David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Hanno roused himself. He realized he had been standing above the pen for some time, watching the handlers at their work but not actually seeing them. He turned and walked off. The elephants did not need his inspection. They were well tended. Of course they were.

More so than any of his brothers, Hasdrubal Barca lived his life astride a pendulum swinging between extremes. By day, he honed his body to the functions of war; at night he sank up to the ears in all the pleasures of consumption available to him. Hannibal had once questioned the structure of his days and whether his habits were suitable for a Barca, suggesting that Hasdrubal's pleasure-seeking indicated a flaw that might weaken him with the passing years. Hasdrubal laughed. He proposed instead that his devotion to the body was the greater discipline. The fact was, he said, that he could rise from an all-night romp and still train with a smile on his face. Perhaps this was a sign of stamina that Hannibal had never himself mastered. As for indications of decay or weakness, at twenty-one his body was a chiseled monument surpassing even his eldest brother's. So, for the time being, he passed his days and nights as he saw fit.

During the winter, he kept to a strict training routine. Three days after his return from Arbocala he began the regimen again, already ill at ease after a few days of uninterrupted leisure, the celebration of victory almost too much even for his own resources. He slept naked, always in his own bed, always completing the night alone, no matter whose pleasures he had shared earlier in the evening. His squire, Noba, woke him just as the sun cleared the horizon line and rose up in spherical completion. Together they bathed in the chilly waters of the private bath on Hasdrubal's balcony. Noba once had to break the skin of ice upon the water before they could enter, an unwelcome task for an Ethiopian. Hasdrubal found this ritual dunking to be the surest cure for the fatigue caused by the previous evening's debauchery.

He broke his fast with a small meal of something dense and meaty—cattle liver topped with eggs, venison on a bed of onions, stewed chunks of goat—and then it was on to the gymnasium. Hasdrubal and Noba had received the same instruction in hand-to-hand combat, but Noba carried with him earlier knowledge, the wisdom of the martial arts of his southern people. The two men merged these tactics and pressed beyond them. They wrestled each other into awkward positions and then talked through the most efficient, deadliest way to free themselves, the quickest way to deal a deathblow. They made killing a game, a physical and mental exercise that they joked their way through, lighthearted, companionable. Yet they both learned their lessons well and on more than one occasion credited their survival to tactics first thought up during these sessions. From wrestling, the two moved on to weapons practice. They sparred with thrusting sword or sweeping falcata, Spartan spear or javelin. When Hasdrubal tired of those, they experimented with using different shields as weapons, fighting with broken swords, with the shafts of blunted spears, or with the spearheads minus the shafts.

Before his afternoon meal, Hasdrubal walked stairs in the gymnasium with an ash beam balanced on his shoulders. He stripped down to nothing for the exercise, grabbed the straps that aided his grip, and hefted the beam with the full exertion of his body, slowly finding the balance point, sliding his body underneath the weight, and coming to peace with it. He took each step deliberately, pressing his foot down into the stone and thereby lifting himself and the weight carried like outstretched wings. It was a slow ordeal, a hundred steps up, a slow turning, and then a hundred steps down, another turning, and on again.

Groups of young noblewomen sometimes gathered to watch him. They whispered among themselves and pointed and laughed and sometimes called out to him, asking him whether he ought not exercise that third leg, for it was limp and lifeless compared with the two others. Hasdrubal kept on at his work, giving them little more than a smile or shake of his head. Instead of being bothered by their teasing, he was amused, flattered, encouraged, reminded that pleasure was never that far away. He slipped out from under the beam only when his legs were useless, rubbery things that wiggled beneath him and disobeyed the instructions his mind gave them.

The rest of the day was spent in training of a less overtly physical sort: honing his horsecraft, practicing the tribal languages, studying accounts of earlier campaigns, learning from the mistakes or triumphs of others, and fulfilling whatever obligations Hannibal had assigned him. A week after their return from campaign and the appearance of the surprise envoy from Rome, Hannibal called a meeting of his brothers and all his senior generals. Mago met Hasdrubal in the gymnasium baths. They had agreed to attend the meeting together so that Hasdrubal could fill his younger brother in on any details that eluded him. The elder brother stood naked before Mago as Noba pounded out a massage on the wings of his back. The squire's dark face was calm and somewhat vacant, his body lean and tall, perfect in a manner unique to his people. The muscles of his arms popped and contracted at their work.

“You should train with me,” Hasdrubal said. “Carthage will make a man soft. Too much palm wine and too many Nubian servant girls to rub you with oil. You need a good thrashing and then for Noba here to beat the fatigue out of you.”

The Ethiopian patted his master on the back and stepped away from him, indicating that he was finished. Hasdrubal rolled his head on his shoulders and stretched his torso at several angles, as if he were testing that the parts still functioned as they should. Then he began to dress.

“So,” Mago said, sitting on a stone bench and looking into the yellowish water of the baths, “is it a certainty, then? We attack Saguntum in the spring?”

Hasdrubal slipped on his undertunic and tugged it into place. “It's a certainty that we'll be at war with someone. Hannibal will spend the winter securing the goodwill of our new allies. He will succeed, in part, but never completely. Men who have just been soundly beaten and humiliated are slow to grow into true friends. If it were my decision we would not attack Saguntum next year. You know I like a fight, but there's enough fight left in the rest of Iberia to keep me occupied. Our brother, I believe, has long wanted to chastise the Saguntines. That Roman envoy only succeeded in making the prospect irresistible.”

“Perhaps that is why it's a sound move to attack Saguntum,” Mago said. “To show our new allies that we can share common enemies. It will take their humiliation and heap it onto another people.”

Hasdrubal glanced up for a moment and took his brother in frankly. He sat down beside him and laced up his sandals. “Perhaps,” he said. “In any event, Hannibal rides before the vanguard of reason. He leaves it to the rest of us to catch up. By the way, watch yourself or you'll find you have been betrothed to some chieftain's daughter. That is a sure way to secure their goodwill—to make them family.”

“You make that sound unpleasant. Hannibal has done so himself.”

“True, but not every man's daughter is an Imilce. Truth be known, brother, I like this country. I am more at home here than in Carthage. The Celtiberians make good allies and amusing enemies. And I've even grown to appreciate their women, pale things that they are. Mago, you would not believe this creature I've been screwing lately. She's beautiful, yes? Silver eyes and a gentle voice and a mouth that always seems in a pucker, you know? She thinks up things that would make an Egyptian blush. She does a trick with a string of beads . . .” Hasdrubal's eyes rolled upward into a flutter. He leaned back against the stone wall, momentarily lost in contemplation. “I won't even describe it. I don't know what you'd think of me.”