David Durham - Pride of Carthage

The younger Fabius began to explain himself, but Publius brought his sword hand down and punched him square on the mouth. The man dropped like a deadweight, unconscious.

“I swear to you all,” Publius said, “that I will allow no man to abandon our country, nor will I betray it myself! I swear a dying oath to Rome. If ever I fail it, may Jupiter bring down upon me a shameful death. May he destroy my family honor and cast all I possess into the hungry mouths of my enemies. I swear this; who among you swear with me? And who among you die on my sword?”

Having spoken, he stood surrounded by a room full of mutinous officers, his single blade raised against them. Laelius flanked him, his hand in a white-knuckled grip around the hilt of his sword. But the others did not attack. Instead they each and all lowered their eyes. As he listened to first one man and then another take the oath, Publius told himself that this was not the end, not of the war, not of his nation. The sun would rise tomorrow. The war would carry on. Publius Scipio had not died at Cannae as he might. Instead he recognized his life's greatest challenge. He would meet Hannibal again. He was sure of it.

Aradna would have forgotten about the young Carthaginian soldier if she had not stumbled upon him in the festering, open-air graveyard of Cannae. She and her band and other bands of camp followers rose before the dawn and greeted the sun at the edge of the battlefield. Usually, they would have swarmed through the dead at the first tentative light, but the sight before them was an unusual horror. The carnage of the day before was past belief. Looking upon the great, jutting, tangled, shadowed devastation, none of them dared enter. Moans filled the air with a low, unnatural tone of anguish. Even the least superstitious among the camp followers feared to tread carelessly among so many soulless creatures. The various afterworlds to which these men hurtled headlong could only hold so many new souls. Surely many of them lingered on this plain, angry at their lot and dangerous to the living.

Aradna, standing to the east of the field, felt the heat of the sun touch the back of her head and slant down her shoulders. She watched as the first touches of gold illuminated portions of the dead and crept down into crevices and gashes, across faces and private parts alike. The human form lost all reason in the jumble. Arms and legs twisted at angles impossible for the living, reaching up from the piles of bodies three, four, and sometimes even more bodies deep. Wounds lay open to flies. Slivers of bone jutted into the air. Flesh had taken on infinite coloration: shades of blue and purple, white as bright ivory, yellow and brown and sometimes strangely crimson. On several occasions Aradna's eyes tricked her into believing that among the human forms were the half-roasted carcasses of swine. But this was, of course, not the case. It was just that some men, in death, failed to look human. The view was no better in the light than before, save that now the carnage was betrayed for what it was—nothing ghostly, just the barbarous work of men on a scale never seen before. This, at least, was something the camp followers understood. They began their labor.

Why she stopped above the young soldier she could not later say, except to explain that she often had to pause that day and steady herself and take shallow breaths. He was buried to mid-torso in the arms and limbs of others. They propped him up so that he was almost vertical, with his head tilted back. Grime caked his face, sweat and blood and dirt commingled into a mask all men shared alike. His mouth gaped open to the air like so many others. A fly buzzed about the cavity, landing on his teeth, crawling over his lips and around the rim of his nostrils. Recognition crept into her slowly. She stared at his face so long that the strange, naked soldier she had met twice and still thought about occasionally emerged from beneath the mask. His features slowly aligned themselves into shapes and contours she recognized. She bent close to him, thinking him dead and feeling no threat from a dead man, touched by curiosity and the slightest notion of sadness.

The soldier grunted, stirred a little, and raised an arm partway up from the muck. That was the first indication she had that he lived. She set down the sack she had already stuffed full with items of jewelry and coins and sacred tokens, jeweled daggers and gilded bits pried from helmets and armor, anything that struck her as valuable in relation to its weight and size. She sat on top of her treasure and reached out a hand toward the man. The flesh at his neck was warm to the touch. She found a pulse and felt it beat beneath her fingers. He might have been unconscious, but the life inside him still seemed strong. She pulled her hand away and sat a while longer, studying him. Already she felt a strange intimacy between them. She had touched his flesh. She stared at him now as he really was, unconscious of her. What, she asked herself, could she learn of this man from his sleeping face?

She did not have time to consider this for too long. The surviving soldiers were up now, moving in small groups across the battlefield. They scavenged also, but they went armed. Judging by the occasional cries of pain, she knew they were dispatching the wounded: the enemy certainly, but also some of their own if they believed them beyond mending. What might they make of the soldier before her?

Aware that she could only do what she wanted to if she did not think about it fully, Aradna put the consequences out of her mind and searched out the men of her band. With their bewildered aid, she wrenched the soldier free from the rest and dragged him to their camp. They did not question her; each in his own way loved her. In this they were more like family than anyone she had known since childhood. She thanked them and said no more and with her gestures warned them to be still if they wished to stay near the light of her favor.

That evening she sat beside the soldier beneath her hide shelter. He still slept soundly, snoring now that he was on his back.

“Never has a man been so tired,” she muttered. “Only men can sleep so deeply.”

She unbuckled his armor, lifted it from him, and set it to the side. She peeled his tunic away from his flesh. The fabric was stiff with dried sweat and grime, with blood, though she did not know whether it was his or other men's. She probed him with her fingers, searching for wounds. And there were many: cuts all over his arms and legs, a piercing wound under his collarbone, a gash in one of his nostrils. Bruises bloomed over every inch of him. These blood wounds must have drained his soul force terribly, but to her eyes none seemed fatal.

The soldier stirred.

Aradna snatched the torch up and held it between them. His eyes cracked open and seemed to focus on the hide above him. She believed she saw conscious thought in his gaze, but perhaps this was not so. He closed his eyes again and the rhythm of his slumber returned.

She carried on with her work. She dipped a cloth in herbed water and gently touched it to his face. She held the fabric there for a moment. When he did not react, she drew it across his forehead, wiping away the grime to reveal the rich, sun-browned skin beneath. As she peeled away the concealing layers, the soldier's face emerged. He had a small mouth, a somewhat wide forehead, and a perfectly formed nose, evenly placed and uniform, save for the scab of the small cut. His eyes pressed against the thin skin of their lids in such a way that she believed she could make out their character. She had to lean close to verify her impression, near enough that she held her breath for fear that he would feel it brushing against his moist skin. Still she saw the same thing. His eyes, they were gentle.

During this process the old woman, Atneh, had come over to the shelter and peered in several times. On each occasion she turned away without speaking and sat by the fire. Aradna knew Atneh had asked that the men stay near in case the soldier woke up in a rage. She fed them a soup she cooked on occasion, made from ingredients she did not name and about which they did not ask. They all sat quietly and talked over their departure on the coming morning. They were loaded beyond their capacity; best to make for the coast and on to whatever destination they chose after that. Eventually, Atneh squatted beside the younger woman and watched her for some time in silence.