David Durham - Pride of Carthage

“This is Kalif,” the Moor said. “He is a strong man. He'll cut clean, with all his force. Two or three strokes at the most and he'll be through. His blade is very sharp . . .”

“Don't do it,” Mago said, eyes shut tight, shaking his head.

“There is no other way.”

“I said don't do it.”

“We clamped your artery to stop the bleeding. The leaking was killing you. Instead you live, but your lower leg is already dead. It's rotten, Mago. It's eating up into you. Let us do what we must. I cannot arrive in Carthage with you dead, not without having done everything to save you.”

“But I said no. You must obey . . .” Mago did not finish the sentence. The effort sapped his energy. “The sun was black,” he said. He knew this would sound strange, but he felt a need to explain it while he could.

“That may have been,” Gadeer said cautiously. “I did not notice that, but it may well have been so.”

“Like the eye of a beast before it kills,” Mago said. Having said that, he felt some amount of completion. The world fizzed around him and the pain was not so important now and he thought he might just fall asleep. He heard Gadeer talking with the others. They were debating whether to bow to his wishes or to treat him. He was no longer a part of the discussion. He was curious and tried to follow them, but his mind would not stay put. He thought of an old man who used to sweep the steps leading into the Council chambers in Carthage. For all he knew, the man was dead. He had hardly ever shared words with him in life, but as a youth he sometimes tossed him coins for his trouble and listened to his toothless mouth give profuse thanks. Why did he think of a man he hardly knew? Why not have visions of Hannibal? Of Hasdrubal and Hanno, of his sisters, of his mother? He could not remember the details of what the man said to him. The old one might have claimed to be a veteran. He might have had wisdom to ease him through this transition. Might have, but he could not remember now.

And then he thought of the Roman senators' rings from Cannae clattering on the floor of the Carthaginian Council chamber. Perhaps the old veteran had commented on this. He had been so proud at that moment, so gleeful at the great killing that Cannae had been. He remembered the way he had grinned as the circles rolled out across the stones, and he regretted his mirth. That grin seemed foul. Of all the things done and undone in his life, he wished he could take back that grin.

Eventually he heard Gadeer say, “All right, let us do it now as he fades.”

He sensed the other man step forward and felt several hands on his body, moving him this way and that. He knew, without looking, at just what moment Kalif raised his sword and he understood why and it saddened him beyond comment. When the blade struck the first time it felt as if a club had hit him. How could the blade be so dull? The second blow was the same. The third and fourth as well. Really, he thought, they were not very good at this. And it was useless, anyway. He felt death coming toward him, no matter these men's efforts.

Most generals would have considered the task of withdrawing an army entrenched throughout southern Italy to be a deadly difficult operation, the kind of test presented to a leader once in his career, a chore for an entire summer, requiring careful planning, fraught with risks equal to those of any offensive campaign. To accomplish it successfully within a month, as Carthage demanded, was impossible, as Hannibal's generals warned him. But if it was, it was simply the latest of many such impossibilities to challenge his leadership.

The commander was, of course, tired now in a way he had never been before: suffering the physical ills of campaign, mentally drained by years of constant leadership, spiritually wrecked by the deaths of his brothers and friends, by the slipping away of a dream so nearly realized. He felt as if the world pulled him toward the ground with twice the normal force. The old falarica injury from Saguntum plagued him with phantom pains, as if the wound were still raw and new, the spear point still probing his flesh. His thoughts came more slowly than they once had. Each idea was somewhat unwieldy now. It had to be rotated in his mind, turned over and identified and set in place. Rest did little to refresh him. Indeed, he dreamed of fatigue, of constant motion, unending hikes. He planned routes in countries far from this one, fought segments of old battles, merging one conflict with another so that they all raged on in him at once, a grand confusion that never came any nearer to an end.

But even in this state he moved through the world looking every bit the commander he had always been. He still managed to accomplish the impossible. Hemmed in as he was in the southern regions of the peninsula, he bade the whole long stretch of Italy farewell in a style befitting his long dominance. He backed his troops in swift, orderly formations, directing his generals to march at night, to move unexpectedly, to survey the land they traversed so that no Roman army might catch them in a trap. He took everything he could from the region, stripped the land of grain and vegetables, beans and livestock. He did not hold these in reserve but instructed his men to feed themselves heartily. He told them to put on weight if they could, to sate themselves now, because they might never see this land again and because they needed strength for the fight to come.

He was not sure what sort of troops he would find waiting for him in Africa. He stirred the Gauls by painting pictures in their minds of the riches to be granted by his grateful nation. On the other hand, he pointed out, if they remained in Italy they would be far from home and with no ship to remove their feet from hostile land. And they would be at the mercy of the vengeful legions. He reminded the Campanians still with him that concluding the war successfully would benefit their people in the long run. He harangued the Lucanian and Bruttian towns about the requirements of friendships; he lured peasants with promises, dragged some from their homes forcibly. He needed men, even if only to stand before his veterans and blunt Roman swords. He drained the foot of Italy of everything he could. At Croton he met the ships dispatched from Carthage, and he put Italy behind him.

It was already late in the season when he landed at Leptis Minor, as the Council had arranged. Apparently, Carthage wanted him near but did not actually favor inviting the whole army inside the city's defenses. Awaiting him were mahouts with seventy-eight elephants. This would have been a welcome sight, except that from his first inspection of them it was obvious that most of the beasts were young, many of them untrained, all of them novices at battle. Vandicar stared at them with tight lips and eventually said he would need three months to train them, at the very least. Hannibal gave him three days, after which they marched to Hadrumetum. He picked up the twelve thousand troops who had served Mago. He knew that there was a well of sorrow possible in contemplating yet another brother's death, but he did not pause to explore it. He put the anguish of it in a compartment of his mind that he would return to later.

Upon receiving detailed reports from the Council, he learned what the enemy had been up to. After securing Cirta and the surrounding area, Publius and Masinissa had turned east and ranged across the flatlands to Hippo Regius, which they took without difficulty. It seemed that Publius had paused there for a week and sent reconnaissance missions into the hills of Naragara, perhaps gathering further troops among the Massylii. Then the whole army marched on Utica, besieged it by land and sea. The Council sent out an army from the city's garrisons, believing they might attack the enemy from the rear while they were engaged with the siege. A mistake. Masinissa outflanked them as if he had dreamed the whole maneuver up in his spare time. Carthage lost nearly four thousand men, many of them from aristocratic families. In pursuing them in retreat toward Carthage, the Romans captured Tunis, which had been abandoned by its garrison. From here the consul could literally gaze across the bay at the target of his enmity. Such was the unease in Carthage that envoys opened peace talks with him, although these were cut short on word of Hannibal's arrival.