Ben Kane: Clouds of War

‘’Scuse me, sir.’ Mutt had noticed something untoward. He strode towards the men, shouting orders.

Hanno fell back to brooding. In Iberia, the situation was not as good as it had been. A number of Carthaginian defeats had seen many tribes changing sides to support Rome. Happily, Sicily was another story. There Carthage had new, powerful supporters. Hippocrates and Epicydes, two Syracusan nobles who had fought with Hannibal, and been subsequently sent by him to the island to foment unrest, had of recent days seized control of the great fortress of Syracuse. This advance — upsetting the city’s fifty-year status as an ally of Rome — increased the likelihood of further help from Carthage on the island. Hanno prayed that the Syracusan and Carthaginian troops on Sicily would be victorious. That outcome would see Hannibal receive reinforcements, which would be warmly received.

The war has taken us from one end of Italy to the other, thought Hanno. His right hand strayed to his neck, the fingers slipping under the cloth that hid his scar from the world. He’d received it as a prisoner in Victumulae, thousands of stadia to the north. Pera, the Roman officer who had given it to him, had been a sadistic bastard. No doubt the sewer rat had been killed in the sack of the town, but Hanno wished that he could have personally seen him on his way to the underworld. Bomilcar, the Carthaginian who had saved Hanno’s life, had been assigned to a different Libyan phalanx afterwards. He had survived Trasimene and Cannae, and the campaigning since. Hanno felt a stab of guilt that he hadn’t been better at keeping in touch. I’ll seek him out tonight, he decided. Bring along a jug of decent wine.

Hanno tramped over to join Mutt. The pair spent the next couple of hours sweating, shouting at the men and getting involved in the more complicated manoeuvres. By the time that they had finished, Hanno had forgotten all about Aurelia and his concerns with the campaign. ‘Mutt, come with me this evening,’ he said as they led the soldiers back to the camp.

‘Where, sir?’

After this long, the honorific still jarred. Hanno had told his second-in-command on numerous occasions not to bother with it, but Mutt was intransigent. ‘The men need to know that there’s a difference between you and me, sir, just as there is between me and them,’ he had replied. Mutt was as stubborn as a mule, so Hanno said nothing.

‘I want to find Bomilcar. The man who got me out of the cell in Victumulae,’ he explained when Mutt’s face remained blank. ‘I haven’t seen him in months. It’d be good to have a few cups of wine with him. I would appreciate your company. He would too.’

‘Aye, sir, that sounds-’ Mutt broke off as a troop of chattering Numidians cantered past, as ever clad in nothing but their sleeveless tunics. ‘-good,’ he finished.

‘Excellent.’ Hanno clapped him on the shoulder. He could feel a fine session looming. On the rare occasions that he’d persuaded Mutt to drink with him, things had got very messy indeed. It didn’t matter if that happened, though. Life was quiet at the moment. No one more senior would care if he spent the following day in his blankets, recovering.

It was then that he caught sight of Sapho walking towards them. Hanno’s mood dampened. No one more senior would disapprove perhaps, but his oldest brother, who was of equivalent rank, undoubtedly would. Since their youth, Sapho had liked to act as if he were Hanno’s moral guardian. ‘Not a word about tonight,’ he hissed.

Mutt knew Hanno well enough. ‘My lips are sealed, sir.’

‘Ho, brother!’ Sapho called out. ‘Well met.’

‘Well met indeed.’ Hanno pulled a smile that was only half fake. Some of the time, he got on with Sapho. To his endless annoyance, he could never quite predict which brother would greet him: the snide, ruthless Sapho who had — probably, although Hanno had no proof — considered letting him drown in a mud pool in Etruria, or the jovial, considerate Sapho who brought wine and told him what Hannibal was planning, as had happened before Trasimene.

‘Training your men?’ Sapho fell into step beside him.

‘Indeed.’

‘Mine are on a hundred stadia run with my second-in-command.’

Hanno heard his soldiers’ dismayed mutters as Sapho’s words carried over his shoulder. ‘Any special reason for that?’

‘They’re getting wine bellies from lying about, doing nothing but drink. It’s time that they got back into shape.’

A devilment took Hanno, and he poked at his brother’s stomach, which wasn’t as flat as it had been. ‘Shouldn’t you be with them?’ He heard Mutt’s snort quickly converted to a cough.

Sapho shoved back at him, annoyed. ‘I’m as fit as I ever was, you cheeky pup!’

‘Of course you are,’ said Hanno. I shouldn’t have said a word, he thought. It’s not worth the aggravation. To his relief, Sapho let it drop.

They made idle chitchat on the walk back, passing through the large gateway that granted access through the tall earthen fortifications. Relieved that Sapho appeared not to have sought him out for any particular reason, Hanno began to relax. He was beginning to consider the idea of inviting Sapho along that night — surprising himself — when he spotted Bostar with a couple of other officers, coming their way. His heart sank. Any time his two older brothers got together, there was potential for trouble.

To his surprise, a convivial air reigned as the groups converged. Bostar introduced his companions, two phalanx commanders whom Hanno vaguely knew but whom Sapho hailed like long-lost comrades. The five men chatted about the usual sort of things: the weather, the state of their men’s fitness, how bad their rations were, whether there had been any reliable sightings of Roman forces, where the next enemy attack would be and so on. Everything was fine until Sapho mentioned, as he just had to Hanno, that his men needed to improve their fitness because of the amounts that they’d been drinking. At this point, Bostar pointed at Sapho’s belly and commented, ‘There’s a bit of extra flesh there, or my eyes are mistaken, brother.’

Sapho flared up like a bush fire. ‘What are you saying?’

Bostar, who was still lean as a hunting dog, shrugged. ‘You have a slight gut. Some exercise would do you some good too.’

Sapho’s eyes filled with suspicion. He swung from Bostar to Hanno and back. ‘You two have been talking behind my back, haven’t you? Laughing at me!’

‘No!’ protested Hanno truthfully.

‘We haven’t said a word,’ said Bostar with a trace of a smirk. Hanno cursed him for it. Now was not the time to rile Sapho further, over something so inconsequential. The two other officers already looked embarrassed — and less than impressed.

Of course Sapho homed in on Bostar’s expression like a fly to shit. ‘Then why the little smile, eh?’

‘We haven’t said a word to one another, Sapho, I swear it,’ said Hanno, annoyed at the way this was degenerating.

‘Really?’ Sapho’s mistrustful expression eased, but his face was full of rage as he turned on Bostar. ‘Just had to get a joke in in front of your friends, was that it?’

‘As if you wouldn’t do the same, if I were overweight!’ retorted Bostar.

‘Screw you!’ snarled Sapho. Before anyone could react, he’d stepped in and thrown a powerful punch to Bostar’s chin, snapping his head and body backwards. Thump . He went down on to the flat of his back. Sapho waded in, throwing kicks and stamping on Bostar with his studded sandals. ‘Always think you know better than me, don’t you?’ he shouted, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Well, you don’t!’

Hanno shoved himself between Sapho and the groaning Bostar. ‘Get off him!’