hair on the back of his neck flexed and quivered. He felt himself walking into an ambush, although he knew this did not make sense. What bandits employ donkeys to lure their prey? He slid a hand down his side and fingered the hilt of his sword. It was a group of camp followers. A poor lot of mixed race. There were tents in the Carthaginian style, but there were also skin structures, hovels made of sticks, lean-tos covered over in hides. The place smelled of human waste, of dogs and unwashed people. Smoke from numerous low fires drifted up in the still air like columns stretching to the sky. From around the fires hostile faces glared. A group of men stood and watched him, a few of them picking up sticks and axes. A woman snatched up a running child by the hair and then slapped him as he began to cry. Others went about their work without seeming to have noticed him, but he still suspected devious intention in their erstwhile endeavors.

In his alertness to danger he must have looked everywhere except just in front of him, for suddenly a woman stood and her torso rose into view. Just then noticing him, she spun around and froze facing him, holding in her arms the sticks she had just gathered. Just like that. She stood before him, near enough that if they had both stretched out their arms they could have touched. Her face drained of color as she stared at him.

She was exactly as he remembered. Well, not exactly. Her hair jutted up from her head in several matted plaits. Black lines of dirt clung to the creases of her forehead and under her chin. A sore glistened red and painful at the corner of her lips. The simple gown she wore had no shape whatsoever. It was caked in mud and spotted with oil stains and with a thousand shades of brown. Imco took all of this in but none of it mattered. Behind the disguise he recognized her as clearly as if she stood before him naked and dripping with cold, fresh water. Picene.

He almost called her by the name he had given her, but he had not taken leave of his senses completely. Not knowing what else to do, he motioned for her to take a seat. The only spot available in their immediate vicinity was the mangled stump of a felled tree. Realizing this, Imco flushed with embarrassment. He looked about for another seat, but as he was doing so the woman sat on the stump and watched him, sticks balanced on her knees. It then took him a few moments to decide to sit on the bare ground. Having done this, he was again at a loss. He heard himself speaking before he really knew what he was saying. He told her his name, his rank in the army, and the unit he ran. He suspected vaguely that this was an absurd way to begin but he could not stop himself and went on blabbering until the woman shook her head. She said something in a language he found familiar, but he did not catch her meaning.

“I can't understand you,” he said, shocked by this realization, and by the unexamined difficulties it signified.

The woman smiled, and Imco saw the humor as well. They had both said that they did not understand the other in languages that the other could not understand. Imco thought this a serious problem, but the woman's smile hinted that it might not be. She said something else to him. It seemed friendly enough, but he had no idea of her meaning, and his bewildered face showed it. The woman seemed to find further amusement in this. She spoke on. From the stream of words he at least gleaned that she was speaking Greek. As the Carthaginian army used Greek for battle commands he knew a few words of the language, but hardly enough for this type of conversation. The woman solved this temporarily.

Motioning that he should stay where he was, she set down her bundle of sticks and moved off quickly. A few moments later she returned, accompanied by a girl of no more than ten years. She was thin as a stick, and blond. To Imco's surprise, however, she spoke Carthaginian. From the flashes of quick anger in her eyes, it seemed best not to ask how she came by this language.

She sat between the two of them and translated. Her interpretations were rough, presumably inexact, but they both listened as if every word mattered. Imco did not have the earlier difficulty of stating the irrelevant. Instead he said the things he actually meant. He said that he had thought of her ever since he first saw her. He meant her no harm, but he had dreamed of her often. He had been plagued with anxiety for her, wondering where in the world she was, how she fared amid the turmoil of a land at war. A woman should not be alone in a place like this. She was alone, right? She was not bound to a man, for example?

In answer to all of this, the woman said she fared just fine. A cold answer, Imco thought, although this might have been a product more of the translator than the speaker. She did not address the issue of whether she was bound to anyone, but she admitted that she had not forgotten him either. She wanted to understand why their paths had crossed three, and now four times. This was more than chance, she believed. Was he hunting her? Imco swore that he was not. He never had. Not, at least, until the donkey came and got him. It was the donkey that led him to—

“What?” the girl asked, for herself and with no prompting from the woman.

Imco went on: He had been living his soldier's existence with no real aim except to survive. It had come as pure shock to him each time they bumped into each other. The fact that she found him on the battlefield of Cannae stunned him with disbelief every day. Nor did the way he found her this time seem any more probable. He had followed the donkey he recognized as hers and here he was. He knew this would sound strange, but it was not the strangest true thing that he could disclose. The dead Saguntine girl who had been following him, for example. She had been no end of annoyance—

This was the last straw for the girl translating. She stood up abruptly. Forces were at work here that she did not understand, and she thought them better kept at a distance. She warned them not to bother her again and she stalked off.

Again, in the silence after her departure, Imco thought the whole venture in danger of failing, which would be so much more terrible now, unthinkable, tragic. Nothing in the world mattered more than the proximity of this beautiful woman. He was still amazed by her presence, her nearness, the radiance that lay under the grime and that knotted hair. He gazed at her as she drew a little nearer, watched her place a hand to her chest, and studied her lips as they pushed out these syllables: “A-rad-na.”

“Aradna?” he asked. When she smiled and nodded, he went through the same motions to tell her his name. For a time the two of them sat near each other, each intoning the other's name, testing it as if searching for answers in the sounds themselves. A little later, Aradna took coal from a neighbor's fire and started her own. She did not tell Imco to leave, and he did not offer to. She roasted a squash by burying it at the edge of the flames, reaching in occasionally and spinning it with her bare hands. Imco brought strips of dried beef out of his satchel, along with heavily watered wine. The two ate in the dying glow of the autumn day. It grew cool quickly, but Imco welcomed this because it brought them nearer to the fire, to each other. Aradna talked freely, conversationally, without the slightest regard for the fact that he could not understand her. She made it seem that the most complicated sentences were understood between them. It was only the simple things that called for gestures and grunts: offering more food, reaching for the wine jug, pointing to a wolf-skin blanket.

He did not notice at just what moment they had moved close enough to touch. At some point they were simply side by side, sharing warmth from the hide, Aradna speaking up into the night sky. He fell asleep watching her profile and woke later to the amazing revelation that the woman's body was curled just next to his and that her hand had slid up under his tunic and was touching his sex. Noticing that he had woken, Aradna drew her hand back. He lay for a long time considering this, and then, nervously, he let his own hand crawl toward her. He touched her at the knee and then slid his fingers up the crease between her thighs. He paused there and might have proceeded no further except that one leg lifted to allow him in. She was both wet and hot and the sensation of her pubic hairs against his fingertips was the most erotic thing he had ever experienced.

He was still in awe of this when she moved, so quickly that he started. She climbed on top of him. He gasped as if in pain. Her warmth as she slid down onto him was overwhelming, complete, the center of his world, and just as hot as if he were pinned to a sun. He could not believe this was happening. She pressed him to the ground and grabbed his lower lip between her teeth and would not let go. He simply could not believe that his life had led to such an utterly, completely exquisite moment.

The next morning he awoke to the smell of her sex on his fingertips. If he had not known what the scent was he would have thought it unpleasant, but because it was proof of their intimacy he inhaled it with pleasure. He could not get enough of it. It did not linger long enough in his nostrils, so throughout the day he again and again placed the back of his nails under his nose. He returned to the camp followers' settlement as often as he could over the next week, until he convinced her to go with him back to the main camp. Though they still could barely speak to each other, neither one considered parting. The army was to be largely stationary for the winter, and no one thought twice about Aradna's presence. Most of them had slaves or servants or captives to keep them warm, if not wives. They simply thought of Aradna as one of these, and Imco kept the truth to himself. She was not a sideline to his daily life; she was the center of it and all else revolved around her. He found that he could say things to her that he had never considered saying to another person. He sometimes feared the Saguntine girl would overhear him, but since Aradna's arrival he had neither seen nor heard from the girl.

One evening, Aradna met him outside his tent. She stalked up to him proudly and, through an enormous smile, spoke a single sentence in Carthaginian. “You are handsome.” She grinned at herself, proud as a cat, and Imco knew for a divine certainty that he had never seen anything more beautiful. The only flaw in all this was that he worried constantly that she would leave him, or that he would die in the next battle, or that her beauty would draw trouble. It astonished him that her disguises fooled anyone, but she rarely attracted the type of attention Imco feared. When the next blow—the first great blow—fell, it had nothing to do with their love affair. It was completely unexpected, and it woke him to the unpredictable world they both still inhabited.

He heard the commotion while in his tent. He was watching Aradna's fingers as they plucked strips of goat meat from the hot stones lining their fire pit. Outside the horns sounded a call he could make no sense of. Feet tramped by; people yelled unintelligible things to each other. Imco was up in a moment. He spoke over his shoulder to Aradna, saying that he would just be gone a moment, and then he joined the growing crowd moving toward the command tent. Eventually, he had to shove and claw his way through, frantic now, for something evil was in the air and he could make no sense of the bits and pieces and exclamations he heard.

When he finally broke through the circle around the front of Hannibal's tent he saw the commander on his knees, a shocking sight in itself. His arms hung limp at the sides, palms out, fingers quivering. Before him lay a round object that at first made no sense. It seemed to be a head, clasped between two hands held in place with twine. Imco stepped closer, blinking. It was a head clasped between two hands held in place with twine. The man's face was barely visible, bruised and battered, rotten, bluish and reddish and brown all at once. Ghastly. And yet Hannibal had no difficulty recognizing who the person had been.

“What have they done to you?” he asked. “Hasdrubal, what have they done?” He bent closer to the head, but his attention focused on the hands. He touched the knuckles with his fingers. “These are not his hands!” he said, drawn in like a madman clutching at a tendril of fantastic possibility. “They are not his!”

If these are not his hands, Imco saw him thinking, perhaps this is not his head. Maybe it is all a lie. Several of the other officers drew closer. Gemel reached out as if to touch Hannibal's back, but he did not do so. He studied the severed limbs, and then he whispered in the commander's ear. The news he gave sapped all hope from the man. Hannibal, as if angry at whatever Gemel had said, scooped the head up and cradled it against his torso. He strode silently into his tent. The flap fell shut and all who remained stared about in dumb silence.

Gemel whispered something to a few of the other officers, and then, seeing Imco, he approached him. “We must all meet at once,” he said. “There is much to discuss. What you see is true. That was the head of Hasdrubal Barca, thrown down outside of camp by a band of Roman horsemen.”

“And the hands?”

“We cannot know for sure, but the horsemen, as they left, shouted the name of the scribe Silenus.”

Hannibal wanted to rage. From the moment he recognized Hasdrubal's features, wrath stirred within him. He felt it twisting him. He heard the roar of it in his ears, a force such as one hears facing into a fierce wind, a noise that takes from the world the variations that differentiate sounds and leaves only the pure cry that is noise and silence at the same instant. He wanted to rampage. He felt Monomachus clutching his elbow, clawing at him, begging to be allowed free rein to spread his terror a thousandfold in retribution. He knew that he muttered consent to the man, but he did not do so with the full measure of his sorrow. He did not know where to direct his anger. Rome was the obvious target. He would never say otherwise in his life. But a man has quieter demons to contend with and these spoke more softly than the wraiths. They asked who was truly to blame. From whose hand dripped the most blood? And also they answered: Hannibal's. Hannibal's.

Trapped between these feuding choruses, he could barely move for days after receiving the terrible gift. Like a man punched so hard in the gut that he cannot respond, cannot speak, cannot strike back, Hannibal doubled over the head that had once been atop his brother's marvelous shoulders and he simply held it. He did not care that the stench thickened the air in his tent. He ignored the decay. Yes, it sickened him so much that he heaved dryly, convulsively, trying to expel whatever was in him. Skin peeled roughly off the skull and the very touch of it on any object left a malignant stain that he could feel as much as see and smell. All this was true, but still this was his brother. These were the eyes he had once used to see; the mouth he had spoken with; the ears through which he had heard the world. He rubbed away the grime crusting his dry orbs and tried to look inside. It was impossible that Hasdrubal no longer resided somewhere behind those eyes. He placed his lips against the rotten flesh and whispered to him. Words tumbled from him, never long thoughts, but simple sentences like those spoken to a child. He told him that it was all right. It was fine. It would be all right. Oh, but his mother loved him. His mother thought him the handsomest. All women thought so. His father knew him to be the bravest, the strongest. He would take him home, he promised. Home to Carthage. He would leave that very day. Come. Together they would see the city jutting up from the Byrsa hill and they would smell the lemon trees and watch sparrows darting overhead in the fading light of evening. They would run out to the obelisk on the point overlooking the sea and they would stand with their chests pressed to the marble, gazing up at the long stretch of stone piercing the sky, awed that the clouds above slid by untouched.

He had been so young when he left Carthage, but now the place called to him somberly, offering him the past reborn, assuring him that what had been might be again. By going back they would find a new way forward, a different future wherein Hasdrubal lived on. And Imilce was there. His son lived in that place. Hanno and Mago could be called home. Mistakes could be undone. What madness was it that he was not with them at that very moment, all together, in health, beneath an African sun, sheltering within palm groves, walking the innermost gardens of his family's palace?

Hannibal's stunned sorrow and longing did not leave him in the days and weeks that followed. He did not, of course, bear Hasdrubal home to Africa; he had no choice but to sow him in Italian soil. Mandarbal undertook the monumental task of sending his soul on into the underworld despite the damaged vessel that he was. The smoke of incense clouded the air; bells tolled for days; priests called out their sacred words unremittingly into the day and night, uttering rites that none understood but that all cowered before, walking nervously, living quietly, afraid lest some new horror be released by all of this. Eventually, Mandarbal answered the lack of a body by beheading a Roman prisoner whom he deemed suitable to provide Hasdrubal's double. With this man's limbs and organs acting as his own, the general finally lay down to search for peace. Hannibal took no joy in any of this. It provided little comfort, but it had to be done. As so much else did.

He had a war to prosecute. In meeting with his generals, he acted as if nothing of personal significance had happened. Hasdrubal's death mattered only because a skilled leader had been eliminated. An army had been routed and scattered, leaving Hannibal's force once again alone on the peninsula. None of the news his generals brought was good. He learned, finally, detailed versions of all that happened the previous year in Iberia. The loss of New Carthage was tremendous, but Baecula, Ilipa, and now Scipio's preparations to attack Carthage . . . The defeats themselves meant staggering losses. And, what was most important, he saw in the young soldier's actions signs of military genius previously absent from the Roman side. No Roman's mind had yet moved so nimbly, with such cunning, using brilliance tempered with humility. He wondered if this, too, was his fault. Perhaps in taking so long to win this war he had allowed for the maturing of a student, a protégé who was unfortunately aligned against him. He wished that he could somehow draw Publius to stay in Italy, but the news of his intentions reached him too late for that.

He had more to contend with. The Macedonians sent to secure a treaty with King Philip had been captured at sea months ago. Lysenthus and Carthalo had been executed, the other officers kept as prisoners, and the staff sold as slaves. A Roman force under Valerius had sailed to raise other Greek cities into rebellion. Valerius had surprised the Macedonians at Apollonia, routed the army, and burned most of the fleet. As the documents had never reached Philip, there was no treaty, and instead of playing a part in winning Carthage's war, Philip was fighting for his very survival.

Such news might once have been dumbfounding, but events were now moving so swiftly that Hannibal put it behind him. Bomilcar died suddenly in his winter quarters. He was taken not by any war injury but by a swelling in his groin that grew over the space of weeks and seemed to sap the life from him. A work of witchcraft, undoubtedly, and yet another massive blow to Hannibal, for they had been friends since adolescence. Mighty Bomilcar gone; it barely seemed possible. He should have died in the thick of battle, with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other. Why had he been denied that?

Livius Salinator skulked nearby, not offering battle but intent on keeping the Carthaginians pinned down in the south. That was all he really had to do. Even without major battles Hannibal's numbers dwindled slowly, from the attrition natural to the passage of time, fatigue, injury and illness, and occasional desertions. Carthage continued to deny him reinforcements. The city's councillors had already begun to worry about their own skins.

Perhaps most directly pressing for him, however, was that Capua was suffering under a new siege. Three Roman armies had the city surrounded and they looked intent on pushing through to the end. They had even sent a message to the city leaders advising them not to waste their time considering under what terms they would surrender. Rome alone would name the conditions, and they could be sure these would be harsh. Representatives of the city had managed to escape and were begging Hannibal to come to their aid. The other generals advised it too. There was no real choice. Capua could not be abandoned: It had been the first city to join their cause willingly. If it fell, more tentative alliances would fall away like leaves in an autumn breeze.

Hannibal agreed that he must take action, but he dismissed the council, saying he needed the night to consider the situation. Back in his tent he tried to do this, but he found his thoughts drifting. They would not stay on one thing but moved from Capua to Rome, Hasdrubal to Publius, Iberia to Carthage. For a time he slept, and on waking he knew he had dreamed of his father and a conversation they had years before. He lay on his cot remembering the look of Hamilcar, the cadence of his voice, the stern intelligence in his eyes. He was not sure whether he remembered things as they actually had been, or whether he had composed and woven his own words into the memory. Perhaps this did not matter. The memory felt real. It occupied a part of him, thoughts and concerns that were real. It was from near the end of his father's life, a decade earlier. They were camped in Iberia, near a hostile tribe to their west. Hannibal had called early upon his father—as was his custom—during the hour before dawn. They spoke briefly of the day to come, but just as he was turning to leave Hamilcar stopped him.

“Hannibal, stay with me a moment as I prepare for this day,” he said.

“Gladly,” Hannibal said. “Should I help you with your armor?”

“That would please me.”

Hamilcar waved away his attendant. The servant ducked out of the tent, though they both knew he was within earshot. Hannibal picked up where the other had left off, bent below his father to lace his sandals. He left the bands of leather loose around the joint of the ankle for mobility, but a little higher up he tugged the hide snug against the flesh like a second, thicker skin.

Hamilcar was an old warrior, past his fortieth year. Every part of his body bore the damage to prove it. A livid scar dripped from his left eye, a curving incision made during the mercenary revolt, as if the artist who drew it had wished to place a permanent tear on the man's cheek. His right hand had been shattered beneath a chariot wheel his first year in Iberia. He thought the injury fortunate, as he favored his left. Ribs cracked the year previous had healed at an off angle and had left his chest cavity asymmetrical when seen without armor.

When he spoke, he almost seemed to have been spurred by a musing on his injuries. “Do you know why I chose this life?”

Hannibal almost responded glibly, thinking for a moment that his father might be leading into a joke. But looking up, he saw the distant look on the older man's face. The wrong word might silence Hamilcar even before he answered his own question, so he pursed his lips and carried on with his work.

“I did not have to make war my life,” Hamilcar said. “My father fought, but I could have chosen another pursuit. I could have taken our riches and built upon them in truly Carthaginian style. I could have lived a soft and luxurious existence and never known the danger of battle or the pain of being far from the ones who complete you. There is some good to be had in such a life, but I could not honestly have chosen it.”

Hannibal finished with the sandals and began to fit greaves over his father's shins, pounded iron infused with a red dust that gave them a color akin to blood. “We are richer now than your father could ever have imagined,” the young man said. “Is that not true?”

Hamilcar considered the point, cocked his head, and looked off again. “Yes. I rule a vast empire now. I bend hundreds of thousands to labor for my benefit. My father would not have imagined that. But as to my earlier question, I chose the sword because it seemed the only honest pursuit available to me. Only with the blade, through a contest of wills in which one measures gains and losses against the value of one's own life . . . only this have I found to be truly honest. Do you understand what I mean? That I can be honest and yet lie time and again to achieve my aims? The honesty is in the simple fact that any and all who treat with me know the lengths to which I will go to achieve my goals. If I tell one of these Iberian chiefs that I will have his allegiance and his tribute by his permission or over his mutilated body, he knows I am a man of my word. To fulfill that word I may kill innocents or bribe his friends. I may fight on the open field or set a trap for him. I may not fight with him at all, but might find a willing slave close to him to slit his neck in sleep. I may, to prove a point, unleash an orgy of bloodletting and lust that erases his people from existence. All this I may use to achieve my ends. Do you think that I can still call this an honest profession?”

“Yes. You are honest in your goals. You deceive no man about them.”

“And what right have I to demand anything of another?”

“The right of capacity. Does the rain ask our permission to fall upon us? Or the seas to drown ships? You do because you can. All of nature is the same.”

“But the seas and rains are elements controlled by the gods. They are beyond our question, beyond our justice.”

Hannibal paused in his work and looked up, a smile at the edge of his lips. “Father, are we not tools of the gods as well?”

“Yes, yes,” Hamilcar conceded, waving his son away as he tested the fit of his sandals and shin guards. “Blessed be Baal, perhaps I am only a sword in his hand. Simple vanity makes me sometimes believe I am the hand instead. I say I choose this life, but who is to say it was not chosen for me?”

Hannibal rose from his knees and found his father's breastplate. It was a heavy piece of iron, intricately molded. The portion that protected the abdomen bore an image of Elissa, she who had founded Carthage in the dim past. She had fine, strong features, even lips, and a headdress. This was a crown of sorts, and yet it had a martial appearance, as if she might wear it into battle. Her hair curled upward in two thick braids, like the curved horns of a ram. But—a strangely intimate detail—locks of hair escaped at her temples and fell down in wavering ribbons that framed her face. It was an ancient piece, artwork melded with the needs of war. He had always admired it. The only fault was in the hollow orbs of her large eyes. As beautiful as it was, this blind stare always troubled him. Why had the artist not gifted her with sight?

Hamilcar let his son drape the armor over his shoulders. “Another day coming on outside this tent,” he said, “another opportunity for the fates to side with or against us. It is strange to remember that all men do not likewise gamble their lives each day. Do you recall the councillor Maganthus? His estate is in the rolling hills and pastureland south of the city. Do you know how he passes his days out there? He has thousands of slaves who work the fields surrounding him. But he has one special slave, a Thracian, I think he was. This slave's task is to search among the fields each morning and bring to him a young woman or girl. Maganthus sits naked on his patio, looking out over his workers while the woman takes his penis in her mouth and stimulates him to climax. The Thracian stands to the side, sword unsheathed and at the ready, should the woman try to damage their master. The combination of the girl's mouth upon him and the slaves in the field and the young Thracian with his sword unsheathed . . . the danger and the power of it all, that is where he finds his pleasure. He told me this himself, as if he were proud of it. What do you make of him?”

“He's a slave himself,” Hannibal said, “to his body's desires.”

“That was never a difficulty for you, was it?”

“You have always shown me how a man controls his desires.”

“I've tried, yes, but this control has come more easily to you.” The old soldier paused a moment as Hannibal clipped the buckles snug around his battered chest. It must have pained him, for he closed his eyes and drew his breath in slowly. The muscles beneath his tear-shaped scar twitched a few times, then settled.

“Maganthus is a perverse wretch,” Hamilcar said, “but it's not his desires that interest me. It's the delusion he lives under. He told me that each girl who services him gives him proof of her loyalty to him. Any one of them could clamp down and end his pleasure forever. The fact that they don't proves to him that they love him. He disregards the sword in the Thracian's hand. That to him is no honest deterrent. If her life were miserable, she would give it up. So the fact that she neither harms him nor gives away her own life proves to him that all is as it should be.”

Hannibal had finished with the breastplate and now stood with his father's helmet in his hands. “Maganthus forgets that the gods created us to love life without reason, even in the face of torture.”

Hamilcar motioned that he would not have the helmet on yet. “That makes it seem as if the gods destined us to be slaves,” he said. “Slaves to life, at least.”

Hannibal smiled. “That's how it has to be, but a true man is a slave to nothing else, right? Not a slave to another man. Nor to desires for sex or fear or drink or riches . . .”

“What about to the bondage of marriage? You have no idea, my young son, how much of my time is spent in silent conversation with your mother. She has been a splendid wife to me, given me strong children, and raised them in health. But she doesn't approve of what I—of what we—do. You'll never hear her say so, but I know this to be true. I did something once that I always regretted afterward. I showed her my work. I let her see my bloody masterpiece—a battlefield piled high with mercenary dead. I wanted to shock her with it. I wanted her to see my work, to understand the wrath of Hamilcar Barca and see that I—a lone man—could dominate many others. I should never have done this.”

“Why? Did she not understand what she saw?”

“No,” Hamilcar said, “just the opposite. She understood it completely. She's loathed me ever since.”

“You're joking,” Hannibal said. “Mother never once spoke ill of you.”

“What do you know of it? You were nine years old when we left Carthage. Do you think she would've spoken of such things to you? Didobal did not stop loving me; but she loathes me at the same time.”

“If that's how she feels, she is wrong,” Hannibal said. “Honor comes from battle with formidable opponents. The mercenaries had Carthage on its knees. Only you could save them. No woman can know what that means. So she shouldn't judge.”

Hamilcar placed a hand on his son's shoulder. There was gentleness in the touch, though the hand was callused and misshapen by years of violence. “Don't speak with that tone when you speak of your mother. You believe you have all the answers, I know. But this is a sickness of youth. We get other illnesses in old age, but in youth, when our bodies are strong, we suffer from one thing only—certainty. When I was younger I too had few doubts about my purpose.”

“Do you now?”

“No. You know my goal. I've never wavered from it. I still don't. Despite all my old man's dithering, few know their calling as clearly as I do. I don't truly question the rightness of my deeds in the world. Your mother is a creator; I am a destroyer. There is balance in this.”

The old warrior stepped away and tested the fit of his breastplate again. Resigning himself to the armor, he dropped his arms and looked again at his son. He said, “I do, however, question the rightness of the world itself.”

Hannibal, lying on his cot in his tent of grief, realized he was just now learning to understand the man. How was it possible that conversations of years before could speak to him now in such a different way? He wished he could ask his father what wisdom the intervening years had provided him for his own old questions. But one cannot make new queries of the dead. If there were answers to be found, they must be in the scripts already written. “The rightness of the world itself,” the old man had said. That was what he doubted. Ten years on, Hannibal was beginning to understand Hamilcar. In some ways, he was becoming him.

But the next morning, when he spoke to his assembled generals, he focused on one portion of his father's words and pushed aside this last proclamation. It might have been true, but what use was doubt to those who still breathed air and lived? Doubt undermined; it offered no help to those still slaves to life. When he issued his decision on their opening move of the season, the entire council looked at him in disbelief. Gemel asked him to repeat himself. Hannibal did. There was one way to tie all of these disparate problems together in a single action. They were to strike camp by the end of the week and march north.

“But not to Capua,” he said. “Our target is Rome.”

Word of Hasdrubal's death preceded Hanno's arrival by a scant few days. The Barca family was still in mourning, though they did so in a strange way that angered Sapanibal. The priests, with their fickle wisdom, deemed that Hasdrubal's death should not be marked in the normal manner. They decreed that he had done something to invoke the ill will of Moloch. His failures in Iberia, his flight toward Italy, and his defeat proved it. Because of this the family could show no grief. They could not wail or cut their hair. They could not go veiled. They could not utter his name without speaking it down toward the ground. They could not prick their fingers with pins or cut their veins at the wrist to bleed until they were weak and faint. Instead, the priest forbade them to eat meat for the month. They could make their own offerings to the gods throughout the day, but in the evening all the Barca women were made to bow their heads as the priests offered sacrifices to cleanse the nation of Hasdrubal's sins.

This galled Sapanibal. They should be praising the man and easing his way into the afterworld. In typical Carthaginian fashion, they betrayed him instead. Hers were a petty people, she thought, who neither reward a man for his successes in life nor honor him in death. Sapanibal raged against this in her private chambers, with only her servants to hear her. In public, she kept her thoughts to herself. Neither Sophonisba nor Imilce showed anything on her face but the fear she expected from them. Even Didobal seemed to accept the advice of the priests. She swore to herself that if one of them looked at her with an inkling of rebellion in her eyes she would rise up and decry the priests' orders. But they did not. Not that she could see, at least.

She wondered if any of them would rouse from stupor if the city one day disrespected Hannibal in a similar manner. She could not imagine that they would not, although this should be no different. A brother was a brother. A husband a husband. Why did only she understand this? She felt, as she often did before, that the male energy inside her was rendered futile by her female body. If she had been born a son instead of a daughter she would have wrung those priests by their necks.

Thinking these things, she rejoiced to hear that Hanno had returned. Wonderful enough that he was alive, but better yet if he arrived in holy anger and cut out the corrupt heart that beat at the center of the city's institutions. He was a warrior, after all. How the soft men of the Council would wither before him!

But in this, too, she was disappointed. Before he had even returned to the family compound, he stopped at the Temple of Baal and there made offerings and underwent a cleansing, to remove the stains of war. The next day he still did not come home but met with the Council instead. From what Sapanibal could gather through her sources, the magistrates grilled him on every aspect of the Iberian wars. Hannon railed against all the Barcas: against Hannibal for starting the war with Rome, against Hasdrubal for abandoning the peninsula without permission, against Hanno and Mago for losing it all through their military ineptitude. Equally reprehensible, they had left alive this Publius Scipio, who reportedly had found killing Carthaginian soldiers so pleasurable that he was now planning to attack Carthage itself. Hadus proposed crucifixion as a just punishment for Hanno's being foolish enough to return. Another peace party member suggested offering Hanno's head as a present to the Romans, along with entreaties to end the conflict. Perhaps Carthage should add his entire family as slaves, Hannibal included.

But even in their foul mood, most councillors balked at this. Many of them had lost fortunes in Iberia and knew that giving in to Rome ruled out ever regaining this source of wealth. And they knew Rome had already been too terrified for too long to settle for an amicable peace. With the exception of the staunchest peace advocates, the others—after chastising Hanno in every manner, over the space of three full days—asked him what he proposed to do next. And he answered, although he gave this portion of his testimony exclusively to the Council of One Hundred Elders. His proposals were best made in secret, so he met with the elders deep in the Temple of Moloch, in a chamber protected by the god himself. There were, therefore, a few aspects of his dealings with the councillors that Sapanibal had yet to learn.

When she did lay eyes upon him, she stood beside the other women of the household in the Chamber of the Palms. He paused just inside the reed outer door, blinking in the dim light, waiting for his eyes to adjust. His face was ashen from his ordeal. He seemed to walk in a daze. The thick scent of incense clung to him still, Moloch's powerful aroma. It seemed he brought something of the hungry god into the room with him. He gazed at his family, behind whom towered the pillars meant to look like an ancient forest. Among these clustered the house servants, officials, eunuch guards: all seeking their first glimpse of the returning son.

Hanno bent his knee and lowered his head and explained that his safe arrival was not his doing alone. It was allowed by the gods, and so he acknowledged the power of Baal, who blew the wind across the sea that bore him home; the kindness of Tanit, who protected Carthage and blessed her crops; the blood rage of Moloch, which took lives other than his own; Astarte, from whose fertility he issued, without whom his homeland would be a barren wound; Eshmun, by whose power his many injuries were healed; Ares, who had filled him with fury in battle. . . . He had always been devout, and he did not forget any of the Carthaginian pantheon for the role they had played in any good fortune he had experienced. His prayers took some time but he completed them without rushing. Only then did he bridge the few steps between them and fall into the women's embraces. Up close, Sapanibal could smell more than the initial aroma of the incense. With her nose close to his ear she smelled the essence shared by all Barca men. It nearly brought tears to her eyes.

Finally, late that night when the household was quiet and the fires burned low and the lyre player in the garden had stopped her plucking and lain down beside the instrument, Hanno came to Sapanibal in her room. She embraced him again, hanging from his neck like a lover. They sat on the terrace overlooking the olive groves. Hanno sipped a heavy red wine, so thick it tinted his teeth a brownish color in the torchlight. And he told her everything. He spoke with a voice both dull and honest, describing the life that he had seen these few years. He spoke with the complete honesty he saved for her among all people. He even described the tortures the Romans had inflicted upon him, the things they promised him if he would turn on his brothers. It was not that he had ever been close to Sapanibal or loved her overly. But he had never been able to lie to her. She had been an older sister who had always seen through him. She judged him, yes, but he ever sought her for confession. Their relationship was no different now. At first, it warmed Sapanibal to fill this role again.

But at the first mention of Syphax she felt a tightness in her throat. She realized that the sensation mirrored a constriction that had gripped Hanno's own voice. He spoke more slowly and kept his eyes pointed out toward the darkness beyond the orchards. He explained that the Roman consul, as part of his plan for attacking Carthage, had made overtures to the Libyan king. This could not be allowed. It would have spelled their death in and of itself. King Gaia was ill and powerless; some said he was already dead but that it was being kept secret until word could reach his son, Masinissa. In any event the Massylii were about to be swallowed into Syphax' empire. This was certain. This was happening no matter what. Carthage, drained by the other theaters of war, was powerless to stop it. Masinissa was a brilliant young man, of whom Hanno was personally fond. He had been a great soldier in the Iberian campaign. They had parted as the best of friends, but Fortune thinks little of such emotions.

“Masinissa has been outmaneuvered without even knowing he was in a game,” Hanno said. “This is tragic for him, but if Syphax joined with Rome and turned against Carthage it would be the end of everything we have ever worked for. It would mean the destruction of the nation. Barcas nailed to crosses. Amazing punishments. Unthinkable things . . .”

“I understand the picture you paint,” Sapanibal said. “What did you do about it?”

“I saved our nation,” Hanno said. “I made an arrangement with Syphax that won him to us. I promised that we would not contest his actions against the Massylii. And I gave him Sophonisba for his wife.”

Sapanibal had been looking intently at her brother and went on doing so for a few moments. But then the meaning of his words drew all of her attention as a dry sponge sucks up water. Her vision blurred. Hanno went out of focus. She had to blink to bring him back again. Her response was first a simple refutation. He had not done that. “Sophonisba is betrothed to Masinissa,” she explained. “She's been promised.”

Hanno pursed his lips. “I'm sorry. I like Masinissa well, but their marriage is not to be. It is unfortunate . . .”

Sapanibal's look of complete disbelief hushed him. “Who gave you the authority?”

Hanno pressed his chin to his chest and held it like that for a moment. Then he looked out again into the night. “The Council sanctified it,” he said. “Didobal agreed. They've already annulled the engagement. It doesn't exist. It never did. To speak of it will be a crime punishable by death.”

“You are not telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie?”

“But she loves him. Do you understand? She wants to marry him. Is this how you save your neck? By trading your sister into slavery? Have Barca men fallen so low? When she hears of this she will die inside—”

“She already knows,” Hanno said. He waited for his sister's response to this, but she only stared at him. He sighed and tried to regain a calmer tone. “Sapanibal, if the gods one day ordain that I may split Syphax on my sword and watch the life escape him, I will do so. At present, I cannot.”

“So instead you'll call him brother? What's happened to you? I thought war made men, not turned them back into children.”

For the first time Hanno's voice rose, heated, quick of tongue. “Sister, look at me. I return defeated, without an army. I have nothing but my life, and that's worth very little. The Council was half a breath away from nailing me to a cross. Hadus would have disemboweled me himself and eaten my entrails while they were still warm. Do you understand? I am alive because I could promise those fat men that an army of sixty thousand Libyans wouldn't be banging on the gates of our city. Instead they'll fight for us. I've hardly saved my neck, sister—not considering the plan I've devised and the risks of it. None of our necks are yet safe. Sophonisba understood this better than you appear to. You surprise me. You are wise in so many ways, but you have a woman's blind spots in your vision.”

Sapanibal stood and moved near to her brother. She placed her hands to either side of his chair and, looking close into his face, she said, “I see more clearly than you imagine, but if I could turn my eyes into stones and rip them out to throw at you I would. You don't know what you've done to her. Syphax? Syphax?”

She had spoken calmly, but something changed with her proximity to him. Hanno began to remind her that Syphax was no demon. He was a king, who would treat Sophonisba well—

Before either of them knew it was going to happen, Sapanibal slapped her brother. “Was Hasdrubal the Handsome a demon?” she asked. “Was he? Was he? Was he?” She slapped him again, with the right and then with the left hand, and then with a mad barrage from both. He sat taking it, his features smudged and reddened; then she dropped on him and hugged him in a strange embrace, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades.

Later still, Sapanibal walked barefoot down the hall toward her sister's quarters. She stood between the eunuchs who guarded the entry, which was open to them but hidden around a corner. The two men each straightened when she approached. They did not speak, did not ask after her business or even set their eyes upon her for more than the instant it took to recognize her. She just stood, not sure what she would say to Sophonisba, or that she would even enter. She told herself that it was her duty to soothe her sister while also reminding her of the union's importance to their nation. Of course, this was what her reasoning mind believed. Her outburst against Hanno was a confused thing, the product of prolonged worry, of her own weakness. Fortune spins like a top and one never knows on what symbol it may land.

The soft, round notes of a pipe chime came to her, pushed by an evening breeze. For a moment she had the strange thought that some spirit had brushed past the chimes as it rushed to confront her, to grab her by the neck and squeeze all that nonsense out of her throat. She did not believe any of it. Maybe she never had. Maybe that was why this pained her so, because her whole life in duty had been an empty torture, a slow, prolonged strangulation. She heard movement inside, the murmur of a voice, and then a short, clipped sound that could have been either laughter or crying. This prompted her to move, although she did not know what she would say.

Rounding the corner into the soft lamplight she noticed Imilce first, leaning on Sophonisba's makeup table. Once, Sapanibal would have felt a pang of jealousy. She was no great friend to her sister, but Imilce had become one. She had taken the place in Sophonisba's life that Sapanibal might have occupied, if she had not been so cold to Sophonisba, if she had not envied her beauty and disdained the joys she took from life. She got no farther than the entrance, and then stood, elbows tucked into her sides.

Her younger sister sat on a stool before the small desk in which she kept her makeup and jewelry. Sapanibal caught her breath, frightened by how beautiful she was. She wore her hair pulled back and her face in profile was a twin to the goddess Tanit's. The curve at the ball of her nose, the full richness of her lips: all glistened as if they were molded anew each morning. She seemed ever to step out of a sculptor's workshop, unblemished, not even a grain of imperfection in the marble of her skin. Her gown fell off one knee, exposing the weight of her calf, a single foot, five toes, the smallest of which wore a tiny gold ring. Perfection. Tragic perfection.

She was about to withdraw when Sophonisba jerked her head around. Viewed straight on, her face struck Sapanibal with the force of a ceremonial mask. The dark makeup with which she etched the edges of her eyelids had run. Black lines streaked down her cheeks in the trails that dipped into the corners of her mouth. She stared at Sapanibal for a moment, then twisted her lips and asked, “Why do you look at me that way? I am not the first woman to wed for the sake of Carthage. Is that what you're going to tell me? Remind me of your own marriage and all the good it did our family? Say it, if you like. You must've waited many years to.”

Sapanibal closed her eyes. When she opened them a moment later tears burst from them. The harsh expression fell from her face completely, replaced by a trembling chin, flushed red cheeks, a ridged and quivering forehead. Several times she tried to say something, but the words bumbled around behind her teeth and nothing came out but sobs of hot air. That was not what she was going to say. Not at all.

Sophonisba stood and moved forward, lifted her arms, and pulled her sobbing sister into her embrace. “What's becoming of us?” she asked.

It was a day that Masinissa would always remember, a moment of decision that shaped everything in the life that was to follow. He began that fateful day trying to find a way to convince Mago not to quit Iberia. They need not be beaten yet, he argued to himself. He could send to his country for more horsemen. Carthage might provide another installment of infantry. Up to that moment, he had found it inordinately easy to kill Romans. He still believed he could accomplish all the tasks set before him and return to Numidia on his own terms. Though he had not mentioned it to the Barcas, he had even rejected envoys from Scipio the previous summer. The Roman had offered him friendship in return for his abandoning the Carthaginian cause. Scipio promised him Carthaginian lands as his own, with gifts from the wealth of their treasury, with numberless slaves, and with permission to rule Africa as he saw fit. It was a lot for a single agent of Rome to offer; this Scipio was bolder than his father. But still, it was of little importance. He rejected the offer with contempt and went on killing them. Who were the Romans to offer him anything other than their blood to wash his spear?

It all changed in a single moment, when a messenger whispered in his ear. What he heard stopped his breathing, blocking his throat so that for some moments his lips opened and closed uselessly, neither speaking nor drawing in air. This happened just after first light of the morning. Before the sun had reached a quarter height he arrived at Mago's camp. He entered at full stride, speeding past the two surprised guards and kicking the tent flap open with his foot.

“How long have you known?”

Mago looked up from the correspondence he had been reading. His first answer was a frown, his eyes nervous and—the Numidian thought—deceitful. “What news have you heard?”

“You know what I've heard. I've been told the sky is falling and my head is uncovered.”

This seemed to confuse the Barca. His frown deepened for a moment; then he dropped the pretense. “The news comes to me just this day as well. By the gods, Masinissa, I had no part in this. Syphax saw an opportunity and he grasped for it. But do not be rash. We can yet mend this.”

“How? How, when everything has been taken from me? My father is dead! I am no longer a son, and I am not a father. Now another man takes my Sophonisba to his bed and fucks her full of my enemies. Instead of my children she will push out Libyans, beasts that will bark for my blood. How can this be mended? Things done cannot be undone. There is only one way forward. I resign my command in your army; I leave Iberia—”

“You cannot!” Mago said, up on his feet now and coming toward him. “Don't be a fool, Masinissa. I know your blood is hot. I'm sorry they have done this. It was done without my knowledge. Nor would Hanno betray you, or Sophonisba herself. This is the work of the Council. Fight on with me, brother, and we will one day set things right again.”

“Again I ask you, how? Would you have me fight for you still, when you are allied to the man who has grasped my kingdom as his own? Have you not understood?” Masinissa blinked his eyes furiously. The conflicted reality of the situation flashed across his face in bursts, as if he were still being pelted by new realizations, continuously putting together how one thing rebounded against another. “All along I've been played for a fool. Sophonisba . . . Sophonisba herself trapped me. She made me a dog, leashed by Carthage. . . .”

“No, that's not so. I know my sister's heart is true to you. I saw her with you. I saw the flush of her cheeks and the joy you kindled in her. If she betrays you, it's with a knife to her throat and no other choice. Tell me you believe me, and we can make anything possible.”

The emotion in his heart was too much for Masinissa to bear showing another man. He gripped Mago and pulled him in so forcefully that the solid impact of their chests took away his breath. He pressed his cheek against the rough grain of Mago's neck. “I wish I could believe you,” he said, “but this morning a veil has been lifted from my eyes and I see everything differently.”

“I cannot be your enemy,” Mago said.

“And I cannot be your brother,” Masinissa whispered. “I loved you, but think of my position. I am a king without a kingdom and a husband without a bride. I don't know about the bride, but I must at least claim my nation back.”

As he walked away he counted each step toward his horse, listening for the call, the shout for him to halt, the order for the soldiers of the Sacred Band to rise up and grapple him to the ground. But the shout never came. Perhaps this was a last act of brotherly affection; perhaps it was a sign of weakness. Either way, he was soon up on a high ridge, riding with his guards around him. With the wind in his face and his horse beneath him he thought most clearly. He sent a messenger to the Romans the next day. He swore allegiance to them on the terms Publius had earlier offered, with the new condition that Rome would help restore his kingdom to him and help him make war against Syphax. It was strange to make promises to Romans. It meant, of course, that he was now at war with Carthage, but it could be no other way. He was a Massylii. With his father's death he had become a king. Strange that he had not heard of this for several weeks. Strange that someone had to whisper in his ear for him to know the whole world had changed.

Telling the Romans that he was returning to his country to raise an army, Masinissa departed Iberia with two hundred of his most loyal horsemen. He could have pulled more of his men if he had the time or ships to aid him, but he did not. Only his friendship with Moorish traders made his flight possible. He considered sending word to Maharbal in Italy, asking him to forsake Hannibal and return to Numidia, but he had not the resources to do this. Not yet, at least. Perhaps he also feared the answer he might receive. Maharbal did not know him. Who was to say he would even acknowledge him as his king? He had first to make sure any of his people would.

The events that unfolded from the moment his feet touched African soil came so fast and furious that the prince barely rested. He slept no more than a quarter of the night's cycle and yet still the waking moments were so full of shifting providence that he felt a lifetime passing in what should have been weeks. He landed on a barren stretch of beach east of Hippo Regius. His men disembarked beneath the light of a waxing moon, the world cast in bone highlights, full of shadow and light, with little gradation in between. They rode their horses right from the transports into the water. They churned up onto the shore in a froth of spray, propelled by bubbling rows of waves. The mounts neighed and tossed their heads and kicked sand into the wind. Not a soul moved on this lip of the continent except for them. This was as it should have been. Masinissa hoped to arrive home unannounced.

But Syphax, he soon learned, had anticipated him. As soon as he received confirmation from Carthage, he had shouted his men to arms. He called in soldiers from throughout his vast empire, making the usual promises: riches and women and the rule of all North Africa. He sent multiple armies marching into Massylii territory, a many-pronged attack that took the city of Thugga with barely a fight and stormed Zama with great violence and cast a net of terror over the plains of the upper Tell. He had King Gaia's grave identified and dug up. He set his corpse aflame and erased all monuments to the ruler's reign and set about placing his own name on all that had been Gaia's. The Massylii were a brave people but without a unifying leader they could not withstand such onslaught; without Carthage's blanket of protection they suddenly seemed a small nation. Syphax pressed them beneath his heel and took joy in it, for to do so had been his hunger all his life long. The summer was not yet half over, but he retired to Cirta to await his new wife and the pleasures he was sure she would provide him.

Masinissa had landed in a country in turmoil. He was branded a bandit from the moment he arrived, a wanted man, treasure to the killer who severed his head and offered it to Syphax, a greater fortune to the man who brought him in alive for the king's amusement. Scouts roamed the shoreline in competing bands. Though he missed him by a day, a Libyan captain named Bucar spotted signs of Masinissa's arrival and set out after him. He ambushed the young king's men a few days later, on the flatlands outside Clupea; he swept down on their riverside camp, trapping the small band between a force of two thousand horsemen and four thousand foot soldiers. There could be no contest between such numbers, so Masinissa's men simply struggled to escape the tightening vise. They fled the horsemen but everywhere found pikes aimed at them from the ground, javelins flung at them in numbers and thickness like a school of barracudas.

By the time they sprung clear of the foot soldiers they numbered less than fifty. In the daylong running skirmish they killed three times as many as they lost, but this was a losing equation. To their honor, his men protected Masinissa with their own lives. That was why there were only four of them alive when Masinissa led them at a full gallop into the river Bagradas. The current lifted them and tumbled them in the brown, silt-laden water. They slid obliquely past their pursuers, at a steady speed faster than the horsemen could make over the irregular terrain, gnarled and choked as it was with bushes. Some of Bucar's men plunged in after them, but three of these went under and disappeared. Seeing the same happen to at least two of Masinissa's men, Bucar pulled up the chase. The prince learned later that he had declared him dead and ridden for Cirta to bring Syphax the news.

But Masinissa did not die. The river spat him to shore at a constriction in its great girth, on a patch of sand so fine and soft that it reminded him of otter fur. His two remaining men found him and together they sat contemplating the desolation that had overtaken them. They had been no great force that morning, but now they had only two horses to share between them, and one of those was lame. How could this have happened? Masinissa asked himself silently, again and again as if the answer would come with dogged persistence. He had accomplished nothing, nothing at all, and now he feared he could not.

One of his companions tugged at his elbow and urged flight. Villagers from a nearby settlement had spotted them and were suspiciously watching from the opposite bank. They could sail for Rome, his companion proposed. They would enlist in the Roman army and return later to set these matters to rights. But these men, brave and true as they were, were not leaders of nations. Masinissa knew that if he arrived in this condition in Rome his life would be worth no more than the price of his skin, the value of his bones and of the jewelry that clung to them.

Instead, he turned from the plains and ascended into the Naragara highlands of his father's territory. He traded his tattered royal garments for a humble disguise. He wore no emblem of sovereignty and shared the two horses fairly with his guards, taking his turn afoot when it came. They dressed the same as he and, to onlookers, occupied no different station in life. In the guise of a holy pilgrim, he sheltered with the peasants of Mount Bellus and made offerings there to the Egyptian god Bes, hoping for some of his mischievous power. He ate the meat of goats roasted on open fires and stole fruit where he could find it. Throughout this time his companions looked on with troubled eyes, for he seemed to have no direction. He did not speak to them of strategy, of tactics to regain his throne. He kept his thoughts to himself and appeared miserably content to roam the land without direction, from the mountain back down to the plains and then through the orchard lands south of Zama and from there into the scraggly hills south of Sicca, a land of mountain goats and of people who walked as if on cloven hooves themselves. They went high enough that they looked down on the flight paths of eagles and condors, creatures that could only take flight by jumping from heights onto columns of heated air rising from the plains.

To aid him his companions spoke casually with the people they met, testing their opinions. Did they mourn King Gaia's death? Did they welcome Syphax, or loathe him as he deserved? They brought Masinissa reports of all they heard. The people were afraid, they said. They despaired, but they still loved the line of Gaia.

Sometimes, huddled beside the campfire or mounted on a ridge or plucking the feathers from a rainbow-throated dove—anytime, really, for it came unannounced by an external impetus—the prince muttered aloud things strange for the men to hear. Words of praise, evocations of beauty, whole speeches of bottomless longing, Sophonisba's name pronounced so slowly that it seemed a new word added to the language, something expressing the tortured love of a man stripped of the skin of artifice: all this embarrassed his men and made them nervous.

When he spoke of his father they understood him somewhat better. He had always claimed that his father had no vision, no ambition. He was a kind man, wise and strong enough to hold together the disparate Massylii people, but Masinissa admitted to his companions that he had always been an ungrateful son, sure he could do better. He could not remember a time when he did not count the days until his father stepped from power and let him stride on to greatness. He had just woken to the fact that he knew nothing of how to be a king. He knew only what it took to be the spoiled son of one.

To this one of his companions offered, “That cannot be so. Our fathers teach us whether we listen or not.”

“A crocodile is born of an egg and never knows his parents after hatching,” the other added. “And yet he grows to be a crocodile; he cannot be anything else.”

Masinissa turned to the two men and stared at them for a long time, unsure that he even recognized them.

When they arrived at the remote council of Massylii elders a few weeks later, it seemed nothing more than a chance happening, as if they had been blown there by a random wind. The council took place at an ancient site known only to the tribal leaders and outside the range of any one elder's base of power. Masinissa was fortunate in his timing, although as yet he took no comfort from this. The council seldom needed to be held more than once in a generation, always in times of turmoil. This was such a time.

There was no structure large enough for the men to gather in so they met in the open. If they noticed Masinissa at all, they thought him one of the local herdsmen. His clothing was poor and bedraggled and his hair hung in knotted locks that obscured his features. He listened as the men—some of whom he had known from birth—spoke of the troubled times they lived in. They couched their words cautiously. It was obvious they wanted to speak frankly to each other, but none knew who among them might have turned to Syphax. They might speak their minds tonight, only to find themselves skewered tomorrow. So the conversation was roundabout and seemed to be heading for no definite conclusion. It was clear that Syphax had grabbed them all by the balls. They hated him for this and spoke with fondness of their dead king. But it was not until one of them offered a prayer of remembrance for Masinissa himself that the prince decided his time had come. It would have been unnatural to hear one's own death lamented and not speak up.

Masinissa stood and pushed his way into the group of men. They turned and looked at him. One elbowed him and another asked his business. He held his tongue until he had centered himself in their circle, and then he kept silent a little longer. He drew his hair back from his face and fastened it with a thong made of lion's hide. And then he dropped his arms, raised his chin, and met the men with his gaze. His fingers twitched as he stood there, ready to draw his dagger and take all the lives he could before he was killed, if it came to that.

He said, “Do not mourn me. The king's son lives.”

Landing on Sicily in the spring, Publius found the island simmering like a pot of boiling water just taken from the fire. The cities of Syracuse, Agrigentum, and Lilybaeum had not watched the war indifferently. Throughout it they had swayed in their allegiance, tipped here and there by the machinations of their ambitious leaders. Many of their residents—the Greeks especially—remembered the fine times they had enjoyed under Carthaginian rule and had not found Roman dominion to their liking. They had rebelled, although with only mixed, temporary success. At the time of Publius' arrival, however, the island had returned to Roman hands. All active revolt and political ploys had been quashed by the forces stationed there, thanks, in part, to the irresolute support Carthage had provided those declaring for them. The Greek rebels in Syracuse found themselves being stripped of their wealth. Many had been kicked onto the streets, where Latin children pelted them with stones and women spat on them and men used any pretense to lash out at them.

Publius, looking at this, reckoned it hardly a stable base from which to launch the greatest military action of his life. So he set about to right things from the first day. Citing his authority as consul, he ordered Greek property returned and demanded that the people of the city live together once more as they had in the years before this recent conflagration. In as short a space of time as he could manage, he circumnavigated the island, bringing this message to all the cities. Then he called the disgraced legions from Cannae to muster. He merged them with the seven thousand volunteers he had secured before leaving Italy. Together, this formed an army of just under twelve thousand, the vast majority of them infantry.

He drilled them mercilessly. He had learned a great deal in Iberia and he tried to convey it to his men and build upon it further. Each day brought more supplies in from the stores kept throughout the island, saw new weapons crafted and honed, filled the harbors of Sicily with the sails of more vessels. The seafaring cities of Etruria laid the keels of some thirty warships, preparing them in the remarkable time of forty-five days from the moment the trees were felled until the hour they sailed for Sicily. Laelius led scouting missions along the African coastline, looking for a place to land, surveying the cities there, getting an idea of their defenses, and making contacts with likely spies. He did not go near Carthage itself, for Publius had another target in mind. The intelligence that Laelius brought him revealed that all the pieces were in place.

The morning of their departure dawned gloriously clear, pleasantly warm, with just enough breeze to buffet the forty warships and hundreds of transports that bobbed in the harbor of Agrigentum. Publius himself called for silence on the ships. When this message had been passed on to all the vessels he invoked the presence of all the gods and goddesses of land and sea. He spoke the words he had practiced for this occasion, with nothing kind in them, but a plainspoken demand that the divine forces aid them in bringing to Carthage all of the terror and suffering Carthage had unloosed on Rome. And he asked that they further be allowed to press the matter to a conclusion, so that the men of Rome and all those allied with her could return to their countries laden with treasure, with plunder enough that they could bury their chins in the bosom of it and forget the strife that had been inflicted on them. He sacrificed a cream-colored bull with a star splash of white on its forehead, slung the entrails into the sea, and watched how they floated on the surface. Finding the picture to his liking, he gave a signal to this effect. A rolling, irregular roar traveled from ship to ship, a great cacophony of voices and horns and bells that some swore must have carried all the way across the water and set the Africans trembling.

They sailed through that day on a middling wind and made slow progress through the night as a thick fog blanketed the sea. Even so, first light brought the shoreline of Africa into hazy view. So near as that, Publius thought. So near to us as that. The first point of land, the captain called the Promontory of Mercury. Publius liked this well enough, but ordered that they carry on to the west. The next morning the captain called out that he had sighted the Cape of the Beautiful One. This, the consul believed, was just the place for them, not far at all from Cirta, but at a good enough distance for him to get his troops to land and into order.

At the sight of them the peasants along the shore ran in fear, grabbing up everything they could carry and kicking their children and livestock before them. Laelius asked if they should chase them down and stop them from sounding the alarm. Publius answered in the negative. In fact, he quite wanted the alarm sounded. Let it ring all the way to Carthage, all the way across the plains of Libya, to the Atlas Mountains and back. The farther away they heard the call, the better.

With the entire army on land, they at once began to march on Cirta. Most of the troops under Publius' command now had not been with him in Iberia, and many of them grumbled at this first move. They were heading in the wrong direction! Why go west when Carthage was to the east and stood undefended? But, as had proved prudent in the past, Publius kept his own counsel.

Some distance outside the city, a delegation from Syphax approached under a banner of parley. Publius agreed to hear them. The message they brought was that the king himself wished to meet with Publius. He believed they had spoken once as reasonable men and could do so again now. Publius sent back saying that the situation was much altered from their last meeting. He came not to talk now but with an army actively at war with Carthage. He said that he knew of Syphax' marriage into the Barca family, and he knew that Hanno Barca was at that very moment raising troops among the Libyans, while several Barca women resided in Cirta. He had every reason to believe that the state of war now stretched to include Syphax' people. Unless the Libyan king renounced his allegiance with Carthage immediately and completely, he faced an imminent clash of arms.

To this Syphax responded with his sincerest hope that it need not come to that. True, he was married into the house of Barca and therefore to the fate of Carthage. Hannibal's wife and elder sister had accompanied his new bride and were in his care at present, but he was still a ruler of his people and capable of making his own decisions. Indeed, this situation placed him in a special position that might benefit them all. Before he need consider breaking with his beloved wife, he again proposed that he mediate between Rome and Carthage. This conflict had gone on too long, too many had died, enough had been destroyed, and both sides had been shown to be great powers evenly met. Hanno, as a commander on African soil, had authority to make arrangements by which his brother in Italy would have to abide. Let them here work out a peace wherein Hannibal withdrew from Italy and Scipio sailed home. Do not answer rashly, but consider that the bloodshed could end with words instead of the sword. Did this not promise benefits to Rome so great that they deserved considering?

When the two of them stepped away from the delegation to ponder this, Laelius asked Publius, “Do you believe he is sincere?”

“He is a jackal,” Publius answered.

Laelius considered this for a moment. “But a sincere jackal?”

In answer, Publius told Syphax that he owed it to his people and to the brave men of his army to explore the possibility of ending this conflagration peaceably. He would consent to a meeting with the king, but only after they had corresponded on enough details to verify that such a conference would yield results. Syphax agreed.

While this got under way, Publius had his army camp on the plains, about a half-day's ride from the city. An equal distance away lay the enemy's camp, a site that had long been used by the Libyans to house troops in training and keep armies of raucous men outside the city itself. Through informers whom Laelius had recruited on his early reconnaissance missions along the coast, Publius knew a great deal about the army he was to face. Syphax had a core of well-trained soldiers, some who fought as spearmen in the manner of the Greek phalanx, others whose primary weapon was the sword. These fought standing side by side, with the edges of their feet touching, slicing like so many butchers at whatever came near them. They carried wooden, hide-covered shields, but their work was more suited to attack than defense.

These men posed as serious a threat as any trained by Hannibal, but much of Syphax' army comprised troops newly called to service from throughout his empire. He had no system for training and formation to match that of the Roman legion, and therefore aimed to prevail through sheer quantity of fighting men alone. Soldiers drifted in like hyenas drawn to a kill. They came singly and in tribal bands, lone creatures who looked after themselves foremost. They were clad in leopard and cheetah and lion skins, burly-armed and long-legged, some with enormous locks of hair like a hundred snakes, others with shaved heads tattooed in imitation of their spirit animals. They carried a wild variety of weapons, many ghastly in appearance: spears of differing sizes and functions, pikes with many-pronged heads, flails that ripped divots of skin loose with each strike, harpoons attached to cords so that a pierced man could be yanked off his feet. One group had chosen the ax as their favored weapon and each of these wore the shriveled remainder of their enemies' severed limbs to attest to their weapons' utility. A band from a seashore people to the west appeared with small round shields encrusted with coral, carrying tridents so heavy that a man once penetrated by their points was thereafter anchored to the spot and could be dispatched with a small shell knife.

The ranks of the African army swelled from one day to the next. Clearly, this was just what Syphax hoped for, and Laelius again and again asked Publius when they were going to act. He feared the enemy would number thirty thousand soon. Forty or fifty thousand before long. Who knew how many sand-colored men would eventually step out of the landscape? Their own troops were only twelve thousand strong. How long could they wait? Each day their number grew, and each day Hanno had more time to shape them into a more cohesive—

“How many died at Cannae?” Publius interrupted.

“You know the number,” Laelius replied.

“Yes, I do,” Publius said, as if this were answer enough to the whole line of questioning.

A week into the slow negotiations, Publius commented that the Libyans had not expanded the boundaries of their camp. No doubt in a desire to conceal their numbers, they contained their growing bulk behind the original perimeter. This structure was formidable, built as it was of stout, gnarled hardwood, woven into a tight wall bristling with thorns as long as a man's finger. It was not a new kind of defense, but had been improved over the years. It was formidable, Publius pointed out, but it was also wooden. For that matter, the huts in the Libyan camp were built mostly of reed and thatch. The Carthaginian contingent, following its custom, built in earth and dried wood. What the camp now presented was a wealth of fuel, contained in a smallish area, crammed with men and animals, supplies and clothing and foodstuffs. The only things not vulnerable to fire were metal objects, and rings or cups, spears or axes, which had never harmed anyone of their own volition.

His companion, as ever, searched in this observation for the course Publius was formulating and then began to see it, unclearly, in outline.

Still the negotiations went on. Syphax had first to convince Publius that Hanno was committed to the possibility of peace. Then Publius needed proof that Hanno had the authority to conclude an agreement. After that, they began a back-and-forth on basic conditions that had to be agreed upon before they went any further. Some among Publius' own staff grumbled that they were playing into Syphax' hands. Though this was never said within his hearing, Publius learned that some of his men believed he had been stricken with fear and wanted to conclude a peace without further risk so that his previous successes would not be overshadowed by a failure. This opinion was hard to refute, for his plan needed to mature. He let them talk.

To Laelius, he noted the tendency of the wind to rise after sunset and gust for some hours as the earth adjusted to the change of day into night.

Nine days into the negotiations, Masinissa arrived at the head of nearly two thousand mounted Massylii. Publius could not help but comment to Laelius on the strangeness of watching the African horsemen ride calmly into his camp. The last time he had beheld such a sight he was looking on his sworn enemy; this time, however, he did his best to put their previous relationship behind them, to dismiss it as a historical detail, not something to trouble them with suspicions now. At least, so he declared publicly, in his opening remarks. Masinissa's people introduced him using the title of king. Publius did not hesitate to take up the term. Why not? Either it would become true in practice, or the young man would die in the effort. That much was clear.

Masinissa, at their first meeting, reiterated the other officers' nervous views on the swelling army of Libyans. Although he spoke no Latin, he could make himself understood in Greek, which pleased the consul almost as much. Publius calmed him, saying that when the time came his men would be in a position to slaughter as many of them as they could hold pebbles in their hand. Publius noted that the young man looked often in the direction of Cirta. He knew why, but for the time being he said nothing.

By the eleventh day, it seemed they had corresponded through messengers for as long as they could. In the final few days Syphax and Hanno increasingly set out demands that proved them scoundrels. In return for ending hostilities and pulling Hannibal back from Italy, they not only wanted Publius' withdrawal from Africa, they also required that Iberia be largely returned to Carthaginian hands and that ports captured by Hannibal in Italy be traded for the Roman-controlled ports on Sicily. They proposed that neither side actually admit defeat at the other's hand; thus Carthage would not be required to pay a war indemnity to make amends for the damage done to the Roman people. And they wanted Masinissa handed over into Syphax' custody.

None of these terms were acceptable. Publius believed that Hanno well understood this, but perhaps his hand was forced by representatives of his council. Or, perhaps, with the fifty-some-thousand men in their camp, they believed they held the advantage. In any event, the consul put aside whatever compunction he might have had about his plans and sent back his reply. It was agreed. They would meet in person in two days' time, on the neutral ground between their camps, just after first light. Hanno and Syphax should both be present. And they, like Publius himself, should have spent the preceding evening in prayer and purification, so that all they said the following day would be kindly looked upon by the gods.

Only on the morning before the arranged meeting did Publius call his generals together and lay before them the complete situation as he saw it, answering all their questions in a single meeting. Of course he was not considering the terms of the enemy's offer. He had never intended to. He had put Carthage to their backs deliberately, not to avoid the issue but to win it more conclusively. The simple fact was that Carthage had no army inside its walls. There were riches in there, fat men and beautiful women and slaves enough for a city twice as large, but there were few fighting men. Carthage had never been a nation of citizen soldiers, and this was their great weakness. They preferred to elevate men of genius to military leadership and then buy temporary armies as required. Hannibal had changed this, to some extent, but Hannibal was not in Africa. The people of Carthage believed themselves safe inside their city's massive fortifications. They could easily hold out for months; they had done so in the past. As they could all see, Hanno Barca and King Syphax had gathered for themselves a sizable force here beside Cirta. Why so?

“Is it not clear that the Carthaginians had hoped that we would attack Carthage?” Publius asked. “Once we had done that and were entrenched, committed, limited to the grounds that the enemy had for generations shaped for its defenses, then and only then would their massive army attack us, not from the city itself but from behind our backs. They would have chosen the spot, the time, the circumstances. They'd have marched in with one unified force under their best commanders, numbering the exact maximum they could muster. This, at least, is what they wished. But something very different will take place.

“This war began with deceit and trickery,” Publius said. “Now it will end by the same.”

There was some debate about what Publius then proposed, but it was halfhearted. The generals all saw its deadly efficiency and knew that any other course might mean their doom. Accordingly, the evening before the scheduled meeting, the various generals led their men out and into positions near the Libyan camp. They waited until dark and, letting their men's eyes adjust, marched with no torchlight to give them away. Each corps carried a red-hot ember in an earthenware jar, wrapped in leather to insulate it and pierced with air holes to feed the coal.

When Publius judged the hour right, he took a reed whistle and played a wistful melody. Others picked it up and passed it on, as had been arranged. With this, the keepers of the coals in four different areas tipped them onto the dry timbers they had prepared. Men huddled close around each of these, protecting the infant flame from the wind that had begun to blow. As soon as the red glow flared into gold tongues, men came forward with torch after torch.