Pride of Carthage (10 page)

Whether this single action served as a catalyst for the mob to move or not was uncertain, but move they did. One flank of Iberian soldiers waded into the water far off at the downstream edge of the river. Others, seeing their boldness, marched in also. Soon a wavering, ragged line of soldiers reached midstream, up to their waists in the current. Hannibal remained silent until some of the enemy crossed the midpoint and began to emerge from the deeper portion of the river. Then he called the Moorish javelin throwers to the ready. A moment more passed and he had them heft their weapons. As the first Iberians stumbled into knee-deep water, he gave the call. The trumpets blew the quick, deafening blast that signaled the spearmen, and a thousand javelins took to the air. The Iberians were ill prepared for the volley, their shields held at awkward angles or up over their heads or caught in the current and tugging them off balance. The missiles pierced their simple tunics and leather breastplates, drove into the bones of men's skulls, and tore through shoulder joints, or thrust through the water to find thighs and groins. Another volley followed and after that the javelin throwers hurled at will so that the air was a whir of missiles finding targets picked out at the spearmen's discretion.

Hannibal, speaking to nobody in particular but within earshot of his brother, said, “I need a greater foe than this.”

The Iberians kept coming until finally, through sheer numbers, they pushed the battle to ground on the Carthaginians' shore. The two sides engaged in earnest. Though the Carpetani were full of rage, they were also sodden and tired. They found the Libyans savage opponents, burly-armed and black-eyed demons who fought in their own version of a phalanx, shields locked tight, their heavy spears forming a living being with thousands of iron-tipped arms. Hannibal rode his stallion into the fray and hacked from horseback with his sword, yelling confidence into his men. Hasdrubal shadowed him and saved his life by sinking a spear into the neck of a Carpetani just about to do the same to the commander. But the two brothers were not long in the thick of battle. Hannibal galloped out again and shouted his next order to his signalers.

The resulting call sounded from the trumpets and when the answer came it did so not from the field of battle itself but from behind the tribal force. The elephants, their mahouts riding just behind their heads, roared out of the old camp and toward the unorganized backside of the enemy. Upon turning to see these great beasts hurtling toward them, the Carpetani realized the complete misery of their coming fate.

Hannibal's stallion spun and snapped his neck from side to side, seeming to be looking for something to sink his teeth into. The commander cuffed him about the ears and yelled to his brother over the din of slaughter: “Do you understand this? Do you see the truth here before you? These people will always be beneath us. They never look upon the past to create something new. They only take what is given to them and perpetuate it. They've never fought a man like me, and they will always be as they are and will never change except by dying into something new. That time has come. This will be your work, Hasdrubal. When I march on Rome, I will leave Iberia in your hands. Next year you'll not only rule over these people, you'll also bring them into our world and mold them into soldiers for Carthage. Today we slay them; tomorrow we resurrect them in our image. Do this, Hasdrubal, and the world is ours to shape.”

The next morning Hannibal rode for Saguntum. He left his brother to bring home the full weight of the victory to the cities and towns that had so foolishly sent their men out to slaughter. The commander's leg pained him terribly after the efforts of the previous day. He rode with a small corps of the Sacred Band and seemed intent on punishing himself throughout the journey, driving on as the pain grew, sometimes slapping his thigh in defiance of it. He thought often of Imilce and that was another stab of frustration, which left him little joy from his recent victory. Now behind him a day or two, the Tagus was like a distant memory from another man's tale.

Nor did his return to Saguntum improve his mood. Though he arrived in the dead of night he soon learned that the siege was no further along. For all the labor done in the weeks of his absence, the scene viewed under the moonlight appeared just as before he had departed. He found Hanno in his cottage and called him out. An anger came upon him quickly and with a fury he did not often show outside of battle. He addressed it to his brother, his face inches from Hanno's. What had Hanno been doing with his command? How had three weeks passed with nothing to show for them?

Hanno did not answer the questions directly but stood in his loose sleeping garments, reciting a chronology of the things they had accomplished. If he was taken aback by his brother's outburst he did not show it. Nor did he react when Hannibal waved him to silence and said, “Hanno, what a gift you would have given me if I'd returned to dine inside those walls. Instead you've worked on at a snail's pace, taking your pleasures in your summer home. How would this please our father to see?”

He sat down on a stool and closed his eyes to the view of the city and tried to shut out the pain of his leg. “They tell me you have been troubled by omens and signs,” he said, almost too quietly for Hanno to hear. “Did not our father teach you that these signs are way markers for our path forward? If you displease the gods, it's not through your actions but through your delays. We will destroy them, Hanno. That's how we honor the gods, by victory in their names. We will end this within a week. Everything we have, we throw at them now. Saguntum loses all except the memory of my name and the knowledge that the will of Baal acts through me. That is how this ends, and on the day I name.”

When he saw the city was finally falling, Imco Vaca chose to enter via a different route than on the last such occasion. He scrambled up the giant wooden stairs of a siege tower, following on the heels of one man, feeling the claws of another behind him. He moved frantically, his whole body alive with purpose. Before he knew it, he had reached the top of the structure and found himself spat out as if by a great mouth. He landed on the top of the wall itself, but he and the man before him both stepped right off the wall and fell free through the air some twenty feet down to a lower landing. Imco thought surely this would end him, but again providence aided him. The man before him took the impact and cushioned Imco's fall. Afoot again, Imco fell in with the stampede of invaders as if he had followed a precisely chosen course to that moment.

The mass of Carthaginians hit the waiting defenders with a force that rocked both groups. Weapons were useless and they stood eye to eye. Then that moment was gone and Imco was hacking with his sword, thrusting, ducking, spinning. He took a Saguntine down by slicing his leg through the knee joint. He missed another with a downward blow, but caught him under the chin with an upward jerk. The point of his falcata slit the man's windpipe. He heard the soldier's breath escape the wound in a rasp. Another thrust a spear at him, but it glanced off his helmet and the Libyan beside him put his spear inside the Iberian at the armpit. Imco's helmet had twisted sideways. He fought without correcting it, a little blind to the left side but no worse for it because he fought to the right. For some time he struggled within a mixed company of friend and foe. But soon his singular progress took him away from his comrades and he knew that he would not die that day. It was like a billow of air blown into him, the knowledge that some god favored him. The defenders recognized this as well as he. They gave way before him as his sweeping blows became wider.

He was soon running through the streets with the others, kicking in doors and hunting down small groups of men. Hannibal's orders were clear and simple. They were to kill all men. That was their only charge. Soldiers disappeared into homes and did not return again. They screamed and tossed over furniture and searched for inhabitants, men to kill and women to rape and children to enslave. Others came out laden with booty, jewels and ornaments, iron cookware and silver cutlery, dragging prisoners by fistfuls of hair. He saw a group of young men driven into a market, weaponless. The Carthaginian men behind them slashed and thrust and kept them moving. One of the Saguntines pleaded for mercy, argued his innocence and friendship, and pointed at others and named their crimes against Carthage. He might have gone on like this, but one of his number punched him squarely in the jaw and left him spitting blood.

By midday, Imco had seen his full share of human suffering. He stepped into a small house at the end of a lane, not expecting to find anything left, but wondering if he might pass a few moments in solitude. He stood for a long moment looking about the room. Indeed, the house had been pillaged and no single object stood upright, no vase was unbroken. He was numb and blood-splattered and very tired. The stillness of the room closed about him, the strangeness of being in somebody else's home. Shame dropped like a shawl about his shoulders. He thought he heard something, but as he listened he realized the sound was within him. A bone-weary cry wrung itself from inside him, a howl not of words but something earlier and more honest, emotions at battle within him. He was unable to order them. He just needed to stand still for a moment, just had to push emotion from him, for there was no place for it.

A muffled cough interrupted his thoughts. He followed the sound and spotted a foot dangling from the chimney above the cooking fire. He set down his booty and yanked the person free: a girl of eleven or so, soot-covered and tearful, hair so long it must never have been trimmed. Her eyes shone in white relief against her sooty face. They were full of terror. She reached for Imco's eyes and would have ripped them out. But he slapped her hands down and pinned her arms to her side. He shushed her violently and yelled that he had something to tell her. When she finally fell silent he did also, though his grip did not loosen.

“Are you the last?” he asked. “Did you have family?” He stopped himself and answered his own question. “Of course you did. We all have family, conquered and conquerors both.” The girl stared into his face, searching for meaning but knowing nothing of his language.

From outside came a new yelling. Soldiers kicked an old man from his house into the street, accusing him of having daughters and demanding that he betray them before he died, threatening to rape him with the shaft of their spears if he did not speak. Imco could not make out his response, but it did not satisfy his tormentors. He and the girl both listened, neither moving until the man's ordeal ended and the soldiers moved on.

“I want you to sit down,” Imco said. He reached out with his foot and righted a stool. Adjusting his grip on the girl, he set her down upon it and slid his hands away. He stood back and studied her.

She was pretty. He could tell this despite her grimy face. Her chin was a little weak, one eye lower than the other, but she was pretty nonetheless. Her body was still boyish, but this was not a flaw. She was not too young to be taken, nor to be sold, nor to be rented out. He walked around her and stood behind her for some time. He had to think about this. He was aware as never before how much suffering this girl's life now offered her. Her shoulders were so thin, but their frailty would please many. Her skin was a translucent covering over her frame. She must have been hungry these past months, but that too would make some men want her. Her hair fell over her shoulder and he could see the pulse of the artery in her neck. He reached out and touched it with his fingertips. The girl moved slightly, but he whispered her to stillness. Her pulse was strong, warm. It seemed irregular in its beating and at first he did not question why. Someone would profit from her suffering. Before the end of the month she would have been used by hundreds of men. She would be diseased and battered. She would rot from the inside out, both body and soul. But right now she was sound. In sorrow, yes. In mourning, surely. But her nightmare had not yet begun in full. He—by whatever divine hand—had been given her life to shape. Some men would have thought this a great gift, so why did it pain him so?

Just after the question formed in his mind he realized why her pulse seemed strange. He snapped his fingers away from her neck and struck the same spot with a slicing sweep of his sword. She dropped from the stool, and he darted outside a moment later, striding away, putting the tiny house behind him. He would forever remember the moment when he realized that the girl's irregular heartbeat was actually a mixture of his pulse with hers, both of them captured there on his fingertips for the few moments they were connected. He might have become a soldier in the last few years, but he was still a brother, still a child who loved his sisters, still soft in some portion of his heart. He prayed that the girl might understand his action as he had meant it: as a twisted, merciful gift.

When word of the sack of Saguntum reached the assembled Roman Senate several senators rose to their feet with calls for an immediate declaration of war. Valerius Flaccus stood with these, finding in the moment so much enthusiasm that he blurted out an entire plan of attack, so complete it had obviously been thought out ahead of time. Another senator pointed out that they should have dealt with Carthage much earlier. Hannibal had gone this far only because certain individuals put their personal interests in Gaul ahead of those of the people. Some cheered and echoed his complaint, but others tried to refocus the debate on the issue at hand: Rome had an enemy. There should be no mudslinging among senators.

From some of the most respected men came some of the most cautious words. One proposed another envoy: Let one of their number journey directly to Carthage and ask once and for all whether Hannibal's actions were indeed Carthage's actions as well. If the Carthaginians failed to answer satisfactorily, then the matter of war would be decided. Let no one say that Rome went to war without due consideration. Roman justice should first be reasoned; then, when necessary, as swift as a falcon. Despite heated debate, this plan was adopted before the close of the day, and Fabius Maximus the elder was chosen as the message bearer.