David Durham - Pride of Carthage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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