Pride of Carthage

The delegation arrived in the capital of the Roman Republic during the waning days of the Mediterranean autumn. They had traveled from the city of Saguntum in eastern Iberia to beg an audience before the Senate. Once they were granted it, a man named Gramini spoke for them. He looked about the chamber with a clear-eyed visage, voice strong but somewhat lispy. The Romans had to crane forward on their benches and watch his lips to understand him, some with hands cupped to their ears, a few with grimaces and whispers that the man's Latin was unintelligible. But in the end all understood the substance of his words, and that was this: The Saguntines were afraid. They feared for their very existence. They were a jewel embedded in a rough land, rife with tribal conflict and turmoil. They were sheep living with a mighty wolf at their back. The creature's name was not new to them, for it was the ever hungry Hannibal Barca of Carthage, the son of Hamilcar, avowed enemy of Rome.

The delegate explained that Rome had neglected Iberia to the Republic's detriment. The African power had taken advantage of this to build an empire there. It had grown into a stronger foe than it had ever been during their earlier wars. He wondered aloud whether Romans had forgotten the lessons of history. Did they not remember the damage Hamilcar Barca had inflicted upon them during the last war between Rome and Carthage? Did they deny that he had gone undefeated and that the conflict had been decided by the flaws of others beyond his control? Did they remember that after this reversal Hamilcar had not only prevailed over the mercenary revolt in his own country but had also begun carving into Iberian soil? Because of him, the Carthaginians grew even richer on a harvest of silver and slaves and timber, a fortune that flowed daily into the coffers of their homeland.

By the benevolent will of the gods, Hamilcar had been dead some years now, but his son-in-law, Hasdrubal the Handsome, had stretched their domain farther and built a fortress-city at New Carthage. Now he, too, was dead: Thankfully, an assassin's knife had found his throat as he slept. But Hamilcar had been resurrected in his son Hannibal. He had set about completing their mission. Altogether, the three Carthaginians had defeated the Olcades and destroyed their city of Althaea, punished the Vaccaei and captured Salmantica, and made unrelenting war on the tribes of the Baetis and Tagus and even the Durius, peoples wilder and farther removed than those of Saguntum. Even now, Hannibal was off on a new campaign against Arbocala. If this proved successful—as the emissaries feared it might have already—most of Iberia would lie under the Carthaginian heel. There was only one great city left, and that was Saguntum. And was Saguntum not an ally to Rome? A friend to be called upon in ill times and likewise aided in Rome's own moments of calamity? That is why he was here before them, to ask for Rome's full commitment of support should Hannibal set his sights next on them.

The senator Gaius Flaminius rose to respond. A tall man among Romans, Gaius was self-assured beneath a bristle of short black hair that stood straight up from his forehead as if plastered there with egg whites. He joked that the Saguntines could not be mistaken for sheep. They were a mighty people in their own right. Their fortress was strong and their resilience in battle well known. He also added, a bit more dryly, that there was one wolf of the Mediterranean and it resided not in Iberia but upon the Tiber. He did not answer the Iberians' questions directly but thanked them for their faith and urged patience. The Senate would consider the matter.

Gramini bowed at this answer but showed with his upraised hand that he was not yet finished. He wanted it understood that the danger Saguntum was in related to its allegiance with Rome. Should that allegiance prove to be of no substance, then a grave injustice would have been committed against a blameless people. Saguntum had every intention of staying loyal to Rome. He hoped that Rome would likewise honor its commitment, for there were some who claimed Saguntum was foolish to put so much faith in a Latin alliance. He ended by asking, “Can we have your word, then, of direct military assistance?”

“You have yet to be attacked,” Flaminius said. “It would be unwise to conclude a course of action prior to understanding the nature of the conflict.” He assured the Iberian that in any event the Saguntines should return to Iberia in good spirits. No nation had ever regretted, or would ever regret, making a friend of Rome.

Having received this answer, Gramini retired and was soon making the arrangements for his return voyage. The Senate, for their part, did engage with the questions the Iberian had posed, in depth, in heated debate, that afternoon and all of the next. They agreed to send a messenger to this Carthaginian, Hannibal Barca. Let his cage get a good rattling. Let him remember the power of Rome and act accordingly. Beyond this, however, they could come to no firm consensus. They had other foreign issues to deal with, in Gaul and Illyria. The resolution of this affair with Carthage would have to wait.

Each afternoon since arriving in Iberia two weeks earlier, the youngest of the Barca brothers, Mago, had taken a long, vigorous ride through the countryside. On returning each afternoon he paused at the same vantage point and stared at the physical manifestation of his family's legacy. New Carthage was breathtaking. It sat at the far end of a long isthmus, like an island tacked to the continent by an arm of the land that refused to let go. From a distance its walls rose straight up out of the water on three sides, only that narrow stretch of earth connecting it to the continent. The harbor carved an almost perfect circle around the city, with fingers of jutting rock that all but closed its mouth. Two thirds of its water sank into a blue-black no different from the deep water offshore; the other third, on the south side of the city, shone a wonderful turquoise blue, lit from below by a shallow bed of rock and coral that caught the sun like the inside of an oyster shell.

The fifteenth time he took in this view, he knew something had changed. It was a minute detail and he took a moment to spot it: The flag normally flapping above the citadel had been pulled in. No longer did the red standard of campaign snap in the breeze. Now, even as he watched, a new flag climbed into position. It shivered, curled, trembled, and never stood out clearly, but he knew what it was: the Lion of Carthage. His family's symbol. It meant his brothers had returned from the insurrection they had gone to put down in the north. Messengers had brought word of the army's approach earlier in the week, but they must have made better time than anticipated.

A rider sent out to find him met him near the southern gates to the fortress. Hannibal asked that he come without hesitation, the messenger said. When Mago dismounted and headed toward the palace the man said, “Not there. Please follow me.”

The walk took a further few minutes. The messenger led him at a trot across the main courtyard, down several flights of marble stairs, through a series of tunnels, and then up a sloping ramp onto the wall itself. Beyond it, Mago caught sight of the returning army, coming in from the northern approach. His steps slowed as he took it in.

The long, wide column flowed over the rolling landscape, receding into the distance and still visible on the farthest ridge of the horizon. The infantry marched in loose formation, in their respective companies and tribal affiliations. The cavalry rode out to either side of the army. They circled and wheeled and galloped in short bursts, as if they were herdsmen at work with a great flock. The elephants strode in a similar deployment but spaced at larger intervals. He could see the nearest of them in detail. They were of the African breed, so their drivers straddled them just behind their ears. The riders' heads and torsos swayed with the slow rhythm of the creatures' strides. They talked to their mounts and smacked them with rods, but these seemed automatic gestures, for the creatures saw the fortress and could already smell the feed waiting for them.

Mago turned and sped off behind the messenger, pushing his way through a growing, joyous crowd. He had to move quickly to slip between them. By the time the messenger slowed his pace and looked back at Mago, they had again dropped down to the base level of the city. They walked down a dark hallway. It was rank with moisture, cooler than the exposed air. Old hay had been swept out and piled along one side of the corridor. The acidic bite of urine made Mago walk with his head turned to one side. He was about to ask the messenger which this was—a joke or a mistake—but then caught sight of a head glancing out from a room toward the end of the hallway. A body emerged after it: his older brother, Hanno, the second after Hannibal. Mago pushed past the messenger and jogged toward him, arms upraised for the greeting he expected.

Hanno shot one arm out. His fingers clamped around his brother's bicep and squeezed a momentary greeting. But then that was done with. He pulled Mago's eyes to his own and fixed his lips in a stern line. “Romans,” he said. “They arrived just before us. Not the homecoming we expected. Hannibal is just about to speak with them. Come.”

Hanno motioned for his brother to enter the room behind him. Though swept clean of straw and filth, the room was simply a corridor, lined along one wall with stalls. It was lit by a mixture of torchlight and the slanting gray daylight from a passage that opened onto the horse-training fields. Several soldiers of the Sacred Band lined the walls. These were guards sworn to protect the nation's generals. Each was clean-shaven on the cheeks and upper lip, a carefully trimmed knob of whiskers at the base of his chin. They stood one before each stall, arms folded and gazes fixed forward.

In the center of the space, a chair had been set, by itself, straight-backed and tall, with wings coming out from either side that hid the profile of whoever resided in it. Which is what it did for the man now seated in it. His arms rested dead upon the armrests, the knuckles of his hands large and calloused, the brown skin stained still darker by some substance long dried and caked against it. Several figures bent close to him, speaking in hushed tones. One of them—half hidden behind the body of the chair and visible only as a portion of the head and shoulder—Mago recognized. When this person looked up he saw the bulky, square-jawed face and the thickly ridged forehead, topped with a mass of wavy black hair. Though his face was grim, the man flashed a smile upon seeing the newcomers. It was Hasdrubal, the third of the Barca sons. As Mago had known from the start, the seated man was his eldest brother, Hannibal.

Mago stepped toward them, but Hanno caught him by the arm. He nodded toward the mouth of the passageway. Five men had appeared in the space. They seemed to stand considering the corridor, looking one to another and sharing thoughts on it. One of them shook his head and spat on the ground. Another made as if to stride away. But yet another stayed them all with a calming gesture of his hand. He pulled the crested helmet from his head and tucked it under his arm, then stepped forward into the passageway. The others fell in a few paces behind him, five silhouettes against the daylight.

“You and I will take a position to the right of him,” Hanno whispered, “Hasdrubal and the translator to the left. This is a strange greeting, yes, but we want you to stand as one of us.”

The two of them slipped into position. Mago still could not see his eldest brother's face, but Hasdrubal nodded at Mago and whispered something that he did not catch. Then they all turned toward the Romans in silence, still-faced and as empty of expression as possible.

The leader of the embassy halted a few strides from the chair and stood with his legs planted wide. Though he wore no sword, he was otherwise dressed for war. His skin tone was only a shade lighter than the Carthaginians', yet there was no mistaking the differences in their origins. He was half a head shorter than most Carthaginians, bulky in the shoulders and thick down through the torso. One edge of his lips twisted, an old scar, perhaps, a wound slow in healing and left imperfect. His eyes jumped from one to the other of the brothers, studying each and finally settling on the figure enclosed by the chair.

“Hannibal Barca,” he said, “commander of the army of Carthage in Iberia: My name is Terentius Varro. I bring you a message from the Republic of Rome, by order of the Senate of that Republic.”

He paused and glanced over his shoulder. One of the men behind him cleared his throat and began to translate Varro's Latin into Carthaginian. He was cut short by a single, small motion that drew all their eyes. Hannibal had raised a finger from its grip on the armchair. His wrist twisted in a motion that was at first unclear, until the digit settled into place, a pointer directed toward one of the men standing behind him, his own translator, a young man dressed in a simple cloak that covered him entirely save for his head and hands. He conveyed the introduction.

“Welcome, Terentius Varro,” Hannibal said, via his translator. “Let us hear it, then.”

“You will have me speak here, in a stable?” Varro looked around. One of the men behind him exhaled an exasperated breath and checked the bottoms of his sandals for fouling. “Let me say again, Hannibal Barca—”

“It's just that I was told you were anxious to speak to me,” Hannibal said, breaking in with his Carthaginian. “I've just returned from the siege of Arbocala this very hour, you see. I am tired, unwashed. I still have blood under my fingernails. All this and yet I've paused here to listen to your urgent message. Once you've given it you can mount and take my answer back to Rome. And do not worry about your sandals. We can provide you new ones if you like.”

The commander pointed to a soldier in the far corner and motioned him out of the room. The young man seemed confused, but hurried out anyway. “You'll like our sandals,” Hannibal said. “There are none better for comfort.”

The Roman turned and shared a dour expression with his translator, as if asking him to make some official note of all of this. He turned back to the commander. “It's come to the Senate's attention that some of our allies here in Iberia are dismayed by Carthaginian actions.”

Hannibal made a sound low in his throat, a rumbling acknowledgment.

The Roman took no note of it. Saguntum, he reminded the commander, was a friend of Rome and would be protected as such. Rome had been generous with Carthage so far, not curtailing its ventures in Iberia since the time of Hamilcar, through Hasdrubal the Handsome. Now Rome was still acting with restraint in her dealings with Hannibal. But this should not suggest that Romans had forgotten the details of previous treaties. They still honored the agreement with Hasdrubal that limited the Carthaginian sphere of influence to south of the Ebro. They acknowledged that the familial and tribal ties of some of Carthage's Iberian allies approached that border, and for that reason they had so far looked the other way in the face of these minor violations. But Rome would not remain inactive if Saguntum were threatened. And she would allow no activity whatsoever beyond the Ebro. None. She wanted this understood by the young commander, in the event that his predecessor's untimely death had left him with any questions.

As the translator finished this, Varro glanced over his shoulder at his colleague, a knowing look that suggested he was just now getting to the crux of his speech. “Rome therefore demands that Hannibal limit his dealings around Saguntum to peaceful transactions among existing allies, establishing no settlements there and mediating no disputes in the region. Rome demands that no Carthaginian or Carthaginian ally cross the Ebro for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, Rome demands—”

“Enough!” Hannibal said in Latin. He had not spoken loudly, but the word clipped the Roman to silence. He leaned forward, for the first time bringing his profile into Mago's view. His deep-set eyes remained in shadow, recessed beneath prominent eyebrows and beside a sharp blade of a nose. Like the men of the Sacred Band, he wore a trimmed bulb of hair on his chin. He touched it with his fingertips and seemed to pluck his words out like single strands. “I'll have no more furthermores. You have made your case. Will you have my response?”

Varro gathered his composure. More than startled by the interruption, he seemed ill at ease speaking directly to the Carthaginian in Latin. He had to clear his throat before responding. “As I have been interrupted, I would not say that I have made my case completely.”

“Be that as it may . . .”

Hannibal stood and stepped forward, a head taller than the Roman. His arms were bare from the shoulder. He flexed his triceps, rolled his shoulder joints, and tilted his chin in a way that audibly cracked his jaw. There was something in his appearance that surprised Mago, though it was not a difference in his actual physique. He had always been fit and disciplined beyond the norm, but now his movements had a new focus and deliberateness. Even as he appeared to be somewhat weary of the discourse, there was still a thoughtful tension behind his eyes. He paced the floor before the envoy, glancing at various objects around the stable: the dirt floor, the wood of the stalls, the insignia on the shield of one of the Sacred Band. He touched for a moment on Mago and registered his arrival with his eyes.

“Whence comes this history of kinship between Rome and Saguntum?” he asked, speaking once more in Carthaginian. His translator kept time just after him. “Where is the treaty written? It seems to me that this city is a new friend to Rome, perhaps a friend in name only, for a purpose only. Be true and speak to the source of your passions. Rome is troubled to see Carthage flourish. You thought us a defeated people but find instead that we blossom. We came to this wild place and tamed it and now manage the riches that flow out of it. This is what you covet. Rome has always hated the way silver coins appear between the fingers of Carthaginian hands as if by sorcery. Speak truthfully and admit that you stand here before me because of greed and envy, not for the protection of a single city. This matter of Saguntum is just an excuse for opening hostilities with us.”

Hannibal paused. When the translator halted a moment later, the Roman answered promptly. “A treaty of alliance between Saguntum and Rome is held by the record keepers of the Senate. It is a well-known friendship that is not in question here.”

“Fine, fine,” Hannibal said, breaking in before the translation was finished. “Let us move on, then.”

Instead of doing so he approached one of the stalls. As he neared it, a horse's head emerged from the shadows, a solid black muzzle, lean until it flared at the nostrils. Hannibal clicked his tongue in greeting and reached out to stroke the creature. He lost himself in examining the horse's mane and ears and brushing his hand across its eyelashes. When he spoke he almost seemed to do so absently.

“My second point of dispute is with your interference within our realm of influence,” he said. “Saguntum is surrounded on all sides by many who are loyal to Carthage. But the Saguntines have interfered in the well-being of our allies the Turdetani. Just this year past the headmen of three clans were put to death. And for what? How did these small tribal powers so threaten Saguntum—or Rome, for that matter? What did they do that they deserved crucifixion? I ask, but I do not pause to hear your answer because you do not have one, not a true one.”

He spun from the horse and set his eyes back on the Roman. “What did you say your name was?”

“Terentius Varro.”

“Let me tell you something, Terentius Varro, which you may not know of Carthage. We aid those who have been wronged. With our strength we defend our friends from tyrants. That is my only grievance against Saguntum. I ask that they make amends for the wrongs they have done. And yet you come here as though I had entered the city and taken their leaders by force and nailed them to crosses. This is rubbish and you know it. Go back to Rome and tell your masters so. Go back to Rome and tell them that I heard your message and give them this response . . .”

Hannibal inhaled deeply and let a moment of silence pass into another. Then he exhaled a long, petulant sigh through loose lips that blubbered as the air escaped. A similar sound came from one of the stalls in answer. One of the Sacred Band chuckled, then caught himself and went stone-faced.

“What was that?” the Roman asked.

“You can make that sound, can you not? Something like a stallion bored with chewing grass. Take that back to Rome and stand before the Senate and in your best and most distinguished voice, say . . .” Again he made the sound, longer this time and even more equestrian.

Varro stared at him. His official haughtiness slipped from his features. “Do you really want conflict with us?”

“What I want is not the important thing,” Hannibal said. “The important thing is what will be. In deciding this, Hannibal is only one of a million minds, only a single man among a host of gods. We've done nothing to violate our word. That is all the answer I need give you. I've spoken to you simply. Flippantly, yes, but my message is clear. I do have disputes with Saguntum. These may, Baal willing, be resolved peacefully, but do understand that they will be resolved one way or the other. Pray to your gods that there is no conflict in this. Good-bye, and fair journey to you.”

The meeting was concluded. Hannibal spun on his heel and fell into instant conversation with Hasdrubal and the others around him, speaking of the things yet to be done that afternoon, the care the returning animals would require, and the provisions he was ordering released for the men to celebrate their victorious return. The Romans looked uncomfortably at each other. They milled about briefly, exchanging glances and a few whispers. Varro seemed on the verge of calling out to the commander, but one of his advisers touched him on the elbow. The group reluctantly retired, five silhouettes again traversing the long stretch of the stable, out into the ashen gray of the winter day.

As soon as the Romans were gone Hasdrubal clapped his brother on the back. Hannibal shook his head and laughed. “Was it imprudent of me to snort so? Do you think he will take my message to the Senate?”

Hasdrubal said, “I would love to see their faces if he does. But Hannibal, look, the other young lion has returned.” He nodded toward Mago.

Hannibal followed his gesture and was in motion even before he had actually spotted him. “By the gods, he has! And he will now get a proper greeting.” He pushed through his advisers, reached Mago in a few steps, and clapped his arms around him. Mago recognized the smell of him, a scent that was stale and sharp and yet sweet all at once. He felt the curly locks of his brother's hair beside his face and the prickle of his chin hairs against his shoulder blades, and he almost gasped at the pressure of the embrace. It seemed to last for some time, but he realized this was because his brother was silently mouthing his thanks to Baal.

“Mago, you do not know how it fills my heart to see you,” Hannibal said, still continuing the embrace, his voice just above a whisper but full of emotion. “It has been too long. I pray that your education was worth these years of absence. I know Father wanted you to build upon the gifts of your intellect, but many times I've wished for you by my side.”

As Hannibal released him, Hasdrubal stepped forward, throwing a slow punch at his chin. The motion then became a quick jab toward his ribs and a moment later was an embrace. Speaking over his brother's shoulder, Mago said, “I came to serve you, brother, but I did not expect to find a Roman in the stables.”

“Neither did I,” Hannibal said, “but let us remember that all such occurrences are the will of Baal. There are great things whistling in the air around us, possibilities, the shouts of the gods to action. So unexpected happenings should be expected. But listen . . .” He spread his arms and spun in a gesture that encompassed them all. “Is this not an amazing moment? After years of separation, Hamilcar's sons are finally all together. Tomorrow will bring many great things for us and for Carthage, for Hamilcar's memory . . .”

Just then the soldier who had been sent away for sandals stepped into the room sheepishly, his burden pressed to his chest. Hannibal broke into laughter. “We let our guests leave without their footwear! The pity of it. Bring me a pair, then. My feet have been well abused in the north. And give one to my brother, the first of many welcome presents.”

He took a pair of the sandals and smacked them to Mago's chest. “I must attend to my returning army,” he said. “They've labored incredibly, so they deserve their rewards. But tonight . . . tonight we'll praise the gods. We'll let the people celebrate. And soon I'll reveal all the many things I have planned for us.”

By dusk all the work that was going to be done had been. An hour later, the officers and chieftains and dignitaries, the courtesans and entertainers began to turn up in the main banquet hall, an enormous, high-ceilinged affair with walls painted the rich red of an African sunset, across which roamed lions in black silhouette. The guests walked into air alive with the beating of hand drums, the tinkling of cymbals, and the dry rhythms of palm fiber rattles. Tables crouched low to the ground. Cushions functioned as backrests. Thick rugs were layered throughout for comfort. Wine was the drink of choice, and it was easy to come by. Boys younger than twelve moved among the guests with jugs of the ruby liquid. They had been told to fill all goblets whether asked to or not. This duty they fulfilled with youthful enthusiasm.

The chefs sent out the feast in waves. The servants all moved in unison, by some signal in the music, perhaps, though the onlookers could not follow it. On each table they set a great fish with a gaping mouth before the guests. They slit the fish open in one smooth slice the length of its belly. They slipped their fingers inside and helped the fish to birth yet another, a red-skinned creature, which likewise housed another fish, which contained a roasted eel, from which they drew a long, slim procession of miniature octopuses, infant creatures the size of large grapes that were likewise tossed into the mouth. In the space of a few moments the single fish had become a bouquet of the ocean's splendor, each with its own distinctive seasonings, each cooked in a different manner before being sewn inside the next one's belly.

Naked men carried boars in on spits balanced on their shoulders. The beasts, in their charred grandeur, were set above slow coals, massive, coarse-haired things that even in such a reduced state looked like beasts set upon the earth by a twisted god. The guests took chunks out of them with their knives and stood, greasy-lipped, awed by the taste of the meat, for it had somehow been infused with a smoky, sweet, succulent flavor that left the lingering taste of citrus on the palate. Amid all this, small dishes bloomed, fruit plates and grilled vegetables and bowls of various olives and vials of virgin oil.

Such was the banquet for the officers and allied chieftains and particular soldiers who had distinguished themselves during the campaign. It was well known that the commander himself partook of few such delicacies. The excesses he did have were mainly those that the military world called virtues: a clear conscience in the face of pain, torture, death; an absurdity of discipline; a cool head though his command was of life and death over thousands. He exercised his body even while at leisure. He paced when he could have been still, stood while writing letters or reading them, walked with weights sewn into his sandals, held his breath for long intervals while training—this last a habit largely unnoticed, but it assured him endurance beyond all others. His brother Hasdrubal was a physical specimen of similar craftsmanship, but his exercises were done in public, and his love of mirth well known. The full length of Hannibal's exertions could only be guessed at. His temperance was better documented. He never drank more than a half-goblet of wine. He never ate till satiated, never slept beyond the first wakeful moments of any morn, and rose always to take in the dawn and measure the day ahead. He preferred lean meat to fat, simple clothing to elaborate, the hardness of the ground to the luxury of his palace bed. And he favored his wife over all other women, a true aberration in a man who ruled with complete power over slave girls and servants and prostitutes, the wives and daughters of the adoring, or ambitious. He might have had his pick of thousands of beauties captured from vanquished tribes. He did not. Instead he saved himself for the things he believed mattered.

As everyone knew this, few bothered to protest when the commander retired. He did so quietly, leaving his brothers to share among themselves his portion of pleasure, which took on a more carnal tone after his departure. Later that evening, Hannibal stood on the balcony of his bedroom overlooking the city, watching the play of light from the many fires, listening to the muffled shouts of revelry in the streets. He took it all in with a silent stillness at his center that was neither joy nor contentment nor pride but something for which he had no name. Though the night was chill, he was clothed only in a robe. The silken fabric draped over his shoulders and fell the entire length of him, brushing the polished stones beneath his feet.

Behind him, his chamber glowed brightly. It was a luxurious museum of carved mahogany and eastern fabrics, low couches and narrow-legged tables that seemed to produce fruit and drink of their own accord, never empty, never wilting. The architects of this deception hid in the shadows and corners of the room. These slim servants were ever present, but so vacant of face and so secretive in their work that one could stand rimmed by them and feel completely alone. A single fireplace heated the room, so large that a stallion could have walked upright into the flames. Like that of the banquet he had so recently escaped, none of the opulence behind him was of his own design, none of it close to his heart. It corresponded to a role he must fill. And it was a gift to her who had granted him immortality.

Though his robe was too luxurious for his tastes, he was thankful for the thinness of it. With his eyes closed, he concentrated on the heat at his back and the chill night air on his face and the sensation of movement as heat rushed from the room and fled into the sky above. There was something intoxicating about it, as if he might himself fly up with the warmth, overcome the night, and look down upon his city from the sky, might for a moment glimpse the world from a god's perspective. He even saw this in his mind's eye, a strange swirling view that no man had ever had. He looked down upon the curve of creation from a distance so great that the creatures below moved without sound or identity, without the passions and petty desires so apparent from up close.

He opened his eyes and all was as before, the city around him, his marble balcony open to the night sky. The blue light of the moon fell upon him and the stone and even the glimmering sea with the same pale tint. How strange it was that at moments of celebration he was struck with bouts of melancholy. Part of his mind glowed with the knowledge of another success and looked forward to the quiet moments he would soon be able to share with his brothers. But another part of him already viewed the conquest of Arbocala as a distant event, lackluster, a mediocre episode from the past. Some men would have taken such a victory and spent the rest of their lives reminding others of it, accomplishing only the exercise of their tongues in their own praise. Perhaps he was a battleground upon which two gods contested an issue he had no inkling of. Why else would he strive and strive and then feel empty . . . ?

A voice broke through his thoughts. “Hannibal? Come and welcome your beloved.”

He turned to see his wife approaching, arms cradled around a sleeping infant. “You have made us wait long enough,” she said. Her Carthaginian was smooth and measured, though her pronunciation had a rough edge to it, an indelicacy of her native tongue that made her voice somewhat masculine as compared with the fine artistry of her features. She was, after all, a native of Iberia, daughter of Ilapan, a chieftain of the Baetis people. Her marriage had thrown her completely into the arms of a foreign culture, and yet she had adapted quickly, gracefully. Hannibal had even come to believe the apparent affection between them to be real. At times, this gave him great joy; at others, it concerned him more than indifference would have.

Imilce stopped some distance from the balcony. “Come out of the cold. Your son is here, inside, where you should be as well.”

Hannibal did as requested. He moved slowly, taking the woman in with his eyes, a wary look as if he was studying her for signs that she was not who she claimed. Hers was a thin-lined beauty, eyebrows of faint brown that seemed drawn each with the single stroke of a quill, lips with no pout at all but rather a wavering, serpentine elegance. Her features were held together with a brittle energy, as if she were a vessel that contained within it the spirit of a petulant, well-loved child, a glimmering intelligence that had been, in fact, the first thing that drew his eyes to her. He slid a hand to the small of her back, pulled her close, and touched his lips to the smooth olive skin of her forehead. He inhaled her hair. The scent was as he remembered, faintly flowered, faintly peppered. She was just the same.

Though she was the same as before, his son most certainly was not. Five months seemed to have doubled his size. No longer was he a seed of child that Hannibal could hold completely within his upheld palms. No longer was he pale and wrinkled and bald. His complexion had ripened. He was thick around the wrists, and his clenched fists already seemed mallets to be contended with. The father saw himself in the child's full lips and this pleased him. He took the boy awkwardly from his mother. The child's head lolled back. Hannibal righted it and cautiously lowered himself to a stool.

“You're just like your older sister,” Imilce said. “Kind as she has been to me, Sapanibal, too, tries to wake him through clumsiness. Always wants to see his gray eyes, she says. But it will not work this time. He's full of his mother's milk and content, drunk with all the food he asks of all the world.”

Hannibal raised his eyes to study her. “Enjoy it, Mother, for soon this one will look up and see a world beyond your breasts. Then he'll be all mine.”

“Never,” Imilce said. She made as if to take the child, but did not. “So how do you feel in victory, husband?”

“As ever, Imilce. I feel the nagging of neglect.”

“Hungry already?”

“There is always some portion of me left unfilled.”

“What can you tell me of the campaign?”

The commander shrugged and sighed and cleared his throat. He said there was little to tell. But she waited, and he found first one thing and then another to mention. The three brothers had returned in good health, each unscathed. Arbocala was theirs, not that this was a great gain, for the city was a sadder collection of hovels than Mastia had been before Hasdrubal the Handsome built New Carthage upon it. The Arbocalians had been not only defiant but also arrogant and disrespectful and treacherous. They murdered a party sent inside the city to present surrender terms. They flung the decapitated bodies out with catapults and had their heads mounted on posts above the city's walls. This insult Hannibal felt keenly, for he had almost sent Hasdrubal in with the delegation. They were so stubborn a people that the only good he could see in the whole venture was the possibility of making them into soldiers for Carthage. If they had the sense to see this, they would find themselves richer than they had ever imagined. But he doubted it would be an easy thing to convince them of. He imagined that even now they were bubbling with hatred and anxious for some way to break the treaties and be free again.

“It will never be an easy task to hold this domain together,” he said. “You Iberians are a troublesome lot, like wild dogs mastered by neither force nor friendship.”

The baby grimaced, cocked his head, and strained against his father's arms. Imilce reached for him.

“He's got the blood of those wild dogs in his veins, you know,” she said. “Do not anger him. We should let him sleep in peace now. You'll have your fill of him tomorrow.”

She walked to the edge of the room and handed the child to a servant who stood waiting. She whispered to her and the girl withdrew, moving backward and bowing and cradling the baby all at once. Imilce spoke then to the room, two sharp words in her native tongue. She was answered by rustling in the shadows along the wall, the slight sound of movement, servants slipping from the room through several different exits, never seen except in glimpses.

A moment later they were all gone, and Imilce turned back to her husband. Her face already looked different, as if her cheeks had flushed and her eyes grown more sensual. As she walked toward him she pulled the pins from her tightly bound hair. The dark strands fell loose and draped around her shoulders. It seemed the mother in her had left the room with the child, and here was a different sort of creature.

“Now we are alone,” she said. “So show me.”

The commander smiled and stood for this custom of theirs. He released the belt of his gown and slid the material off his shoulders and let it drop to the ground. He stood naked before her, hands held out beside his hips, palms upward so that she could see the parts of his body. The long muscles of his legs stood out each in its layered place; his calves seemed smooth river stones slipped beneath his flesh, the cords of his inner thigh like ribbons stretched taut. His sex nestled in its place somewhat shyly, and above it the ridged compartments of his torso swept up into the bulk of his chest and the wide stretch of his shoulders.

“As you can see,” he said, “there's no new mark upon me, neither nick nor bruise.”

The woman's eyes dipped down toward his groin. “Nothing lopped off?”

Hannibal smiled. “No, I am still complete. They did not touch me.”

“But you touched them?” she asked.

“Surely. There are many now who regret their actions, some that do so from the afterworld.”

“But yourself, you have nothing to regret?”

He followed her with his eyes as she circled him. “Baal was beside me in this venture. I was simply the humble servant of his will.”

From behind him, she said, “Is that so? Hannibal bends to another's will?”

“If that other is my god, yes.”

Imilce placed a finger at the base of his neck and traced the line of his spine, pulling away just above his buttocks. “I see,” she said. “And what's this?”

“What?” Hannibal craned his neck around to see, but before he had done so Imilce showed her teeth and nipped the flesh of his shoulder. He spun away from her and then swept back and pressed her to his chest and carried her toward the bed, feet dangling above the floor.

Later that evening, Hannibal lay upon blankets thrown across the floor. He spread out on his chest, eyes intent on nothing except the folds on the fabric just before him, the ridges and swells of it, the range of peaks that he had plucked up with his fingers and now studied like objects made of stone. Imilce slipped quietly back into the room. She paused to watch him from a dim place against the wall, and then she let her gown drop again. She dipped her fingers into a bowl of flavored water and swept them across her swollen nipples. She moved forward into the lamplight. She climbed on her husband's back and settled with her spine cradled in his, her shoulders resting on the stretch of his back, his buttocks molded into the hollow above hers. Neither spoke for some time, but when Imilce did it was clear enough of what she spoke.

“So, you are going to do it, are you not? You will attack Rome?”

“The time is near and I am ready.”

“Of course you are ready. When were you ever not ready? But Hannibal, I do think you push things too quickly. I will not try to convince you of this. I know your mind is your own, but tell me, love, where will this course lead?”

“To glory.”

Imilce stared up at the ceiling as she thought about this. One of the lamps had begun to smoke and a ribbon of black haze floated across the plaster like an eel seeking a home. “Is that all?” she asked. “Glory?”

“And justice as well. Freedom. And yes, you might ask—vengeance.” Hannibal exhaled a long breath and spoke with a curtness to his words. “I will not have this discussion with you. Imilce, your husband is no normal man. I was born for this. That is all there is to it. I love you too much to be vexed with you; so stop.”

Imilce rolled over and nestled under his arm. He adjusted to suit her and pulled her in close. “Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” Imilce asked. “It wasn't on our wedding day, as you may think. I spied on you before that. I hid once in the curtains along the walls in my father's court when he was entertaining you. I slit the fabric just enough to look out at you.”

“You're father would've skinned you alive for that,” Hannibal said.

“Perhaps, but he was desperate to wed himself to the Barcas. He was not so powerful as you believed.”

“I know. The Baetis are of little importance now. Perhaps I should throw you to the side and find another bride.”

Imilce pressed her teeth against the flesh of his shoulder, but otherwise ignored his comment. “I was afraid of you,” she said. “Resting on the couches you looked like a lion so confident in his strength he has only to lie down and stretch to make others tremble. I feared that you would devour me. I thought for a moment that I should step out from behind that curtain and disgrace myself and ruin the marriage plans.”

“But you did not do that.”

“No, because as much as I trembled at the thought of you, you pulled me toward you. I felt, perhaps, like an insect so attracted to the light of the torch that it flies into the flame. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Hannibal nodded. “At Arbocala I met a young soldier who'd behaved bravely,” he said. “In honor of this I bestowed upon his humble family a plantation outside of Carthage. I gave his people slaves and a small fortune in silver and in the space of a few moments changed their lives forever. That is the power I have because of the things I accomplish. And if I can give all of that to a boy soldier, what is a suitable present for my wife? Not simply treasure. Not more servants. These things are not enough. In two years, you will be able to look from the balcony of this or any other palace you choose and know that all the Mediterranean world is yours to shape. How many men can say that to their wives and mean it? Would you like that to be so?”

Imilce squeezed herself further under him, until he rose up and she could wrap her legs around him. She looked at him frankly, long, as if she might disclose some secret to him. But then she smiled and stretched up toward him and brushed her lips across his and touched him gently with her tongue.

Hanno Barca began the day with clearer eyes than most. Though he had reveled with the rest, he rose before the dawn and busied himself at self-assigned tasks. Mounted on one of Hannibal's stallions, he rode bareback through the city streets. The quiet lanes were awash with debris, bits and pieces of material without form in the morning light, metal fragments that might have once been armor but which had been torn apart during some segment of the evening's ritual. Hanno might have questioned this waste of military hardware, but there was little use in that. Such was the army of Carthage that it gathered soldiers from any and all the strange corners of its empire. Who knew all of their customs? And what did it matter, anyway? Somehow, Hannibal welded them into a whole, and that whole had made a custom of success.

The fountain in the main square had been drunk dry. The bowl overflowed with limp bodies: persons clothed and unclothed and in all states between, stained the ruddy brown of spilled wine, greasy with leftover food, bits of bone still clenched in some hands, grease yet moist on mouths thrown open to the chill morning air. The fires had died down from their raging heights, but they still smoldered, giving the whole scene a surreal aspect. It seemed Hanno was looking not upon a festive city but at a conquered one. Strange, he thought, that the two opposites had so much in common to the unprejudiced eye. Missing were only the wretched of the war trains, poor folk who would have been picking through the bodies for what small treasure they could find among the dead. Even such as these must have had their fill the night before.

In the stables he kicked grooms from their drunken slumbers and prodded them to work. The horses in their care needed them despite their hangovers. Then he called on the priests of Baal. Rites of thanks and propitiation had been going on since the army's return. Hanno had made offerings to the gods as appropriate the previous afternoon, but he was anxious lest more be in order. He dismounted and approached the temple holding his sandals in his hands and feeling the chill slap of his feet on the marble stairway leading up to the main entrance. He moved slowly, out of reverence, but also because he had no choice. The steps were set at a shallow angle that made it hard to mount them quickly. One had to place each foot carefully, a process that heightened the sense of awe and foreboding at approaching the god's sanctuary.

At the mouth of the temple, however, Hanno learned that the head priest, Mandarbal, would not see him. He was engaged in high matters and could not break off at that moment. Nor was his present ceremony one for outsiders to observe. Hanno was forced to withdraw, stepping backward down the god's steps, uneasy, for in this snub he felt a rebuke he did not deserve. After all, he was the most devout of all the brothers, the one most mindful of the gods, the first to call on them for aid, the one who praised them for every success. He had even confessed to Mandarbal once that he might have joined the priesthood if he had not been born Hamilcar Barca's son. To this, the priest had just grunted.

A few hours later, Hanno stood on the terrace overlooking the exercise ground reserved for the elephants. He watched the trainers tending the animals for some time, moving about beneath the beasts, talking to them with short calls and taps of their sticks. He thought several times that he would descend and walk among the creatures and run his hands over their coarse hairs and wrinkled flesh. He liked talking to the mahouts, appreciated the way they had only one job but knew it so well. But he was stayed by other thoughts, memories that he had no use for but that seemed intent on troubling him. They pushed into the central portion of his mind, that place separate from sight or hearing or bodily movements, the part that takes a person over even as he continues to occupy the physical world.

He thought of the child he had once been and the brother he was blessed, or cursed, to be second to. Hannibal's never-ending campaigns were tests that always ended in his success. What pained Hanno even now was that their father had known that only Hannibal among them had this gift. Hamilcar had told him as much in a thousand ways, on a thousand different occasions. Hanno had watched throughout his adolescence as Hannibal excelled first at youthful games, then into a physicality that bloomed like a weed into manhood. He had watched as his brother, just two years his senior, went from the verge of the council circle to the circle itself, and soon to the center. He was a young upstart in some ways, but all the men seemed to see the great commander perpetuated in his firstborn. It was not that Hanno showed any obvious lack: he was tall, strong limbed, and skilled enough with all the weapons of combat. He had studied the same manuals, trained with the same veterans, learned the history of warfare from the same tutors. But there was room for only a single star in their father's eyes, and Hanno had never been it. Hamilcar had rarely given him command of any force larger than a unit of a hundred soldiers. The first time he did proved tragic.

He was to lead a patrol from a conquered capital of the Betisians, up the Betis River toward Castulo, branching off before he reached that town and following a tributary south to New Carthage. His orders were to march the troops home by a prominent route, feeding the Iberians' sense that they were inevitably surrounded by a more organized foe. It was a routine procedure, usually done in pacified territory, meant mostly as a show of force to natives of ever-doubtful allegiance. Hamilcar gave him a company of two thousand Oretani soldiers, Iberians who, though not completely loyal, were believed to be tamed at least.

The mission started unremarkably, but three days into the march a scout brought his guide information that changed their course: The Betisians were planning an offensive to retake the recently captured city. Their troops had not all surrendered. In fact, many had been held in reserve and were hidden in a valley stronghold in the Silver Mountains, waiting for the Carthaginian force to diminish. With Hanno's group on the march via a northerly route and Hasdrubal on the southerly, they saw their opportunity to attack Hamilcar's dispersed forces.

Hanno heard this information with a calm façade, though his heart hammered out a more frantic reception. He began to give orders to turn back, but the scout suggested something different. Why not send a warning to Hamilcar? Hanno's was still a strong enough force to contend with the rebellion, so long as they were forewarned. With a messenger dispatched, Hanno himself could march on the Betisians and rout their unprotected stronghold. Their camp, not marked on any map that the Carthaginians held, was hidden away in a narrow defile easily accessible only from either end. The scout assured him that it was a valuable settlement and that taking it would do much to disrupt the tribe. The Betisians would have nothing to return to and would thus truly be ready to come to terms with the Carthaginians.

Hanno tried to imagine what his father would have him do, or what Hannibal would have done faced with the same circumstances. His information was reliable, he believed, for the messenger was of Castulo blood and they had been faithful allies for almost two years now. Should he not seize the opportunity? He could turn a routine mission into a small victory, and then return home to casually present his father with details of a blank spot on their map. It was a risk, yes, and it was beyond his orders, but had not the Barca sons always been instructed to think on their feet? He imagined the dour look his father might turn on him if he went home with the news of this opportunity offered and passed upon. And that he could not face.

He turned the column for the defile and entered it two days later. The guide moved forward to scout with an advance party of cavalry. The route largely followed the course of a narrow stream, hemmed in on both sides by trees. It was narrow enough that the line thinned, first to four abreast and then to three. It broke down even further as the men jumped from rock to rock or splashed through small pools. It was a fair day, warm enough that the soldiers drank handfuls of the cool water and talked rapidly in their native tongue. Hanno led the company from horseback, he and a group of twenty of the Sacred Band at the front of the line. There was a nervous energy among them, the Band looking one to another, whispering that the guide should have returned by now, or they should have caught up with him. But still they came on no settlement, nor were there many signs that an armed force had passed this way recently. Hanno took note of this and yet, inexplicably even in his own reckoning, he did not halt the march. The column moved on into slightly easier territory, although steeper on both sides and still tree-lined.

They had all but cleared the rise at the far end of the ravine when it happened. He knew he had been led into a trap when he heard the first arrow sink into the soil a few feet from him. It was almost silent, a muted thwack that only in its wake carried the whistle of its falling and only in its quivering shaft betrayed the speed with which it had appeared. For a few moments Hanno was frozen. He saw and felt the world in surreal detail: the feathers of the arrow gray and imperfect, the breeze on his skin as if it were a gale across a fresh wound, a single bird clipping its song and rising, rising up from the ground and away. Then another arrow struck home, not into the soil this time but through the collarbone of an infantryman a few feet behind him.

Hanno spun to give his orders—exactly what they would be, he had not yet formulated—but it did not matter. The din and confusion were beyond his control already. The arrows fell in a hail, glancing off armor and some finding their homes in flesh. The soldiers ducked beneath their shields and sought to see from beneath them. The Betisians crashed down through the trees, tumbling at an impossible speed and angle, more falling than running. Some tripped and whirled head over heels, others slid on their backsides. All screamed a war chant at the top of their lungs, a song they each sang the same but not at the same time. Two ragged walls of Iberians smashed into the thin column from either side, instantly shredding any semblance of order. Before the battle had even progressed beyond this chaos, a new wave of war cries fell upon them. The archers had put down their bows and were now running to join the others, swords in hand.

A lieutenant tugged on Hanno's arm. “We must go,” he said. “Those men are lost.”

“Then I, too, am lost.” He tried to spin his horse but the Sacred Band drew up close around him. One snatched his reins from him and another prodded his horse and all of them moved forward, forming one body. Hanno cursed them and lashed out and even moved to draw his sword. But it was no use. A moment later they were over the rise and all was downward motion. They were soon met by a contingent of Numidian cavalry and with these in their rear they kept up a running fight for the rest of the afternoon and sporadically over the next two days. But the Betisians chased them halfheartedly; they had more than achieved their goal. Hanno was not sure if they were hunting him or simply driving him forward.

Over the space of several days after his arrival at New Carthage it all became clear. There had been no attack on Hamilcar's forces. The only attack was the one upon Hanno's. And as that had proved successful, the whole territory was thrown into confusion once more. Hanno did not see his father till they met on the field a month later. But if the old soldier had forgotten his anger during that space of time, it did not show. He found Hanno in his tent. He strode in unannounced, in full battle armor, helmet clenched in one hand. The other, his left, he swung up like a rock and slammed across the bridge of his son's nose. Hanno's nose poured blood instantly, the stuff thick in his mouth, running freely from his chin down onto his tunic.

“Why must you always disappoint me?” Hamilcar asked. His voice was even, but cast low and scornful. “Next time you lead two thousand men to their deaths, stay with them yourself. Have at least that dignity. In my father's time you would have been crucified for this. Be glad we live in a gentler moment.” Having uttered this and thrown his blow, the old warrior spun and pushed through the tent flap.

That night Hanno sought no treatment for his nose but slept wrapped around it. The next morning his physician threw up his hands. It would no longer be the envy of the women, he said, but perhaps now he would look more like a warrior. Hanno walked out to take his place beside his father with his nose swollen, his eyes black and puffy. Within a fortnight Hannibal led a force against the Betisians and met them in an open field. By the end of the afternoon he had their headman's skull on a javelin tip. By the end of the week he had their main settlement, and their allegiance ever after. Such was the difference between his brother and him. Hanno never forgot it.

Hanno roused himself. He realized he had been standing above the pen for some time, watching the handlers at their work but not actually seeing them. He turned and walked off. The elephants did not need his inspection. They were well tended. Of course they were.

More so than any of his brothers, Hasdrubal Barca lived his life astride a pendulum swinging between extremes. By day, he honed his body to the functions of war; at night he sank up to the ears in all the pleasures of consumption available to him. Hannibal had once questioned the structure of his days and whether his habits were suitable for a Barca, suggesting that Hasdrubal's pleasure-seeking indicated a flaw that might weaken him with the passing years. Hasdrubal laughed. He proposed instead that his devotion to the body was the greater discipline. The fact was, he said, that he could rise from an all-night romp and still train with a smile on his face. Perhaps this was a sign of stamina that Hannibal had never himself mastered. As for indications of decay or weakness, at twenty-one his body was a chiseled monument surpassing even his eldest brother's. So, for the time being, he passed his days and nights as he saw fit.

During the winter, he kept to a strict training routine. Three days after his return from Arbocala he began the regimen again, already ill at ease after a few days of uninterrupted leisure, the celebration of victory almost too much even for his own resources. He slept naked, always in his own bed, always completing the night alone, no matter whose pleasures he had shared earlier in the evening. His squire, Noba, woke him just as the sun cleared the horizon line and rose up in spherical completion. Together they bathed in the chilly waters of the private bath on Hasdrubal's balcony. Noba once had to break the skin of ice upon the water before they could enter, an unwelcome task for an Ethiopian. Hasdrubal found this ritual dunking to be the surest cure for the fatigue caused by the previous evening's debauchery.

He broke his fast with a small meal of something dense and meaty—cattle liver topped with eggs, venison on a bed of onions, stewed chunks of goat—and then it was on to the gymnasium. Hasdrubal and Noba had received the same instruction in hand-to-hand combat, but Noba carried with him earlier knowledge, the wisdom of the martial arts of his southern people. The two men merged these tactics and pressed beyond them. They wrestled each other into awkward positions and then talked through the most efficient, deadliest way to free themselves, the quickest way to deal a deathblow. They made killing a game, a physical and mental exercise that they joked their way through, lighthearted, companionable. Yet they both learned their lessons well and on more than one occasion credited their survival to tactics first thought up during these sessions. From wrestling, the two moved on to weapons practice. They sparred with thrusting sword or sweeping falcata, Spartan spear or javelin. When Hasdrubal tired of those, they experimented with using different shields as weapons, fighting with broken swords, with the shafts of blunted spears, or with the spearheads minus the shafts.

Before his afternoon meal, Hasdrubal walked stairs in the gymnasium with an ash beam balanced on his shoulders. He stripped down to nothing for the exercise, grabbed the straps that aided his grip, and hefted the beam with the full exertion of his body, slowly finding the balance point, sliding his body underneath the weight, and coming to peace with it. He took each step deliberately, pressing his foot down into the stone and thereby lifting himself and the weight carried like outstretched wings. It was a slow ordeal, a hundred steps up, a slow turning, and then a hundred steps down, another turning, and on again.

Groups of young noblewomen sometimes gathered to watch him. They whispered among themselves and pointed and laughed and sometimes called out to him, asking him whether he ought not exercise that third leg, for it was limp and lifeless compared with the two others. Hasdrubal kept on at his work, giving them little more than a smile or shake of his head. Instead of being bothered by their teasing, he was amused, flattered, encouraged, reminded that pleasure was never that far away. He slipped out from under the beam only when his legs were useless, rubbery things that wiggled beneath him and disobeyed the instructions his mind gave them.

The rest of the day was spent in training of a less overtly physical sort: honing his horsecraft, practicing the tribal languages, studying accounts of earlier campaigns, learning from the mistakes or triumphs of others, and fulfilling whatever obligations Hannibal had assigned him. A week after their return from campaign and the appearance of the surprise envoy from Rome, Hannibal called a meeting of his brothers and all his senior generals. Mago met Hasdrubal in the gymnasium baths. They had agreed to attend the meeting together so that Hasdrubal could fill his younger brother in on any details that eluded him. The elder brother stood naked before Mago as Noba pounded out a massage on the wings of his back. The squire's dark face was calm and somewhat vacant, his body lean and tall, perfect in a manner unique to his people. The muscles of his arms popped and contracted at their work.

“You should train with me,” Hasdrubal said. “Carthage will make a man soft. Too much palm wine and too many Nubian servant girls to rub you with oil. You need a good thrashing and then for Noba here to beat the fatigue out of you.”

The Ethiopian patted his master on the back and stepped away from him, indicating that he was finished. Hasdrubal rolled his head on his shoulders and stretched his torso at several angles, as if he were testing that the parts still functioned as they should. Then he began to dress.

“So,” Mago said, sitting on a stone bench and looking into the yellowish water of the baths, “is it a certainty, then? We attack Saguntum in the spring?”

Hasdrubal slipped on his undertunic and tugged it into place. “It's a certainty that we'll be at war with someone. Hannibal will spend the winter securing the goodwill of our new allies. He will succeed, in part, but never completely. Men who have just been soundly beaten and humiliated are slow to grow into true friends. If it were my decision we would not attack Saguntum next year. You know I like a fight, but there's enough fight left in the rest of Iberia to keep me occupied. Our brother, I believe, has long wanted to chastise the Saguntines. That Roman envoy only succeeded in making the prospect irresistible.”

“Perhaps that is why it's a sound move to attack Saguntum,” Mago said. “To show our new allies that we can share common enemies. It will take their humiliation and heap it onto another people.”

Hasdrubal glanced up for a moment and took his brother in frankly. He sat down beside him and laced up his sandals. “Perhaps,” he said. “In any event, Hannibal rides before the vanguard of reason. He leaves it to the rest of us to catch up. By the way, watch yourself or you'll find you have been betrothed to some chieftain's daughter. That is a sure way to secure their goodwill—to make them family.”

“You make that sound unpleasant. Hannibal has done so himself.”

“True, but not every man's daughter is an Imilce. Truth be known, brother, I like this country. I am more at home here than in Carthage. The Celtiberians make good allies and amusing enemies. And I've even grown to appreciate their women, pale things that they are. Mago, you would not believe this creature I've been screwing lately. She's beautiful, yes? Silver eyes and a gentle voice and a mouth that always seems in a pucker, you know? She thinks up things that would make an Egyptian blush. She does a trick with a string of beads . . .” Hasdrubal's eyes rolled upward into a flutter. He leaned back against the stone wall, momentarily lost in contemplation. “I won't even describe it. I don't know what you'd think of me.”

“Is this love or just passion?” Mago asked.

“It is the love of passion, my brother. The love of passion.”

The two brothers were among the first to climb the winding stone staircase to the top of the citadel, where the meeting of the generals was to take place. The tower was open to the air, a round platform ringed by a waist-high stone wall. It offered a view of both the fortress and the turquoise sea stretching out to the horizon. A wind whipped and buffeted the brothers, cold and mischievous. It made talking a challenge, but what Hannibal had to discuss he did not mind shouting out. And they were far from prying ears anyway.

Most of the officers were still settling in after the Arbocala campaign. If they were surprised to be called to a meeting so soon, they did not show it. They mounted the platform, shadowed by their squires, with a variety of characters reflected on their faces, as different in temperament as in the shades of their skin.

Maharbal, the captain of the Numidian cavalry, stepped onto the platform with a stern demeanor throughout his entire body. He wore his hair long. The thick, wiry strands gathered at the back, secured with a strip of leather. His dark skin had a reddish hue, as if baked by the sun and ripened to a rough, thick coat. His nose was slim and sharp; his chin protruded as if his face were a hatchet meant to slice the wind. Indeed this was just what he was famous for, the speed and precision of his riding.

“He is new to leadership,” Hasdrubal said, “sent by King Gaia of the Massylii. He knows his men and their horses and commands a devotion that almost rivals their admiration of Hannibal himself. He has almost too much power, but he has thus far proved true to us. We would be legless without Numidian horsemen.”

Adherbal, the chief engineer, also arrived early, dressed in a flowing Carthaginian tunic. He set his palms upon the stone wall and gazed out over the city he had helped create. His eyes moved with a singular intelligence, as if the wheels of his thoughts spun behind them, figuring calculations and making measurements even as he smiled and spoke and listened. Recently, his skills at building and knowledge of the laws of physics had been used to destroy cities rather than create them.

“If we lay siege to the Saguntines it'll be his machines that win it for us,” Hasdrubal said.

Just before the meeting, the others arrived in quick succession. Young Carthalo commanded the light cavalry under Maharbal. Bostar and Bomilcar: the first Hannibal's secretary and the second a favored general. Synhalus, the oldest man of the group, had served as the Barcas' surgeon since Hamilcar's time. He was the slimmest of them all, fine-featured and intelligent, of Egyptian blood. He had quiet eyes and full lips and a face not given to showing emotion or betraying any thoughts whatsoever. A man named Vandicar stood beside him, the chief mahout, a native of the distant land of the Indians. His complexion was a touch darker than the Carthaginians', but his closely cropped black hair was absolutely straight, oily and dense. Behind each of the primary players stood their squires and assistants, quiet shadows like Noba who heard all with blank faces, trusted aides and friends, battle-hardened soldiers in their own right, some free, some bound by slavery.

Most of these men Hasdrubal knew both from the rigors of campaign and from the pleasures provided by leisure moments. He greeted them with nods and an easy grin. There was in his movements and posture the swagger of a young lion confident with his place among his peers. So he seemed until the first sighting of the crown of one man's black mane. This man was Monomachus. He took the company in with a disdainful glance that touched on everyone but moved on quickly, as if none of those he saw proved to be of sufficient interest. His eyes were intense and bulbous, seemingly too large for his face. Or perhaps they only seemed so because of his shrunken cheeks and the withered, dry pucker of his mouth.

Hasdrubal's glib expression vanished. He whispered to his brother, a little lower than previously, his eyes not upon the man in question but looking off at nothing in particular. “There stands a more ancient form of man than most.”

“I remember him,” Mago said. “He's Monomachus. He created the Lion's Way, did not he?”

Hasdrubal nodded. “And he's no saner now than he was then. He's devoted his works to Moloch, the Eater of Children. He leaves very few of his opponents alive. At least he fights for us. Of this be thankful.”

When Hannibal appeared he swept up onto the platform in a flourish of purposeful energy. He wore the leather corselet he sometimes sparred in. Its polished blackness was as impressively sculpted as hammered iron. He wore a red cloak that fell almost to the ground, but beneath this his arms were bare, as were his legs below the thigh. He gave the impression that he had just come from training, still flushed and warm from it. When his eyes touched on Hasdrubal, the young man felt a warm flush on his face despite himself. His brother's gaze in joy was like the sun bursting from behind a cloud.

Hanno appeared just after him. He nodded at his younger siblings, then crossed his arms and waited.

When he began, Hannibal's voice rang loud and clear, despite the wind trying to spirit his words away. “Remember with me for a moment the grandeur of our nation and the work we've accomplished here in Iberia,” he said. “We who were beaten through treachery have here carved one of the world's great empires. We who should be poor are rich. We who should be defeated know only victory after victory. We've much to be proud of. Be so in the name of my father, Hamilcar, and my brother by marriage, Hasdrubal the Handsome, for they made this possible. Their work was well begun, but it's not yet complete. As they have passed on to Baal, it passes to us to make real the world they both envisioned. We still have an enemy, a single foe, but a foe like none other. You know of whom I speak. . . . Not the Greeks whom we fought so often in times past. Not those Celts still defiant in the north of this very country. Not even the Saguntines, to whom I will direct your attention in a moment. I speak now of that den of thieves and pirates that they call Rome. Need I recount their crimes against us?”

The group murmured that these crimes were well known to them all.

Hannibal said the names anyway, slowly, each word broken into its separate syllables. “Sicily. Sardinia. Corsica. All taken from us. Our wealth. Blood. Possessions. All taken from us. The enormous cost of a war we did not start . . . Heaped upon us to pay for far into the years to come. Our navy destroyed. A people who were above all seamen now limited to a few vessels, cursed to walk instead of follow the wind. These losses are too great for a proud people to bear. And we are proud, are we not?”

All agreed that they were. Monomachus grunted low in his throat.

“Now, friends, the wolf's nose is sniffing even here in Iberia. Again the Romans are on the verge of ignoring honor. They wait not for right but only for opportunity. Some back in Carthage call themselves the Peace Party. They would have us avoid all conflict with Rome—would have us bow and bow again. They argue that we should accept the rule of our betters and profit from what commerce we can, like street peddlers scrounging for business in back alleyways. But what do these peaceable sorts know of the things we have created here? They know only that wealth pours from us to them, and that is as it should be. They need know little else, because it is we here on this citadel who determine the future of our nation. Make no mistake—we are Carthage, the heart and arm of it both. We are a small group here, but each of you is key to this army. Each of you makes Carthage great through your work. Each of you owns some portion of this empire. And what we've built thus far is but the foundation for something larger.

“I will speak to you plainly, so that you'll understand me the same way. We will move against Saguntum in the spring. Either the Romans will come to the Saguntines' aid, or the city will fall to us. If it falls, then the Romans will know what we think of them and they'll have to respond. So, either way, Saguntum is the opening thrust in an attack upon Rome itself. The Romans will be slow to recognize this completely. My sources say that they are now more concerned about events in Illyria than they are about us here. They will move more like tortoises than wolves. By the time they know we are their enemy, we'll be on their soil, with our swords at their necks. So . . . Saguntum this summer. Rome the next. Do any question me?”

Only the wind did, smacking hard across the citadel with three strong gusts. Hasdrubal had known this was coming, but the simple statement of it stunned him. The words seemed to come so easily to his brother's lips. They seemed so reasonable, despite the fact that they introduced the first official mention of a massive endeavor. He wondered if any would object, but from the generals and advisers all was silence until Monomachus said, “None question you.”

Hannibal nodded and said, “This goal is for our closed council only. The mass of men need not know my intentions; neither should the spies of Rome be given warning. But I will not keep secrets from you. This coming year we are still the Carthaginian army of Iberia. Next year they will be calling us the Army of Italy. Come, let's begin. There is everything to do.”

The Numidian spent the last of his silver on the passage to Iberia at the Pillars of Hercules. He traveled solitary, aligned with no city or king or general. Though a horseman by birth, he stood and walked on his own two legs. His head was shaved clean, with skin the color of oiled mahogany. He dressed simply in an earth-colored tunic, with a leopard skin flung across his shoulder and secured before him, a garment and blanket and bedding all in one. His arms bore tattoos, fine lines that were not words but were intelligible to those who knew how to read them. He had a strong hook of a nose and thin facial hair that clung in small curls just under his chin. His eyes were as clear now as they had been in his youth, though at twenty-nine he had seen things that meant the better portion of his life was behind him and now only dimly remembered. His name was Tusselo.

On disembarking in Iberia he began to search. The many signs were not hard to follow. The land had been trodden thin by the feet of so many thousands of men. It was scarred by horse hooves, flattened by the round, padded footfalls of elephants, cut by the wheels of carts and by the myriad other objects that seemed to have been dragged or pushed or somehow conveyed along the ground in a manner that left deep gouges. The farmland to either side had been stripped of its summer harvest. Many of those he passed still smarted from the inconveniences of the earlier horde and by no means was this lone traveler looked upon kindly. He was barred from settled places often, whether city or town or village it did not seem to matter. An old woman in Acra Leuce spat at him in the street and cursed his gods as weaklings. A man in an unnamed town cut him with an Iberian dagger, a clean slash across his forehead that bled profusely but was no real threat. It was a strange encounter, for having cut the Numidian the man just stood back and watched him walk away without further molestation. He was once followed by a band of young avengers who would have punished him for other men's crimes. They came upon him late at night, but he was ready for them and was more a man than they and left them smarting with the awareness of this. He carried a spear for a reason, and he explained this to them at close quarters.

Nor was nature disposed to aid him. The sun burned daylong in unclouded skies. Shade was thin and hard to come by and the landscape filled with hulking shapes in the distance. Once he traveled a barren stretch of land cut by dry rivers, some of enormous girth that might have funneled torrents but now lay parched beneath the summer sun. Later, he traversed a wide, shallow sea, the liquid so potent that it crystallized on his feet and coated them with a crust. Around him little thrived save for thin, delicately pink birds, creatures that stood on one leg and then the other and gestured with their curved beaks as if engaged in some courtly dance. On occasion his passage disturbed them; and the birds rose in great waves, thousands upon thousands of them, like giant sheets whipped by the breeze and lifted into the air. He never forgot the sight of them. Nor of the opal sea in the morning. Nor of a stretch of white beach as smooth as polished marble. Nor the white-winged butterfly that awoke him with a kiss upon his forehead.

He began to despair that he would succumb to some mishap before reaching his goal, but then he crossed the river Sucro and knew that he was close. He spent the night in a village by the sea and found that the people were not unkind to him, stranger though he was. He would always remember eating roasted fish on the beach, served up by an old man with whom he could not communicate in words but who seemed a friend nonetheless. The two sat on the sand near each other and scooped up the flaky white fish with their bare fingers. Tusselo tried to pay the man, but he refused, his hands raised before him and vertical so that no object could be placed upon them. In parting, Tusselo walked away a short distance and then turned to wave a good-bye. But the old man had turned his back to him and was kicking the sand to cover the spot upon which they had sat. Tusselo found something disquieting in this.

A week later he caught sight of scavenging parties sent out to supply the army. He avoided them for a day, but the next afternoon a lone horseman spotted him. The rider sat a rise a little distance away, contemplated him, and then rode forward into a dip. When he emerged Tusselo knew him for what he was, Massylii, slim and dark and so at one with his mount that he rode bareback and without reins. Tusselo raised his hand in greeting, knowing that his solitary travel was over. The rider stopped a short distance away and asked the stranger his business.

Knowing the man's warm tongue, Tusselo responded in kind. He came bearing knowledge the commander might find valuable, he explained. He had come to serve. He had come to fight for Hannibal.

The siege of Saguntum began early in the spring of the year following the defeat of Arbocala. It went on unabated, week after week, as spring gave way to summer. The city perched on the edge of a rocky plateau, high enough to afford a view of the surrounding hills and out toward the sea. It was well fortified, walled completely, in differing heights and thicknesses as suited the varying landscape. There were towers spaced along the walls at intervals, of such stout proportions that one might have thought the city perfectly defended. Hannibal was intent on proving this belief mistaken.

Under his direction a mass of men blanketed the ground all around the city, working in a hundred ways to break through the skin of the place and climb inside. One section of wall collapsed during the first weeks in a chaos of dust and debris and falling bodies, creating a great wound in the city's defenses that extended the whole length from one tower to the next. The Saguntines stanched it before the invaders could pour in, building a new shell from the rubble, working ruined homes into the fabric of the wall, throwing up barricades in all gaps, and using whatever materials came readily to hand. Some fought to keep the invaders at bay even as others ran between the defenders, working in stone and wood and earth. The wound remained, scabbed over and livid, yet the city had protection for another day.

The Saguntines received Hannibal's terms each time he offered them, but they refused to accept them. He knew the source of their resolve was threefold. There was simple loathing of defeat and the indignities it entailed. The stubborn bravado natural to all the Iberians he had yet encountered. And, of course, the Saguntines looked daily to the sea-horizon for salvation. From spies, Hannibal knew of three envoys who had escaped the city to renew their entreaties for Roman aid. He might have intercepted them with ease, but it suited him that they reach their goal and state their case in the Senate. He wanted the Romans to roil and fume. If they stirred to action against him, so too would he against them.

But despite all his planning, the siege threatened to carry on indefinitely. That was why, one sweltering morning in mid-June, Hannibal decided something must be done. He knew as well as any other that his actions verged on foolhardy, but he awoke to the knowledge that a lethargy had taken hold of his men. The heat of the summer day threatened to stew them slowly and would perhaps turn them upon themselves in surly frustration. He could not allow this to happen. Although he could not break through walls by himself, a lone man can inspire a mass to greatness beyond the power of an individual. His father would have done so, and as he was gone the responsibility fell to the first son.

He mounted the stallion that had of late become his favorite and rode out onto the debris-laden field between the city's walls and the mass of his fatigued, bored men. He shouted them to action. They looked up at him from the dust and grime. They saw his figure through the wavering haze cast by the heat and thought him a madman or an annoyance. Then they realized who he was and began to make sense of his words. Those who spoke no Carthaginian understood him only when he spoke in Greek, or in Celtiberian or Numidian. Some spoke still other languages and received his message through translation or by inference. He began simply anyway.

Get up and be men, he told them. Get off your lazy backsides and follow me through the walls of this city and through to the orgy of a lifetime. He told them they had everything they needed to storm the city that very hour. All the manpower and the machinery, the weapons and the opportunity. They needed only the balls to make it happen. They had been spurned and spurned again by the smug gluttons of Saguntum. Right now they were being laughed at and humiliated. Even the women and children of the city must think them pathetic, worth neither friendship nor obedience nor even a fuck.

He rode into a corps of Celtiberians, the big horse unwary of stepping on them. The soldiers jumped up and peeled back to allow his progress. They were pale of complexion, some with dustings of gold in their hair. Many of them were seeing their leader close up for the first time and they stared at him with slack jaws.

“Saguntum,” he said, voice not nearly loud enough to carry to them all but reaching many. “Does this task seem daunting, my friends? Does it tax you and strain your patience and will? So it should. This is a great city, whose foundations run deep, whose walls are thick, and whose inhabitants are thickheaded and vain. These months of work have pained us all—me as well as you—and yet we are here for a goal of undeniable worth. We came here at the bidding of our friends the Turdetani, those good people who suffered beneath the repression of the city behind me.”

A shout went up, which must have been the Turdetani responding to the mention of their name. Hannibal acknowledged them with a nod and spurred his horse in their direction. “There are issues of right and wrong to be discussed,” he said, “a dispute best handled by an impartial party. That is why I offered to be a judge in the matter. But rather than discourse like honorable men, these Saguntines called upon Rome to clap its mighty palm down on us. This before we'd chosen sides and taken up arms. Romans came to my fortress and stood before me and told me, Hannibal, what I could do and what I could not do. They told me that I was a child and all of you my bandy-legged playmates. Is that how you see yourselves?”

Hannibal kicked his horse into a gallop that sent infantrymen diving out of his path. The translation took a moment. As the various precincts understood his question, the answer rolled back like claps of thunder during a storm, some loud and some far and some near at hand, some sharp and others grumbling, in increasingly angry tones as if this insult was more than they could bear, something they had not considered before but which touched them sorely. In many languages, the men replied in the negative. They were not playmates; Hannibal was no child.

When the commander spoke again he did so from deep within a host of Libyan mercenaries. The soldiers reached up and touched his legs as he passed. They were copper-skinned men, noses and chins like features carved in granite and left rough-edged. In many ways they were the core of his army, battle-hardened veterans whose families had fought for Carthage for several generations. The relationship between the two peoples was not a formal alliance; Carthage was not sworn to protect the Libyans, nor was their king, Syphax, bound to her. But Syphax had continued the long-standing tradition of allowing his men to hire themselves out as mercenaries in the Carthaginian army, especially as a portion of their pay went to him in one form or another. The Libyans around Hannibal did not speak as he passed, but each stomped one foot in a throbbing rhythm.

“Who are the Saguntines to call another our master? Does that sound like the action of a people to be pitied? Nor shall they be pitied. Not for the injustice that began this conflict, nor for the months of labor they have caused, nor for your brothers who have been sent on to the next world. Just in the last few days I detailed to them through one of their citizens my terms for their surrender. Even at this date Hannibal conceded the possibility of mercy. But I went spurned.”

He paused at the edge of the Libyans, facing a company of mounted Massylii Numidians, these men easy on their horses, dark and tattooed as was their custom, with matted ropes of hair brushing their shoulders, eyes that sat deep and moved heavily. These men were also paid for their services, but they had been offered to the Carthaginian army by their king, Gaia, who made it clear he longed for an official, lasting union with Carthage.

When the various translations ceased and the crowd hushed, Hannibal spoke in rhythm with the throbbing beat still kept by the Libyans. “So let this now be known: That city, when it falls, goes to the men who capture it! What booty may be found there, in gold, in coins and jewels and weapons. In men and children. In women. Hannibal claims none of it. We will send some tribute to Carthage, so that the people may understand our work, and portion some to fund this great army. But beyond that Hannibal gives it all to those brave enough to take it, to do with it what they please. This siege has gone on long enough, my friends—let us now raze this place and be done with it!”

He did not have to await translation to get the men's roar of approval. Those who understood his Carthaginian shouted their immediate pleasure. Others joined in, perhaps not understanding completely but knowing that something unusual was being offered to them and willing to express joy and get the details later. They fell on Saguntum that day with an enthusiasm that must have rocked the defenders. The motley soldiers of Carthage threw their bodies at the walls as if they could claw through the stone itself. The Saguntines in return hurled down their spears and stones. Bodies were impaled and burned, skulls shattered and limbs snapped. But each man that fell was stepped upon by another willing to climb over his body and get for himself a portion of the city's riches. And perhaps each man was aware that the body he climbed over made one fewer to divide the treasure with.

Nor were the soldiers without a model of bravery. Hannibal was among them. Later all the men would claim to have labored beside him at some point during the day. He dragged back the battering ram and ran forward yelling his fury into the base of the wall. He scaled the lower portion of a ladder and only just jumped to safety when a log was set rolling from the wall above, peeling off the men before and below him and leaving them shattered and broken. He landed awkwardly from his leap and limped so markedly that Mago convinced him to mount again. He did so, and rode exhorting the men. It was atop that churning mass of muscle that the hand of another's fate touched him in a way it had never before.

In all the movement and action, his mouth open and yelling, horse swirling beneath him, men rushing about him, he did not notice the falarica let loose from a tower high on the wall. He did not see the fingers that released it or hear the prayer on the lips of that person. The spearhead itself was four feet long, followed by a compartment smeared with pitch and set aflame, behind which stretched ten feet of shaft that gave the weapon a deadly weight in falling. It cut a fiery, indirect path toward its target, first up into the air, then arching, arching, losing upward speed, but gaining from gravity's pull as it returned to the earth. In the time this missile was in the air Hannibal and his mount circled and pranced and galloped a short distance and pulled up. He and the horse might easily have been yards from the spear when it struck the earth. This fact would haunt him afterward though he would never voice his questions about what this meant for the will of the gods or the intentions of the fates.

A guard next to him shouted a warning, too late and unheard anyway. The point of the falarica slammed into Hannibal's leg and through his flesh and muscle and past him into the leather of his saddle and farther still into the back of the horse. It broke two of the mount's ribs and lodged so deeply inside it that the wound was mortal. The horse was dead on its feet. Hannibal batted at the flaming pitch along the shaft as if he might right the matter with the fury of his palms. Then he felt the horse start to buckle and knew that he might be crushed beneath it. So he did what he had to.

As the horse fell to one side, he wrenched himself the other way. The sharp prongs of the spearhead ripped sideways through his leg, pausing for a moment against a thin ribbon of reluctant flesh, then tearing free. Hannibal landed on top of the horse. He tried to spring away, but as one leg was useless, he ended up with his chest on the horse's rump. In one of its last acts on this earth the creature kicked, and Hannibal was made aware of three things. The air was knocked completely out of his chest so that his lungs were momentarily flat and useless. He realized in midair that the force of the blow had sent him over the heads and beyond the first few who had come to aid him. And as he rolled and scraped across the ground and settled in an undignified jumble, he understood that he would never be able to stand before Imilce as he had in the past. He was no longer perfect. This thought stunned him even more than the pain, even more than the proximity of death, the few inches that placed the spearhead in one portion of his body and not another.

When the messenger found him, Mago was at the far edge of the camp, surveying the quantity and abundance of lumber recently hewn for siege engines. He left directly. He cut through sections of the camp he had never explored before: the tent neighborhoods of the various tribes, wherein each people kept to its way and lived by its customs. He passed the hovels of camp followers—squat dwellings of animal skins, others woven of plant matter, and some built of bricks of mud and feces; he passed through open-air markets, carcasses hanging to air, fly-spotted, the ground below them splattered with offal, the air rife with the scent of slaughtered flesh, with the stench of fish guts. Beyond the confusion created by the mass of nationalities there were women in abundance, cooks and prostitutes and maids, wives and sisters and even daughters, especially from the Celtiberian tribes who were not so far from home. There were children among them, the same urchins who made their lives in the alleys of cities, quick and nimble and somehow thriving beneath the feet of warriors. The lanes were even patrolled by the requisite stray dogs, thin-limbed and shorthaired and none of them of any particular breed. Like the children, they managed to eke out an existence in and around the machinery of war. There was little order to it, except for the knowledge that each and every soul within miles knew the name Hannibal Barca.

But few of them recognized the Barca striding past them behind the messenger, which suited him well as yet. Mago had been face-to-face with his responsibilities as never before. He kept a daily record of all notable developments, organized the notes and engineering reports from Adherbal, kept track of morale in the various contingents, settled disputes in Hannibal's name when the weary soldiers turned their frustrations against each other. He was even left in charge of requisitioning supplies for Vandicar, the chief mahout, whose elephants were as sorely taxed as any soldier by the siege work.

In his attempt to fulfill all the tasks set for him, Mago found himself down among the soldiers, examining the machines and learning about strategy from those who would answer his questions. At first he was hesitant in dealing with men older than he, more experienced than he, with scowling faces and opinions they did not mind spouting at the least provocation. But each evening as he completed his work he catalogued the day's interactions and noted where he had been lacking.

One morning Mago yanked the young cavalry general, Carthalo, from his horse and held him pinned beneath his foot. The horseman's infraction had come the day before, a matter concerning his disregard for an order he saw as beneath his men, but Mago had needed the evening to devise his response. It came as a surprise to many—Carthalo included—but went unnoticed by few. The youngest Barca was growing to fill the promise of his family name quite quickly.

Mago nodded to the guards posted outside Hannibal's tent. He slipped quietly past them and into a gloomy haze of incense, the close, moist smell of sweat and exhaustion, of blood and vinegar. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light the room came slowly into relief, its sparse furnishings ordering themselves before his eyes. A single wooden table stood at the center, cluttered with maps and other papers and surrounded by stools pushed back a little distance. Just beyond the table, lining the far wall, Hannibal lay on a small bed. He was propped up on one elbow and from that position watched his physician, Synhalus, who worked beneath the lamp glow provided by his assistant.

“Welcome, brother,” Hannibal said, his tone surprisingly light. “Sorry to call you away, but I need your services as scribe. The sickly creature who last had the post died most unpleasantly. My surgeon here says it was the cost of his sexual habits, consumed from the loins up into his abdomen. I would prefer a death in battle, to be sure.”

The Egyptian physician glanced over his shoulder and seemed to consider the interruption for a moment. He exhaled and pushed himself to his feet and spoke a few words to the commander. As he did so, Mago was provided a view of his work. His brother's leg was bare, punctured at mid-thigh in a circle of jagged flesh that cut deep into the muscle. The surgeon draped a wet cloth over the wound. The white material flushed on contact and then, gradually, deepened to a red and on toward brown.

“Don't think me too infirm,” Hannibal said. “They pierced the skin and muscle of me, Mago, but not the bone, not even the main artery, and certainly not my heart or resolve. I don't doubt I am the victim of some stable boy who snatched up a javelin when he saw his chance for glory. It does vex me, mostly because my foolishness broke our momentum and the siege carries on. Come in and sit. Synhalus is leaving me now but he will soon return. He has all manner of tortures planned for me this afternoon, but he thinks he can keep this leg from becoming the death of me.”

Hannibal grasped the surgeon by the wrist in a parting gesture. Synhalus nodded and left the room without making eye contact with Mago. His assistant took the lamp with him and for a moment after their departure the room dropped into shadow.

Mago navigated through the stools and sat as instructed. He found it hard to look directly at his brother, for his eyes wanted only to stare at the wound. “I would take your place if I could,” he said. “I'd accept the foul weapon into my own flesh to see you whole again.”

The smile on the commander's face dropped away. Though the air in the tent was a comfortable temperature, beads of sweat dotted his nose and temples. These were the only indication of the pain his leg must have been causing him. He shifted position and said, “You would never have been as foolish as I. There are many reasons for me to risk my life for our goals; impatience isn't one of them. Are the men greatly disturbed?”

“None can remember seeing you injured,” Mago said. “It has been a shock. Rumors spread faster than fever in times like this.”

Hannibal shifted as if he were about to rise, but understanding his thoughts Mago stayed him with a hand. “We're dealing with it, brother. I made sure that the priest who sacrificed this morning found the signs positive. Also, I instructed the generals to speak not of your frailty but of your courage, to remind all men that you have as much to lose in this battle as they and yet you do not shrink from it. I tell them that, but be more careful in future, brother. It's not true that you have as much to lose as they; you have very much more.”

“Wise counsel,” Hannibal said. “Sometimes I think you are more like me than any of our father's children.”

“You speak too highly of me.”

Hannibal did not smile, but there was something ironic in his expression. “I don't think so. You are the most like what I would be if I could be other than I am. Hasdrubal takes joy from life in a light way that I never could. Hanno lives well, but carries a weight around his neck that hinders him. Some doubt was planted in him young, and he's never grown beyond it. You, Mago, have a balance that I envy. One day I will show you the depths of my admiration, but let us first take care of what we must. I called you here because again the Romans have sent envoys to chastise us. I've kept them waiting along the shore, stewing, I hope, and blistering under the sun. I might have received them previously, but not in this state. I am sure that in a day or two they'll sail from here directly to Carthage. But let us forewarn the Council. Better they hear from me first. You'll find writing materials there behind you.”

He waited as Mago got his supplies ready. He started to adjust his position, but his leg stopped him. He gave up on the effort. Instead he swiped at the flies that had settled on his bandage. They scattered, only to circle and return a moment later. When his brother looked up at him, he began.

“Transcribe my words exactly. Have you any question, stop me and ask it. We can have no errors in such a correspondence. Write this . . . Honored and venerated Council of Carthage, beloved of Baal, descendants of Elissa, Hannibal hails you. I write to you on a matter of grave importance, which I ask you to consider the very day you receive this. As you know, I serve you humbly in Iberia. I carry on the work of my father, Hamilcar, who through sheer force of will wrested Iberia from the waste of tribal bickering. He built of it a fine holding, rich in silver and timber and other resources. My father filled your coffers, aiding as no other could in the rebuilding of Carthage's depleted fortunes. He died in these efforts, sacrificing even his life to the country he loved.”

Hannibal paused to allow Mago to catch up. He was surprised to find that his brother stopped writing only a moment later. “So fast as that? They have taught you well. Perhaps I need not have sent for that Greek to keep a record of events for me.” He proceeded, speaking a little more rapidly.

“In the time after my father's death, my brother-in-law, Hasdrubal the Handsome, ably managed Iberia. On his death I took his burdens upon myself, not solely of my own wish but at the request of all who cared for Carthage's glory. Since then I've all but completed the conquest of Iberia. I did not call on Carthage for resources then, but at my own expense gained domination over the tribes of the Tagus, and captured Salmantica and Arbocala. Carthage favors generals who win and generals who enrich the city of their birth. This being so, you can have no complaint about Hannibal or the legacy of the Barcas.

“I remind you of all this so that it will be fresh in your mind when you receive the embassy of the Romans. They will come to you condemning me, spinning truths into lies and lies into truths, as is their way. You know the mission that I am on, so remember two things, that Saguntum is south of the Ebro, and that we've no obligation to honor Roman commands concerning a city within our realm of influence. I believe that my actions in taking Saguntum do not violate existing agreements. Even if they did, you have the authority to reject those agreements, as they did not come directly from yourselves. What I ask of you is simple. Send those Romans home like the disobedient dogs they are. I will complete this business soon, and I assure you Carthage will benefit handsomely from it. And know also that, should Rome challenge us with force, Carthage can count on Hannibal and his army to meet any threat before it reaches African soil.”

Hannibal motioned for his brother to hold the scroll up for him to see. “You have a fine hand,” he said, his tone conversational. “They are indeed precious, these Romans. They call me barbaric, when they are the masters of treachery and the breakers of treaties. They present themselves here like children shocked at the harsh world all around them. But even these Saguntines shall one day attest that Hannibal is both just and strong.”

“Shall they?” Mago asked. “That would surprise me. I mean, that they would admit as much.”

“They cannot say I failed to offer them a choice. Think of it like this: When you come upon a great tree that blocks your path, do you stand against it and challenge it to battle? When you are out walking in the night and hear behind you the growls of a lion, do you turn and fight it lest it inconvenience you? No. You walk around the tree. You quicken your pace away from the lion and find shelter. I present the Saguntines with a force beyond their capacity to defeat. They must adapt to it. If they had the wisdom to acknowledge this, we would not be fighting now. When they rejected me, they asked for my wrath instead of my friendship. So their fate has been decided by their own actions. This is no perversity of my own. The world is cruel. One must take on a portion of that cruelty to live in it. That is all I've done.”

Hannibal paused and tilted his head to listen to some shouts outside, and then continued. “But, some might ask, Is Hannibal propelled by the breeze or does he shape the breeze? To which I admit that the behavior of the Saguntines suits me perfectly. I knew how they would react, and how Rome will react. Though I might have thought we would capture them sooner, I am glad this is proving a challenge for my men.”

Mago nodded, though he found himself resisting Hannibal's logic. Questions popped to mind fully formed; facts occurred to him that he might have pointed out to undermine the general's assertions. It could not be denied that the Saguntines were fighting bravely for their very lives, to protect their women and keep their children from being sold into slavery. At night, when he heard them calling out curses from the walls, he could hear the brave desperation in the voices. The poet in him was struck by this. Perhaps it was the Iliad haunting him once more, recalling the fate of Priam and his Troy. He had always been disappointed by that aspect of the great tales. All that heroic grandeur resulted in rape and pillage and the utter destruction of a people. But Mago had never voiced such thoughts to anyone and he held his peace.

“In any event, the Council will know my mind and they will be swayed by it,” Hannibal continued. “Though I've been away from home too many years, I still know my people. My message will, by the gods' grace, fly past the Roman envoy and find a home in the hearts of our countrymen. That's my will. Let us see it fulfilled.” So saying, he placed his stamp upon the scroll. Mago rolled and wrapped it safely and passed it on to a messenger, who was waiting at the mouth of the tent.

It seemed that Hannibal was on the verge of dismissing Mago, but he delayed him a little longer. He ran a hand down the ridge of his nose, and opened his fingers across his lower face as if he would capture the heat of his breath. “Mago, write me another letter. As with everything that passes between us, this correspondence is not to be spoken of. Perhaps this woman is my weakness, brother, and if that is so I would have none but yourself know it.”

He hesitated for a moment after Mago was ready, and there was some reluctance in his voice when he spoke again. “Dearest Imilce . . .”

Sapanibal was as much a Barca as any of her brothers. She had Hannibal's deep-set eyes, Hanno's stature and wide forehead, Hasdrubal's shapely mouth, and Mago's sensitive mind. Like all her siblings, her younger sister Sophonisba included, she had been raised to serve the family's interests. Her marriage to Hasdrubal the Handsome had done just that, creating a bond stronger than mere pledges and promises. In this her sacrifice was as earnest as if she had dedicated her life to war; Sapanibal had endured her task with the same dedication expected of her brothers. Perhaps this was why she had been out of sorts of late. What was required of her was no longer certain. Her husband had been dead some years now and therefore no longer a tool through which to exert influence. None of the children he had planted in her had lived more than a few months inside her, so she could not focus herself on motherhood. Her brothers were always busy with warcraft, in which she could take no official role. And then there was Imilce, who now commanded Hannibal's attention in a way that Sapanibal felt was gradually, inevitably, replacing the influence she might once have exerted.

A late summer morning found her walking the meandering path into the woodland of New Carthage, a small square of dense trees, aged giants trapped within the city's granite walls. The same architecture that protected these chosen few had grown wealthy at the expense of the miles and miles of forest once thick outside the gates. With the price of fine lumber rising, the wood standing in New Carthage was a great luxury, which had been protected during the governance of her husband. It was rumored that his forbearance sprang not from an interest in nature, but to please a concubine of whom he was particularly enamored. For this it was called the Whore's Wood, a name Sapanibal was quite fond of. She had long ago ceased to take offense at Hasdrubal's infidelities. He had been a man, and men showed their prime weakness in giving in to the hungers of the groin. Anyway, the whore in question had been sharing Hasdrubal's bed on the night he was assassinated. She died in Sapanibal's place, her chest and abdomen speckled with stab wounds, just like her lover's. Baal had a sense of humor after all.

She found a certain peace and calm beneath the cloak of interwoven branches, inhaling the dampness of the place. Who could help but stand in awe of the towering columns of oak and spruce, with ferns thick around the legs and the leaves above stirred by breezes little felt upon the ground? Though she never spoke of it to anyone, she had occasionally slept in the woods. Stretching her body out on the mossy floor, eyes closed, she had listened as the natural world shifted around her. It was a rare, private pleasure, the only time she felt truly herself because it was the only time she truly forgot herself.

She spotted Imilce, her maid, and their guard before they were aware of her, waiting as had been arranged by messenger a few hours earlier. She slowed her pace and watched them a moment. Sitting on stools that servants must have placed for them, they were dwarfed by the trees, both the many standing and one great beast that had fallen two years before. It was thicker than either woman was tall. It ran behind them like a wall thrown down by the forest itself. Strange, Sapanibal thought, that a race of creatures who built such enormous structures could themselves look like insects before the mute girth of nature.

“Good Imilce,” she called as she walked into the clearing, “forgive me for asking to meet you here. It's just that I never begin a day without a walk in the forest, and I thought how pleasant it would be for you to share it with me. Come walk with me a little. I will be your guide to the Whore's Wood.”

Imilce rose and nodded to her maid; they fell in step with her sister-in-law. Imilce's body had a lithe, supple quality that contrasted sharply with Sapanibal's stride. Though Sapanibal was well dressed, her hair neatly woven into braids, and her ears adorned with silver loops, still she was a goose leading a swan and she knew it. She felt it keenly despite herself and hid it through banter. The wood was full of life and she told Imilce all about it as they walked.

The ear-piercing calls of tropical birds—flamboyant creatures of bright greens and reds, some of solid white, big-beaked and absurd by design—cut the air in cacophonic waves. They were not native to the forest but were replenished each year, kept in place by clipped wings and the barren stretch of treeless land around the city. The parrots were not the only foreigners. A troop of monkeys lived within the forest. They had been imported from Africa, tiny-faced and long-limbed and so agile as to defy possibility. They called to each other and threw insults down upon the intruders. Sapanibal pulled dates from a pouch attached to her waist chain and hurled them one by one into the trees. This brought more cries. The monkeys jumped from limb to limb and snatched the fruit out of midair. They shadowed the women until they reached the edge of the wood and stepped out onto the close-cropped field that ran away a short distance to the city's wall.

Sapanibal lowered herself and sat with her legs crossed before her, straight-backed. “We are a strange people,” she said, pointing to a small group of creatures near a crook in the wall. From a distance they looked like horses, but there was something different in their movements and colorings. Zebras. “There are some who would make New Carthage a pen for all things exotic, people or jewels or animals. In truth, it sometimes seems to me that my brother succeeds not because of Carthage but despite it. This extravagance will be our downfall if anything is. Did you know, Imilce, that once a merchant named Sastanu traveled from Carthage with two fully grown giraffes? He called them wedding presents for Hasdrubal and me. One died of fever; the other bit a guard in the backside and found the artery in her throat sliced by his sword.”

Imilce was still considering the prospect of settling down on the grass. Eventually, reluctantly, she did so. “I had not heard that before. I'd quite like to see a giraffe. Are they really so tall as they say?”

Sapanibal, though she had opened the topic, grew impatient with it. “Yes, you could walk upright beneath the belly of one with room to spare. But I've not come to talk of such things. I bring you a message, sister-in-law, from my brother.”

“My husband?”

Sapanibal reached inside the loose folds of her gown and produced a small, tightly rolled scroll. “It seems the siege goes on, slow as the summer and not nearly as pleasant.”

“You have read the letter?”

Sapanibal looked at her dryly. “I've not read it, sister. Much mail comes through me, and this I thought I'd deliver to you rather than hand it off to another.”

Imilce took the scroll and held it awkwardly. Her fingers caressed the string that bound it. A moment passed in silence until finally she thanked Sapanibal and seemed on the verge of taking her leave.

But Sapanibal said casually, “I'll read it for you, if you like.”

This stopped Imilce. She began by shaking her head, but turned the gesture into a one-shoulder shrug instead. “I would not want to trouble you,” she said.

Sapanibal opened her palm. “It's no trouble. A small thing that I am happy to do for you.”

Imilce handed back the scroll and waited as Sapanibal removed the string, unrolled it, and pressed it flat with her fingers. “‘Dearest Imilce,'” she read. “‘May this find you as when I last saw you, the model of health and beauty. I pray the summer has not been too oppressive in New Carthage. I heard early reports of a fever in the region, but later I was told this was not so. Please speak of this when you next write me. This business here is slow. Our adversary is a more tenacious one than I expected, as you warned me. You know these people better than I. Perhaps next time you will remind me of this occasion and force your counsel upon me. But the siege will be concluded before the warring season ends. I assure you of that, and then you will find me in your presence once more.'”

Sapanibal paused and cleared her throat and brushed away a fly that had settled on her arm.

“‘How is young Hamilcar? It is one of my sorest trials that I cannot see him daily growing. I hope you are whispering to him as we spoke of in the spring, speaking close so that his tiny ears might hear of his father and recognize me upon my return. I was told recently that since I departed you have daily offered sacrifice on my behalf. I thank you for this. May the gods smile on you and pass your wisdom on to our son. Imilce, you may also have heard that I've been injured. There is nothing in this rumor; I am in fine health, as ever. From your husband, who loves you. Hannibal.'”

Imilce was silent for a long moment, and then said, “He's lying, isn't he? He's been hurt. I should go to him.”

“You should not,” Sapanibal said. “If my brother says he's in fine health, then you must believe him. And if he was injured, then it's a matter for a surgeon, not a wife.”

“So you, too, think he is hurt?”

Sapanibal ignored this. “He must know that you are here and well and lovingly unconcerned. Even this letter is too much of an indulgence. He is the commander of an army, Imilce. His mind should be at ease and focused solely on his goal. The lives of many people and the fate of our nation depend on it. If you like, I can help you write a response, a cheery letter that reminds him his son is healthy and his wife loving. That is what he needs. Do you understand?”

Imilce lifted her gaze and watched the zebras in the distance. “You make it quite clear, sister.”

“Good,” Sapanibal said. “The best hope Hannibal has for recovery is full focus on it.”

Imilce snapped her head around and stared at Sapanibal, exasperated. “So you do believe he's been injured! Or do you know it from another source? Tell me, please. You have spies everywhere, don't you? Nothing passes Sapanibal. Only I am kept ignorant.”