David Durham: Pride of Carthage

“So, you are going to do it, are you not? You will attack Rome?”

“The time is near and I am ready.”

“Of course you are ready. When were you ever not ready? But Hannibal, I do think you push things too quickly. I will not try to convince you of this. I know your mind is your own, but tell me, love, where will this course lead?”

“To glory.”

Imilce stared up at the ceiling as she thought about this. One of the lamps had begun to smoke and a ribbon of black haze floated across the plaster like an eel seeking a home. “Is that all?” she asked. “Glory?”

“And justice as well. Freedom. And yes, you might ask—vengeance.” Hannibal exhaled a long breath and spoke with a curtness to his words. “I will not have this discussion with you. Imilce, your husband is no normal man. I was born for this. That is all there is to it. I love you too much to be vexed with you; so stop.”

Imilce rolled over and nestled under his arm. He adjusted to suit her and pulled her in close. “Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” Imilce asked. “It wasn't on our wedding day, as you may think. I spied on you before that. I hid once in the curtains along the walls in my father's court when he was entertaining you. I slit the fabric just enough to look out at you.”

“You're father would've skinned you alive for that,” Hannibal said.

“Perhaps, but he was desperate to wed himself to the Barcas. He was not so powerful as you believed.”

“I know. The Baetis are of little importance now. Perhaps I should throw you to the side and find another bride.”

Imilce pressed her teeth against the flesh of his shoulder, but otherwise ignored his comment. “I was afraid of you,” she said. “Resting on the couches you looked like a lion so confident in his strength he has only to lie down and stretch to make others tremble. I feared that you would devour me. I thought for a moment that I should step out from behind that curtain and disgrace myself and ruin the marriage plans.”

“But you did not do that.”

“No, because as much as I trembled at the thought of you, you pulled me toward you. I felt, perhaps, like an insect so attracted to the light of the torch that it flies into the flame. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Hannibal nodded. “At Arbocala I met a young soldier who'd behaved bravely,” he said. “In honor of this I bestowed upon his humble family a plantation outside of Carthage. I gave his people slaves and a small fortune in silver and in the space of a few moments changed their lives forever. That is the power I have because of the things I accomplish. And if I can give all of that to a boy soldier, what is a suitable present for my wife? Not simply treasure. Not more servants. These things are not enough. In two years, you will be able to look from the balcony of this or any other palace you choose and know that all the Mediterranean world is yours to shape. How many men can say that to their wives and mean it? Would you like that to be so?”

Imilce squeezed herself further under him, until he rose up and she could wrap her legs around him. She looked at him frankly, long, as if she might disclose some secret to him. But then she smiled and stretched up toward him and brushed her lips across his and touched him gently with her tongue.

Hanno Barca began the day with clearer eyes than most. Though he had reveled with the rest, he rose before the dawn and busied himself at self-assigned tasks. Mounted on one of Hannibal's stallions, he rode bareback through the city streets. The quiet lanes were awash with debris, bits and pieces of material without form in the morning light, metal fragments that might have once been armor but which had been torn apart during some segment of the evening's ritual. Hanno might have questioned this waste of military hardware, but there was little use in that. Such was the army of Carthage that it gathered soldiers from any and all the strange corners of its empire. Who knew all of their customs? And what did it matter, anyway? Somehow, Hannibal welded them into a whole, and that whole had made a custom of success.

The fountain in the main square had been drunk dry. The bowl overflowed with limp bodies: persons clothed and unclothed and in all states between, stained the ruddy brown of spilled wine, greasy with leftover food, bits of bone still clenched in some hands, grease yet moist on mouths thrown open to the chill morning air. The fires had died down from their raging heights, but they still smoldered, giving the whole scene a surreal aspect. It seemed Hanno was looking not upon a festive city but at a conquered one. Strange, he thought, that the two opposites had so much in common to the unprejudiced eye. Missing were only the wretched of the war trains, poor folk who would have been picking through the bodies for what small treasure they could find among the dead. Even such as these must have had their fill the night before.

In the stables he kicked grooms from their drunken slumbers and prodded them to work. The horses in their care needed them despite their hangovers. Then he called on the priests of Baal. Rites of thanks and propitiation had been going on since the army's return. Hanno had made offerings to the gods as appropriate the previous afternoon, but he was anxious lest more be in order. He dismounted and approached the temple holding his sandals in his hands and feeling the chill slap of his feet on the marble stairway leading up to the main entrance. He moved slowly, out of reverence, but also because he had no choice. The steps were set at a shallow angle that made it hard to mount them quickly. One had to place each foot carefully, a process that heightened the sense of awe and foreboding at approaching the god's sanctuary.

At the mouth of the temple, however, Hanno learned that the head priest, Mandarbal, would not see him. He was engaged in high matters and could not break off at that moment. Nor was his present ceremony one for outsiders to observe. Hanno was forced to withdraw, stepping backward down the god's steps, uneasy, for in this snub he felt a rebuke he did not deserve. After all, he was the most devout of all the brothers, the one most mindful of the gods, the first to call on them for aid, the one who praised them for every success. He had even confessed to Mandarbal once that he might have joined the priesthood if he had not been born Hamilcar Barca's son. To this, the priest had just grunted.

A few hours later, Hanno stood on the terrace overlooking the exercise ground reserved for the elephants. He watched the trainers tending the animals for some time, moving about beneath the beasts, talking to them with short calls and taps of their sticks. He thought several times that he would descend and walk among the creatures and run his hands over their coarse hairs and wrinkled flesh. He liked talking to the mahouts, appreciated the way they had only one job but knew it so well. But he was stayed by other thoughts, memories that he had no use for but that seemed intent on troubling him. They pushed into the central portion of his mind, that place separate from sight or hearing or bodily movements, the part that takes a person over even as he continues to occupy the physical world.

He thought of the child he had once been and the brother he was blessed, or cursed, to be second to. Hannibal's never-ending campaigns were tests that always ended in his success. What pained Hanno even now was that their father had known that only Hannibal among them had this gift. Hamilcar had told him as much in a thousand ways, on a thousand different occasions. Hanno had watched throughout his adolescence as Hannibal excelled first at youthful games, then into a physicality that bloomed like a weed into manhood. He had watched as his brother, just two years his senior, went from the verge of the council circle to the circle itself, and soon to the center. He was a young upstart in some ways, but all the men seemed to see the great commander perpetuated in his firstborn. It was not that Hanno showed any obvious lack: he was tall, strong limbed, and skilled enough with all the weapons of combat. He had studied the same manuals, trained with the same veterans, learned the history of warfare from the same tutors. But there was room for only a single star in their father's eyes, and Hanno had never been it. Hamilcar had rarely given him command of any force larger than a unit of a hundred soldiers. The first time he did proved tragic.