Pride of Carthage (78 page)

Halfway across the field a number of the elephants stopped dead in their tracks. A few others trembled and tossed their heads and changed direction. The sound reached him later than the sight, so it took him a moment to hear the blast of noise that had met the elephants. The Romans, all at once, had unleashed a barrage of sound. Nearly all the men of the front line carried war horns. These they blew on. Behind them the others shouted in unison, on signals given to various cohorts, so that the sound pulsed, first from one place and the another. All the men banged their swords or spears on their shields, on their breastplates, on their helmets. The elephants, especially the young ones, had never heard anything like it. They must have wondered what sort of beast they were approaching and why.

As soon as the first of the elephants neared pilum range, hundreds of missiles flew at them, piercing the creatures between the eyes or in the ears, catching them in their open mouths, dangling from their chests as they ran. For many of them, this was too much. They turned and retreated, adding their maddened trumpeting to the tumult. The thirty or so that did manage to enter the enemy ranks found the troops drawn into an alternating pattern of tightly wedged men or wide, open avenues. This was what had been strange about the quincunx. They had been positioned in such a way that the troops could step out of the elephants' path and slot into each other. Faced with the path of least resistance, the elephants, no matter what their mahouts tried to convince them, hurtled down through the open stretches as if racing to exit the far end. Few of them made it, however, for the Romans turned and pelted them in passing. Pila and stones, javelins and smaller missiles: all so great in number that the creatures stumbled and fell beneath them, roaring, crying, tears dripping from their long lashes, their hides stuck like pincushions. Some soldiers even began to approach them, stick a foot up, and yank out the missiles to see if they could be used again.

As all this took place on the Roman side, the Carthaginian side suffered conversely. Several of the elephants stampeded straight back and through the infantry, cutting a path through the men like four-legged boulders. To the left, four elephants in close formation drove a wedge through the cavalry, sending them into complete chaos, a situation which Masinissa soon exploited, appearing among them out of the elephants' dusty wake. He drove the confused horsemen from the field. Before long Maharbal and Laelius set the right wing to flight as well. They rushed up the slope at an angle off to the north, and for the next hour the horsemen were to play no part in the main conflict.

The Romans resumed their march toward Hannibal's first line. They did not have many missiles left, but Hannibal could not get his troops to take advantage of this. They did not launch the volley he had hoped for, but tried to pick out singular targets and met with little success. The Romans stepped up to them slowly and began the cut, block, and thrust, cut, block, and thrust that they were so efficient at, using their shields to knock their opponents off their guard or even off their feet. The mixed troops trying to fight them in a variety of styles had no chance against the relentless uniformity of the Roman advance. As the Gauls jostled for room to swing their long swords, the Romans jabbed at their naked torsos, slit their trouser legs open, and sent them to their knees. The slight Ligurians fought well at close quarters, quick with short swords, standing up and squatting, striking high and low, whirlwinds of movement, but rarely landing fatal blows. Many of the Africans fought with spears, but they struggled as individuals trying to fight their way into an impenetrable wall.

Hannibal was not surprised when they began to crumble. First one soldier and then several and then large groups from the first line retreated toward the second. They thought they would sink into their masses. As they approached they discovered the second line would not accept them, no matter how they tried to push through, cursing and indignant. Spears and swords and grim faces met them, held them in place until the Romans caught them up again and they had to turn and fight once more. This was just as he had ordered. Treacherous, yes, but the circumstances left little room for anything else.

Before long the Romans fought standing on the corpses of the first line. The Libyans, Moors, and Balearics of Mago's army fought with fresh vigor. They had a higher level of discipline and during the first moments they stopped the Roman advance dead. But as a river builds slowly to protest a new dam, so the Romans' collective weight began to move them forward again. When the second line broke they were not prepared for the shock they faced on their retreat. The third line would not allow them refuge, just as they had spurned the first. They were cut down fighting, their backs pricked by a wall of their troops' spears.

As the Romans made contact with his veterans, Hannibal thought he might have them. The legionaries would be exhausted by now. The front ranks, facing the fresh veterans, would fall in great numbers. His officers would pull back slowly, leading them on, making them climb, slip, stumble over the bodies of the dead to reach them. They might at least maul them badly enough in the first few minutes as to work a change in the collective psychology of the soldiers.

But Publius must have seen these possibilities as well as Hannibal. He pulled his men back. Even with the blood fury on them, he spoke a command; it translated through the horns; the men listened. They withdrew in semiorderly manner, treading backward in high, careful steps over bodies and weapons and viscera. They regrouped, speaking to each other, finding their places in line, and forming up tightly, panting, wiping sweat from their eyes, spitting blood.

By the time they marched forward again they looked as orderly as if the battle had just begun. The two sides collided, shield to shield, the veterans meeting them in kind, with much the same equipment and technique. The impact sent an echoing clap fanning out in all directions, like the thud of a hundred mountain rams all colliding at once. From then on it was butchery, both sides equally matched, each man dancing with one malignant partner after another, the armies eating into each other. Hannibal could not see as much as he wished. Dust clouded the scene, and the spray of blood above the field seemed a dark rain falling on that one spot in all the world. But he could tell from the general steadiness of the mass of men and from the noise that the issue was not yet decided against him. Somewhere in there Monomachus led the killing. Isalca rallied his woolly-haired Gaetulians. Imco Vaca worked his magic. Perhaps the gods would bless the fresh-faced Vaca again and raise him up as the hero of this battle. Maybe, if they could just hold long enough, the consul would pull his men back, afraid to find himself stranded deep in Africa with only a few shattered men to protect him. Each passing breath increased the chance that they would both concede this contest as a draw. Then, surely, he and the consul would reach a peace agreement. He would even give a little more if he had to. This seemed so possible that the commander began to plan how best to retract the veterans.

But then, from off to the west, he heard a familiar thunder. Because of the slope he could see nothing for a few moments. The sound grew and grew and seemed to engulf him from the opposite side as well. At almost the same moment, cavalry crested the rise to the west and emerged from the scoop of a gentle ravine to the east. Hannibal needed no more than a glance at their speed and vigor and numbers to know that both forces belonged to the enemy. His horsemen had obviously been vanquished. And with this the battle was decided. Masinissa first, but then Laelius and Maharbal rode in with their thousands of soldiers, attacking the veterans from all available sides. The infantry faced about to meet them, but it was a losing effort. The Numidians must have gathered up fallen spears before they returned. They carried extras that they flung at leisure, looking from a distance as if they were betting with each other, telling jokes, laughing. They never got close enough for the foot soldiers to injure them. They just whirled and darted, trilled and darted.

When a few of them caught sight of him and turned their horses toward him, Hannibal knew there was no need to stay a moment longer. Part of him wanted to throw himself into it and meet his end. There before him were thousands of men who hungered to spill his blood. For a moment, he almost gave it to them. But even in his fatigue, even in defeat, he could not help but remember his duty, both to his nation and to his family. It would be cowardly to die now, irresponsible. So he agreed to the Sacred Band's entreaty that they fly. As their horses were rested, they soon outstripped their pursuers and ate up Africa toward the northern horizon.

He was four days on the journey to Hadrumetum. He paused there only long enough to dispatch a seaborne messenger to Carthage, stating his defeat simply, warning the Council that he was on the way and that he brought with him the end of the war. They must concede and accept any terms offered, he wrote. They had to prepare themselves.

Then he set out again. For some reason that he could not explain even to himself, he chose to walk the final days to Carthage. No matter what Publius might have planned, he would be delayed for weeks by the aftermath of such a success and by the need to move an entire army. Hannibal, for this last journey, did not have to rush. He walked with the Sacred Band trailing behind him. At first they were a party of fifteen, but as they passed people gathered to watch them, whispering to themselves.

Someone quickly named him as Hannibal, swearing that he recognized his likeness from a coin. But many protested that this could not be Hannibal. His beard was wild and unkempt. He stumbled as he walked and the sole of one sandal had begun to flap with each step. He looked like some terrible beggar, a veteran of an ancient war, a man lost in the southern desert and surely insane.

But what of his eye? others asked. He has sight in a single eye, just like Hannibal. And does not he wear the garb of a commander? Is he not guarded by the Sacred Band? They threw question after question at his guards, who refused to answer and for some time chased them away. Eventually the numbers grew large enough that they chose instead to ignore them.

Across fields and orchards and pastureland, Hannibal walked at the vanguard of an ever-increasing horde. They were sure now that he was indeed the famous commander, coming home, bearing news to shape the future of the nation. This news, to judge by the look of him, could not be good. He stopped eating on the second day and drank water only from the streams he passed over or waded through. He was emaciated, and beneath the thinness of his skin the muscles of his arms stood out, the striations in his legs. He did not stop to sleep. He walked on through the night and lost many of his followers, but by the middle of the third day they had caught him up again. He walked through the next night, and again the same thing happened. He was so near to Carthage now that curious pilgrims from the city came out to meet him. They shouted greetings to him, prayers, questions. What was their fate to be? Was the wrath of Rome upon them?

Monomachus rode up beside him just after he had come in sight of Carthage. He had yet to wash or clean his armor. He was coated in dust and grime that had dried into the blood over every inch of him. He looked like a corpse moving in imitation of life. The general offered a report on the last moments of the battle. He named specific officers and described their fate, explained how he and a small contingent had cut their way out through the Romans and escaped. Few others had been so lucky. “Only the ones blessed to kill another day,” he said. He understood that the Romans had begun the northerly march once more, although they showed no haste and might take a couple of weeks to reach Carthage.

When he was done, Hannibal said nothing. Indeed, he had hardly listened at all. He kept walking. Monomachus rode along beside the commander for some time, and then, as if it had just occurred to him, he asked if Hannibal had need of a horse.

“The way would be much quicker mounted,” he said. “If we are to fight on perhaps we should make haste.”

“The war is over,” Hannibal said, uttering the first words to escape his parched lips in days. “The only fight left in me is the fight for peace.”

“Moloch abhors peace,” Monomachus said.

“And I abhor Moloch,” Hannibal snapped. “He's your god; not mine. Not anymore.”

Monomachus—stunned, angered, frightened by the blasphemy, all of these—yanked his horse to a halt and sat on the creature immobile as the crowd issued around him.

Hannibal walked on.

Late in the morning, he paused to stare at the full grandeur of his native city, its great walls, the thick foundations, the hill of Byrsa upon which Elissa had first laid claim to this blessed and accursed portion of Africa. Had that beautiful Phoenician queen known what she was starting when she landed here?

By midday he walked down an avenue hemmed in by throngs from the city: young men jostling for position, laborers who had dropped their tasks, women of the lower classes who managed to watch every move he made while simultaneously keeping their eyes lowered, priests looking on from beneath the hoods that hid them from the light of day, slaves and children, aged crones who greeted him in the old way, kneeling on the ground with their wrinkled foreheads against the dust. Vendors sold food, offered water from gourds. Even dogs peered out between legs, curious in their own way.

It was both wonderful and sad to see their many faces, so different in features and skin tone, persons born in this land and those drawn here, some with black curls tight to their scalps, or locks flowing in waves, or hair straight and fine as silk. These were his people. They were the embodiment of all the nations of the world.

Several times councillors stepped out of the crowd and approached him with an air of importance, wearing the robes and the stern faces of their rank. He passed them by, but not out of malice. He would speak to them soon, but first he had other business.

He saw the figures standing on the walls from a long way out, and those gathered at the top of the main ramp leading into the city. He was calm until the moment he saw his family banner hoisted. The Barca lion. It marked the place where his family stood. At the foot of the granite incline he paused and squinted his single eye. He squeezed the figures up there into better focus. There stood his mother, cloaked in a purple robe, her hair bound up into an intricate crown rising above her head. Beside her Sapanibal, touching at the shoulder with a man whom Hannibal could not name just then, an old friend of his father's. It took him a moment to pick out Imilce from among the numerous household servants. But she was there, and before her stood a boy. Her hands rested on his shoulders and though he bore no resemblance to the two-year-old he had left five years ago, Hannibal knew who the boy must be. He hesitated for a few moments, and then he turned to one of the Sacred Band. He sent the man up with a message.