David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Memories brought the tears, the recollection that he had once been the child of a mother, that there was a woman living in the world who had slapped his bottom and wiped his mouth when he was sick and fed him bread dipped in olive oil. Everything about this seemed impossibly tragic. So much so that he did not even cheer with the rest when the rocks exploded amid plumes of steam and flying debris. What a silly thing to find joyful, he thought. Cracked boulders. More hiking. More cold. How did these things compare to the embrace of the fat woman who had created you? He could not help thinking all these men were mad, not only the leader.

Then something unexpected happened. He awoke one frigid morning at the foot of the Alps, four days after they had begun the descent. Italian soil lay beneath him. The awareness that they had done the impossible dawned on him as gradually as the brightening day. The army that had left New Carthage numbered upward of a hundred thousand. Now, they were down to a dejected, battered, and emaciated remnant of that. Perhaps thirty thousand, perhaps fewer. They had lost thousands of horses. And the elephants, though all still lived, were gaunt versions of their former selves. The rich train of booty and the thriving community of camp followers were, as far as he could tell, no more.

But on that morning, even knowing all this, Imco peered out his tent flap and looked up at the clear white-blue Italian sky. They were here. Despite it all, they were not defeated. He swelled with a sudden, long-absent enthusiasm. Things might yet look up. There might still be rewards awaiting him, pleasures that his mother's image had no place beside. Once again, Imco remembered himself, the soldier he had become and the mission he was part of. They were a storm about to break over Italy. What army could possibly stop them now?

Aradna considered herself blessed to have found the dead man. Though she had seen many corpses in her time, she would never forget the way he sat upright with an arm stretched out before him, like a blind beggar beseeching pity from unseen passersby. Perhaps it was because of this posture that so many had ignored him. Aradna, however, could not help but notice him when a raven perched on his shoulder, looked about, pecked at the man's lip, and looked about again. His features were those of an Iberian Celt, and he was older than most warriors. His eyes were open, lips crusted and peeling, cheeks blackened by frostbite prior to his death.

But it was not enough to deter her from reaching out and touching the garment draped over his shoulders, a thick cloak of wolf fur that might well have been cured earlier on the march. She wondered for a moment that a man could freeze with such a garment on him, but then she noticed his other hand. It pressed against a brown stain on his tunic, fingers stuck either side of an arrow shaft. His death must have been slow, his upraised hand an entreaty for medical attention that never came. It was not exactly easy to pry the cloak off him, but Aradna managed it. She trudged away wrapped in it and renewed in her belief that Artemis looked kindly upon her.

Such thoughts were truly acts of faith considering the hardships of the past weeks. The soldiers complained of their lot, but they knew nothing of true privation. She walked the same ground they did, through the same ravines and over snowy passes and across rivers cold as liquid ice. But she got no rations. The people she marched with held few supplies in trust and each harbored a deep suspicion of any person's actions toward them, kind or cruel. They had been cut to ribbons in the gorge, their numbers halved in that single afternoon and dwindling ever since. The loose order that had bound them to the army vanished. Supplies were abandoned to the Allobroges. Men and women were cut down and robbed of their possessions, some captured alive and deprived of their very freedom.

One evening the stragglers' camp she slept in was raided by local brigands. She had jumped to her feet at the first sound of confusion, but a man grabbed her wrist and began to drag her away. She yanked so hard against him that her upper arm popped out of its joint. The strange sensation this gave her attacker provided her a quick moment of confusion. She bashed his foot beneath her heel and fled. Her loose arm blinded her with pain, but the movement of running shifted the joint home and the pain was gone in an instant.

For a time after that she traveled alone, mingling with the rear of the army, scavenging on the debris left in their wake. She took even more care to attract no attention. Like the others, she had not bathed in weeks now. But she made sure that she was filthier than most. She caked her face with dirt and grease. Her hair grew into thick knots, hung with twigs and bits of rubbish. She strung a dead mouse around her neck. She ran her fingers through the stink of her armpits and then pressed the scent onto all her garments. She considered the fumes that met her nose when she squatted and thought that she might smear this scent on her outer garments as well. It was a short-lived idea, however. One could never tell what might stir a man's loins. She had heard of stranger things.

But even filthy and disheveled and starving, Aradna was a beauty. Men could not help but notice. A Gaul stopped her one clear morning at the foot of a scree slope. He was upon her suddenly, long sword in hand. He stepped from behind a tree as if he had lain in wait for some time and had chosen this moment for the fineness of the crisp air and the quiet solitude they found themselves in. He indicated with a thrusting pelvis the activity he had in mind. She spat at him. He ignored this, calming her with his weaponless hand, patting toward her to indicate that it would not hurt. Just a small thing, he seemed to be saying. Just a moment of your time. He never lowered the upraised sword. She hissed at him and gestured with her hands that he should pleasure himself and leave her out of it. But behind the bold rejection, she knew the threat he posed. He was a strong man in his prime who would happily injure her to have her. He might lop off an arm to punish her, or beat her senseless and carry her into slavery.

Aradna dropped to her knees in the scree, opened her mouth, and motioned that she would receive him with it. He was wary of this, but as she sucked air in and out of her lips he began to think again. His trousers were down to his knees the next moment. Aradna almost smiled. The weakness of men never failed to amaze her. As he shuffled forward he did not notice that she grasped a jagged stone in either hand. She drew her arms up and back and snapped them together with a motion like a bird flapping its wings to take off. Her two hands brought the stones together on his penis. She turned and fled, but not before blood splattered her face. She shook her head at the foolishness and at the curse of the beauty she had never asked for and could not dispose of.

By the time she reached the snowy plains the stragglers had so thinned that she walked alone. She inspected bodies for coins and valuables, cut flesh from frozen pack animals, added and subtracted clothing as new pieces were presented to her. Midway up the slope the gradient lessened briefly and Aradna came upon a strange pit alongside the path. It was a crater with sloping walls the height of several people in depth. The base of it showed the rocky frame of the mountain itself. In the center of this stood a lone, dejected donkey. The creature was completely still, head hung low, eyes fixed on nothing at all and seeking nothing at all. A urine stink seeped up from the pit, strong enough to make Aradna clamp a hand over her nose. She realized that the donkey had nothing to do with the shaping of the depression. It was simply a spot that man after man had chosen to urinate in, so melting the snow and ice and leaving a steaming pit behind. The donkey must either have stumbled into it, or else sought it out in a desire to touch his hooves to solid stone. Aradna watched him a moment, thinking. Then she slid-climbed down into the hole. Gifts like this should not be questioned, just received gratefully.