Pride of Carthage

“You slight us both and in neither case do you speak truly. Nobody would ever suggest Imilce is ignorant, or that I've any power whatsoever. I only offer you my counsel as one who has been a soldier's wife. You know as well as I that Hannibal has been provoking Rome. If he engages with the Romans fully it will be a war like none the world has yet seen. It'll be no summer campaign but a far longer struggle. You should consider how best to aid our cause in this.”

“Perhaps I will accompany him,” Imilce offered.

Sapanibal pursed her lips—at the world at large, for Imilce had lowered her gaze to her lap. “Some wives have done that, yes,” she said. “And there are always women among the camp followers. But you know as well as I that is a foolish notion for you, with the baby certainly. On the contrary, I believe you should return with me to Carthage and wait out the war there.”

“You would have me leave Iberia?”

“It would be for the best. You are married to Carthage, after all. You might as well see it, learn the language properly, meet my mother, Didobal, and my sister, Sophonisba.”

“I will ask my husband.”

“You can do that, but know that I've already spoken with him on this matter, and he agrees with me.”

Imilce looked askance at Sapanibal as she considered this news. “I will ask him myself.” She rose and patted bits of debris from her gown. “I will sacrifice to Baal this evening and I will have a letter composed, cheerful as you say. Thank you, sister, for your counsel.”

Sapanibal watched Imilce move away. Despite the young beauty's deferential words, Sapanibal did not trust her, was not yet confident that she would not somehow corrupt the course of events to come, intentionally or otherwise. She was, after all, the daughter of a conquered chieftain. Though others did not yet realize this, Sapanibal knew that Imilce formed her own opinions. This much, at least, she could see behind the elegant façade.

Just as Hannibal hoped, the Carthaginian Council had time to consider his letter before the Roman envoy called on them. They turned him away casually, citing the arguments elucidated to them in the letter. Unfortunately, the same messenger who brought this news back to Hannibal also brought word of a rebellion among the Carpetani, in central Iberia. The commander left Saguntum to deal with it personally. He might have delegated this task to a trusted general, but he deemed it grave enough to require his personal attention. If left unchecked, these unruly tribes might inspire more discontent with Carthaginian authority. This was impermissible.

In his absence he left Hanno at the helm, with instructions to bring the siege to a conclusion if it all possible. But almost before Hannibal's silhouette disappeared over the Saguntine hills, the men's enthusiasm drained from their weary bodies. Hanno saw this. Perhaps even more significantly, he felt it as well. He had no inspired speeches to energize his sweat-soaked, reeking, insect-plagued men, but he believed that no city could stand forever against dogged persistence. He had the men build ever larger siege engines, towers taller than the walls, that could be pushed forward on the level areas. From these they hurled volleys of arrows and spears and darts as cover for those working beneath them. In other areas, they built sheltered pathways so that workers could go forward in safety and chip away at the foundation of the city in relative safety. Adherbal, the chief engineer, reported that the blocks at the base of the walls were fitted and sealed with clay. These blocks he had pulled away in great numbers, weakening the fortress at its very base. Occasionally the massive walls shifted and adjusted to the intrusion, groaned against it as if calling out for help.

This was normal enough—to be expected as the battering rams shook the barriers deep down into their foundations—but Hanno woke one stiflingly hot late-summer morning, feeling something in the air, something amiss. When a messenger brought him news of a strange occurrence he almost felt like he had been expecting it. A corner section of the city's sloping northern bulwark had shifted suddenly, crushing the corps of workers undermining it, burying them in an instant mass grave, one great noise and then complete silence, no cries or moaning or calls for help. As the dust slowly cleared it revealed the strangest of architectural adjustments. The wall had not collapsed at all but simply sunk about ten feet, completely intact, no weaker for the change, no more easily breached.

Inspecting the sight, Hanno felt a sudden, gnawing doubt wrap around his gut. What force had lifted its massive boot and pressed it down upon those fifty men, blotting them from the earth without a trace? It was too odd an occurrence to go unconsidered. There might well be a portent in it of things to come. Perhaps the Saguntines had called upon the power of a god whose devotion to them outweighed Baal's commitment to the Carthaginians. If that were so, not even Hannibal's skills could hope to further their cause. Hanno ordered a halt to similar work and called upon the chief priest for guidance.

Mandarbal was a taciturn man with a disfigured face. His upper lip attached directly to the lower portion of his nose, leaving his mouth ever open, his large yellow foreteeth jutting out. It was rumored that he had been born with hands like the flippers of a sea creature, fingers all attached to each other with a webbing of skin that a clerical surgeon sliced away on the day they accepted the orphaned boy into their order. For this reason the priest always wore leather gloves, as he did that afternoon as he invoked the presence of the gods and their wisdom and guidance in the question before them. The animal to be offered was a she-goat that had spent some time in a blessed state, waiting to be called upon. Mandarbal's black-cloaked assistants led her into the dusty courtyard of the command tent, chanting sacred words, the meanings of which were known only to themselves. The goat eyed them warily, skittish and ornery, pulling against the rope that bound her. The priests had difficulty maintaining the appropriate solemnity while controlling her.

Mago, who stood beside his brother, nudged him in the ribs. “Seems she knows what's coming,” he said. “Our future written on the inside of her. Strange how the gods speak to us.”

The animal's struggles turned out to be short-lived. Mandarbal knew his work well and went to it without delay. With the help of his assistants, he straddled the goat across the shoulders and jabbed her in the neck with a long, thin spike. An artery spurted a few quick streams of blood and then eased into a steady flow that slowly blackened the goat's neck and dripped down to the parched earth. The priest stretched out his hand for the next tool, a knife with a convexly curved blade and a handle said to have been made from the backbone of a sea monster. The motion he used to cut the creature's throat was awkward, but so fast that the goat barely noticed it. She had dropped to her knees before she realized new damage had been done to her. This much of the ceremony was public, but as the priests bent to the surgery they closed in around the victim and worked silently.

Mago began to whisper something to his brother, but paused to watch a man stride up to the edge of the group. He was a short man, thin around the chest, with slender arms like those of an adolescent boy. His head seemed somewhat larger than the norm, squared across the back and covered in a mass of curly black hair. But for all his seeming frailty he was tanned a leathery brown and strode up with a massive pack balanced on his shoulders, the legs supporting him sinewy and nimble. He tossed his burden down in the dust and introduced himself, speaking first in Greek, then a little more in Latin, and finally, eloquently, in Carthaginian. He was Silenus, the Greek who was to take over as Hannibal's official historian and chronicler. He said that he had come from afar to immortalize this colossal undertaking in words that would make the ancient poets jealous. He needed little more than wine to wet his pen.

Mago warmed to him immediately, but Hanno said, “You have arrived at an inconvenient time. We expected you several weeks ago.”

“I know it, sir. I've been held up by too many things to recount in brief. I will bend your ear if you ask me to, but it is a tale better told at leisure.”

Hanno considered this prospect for a moment before answering. “It can wait,” he said. “Search out the camp quartermaster. He'll get you settled and show you the layout of the camp. You'll explain your lateness to me this evening.”

“At dinner,” Mago said. “Explain it to me as well. Tell the tale in leisure, as you suggest.”

Hanno looked at his brother but did not contradict him. He turned his attention back to the divination, although he was still aware that some moments passed before the Greek hefted his load and moved away.

Mandarbal finally rose, the bloody liver cradled in his gloved hands. The goat lay on its side, abdomen slit open and viscera strewn from the wound and freckled with pale dirt, already swarming with flies. The priest placed the sacred organ carefully upon the ceremonial table and bent close to it, his attendants on either side of him, shoulder to shoulder, head to head so that the two brothers saw nothing of the signs written on the liver itself. Mandarbal stood erect above the scene for a moment, then turned and walked toward the brothers. As he left the circle of priests, the space he vacated closed behind him. Hanno only caught a momentary glimpse of the mutilated flesh.

“The signs are uncertain,” Mandarbal said, his voice high and lisping. “The offshoot of the liver is abnormally large, which suggests a reversal of the natural order. The right compartment is healthy and fine, but the left bears a black mark shaped like a young frog.”

“How do you read that?” Hanno asked.

“It is uncertain. We are favored by the gods in some aspects, and yet there are divine forces aligned against us.”

“Is that all you can see?”

Mandarbal considered this. He looked back over his shoulders. An insect landed on his lip but flew away instantly. He said, “Perhaps you have offended a single deity and may yet suffer for it.”

Hanno pressed his tongue against his teeth for a moment. “I would look upon the organ myself,” he said. “Might I—”

The priest stopped him with his hand. His fingertips spotted Hanno's breastplate with blood. “You cannot see the sacred parts. This is forbidden to your eyes. You would profane the rites. I've told you more than enough. Trust when I tell you that the future is not certain. Sacrifice to Baal and to Anath. I will ask El for guidance. Perhaps the aged one will speak to us. And Moloch, also—give praise to death.”

Mandarbal made as if to return to his attendants, but noting the expression on Hanno's face, he paused. “Events will unfold by the will of the gods,” he said. “To know their desire is not always our fortune; to have a part in it, regardless, is the blessing and curse of our lives. Be at ease with it. A thrashing man will always drown; a passive one may sometimes float.”

With that, the priest turned and showed the Barcas his back.

Mago shrugged, pursed his lips, and patted his brother on the shoulder. “What did you expect?” he asked. “They are priests. It is against their creed to speak clearly.”

Hanno took the sacred ceremonies much more seriously than his brother, but he could not deny the simple truth Mago referred to. The priests always left one more ill at ease than before, more uncertain, more troubled by the numerous possibilities. It was a strange art, theirs, but one he could never turn his back on.

Had he had only his own inclinations to consider, he would not have joined his brother for the evening meal but would have retired early to privacy. But, as so often since Hannibal's departure, his presence seemed an official necessity. In honor of the Greek, the officers dined in a style he was familiar with, lounging on low couches in Mago's tent, sampling cheeses and fish, vegetables and goat meat with their fingers. The day was still stiflingly warm. One wall of the large tent was folded back to encourage the first stirrings of an evening breeze. Silenus spoke Carthaginian with a Syracusan accent. He entertained the weary soldiers with tales of his voyage from Carthage to Sicily, from there up to the Greek town of Emporiae in northeastern Iberia, from which he sailed along the coast aboard a trading vessel that dropped him at Saguntum. It was hard to know just where fact met fantasy in the man's story, for his odyssey seemed calculated to outdo the poem sung by Homer. He spoke of pirates off the Aegates, of sighting a leviathan longer than the quinquereme in which he sailed, and of a lightning bolt that darted down out of a clear sky and struck the surface of the water.

“It sounds as though we are lucky to lay our eyes on you,” Mago said. He motioned for a servant to refill the Greek's wine bowl, a task attended by a slim-shouldered Arbocalan.

“That you are,” the Greek agreed. “If I had known that I would miss the commander, I might not have rushed.”

“Better that you delayed no longer,” Hanno said. Without his meaning to reveal it, his voice bore an edge of threat. There was something about the scribe that annoyed him, more so because he chided himself for showing it in the face of a company that seemed kindly inclined toward the man. In a more controlled tone, he said, “There's a great deal you'll have to learn about what we require of you.”

“Of course that is so,” Silenus said. He bowed his head and left it at that.

One officer, Bomilcar, seemed particularly amused by Silenus. Though a giant of a man, perfectly proportioned but at a scale rarely witnessed, Bomilcar was neither a terribly disciplined nor especially intelligent officer. His muscular bulk made him a leader of men regardless. His family was an old one in Carthage, but they had maintained a remarkable purity of Phoenician blood, evidenced by the curved blade of his nose, his sharp chin, and the bushy prominence of his eyebrows.

“Greek,” he said, “let me ask you, how did your gimp god Hephaestus secure Aphrodite as a wife? Why not Ares instead? Why not Zeus himself? Or that one from the sea?”

“The blacksmith has got poor legs,” Silenus said, “but his other limbs function quite well. He spends his days pounding iron—”

“And his nights pounding something else!” Bomilcar was laughing at his own joke before he had even completed it.

Silenus smiled. “Yes, but Hephaestus is known as a kind god, as well. Perhaps Aphrodite finds this a virtue. This may come as a surprise to you, Bomilcar, but I am not personally acquainted with the Olympians. I've invoked their presence more than once, I assure you, but as yet they've spurned me. Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite—I've asked them all to dine but they've ignored me. I caught a glimpse of Dionysus once, but my head was a bit foggy at the time. No, the gods are largely silent as concerns young Silenus.”

“Are you a Skeptic, then?” Mago asked.

“Not at all,” Silenus said. “I've seen Ares in a man's eyes and sampled Aphrodite's handiwork and every day one sees Apollo's labors. I've simply been shunned, and I am bitter.”

Hanno said, “Greeks are strange creatures. They claim to revere their gods above all others and yet at the same time they pretend to believe in nothing. Have you no fear of the insult you may cause and of the punishment brought down on you?”

“Insult to the gods?” Silenus asked. He held his wine goblet beneath his nose for a moment, thinking. “I am too small a man to accomplish that. You see these arms, this misshapen head? What god could reasonably take offense at anything I utter?”

“You toy with questions instead of answering them,” Hanno said. “We Carthaginians fear our gods. We ask daily, hourly, each minute that their wrath be directed at our enemies instead of at ourselves. We never know what will displease them, so we are ever respectful.”

“How unfortunate,” Silenus said. He seemed to have more to say but left it at that.

“Let's not talk of our faiths,” Mago said. “We all honor Baal. That is never in question among this company, Greeks included. But tell us something more useful, Silenus. You have actually been to Rome, haven't you? Tell us of the Romans.”

Silenus picked up on the topic happily enough. “The Romans are an uncultured lot. It is not so long ago that Rome was a flea-infested sewer of no consequence at all. They've no literature to speak of. They appease the gods when it suits them, but they make a muddle of it. They've actually just borrowed our Greek deities and renamed them. One wonders whom they think they are fooling. Not the gods themselves, surely. I imagine that when they decide they need a literature of their own they'll take it from Greece. Take Homer and rename him Pomponius or something similarly absurd and change all the names in the Iliad. They are shameless, I assure you. This could well happen.”

“If they aren't humbled first,” Bomilcar said. “Which they shall be by Baal's grace and Hannibal's cunning. I wish he were here to meet you, Greek. Then you'd see the face of the future. He'll squash these Romans beneath his heel soon. Hannibal puts steel in all his men's backbones. Rome is no foe to be feared.”

“I am no warrior,” Silenus said, “but I might argue there's a thing even more powerful than steel.”

“And what's that?” Bomilcar asked. “Surely not pen and ink? Are you of that school?”

“No,” Silenus said dryly, looking almost saddened by the admission. “I'm not such an idealist that I believe that. What I'm referring to is not easily explained. I don't have the word for it just yet, but . . . Have you heard of Cincinnatus? During the early forging of the Republic, the Romans battled with their neighbors constantly. In the instance I am speaking of, the Roman army was pinned down by the Aequi, in a dire situation, trapped with dwindling food and water and outnumbered. As things seemed hopeless, Rome looked to the priests for direction, and in answer they were instructed to call upon Cincinnatus, a veteran soldier some years retired into a quiet life. They found him working in his field, plow in hand, sweating, squinting at the sun, I'd imagine, wife and children and some pigs about the place. You can picture it. But still they called him up and bestowed upon him the powers of dictator. He left the plow where it rested and raised a new army from the fields and farms around him. He marched on the Aequi within a few weeks and defeated them soundly. Quite a feat for a humble farmer, would not you say?”

“But Cincinnatus was no humble farmer,” Hanno said. “He was a veteran. Retired, but still a warrior. What point do you wish to extract from this tale?”

“I assert that he was a warrior and also a simple farmer. He was both, and not more one than the other. That is my point. Romans believe themselves to be simple farmers. But they believe that hand in hand with this goes the requirement that they also be their nations' soldiers. Plow one minute, sword the next, depending on the call of the country. After his victory Cincinnatus laid down the title of dictator and walked away from the rule of Rome and returned to his farm. He picked up his plow where it lay and carried on with his real work of choice.”

Mago doubted that the man's plow had stood untouched in the fields and said so. Silenus waved this away as superficial. “That is a detail of the storyteller. It enhances the tale's symmetry, but should not distract from the truth of it. Still, my point—”

“I understand your point,” Hanno said, “but no army of farmers can stand against an army of trained soldiers, men who have chosen war above other paths. A soldier who has just stepped from the field cannot hope to defeat one who has been drilled and drilled again, one who knows nothing but the life of the sword and scorns men who would break their backs trying to grow plants from the dry earth. Our army succeeds not despite the absence of civilians, but because of it. No man in the Carthaginian Council could last a day in battle beside my brother or me. I'd wager that the same is true of Roman senators. I think this Cincinnatus is just a fiction, a detail from an earlier storyteller, to use your words.”

Silenus shrugged. He lifted his bowl and realized it was empty. Holding it up to be refilled, he said, “But if I understand the possible plans this conversation has suggested to me, then your brother would consider attacking the Romans on their own soil. Men fight differently with their wives and children at their backs. The Saguntines demonstrate it at this very moment.”

Hanno studied the Greek through narrowed eyes. “One wonders if you are suited to the job required of you.” Without awaiting a response, he rose, bade them fair evening, and turned to leave.

“Hanno,” Bomilcar called. “You haven't said whether we resume in force tomorrow. I know the signs were troubling . . . but my men are ready to push the assault. Adherbal says—”

“I know,” Hanno snapped, “but architects do not give orders. They follow them. And I've not made up my mind. I must think on it more.” He stepped out into the summer night and stood for a moment with his eyes closed, feeling the movement of the evening air across his face. The scent of cooking meat floated to him. Beyond that came the flavor of incense and the musty rankness of horses, and, behind it all, the dry smoke of a thousand small fires. He heard bits of conversation, a yell in a language he did not recognize, laughter like that of children at play, and a prayer spoken loud to Shalem, the god who most loved to contemplate the setting sun.

He moved off toward the cottage he had been staying in of late. It was somewhat farther up the slope, set back on a flat shelf and abutted by a stony outcropping. It had been a retreat for one of Saguntum's wealthy leaders, just far enough from the city to provide some quiet, high enough up for the air to be better than that found near the sewers of the city, with a view that one could contemplate indefinitely. Hannibal would not have approved—rather a simple tent or the bare ground, like the men who served them—but the commander was away. Hanno was no stranger to the trials of camp, but when opportunity allowed he preferred solid walls around him and comfort in his bed and the privacy to share it as he saw fit.

While he ascended the hill, the sky bloomed in magnificent color. The horizon glowed radiantly auburn, as if the air itself took on the warmth of the sun and hummed with it. Even the smoke rising from the city caught the crimson heat. Highlights swirled into the billowing gray and black. Hanno remembered the earlier mention of Hephaestus. The sky around his volcano-forge would look much like this. . . . He shook his head to clear it of Greek thoughts. There was only one aspect of Silenus' stories that he cared for: the notion that the Romans read the prophecies correctly when they sought out Cincinnatus. Would that he had such wisdom himself, for he was more puzzled about how to proceed than ever. Was he the drowning man Mandarbal referred to? He felt this to be so, but how did one float in a sea as tumultuous as the one he found himself in?

As he reached his cottage, a figure rose from the ground before it, no soldier or guard but one of the young men who cared for the horses in the hills beyond the camp. He was perhaps fifteen, bare-chested and lithe, a Celt with hair touched by the sun and large black eyes that he kept lowered as the general approached. Hanno did not pause to address the boy, but he was warmed by his presence and thankful for the silent company he was to offer. He walked past him without a gesture or greeting. The boy waited a moment. His eyes rose enough to take in the scene of the city before him, and then he turned and stepped through the threshold.

Hannibal met Hasdrubal en route from New Carthage, and the two brothers rode together at the head of a force of almost twenty thousand. In the week they spent riding inland Hannibal kept his brother tethered to his side, discussing tactics with him, testing his knowledge of the country, quizzing him on the various chieftains, their characters, flaws, and virtues. He needed to know that this young one was capable of the things that were to be asked of him, and the time left for training diminished daily. The army was a mixed company made up partly of the veterans stationed at New Carthage, with some Iberians from the southern tribes, completed by new Libyan recruits and a unit of Moorish mercenaries, and augmented by a company of elephants fresh from North Africa. They had never fought together as one body, but at least they knew the commands as given by the trumpet. Even more important, Hannibal trusted the generals overseeing them to carry out his will.

The farther inland they marched the hotter it grew, dry and unrelenting through the day and a slow bake at night. When they looked back on the column, the army faded rank after rank into a thickening cloud of dust. Hasdrubal once commented that the men were like individual licks of a great fire—a fitting image, Hannibal thought.

Though he spoke of it to no one, Hannibal's wound troubled him constantly. It had half healed into a ragged, fearsome-looking scar, and the leg was just barely sound enough for him to walk and ride. Synhalus had opposed this excursion, and Hannibal soon acknowledged the physician's wisdom—if only to himself—as days in the saddle took their toll on him. At night the pain of the wound gnawed at his leg with such convulsive ardor that he once dreamed a miniature fox had been sewn alive into the wound. He awoke drenched in sweat and angry at himself. A man should control his pain and not the other way around. His father had exemplified such strength during the last decade of his life, and Hannibal was determined to be no different. To prove it he brought his fist down upon his thigh as if to punish the creature within it, to beat it into submission. This proved largely impossible, however. He was glad when battle came, for during it he truly forgot the pain and had no purpose save one.

The Massylii scouts had brought back partial reports earlier in the day. Therefore Hannibal knew as he approached the river Tagus that the Carpetani were near at hand. But it was not until the full force of the barbarians blocked their path that the situation became completely clear. They stood on the near bank of the river, thousands upon thousands of them, a force larger than any they had yet mustered. Hannibal knew at a glance that this horde represented not a single tribe but the confederation of several. They outnumbered the Carthaginians by at least three to one. Moving forward in a semi-ordered mob, they shouted out in their various dialects and blew their horns and bashed their spears and swords against their shields.

The Barca brothers watched this from atop anxious horses. Hasdrubal cursed that they had no choice but to engage fully, but Hannibal shook his head. It was late afternoon already; the sun was slipping behind the hills to the west. He gave orders for the army to back and fight, back and fight. He engaged chosen units briefly and then withdrew them, inflicting what damage he could with pikemen and with the quick spears of the Moorish skirmishers. The elephants wreaked some havoc among the Carpetani but even these he held at close rein.

The afternoon passed into evening, and it appeared—not solely to the Carpetani but also to many among the Carthaginians themselves—that the Iberians had bested Hannibal's men for the day. As the sun set, the Carthaginians turned from warfare to architecture, building the fortifications to protect them till the morrow. Hannibal instructed them to make a great show of it, with plenty of noise, to make it clear that they were settling in for a prolonged fight the next day.

Toward the end of the night's first quarter, Hannibal and a group of scouts led the infantry and most of the cavalry on a five-mile hike upstream. They traveled silently, through what cover of trees as they could. They cut through a narrow pass in the hills and dropped down to the river level and forded it, blessed for most of the crossing with moonlight so bright above them that it lit the river rocks and the hillsides in pale, ghostly gray and etched ribbons of white into the dark water. The march back down toward the enemy army was carried out in the black hours after moonset and before the dawn. The next morning the tribes woke to find their enemy largely behind them, somehow transported to the other side of the river. This threw them into confusion, into quick consultations, arguments, and impromptu councils.

“Watch them,” Hannibal said to his brother. “Just watch them.”

Whatever debate the tribal leaders had, it seemed to lead to no organized action. They collected at the waterfront, shouting insults across at the Carthaginians, calling them cowards, women, dogs. Hannibal held his men, silent, watching, waiting. Something about this calm enraged the Carpetani further. A single soldier stepped nearer than the others and sent his spear across the river. It fell short. The point bounced off a rock and the spear skittered across the ground and rolled to rest at the foot of a Libyan. The infantryman picked it up and considered it, weighed it and tested its grip. Then he tossed it down as useless.

Whether this single action served as a catalyst for the mob to move or not was uncertain, but move they did. One flank of Iberian soldiers waded into the water far off at the downstream edge of the river. Others, seeing their boldness, marched in also. Soon a wavering, ragged line of soldiers reached midstream, up to their waists in the current. Hannibal remained silent until some of the enemy crossed the midpoint and began to emerge from the deeper portion of the river. Then he called the Moorish javelin throwers to the ready. A moment more passed and he had them heft their weapons. As the first Iberians stumbled into knee-deep water, he gave the call. The trumpets blew the quick, deafening blast that signaled the spearmen, and a thousand javelins took to the air. The Iberians were ill prepared for the volley, their shields held at awkward angles or up over their heads or caught in the current and tugging them off balance. The missiles pierced their simple tunics and leather breastplates, drove into the bones of men's skulls, and tore through shoulder joints, or thrust through the water to find thighs and groins. Another volley followed and after that the javelin throwers hurled at will so that the air was a whir of missiles finding targets picked out at the spearmen's discretion.

Hannibal, speaking to nobody in particular but within earshot of his brother, said, “I need a greater foe than this.”

The Iberians kept coming until finally, through sheer numbers, they pushed the battle to ground on the Carthaginians' shore. The two sides engaged in earnest. Though the Carpetani were full of rage, they were also sodden and tired. They found the Libyans savage opponents, burly-armed and black-eyed demons who fought in their own version of a phalanx, shields locked tight, their heavy spears forming a living being with thousands of iron-tipped arms. Hannibal rode his stallion into the fray and hacked from horseback with his sword, yelling confidence into his men. Hasdrubal shadowed him and saved his life by sinking a spear into the neck of a Carpetani just about to do the same to the commander. But the two brothers were not long in the thick of battle. Hannibal galloped out again and shouted his next order to his signalers.

The resulting call sounded from the trumpets and when the answer came it did so not from the field of battle itself but from behind the tribal force. The elephants, their mahouts riding just behind their heads, roared out of the old camp and toward the unorganized backside of the enemy. Upon turning to see these great beasts hurtling toward them, the Carpetani realized the complete misery of their coming fate.

Hannibal's stallion spun and snapped his neck from side to side, seeming to be looking for something to sink his teeth into. The commander cuffed him about the ears and yelled to his brother over the din of slaughter: “Do you understand this? Do you see the truth here before you? These people will always be beneath us. They never look upon the past to create something new. They only take what is given to them and perpetuate it. They've never fought a man like me, and they will always be as they are and will never change except by dying into something new. That time has come. This will be your work, Hasdrubal. When I march on Rome, I will leave Iberia in your hands. Next year you'll not only rule over these people, you'll also bring them into our world and mold them into soldiers for Carthage. Today we slay them; tomorrow we resurrect them in our image. Do this, Hasdrubal, and the world is ours to shape.”

The next morning Hannibal rode for Saguntum. He left his brother to bring home the full weight of the victory to the cities and towns that had so foolishly sent their men out to slaughter. The commander's leg pained him terribly after the efforts of the previous day. He rode with a small corps of the Sacred Band and seemed intent on punishing himself throughout the journey, driving on as the pain grew, sometimes slapping his thigh in defiance of it. He thought often of Imilce and that was another stab of frustration, which left him little joy from his recent victory. Now behind him a day or two, the Tagus was like a distant memory from another man's tale.

Nor did his return to Saguntum improve his mood. Though he arrived in the dead of night he soon learned that the siege was no further along. For all the labor done in the weeks of his absence, the scene viewed under the moonlight appeared just as before he had departed. He found Hanno in his cottage and called him out. An anger came upon him quickly and with a fury he did not often show outside of battle. He addressed it to his brother, his face inches from Hanno's. What had Hanno been doing with his command? How had three weeks passed with nothing to show for them?

Hanno did not answer the questions directly but stood in his loose sleeping garments, reciting a chronology of the things they had accomplished. If he was taken aback by his brother's outburst he did not show it. Nor did he react when Hannibal waved him to silence and said, “Hanno, what a gift you would have given me if I'd returned to dine inside those walls. Instead you've worked on at a snail's pace, taking your pleasures in your summer home. How would this please our father to see?”

He sat down on a stool and closed his eyes to the view of the city and tried to shut out the pain of his leg. “They tell me you have been troubled by omens and signs,” he said, almost too quietly for Hanno to hear. “Did not our father teach you that these signs are way markers for our path forward? If you displease the gods, it's not through your actions but through your delays. We will destroy them, Hanno. That's how we honor the gods, by victory in their names. We will end this within a week. Everything we have, we throw at them now. Saguntum loses all except the memory of my name and the knowledge that the will of Baal acts through me. That is how this ends, and on the day I name.”

When he saw the city was finally falling, Imco Vaca chose to enter via a different route than on the last such occasion. He scrambled up the giant wooden stairs of a siege tower, following on the heels of one man, feeling the claws of another behind him. He moved frantically, his whole body alive with purpose. Before he knew it, he had reached the top of the structure and found himself spat out as if by a great mouth. He landed on the top of the wall itself, but he and the man before him both stepped right off the wall and fell free through the air some twenty feet down to a lower landing. Imco thought surely this would end him, but again providence aided him. The man before him took the impact and cushioned Imco's fall. Afoot again, Imco fell in with the stampede of invaders as if he had followed a precisely chosen course to that moment.

The mass of Carthaginians hit the waiting defenders with a force that rocked both groups. Weapons were useless and they stood eye to eye. Then that moment was gone and Imco was hacking with his sword, thrusting, ducking, spinning. He took a Saguntine down by slicing his leg through the knee joint. He missed another with a downward blow, but caught him under the chin with an upward jerk. The point of his falcata slit the man's windpipe. He heard the soldier's breath escape the wound in a rasp. Another thrust a spear at him, but it glanced off his helmet and the Libyan beside him put his spear inside the Iberian at the armpit. Imco's helmet had twisted sideways. He fought without correcting it, a little blind to the left side but no worse for it because he fought to the right. For some time he struggled within a mixed company of friend and foe. But soon his singular progress took him away from his comrades and he knew that he would not die that day. It was like a billow of air blown into him, the knowledge that some god favored him. The defenders recognized this as well as he. They gave way before him as his sweeping blows became wider.

He was soon running through the streets with the others, kicking in doors and hunting down small groups of men. Hannibal's orders were clear and simple. They were to kill all men. That was their only charge. Soldiers disappeared into homes and did not return again. They screamed and tossed over furniture and searched for inhabitants, men to kill and women to rape and children to enslave. Others came out laden with booty, jewels and ornaments, iron cookware and silver cutlery, dragging prisoners by fistfuls of hair. He saw a group of young men driven into a market, weaponless. The Carthaginian men behind them slashed and thrust and kept them moving. One of the Saguntines pleaded for mercy, argued his innocence and friendship, and pointed at others and named their crimes against Carthage. He might have gone on like this, but one of his number punched him squarely in the jaw and left him spitting blood.

By midday, Imco had seen his full share of human suffering. He stepped into a small house at the end of a lane, not expecting to find anything left, but wondering if he might pass a few moments in solitude. He stood for a long moment looking about the room. Indeed, the house had been pillaged and no single object stood upright, no vase was unbroken. He was numb and blood-splattered and very tired. The stillness of the room closed about him, the strangeness of being in somebody else's home. Shame dropped like a shawl about his shoulders. He thought he heard something, but as he listened he realized the sound was within him. A bone-weary cry wrung itself from inside him, a howl not of words but something earlier and more honest, emotions at battle within him. He was unable to order them. He just needed to stand still for a moment, just had to push emotion from him, for there was no place for it.

A muffled cough interrupted his thoughts. He followed the sound and spotted a foot dangling from the chimney above the cooking fire. He set down his booty and yanked the person free: a girl of eleven or so, soot-covered and tearful, hair so long it must never have been trimmed. Her eyes shone in white relief against her sooty face. They were full of terror. She reached for Imco's eyes and would have ripped them out. But he slapped her hands down and pinned her arms to her side. He shushed her violently and yelled that he had something to tell her. When she finally fell silent he did also, though his grip did not loosen.

“Are you the last?” he asked. “Did you have family?” He stopped himself and answered his own question. “Of course you did. We all have family, conquered and conquerors both.” The girl stared into his face, searching for meaning but knowing nothing of his language.

From outside came a new yelling. Soldiers kicked an old man from his house into the street, accusing him of having daughters and demanding that he betray them before he died, threatening to rape him with the shaft of their spears if he did not speak. Imco could not make out his response, but it did not satisfy his tormentors. He and the girl both listened, neither moving until the man's ordeal ended and the soldiers moved on.

“I want you to sit down,” Imco said. He reached out with his foot and righted a stool. Adjusting his grip on the girl, he set her down upon it and slid his hands away. He stood back and studied her.

She was pretty. He could tell this despite her grimy face. Her chin was a little weak, one eye lower than the other, but she was pretty nonetheless. Her body was still boyish, but this was not a flaw. She was not too young to be taken, nor to be sold, nor to be rented out. He walked around her and stood behind her for some time. He had to think about this. He was aware as never before how much suffering this girl's life now offered her. Her shoulders were so thin, but their frailty would please many. Her skin was a translucent covering over her frame. She must have been hungry these past months, but that too would make some men want her. Her hair fell over her shoulder and he could see the pulse of the artery in her neck. He reached out and touched it with his fingertips. The girl moved slightly, but he whispered her to stillness. Her pulse was strong, warm. It seemed irregular in its beating and at first he did not question why. Someone would profit from her suffering. Before the end of the month she would have been used by hundreds of men. She would be diseased and battered. She would rot from the inside out, both body and soul. But right now she was sound. In sorrow, yes. In mourning, surely. But her nightmare had not yet begun in full. He—by whatever divine hand—had been given her life to shape. Some men would have thought this a great gift, so why did it pain him so?

Just after the question formed in his mind he realized why her pulse seemed strange. He snapped his fingers away from her neck and struck the same spot with a slicing sweep of his sword. She dropped from the stool, and he darted outside a moment later, striding away, putting the tiny house behind him. He would forever remember the moment when he realized that the girl's irregular heartbeat was actually a mixture of his pulse with hers, both of them captured there on his fingertips for the few moments they were connected. He might have become a soldier in the last few years, but he was still a brother, still a child who loved his sisters, still soft in some portion of his heart. He prayed that the girl might understand his action as he had meant it: as a twisted, merciful gift.

When word of the sack of Saguntum reached the assembled Roman Senate several senators rose to their feet with calls for an immediate declaration of war. Valerius Flaccus stood with these, finding in the moment so much enthusiasm that he blurted out an entire plan of attack, so complete it had obviously been thought out ahead of time. Another senator pointed out that they should have dealt with Carthage much earlier. Hannibal had gone this far only because certain individuals put their personal interests in Gaul ahead of those of the people. Some cheered and echoed his complaint, but others tried to refocus the debate on the issue at hand: Rome had an enemy. There should be no mudslinging among senators.

From some of the most respected men came some of the most cautious words. One proposed another envoy: Let one of their number journey directly to Carthage and ask once and for all whether Hannibal's actions were indeed Carthage's actions as well. If the Carthaginians failed to answer satisfactorily, then the matter of war would be decided. Let no one say that Rome went to war without due consideration. Roman justice should first be reasoned; then, when necessary, as swift as a falcon. Despite heated debate, this plan was adopted before the close of the day, and Fabius Maximus the elder was chosen as the message bearer.

The envoy sailed in surprisingly good weather, nothing ominous in the sky or upon the sea itself. It did not seem that nature was aware of the import of the debate to come. Fabius suffered from arthritis on damp days, and his eyesight was not what it used to be. One shoulder sat a bit higher than the other—the result of damage to his left leg years before—but he hid this well when not within the confines of his own home. The black hair of his youth had gone prematurely gray. After a few years of fighting it, he now wore this badge of maturity proudly. It was his age that gave depth to his authority. It was one of many reasons that he was chosen to head the embassy, charged with the responsibility of asking one question and responding to it as appropriate.

They were met by the Carthaginians and offered the city's hospitalities with all courtesy. These Fabius turned down, asking only for an audience with the Council. Fabius wasted little time. He moved carefully to the center of the chamber, which was a dimmer space than the Roman equivalent, lit not by the sun but by large torches jutting out of the walls. It was damp and fragrant from bubbling vats of herbs and sticks of incense. With his fading vision, Fabius could barely make out the men he was to address, and the smells assaulted his nose. But he stood straight-backed and feigned the most direct of gazes. He asked whether Hannibal had acted upon his own folly in attacking Saguntum, or whether he was a true representative of the will of Carthage.

Cries went up from several quarters, not in answer to the question but with questions and assertions of their own. Fabius waited.

One Imago Messano quieted the others and rose to speak. He responded politely: The question was not so much whether Hannibal had acted upon state orders or upon his own whims. Rather, it was one of law and precedent. Saguntum had not been in alliance with Rome when the treaty between Rome and Carthage was made. And later, the agreement made with Hasdrubal the Handsome could not truly be considered binding because it was concluded at a distance from the Council and therefore had no official sanction. This being so, Carthage had no responsibility to bow to Rome's wishes.

“This matter with Saguntum,” Imago said, smiling, “is an internal affair and should be respected as such. That is our position.”

Fabius chose to proceed simply. He clasped a fold of his toga in his fist and looked about at the stern faces surrounding him and made sure that all saw his gesture. He gripped so firmly that his knuckles went white with pressure. “In this hand I hold war or peace,” he said. “I offer either as a present to the Carthaginian people, but it is up to you to decide which you would rather receive.”

Imago, gazing about him for his fellows' approval, answered with a shrug. “We accept whichever your Roman heart prefers to give.”

And so Fabius opened his hand and released the folds of his toga in a manner that made it clear which the Roman heart preferred. As he spun to leave, the Carthaginians spoke in one voice, declaring their acceptance of the gift and their devotion to fight it to the end. Thus was the second war between Carthage and Rome agreed upon by cordial means.

During the winter following the siege of Saguntum, Hannibal released his Iberian troops to enjoy their families for the season, with the order to return in the spring to embark upon a journey to immortal fame. But for the commander himself and those who served him most intimately, there was little rest. To his family, it sometimes seemed that Hannibal had not returned from campaign at all. He was gone on exercises for days or sometimes weeks. When he was at home his time was filled morning to night with meetings and counsels, with planning sessions, with dictating letters to foreign leaders and collecting information from spies. The project he now had before him was a massive puzzle of matters military, geographical, cultural, monetary, issues as diverse as supply trains and political ramifications, topics as varied as naval routes and the physical constitution of elephants.

He drilled his Libyan veterans beyond any of the soldiers' expectations. They were up before the winter dawns, sent on far-ranging marches in full gear, with food and animals and siege weapons. They prowled the high mountains, going so high as to press through knee-deep snow, scaling rock faces, and rigging rope systems to aid the pack animals, coating their bare limbs with grease and marveling at the way their breath made ghosts before their mouths. He had new supplies of elephants shipped across from Carthage, mostly the native variety from the wooded hills of North Africa. They were not so large as the specimens found farther south, nor even did they stand as tall as the Asian variety, but each was a four-legged juggernaut. With a skilled mahout behind their ears they could mow down the enemy. Just the sight of them might clear a path through the barbarians who stood between them and Rome. Hannibal also called up new corps of Balearic slingers, for he had come to admire the pinpoint accuracy of their strikes, the way they turned the tiniest of stones into missiles that flew at blurred speed. He made arrangements to transfer some of his Iberian troops to defend Carthage, while bringing Africans over to protect Iberia in his absence. He hoped to assure their loyalty by keeping each group far from their homes, away from the enticement to desert, and dependent on their Carthaginian masters. And he sent emissaries to the tribes whose territories they would have to cross, rough Gaelic and Celtic peoples with whom he preferred friendship to war.

In the days just before the Mediterranean winter loosed its grip on New Carthage, Hannibal received his most detailed map yet of the territory through which his route to Rome lay. Alone in his chambers, he spread it out across his table and bent to study it. On the map the Alps were little more than a single jagged line of peaks, like a strange scar across the land. The document suggested routes through several different passes, but it provided no details, no indication of height or terrain or forage. There was little here from which he could choose a course. What to make of tales of peaks that pierced the sky, of yearlong ice and earthquakes wherein snow and rock flowed in torrents that were like water one moment, then set like cement the next? He wondered how the elephants would fare in those conditions. Some sources suggested that elephants would perish in the cold. Others argued that their thick hides would protect them. He had heard of the bones of mighty pachyderms found trapped in the ice of northern places. Giants, they said these were. If those creatures grew so large there, perhaps the climate would suit his elephants more than people knew.

If this were not confusion enough, the names of the tribes stood out among the depiction of the natural features: Volcae, Cavares, Allobroges, Triscastinii, Taurini, Cenomani . . . What peoples were these? Some of them were known to him; some channels of communication had long been open. Some of the tribes, like the Insubres and Boii, were actively hostile to Rome and interested in his plans. But others were only names shrouded in rumor and speculation. Blond creatures who lived in regions so frigid as to change their natural skin color, making them pale as marble statues, taller than normal men, and fierce as wolves. They drank the blood of slain heroes and made ornaments from bones and teeth and adorned their hovels with the bleached skulls of their foes. They fought with a wild abandon that had no order to it save the desire for personal glory. He understood they went into battle naked or nearly so, and that they often went clothed only in trousers that covered their legs like a second skin. Such a strange notion: to rarely see the muscles and flesh and hair of one's own thighs. It was hard to know just how accurate these tales were, and yet he did not doubt that any errors were deviations from even stranger truths.

Standing over the chart he felt a flush of blood tint his face. For all the information, the map was terribly inadequate, the detail etched by a man's pen, pushed by a single hand and mind. It was not the real world but only a vague, incomplete outline of it. The day would come when these mountains and these people were real before him, when he would feel the sharp rocks through his sandals and look upon the barricade of mountains receding before him in solid fact, when he would see these peoples' eyes and smell their breath and grasp their hands in friendship or spill their blood in enmity. Strange that thousands of lives depended on the plans he made now, pulled from the air in calm solitude. He wished his father were beside him so that they could share this, but he pushed the thought from his mind with a resolve long practiced. Uncertainty was the shackle that constrained normal men.

As he bent staring at the map, his sister appeared in the corridor opening. Sapanibal stood a moment in silence, then stepped through the threshold, nodding to the door servant as she did so. The slave bowed his head and slipped from the room, leaving the two siblings alone for the first time in nearly a year.

“My brother,” Sapanibal said, “I trust I am not disturbing you.”

Hannibal looked up from the chart. Seeing her, his face went through a quick transformation. At first he met her with the stern visage of a general. This faded almost to the half-grin of a brother, and fast behind this came the honest, tired expression with which he addressed few people in the world.

“Many things disturb me, sister, but you are a welcome visitor.”

“I come, actually, as an emissary of your beloved. She is worried about you. Thinks you're sure to catch a consumptive illness with this winter training.”

Hannibal smiled and shook his head. “She is afraid for me now, while I'm simply practicing for war? You women are strange. Happy to send me off into battle, but fearful that a cold might fell me.”

“Small things are sometimes the death of great men. I do not think Imilce is alone in fearing that you tax yourself.”

“Tax myself?” Hannibal asked. “If only you knew, sister. To see this coming war into being requires an unending vigilance. This is just the calm; come and see the makings of the storm.” He waved her closer to the table. “For all its art, this map is a crude thing, filled with empty spaces, dotted with deaths yet to be written. You know my plans?”

“No one has invited me to council,” Sapanibal said. “The things I've heard I dismiss as speculation only.”

Hannibal doubted her knowledge was so limited, but he said, “A land attack. Since the Romans destroyed our navy during our last war, they've believed themselves safe in their own land. The physical barriers have always seemed insurmountable. An army cannot swim the sea. Nor can an army climb the heights of mountains like the Alps and Pyrenees. So the Romans believe, at least. Our spies report they think they'll fight this war on their own terms. They expect me to entrench here in Iberia and wait to defend myself. On this they are mistaken.”

He paused for a moment and studied the map. Sapanibal, dryly, asked, “Has the commander changed the map of the world to suit him?”

“The map can remain as it is,” Hannibal said. “We will march along the Mediterranean coast this spring, cross the Pyrenees in early summer and the Rhône at midsummer, and traverse the Alps before the autumn. This will be a long and difficult march, but I do not accept that it is impossible. It only means that we will be the first. Think of the things Alexander achieved by again and again attempting the unimaginable. What do you think of this?”

Sapanibal laughed. “Hannibal asks a woman's advice on matters of war?”

Hannibal watched her and did not answer but awaited hers. She was the eldest of Hamilcar's offspring and though she was a woman she was easily Hannibal's equal in wisdom: they both knew it. She had made sure he knew it from his earliest memories of her. There was a time, in fact, when she was his physical superior. Her strong, long-legged form had thrown his often during the wrestling matches of their youth. A twelve-year-old girl, in the quick bloom of early womanhood, is in no way inferior to her nine-year-old brother. Hannibal had never forgotten this. It hung behind all discourse between them. So yes, he would ask a woman's advice, and he knew she would give it.

“Your plan is the best possible one,” she said. “Father would be proud. And what of the rest of us? What fates have you assigned your siblings?”

Hannibal stepped back from the desk and rolled his shoulders for a moment, as if his day's training had just caught up with him. He sat down on a nearby stool and rotated his head to ease some tension in his vertebrae. The bones made an audible crack, but judging by the commander's grimace this provided no relief.

“Everyone has a part to play,” he said, “though I've yet to settle everyone's role exactly. I will do so soon. But for your part, I ask—”

“I will escort your wife to Carthage,” Sapanibal said, “and introduce her to our mother and Sophonisba and bring her more fully into our country's ways.” After a short pause she added, “If that is your wish, brother.”

“You have learned no fondness for my wife, have you?”

“What has that to do with it?” Sapanibal asked, with her usual flat frankness. She stood and circled her brother and pushed his hand from his neck with her palm. She stood a moment with her fingers on the firm wings of his shoulder muscles, then she squeezed and released, squeezed and released. “I respect her,” she said. “That is what matters. I understand the value of your union with her here in Iberia. She is beloved of her people, and this is a good thing for Carthage. And, too, brother, I acknowledge your passion for her.”

Sapanibal pressed her thumbs into Hannibal's back with a force that surprised him, as if the two digits were formed on gnarled tree roots. He almost turned around to check, but her hands held him.

“If the marriage had been mine to arrange,” she continued, “I might have found you an equally useful, yet somewhat more homely bride. A man should value the bond with his wife and honor her accordingly, but a commander should not mix duty with ardor. Better to respect your wife and stick your penis in some pretty camp follower.”

Again Hannibal almost turned, for it seemed to him that his sister was speaking with doubled significance about her own marriage. But she stopped any movement with an admonishing click of her tongue.

“Do you truly mean that?” Hannibal asked. “Father was not so with Mother. . . .”

“Yes, but her strength equaled his. You are a man, Hannibal. You can have no idea of the sacrifices required of women. Mother was the foundation from which Hamilcar Barca launched himself at the world. But she was never, never a source of weakness to him. This is something you cannot know, but believe your older sister.”

“So you think my wife is not such a foundation?”

“I've never said a sour word against Imilce. I'm just voicing my thoughts on a subject, and on the virtues of our mother. Of any wife of yours . . . She should be handled strictly, so as to cause the least distraction.”

Hannibal heard this with pursed lips, a frown tugging at one corner but not completely allowed. It faded with a few moments of silence. “Sister, we should have spoken more often. Your counsel is wise where I am shortsighted. It would have been good for us to debate the matters of life more fully.”

“Why do you say ‘should' and ‘would'? Are we not at council now? You speak as if we've no future before us.”

Just then, both siblings caught movement at the mouth of the corridor. Imilce stepped in. She met the two with her gaze, cleared her throat, and placed a hand upon her delicate collarbones.

Hannibal placed a hand on his sister's fingers. She withdrew them. As he rose and approached his wife he said, softly and—though his eyes were on Imilce—to Sapanibal alone, “We've a war before us. Beyond that very little is certain.”

How the child escaped his governess's care none could say, but he was a lively boy, recently emboldened by his mastery of two-legged travel, and such children have their own, secret devices. He progressed unnoticed through several long corridors, through a room set off with a long dining table under which he walked, out onto a balcony into the winter afternoon, and then back into the warmth by another entrance. He stepped flat-footed, bowed at the legs, his fat feet slapping against the smooth stones, chubby legs rotating from the hips so that his cloth-bound behind served as the pivot from which he wiggled himself forward. He pushed through a curtain partition and into a room filled with male voices. These drew him, for among them was the timbre and cadence that he recognized as his father's. It was only there, standing at the edge of the room, looking shyly toward the table and the large men around it, that he was recognized.

Hannibal's expression had been serious, his hand massaging the ball of his chin-beard in thought. But his eyes brightened on spotting the child. “Little Hammer!” he said, cutting off one of his guests in mid-sentence. “Excuse me, friends, but we're being spied upon.” The commander rose from his place at the table and strode toward the child. He snatched him up and held him above his head a moment, the boy convulsing with sudden glee. “What are you doing here, Hamilcar?”

“He's come to learn of matters political and martial,” Bomilcar said.

Bostar, to explain to the guests, spoke in Greek. “Hannibal's son,” he said, “named in honor of his grandfather, of course. He keeps the maids on their toes, but this time he's escaped them.”

The three Macedonians nodded at this. None seemed offended by the interruption. Instead, one commented on the boy's healthy looks; another offered that perhaps it was not maids the boy needed but young soldiers to keep up with him.

Lysenthus, head of the Greek party and therefore seated at the center, asked to see Hamilcar up close. He wore a dark leather breastplate on which ridged abdominal and chest muscles had been outlined in silver studs. He was a solid man, scarred across the cheek and nicked on the eyebrow in a raised welt. His straight brown hair hung in somewhat greasy strands around his face. But for all his warrior's appearance he had about him the look of a sensualist, an easy manner and smirking mouth. He reached for young Hamilcar and propped him up on the table before him.

Hannibal stood nearby for a moment, but as the child seemed fascinated by the Macedonian he returned to his seat. Lysenthus uttered a string of nonsense words to the boy, neither Greek nor Carthaginian but the babble so often spoken to children. Hannibal felt Bostar's gaze and knew he was being invited to mirth at the sight of Lysenthus—warrior of Macedon, personal envoy of Philip the Fifth—reduced to using nonsense words by a small boy. For the first time in the several hours they had been talking, Hannibal noticed that Lysenthus was missing a finger from his left hand. Not an unusual wound by any means, but it surprised him that he only noticed now, when the absence of the digits so stood out on hands cupped around his son's back.

“I've made a few like this myself,” Lysenthus said. “More than I can count, actually. Will he wield a sword like his father?”

Hannibal tilted his head and spoke careful Greek, perhaps more pure in his pronunciation than the Macedonians themselves. “If he lives to see that day, by Baal's grace . . . I believe his fate in life was chosen by powers other than my own.”

“The child of a lion is a lion, yes?”

The other visitors agreed with solemn nods, but Bostar was not so sure. “I heard a tale from the land of Chad that might dispute that. It's said that once, not too many years ago, a lioness gave birth to an antelope and raised her with affection.”

“You're mad!” Bomilcar said, speaking in Carthaginian. “Did I hear you right? A lion give birth to an antelope?”

“That is what I've heard,” Bostar said, keeping to Greek. “The Ethiopians swear such things have happened more than once and each time foretells a shift in the world's fortunes.”

Bomilcar frowned at this and looked about for a translation. His Greek sufficed for giving military orders, but was not up to casual conversation.

Hannibal said, “I know not the order of things beyond the great desert. One certainly hears tales, but this child is born of my blood—a cub from a lion. Perhaps he will exceed me in time.”

Hamilcar, as if in answer, reached for the dagger sheathed beneath Lysenthus' arm. The Macedonian moved the boy out to arm's length and laughingly asked, “Has he ever held a blade?”

Hannibal shook his head, lips in a tight line now and forehead creased uneasily.

Lysenthus held the boy by one hand and with the other pulled the short dagger from its holder. He held it before the child a moment, watching the fascination in his eyes, rotating the blade so that it reflected glimmers of light on Hamilcar's face. The boy reached for it, delicately, as if he knew that he must show care if he was to be allowed the object. Lysenthus, looking only at the boy now, slid his fingers onto the blade and offered the child the handle. The young Hamilcar took the weapon and held it before him, clasped in two hands, upright and as large as a sword to a man. He was all stillness for a long moment, and the party watched in a hush that suggested awe, as if they were witnessing something prophetic. But then the young one remembered he was a child. He let out a babbling gurgle and jerked the knife up and down, suddenly wild. Lysenthus snapped his head back, an instant too late. The tip of the blade sliced a tiny nick in his nose that dripped red instantly. Just as Hannibal snapped to his feet the Macedonian's hand fell over the child's and pried the blade away.

“A warrior indeed!” he called, laughing and trying to sheath the weapon. “A year old only, and he has already cut the flesh of a warrior. Were you so young as this when you first drew blood, Hannibal?”

The tension in Hannibal's body was slow to uncoil. Eventually, he smiled, pulled a cloth from inside his tunic, and tossed it to Lysenthus. “I do not remember the first time I drew blood,” he said. “And neither will he.”

Hannibal hefted his son and set him down on the floor. He motioned for Bostar to amuse the boy, a task the officer went at awkwardly, but well enough to permit the meeting to go on. They had already been through the long, gradual introductions to their respective positions and plans for the future. Hannibal had offered a pact of friendship with Macedon and found the king's ambassadors as receptive as he could have hoped. But the matter to which he had turned just before Hamilcar's entry was more delicate. Lysenthus returned to it in a roundabout way.

“Philip has no love for Rome,” he said. “On the contrary, he loathes the manner in which they interfere in Adriatic matters that should not concern them. He will watch your progress with interest, but Commander, he is not yet ready to join you in war against Rome.”

Bomilcar somehow managed to follow this well enough to form a response. “Philip would have us do all the work first—is that what you're saying? Then he'd join in the victory celebrations.”

Lysenthus dabbed at the cut on his nose. “Philip would take an active part in any victory over the Romans,” he said. “You might well find you need our formidable aid in achieving it, but events will have to unfold somewhat before that time comes. You have fought admirably against the barbarians of Iberia, but Rome will be an altogether different test. They will come at you, and quickly.”

“Not quickly enough,” Hannibal said. “I know much of what transpires in Roman councils. They plan a two-pronged attack: one consul and his army attacking Carthage itself, the other aimed at us here in Iberia. This is a reasonable plan, but they will find things progress in a way they cannot imagine.”

Lysenthus thought about this a moment, glanced at his aides, and then looked back at Hannibal, a new understanding etched on his features. “You're going to attack them first, on their own soil? How? You have no navy . . . no way to reach them.”

Hannibal glanced at Bostar, who seemed anxious to rise from the floor and say something, if Hamilcar had not been climbing over his knees and attempting to unlace his sandals.

“You'll forgive me, Lysenthus,” the commander continued, “if I do not reveal all the details. But do make sure that Philip watches these opening moves with close attention. He'll see what we are made of and what we can accomplish—we hope with his friendship and aid. At the very least, let us continue to correspond.”

Lysenthus assured him that this was possible and that the message would reach the king as soon as he did. With that, the meeting drew to a close. The two officers escorted the Macedonians away and off to an afternoon hunt, their last before preparing for the hazardous sea voyage back to Macedon.

Hannibal sat a moment, watching his son at play with the balls of wadded paper Bostar had improvised as toys while the men spoke. It was a joyful image, yet quick behind the joy came a tension low in his gut, almost like the anxiety of battle. He had lied in answering Lysenthus' question: In truth, he did remember the first time he drew blood. The memory was seared into his consciousness, one of his earliest, from before he came to Iberia.

He was still living in Carthage, at the family's palace on the hill of Byrsa. His father had roused him from sleep. His face was ragged and coated with sweat and filth. He smelled foul and he still wore the soiled armor of battle. “Come, I would show you something,” Hamilcar said.

The boy Hannibal's heart thumped in his chest; not only from the abruptness of his awakening, but he had not even known his father had returned from the war. Mercenaries had turned on the city and besieged it. The conflict had been brutal beyond recent memory, but under Hamilcar's leadership the Carthaginian nobles had finally driven the mercenaries out into the desert, where the traitors made their last stand. What exactly had transpired, the boy had no idea.

Nor did Hamilcar open his lips as he led Hannibal through the dark palace and out onto the grounds. They passed through several courtyards and down into the stables. A torch burned at the far end of the corridor. They moved toward it through the shadows. The horses snorted and shifted nervously, watching their progress; they seemed as aware as Hannibal that something profound was to happen.

But it was not until they had actually halted that Hannibal saw the figure to whom they were drawn. A man had been nailed to wood supports by the wrist, his body drooping, head down upon his chest. He was covered in crusted fluids and dust and had been hanging for long enough that the blood dripping from his impaled wrists had congealed into black globules. Hamilcar grasped a handful of the man's hair and yanked his head upright. The man's eyes opened, rolled up, and then veered off into semiconsciousness.

“This man betrayed Carthage,” Hamilcar said, his voice a dry rasp that he could not shake, though he cleared his throat several times. “Do you understand that? This man conspired to open the gates of our city to the mercenaries. He did it for money, for power, out of a sheer hatred that he hid behind the mask of a countryman. He almost succeeded. Had this man the power, he would yank you up by the ankles and bash your skull against the stones beneath us. He would nail me to a cross and leave me to die slowly. He'd see me a rotting, maggot-filled corpse, and he would laugh at the sight. He would slit your brother's necks and rape your mother and have her sold into slavery. He would live in our house and eat our food and rule over our servants. This is the man before you. Do you know his name?”

Hannibal shook his head, his eyes pinned to the stones and not moving even as he answered.

“His name is Tamar. Some call him the Blessed, others the Foul. Some call him friend. Some father. Some lover. Do you understand? He has other names also: Alexander. Cyrus. Achilles. Khufu. Yahweh or Ares or Osiris. He is Sumerian, Persian, Spartan. He is the thief in the street, the councillor who sits beside you, the man who covets your wife. You choose his name, for he has many, as many names as there are men born to women. His name is Rome. His name is mankind. This is the world we live in, and you'll find it full of men like this.”

Hamilcar released the man's head and placed his hands on his son's shoulders. He pulled him close and let the boy rest his forehead against his cheek. Hannibal did this willingly, for he did not want to look at the man about whom they spoke. “Son,” he said, “there was a noose around our neck and to cut it I had to kill many men most horribly. You are a child, but the world you were born into is no kind place. This is why I teach you now that creation is full of wolves aligned against us. To live in it without falling into madness, you must make of yourself more than a single man. You love with all your heart as a father and son and husband. You wrap your arms around your mother and know the goodness of women. You find beauty in the world and cherish it. But never waver from strength. Never run from battle. When the time comes to act, do so, with iron in your hand and your loins and your heart. Unreservedly love those who love you, and protect them without remorse. Will you always do that?”

Against his father's chest, the boy nodded.

“Then I am proud to call you my firstborn son,” Hamilcar said. He pulled away and stood up straight and yanked a dagger from the sheath on his ankle and pressed the handle into his son's hand. “Now kill this man.”

Hannibal stared at the blade in his small hand, a dagger nearly as large as the toy swords he practiced with. He closed his fingers around the handle slowly, felt the worn leather, the rough weave of it and the solidity of the iron beneath it. He raised his eyes and moved toward the man and did as his father ordered. He did not lift the man's head, but he slipped the blade under his chin and cut a ragged, sloppy line that yanked free of his flesh just under the ear. He fell against the dead man's body for a moment. Though he sprang back, the touch still stained his nightclothes with the man's newly flowing blood. He was just eight years old that night. Of course he had not forgotten that moment. Nor would he. It would be with him on his deathbed, if the moment of his passing allowed for reflection.

Both he and young Hamilcar were roused from their thoughts by the chatter of maids in the hall. Beyond them the sharp urgency of Imilce's voice betrayed her concern. Hannibal rose, snatched his son up, and held him high, staring at him as the boy struggled and reached out to pat his father's face, not sure now whether to play or call for his mother. The child's eyes were indeed a striking gray, hair touched with some of Imilce's fairness. But his nose and mouth and stocky build were nothing if not Barca. He had such smoothness of skin, no blemish upon it, with a fragrance that was like nothing, for few things are as pure. His lower front teeth stood perfectly straight, close-fitted like a tiny phalanx of four warriors. Drool escaped the infant's lips and collected on his chin, bunching in preparation for a fall. Hannibal, in one quick gesture, licked the spittle clean.

“By the gods,” he said, “you are the sum of me, of all that came before. You are all that ever I can be.”

He placed the boy on the stone floor and watched as he spun away and tottered off, first randomly, then toward the sound of his mother's voice, just outside in the corridor now.

Watching him, full of love, the father whispered, “Our lives are torture.”

Camped outside New Carthage for the winter, Tusselo had time to look back on the two periods of his life now concluded and to consider the new one just dawning. As a child he had been on horseback from as early as he could remember. He had been one of many in his village, from a large family, all speaking the same language, tied to the same gods, and living by the same customs. He had thought himself master of his young world and faced his coming manhood with eagerness.

But one evening he went to bed a free person, a Massylii Numidian, a horseman; when he awoke, the curved blade of a Libyan knife at his throat was whispering that all of that was done. Dawn found him shuffling along in chains, driven by slavers who cared not that his blood was much like theirs. Within a week, they reached the shore. There a Roman captain bought him and carried him for the first time out into open sea. He had just reached an age when his thoughts turned kindly toward the girls of his clan, but on the first day at sail these thoughts had been forever made a punishment by his captor. With the quick slice of a knife, his immortality vanished. Tusselo doubled over, clutching at his groin, awed and pained beyond all reckoning, amazed to hear the laughter of the man who had emasculated him and listening, despite himself, to the man's jokes that he might now play the woman on occasion but would never again inflict his manhood on any other. It was an absolutely unimaginable act, a change in fortune so profound that he refused to believe it even as he writhed across the deck in a puddle of his own blood. Unfortunately, he was to live through many days thereafter that made it clear human cruelty was never to be underestimated, always to be believed in, much more constant then the favor of any god.

He spent twelve years as a slave to Rome, sold from one master to another three times before finding a permanent place with a traveling merchant of middling wealth. In those twelve years he had lived a lifetime that almost negated the years before. Almost, but not quite. That was why he grasped for freedom several times, finally achieving it one night not far from Brundisium. He had escaped with a pouch full of coins that the drunken man foolishly left resting in his open palm. He used them to pay for a single, extortionately priced passage to Africa.

In his homeland nothing was the same, neither in the sights he saw nor in him, who perceived them. There was no one left to call family. Tusselo found a miserable cluster of hovels more like a leper colony than the thriving town of his birth. He sat down on a hill facing north and looked out on the grassy plains and ragged woodland that flowed toward the sea. It was a beautiful country. It had a largeness different from the land of his enslavement. It pained him that he had to think of that place so often, and yet he could not stop. Every memory his homeland brought to mind had at its back the shadow of how slavery had destroyed it. He had hoped that his hard-won freedom would end some portion of his suffering, but this was not the case. He had been robbed of so many things—how completely, he understood only as he gazed out across a land that pained him with memories and offered no solace. He was an exile in his own country: that was why he had left it to join Hannibal. And it only seemed right that the journey he embarked on should aim back to Italy.

On the day that Tusselo spotted that lone rider near Saguntum—after tracking Hannibal's army on foot—he had not been atop a horse in thirteen years. Nor had he immediately remedied this. He spent months at Saguntum as little more than a laborer, accepting whatever task fell to him. He worked with a more reverent obedience than he had ever shown a master, and he kept always in the company of his countrymen, remembering their ways. He stayed with the victorious army when it returned to New Carthage, and he made sure his desire to mount and fight again was well known.

It had been his master's custom to keep all of his slaves' heads shaven. As he was a slave no longer, Tusselo freed his hair to run its course. He did not remember when he stopped dragging the honed edge of his knife over his scalp, but his hair soon grew long enough that he could take fingerfuls of the curly stuff and twirl them into matted locks. He rarely caught sight of his own reflection—it had never before mattered to him—but now he took to pausing and studying himself in still pools of water, in the circlets of pounded metal shields, or in the dull reflection on the flat of his knife. He took some joy in what he saw. It was a different self than he had known for some time, an earlier incarnation. His hair was black, thick. It sprang from his head with pent-up aggression, as unruly as Medusa's crown of snakes and no less impressive. It framed his face and gave his features a new completion, a solidity, a strong Africanness that he welcomed. Perhaps that was why his master had shaved him, to deprive him of these things and to leave him ever a stranger to his own reflection, so that he would forget himself and remember only the slave. No longer. He had his hair back, and in midwinter he also regained his identity as a horseman.

The day he was assigned a mount he stood weak-kneed, his throat tight and fingertips tingling. The army horses were Iberian mostly, pulled in from a variety of tribes and regions of the country, schooled by different techniques from African mounts, and all with varying perceptions of their role in relation to man. They were somewhat larger than the fleet-footed creatures of North Africa, in a myriad of colors and temperaments, with a wild energy that flared up as Massylii riders cut individuals from the herd to examine them more closely. It was a wonder to watch and Tusselo, having lived many of his years away from his homeland, was struck with awe at the horsecraft he had been born into.

The Numidians cinched their legs around their horses' backs and spoke to them. They sent signals through touch, sometimes with a stick, but often with their fingers. They shifted their body weight accordingly and flapped their arms from their shoulders as if this motion translated into speed in the horses' hooves and called sudden, surprise maneuvers. The mounts seemed to understand them completely and to take joy at slicing through the Iberian horses, dividing them and circling and dizzying them till the Iberians stood dazzled. Tusselo remembered it now, but he had seen no such skill during the years he spent in exile. It almost shamed him to have gotten so used to how Romans handled horses, with no art, no joy but simply mastery of man over beast.

When his turn came to receive a mount he did not hesitate to take it. He had to move with confidence, he knew, for these men would spot any awkwardness as a lioness sees weakness in her prey. He approached the horse from the side, one arm flat against him and the other raised just slightly, fingertips extended as if he were brushing them across stalks of tall grass. And yet there was no guile in his approach, no stealth. He walked toward the horse as if to do so were the most natural thing in the world. He spoke words of encouragement to her, not shy, but like one friend to another on meeting again.

Before she knew it, he was beside her. And as she cocked her head to follow him he leaped, a smooth motion that somehow draped him over her back as a blanket might fall. He wrapped his arms around her and spread his weight across her and continued his string of words. He had thought that gladness was a thing of the past for him, and perhaps this was so, but there was something stirring in him now and it was not the slow simmering he had carried for so many years. He knew already that he could be nearly his whole self with this horse. Astride her, he could again learn to ride like a whirlwind. He could again belong to a people and fight with a purpose. This horse would never question his manhood, would never taunt him for the damage done to him by his old master. And that was a great blessing. In return he would be kind to her, and feed her well, and not ride her too hard, and lead her only into sensible battle. Together they would see wondrous things. No portion of the earth would hold either of them in bondage. These were some of the things he told her, and, Iberian though she was, she soon calmed to listen.

As his mare was not versed in the Massylii manner of riding, the headman of the cavalry gave Tusselo leave to train her, to care for her as his own. He had seen all he needed to in Tusselo's actions to confirm he belonged among them. Tusselo rode up into the hills beyond New Carthage that very evening, the horse powerful beneath him, her hooves pounding the earth and tearing up divots, the speed of it intoxicating to one so long cursed to the pace of his own legs.

He stopped the horse on a hill. Behind him, New Carthage smoldered, as cities always do, cloaked in a blanket of haze. To the south the sea swelled and receded against the land. To the west and the north the land rolled away to the horizon. None of it seemed beyond him. He was free for the first real time since his boyhood. And—if the gods had finally chosen to smile upon him—he would soon return to business unfinished in Rome, not alone this time, but with an army.

There are some men whom the gods curse by birth into times of war; there are others for whom this is a blessing. There are some who crave nothing more than chaos, who eat their pain and revel in that of others. Such a man was Monomachus, and such was the gift bestowed upon him that he could daily take the base materials of life and open them to air and search out the root of human emotion and twist it into knots of anguish. It was no secret that he had devoted his military labors to Moloch, the Devourer, but many speculated that he communed with even earlier deities. Some said that he was of Egyptian origins and that he walked the modern world as an incarnation of the lost gods of that aged place. Others said the source of his barbarism could be found within the span of his singular life, if one were bold enough to search for it. Still others refused to speak of him or even utter his name. And a few were loyal to him as to no other and served only under him.

Hannibal chose this man to lead the delegation that would introduce Carthage to the Gauls. A strange choice, perhaps, but the commander wished to make certain things clear to those coarse men from the start. Monomachus stood before the Gauls like the seething pulse of enmity. His cheekbones were high and feline, so prominent that the rest of his face hung shadowed beneath them. He was so devoid of fat that his body seemed little more than a skeleton wrapped in striated cords of muscle. When the Gauls beheld him they knew that even by their own standards this was a creature not wisely crossed. Most of them were glad they did not have to cross him. For, despite the simmering intensity in his stare, he offered friendship. He lavished presents of gold and silver on the chieftains. He unsheathed finely crafted Iberian swords and offered them up, blade held between his fingers. He talked of the power of Carthage and the benefits of friendship. And he said that he had been sent only to guarantee safe passage through their lands as the forces of Carthage marched toward Rome. Should the Gauls choose to join in the great war, they would be welcome as comrades, with the bounty of Italy shared among them all. He found most tribes eventually proved amenable.

But when he reached the Volcae things changed somewhat. These were an even rougher sort of barbarian tribe than most, warlike and primitive, caring little for the outside world. Monomachus found his translator having difficulty communicating with them. They took the gifts readily enough, but they saw no need to bow to these foreigners' wishes. There were only a few of them, after all, and the Volcae were a numerous people. The Carthaginians presented their gifts and called councils, and all the while more of the Volcae slunk out of the foothills in seemingly endless small bands. Their camp grew around the envoys, and the Carthaginians sensed the whispered malice multiplying minute by minute.

The group spent one sleepless night in these people's company. It was a frigid winter and none of the warm-blooded Africans fared well in it. They heard movement around them all through the night; by morning it seemed their host had doubled in size yet again. The party of twenty-five stood steaming in the morning air, talking among themselves in whispers that crystallized before their faces. One man whispered to another that they would not leave this place alive, but Monomachus punched the young man and told them what he had learned in the night, for he had not been idle. Their interpreter had managed to gain this information through bribes: this day would indeed be their last. The chieftain was to invite them to his hut to receive more presents, but once inside they would be seized. Then the masses outside would attack the rest of the contingent. They would be killed by various tortures. Their heads would be cut from their bodies and used for sport. Their skulls would later adorn the entrances to Volcae homes, or roll upon the floor as toys for children.

“At least,” Monomachus said, “this is how they would have things.” But he had a different idea and his men bent willing ears to it.

They went to the chieftain bearing no arms of their own, but with a gift of swords, one carried by each of the five who would enter the hut. There was some debate about this, but, in the end, prudence gave way to greed, for the Gauls desired the fine swords. Inside was smoky and dark and close. The five stood before the chieftain and explained their proposals. They felt the armed guards pressing at their backs, but Monomachus spoke easily, describing the war to come and the part they might play in it, actively if they chose, or passively by allowing the army to pass unmolested. Either suited Hannibal. They waited as the translator did his work.

When the response came, it was as the Carthaginians expected. The chief would promise nothing until he had seen the gifts they offered. And these gifts had better be magnificent, for he was not inclined to allow a foreign force to pass beneath his nose. Who was this Hannibal, anyway? Why had he not come himself? If he was so powerful, why did he send such a small delegation? Why try to bribe his way through a territory, if his army was all that they claimed? He asked again to see the gifts. He might talk more after that.

Monomachus heard this calmly. He stared at the bulbous nose of the Gaul, at the blue eyes and the red, creviced skin. He held the curved sword before him, like nothing the Gaul had seen before, glinting even in the dim firelight. He said this: They would pass. They would, with his blessing or not, beneath his nose or no. In fact, he would take his nose to Hannibal and let the commander decide the matter. Before the translator had completed the Gallic version, Monomachus slammed his head forward, mouth open, teeth bared. He clamped down on the chieftain's nose and shook his head from side to side with all the fury of a lion at the kill. He broke away with a chunk of the man's flesh in his mouth. The Gaul's face was a bloody mess, but that was soon to be the least of his problems.

Monomachus stepped back and put the gift-sword to use. He struck low and sliced the Gaul clean through both legs just below the knee. The man fell as his shins slipped away from him, but a moment later he was upright, fighting for balance on the bloody stumps that were now his legs. This could not last long, but the Carthaginians did not wait to see him fall again. In a blur of stabbing and slashing they dispatched the rest of the Gauls, who scarcely had the time or the space to swing their swords into motion.

The small party flew out of the shelter and into the arms of a massed army. The rest of the group, who had been waiting outside, had drawn their swords at the first sounds of confusion from within the hovel. The moment Monomachus joined them they hit the wall of blond chests with a shocking, immediate fury, a scream rising from their leader and stirring the other men into a frenzy of hacking, thrusting progress. Though they started at twenty-five before the meeting they were seventeen by the time they reached their horses, and eleven when they could finally look behind them without fear. Two others died of their injuries in the days to come. One was dispatched at his own request.

And so it was a ragged band of eight that finally returned to New Carthage. Monomachus went straight to Hannibal, unwashed and still crusted in blood he chose not to wash from his armor. He said things had gone quite well in Gaul. They had many friends. They would not find that their passage along the Rhône need be made through entirely hostile peoples. “There were a few tribes that might prove troublesome,” he said, “but they will find themselves overmatched.”

Entering his chambers at a brisk walk, Hannibal spotted the servant before she noticed him. She lay prone across his bed, the curve of her hips betrayed through the thin fabric of her shift, her legs stretching bare beyond these. The sole of one foot caressed the toes of the other. She seemed completely absorbed with something just beside her, out of view. Hannibal cleared his throat and the young woman's head snapped around. She gasped and sprang to her feet, head bowed and arms pinned at her sides. Only then was it clear that she had been cuddling with the child, Hamilcar. The boy, also as if caught in some clandestine moment, rolled from back to belly. He paused on all fours and stared at his father, unsure why he had caused such alarm in his maid. After a moment of apparent thought, he offered a babble of greeting.

“Would you seduce my son already?” Hannibal asked. The maid began a hurried response, but he shushed her silent and moved forward, tossing his cloak across a chair. “Where is my wife?”

“She should be here in a moment,” the maid said. “She . . . sent me with the young lord to await her, and you, on the hour.” Her eyes darted up just quickly enough to stress this, pointing out—whether she intended to or not—that Hannibal had arrived early for his planned meeting with his wife. She had an attractive face, full and fleshy-featured. Though she was shorter than Imilce, her body was more languidly curved. Her breasts, wide-spaced and full, pressed against her shift, staining the garment with moisture from her nipples.

Noticing this, Hannibal asked, “Do you feed my son as well as sport with him?”

“Yes, my lord. But only on occasion. Your wife feeds him well.”

“You must have a child of your own, then?”

“A girl.”

“And how does she fare? Does she not want for your milk?”

The maid seemed uncomfortable with the line of questioning, but she answered, “No, lord: As I give milk to your son, so another gives hers to mine.”

Hannibal almost asked about that woman's child, but he had already shared more words with her than he usually did with servants. At some point, he knew, somebody's child might well perish so that his son was fed richly. He did not want to linger too long on this thought. He dismissed the maid with a motion of his head. “I will care for the boy,” he said.

When Imilce entered the room, father and child were seated on the floor. Hannibal was trying to position marble soldiers in a particular formation, but Hamilcar kept interrupting him, picking up first one soldier and then another, bringing them to his mouth as if he were a giant who would solve the dispute by chewing off their heads. Imilce paused a moment, taking the scene in, and then walked in without expressing whatever thought she entertained about them.

“A strange thing happened this morning,” she said, motioning with her fingers that she would not sit on the stone floor. Hannibal rose and cast himself onto the bed. Imilce joined him, continuing with her story. Apparently, the cook preparing the afternoon meal in honor of the small delegation from the Insubrian Gauls had been blinded in one eye. It was the oddest of accidents: He had simply plunged a ladle into a vat of boiling oil to test its consistency. But at the touch of the utensil, the oil spat up a single droplet. It hit the cook's open eye and sent him stumbling away in pain. On hearing of this, Hanno was quite upset. He had called for Mandarbal but he had been informed that the seer was ill with a fever and could not attend him. “This distressed him even more,” Imilce said, “for it seemed a doubly ominous warning.”

Hannibal listened with little interest, commenting that his brother was too inclined to find ill omens in the simplest of things. “One should be attentive to the gods,” he said, “but not paralyzed in all matters. A drop of oil is hardly a sign from Baal. I trust the man can cook with a single eye just as well as with two.”

As he spoke he moved closer to his wife, caressing first the smooth skin on the back of her hands and then the joint of her knee and then the pale stretch of her inner thigh. “I've decided a position for Hanno in this conflict,” he said. “I will inform him of it soon, though I've no doubt he will find something of ill-fortune in my decision.”

“And what of your family?” Imilce slipped her hand over Hannibal's, simultaneously caressing it and slowing its upward progress. “What fate have you assigned us?”

“The best and only course for you is that which is safest,” Hannibal said. “So, you, my love, will finally see my homeland. Sapanibal will escort you and introduce you to my mother and my younger sister and to Carthage itself. I am sure you will find them all most welcoming. You'll wait out this war in the embrace of more luxury than you've yet tasted.”

“If that is your wish,” Imilce said. “But I had held some hope that I might go with you.”

Hamilcar rose to his feet and pulled a bowl of olives from the serving table. Imilce half-rose to attend him, but was stayed by her husband's arm. She watched the child spill the fruit and roll it beneath his palms.

“You would ride with me into battle?” Hannibal asked, squinting as if the thought of this bewildered him. “I knew not that you were of the Amazon race.”

“Do not joke at my expense. I wish to travel with you, so that I might see you at times and so that your son need not forget you. I am not so feeble as to be a burden. Hasdrubal schooled me well in riding last year.”

“Did he teach you to hurl a javelin as well? Did he teach you of the parts inside a man's body and how best to destroy them?” Imilce began to respond, but Hannibal continued, his voice edged. “Life on campaign would ill suit you. What would become of you should I die? Should the Romans lay their hands on you they would dishonor you. They might well form a train behind you and each of them—hundreds of them—push their seed inside you and so punish me as well. This is no idle threat but the way of war, the nature of hatred. What if they captured my son? What might they do with him? The thought is unimaginable.”

“You misunderstand me,” Imilce said, though her voice was chastened and had lost its playful timbre. “I meant only that we be near. You might capture a city early and we might come to it and live in safety, in a fortress you thought of as a home within their—”

Hannibal pushed her caressing hand away, kicked his legs off the bed, and rose. “And when word got out that Hannibal's beloved wife dwelled in that city? It would soon become a target. If I were at the gates of Rome with my hands upon the ram and word came to me that you were in danger, what would you have me do? No, the very idea is absurd. You would create in me a weakness where there need not be one.”

“If it came to that, I would die before—”

“You would be fortunate to be allowed death,” Hannibal said. “No. That is my answer. You go to Carthage with all that is precious to me. Let us talk of it no more.”

Though her eyes were cast aside and her visage tight with things unsaid, Imilce nodded. She rose and scooped up her son and started to move away.

“What are you doing?”

In answer, Imilce clicked her tongue twice on the roof of her mouth. The boy's maid appeared, took the boy, and slipped away with him. Imilce turned back toward her husband. Reaching to loosen her hair, she said, “Perhaps the commander would like a second child. If so, we should not waste time.”

The men gathered for the meeting with a nervous, expectant air. Hannibal was finally to set all the pieces of his plan before them and each would learn his own position within it. Though they had attended councils throughout the winter and most had even spoken privately with the commander, this meeting marked a new stage, the moment at which preparation met the bridge into action. They sat on cushions around a low table, at ease for the moment but not slouching or leaning back as they might while at leisure. Mago and Hasdrubal, Bostar and Bomilcar, Maharbal and Carthalo, Monomachus and Vandicar: all men of importance in the campaign to come, each a representative of components of the army serving under them. Hannibal disdained clutter at meetings such as these. Instead he trusted in the generals beneath him to hear his desires and to carry them through.

Hanno, taciturn as ever, took a seat at the edge of the low table, his cushion pushed back a little way so that those next to him had to look almost over their shoulders to address him. He had long dreaded this meeting. He felt the fear now in the pulsing of the arteries in his hands. Whether he clenched them into fists or held them loose or laid them flat on his thighs, in each position his heart seemed to be contained within them and to thump, thump, thump. It was most distracting, all the more because he had to concentrate to think past it, to brace himself for the role he would soon be assigned. Which would be worse, a position of prominence from which to err yet again in decision-making, or a demotion to some lesser role that would indicate to all that Hannibal found him wanting?

The arrival of the historian roused Hanno from his thoughts. Silenus entered laden with the writing supplies with which he would keep a record of all of Hannibal's accomplishments. He took a seat near Hanno, greeting him with a smile that the Barca returned coldly. He had grown no fonder of the Greek than when they first met. Silenus was silent enough as he prepared his writing utensils, but once readied he looked about the group and immediately found a jumping-off point in some quadrant of the conversation. He said, “Which puts me in the mind of the story of Titus Manlius and his son. Has anyone heard of this?”

He addressed his question to the room rather than to anyone in particular and it might have passed unnoticed, except that Bomilcar threw up his hands. “He speaks! Our resident historian and Roman expert! Silenus, if you were as productive in bed as you are in producing tales you would have created your own nation by now.”

“You may have something there,” Silenus said, “but for better or worse the gods have not so endowed me. I pleasure in bed like any man, but of issue . . . As yet I am the father only of tales. This one I am assured is true, however. You might find it instructive of the Roman character.”

Before Hanno could find the words to discourage him, Mago did the opposite.

“We await patiently,” he said.

“The consul Titus Manlius,” Silenus began, “once gave orders to his entire legion that they were not that day to engage the enemy.”

“What enemy?” Hasdrubal asked.

“Not relevant to the story,” Silenus said. “It was a clear enough order and easily obeyed, one would think. But Titus had an impetuous son with other—”

Silenus cut off his words at the entry of the commander. All rose to greet him, but Hannibal squelched any formality with a gesture. He must have had his hair trimmed that very afternoon, for it was shorter than it had been the day before, cut close around the ears and with a straight line across the base of the neck. His face was fresh, and clean-shaven save for his chin beard, which had only been snipped for shape, not shortened. He sat down heavily and took the scrolls handed to him by an assistant. While he stretched them out across the low table, he nodded that the Greek could carry on.

“Titus Manlius had a son,” Silenus resumed, “a brave youth who that very day had an encounter with the enemy. The latter had called the young Titus out to single combat and Titus could not restrain himself. The two did battle and young Titus came away the victor. He slew a distinguished opponent,” Silenus said, “robbed the enemy of a leader, and . . .”

“Disobeyed his father,” Bostar said.

“Exactly. Manlius summoned the young man and called for an assembly to be sounded. Once all were in attendance he gave a speech, the words of which escape me in exact—”

“No!” Bomilcar said. “Surely you were there and can quote him word for word.”

Silenus let this sit and looked sadly around at the company, his eyes alone conveying a humorous disdain for the large Carthaginian. “As I understand it, he spoke of the need for discipline. His son's actions were in contradiction to his order, and his order was a stitch in the fabric that held Roman arms together. If the young Titus was allowed to snap this thread, then the cloak of Roman arms might well fray and come apart at the seams.”

“Sounds like a quote to me,” Hasdrubal said. Bomilcar seconded the notion.

“The consul summoned a lictor,” Silenus continued, “and had his son grappled and bound to a stake and beheaded before the view of all the company, without any further debate. Such is the nature of Roman discipline and the lengths they'll go to in ensuring it, whether justly or not.”

Monomachus said that whether the punishment was just was not the issue. He was sure, on the other hand, that it had proved effective in keeping discipline thereafter. “That, surely, is the point Silenus is making.”

Bostar said, “You all assume too much of the fatherly bond. Perhaps the old man had no love for his issue. Perhaps he was glad to be rid of him.”

“No father can help but love his son,” Hannibal said, absently, only through his words showing that he was listening at all.

“So you would not have acted as Manlius did?” Silenus asked.

“My son wouldn't have disobeyed me. Just as I never disobeyed my father.”

“But if by chance . . .”

Hannibal finally looked up from his charts. “That's not a decision I would have to face. If it's impossible for me, it deserves no comment from me. Silenus, you are needed here as a scribe and chronicler, not as a storyteller. Keep notes of what passes now. The things we will speak of today are known in part to all of you. But I will state the order of things again so that none misunderstand.

“This spring the army of Carthaginian Iberia marches for Rome. Hasdrubal, to you goes command here in Iberia, with all the duties that entails. It will be no easy task to fend off Roman parties while also keeping a tight grasp upon the Celtiberian tribes. It will require all of your skills, and Noba's as well. Vandicar, you and your elephants will sail as far up the coast as possible in transport ships, but by the Pyrenees the creatures will need to be afoot. The rest of us will all march from here in a month's time. We will suffer considerable losses before ever touching down in Italy. No one can say how many, for no one has attempted this before. But we can minimize our losses by carefully managing the march. We must find the best guides for each portion: one pass could lead to death, the next to Rome. We must choose correctly. And we must be stern with the mountain Gauls. We'll send an advance guard two days ahead of the column. They can welcome us as friends and see us provisioned, and they can even join our cause if it is close to their hearts' desires. If they oppose us we'll leave their houses aflame, their men dead, and their women weeping. It's as simple as that.”

Though Hannibal seemed to be ready to move on to the next point, Monomachus signaled with an upraised finger that he would like to speak. “These Gauls will be a thorn in our side each day of our journey,” he said. “I've no doubt that we will kill many of them. But why waste the dead? From the early days of the march, the army should be fed a daily ration of enemy flesh.”

Cries of disgust went up from Hasdrubal and Bostar. Bomilcar slapped his hand down upon the tabletop. Mago blurted, “Is he mad?”

Monomachus spoke calmly over the din. “This way we'll put their very flesh to use. We'll harden the men to the practice and later, should we need to fall back on it in times of famine, the men will find it easier to bear. And also, there are some people who believe one grows stronger by eating the flesh of conquered warriors. Perhaps some essence lives on in the tissue.”

“Hannibal, must we discuss this?” Mago asked.

The commander considered for a moment before answering. “Monomachus, I pray we never become enemies,” he said. “I understand that there is a measure of dark logic in your proposal. An army that not only kills but that dines on its enemies would be an awesome force, preying on the minds and courage of their opponents. But, to be truthful, the idea turns my stomach. And I would not force my men to a practice I will not take part in myself. We will make do as we always have.”

“There are tales of—”

“Let us not think too much on tales. The answer is no. We will make our way through the Alps and smoke the Romans from their den. I will not fail to lead us there through lack of willpower. But we will not become eaters of flesh. Let us move on.”

It was clear that Monomachus had more to say, but Hannibal's voice was firm. Monomachus sucked his cheeks in and stared at a space on the far wall of the chamber.

“Hanno, you will stay with a company guarding the mountain passes. This is our only road to Italy and, once secured, it must be kept open for reinforcements. This is a most important post, for without an artery connecting our army to Iberia we will be cut off within the belly of our enemy.”

Hannibal carried on with his speech, but for a moment Hanno heard nothing save a repetition of the words previously uttered, his fate. What did this mean? A company guarding mountain passes? Was it an insult, to be left on some rocky outcrop among barbarians, a banishment to a snowy wasteland? Or was there some importance to the role and the command—small though it might be—that he would exercise? It was too much to think over quickly, not while he sat among this company, wanting to present an expressionless face, to act as if he had known all along his post and even had some hand in planning it. He felt again the pulsing in his palms. He slid his hands from his thighs, down and out of view.

“Mago will attend me,” Hannibal was saying. “He will be the left arm twinned beside my right. Bostar, Bomilcar, so, too, will you test yourselves on Italian soil. Maharbal, the hooves beneath you will resound in valleys and hills around Rome. This, at least, is the order of the first prong of this attack. Next year we will spend the cold months in the land of the Gauls, where the Boii and Insubres are ready to unite with our cause. The spring of that year we attack, with a larger army than has ever before threatened Italy. Once we have them in a defensive posture, Hasdrubal can follow with another army. Should Baal and the fates favor us, by autumn of the second year hence we will dine within Roman halls, as guests or conquerors, depending on what peace terms the situation dictates.”

“And if we meet Romans while still in Catalonia?” Maharbal asked.

After getting Hannibal's approving glance, Bostar answered. “That could be to our advantage. We know that the Romans will divide their consular armies: one for Iberia, another for Africa. If they do land an army in Iberia, it will certainly be in the north, nearer to their Greek allies in Massilia. It would do us no harm to fight there, far from New Carthage. With our victory, they'll recall the second consular force from threatening Africa.”

“Either course of events suits us,” Hannibal said, “although we cannot count on Rome to do our bidding. We must imagine a plan wherein our actions carry us through.”

“Then why not besiege Rome itself?” Bomilcar asked. “We've made no preparations to take siege engines. This must be reconsidered.”

“Siege will not be our first resort. The engines would be too burdensome to journey with us by land. They might reach us by ship, but our navy is too small. We might build the machines once in Italy, but in any case I believe a siege might be an error. Rome is too well fortified.”

“No city can hold out forever,” Bomilcar said.

“Neither can a small army survive indefinitely on hostile lands,” Hannibal answered. “No, we must meet them on the field of battle and beat them resoundingly. We wound them first and then follow until weakness betrays them. We show their Latin allies not the city of a strong friend under threat, but proof that their masters have a superior on the field. A winner never lacks for friends. Said simply: We march to Italy, we defeat the Romans in battle, we break the old alliances with their neighbors, and then—only then—we press upon Rome itself. I've spoken to each of you fully about these matters. This is how we will proceed. Through the rest of the early spring you will each school yourselves in all the matters important to your roles.

“Now,” he said, leaning over the charts and smoothing them with his hands, “let us examine all these points in more detail.”

Hanno, bending forward with the others, watched his brother's profile: his hair, wavy and dark, forehead ridged with the thoughts he sought to convey, eyebrows like two ridges of black basalt, full, shapely mouth. For the first time he gave a word to the feeling he had for his brother, the sentiment that lingered just beyond his love, at the backside of admiration and adoration, fast behind the awareness that they shared blood and features and a scent so similar even hounds could not tell them apart. In a place further back than all these things, a seed planted in his infancy, there resided an emotion, named now for the first time. It humbled him just to form the word in his head and hear it sound within him.

Hate.

Hasdrubal awoke knowing that he had dreamed of the day of his father's death. He did not remember the particulars of the vision. It faded into the vapors of the unconscious world even as he opened his eyes upon the earthly one. He was left with something equally disturbing—the memory of the actual events, the part he had played in them, and the frightening world in which his childhood was a narrow sliver of his life, maturity demanded even before his body began the change toward manhood.

The second youngest male Barca had emerged into awareness while his homeland was in the depths of defeat. One of the first things he knew of his country was that they had lost a war to a great power called Rome. Lands and property and pride had been taken from them. They had staggered beneath a war indemnity and, further, the city itself had been besieged by its own mercenaries. The outcome of that conflict had been no sure matter. It was only by the belated will of the gods that his father, Hamilcar, had finally managed to raise the siege and drive the mercenaries out into the desert and slaughter forty thousand of them in a trap of epic proportions, leaving a mass grave almost beyond imagination—though Hasdrubal's youthful mind created images of it often.

This was the Carthage into which the boy Hasdrubal came of age. As some children run up dark stairs for fear of the imaginary beast behind them, Hasdrubal ran through his early years pursued by massed armies of the dead waiting to sweep away all he knew in a whirlwind of violence. He might have grown into a shy adult had not his father modeled such complete, military confidence. Hamilcar set out to change this world, with Iberia as his stepping-stone, with his sons nipping at his heels like cubs. With a foothold on the river Betis, he carved his way into Iberia through brute force, constant war, prevailing by the sheer might of Barca will.

The year of Hamilcar's death it was the city of Ilici that put up the fiercest resistance. Hamilcar's siege of the city had dragged through late summer, through autumn, and on into winter. The quarrelsome people showed no signs of surrender. In their resolve, they even tossed the bodies of the old and infirm over the walls, men and women with their throats cut, a message that they preferred death to starvation: better to be corpses than to be the slaves of the Carthaginians. Patient but resolved, Hamilcar released some of his army for the winter and kept up the siege with a reduced force. He believed that patience would assure them victory. They had recourse to resupply while the suffering Ilicians did not. His position was strong. It was simply a matter of time, and the two sons attending him—Hannibal and Hasdrubal—would benefit from the lesson of patience.

When Orissus, a tribal king from just north of the city, approached them under the banner of peace it seemed reasonable enough. The man had been on favorable terms with them for some time. It was likely he wanted to better his position to exploit the Ilicians' misfortune. He offered Hamilcar entertainment in his stronghold, a reprieve from the siege, and the opportunity to consider an allegiance between them. He spoke with no guile on his face, offering simple truths and promises kind to the ears of battle-weary men.

In private council to consider the offer, Hamilcar asked his sons their opinion. Hannibal, long his father's confidant, warned against accepting. He argued that they should bear out the cold and see the siege through. Let rest come when the work was completed, not before. For his part, Hasdrubal was not yet accustomed to being asked his opinion. He fumbled for an answer, trying to disguise his own eagerness with logic. “We have no reason to doubt Orissus,” he said. “He's been a friend thus far. And there is your health to consider, Father. Cold is sometimes the death of great men.”

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

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

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

“What people?” Hamilcar asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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