Pride of Carthage (76 page)

It was already late in the season when he landed at Leptis Minor, as the Council had arranged. Apparently, Carthage wanted him near but did not actually favor inviting the whole army inside the city's defenses. Awaiting him were mahouts with seventy-eight elephants. This would have been a welcome sight, except that from his first inspection of them it was obvious that most of the beasts were young, many of them untrained, all of them novices at battle. Vandicar stared at them with tight lips and eventually said he would need three months to train them, at the very least. Hannibal gave him three days, after which they marched to Hadrumetum. He picked up the twelve thousand troops who had served Mago. He knew that there was a well of sorrow possible in contemplating yet another brother's death, but he did not pause to explore it. He put the anguish of it in a compartment of his mind that he would return to later.

Upon receiving detailed reports from the Council, he learned what the enemy had been up to. After securing Cirta and the surrounding area, Publius and Masinissa had turned east and ranged across the flatlands to Hippo Regius, which they took without difficulty. It seemed that Publius had paused there for a week and sent reconnaissance missions into the hills of Naragara, perhaps gathering further troops among the Massylii. Then the whole army marched on Utica, besieged it by land and sea. The Council sent out an army from the city's garrisons, believing they might attack the enemy from the rear while they were engaged with the siege. A mistake. Masinissa outflanked them as if he had dreamed the whole maneuver up in his spare time. Carthage lost nearly four thousand men, many of them from aristocratic families. In pursuing them in retreat toward Carthage, the Romans captured Tunis, which had been abandoned by its garrison. From here the consul could literally gaze across the bay at the target of his enmity. Such was the unease in Carthage that envoys opened peace talks with him, although these were cut short on word of Hannibal's arrival.

Publius did not waste time trying to haggle with the councillors. Neither did he attack Carthage itself. Instead, he turned his army to the south and had them ravage their way down the broad valley of the Bagradas River. Every field they passed was left a blackened inferno, every village and town, every storehouse of grain, every orchard. They took town after town by storm, enslaving everyone with a value as a slave, dispatching the rest. At Thugga they tossed the bodies into the river and let them float toward the ocean, like a great vein bleeding out the life of the continent. When the town of Abba sent out envoys to discuss terms of surrender Publius had the men's hands cut off and spun them around with the message that there were no terms except the complete surrender of Carthage itself. At Kemis he repeated the atrocity of the plains, burning alive an entire village of thatched huts, the young and the old alike, capturing those lucky enough to escape and enslaving them.

The people did not understand who this demon was and why he had dropped down on them with such fury, but Publius was as calculated in his cruelty as he had been in his generosity in Iberia. Hannibal knew exactly what the Roman was doing, for he had used the same tactics himself. The consul bore those poor people no malice, just as Hannibal had not thought of the Latin tribes as naturally inimical to him. But by abusing them Publius prodded the Council to swift action. They, in turn, pressured Hannibal to give chase before he had truly gained his footing in Africa, leaving him little time to raise new troops and none to properly train them.

At first, Hannibal balked at being ordered about in this fashion. He did not move immediately. Instead, he came to terms with the Libyan Tychaeus, who was a relation of Syphax and hungry for revenge. He brought three thousand Libyan veterans into the army, a great gain. But in the days it took him to arrange this, new orders came from Carthage. Hannibal was to track the Romans down and annihilate them while they were still far from the city itself. Should he have any question about following these orders, he should remember that his family still lived in Carthage, by the grace of the Council. They were sure, they said, that Hannibal would not want anything unfortunate to befall them, especially his wife and young son.

As he closed his eyes after reading this Hannibal entertained a vision of turning his army on his own city. He had always believed that he knew the Carthaginian mind intimately. Now he wondered whether Carthage was viler than he had yet imagined, deserving of harsher punishments than he had ever visited on his enemies. Did not his men love him more than Carthage itself? They would rally behind him. He would find no difficulty reminding them of all the many ways the city had neglected them over the years. He would make them believe that together they could reach into the capital and rip out its foul heart and replace it with something to be proud of, something that would enrich them all with treasure beyond booty, beyond gold and slaves. He would build a new Carthage on the foundations of the old. And that city—his creation—could then turn its full resources to anything, even back to the defeat of Rome.

But this was only a fancy, and Hannibal was not one to entertain fancies. Ever since retreating from the walls of Rome he had known that this war would not lead to victory. Rome had taken the worst he could give it, and had lived. He would spend the rest of his life trying to understand just how that had happened, for he still did not fully comprehend it and could not order the events in a way that added up to the outcome Rome achieved. And in a more intimate way it baffled him. For all the years of his remembered life, he had believed that it was his destiny to defeat Rome. The knowledge that he had been mistaken cast everything in doubt. He was not even confident that he could rid Carthage of Publius Scipio, not considering the way Fortune's wind blew in his favor. He would have argued against the Council if he had known what to say, but the words eluded him. So he bowed to their wishes and began his pursuit.

It seemed that nothing in the world alarmed the animals of Africa more than the spectacle of an army of men on the march. As Hannibal pushed southward down the Bagradas valley, he drove herds of gazelle bounding before them across the scarred, smoldering landscape. Ostriches crisscrossed in front of the tide of men with their great, long-legged strides, occasionally becoming so disconcerted as to flap their useless wings in a desire to gain the air like other birds. Hyenas protested their progress each step of the way, retreating just so far before the approaching army, then spinning to challenge them with a chattering cacophony of yelps, only to spin again into bare-bottomed retreat. One evening Hannibal awoke to the calls of a lion, a tortured sound that seemed to warp the very fabric of the air through which it issued. The commander thought his tent fabric shook with each blast of sound, but in the dim light he could not be sure of this. It felt like the beast was communicating with him, but if this were so he knew not the language that it spoke.

As they were not themselves bent on destruction, the army rapidly gained on the Romans. From outside the pit of misery that had once been the trading center of Sicca, Hannibal sent out spies. They returned several days later and told a strange story. Several of them had been captured. When they were brought before Publius, one of his generals, Laelius, unsheathed his sword. They expected the customary fate of captured spies: to have their hands and tongues cut out and then to be released. But the consul laughed and waved for Laelius to sheath his sword. With another motion, he ordered their hands unbound. He called them guests and said that if Hannibal wished to know the state of his army all he had to do was ask. He personally escorted them throughout the camp, showing them everything, pausing long enough so that the men's nervous eyes could count and gauge the numbers they were seeing. This they did.

After they ended their report, the spies stood nervously about, with something more to say although they feared to do so.

“What else?” Hannibal asked.

One of the Libyans answered, “Commander, forgive me, but Publius told us to ask you whether his spies might survey your camp under the same conditions.”

Hannibal sent the same man back with a negative answer. He did say, however, that he would be pleased to meet Publius to discuss the terms of a peace. Without waiting for an answer, he kept to his tasks as he saw them. Maharbal's scouts surveyed the land between the two armies, and the commander maneuvered his troops according to their reports. It soon became clear that Publius had chosen the wide plain east of Zama as the stage for their encounter. A strong decision. The land was perfect for an open engagement, with nothing to favor either side, no traps to spring or avoid, no reason not to judge the ground a fair venue for combat. It was a spot, in fact, that Hannibal could find no excuse to avoid.

Strangely enough, he wished he could. He felt the fingers of another man's hands pushing him this way and that, and he did not like it. In the past he would have found some way to snatch control, but he could see no way to do this now. The consul held all the advantages he had had in Italy. For that reason, Hannibal meant his offer of discourse seriously. The Council wanted him to destroy the Romans, but if they believed that only he was capable of this, they must accept his word if he chose a negotiated peace. That might be just the thing they all needed, to talk peace, and then to go home and be citizens again. He sent a second envoy to the consul.

On the afternoon that he approached Hannibal with the news of Publius' acceptance of his proposal, Gemel found him asleep on his stool. He sat upright, with one hand stretched out before him on his thigh, as if he were reaching to accept an object into his palm. The officer almost commenced speaking, but then he noticed the slump of his head and the labored steadiness of his breathing.

“Hannibal?”

The commander opened his eyes. He did not start or jerk, or give any sign that he had been surprised. He simply straightened his head and turned his gaze on the officer and studied him for a quiet moment. “I was just thinking,” he said, “of how I used to kiss the drool away from my son's chin. There's nothing so soft as a baby's cheek, just there at the corner of their lips. I would like to do this again, but if I ever see young Hamilcar I probably won't even recognize him.”

“Of course you will,” Gemel said. “He is your son. My first son had a Turdetani mother, but still he came out my double.”

Hannibal frowned. “You have young?”

Gemel nodded. “I have three, Hannibal. Two by that Turdetani woman. I do not know their fate, but she was resourceful. They may yet live in Iberia. My youngest is by a Bruttian woman who still travels with me. This child is a girl. Unfortunately for her, she looks like me as well.”

Hannibal's gaze drifted away, moving from one thing to the next but obviously seeing only the thoughts inside him. “I did not know,” he said. “How can it be that I never spoke to you of this before?”

“When we speak it's of other things, Commander. More important things. That's why I'm here now. Scipio has agreed to speak with you. Tomorrow, on the field between the two armies.”

“So he agrees that we may end this with words?”

Gemel looked uncomfortable. “That I cannot say. Commander, are you well? If you wish I will propose a delay.”

Hannibal stood and stepped closer to his secretary. He placed a hand on his shoulder and rocked him gently back and forth, humor on his fatigued features. “You ask whether I am well. . . . You have come very far with me, Gemel, and you have become as dear to me as Bostar was. I remember the morning after Cannae, when you stepped in to fill his position. You had nervous eyes then. You stood very erect and spoke clipped words, such as would make any drill officer proud.”

“Some people have said that I still speak that way.”

“Yes, yes, you do. But I've grown so accustomed to it. I am sorry that we haven't spoken more as friends. This was a mistake on my part. Do you accept my apology?”

Gemel, embarrassed suddenly, nodded crookedly, in a way that both affirmed his acceptance and denied that any slight had been done.

“Good. Send Scipio my word; we will meet on the morrow. There is no need for delay.”

Hannibal slept like the dead that night. He woke in the predawn and automatically began to go over the speech he had to make. But he soon found that the words he meant to use did not need practicing. He felt like speaking the truth, and the truth is never rehearsed. Deciding so, he stilled his mind, stepped out of his tent, and watched the dawn.

Hannibal's forces marched down the slope from the northern boundary of the field of Zama and paused halfway, before them a great stretch of land as flat as a rough-cut paving stone. The Roman army occupied the southern area of this great space. They had drawn up in battle formation, in the checkerboard pattern of cohorts. Behind them rose the dim shapes of hills galloping off into the continent. Hannibal stepped forward before his army and walked toward the enemy without a weapon on his person. No guards—not even the Sacred Band—accompanied him. Only a translator trailed behind, also unarmed, a man of Egyptian blood and fluent in all tongues of consequence. Hannibal had no intention of using him, but it was the arrangement he had agreed to.

Publius likewise emerged as a single figure before the mass of men. His translator walked beside him. For a time he seemed very small, but as they neared the stools set up for them in the middle of the barren field, the man's proportions came into order. Lately, Hannibal had felt the vision of his good eye played tricks with him, especially in bright light. Because of this he opened their discourse abruptly, before either man had even sat down.

“We cannot speak sensibly in such a glare,” he said in Latin. “Would you mind if I called for shade? A single slave. On my word, he'd bear no weapon.”

Publius had clearly not expected this, neither the tone of it, its content or language. It took him a moment to recover. Call whomever you wish.”

Hannibal dispatched his translator to fetch a slave, and the two men sat on the stools, facing at slight angles away from each other. No more than three strides separated them. Publius bore the uniform of his office well. The bronze of his muscled breastplate glinted with fresh polishing, almost to the hue of gold. His empty sheath was attached to his body by a crimson band tight across his torso, and from his helmet rose a great horsehair plume dyed the same color. Hannibal could not help but notice his opponent's youth. By the gods, he was only a boy! His eyes set widely on his face, a sharp nose cutting between them, with thin lips closed and waiting. Not exactly a handsome face, not fierce as Marcellus' had been even in death, not spiteful like the faces of so many Roman prisoners, but even silently and in stillness he conveyed his intelligence.