David Durham - Pride of Carthage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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