David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Bomilcar guffawed. “‘Always seek to engage' . . . You should run through the idiot who said that.”

Hannibal stood erect, though his eyes stayed on the diagram. “Where is the weakness in this?”

Mago glanced at Carthalo. He raised his eyes and cocked his head to show that he would defer if Carthalo had an answer prepared. The cavalry lieutenant, however, just furrowed his brow and leaned to study the diagram. They had all been over this material before, many times, in fact, but they each knew—perhaps the commander knew better than any—that the tactics they had conceived to fight the legion were insufficient, at least on paper. The Roman formation was more versatile than the phalanx, more disciplined than hordes of barbarians, more a machine than a temperamental beast. Some argued that it was the development of this formation that led the Romans to break with the old custom of seasonal skirmishes and begin to subjugate their neighbors completely. They had conquered in an ever-widening circle around them, had defeated most of the Carthaginian commanders during the first war, and had even humbled Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose military machine many had thought unstoppable. Hannibal had always said he was confident that his Libyan veterans could stand toe to toe against any soldiers the world had ever known. But they were only part of the army, few in number compared with the newly trained Iberians and the untested Gauls.

“I was hoping you would tell us,” Mago finally said. “I cannot find the fault in it.”

“Neither can I,” Hannibal said, coughing abruptly. He cleared his throat and ran his palm over his mouth, as if he were drawing the illness from it and depositing it elsewhere. “If the men are well trained I think this formation is nearly unbeatable. A phalanx may be a bristling bull in full armor, but these Romans have created a creature with numerous eyes and many limbs. It may be that we cannot defeat them on an open field, not if the circumstances favor them. But discipline can be a flaw as well as a virtue. They will react as they have been trained, to each circumstance they've come to expect. So we must always present them with the unexpected. We must make sure that we never engage except under conditions to our advantage. We must fight intelligently, unpredictably.”

Bomilcar had been waiting for a pause in his commander's address. “This talk was fine last winter, back in New Carthage, but what good is such chatter now? How can we prevail against a foe that will not fight us? That is the trick I'd like to hear explained.”

Bostar glanced between Hannibal and Bomilcar, uneasy. His face had suffered more than most from the cold. The tip of his nose and a portion of his cheeks still dripped raw from the damage of exposure. Synhalus had coated his face with one of his salves, but whether the Egyptian knew anything about frost-damaged skin was doubtful. “What would you have us do?” he asked.

“March for Rome!” Bomilcar said. “It is south of us, and to the south is warmth. Is not that what we came for? I've never known Hannibal to hesitate. I pray he will not do so now.”

Hannibal fixed Bomilcar in his gaze, a dangerous look that was not anger but could easily become it. He had trimmed his beard recently, close enough that one could note the tense trembling around his mouth. “I'll consider your words,” he said. “Now leave me—all of you. We all know the situation we're in, so let us ponder it separately. Leave me and attend to your business.”

Alone in the smoky chamber, the commander sat down on his stool and pulled his tiny field desk toward him. Bomilcar was right, of course—at least in that they must force an engagement before hard winter set in. Their situation was not so different from what he had anticipated back in the warmth of New Carthage. He knew that the campaign had thus far been more successful than most men would have dreamed, despite the death toll of the mountain crossing. But in some childish area at the back of his mind he had harbored notions of a great, swift victory. He had believed—and still believed—that the Romans would suffer only a few defeats before pleading for peace. They had gained too much in recent years to risk it all with a death struggle.

He lifted a quill and dipped for ink and ran his hand through the pages Silenus had left until he found a blank one. He had no clear thought of why he searched out these tools. He had a vague notion that he would scribble a few lines to inspire himself, that through the pressure of the quill point on the papyrus he would scratch out the words to frame the actions to come. But when his hand moved—tremulous and large around the instrument and half-cramped even at the first stroke—he wrote something very different.

“Beloved Imilce.”

He gazed at the name a moment, taking it in, remembering it.

“It gives me pleasure to write out the letters of your name, to form the sounds on my lips. Here in my warrior's tent, in frigid Gaul, your name is like a revelation. When I recall that you live in this world . . .”

He paused, feeling a flood of maudlin words pressing against his will. It was almost overpowering, the desire to unburden himself to her, as a man can only do to a woman, to someone so much a part of his life and yet wholly separate from his violent work. But he could not give in to this desire—for many reasons, chief among them that such soft thoughts did nothing to hone his military mind. So he wrote a different truth than he had first intended.

“. . . I am reminded why I fight. I am nothing if not a warrior, but I do not love to be far from you. I do not covet victory so much that I forget the softer things of life. Believe me in this. Even Hannibal . . .”

He cupped his hand tightly over his mouth, coughed into it, and checked his palm for discharge. There was none. Looking over his words, he frowned at them. “Even Hannibal” what? His quill swayed over the words, undecided, half of a mind to strike them and begin again, reading them with one meaning and then, instantly, seeing another. It seemed foolish to pen a love note, but almost sacrilegious not to. The words were true, and yet they were lies also. He could not pin them down. He searched for a way to explain the progress of the campaign instead. He thought of writing that they had come through the mountains unscathed, but he could not write such a blatant falsehood. He thought to describe military matters but did not progress far on such lines. Details of distances traveled, of soldiers and supplies lost, of allegiances made and broken: it would sound like men's babble to her, just another nightmare of masculine misery. It would make no sense in the luxury of Carthage. Nor could he find the words to describe the war in brief. Nor did he want her mind tainted by things martial. Another line of thought came to him.

“How fares Little Hammer? Perhaps he speaks some words by now. This seems an impossible thing, but speech comes to all of us. Do not let him grow soft in my absence. He is just a boy, but he will be a man sooner than you can imagine. Have him tutored by a Greek. And also in swordplay and archery. Even very young boys can fashion bows in the African style. Remember that he is a child of Carthage and he should pay daily homage to Melkart and Baal, and to all the gods of my people. Teach him to temper his passions. Also . . .”

He impaled the point of the quill in the papyrus, cutting the flow of words. What was he doing? It had been less than a year since he left. Only a few months, one season fading into another and that into another. Why write of passions when his son was a tiny child? Why act as if he could raise his son from a distance, through words on a page?

Maharbal entered the tent just then. He moved as swiftly on foot as he did on horseback and spoke in character with his face: sharply, directly, like a hatchet blade. “Scipio is near! If we want him we can engage him today.”