David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Hanno realized his palms were sweaty and his chest tingled as if he were approaching an enemy to do battle. Just a few moments had passed, but he had no idea why he had spoken as he just had. “This is no business of yours,” he said. “As usual, you forget yourself.”

“I apologize,” Silenus said, “but, Barca, you are a difficult script to read. Have you ever wondered what your life would have been if you'd been the firstborn of your mother?”

“The same as it is now.”

“How do you mean? Would you have been the leader of the army then? Hanno, the Supreme Commander of the Army of Carthage . . . Or would that title have gone to your brother, as it does now, but somehow skipping over the eldest? I mean, in which way would it have been the same?”

“It is a foolish question,” Hanno said. “A philosopher's trick. You may speak circles around me, but the world is as it is. No other way. This talk bores me, Silenus. You bore me.”

“Are you sure of that?” Silenus asked. He dropped a leg down from the couch, exposing his inner thigh for a moment. “Sometimes it seems to me that what you feel for me is not boredom, not distaste at all, but rather a certain hunger. We Greeks understand this hunger better than any. I possess the tools for this training in abundance, my friend. In abundance. Perhaps you should have me school you in it.”

“Perhaps,” Hanno finally said.

Silenus, his face quite near the other man's, grumbled an affirmative, a sound from low in his throat, stretched out. “Yes,” he said. “Perhaps . . .”

The Greek let the word and the possibilities presented by it linger in the air between them. Again, Hanno felt the overwhelming desire to lash out. But he knew the feeling was not simple anger at all. It was, as Silenus said, a certain hunger. He wanted to press his mouth to the Greek's and silence him with the force of his lips and tongue. He wanted to lift him bodily and throw him down and teach him that they were equal in body if not in wit. He had never considered that he harbored such passion for this one, with his thin frame and bowed legs and his too-large head and the arrogance that bound it all together. He was no warrior. No specimen of manly beauty. And yet Hanno wanted him with an urgency that punched him low in the abdomen. He wanted brutal, intimate violence, and he had never understood this fully until that moment.

A call from outside his tent interrupted his revelation. Hanno answered hoarsely, and a messenger said that Hannibal wished to see him. “The commander apologizes for the late council,” the voice said, “but he would speak to you presently in his tent.”

Silenus raised a single eyebrow and finished the sentence he had started ages ago: “. . . and perhaps not,” he said. “In any event, not just now.” He drew himself up and looked around as if to gather his things.

Hanno did not move anything except his eyes, which followed as Silenus rose and made his way toward the tent flap.

The Greek glanced back briefly before departing. “Give my best to your brother.”

A few moments later, Hanno wove his way through camp. Somewhere a lone musician worked out a melody on a bone whistle. Campfires illumed various quadrants with a low glow, as if a thick, moisture-laden blanket hovered somewhere just above the height of a man's head and allowed no light to rise above it. As he passed a tethered horse the creature let flow with a stream of urine. The splash was so loud and abrupt that Hanno started. He slid half a step to the side, steadied himself, and glanced around. Nobody was in sight. He cursed the horse under his breath.

Hannibal's tent flap was open to the night. The commander sat on his three-legged stool, studying a scroll on the table before him. He did not rise to greet Hanno, but took in his attire with a long look. Having seen enough, he bent his head back to the tablet. “I've called you from leisure, have I?”

Hanno had no wish to name the activity he had been called from. “I thought I might find you the same,” he said. “The men are at pleasure. . . . Will you never stop to savor your victories, brother?”

Hannibal answered without looking up. “At the end of a day, do you praise yourself for having lived through it? Do you not know that after the night comes the dawn of a new day? When you exhale a breath in one moment, do you believe you have accomplished greatness? Or do you remember that the very next moment you must draw another breath and begin again? A thousand different forces would love to see me fail. I cannot abandon my vigilance for a moment. That is what it means to command. Perhaps you will understand this fully someday. Come closer and sit down, if it pleases you.”

Hanno took a few steps forward, just two bites of the distance between them, no more.

“Hanno, I know that you've not been happy with my decision about your role, but I've thought it through and my mind is unchanged. You will stay on here and watch over the Suessetani. They'll need a strong hand to keep them subdued. I am sure you understand the importance of this. See Bostar in the morning. He is preparing written details for you: names and familial affiliations of these people, geography and accounts of resources. You should learn more of the local tongue as well. We'll get you a tutor. I would only ask that you keep your pleasures in check. Remember, the knife that killed our brother-in-law found him in his bed.”

The interview was over. Hanno, like any common officer, had been dismissed. He flushed hot, felt a leaden pressure behind his eyes. Though he told himself to turn and throw open the tent flap and stride away he did not do so. He could not make his feet move.

“Am I so worthless to you?” he asked.

Hannibal, without looking up or changing his posture or tone, said, “You are my brother and I need a trusted commander here.”

“Have you never considered that I, too, want to kick open the gates of Rome?”

This brought up the other's gaze. “I've never had to consider it. The answer can be assumed by the blood within your veins. But why do you question me? This post is no punishment. It is my will. You'll adhere to it. If I am ever to ask great things of you I must know that you will serve me unquestioningly. You have not always achieved that in the past. Consider this a new opportunity.”

Again, Hannibal bent his head and signaled the discourse was concluded. But again Hanno spoke ahead of himself. “In one breath you say that this assignment is not a slight,” he said. “In the next you name my faults. But what's true? Speak plainly to me! You owe me that much.”

“I did not know that I was in your debt,” Hannibal said. “I thought perhaps you were in mine.”

Hanno—watching his brother's brow, the artery that beat high on it, the eyes running over the words—knew that it was within him to kill his brother. It was a quiet thought, really. There was something comforting in it. An escape he had not imagined before. No matter what might come afterward, it was within the realm of possibility that he could murder; that Hannibal could die. On this ultimate of things they were equally balanced. With that thought in his mind, Hanno spun and trudged from his brother's tent. He avoided him in the following days and parted from him as if they were enemies and not siblings at all. He pushed thoughts of Silenus from his mind. He had never before felt shame at his desires, but there was something different about the scribe and the depth of the turmoil he fueled inside him.

Now, two months later, a lieutenant brought him the news he feared. A legion under Gnaeus Scipio had landed at Emporiae, a Greek settlement that had refused a Carthaginian alliance. The Romans had been welcomed joyously. They numbered easily twice the ten thousand soldiers Hanno controlled and made it no secret that their aim was to hunt down Hanno, and quickly.