Pride of Carthage

Events in Iberia had brought Hasdrubal little joy: neither the satisfaction of a single victory nor the hopes of any discernible change in the near future. All around him he felt whispers of discontent, vengeful scheming tended by the Romans like attentive men blowing on a kindling blaze. This Gnaeus Scipio, brother to the former consul, proved a surprising foe. Early in the spring, he ambushed Hasdrubal's entire navy while it was beached at the mouth of the Ebro. The Romans—surely with the advantage of some traitor's information—bore down on the sailors as they rose from slumber, driving in with the rising sun at their backs. It was no battle at all but a wild scramble, vessels rammed and stormed before they had even pushed out through the breakers. Boats not even afloat yet were grappled with hooks and towed into the water and set aflame.

On learning of the disaster, Hasdrubal imagined the far-off day when his brother would also get word of it. He beat his head with the flats of his hands so forcefully that his officers grabbed his arms to stop him. He wanted foremost to attack Emporiae and free Hanno, but Gnaeus kept him otherwise occupied. The Roman sailed south, stormed and sacked the allied town of Onusa, near New Carthage, then burned a village within sight of the city itself and destroyed crops meant for Carthaginian consumption. Hasdrubal had no choice but to retreat and protect the capital. And—as if the damage done by this single man had not been enough—the early autumn saw the arrival of his elder brother, Cornelius Scipio. Hasdrubal would have both of them to contend with from now on.

Despite these misfortunes, he did manage to hold most of the country together. He kept a firm grip on most of his Iberian allies, sending warnings sometimes veiled and sometimes graphically detailed. In many ways, he achieved the focus and breadth of vision that his brother asked of him, but he burned with the desire to be freed of this post and to carry out the next phase of Hannibal's plan. Not even the insatiable sexual appetite of his young bride distracted him from this for long. He felt that he was not truly helping to win the war and, increasingly, he considered pressing Carthage for leave to march for Italy. He had made this desire known to the Council, but had received no response.

So he greeted the news of the arrival of a delegation of Carthaginian ships with eagerness. Perhaps he was finally to receive the leave he wished for. He stood on the balcony of his chambers, watching the vessels drop their sails and row between the guard rocks at the mouth of the harbor. The fleet was an impressive sight, some thirty ships of varying sizes. Oars struck the water in unison, stirring foam with each stroke, shifting the ships forward in a motion that Hasdrubal always found odd to behold. The strange, buoyant agreement between the vessel and the water never ceased to amaze him. What made that surface both solid and fluid? Supportive to some objects, deadly to others, always threatening to consume at any moment, each swell in the surf like a hunger pain rippling across the belly of a beast. He could never have been a sea captain. Better death during a raging battle on land than from the bottomless suck of the sea.

Noba walked in swiftly, several loose scrolls clipped between his fingers. “They bring reinforcements,” he said. “Four thousand of them. Scant, really, but at least they are Libyans.”

Hasdrubal dipped one corner of his lip, and then righted it again. He sat on a short stool, with his legs wide, hands resting on his knees. The shadow of a new beard added an unkempt aspect to his face. “And what else?”

“Ten elephants. Two hundred Massylii. And they have sent you a new general, Gisgo, son of Hannon. He is to serve as lieutenant governor. He is under your direction, but he will handle civil matters while you are on campaign and will be the main contact between Iberia and Carthage. This last is not good news, I think.”

“No Hannon ever brings good news. Is there no further message for me from the Shophet or the Council?”

The squire shook his head.

“I must take them to task for that some day. How many have they sent to Italy?”

Noba stared at him for a moment. He cleared his throat and held up one of the scrolls and contemplated it for a moment. “They have not sent Hannibal reinforcements yet,” he said.

Hasdrubal jerked his head upright, rose, and strode forward, hand out to snatch away the document. “Are you joking with me?”

“You know I have no sense of humor.”

After a brief glance Hasdrubal tossed the scroll away. “Make me understand, Noba, because I see no reason in this.”

“Perhaps their resources are not quite as great as we imagine,” Noba offered.

“I can imagine much,” Hasdrubal said, “but the wealth of Carthage is beyond even me. No, that is not the problem. They want him to fail, yes?”

“Think not of how those old men conspire. What matters is what we do here. Four thousand men is more than we had yesterday.”

Hasdrubal caught sight of Bayala, who had entered at the far corner of the room. Seeing Noba, she lingered at a distance, running her hands over the fabric of a wall tapestry. Hasdrubal cut his jibe short and lowered his voice. “So why not give this Gisgo full control of New Carthage? He can have it. Write a dispatch to Carthage for me. Tell them I am going to my brother. I will take only a few thousand men—a portion of the number they should have sent Hannibal themselves.”

Noba locked his arms across his chest. “The Council will not let you go. We both know that. Some would use the very fact that you made the request against you. One minute they'd say you are indispensable to Iberia; the next, they'd question your loyalty. They will reach their fingers into our business and strip away first this portion of your authority and then the next.”

“Has Noba become all-knowing in the last few months? There was a time when you were loyal to me.”

“Those loyal to you tell you when you are mistaken,” Noba said. “This is a greater loyalty than feeding your moments of folly. You would see this if the gods had granted you wisdom as vast as your—”

Hasdrubal shot his hand out and snapped his fist closed before his squire's face, near enough that a simple thrust of his arm would have made the threat into a punch. “Finish that sentence and you will never know joy again.”

Noba rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he seemed to reconsider and said, “Forgive me. I misspoke. Make whatever decision you must. I will go now and greet Gisgo for you. We should dine with him tonight.”

As the sounds of the man's steps faded in the hallway Hasdrubal closed his eyes and exhaled a long breath. He heard Bayala approaching him. He opened his eyes. She circled him for a moment, looking at him coyly, the tip of her tongue peeking out from the grip of her front teeth. Her gray eyes squinted with the mischievous look she always fixed on him as an amorous invitation. Even though he felt his sex stir, he fixed his gaze on the far side of the room. He was in no humor for such distractions. She must have sensed this, for she surprised him when she spoke.

“Noba is right.”

“He may be,” Hasdrubal said, “but I did not ask your opinion.”

“No, you did not. If you tell me to hold my tongue, I will, but there is no reason you should not speak with me about such things. He is a good man. You and your brothers are fortunate. You instill loyalty in those close to you. Few men achieve this as easily as Barcas.”

Hasdrubal would not look at her. “What do you know of it? A woman's mind is poison to reasoned thought.”

“In some countries women rule over men.”

“This is not such a country.”

Bayala creased her thin lips as if pressing this reality between them. Then she released it without comment. “Anyway, you are needed here in Iberia. I hear things, too, husband. Women talk as much as men and often of the same matters. Many tribes await the smallest excuse to leave you. Even my father may prove fickle. He would abandon you without a thought if Fortune deserts you. To get his power he killed his older brother, you know. Some say he had a stew made of his innards and had all the family eat of him, so that they all shared in his crime. I was not yet born, but I do not doubt this story.”

A visual image of Andobales' bulk appeared in Hasdrubal's mind, the boarlike shape of his body, the jutting stretch of his jaw and nose. Hasdrubal did not like thinking about him, nor remembering that the object of so much of his desire sprang from him. But neither did it seem right for a daughter to tell disparaging tales of her creator.

“So you are now a woman who speaks against her father?” he asked. “I wonder what you will say of me behind my back?”

“Nothing that I would not say on my knees before you, husband.”

Bayala slid a hand across his abdomen. Her fingers found a crease in the material and slipped through to caress his flesh. “You must stay here and protect your empire,” she said. “You must protect your wife. I never feel safe out of your sight. Anyway, do you want so badly to leave me? Do I fail to give you pleasure?”

He almost said that there was more to life than the pursuit of pleasure, but the words died in him: first, because he wondered why she should feel endangered, and second, because he felt filled to overflowing with desire and doubted his assertion. Bayala did not seem to mind his silence. She pressed her body against his. He felt the soft weight of her breast held against his bicep. As she slid around toward his chest her breast swayed free. Something in the momentary, passing sensation of this sucked the air out of him.

“Do you like me, husband?” she asked.

Finally looking down at her—at the confident mirth in her eyes, the imperfect lines of her face, and the thin stretch of her lips—Hasdrubal knew that he liked her very much. More than he wished to tell her. He wondered whether any other Barca had ever felt such a weakness for a woman. A voice within him whispered that if he were not careful such emotion would be the death of him.

Imilce disliked sending Hannibal a letter written in another's hand, but she could not yet write with the grace she wished for. She had no choice but to speak her love aloud and watch it made manifest by the subtle fingers of a scribe a few years her junior. He never looked up at her, but kept his head inches above his work. She was thankful for this and spoke slowly so that he would have no need to interrupt her.

She began, “Hannibal, husband, beloved both of Baal and Imilce . . . I write you in longing and pride. I do not know where this will find you or what hardship you may be suffering at the moment you read this. I do not know, husband, if you will ever read this. But still I write in hope. The news here is that you have struck several blows at Rome, just as you said you would. This was met with great excitement, although not everyone in Carthage wishes you success. I will not put names in writing, but I now understand that beside each councillor singing your praises is another who grumbles that you are leading the nation to ruin. I would not have thought it possible for any to feel this way, but the people of Carthage surprise me in many ways.

“This city of your birth is beautiful, rich beyond my imaginings. And—for me, at least—it is stifling, confining, like a tomb. I do not wish you to think me ungrateful. Your mother and sisters have been very kind to me, but I am nothing here without you. None here save Sapanibal have seen me at your side. None see me as I would be seen. They are kind enough, but they make me feel like a jeweled necklace sitting in a box, without the neck for which it was crafted. Are you still convinced that I should not come to you in Italy? I would happily do so, especially now as you are winning fame for us \ all. . . .

“Have you got all that?” she asked the scribe.

Without looking up, he nodded that he did. He mumbled, “Fame for us all,” as he finished writing.

Imilce picked up a date and tested the flesh of it against her teeth. She had seen Carthaginian women do this often, and—both consciously and not—she had adopted some of their mannerisms. On her young sister-in-law's recommendation, she had taken to wearing Carthaginian clothing. The garments were beautiful in their own right, but she never failed to be impressed by the effect they produced when combined with the voluptuous grace of African women. Didobal epitomized this and bore it with remarkable effect: her dark skin further enriched by the bright reds and oranges of her garments, by patterns and pictures stained into the cloth. Certainly, Carthaginian men looked kindly on her, but what did they matter? It was a women's world in which she found herself, and here she felt shockingly immature. Thinking of her mother-in-law, Imilce felt like an adolescent wrapped in adult garments, like a stick figure but not a true woman at all. Oh, she so very badly wished she could dig her fingernails into her husband's muscled back, direct his sex inside her, and know once more that he was real and that she was truly valued and that her future was assured. It was unfortunate that she had not become pregnant again. . . . But such thoughts were not for this scribe's ears. She tossed the date back into its bowl and carried on with another line of thought.

“I will tell you something now that struck me deeply,” she resumed, “though I do not know what you will think of it. This afternoon I took the midday meal with your youngest sister, Sophonisba. I am sure you have not the slightest memory of her. She is just thirteen, but her beauty is blooming daily. Her eyes are so black and large, framed by eyelashes that seem to stroke the air itself with sensuality, as if each lash were a feather in an Egyptian dancer's fingers. How she can convey all this by simply blinking is beyond me, but the effect is quite real. It is frightening, really, how devastating she can be with that adolescent glare of hers. Grown men, soldiers and fathers and grandfathers even . . . They all crumble before her. Either that or they simper and flirt with her. She is barely more than a girl, but already the wolves are baying in the night.

“It is Sophonisba's mind that truly surprised me, however. She is a young woman of strong opinions. She is well informed and readily capable of discoursing on all manner of subject. She knows the details of the campaign, and she wishes she might herself take part. She looked at me with all seriousness and said, ‘Had I been born a man I would avenge the wrongs done us by Rome.' She asked, ‘Do you not think that our women have bravery beyond that even of our men?'

“I answered her that if she was anything to go by, then that was undoubtedly true. But she would not be so easily flattered. She was looking for something more, but she was unsure of how to say it at first. I referred to her mother, and her mother's mother, and to all those who have bravely sent their men off to war and waited long years for their return. I did not mention myself, of course, but in listening to myself speak I did feel a certain pride at being as composed as I am in your long absence. Sophonisba did not dispute any of this, but she seemed saddened by it. She wished there were other ways to demonstrate her valor. She said, ‘Imilce, I am not like most girls. I do not pray for childish things. I pray that I will somehow serve Carthage in a way that would honor the Barcas.'

“Can you imagine this? From a girl who should be dreaming simply of some foreign prince to wed . . .”

Imilce, for the first since beginning her letter, sat down on the intricate reclining chair in her sitting room. It was a piece of furniture she still did not care for. Despite its elegant shape and its tiny zebra-skinned cushion, it was an instrument of discomfort. If she had been confident of her position she would have replaced it by now. She sat silent for a moment, pressing her back into the perfectly straight length of mahogany, listening to the scribe's pen upon the papyrus.

She had reminded herself of Sophonisba's suitor, Masinissa, and considered mentioning him. She had first laid eyes on him a few days before as he returned from a lion hunt, an elite event in which he was participating for the first time. At Sophonisba's side, Imilce had stood on the wall near the city gates and watched the chariots thunder up the road. The afternoon was pleasantly cool, the surface of the road darkened by an early, light rain. Masinissa, being a Massylii, spurned the wheeled vehicles. Instead, he rode in the swarming confusion of horsemen. Sophonisba had no difficulty picking him out from the crowd.

“There he is,” she had said. “The handsome one.”

This was not, actually, a distinguishing feature among the throng of youthful warriors. Imilce nearly said as much. But then, to her surprise, she did spot a young man of more than usual grace. His dress was no different from the others', and his tack was simple. Yet as he circled and wheeled and trilled with his companions his face shone with a regal joy that separated him from the rest. Here was a boy at play with his friends; but here, too, was a monarch who knew his place among them and wore it comfortably. Word soon spread that the young prince had slain his first lion. He had made the kill from horseback, dancing around the beast, sinking three spears before it went down. That a young man so slender could slay a lion was difficult for Imilce to accept. She wondered whether the tale had not been exaggerated to feed the prince's pride. Though a woman, she knew as well as any man that a servant's deeds are often claimed by his master. But when she met Masinissa, saw his face and bearing from up close, felt his unusually calm confidence, the deferential smile and humility with which he received praise: considering all this, she believed the story.

She would have liked to share this and more with her husband, but she already felt she was rattling on too much, speaking of matters that were not particularly important and that Hannibal might find trivial when compared with the struggles in which he was engaged. And anyway, she never managed to convey her true heart in letters. Writing them made her doubt whether she knew her true heart.

“Perhaps your family shall have female heroes in the future,” she dictated, “should your sisters be given a chance to shine like their brothers.

“All the love Baal permits between us, Your wife, Imilce.”

When the scribe finished writing, she dismissed him, pointedly slipping the document from under his gaze so that he might not reread it to her, as he usually did. Alone a moment later, she studied the letter. She haltingly began to read it over, but then decided not to attempt the task. Though she could make some sense of the letters, she was never confident in her reading. Too many words escaped her, so that she always found her feelings incompletely rendered. The scribes never wrote one's exact words anyway; they abbreviated; they made intricate thoughts into simple, blocky sentiments. If she let herself, she would call the scribe back and have him rewrite the thing several times. She had done this with previous letters, but this time she disciplined the urge. Instead she did something else.

Once sure the ink was dry, she parted the fabric of her gown. She lifted the papyrus and pressed it against her naked flesh. She worked each section of it with her fingertips, feeling the damp of her sweat absorbed by the dry paper. She pressed from the skin of her belly up into the hollow that fused her ribs together, out over the soft give of her breasts. She held the papyrus there for several long breaths, imagining Hannibal receiving the document, believing that he might sense her on it, might think the paper was her very flesh, might feel the longing behind the words and understand more things than she could say.

The massacre beside Lake Trasimene was unprecedented in Roman history. It was not a repeat of the Trebia disaster; it was worse. This time, fifteen thousand men were killed in the initial slaughter. Among them, the consul who had led them went down, run through by the spear of an Insubrian Gaul. Six thousand managed to escape the defile and flee to a nearby town, but they held out no longer than a day, giving up along with thousands of others. In addition, Geminus' cavalry had been met by Maharbal's superior force. The Numidians killed or captured all four thousand of them. If the last defeat had struck each Roman a blow to the chest, this one hit the collective soul of the people like a blacksmith's hammer. It left the citizens breathless, shocked, unsure what the limits of Hannibal's powers were, taking nothing for granted.

Soon, word came that some of the soldiers were straggling home. The people flocked to the gates of Rome, crowding the walls, wailing at the sight before them. Women ran forth, gripping the grimy, blood-caked soldiers, gazing into their faces, calling out the names of husbands, sons, brothers, beseeching the gods to bring their loved ones home. But the gods had turned away. Rome faced the possibility that Hannibal could not be beaten. Perhaps he had trapped Fortune and kept her caged and twisted her always to his advantage. Perhaps this man was more than just a man.

Great as the panic was, as lurid as the stories were, the Republic's leaders did not waste much time in hand-wringing. In the Senate, the faction dominated by the Fabian family and their allies called for the immediate naming of a dictator. It was a stunning proposal, one that nobody wished to believe was needed. With absolute power came grave danger, but if ever extreme measures were called for, this was such a moment. And somehow it was clear to all that the leader of the Fabians' own party was the only clear choice for the position. The gray-haired Fabius Maximus: former censor, twice consul, twice interrex, and once already named dictator, the very man who had declared war on Carthage by throwing out a fold of his toga. He was the embodiment of Roman virtue, steadfast, dogged, single-minded to a fault. He was neither fiery in speech nor quick to action, but he was vigorous once roused. He did have an affliction—his poor vision—but it was not one for which his peers thought less of him, as it came upon many men with age. He arranged for a pair of eyes to accompany him during his tenure as dictator, a young officer with eyesight rivaling the keen stare of a hawk: the former consul's son, Publius Scipio.

As his first act in office, Fabius pronounced that the Trasimene disaster had been the result of Flaminius' impiety and disregard for religious formality. Had nobody around him paused to notice that he began his pursuit of Hannibal on a dies nefastus, an inauspicious day, when no work should take place, during an hour when the gods looked askance at those who commenced new projects? Fabius ordered study of the Sibylline Books, hoping that the prophetic sayings of the Cumaean Sibyl would provide some direction, as they had in times past. He consulted priests and called for the immediate commencement of the rites, games, dedications, and vows that they said the gods demanded. Next, he issued an edict that all country people should destroy their crops, their houses, and even their tools at the first sign of Hannibal's approach. He ordered the call-up of two new legions to protect Rome. He sent Lucius Postumius to Cisalpine Gaul with two full legions, with the responsibility of keeping the Boii and Insubres under pressure. At best, he hoped, their armies might desert Hannibal to protect their own. At worse, Postumius could prevent them from sending new reinforcements to join the Carthaginian.

And then, just before leaving to take over Geminus' legions, Fabius addressed the Senate and conveyed to them the surprising strategy he had developed to defeat the enemy. He said that his grand plan was actually marked by its simplicity. He would simply not fight the barbarian. An army that does not engage in battle cannot be beaten in battle, he said. When asked if he would then let the invaders ravish the countryside, Fabius answered that yes, he would.

“Let them crisscross the land as they wish,” he said. “Let the land not be burned only in their wake but also let the fires precede them. Let weeks and months pass without a decisive battle. Let them die one by one from the various hazards of life: illness and injury, or even age if they hang on long enough. By these various measures we will reduce the enemy's limited number.”

He explained that he would not be inactive meanwhile. His army would shadow Hannibal's, harassing them and making life difficult for them. He would make it hard for the Carthaginians to feed themselves or to replenish their arms. He would let fatigue and time wear the invaders down. Rome's strength was that she could replenish her losses, recruit new soldiers, plant new crops. Hannibal could do none of these things—not easily, at least. This would be his undoing.

Fabius' strategy troubled many in the Senate. One man, Terentuis Varro, rose in the silent chamber and asked, “What madness is this, Fabius? Are you so full of despair? Have we elected you only to learn that you believe us doomed?”

“Hannibal cannot be beaten on the field,” Fabius said, “but he can be beaten. Think wisely on this and deeply, not with vanity but with reason. Was Cornelius a lesser general than any man in here? Was Sempronius? Flaminius? And has the Roman army a history of defeat? Has any nation stood against us and prevailed? No. What we face now is the greatest challenge to our Republic since its founding. I do not know what god breathes genius into the young Barca, but we must admit that for the moment he is our superior in the open clash of arms. Friends, you did not elect me for my wit. You did not bestow this responsibility on me because my mind is so nimble as to dance around this Carthaginian. You elected me because you believed in my judgment. That is what I offer you today. By my policies we will defeat this invader. Carthage will have its day of sorrow. Be patient and trust in me. I am your dictator. Rome will be saved.”

He walked from the hushed chamber, his attendants all around him, Publius at his elbow. “How do you think they received that?” he asked, once out on the streets.

“Sir,” Publius said, “birds could have built nests in their mouths and raised young, such was their shock.”

Fabius smiled and said, “Let us hope it strikes Hannibal the same.”

After Trasimene, Hannibal turned the army east and marched through Umbria. It was not a campaign at all but a moving feast, the whole country one great market from which they plucked goods at will. In each precinct Hannibal kept his ears open for encouraging words, for any people or city wise enough to desert Rome and join the winning cause. But people of Latin blood were a stubborn, recalcitrant lot. Several towns rejected the Carthaginian offer of goodwill and paid for it. The city of Spoletium was somewhat more formidable. It repulsed the Carthaginian attack with disdain. Foolish, that. Had Hannibal the equipment and time to besiege the city properly he would have done so, but there were other matters to see to.

In the first week of July, he settled the army in along the Picene coast and had them lay down their burdens, rest their bodies, and assess the booty they had amassed thus far. Despite their triumphs the men were in pitiable shape, wounded from battle, malnourished from the winter, tired from the march, and plagued by bouts of diarrhea. The animals were no better off. So Hannibal gave them time to recover beside the ocean. They bathed in the warm waters, baked in the sun, and put well behind them the hardships of the winter. They slaughtered the locals' fat lambs and cattle, ate fresh bread, and munched fruit pulled ripe from the trees.

The weeks of recovery were not spent in idle pleasure alone. Hannibal had the Libyans rearmed with the best of the captured Roman weapons. They drilled with them and soon came to favor them and to better understand the Roman technique and how to counter it. He sent the Numidians out on far-ranging raids that brought back new horses, the best of which were put into training in their style. Hannibal also sent messengers to Carthage, carrying word of his victories and asking for reinforcements. He knew even as he composed these words that some within the Council would argue against acceding to his requests. But he had to make them.

The defiance on the faces of the peasants they had despoiled had surprised him. Why had they not dropped to their knees and praised him? Why had they not even lied for the moment and claimed to support him? He knew well the manner in which most people behave in the hour of their defeat; these Italians had not followed any model he had previously encountered. And Rome, it seemed, had yet to whisper a word about coming to terms. Through Bostar, he managed to keep a steady flow of spies back and forth to the capital. None reported any mention of appeasement within the city. None even suggested that this thought occupied the senators' private minds, much less played a hand in public policy. Instead, it seemed that Rome gave thought only to the next stage of the war.

At a meeting of his generals, Hannibal asked, “What does this mean, this dictatorship?”

They had gathered in a long-abandoned cottage that served as a makeshift headquarters. The door stood open, casting a square of the brilliant daylight across the room. It was stiflingly hot beneath the sun, so that the stools had been positioned to make the best use of the shade. Above them, lizards slid through the roof, rattling the sun-parched thatch of hay.

“It means they are afraid,” Bomilcar said.

“As they should be. But how does a dictator change the struggle before us?”

“We should strike soon and hard,” Maharbal said.

Monomachus sucked his cheeks and spoke through the dry pucker that was his mouth. “I care not for delay,” he said. “Our men are rested. Let us strike at the Roman heart now, while our men still remember how easy it is to split Roman flesh.”

Bostar listened to this with a pained expression. He had formed the habit of stroking the ice-scarred tissue of his cheeks while he thought. He did this now, rhythmically, and said, “To the commander's question . . . The Senate approves the call for a dictator only after a great disaster. In this way, we know they acknowledge the carnage we've inflicted on them. Instead of their usual two consuls, each of whom controls two legions, they put in place a single, ultimate commander. This dictator controls four legions at once, for a term of six months. His power is total. Last year, as you will recall, the Romans put six legions in the field, but they never fought as a combined force. They still won't, but with a dictator we can reasonably assume we'll meet a larger single force than we have thus far.”

“So they have adopted a king?” Mago asked. “This means they are changing everything.”

“Not so,” Bostar said. “Romans fear monarchs more even than Athenians do. They will bear this dictator only so long as he is useful. Then they demand that he step down. The Senate chose Fabius because they believe him a prudent, humble man. They would not give this power to anyone but. If you will recall Cincinnatus—”

“Do not start repeating the Greek's tales!” Bomilcar said. “We all know this Cincinnatus. Picked his plow out of the field and struck the enemy about the head with it, then returned the plow to the ground and carried on. Are we to fight farmers, then?”

“One might say that, yes. Romans like to think of themselves as humble people of the land. My point in mentioning Cincinnatus is that he is the model of a Roman dictator. He was a man they could turn to in crisis, one who could be trusted completely to act with the greatest wisdom, a different sort of man than Sempronius or Flaminius.”

“Fabius will be no fool, then?” Hannibal asked.

Bostar nodded in such a way as to indicate that the commander had stated the matter succinctly. “He will be no fool, which leaves you with this question: How will a wiser leader confront you?”

Bomilcar snorted. “If he were truly wise, he would not confront us at all!”

A few of the others laughed, but Monomachus considered the statement as if it had been offered in seriousness. “There are ways that we can assure that they fight us,” he said. He leaned toward the commander and pitched his words low enough so that the others had to be still to hear him. “Let us order the men to kill everyone in our path. Not just men, but women and children, too. How could the dictator answer that except by battle? They would rush to fight us faster even than Flaminius. Anyway, I do not see the good in leaving children to grow into men, women to push out new soldiers. This is not sound strategy. We should slay them all until they beg us on their knees to stop.”

“Monomachus, I sometimes wonder if you would halt even at that point,” Hannibal said. “As ever, there is potent logic in your suggestion. As ever, I take your words seriously. But it need not come to that. I've not changed my opinion in the slightest. The only way to defeat Rome is to alienate her from her allies. The people of Italy must see that we are strong, but I would not have them think us monsters. We cannot win this war if all of Italy abhors us.”

“But if we kill them they will be dead!” Monomachus said, spitting the last word out with the weight and resonance of a shout. “I fear not the anger of dead men. Ghosts are vapors. Never has one wielded a sword against living flesh.”

An uneasy silence followed this. Eventually, Mago said, “I second my brother on this.” He spoke forcefully, but having done so he seemed at a loss for anything more to say. Monomachus turned his gaze on him slowly, the lower lids of his eyes rimmed with condescension bordering on malice. Mago did not meet the older general's eyes, and he was visibly relieved when Hannibal spoke again.

“We know nothing of what Fabius will do just yet,” he said. “Let us be direct. We will offer battle whenever we can. Perhaps Fabius will accept. One more victory should loosen Rome from her allies. This is how we will proceed. But we do not yet need to kill women and children.”

The frivolity with which small-minded people spent money always amazed Silenus. Diodorus' chambers were lavish in the style of one new to affluence—in the manner, actually, of a public servant spending the wealth of others on trinkets: ostrich feathers, vases modeled on Eastern designs, cushions encrusted with glass bits meant to pass as precious stones, a few pieces of gold-inlaid furniture. It had been some time since the Greek had witnessed such an attempt at urban splendor. He did not miss it, and, despite the show of luxury, Silenus noted just enough signs of imperfect workmanship and garish design to indicate that the magistrate was not quite as prosperous as he wished to pretend.

Fresh from disembarking at Emporiae and on land for the first time in a week, Silenus had yet to accustom himself to the immobility of life on solid ground. His head swayed on his shoulders, still keeping the rhythm of the waves. Dried seawater crusted his face. He had formed the habit of absently drawing his fingers across his cheeks and down to the tip of his tongue, where he tasted the tang of salt. He was doing this when Diodorus finally appeared.

Silenus had only met the magistrate once, and that was years ago in Syracuse—when Diodorus became engaged to his sister—but he recognized in an instant that he had put on weight, around the torso and in the thighs, as a woman might in her mature years. His mouth was as wide as Silenus remembered and his eyes, conversely, as close together. The least appealing aspect of his appearance was that he wore a garment resembling a toga, not quite the genuine article but close enough to betray his aspirations.

“Silenus,” he said, “my brother, I did not believe my ears when they told me you were here. By the favor of the gods, you look in good health! If I did not know better I would think you a warrior.”

The two men embraced, quickly, and then drew apart. “And if I did not know better I would think you a Roman,” Silenus said.

“Oh, not yet, but who knows how the gods will order things in the future? Sit. Sit and drink with me.”

Silenus did so, and for a few minutes the two shared pleasantries. Silenus asked after his sister. Diodorus admitted that she made an adequate wife. Although, he explained, he much preferred the pleasures to be had from virgins. It was unfortunate that they were so hard to come by and expensive to purchase. Such pleasures were a constant strain on his resources. Silenus nodded at this, smiling despite himself.

Diodorus was also willing to speak at length of the tumultuous path of his political life. Through the luck of others' misfortunes—a few fevers, a tribal war, and a rapidly advancing dementia had cleared a path for his ascent—he had moved up from a petty official of the city to one of its leading magistrates in just a few years. Unfortunately, just as quickly he had seen his stature reduced by the machinations of his peers. The only difficulty was that he was never sure which god favored or despised him. To be safe he offered tribute to them all—a time-consuming task.

Eventually, when Diodorus seemed to have talked himself out, Silenus addressed his true purpose directly, thinking to be most forceful thus. “I come with a message from Hannibal Barca,” he said, “the commander of the Carthaginian army of Iberia and Italy.”

Diodorus nearly choked on his wine. He spat a portion of it back into his goblet, rose from the couch, and through his coughing managed to say, “You what? Hannibal, did you say?”

Silenus fought a smile. “He bade me speak with you of a prisoner you hold here. You will know of whom I speak: his brother, Hanno Barca. Emporiae was not wise to let the Romans keep him here. Hannibal never called you an enemy and begs that you not name yourself as one.”

“Wait one moment,” Diodorus said. “You come to me as a representative of Carthage? You, a Syracusan? When did you throw in with the Africans? And now you come here into my home to demand—”

“Please,” Silenus said. “This is a serious business; speak calmly with me, as my kinsman.”

Diodorus cast his eyes about the room, checking that nobody was lingering to hear. “The truth is I've no quarrel with Hannibal,” he said. “I want him neither as an enemy nor as a friend. This business of keeping his brother is no pleasure to me, but some things are unavoidable.”

“Nothing is unavoidable except death, Diodorus. Is Hanno in good health?”

One corner of the magistrate's lips twitched nervously at the question. “You could say that,” he said. “I mean . . . I believe so, but I've only seen him a few times.”

“Have you considered your fate when Hannibal wins this war?”

“When? Has it been ordained by the gods already?”

Silenus did not dignify this with anything except a smirk. He leaned forward and set his hand on the other's hairy wrist for a moment. “Diodorus, I did not join Hannibal's campaign because I believed he would win, nor because I cared either way. It was a form of employment, an adventure, a tale I could spend the rest of my life telling. And it has been all of these things. But I cannot deny what my own eyes have witnessed. I've never seen a man better suited to command. Everything Hannibal wants, he achieves; everyone he opposes, he defeats. That is the simple truth. I pray you will not make an enemy of him.”

Diodorus pulled his arm away. He sat back, somewhat smugly, and studied Silenus as if noticing him for the first time. “Has he so won you over? Tell me, does he share your bed as well? They say that Hasdrubal Barca has a stallion's shaft. Is the same true of the eldest?”

Silenus did not dignify this with a response. He reached down into his traveling satchel, fished out a small leather pouch, and tilted it onto the table. Gold coins.

“What?” Diodorus asked. “Do you think me poor? Perhaps you have not looked around . . .”

“You are not poor, I know, but nor are you as rich as you would like. This gift is just a token. The riches he promises you for this favor will exceed your wildest dreams. This is why I know it is safe to show this to you. Accept it, and much more will come to you. Deny it, and you deny much more than you can imagine.”

Diodorus, for the first time, forgot his look of haughty refusal. His eyes lingered on the coins. “But the reach of Rome . . .”

“By next year, Rome's reach will be no longer than the space from your shoulder to your fingertips.”

“Do you really believe that? That this African . . .”

“If you knew him you would not doubt him,” Silenus said. “Think with all of your wisdom on this. When the war is concluded, Hannibal will control the Mediterranean. He will not forget those who aided him. How would you, Diodorus, like to rule Emporiae as your own domain? Hannibal will call you his governor; you, of course, may think yourself more like a king, with access to as many virgins as your penis can service, among other pleasures. This is what Hannibal offers you.”

“But what you wish I cannot deliver. I am only one magistrate among many, and the Romans do not bow to our wishes, anyway. Their guards answer only to their leaders—”

Silenus interrupted. “My mind is devious, brother. Say yes to this in principle and together we will think of a way to achieve it.”

Diodorus thought for a long time. “How can it be,” he finally said, “that you sit before me speaking of these things? It's madness, and my answer is no. I cannot do what you ask.”

Imco had hardly thought about the Saguntine girl for months before the dreams started, but once they began they were a constant torment. He saw her as she had been on the day Saguntum fell. He would relive the few moments after he had found her wedged up into a fireplace. Again and again he agonized over her fate, wishing he could turn away and flee but never able to do so. Before long, she began to appear in camp, in his tent, at his feet as he slept, becoming more solid with each encounter until she seemed to be flesh and blood and she began to speak to him. She had walked this far, she said, to ask him what right he had had. Was he a god? Who had given him dominion over her?

He tried to explain that he had slit her throat not as a punishment, not out of cruelty or malice, but just the opposite. A gift, considering the circumstances in which he had found her. He had saved her from greater suffering. At this, the girl just rolled her eyes, rolled them and then set her gaze back on him again and pinned him. Then she would show him the scar and ask him whether it looked like a present she should be grateful for. She became bolder with the passage of time, grew to know him better and despise him more—which seemed a twisted progression to him, for surely the opposite should be true. He had killed her out of mercy, but the thanks he got was ghostly torment. Just his luck.

Perhaps because of her presence, the respite by the coast passed almost unnoticed, certainly unappreciated. When the word came that the army would be marching to intercept the new dictator, Imco groaned. He had just thrown down his burdens! Barely caught his breath. His vision had only recently returned to normal. His teeth had settled down in their gums once more, and his arms and belly were fleshed out a little better each day, but he was still a wisp of his former self and he told his squadron leader as much. He also noted that he still carried a chest full of phlegm, that his genital lice tortured him incessantly, and that his feet were tender with a rot from the marshes that had yet to heal. He also mentioned that his vision was impaired and that he was not sure he would be able to tell friend from foe on the battlefield—a small lie in the scheme of things. It might have been the one that saved him.

Much to his surprise, his squadron leader waved him away, telling him to stay, then, and join the guards watching over the occupied town and the stores of booty. After he had watched the tail of the army disappear over the horizon a few days later, it occurred to Imco that he was actually one of a relatively small company, made up partly of camp followers and slaves, charged with protecting a rather large treasure, surrounded by countless unseen natives who were naturally disgruntled at having been ousted from their homes. The first few days passed in tense appraisal of every puff of dust in the distance and every vessel appearing on the sea. Throughout the day, Imco stewed beneath the unrelenting summer sun, nagged by the growing suspicion that he was not fortunate at all to have won this duty. He was expendable—that was more like it. He even spent an anxious evening turning over the idea that the army might never return. This new dictator might, in fact, defeat them. And if that happened it would be only a matter of time before the Romans found them out and made captives of them all.

But the next morning dawned as quiet as the one that preceded it. Cavalry units came and went, scouring the neighboring countryside and depositing their gains at the camp. The soldiers kept watch through a rota system. One day passed into the next with little change and no news of a major battle. Sitting in the sparse shade of a stone pine on the shore side of camp, Imco found in the quiet sights a peace that he had not known for some time. The smell of the salt air, the thrum of waves collapsing on the shore, the view of fishing boats pulled up against the sand, the nimble movements of the shorebirds darting along the tide line: it was almost too tranquil to believe, in light of the more violent scenes he had been part of over the last few years. His situation verged on bliss, except that with fewer people around, the girl completed her emergence into the physical world. She escaped the confines of his dreams, visited him in the full light of day, and now felt free to pester him about a variety of topics.

He first discovered this one afternoon. He had noticed a stray dog patrolling the camp in wary fits and starts. He moved around cottages and shacks as if he knew the place well, but his gaze suggested that nothing was as he remembered anymore. The dog had one ear chewed off. He was dusty, his hair rubbed down to the flesh in spots. His pink tongue lolled constantly from the left side of his jaws. Imco found something humorously endearing in the dog's nervous movements about the camp. He called after him and tried to wave him over with benign gestures. But when the dog would come nowhere near him, he had a change of heart and threw a stone at it instead. “Pathetic creature.”

Just after he mumbled this, a voice beside him asked, “Who are you to call another being pathetic?”

It was the girl, squatting beside him in the shade. She pointed out that he had chosen not to march with the others out of simple fear. Did not that make him more pitiable even than a dog? He went from moment to moment complaining about his fate in life, always fearing the next battle, the next injury or illness. If he hated war so much, why did he not take his own life as he had taken hers? She told him she would rather have been pierced by the lust of a warrior than spared by the trembling hand of a half-man. He had not allowed her that choice, had he? She had never known a man more hypocritical than he, she claimed. He could kill when the killing was easy, but really any act of valor he could claim was simply an act of cowardice turned on its head. Did they not call him the Hero of Arbocala?

“What a farce,” she said.

By the end of the first week she was even following him through the midday sun, accosting him in view of other soldiers, who ignored her out of respect for him and, perhaps, empathy with his situation. It was most disconcerting, listening to her. She seemed to know his innermost thoughts. She understood him, in fact, with a clarity that baffled him. How had she come to know so many details of his life? To act as if she had spoken with his sisters and mother back in Carthage? He shot these questions back at her, but she answered that the dead have ways unknown to the living. Cryptic nonsense, he thought.

One afternoon the girl so harassed him that he lost his way while walking to the river he had grown accustomed to bathing in. Bathing was the only way to escape the stifling heat, and he preferred the fresh water to that of the sea. He cursed her for distracting him with a whole litany of questions about how various family members would view his cowardice throughout the campaign. The day was oppressively hot. The sun beat down like burning fingers massaging his flesh. He stripped off his tunic and walked naked with the garment flung over his shoulder. He spent some time struggling through the undergrowth before he finally reached the riverbank. But the point at which he reached it was all wrong. He was looking down upon a bend in the river from high above. He would have to walk a good distance upstream to find a route down. Resigned to this, telling himself that the sweat he would work up in the effort would make the swim that much more enjoyable, he turned to walk on. That was when he saw her.

She squatted on the pebbles of the far bank, scrubbing garments in the water. At first Imco took her for an adolescent, maybe one of the displaced townspeople camped on the outskirts of their former home. A little distance away, a donkey munched quietly on the sparse grass. Imco found the sight of the donkey strangely disturbing, but he did not wish to address this at that moment. He turned his eyes back to the young woman. He could make out no more of her features, huddled and low as she was.

He was about to move on when she rose and stood, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders, and stretching out her arms to either side. Her tunic was thin and worn to begin with, but it had also been splashed with water so it clung to her chest and belly. The sight of this was like a divine revelation. Imco felt the air sucked out of his lungs, such was the impact of the contours of her body upon his. He had been weeks without sex, and he felt his penis stiffen. Imco patted it down and inched forward a little through the underbrush.

She was no girl at all, but a young woman. And by the gods, she was beautiful! As if toying with him, she stripped off her tunic and waded into the stream. Imco pressed forward, feeling his way through the vegetation with quiet toes. The woman walked out into midstream and sank down into the water. This made her no less exciting however, as the water was perfectly clear, revealing her body through pale blue highlights. She rolled over, dunked her head, and came up with her curls pressed to her scalp, and then dove forward so that her backside broke the surface for a fleeting moment.

It was all too much for Imco. His penis throbbed. Its scream for attention was not to be ignored. Imco obliged. Perhaps he should not have touched it, for in doing so he took his hand away from a grip among the bushes and took hold of a less useful anchorage. His attention was not on his footing, as it should have been. On the first stroke he gasped. On the second his eyes rolled back in his head. On the third his left foot slipped from beneath him. His body twisted just enough to dislodge his other foot. He reached out vaguely with his free hand, not yet realizing what was happening. His fingers touched only dry leaves and slender branches unable to hold him. He slid forward, grinding his bottom along the ground for a moment, fast reaching the edge of the embankment. He burst into midair amidst a rain of dust and debris.

He landed on a small beach along the near shore. The impact on his backside was painful enough, but his erection smacked against the sand with the full force of his fall. He would have doubled over in agony, but the woman stood up. She did not flee from him. Instead she strode directly toward him, kicking up a spray of water before her. She halted just a few paces away and spouted a fount of verbal abuse. As she stood berating him in a language he could not understand, he realized that her beauty, from up close, was even more astonishing than he had imagined. It radiated from her very skin. It floated off her like a fragrant oil. It reached out toward him as if her spirit contained arms separate from the thrashing limbs that threatened him. Her beauty was not simply a collection of parts placed favorably beside each other, although he did not fail to notice these parts in great detail. Her hair fell over her face as if it had a mind of its own and meant to toy with her. Her breasts jiggled wildly with her harangue. The muscles of her torso stretched and flexed with each step. Her upper thighs were as firm and smooth as an adolescent boy's, and the triangle of hair at her midpoint was dripping wet. Even in that moment of pain and outright trepidation, despite the immediacy of the confrontation and his embarrassingly excited nudity: still the image came to him fully formed of his mouth against the woman's sex, drinking the moisture dripping there as if from a sacred spring.

New images might have followed upon this one, but the woman closed her discourse by pointing at his own sex, spitting, and tossing her head with complete scorn. Then she turned, snatched up her clothes, and strode away. The image of her naked bottom would haunt him afterward. Somehow, the behind of the donkey following her only made his pain more acute. The creature fell into step a few paces after her, as if he were an ungrateful and unworthy husband, a four-legged barrier between her and a truly devoted suitor. They disappeared between a crease in the landscape, leaving him alone in the gurgling quiet of the afternoon.

Imco managed to rise. Once upright, however, he reconsidered. He placed a knee on the ground, then the other knee, then he lowered himself to all fours. This was not quite enough, either. Eventually, he lay on his side in the sand, his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. In this posture he came to grips with the stomach-churning agony of his groin injury. This could not have been a chance encounter, he told himself. The hand of a gentle god had propelled him here. He did not question whether it was the same hand that had shoved him into midair at Saguntum, for the point seemed irrelevant. He had found a new purpose in life. A new destiny. He had to learn her name. He was—true to the unacknowledged poet inside him—in love.

Before long, he heard the approach of familiar footsteps. The Saguntine girl squatted in the sand a little distance away and said, “Have I used the word ‘pathetic' already? You give new meaning to it.”

How strange, Imco thought, that in such a short space of time two women should enter his life, each a torment of a different sort. Nothing was ever easy.

Fabius Maximus held his troops back like leashed hounds baying for blood. He stood with a hand on Publius Scipio's shoulder, listening to the soldier's description of the land below them and the punishments Hannibal had inflicted upon it. Publius had an even, measured voice, intelligent and thorough. He knew what the dictator wished to learn before Fabius even asked the questions and he always laid out the most pertinent features of the landscape first. With his aid, Fabius layered his mind's created images on top of the evidence of his eyes. The merging of the two developed a picture he believed to be clearer than one rendered through sight alone, nuanced with more detail and depth.

Perhaps the delay caused by this careful elucidation served as the foundation for the dictator's famous patience. He rejected the Carthaginian's offer for battle, first at Aecae, and then again each day afterward. He had the army trail the enemy through Apulia, keeping to the high ground so as to avoid the Numidian cavalry. He harassed them with quick raids, making small war, allowing atrocity after atrocity by the foe but evading open battle at all costs. Fabius' men were well provisioned, so he destroyed any supplies he suspected to be within his enemy's reach. He put special effort into picking off parties of foragers, staying ever vigilant, always near enough to spot the parties and send detachments to rout them. Even news of a single Massylii unhorsed was pleasant to his ears. Two Balearic slingers captured as they took target practice on a herd of sheep, a Gaul left behind due to a gangrenous leg, summarily tortured and nailed to the gnarled trunk of an olive tree: each of these came as an additional verification that his strategy was sound and would succeed over time.

Terentius Varro, his master of horse, chomped and foamed at the bit, muttering that Hannibal had arrived before them and they should vanquish him without delay. They could not keep to this policy of inaction! Perhaps it had sounded reasonable when he had dreamed it up in the safety of Rome, but here in Apulia they could see that it was not working. Italy was burning. Their allies killed and raped daily. What sort of policy was this? It rejected the long history of Roman warfare. Rome had not risen to power by letting an enemy run wild in their country. Rome had always attacked first, promptly, directly, decisively.

Fabius listened to his ranting and answered with all the dignity he could muster. Varro had not been his choice for his main lieutenant. Actually, the Senate had appointed him because he had spoken out against the Fabian policy. This rankled him—that even as they appointed him dictator they burdened him with a high-ranking officer who did not share his views. Varro was a man of the people. His father had been a butcher, successful enough financially to set the stage for his son's career. Fabius always found men of such new blood to be of questionable character too. Despite the young man's early achievements, he seemed better suited to the work of a laborer, to alleyway brawls, to taking orders, not giving them. He was, actually, something of a nuisance. Fabius restated his chosen tactics, held to them, and reminded Varro which of them had been given the title of dictator. Varro could not answer this except by fuming.

By Fabius' orders, they followed the Carthaginian army up and over the Apennines into the territory of the Hirpini, a land of rolling uplands interrupted by great, slanting slabs of limestone, a beautiful country planted with wide fields. Hannibal turned his army this way and that. He broke camp in the middle of the night and tried to outflank Fabius, or to surprise him with sudden proximity, or to vanish from sight.

Fabius watched anxiously as the city of Beneventum repulsed the Carthaginian attack. He sent a messenger to them with the promise that they would be rewarded for their loyalty later. On the other hand, he failed to anticipate Hannibal's strike at Telesia. He took the town with ease and found vast stores of grain hidden hastily within it. Again, Varro shouted in his superior's ear, as if his hearing were in doubt as well as his sight. But the dictator was as determined as the invader. He held to his chosen course.

One evening as Fabius returned to his tent from relieving himself, Publius spoke out of the darkness. He said that he could not sleep for thinking about the suffering Hannibal was inflicting upon the people. Fabius searched out his cot with his foot and lowered himself to it. Once comfortably situated, he gave the young Scipio a moment's thought. He had thus far not voiced a personal opinion of the campaign. Unlike Varro, he had been raised well, by a revered family and by a father who took his son's upbringing seriously. Considering this, he decided to dignify Publius with a brief response.

“Our charge requires that we must sleep,” he said, “so that we may better work to free them on the morrow.”

“You are right, of course,” Publius said, “but do you not think of them at all? Do you not see them in your dreams?”

“No, I do not.” Fabius spoke firmly, in a tone meant to end the conversation.

But the younger man said, “Their suffering is like a scene painted upon a thin curtain through which I see the world. I still see beyond them, but I cannot forget their present turmoil for even a moment. I see faces of individual men and women, of children, so clear it seems they are people known to me, even though they are not. They ask me to remember them, to realize fully that each of them has only one life, like fragile glass crushed beneath Hannibal's foot.”

Fabius rolled irritably to his side. “You dream of poets, not of peasants.”

“At times, simple people seem much the same.”

“Such dreams do not serve you well. You should stop having them. It is not for a leader to think in specific terms: neither of strangers, nor of his own family. This is what the young do not understand. I consider a larger vision than you are capable of. Now go to sleep. You are my eyes, not my mouth!”

A few days later, the Carthaginian made another daring move. Hannibal departed Telesia. He snaked his army through the mountains not far from Samnium, crossed the Volturnus, and descended onto the plains of Campania. This country was in the full bloom of summer, as rich as the Nile delta, so far unscathed by the war and unprepared for its sudden arrival. Fabius did his best to send messengers ahead in warning, but he knew this effort was largely in vain. Hannibal had the whole of the Falernian plain at his mercy. If that were not bad enough, this move put him for the first time within striking distance of Rome itself.

Varro raged yet again, but still Fabius stood upon the hills staring out, firm in his resolve, ears attuned to the youth speaking softly beside him. It was Publius who casually mentioned that Hannibal's forces were now within a natural boundary, and that that could be used against them. Fabius pulled in his blurred gaze and focused on the soldier standing beside him, almost as if seeing him for the first time, though they had now been inseparable for weeks. He asked Publius to explain this notion. And the young soldier did, much to the older one's interest.

The situation became clear to Hannibal well before the body of his joyous army paused to consider it. They were afoot and unbeaten on Italian soil, enjoying the bounty of Campania, elated by their victories, fat from fine food, and sated from conquerors' sex. Most of the army had slaves they called their own in the train behind them, and these were laden with all they could carry and more: weapons and jewels; coins and tools and sacred items. Behind them followed hundreds of cattle, some newly slaughtered each evening, the scent of their roasting adding a pleasant air to camp. While they were constantly aware of the army following their every move, the Roman cowards did not dare engage with them. Hannibal several times set the army on a field perfect for battle and invited Fabius to engage, but the Roman sat on his hands and did nothing. None of the army of Carthage had ever imagined their lot could be this good. Campania had been a blessing to them; this Fabius had been less a foe than an escort. But Hannibal saw a problem stalking them, as gradual and inevitable as the change of seasons.

He called a meeting of his generals and opened it by asking them to study the charts of their current position, paying close attention to his notes detailing the best information he had on the Roman positions. They had entered the plain through the narrow pass of Callicula. Fabius took this pass shortly after, leaving a detachment of four thousand men sitting tight within it. The dictator then sent his master of horse to the defile of Terracina, where the mountains came down to the sea and the Via Appia could be easily held. He strengthened the garrison at Casilinum and lined the hills hemming in the plain with troops awaiting any weakness, easily called to arms, with a daylight view of all the Carthaginians might undertake.

“In short,” Hannibal said, “we are trapped. This plain is a joy for summer raiding, but it will not sustain us through a winter. Nor would it be wise to stay here with nearby cities like Capua and Nola still hostile to us. Fabius knows it. That is partly why he watched us and did not engage, so that we might confine ourselves to winter in a depleted land. What thoughts have you each?”

As was their custom each general spoke in turn, each espousing a different course of action, if not from conviction then from custom, for Hannibal always asked to hear all reasonable alternatives before settling on the best. Bomilcar argued in favor of fighting through the pass; Maharbal suggested a dash toward the Via Appia, double time, to beat the season and reach someplace more favorable; Bostar suggested, though doubtfully, that they might ford the Volturnus; Monomachus was adamant that they could easily survive the winter, for they carried with them more than just cattle to eat.

Hannibal was silent. If he disagreed with any proposal he did not say so at once; nor did he have to, for Mago found the faults of each. The Romans held all the positions of advantage. The toll the Carthaginians would suffer in dead if they tried to fight up through the pass would leave them fatally weak. They would be no wiser than the Persians at Thermopylae, and unlike the Persians, they did not have thousands of lives to waste. They could run for the south, but this would spread them dangerously thin. The men would have to abandon their booty; this would damage morale, cost them much of what they had gained thus far, and betray a measure of fear that would give the Romans heart. The river itself posed a formidable barrier, hard to cross at any time and certainly no favorable route with an army ready to pounce on them.

Mago tossed the dagger he had been using as a pointer down upon the table. “Trapped! Fabius has all of Latium and Samnium and Beneventum to call upon for supplies. They will get fat while we starve. This plain of bounty will be the death of us.”

Hannibal spoke lightheartedly, looking at Mago with a crooked grin on his lips. “My brother has a soldier's fire in his soul,” he said. “And yet there's still some of the poet in him. It is my joy to see him grow this way.”

Mago snapped his head up and stared at his brother, searching for sarcasm. Instead he saw a wry humor written on his face, like one who has thought of a joke and is about to share it. Mago had seen this look before. He smiled and shook his head at his own outburst. “Tell us, then,” he said.

On that prompting, Hannibal explained how they were to proceed.

In the days that followed, the sprawling army marched back toward the ridge of mountains barring entry into Apulia. The plain they crossed stretched right up to the base of the mountains, and the peaks rose in one thrust. They could make out the dispositions of Fabius' army, clinging to the heights, waiting, watching. The glow of their fires stood out in the night, showing by their size the various routes through the mountains. The widest pass had the largest contingent of soldiers, but Fabius left no possible route unguarded. Small units held the smaller openings against spies or messengers or any who might seek solitary escape. Though many among the army groaned at their situation, Hannibal saw only the conditions he had anticipated.

The men ate quickly that evening. They made tight bundles of their weapons and supplies. They secured what supplies they could to the backs of horses and donkeys and even cattle. Men rushed out under the dying light of day and gathered all the wood they could find: fallen branches and decaying trees and twigs of all sizes right down to finger thin. These they piled near the edge of camp. Beside it they collected a hundred select steers in one mass of uneasy bovine life. For this task, Hannibal wanted only the largest from the herd they had gathered over the summer, the ones with wide horns and the strength to endure the ordeal he planned for them.

Mindful of the gods and of his men's morale, Hannibal asked Mandarbal to sanctify the proceedings. The robed priest went to his task with a surly belligerence, uttering the sacred words that were his province. He explained little to the nervous eyes watching them, but moved among the beasts cutting nicks in their shoulders and necks. He grasped at invisible objects, snatching them down and pressing them into his heart and rubbing them along the shaft of his dagger. he slapped away the hands of any who were touching the steers so that none fouled them during his ritual. By the time he concluded, all believed the method of their hoped-for escape had somehow been married to a great offering: a religious sacrifice and their own deliverance, at once.

Once Mandarbal retired, Hannibal himself oversaw the next phase of preparations. With his own hands, he tugged one of the animals away from the rest and toward the woodpile. He picked pieces of wood and placed them between the creature's horns, balancing them carefully. He called for twine to secure them. Soon the creature wore a headdress of sticks and branches woven through and tied to its horns and smeared with the pitch used to fuel torches. Hannibal stepped back and studied the wary, dejected creature, head heavy beneath its load.

Standing beside his brother, Mago said, “This is a singularly strange undertaking.”

Hannibal did not disagree. He ordered that all the steers be similarly dressed.

The moon was thin and cast little light as the army left camp. They crept toward the base of the mountains and then up across their toes. For now, they went by the light of a few torches only. Fast behind them, herders drove the cattle forward. The rest of the army followed, awkward beneath their burdens, prodded by the feet nipping their ankles. Camp followers scampered in the rear, nervous about this whole venture but seeing no means to avoid it.

The route led some distance up toward two of the passes, the main way and a lower, narrower gap that was a plausible enough choice for Fabius to have positioned a small company there. When he could see the Roman fires in both camps, Hannibal whispered the agreed-upon command. The bearers of the few torches turned and offered them to those waiting near with unlighted wands. First one and then another and then many new flames sprang to life. In an instant they gave up all notion of stealth and watched each other's faces and bodies appear in wavering, warm yellow light. And then, before the beasts had time to panic, they were set on fire. The torch carriers moved among them, touching flame to the fuel carried on their horns. A moment later the herders shouted them into motion.

The cattle, unsure what was happening to them, sprang forward and ran upward, ducking their heads and weaving around trees and shrubs as if they might escape the flames through speed and footwork. The army trailed behind them. Though the beasts bellowed and snorted and filled the night with frantic sounds, the men moved as quietly as they could, coughing into their hands and shading their eyes against the smoke and trying to breathe through their mouths.

The Roman guards looking down upon this weaving herd of lights were mystified. They had seen nothing like this and could make no sense of the size of the fires, or of the way they moved, or of the eerie sounds carried by the night air. They woke the tribune in charge of the pass. He sent a messenger to Fabius, but he knew that he would not receive a reply in time to avert whatever mischief was afoot. He had to act. For lack of a better explanation, the tribune concluded that the Carthaginians were making a rush on the lower pass. Of course they were. That was the type of bold maneuver this African would attempt, to attack the weaker camp and push through with brute force. The tribune ordered the bulk of his men to speed across and down and reinforce the small contingent there. This maneuver would not be easy in the dark, but he had been warned of Hannibal's underhandedness and had no desire to be made a fool of.

Hannibal had, of course, counted on just this move. When he saw Roman torchlight leaving the high pass, he gave the order for the main body of the army to follow him. They moved away from the flaming cattle and proceeded, stealthily, toward the high pass, the one now being hastily deserted.

By the time the animals reached the Romans in the other pass, they were wailing like monsters under the torture of hide and flesh aflame. They came at the Roman infantrymen, a horde of beasts sent forth by the will of Baal himself, stepping from the dark frenzied, driven by smoke and flame. They shook their heads and raked them on the ground and bumped into one another and climbed in this chaos. A few Romans loosed their spears. One or two raised their swords as if to do combat. Most retreated, calling to each other, each asking the one beside him to explain this sight. None understood that at that moment Hannibal and the better part of his army were taking the high pass nearly unchallenged.

A few hours later the sky lightened just enough to reveal their gray forms. Fabius, watching through the eyes of the young Publius Scipio, saw the last of the Carthaginian army disappear over the pass. The remaining guards pulled up from their posts and bid the plains of Campania farewell. The whole army slipped out of sight, like the tail of a serpent into its den.

Sapanibal flew into a silent rage each time she heard of the Council's refusals to aid Hannibal. It was intolerable that so much time was passing without his receiving a single token of support from the country for which he fought. Even now, with the commander so close to victory, they had no vision. The mood of the Council bore no resemblance to the unwavering enthusiasm of the populace. The common people knew Hannibal for the hero that he was. They sang songs to praise him. Poets crafted verses that dramatized his deeds. Children playacted the parts of him and his brothers in the streets. Even slaves, it seemed, took some pride in his accomplishments. He belonged to the entire nation and exemplified the best of them. At least, this was true of all except a powerful group of councillors, centered around the elected leader of the council, the Shophet Hadus, and fueled by the Hannons' old hatred. No matter what Hannibal achieved, they found fault with him. Out of necessity, they praised his accomplishments briefly, but it was clear the words withered and turned bitter on their tongues.

Sapanibal was above all a reasoning woman, tempered by long years of sacrifice, not inclined to show her emotions in the public sphere or behave in ways unsuited to her sex. She had never before felt inclined to voice her thoughts outside her familial home, but the men of Carthage were on so misguided a course that they might end up losing everything. She decided her brother's enemies needed to be challenged. She had no faith that her allies in the Council were doing this with the necessary force. So she would have to see to it herself, and she knew just the setting in which to address the subject, to make a scandal of it, and through that to get tongues wagging. She attacked them where they spent most of their lives: the councillors' baths.

Sapanibal strode past the attendants at the entrance before they could think to stop her, before they had fully even comprehended her presence. The room was warm, pungent with stewed herbs and thick with the haze of incense and pipe smoke. Special torches on the wall and small fires attended by nude boys dimly lighted the chamber. The room's high ceilings gave no feeling of lightness but instead intensified the gloom. Every inch of the walls had been painted with murals of war scenes and illustrations of carnal stories and images of black-faced gods, masks that added to the sinister air.

She found the men she was looking for lounging at their leisure. Hadus saw her from a distance and rolled his eyes. He did not adjust his position at all, but sat with his weak chest exposed, his genitals just barely covered by a fold of his gown.

“What are you doing here?” a councillor behind the Shophet asked. “This is not a place for women.”

“Nor is it a place for cowards,” Sapanibal said. She looked at Hadus. “Shall we leave together?”

Hadus furrowed his brow. He was a thin man given to wrinkles and this expression made his face almost unrecognizable. “What is this?” he asked. “You enter our place of leisure to offend me? Barca women are just as arrogant as the men.”

“Why did you speak against Hannibal this afternoon? He would not request help unless he needed it, and unless he knew it would bring victory. Do you want him to fail so much that—”

“What do you know of these things, woman?”

“I know that my brothers are the greatest wealth our nation has. I know that Hannibal's brilliance has brought victory where none of you believed victory was possible. I know it was here in Carthage that this war was declared, but that you are too cowardly or envious to see it through. What do you fear that you tie my brother's hands?”

“Someone take this bitch away before I lose my head,” Hadus said, looking around as if he were addressing someone in particular but could not find him. “I've half a mind to smack her down and give her a good humping. She is no beauty, but rather that than hear her rattle on.”

“Not even you could get away with that,” Sapanibal said, dry and as composed as ever.

Hadus glanced around at his companions, his face puckered into an expression of utter, dismissive contempt. He did not look at Sapanibal when he spoke. “For my own part,” he said, “I grow tired of talk of Hannibal. Never has Carthage known a man more presumptuous and vain. With the exception, of course, of the father who came before him. Only he surpassed his son in greed.”

“You are mad to say such things!” Sapanibal said. “Everything that Barcas do, we do for Carthage. Hearing you, I know that Carthage does not do likewise for Barcas.”

“Is that so? Where, then, is the tribute of his successes? Why has he sent none home to us to prove his allegiance?”

Sapanibal's jaw hung in disbelief. “Allegiance? How could he send anything to us when he must pay and feed his troops? He has borne the entire—”

Hadus interrupted her. “You say that the Council declared this war, but in truth the Council had little choice. The Barca brood was already running wild. They stirred Rome from its slumber. Had we denied that Hannibal was ours, Rome would have grasped for him and robbed us of our possessions. You cannot be expected to understand this, but our acceptance of the war was a defensive action. Unfortunately, your brother set off on his mad march without consulting us. He has brought no end of trouble upon himself and upon us. That is the real truth of it.”

The servants had been active at the margins of the chamber since she entered. Thin creatures, they seemed offended by Sapanibal's intrusion but afraid to approach her. They had obviously sent for help, however. Two eunuchs entered the room with a purposeful walk. Sapanibal did not follow them with her eyes, but she was aware of their progress along the far wall, out of her view and then approaching from behind her. She heard the pad of their bare feet pause.

“Be under no illusion, Sa-pa-ni-bal,” Hadus said, stretching out the syllables with calm contempt. “If I had my way we would call Hannibal home and strike that genius of a head from its body. That is how I would save Carthage and assure my sons a future. What a gesture that would be to Rome. As it is not within my power right now, I will just have to let him hang himself. And he will. He will. No man can reach for the sun without being burned.”

Sensing the eunuchs moving closer, Sapanibal snapped, “Do not permit them to touch me!”

Her voice was so sharp that several of the men winced. The eunuchs froze, eyes on Hadus for direction.

“I will leave as I entered,” Sapanibal said. “Hadus, hear me now and recall my words later. The time will come when my brother's deeds exceed all others in grandeur. The time will come when he returns to Carthage victorious. I would not wish to be you at that moment. You will need eyes in the back of your head, for you shall have no future before you but will only look back on the things that might have been.”

She turned, yanked her elbow from the reach of one of the eunuchs, and exited the chamber with all of the straight-backed grace she could muster. She knew that she had spoken the truth, and she took some pleasure in cutting Hadus down as if she were an equal, but she also feared she had done nothing for her brother's cause. And there was something else. Though she had given no indication of it throughout the exchange, her quick glance had noticed another man among the company: Imago Messano. He sat, bare-chested, toward the wall at the far end of the room. Carthage was a den of enemies, each one of the cowards scheming a way to become a lion killer. Why had she never seen this fully before?

Silenus lived from week to week in Emporiae. Each day he sought out and met with Diodorus. He tried to speak wisdom to him, to convince him to shake loose of his Roman rulers and accept the future that Hannibal offered. All he had to do was help a single prisoner to escape. That was all, and for it he would become as wealthy as a minor king. Like a man who takes sexual pleasure in being denied gratification, Diodorus heard his brother-in-law out each day. He teetered in his loyalties but never swayed fully to either side. At times he visibly licked his lips at the riches Silenus described to him in luxurious detail, but he would not consummate with action. He could not afford to make Rome an enemy. So Hanno's imprisonment went on.

Silenus called upon his sister to ask her help, but quickly learned that she would offer little. In keeping with Greek custom, her authority was limited to the hidden world of the home. She would not even speak to her husband on the issue of Hanno's release. After a few weeks, Silenus had stopped visiting her. Looking in her round woman's face, he realized that they had little to unite them, only the memory of parents long dead. Of what significance was that in a world swirling with the currents of war?

Silenus, having no other mandate, simply persevered. As an anonymous Greek in a Greek settlement, he was as free as any in the occupied city. He walked among Romans in the streets and listened to their banter. He cocked his ear at news of their war in Iberia. He sat beside them in the baths, so close that he could have reached out a hand and touched their bare flesh. Thus he learned of Hasdrubal's defeats and small victories, of his marriage, and of Roman schemes to press the conflict conclusively during the coming year. More than once he found himself the object of hungry, unsubtle stares. Romans knew little about amorous decorum. Like any men, they lusted, but they rushed into sex like four-legged creatures, humping quickly as if the chore were beneath them. Silenus rejected their overtures with all the disdain he could get away with.

Fortunately, not everyone in the city was an enemy of Hannibal's or a friend to the Romans. Many among the Greeks found the haughty Roman attitudes unpleasant, their arrogance that of cowherds drunk on the strange whim of Fortune that had brought them success. Silenus never showed his hand, but he did move from one circle to another, seeking out individuals with the deepest antipathy to Rome. Thus he chanced upon a group of Turdetani living in the city, in the lowest rungs of society, each and every one of them roiling at the indignities done to Hanno, each of them wishing to see the Romans fail. Hannibal had attacked Saguntum to protect them, they believed, and they felt a loyalty to him unusual among Iberians. Silenus believed these men—coarse criminals that they were—might be just the actors for the play he had in mind. But Diodorus still denied him the fruits of his mission, even when he put forth a complete plan of action, argued with all his powers of persuasion.

“I have the men,” he explained. “They will do the bloody work of dealing with the guards. All you have to do is plan the rescue with me, gain all the details of where and how he is detained, the best routes to him, the rotation of his guards. Provide us the key to unlock his cell and chains. These are not difficult things for a man in your position.”

“We will be found out,” Diodorus said. “You may fly away with Hanno, but I'll be left to suffer the Romans' wrath.”

Silenus moved forward suddenly and grasped one of the man's hands between his. “Listen. Just before we spring our plan, I will announce to one of the Turdetani just which magistrate is aiding us. I'll give whatever name you give me. They will whisper of it to a few others. Think about that. An hour after the escape is known, the entire population will be tongue-wagging, and none of them will think to say your name. In the fury of rumor, you will be one of many to denounce that other man. He will take your punishment; you will, eventually, take the city. You are a creature of political life. Surely you have an enemy you'd like to see crucified.”

Though this speech was forcefully made, Diodorus clung to his indecision. Silenus wished he could communicate his efforts to Hannibal, but he knew that any letter would doom him if it were intercepted. Instead he prayed for some change of fortune. He called on gods he did not even believe in, asking them to prove themselves by divine intervention, promising that he would withdraw his complaints if they only showed themselves and acted on his behalf.

One day in the early autumn, something just as improbable happened; it changed nothing in his thoughts about the gods, for Silenus could name a man as its author. He waited in the morning outside Diodorus' chambers, his head muddled from wine consumed the night before. He had drunk too much of it and it was too cheaply made, but the young student with whom he had shared it was more than worth the trouble. The night's events were a clouded jumble of images and snatches of conversation, but still he knew he had prosecuted his conquest with rare skill. Later in the day, he hoped, he might pick up where he had left off.

When finally called in, he found the magistrate seated as always, with scrolls and documents spread before him. Everything was as it had been many times before, except that when Diodorus glanced up he seemed instantly ill at ease. His eyes quivered with a timorous energy and his hands moved like nervous birds across the paperwork, shifting and sorting and then undoing what they had just done.

Silenus began for the hundredth time. He stated again the generosity of Hannibal's offer, the simplicity of his request. He recounted Hannibal's victories, one example after another that he was superior to Rome. Two of them so far and counting. He began to name them, but Diodorus stopped him.

“Two, you say?” he asked.

“Ticinus . . .”

“Ticinus? You name Ticinus?”

“Yes, I do. It's a small victory but not to be ignored. Along with it, the Trebia . . .”

Diodorus interrupted him. “Why toy with me? We both know that the world has changed and everything in it has been cast in doubt.”

Silenus had not been aware of any such thing, but he answered coolly, as if he were in fact toying with the man. “Yes . . . and how was that achieved?”

“You know full well how it was achieved. That madman you call master . . . He's made a butcher's block of all Italy. I know you rejoice over Trasimene, but don't treat me as a fool.”

“Trasimene?”

Diodorus stared at him. At first he fixed him with a slack-jawed expression of loathing. But the longer he stared, the more this faded into incredulity. Silenus could not hide his confusion completely and the politician's eyes homed in on this. “You truly are ignorant of Trasimene?”

Silenus barely knew the name of the place, but he did not like to be found wanting by this man. “I'm ignorant of few things that pass in the world, my brother by marriage, but some things come to me slowly.” He hesitated a moment. “Perhaps you have details that I do not.”

“What do details matter? Either you know of it or you don't. Granted, it is hard to believe what I've been told. Somehow, your commander made a trap out of the land itself. He slaughtered Flaminius and his entire army like hens gathered together in a pen. I never imagined I'd live to hear of this.”

The magistrate rose and fetched a jug of wine and a glass. It was early in the day, yes, but Silenus found himself thirsty as well. He motioned for the jug and drank directly from it, deeply enough that he would feel the effects. Diodorus took the jug from him and refilled his glass. A few moments passed like this, the two of them shuttling the jug back and forth, each captured by thoughts of his own.

Diodorus was the first to raise his eyes. “Does your commander's offer stand?”

Four days later, in the afternoon, the two men walked quickly through corridors in the lower reaches of the fortress. Diodorus had at last found his motivation. He went at the task with a nervous, jerky intensity that surprised Silenus, but it proved a fine thing. The plan had unfolded just as Silenus had imagined, although he witnessed the aftermath rather than the event. The assassins had done their work, and they had suffered for it. Judging by the carnage in the hallway, the five Roman guards had each killed at least three Turdetani. The surviving Iberians were nowhere to be seen, having slunk away into hiding.

Stepping over and around the bodies, careful on the blood-slicked floor, Diodorus warned Silenus to prepare himself for the sight of the prisoner. The Romans had treated him harshly. Diodorus described the tortures they had used, and Silenus winced as he heard them. They had had a thousand questions for Hanno. He had answered none of them.

“So they abused him,” Diodorus said. He stood before the door of Hanno's cell and fumbled to find the correct key, his hand jerking at the wrist, making the simple task difficult. Each jingle of the keys echoed down the hallway. “They did no permanent damage. He still has all his limbs and digits, but he has suffered. Have no illusion about that.”

Silenus touched Diodorus' shoulder. “You say he did not answer their questions?”

“Not one word of betrayal escaped his lips,” Diodorus whispered. “They threatened him with things to make a man's penis shrivel and his hair go white on the spot, but he uttered not a single word they wished for. He lives up to his family name.”

The magistrate found the right key and rammed it home. He leaned to twist it around and then shouldered the iron-framed door open. Silenus followed him into the cell reluctantly. Diodorus' wide torso blocked out the view. Silenus conjured images of disfigurement, of nudity, of the various postures they might have bound Hanno in, but when he finally laid eyes on the second eldest Barca brother it was not at all what he had imagined.

Hanno sat on the floor in the corner, like a child suffering some long punishment. He was wrapped in a long cloak, hooded. His head drooped toward the stone floor. He did not move at all upon their entering. Silenus, thinking he must imagine them to be his tormentors returning, struggled for the words to greet him. He stepped forward reluctantly, one arm outstretched to touch the prisoner's knee. “Hanno Barca,” he whispered in Carthaginian. “Hanno, I've come with the blessing of—”

Diodorus pushed past him. He scooped his hands under one of Hanno's arms and indicated that Silenus should do the same. Seeing the alarm on Silenus' face, he said, “Make your speeches later. Come, let's do this without delay.”

They dragged the warrior's body between them, laid him in a wagon, covered it, and negotiated the back lanes of the city. Diodorus parted company with them near the docks, pressing upon Silenus all forms of praise for Hannibal, pledges of secret friendship, asking again and again for confirmation of the wealth coming to him. He walked away muttering under his breath, testing the inflection with which to answer the questions soon to be put to him, trying to find which lies best flowed from his tongue.

Silenus and his charge fled the city that evening, aboard a small vessel that cut through the waves with dangerous speed. Silenus, after so much waiting, found himself suddenly free of the land and in motion. The wind behind them some might have called a gale, but he considered it a blessing. The poor trader who captained the ship knew without asking that their mission was covert and perilous. He kept the sail unfurled and rode the back of the sea as one might sit atop a raging bull.

In the boat's small shelter, the two men huddled against the night chill and sea spray. Hanno awoke with the rocking of the waves. He fixed his eyes on the Greek and studied him earnestly, as if searching for him in some dim portion of his memory. Silenus tried several times to bring him into conversation, but Hanno chose his own time.

Eventually, in the darkness of full night, Hanno said, “Out of the clutches of one Greek . . .”

Silenus filled in the pause. “. . . and into the hands of an old friend. By the gods, you must have fared all right if you leave that chamber with humor on your tongue. Are you hungry? I brought food, for I feared they'd starved you.”

Hanno shook his head. “Romans believe meat and rich food make a man soft. So they gave me meat instead of the plain food they favor.” A fit of coughing choked out his words. He was silent for a moment and then whispered, “They fed me so that I would be stronger for their questions.”

“Think no more about it,” Silenus said. “It's over. Done. You've left that dungeon and none need speak of what went on there. I'll never betray you, as you never betrayed your country. That's all anybody need know.”

Hanno looked as if he might try a weak smile but he did not. He just gazed into the other man's eyes with an intensity that was statement and question and silence all.

Silenus had to turn away. “And to think,” he said, “at one time I thought we were just a few words away from becoming lovers.”

Hanno closed his eyes as if this thought pained him.

The air above Rome hummed with a wild, bickering energy, with resentment and anger, with possibility and passion, with fear of the gods, and with the fervent hope that divine forces would soon smile on the Roman people. In alleyways and baths and markets, Romans spoke of nothing save the situation they found themselves in and how to remedy it. Few opinions sat easily next to one another, but the tone of the discourse had shifted. The shock of the Trebia now lay a distant memory; gone was the desperation following Trasimene; forgotten the notion of Hannibal's invincibility. In place of these, the Roman people stoked the fires of indignant rage. Under Fabius' leadership they had wasted an entire season pretending to be cowards. They had suffered humiliation after humiliation. When the old man finally seemed to have the African within his grasp he let him escape by a cheap, cowardly ruse. Things had to change, at all levels, decisively and soon.

The dictator received a cold reception on his return to Rome. He walked the streets with the decorum he had long nurtured, with his faithful around him. He showed not the slightest diffidence, gave no hint that he viewed his strange campaign with regret. He handed his dictatorship back into the trust of the Senate without a word of apology. This apparent indifference to public criticism united the people against him. A senator's wife dubbed him Fabius the Delayer. The name took. Children taunted him in the streets. They threw out insults that were rarely intelligible—spoken as they were on the run, with fear and laughter both garbling the words—but the sight of young ones darting to and fro through the dictator's entourage had a detrimental effect on his stature. Enough so that a street player could get away with depicting the dictator as completely blind, a feeble creature who complained that his testicles had somehow fallen out of the sacks that held them. By the end of the performance—to the hilarity of ever-growing crowds—the actor was down upon his knees, searching with his hands for the missing baubles. The audience laughed all the harder because mirth had been absent from the capital so long. With its return, however, a new future seemed possible. The elections only verified this.

Terentius Varro stepped first into the fringed toga of consul. He who had so chafed against the dictator's delaying tactics easily became the popular choice. He wrapped the garment around his thick torso and walked with one arm clenched at an angle that highlighted the bulge of his bicep. Though he was not exactly of the people, he knew how to play to a crowd, boasting with an earthy bravado that his family had once been butchers. He knew that citizens both rich and poor wanted action. It was not simply a matter of honor, of national pride, or even of revenge for lives lost. The fact was that people were going hungry. Food was in short supply. Goods normally transported across the country had been long held up. Italy, so rightly the object of Roman hegemony, was out of balance. Varro pledged to right all this by the age-old method of the Roman people—war on the open field. In his speech accepting the consulship he reminded the Senate that he had once before looked into Hannibal's foul face, some years back, in his city of New Carthage. He swore that the next time he caught sight of him would be the African's last day in command. He would do battle that very hour and bring this matter to a close.

The people greeted all this with enthusiasm. But Romans had embedded deep within them a cautious core, a twin who always wished to calm the passions of his brother. Thus the second consul elected was Aemilius Paullus, already a veteran of the office: He had commanded previously in Illyria. The family line of this more seasoned choice nowhere converged with that of butchers. He was a friend to the brothers Scipio and had apprenticed under Fabius himself. Indeed, it was rumored that on the evening after the election Aemilius supped at the former dictator's house, listening to the older man's counsel and taking within himself a portion of his views. But if this was true, he was prudent enough not to admit it.

The Senate, having appointed these two men with a war mission, did not fail to support them. In addition to the four legions already in the field, they called up four more. They increased the number of men in each to five thousand, and they demanded that their allies provide matching forces. More than one hundred senators left the Senate to serve in the coming year's army. Though they were going to war, the people felt propelled by an almost euphoric wave of enthusiasm. They would field an army such as the world had never known—a full eighty thousand soldiers for Rome. The destiny of their people was again within reach. They had only to remember themselves and seize it. They were Romans, after all.

Another point of interest in the new year's elections—an event hardly noticed in the consular turmoil—was the rise of Publius Scipio to the position of tribune. He was thereby entrusted with protecting the lives, property, and well-being of the people. The young man, son of the former consul, savior of his father at the Ticinus, whisperer in the dictator's ear, held to a path of quiet ascendance.

Hasdrubal found the Scipio brothers a constant nuisance, a two-headed viper that threatened to stir the whole of Iberia into rebellion. Word of Trasimene must have reached the Scipios quickly, for their tactics changed somewhat late in the summer. They became cautious. They turned their talents to political intrigue. The two sides played a game of strategic moves, one pressing around the side of the other, flanking and counterflanking, skirmishing at the fringes of their might but not clashing head-on. Both sides courted the various tribes, each vying to play the native people against each other, or against other Iberians, whichever seemed more expedient. It was an intricate game that ill suited the young Barca. He could barely keep track of who was loyal to whom, who an enemy of whom, and why, or which double or triple betrayal was in the works at any one time. Had it not been for Noba, with his labyrinthine memory, he would have overturned the game board in frustration long ago.

In the autumn, frustrated by the lack of direct action and warily feeling that the contest was turning against him, Hasdrubal pushed for a decisive military clash. His army was divided—half of his forces patrolled the far south, staying vigilant lest any portion of the empire grow rebellious—but he drew upon a fresh reserve of troops gathered from the Tagus region, mostly of the Carpetani. They were raw recruits, numerous but not entirely happy with their lot in life since Hannibal's rout of them a few years before. They might not want to fight, but like all men they would do so for their lives. If they were flanked on either side by the best of his troops, the Africans, then simple self-preservation would transform them into something useful.

When the opportunity came to surprise the Scipios, at an unremarkable spot near Dertosa, Hasdrubal snatched at it. At least, he thought he was surprising them. They drew up into their orderly ranks with amazing efficiency, and with the first volley thrown from the Roman velites his Carpetani troops broke ranks. Many of them grumbled against being pressed into the fight, and they all found the sight of Rome's ordered butchers too much to bear. They shifted in confusion, one line inching nervously back into the next and that pushing still further ranks into disorder. A tumult of confusion passed from man to man. The African troops held solid, briefly. They watched as the Roman front flowed in on the Iberians like a river pressing against an untried dam. They might have fallen upon the enemy's side to great effect, but such was not the mood of the day. Instead they turned and executed a quick retreat. Just like that the battle was decided.

Hasdrubal shouted orders that his signalers conveyed to the troops as well as they could. But fear can drench men faster than a downpour of rain. Hasdrubal had heard of such things but never witnessed them. The Romans that day did not so much fight as slaughter. The Africans, though retreating, had not actually panicked, so most of the Roman fury focused on the Iberians. They dashed forward, hacking and stabbing at the backs of the panicked conscripts, slicing at the tendons in their calves, stabbing into the soft tissue at the back of their knees.

More than ten thousand Iberians died at Dertosa. Only a few hundred Africans perished, but this small good fortune was as nothing compared to the ill will it inspired throughout Iberia. The Ilergetes of northern Iberia shrugged off any pretense of impartiality. They went over to Rome completely, sealing the alliance with the severed heads of the Carthaginian delegates in their midst. The Vaccaei—distant though they were, to the northwest—announced their defection to Rome. Even the Turdetani, for whom Hannibal had attacked Saguntum, were known to be corresponding with the Scipios. Andobales pledged that the agreements between Carthage and the Oretani still held, but Hasdrubal heard Bayala's cautioning words behind everything the man said, and did not trust him. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to go on as if he did.

Word came of another rebellion too symbolically important to ignore. The Carpetani, hearing of their losses at Dertosa, rose again, declaring their independence from both Carthage and Rome. Hasdrubal remembered the conversations he had with Hannibal as they marched toward these same people just a few years earlier. The memory was almost painful to him: the two of them mounted and conversing, a whole army behind them. At that time, Hasdrubal had not yet fully imagined the burdens of leadership. Even considering the bloody violence of the work, it was a memory of innocence.

But remembrances are of no use unless they inform the present. With that in mind, Hasdrubal acted—not in passion this time, but with cold determination. His southern troops had just returned from their duties. He stirred them from their short rest, met them at a double-time march, and in consultation with Noba planned to meet the Iberians' treachery with an even greater one.

The Carpetani greeted the approaching army in their usual form: as a raucous swarm propelled more by courage than by strategy. Hasdrubal timed the approach of his army in such a way that they came within sight of the horde toward the close of the day. They made camp, apparently to await the next day's coming battle. As Hannibal had done during their last encounter, Hasdrubal put his men into motion in the dead of night. But this time he had the bulk of his infantry back several miles, far enough to ensure that the Iberians would not be able to press battle the next day. At the same time he sent the full force of his cavalry on a mission under Noba's direction. He knew a good deal about this area, and he put that knowledge to use in navigating through the night.

At dawn, the cavalry swept down not upon the Carpetani horde but upon their unprotected wives and children some miles away. They breached the main town's defenses with ease and poured through the humble streets, slaughtering men of dangerous age. Hasdrubal had ordered the capture of all females of childbearing age. Quite a number this made. They were bound and sent on their own feet toward New Carthage, captives to seal the Carpetani to a new loyalty.

All this was a day's work. The men on the battlefield did not learn of the situation until the close of the day, at which point they could not vent their fury. Instead they spent the night in anguished confusion. Many, desperate to learn of their families' fates, slipped away during the night, hoping to find their wives and daughters safe. Meanwhile, Hasdrubal moved his infantry forward into position again. With the next dawn he fell on the disheartened remnants of the Carpetani. The butchery was fast and easy. That evening he accepted an invitation to parley with the Carpetani chieftain, Gamboles. In fact there was little parleying. Hasdrubal's diatribe was made more vicious by his fatigue and resentment and distaste for his own tactics. The women, he said, would not be harmed so long as the two peoples were friends. But should Carthage find itself betrayed, then each and every one of them would be pumped full of Carthaginian seed, to bear a half-breed army of the future.

“Do you understand me?” he asked. “The Carpetani must never rise again. You have been beaten beyond hope of future victory. Do not be a fool. Do not harbor plans for vengeance in your hearts. Do not walk from here with malice. Instead, understand that I've been more generous than you deserve. Tell this to your people. Speak plainly so that they may understand and hear your voice one last time before you come with me to be my guest in New Carthage. Do exactly as I say, because I promise you, Gamboles, if I hear one whisper of stirring, your women will suffer for it. As will you. I'll sever your head from your shoulders and shove it nose-first up your ass. Thereafter, your people will each and every one of them eat a diet of shit.”

Hasdrubal rode away with all the promises he asked for. Not terribly satisfying, but certainly the best he could manage under the circumstances. He had never thought of cruelty like this before. He had no wish to see any of these punishments come to pass, but neither could he allow his father's empire to crumble on his watch. All things considered it was one of his more successful ventures, though he felt little pride in it and had no true faith that Fortune had joined his cause.

With the work done, he headed for New Carthage. The ten days it took to reach the capital passed in a blur, a tumult of motion and fretting and gut-deep longing to see his wife again and to feel her legs straddled around his hips. On arriving, he attended no business but went straight to his private chambers. Entering the outer room he called out, “Wife, come to me now! I need to pierce you!”

He dropped his sword unceremoniously on the stone floor, cast his cloak over a chair, and snatched up a waiting pitcher of wine. He did all this at a brisk walk and was therefore well into the room before he saw the two figures lounging on his couches. He stared at them for a long moment, openmouthed, with all the mystification he would have shown upon seeing ghosts. He held the pitcher halfway to his mouth, dripping wine upon the floor.

Silenus glanced at Hanno and said, “That's a strange greeting.”

It was almost too much to bear thinking about, but Imilce could not help but do so again and again each day. She was ever being reminded that young Hamilcar was approaching his fourth birthday and that it had been three long years since his father had last seen him. She remembered how the two of them had looked the day before he departed. Hannibal had stood holding the boy in his muscled arms, looking down on him and whispering close to his face, telling him things he said were for the child's ears only. The boy's legs dangled beneath his father's grip, plump and lovely; his features were still rounded, his fingers chubby. The boy had listened to the man patiently, for a few moments at least. Then he squirmed free and ran off to play. Hannibal looked up at her, shrugged and smiled and said something she could not now remember, though she always imagined him with his mouth moving and wished that she could move closer to the recollection and place her ear against his lips and feel them brush against her.

It pained her to think how changed they both were now, how days and months and years had pushed in between that moment and this one. She knew her husband had suffered injuries that would mark him for life. She knew he had lost the sight in one eye and endured hardships she could barely imagine. He might be a different man entirely the next time she saw him. Likewise, Little Hammer would be almost unrecognizable to Hannibal. He had sprouted like a vine reaching for the sky. He no longer teetered on wobbly legs, but darted through their chambers like a cheetah. She realized her son thought of Carthage as his first home. He reached for Sapanibal and Sophonisba with complete comfort and unquestioning love. They luxuriated in this, even as they joked that they must treasure the few years the boy had left to spend in the company of women. Even Didobal softened in the boy's company.

Imilce had spoken to him over the years of his father, as had many others. The child was constantly reminded whose son he was and how much was expected of him. But lately she had begun to fear that her words found no purchase in his memory. As she spoke he stared absently into the distance. When she concluded, he moved away from her, always polite enough, always nodding when he was supposed to, speaking when asked to—but she knew the boy had a blank space in his center. Hannibal had actually been present just one year of the boy's four: no time at all. In the child's mind, his father could only be a creature built of words, a fancy like a character from old stories. Not so removed from the gods: like them, a part of every day, unseen and believed in mostly without evidence.

She was pondering these things one afternoon when Sophonisba called on her. Imilce reclined on the sofa at the edge of her chamber, looking out over the gardens. As usual she had nothing to occupy her, no responsibilities. Hamilcar was engaged in some activity that did not require her supervision. Sophonisba came in behind the maid who escorted her. She did not wait as the servant announced her with the usual formality of Carthaginian households, but pushed past the woman and plopped down on the sofa beside her sister-in-law. The maid tried a moment to continue the introduction, but then gave up. She withdrew, annoyance flashing on her face. Seeing this Imilce nearly chastised her on the spot. No servant should ever comment upon the actions of her masters. But Sophonisba was too eager to talk.

“If you are good to me,” she said, “I will tell you a secret. You must promise to keep it, though. If you betray me, I'll never forgive you. You'll have an undying enemy for the rest of your life. Do you promise?”

Imilce looked at her with more seriousness than she intended. The proposition struck her with an unreasonable amount of fear. She could not survive in this place with Sophonisba as an enemy. The introduction of secrets brought with it both camaraderie and the awareness that somebody else was being excluded. Her heart beat a little faster, even though she knew it was silly to find anything ominous in this. The young woman's face was all mirth and welcome. Her threat was nothing but banter between two friends.

Imilce said, “Of course. Tell me.”

“I spent the night in the wilds with Masinissa,” the young woman said. She paused for dramatic effect, her lips pursed, eyes mischievous and painfully beautiful. She explained that she and her fiancé had stolen away from the city the previous evening, with her sitting before the prince on the bare back of his stallion. They rode out through a side gate, cut through the peasants' town, out past the fields, and on into the rolling orchards. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon. It was a screen of the darkest blue, alive with numberless stars. The land itself seemed endless, thrown out in ripples stretching deep into the heart of the continent. They sometimes passed campfires of field workers, or saw the signal fires of soldiers, but mostly the night was theirs alone.

Imilce chided her for the rash danger—not to mention the damage she might have done to her reputation and to the very union. They had only just become engaged, after all, and it was meant to be some time before they were wed. But Sophonisba laughed at both these points. As for the danger, when she said she rode alone with Masinissa, she meant “alone” in princely terms. A guard of fifty horsemen shadowed them.

As for reputation, nothing mattered to her mother more than the power of her familial connections; and nothing mattered to Gaia, Masinissa's father, more than the security of his kingdom. Everyone wanted them wed. So, she was sure, anything could be overlooked. And, anyway, there were stories that Didobal herself had been as mischievous as a jackal in her youth. She had a few secrets to pressure her with, things she had not even divulged to Imilce, sister though she was.

“Should I tell you what happened then?” Sophonisba asked. “Or need I find a different confidante?”

Imilce shut her lips in a tight line, keeping up the look of reproach for as long as she could. But her façade masked very different feelings. She was always amazed at how Sophonisba occupied and acted in the world. It was not just that she flouted tradition and decorum on occasion; it was the casual confidence with which she accomplished this. Imilce, staring at her, wished for a portion of this young woman's strength; with it perhaps she, too, would find a way to act boldly to answer the things that troubled her.

Eventually Sophonisba overcame the unanswered question and proceeded. Though he rode fast to impress her, and seemed to dash from feature to feature on the landscape at whim, he did have a destination in mind. They stopped at a strange structure set at the top of a gentle crest, with views of the country to either side. They dismounted and walked past a crumbling wall that squared a courtyard, no larger than a pen for a few horses. A tower rose from one corner, although it too was damaged at what must have been its midpoint. Blocks littered the ground.