Pride of Carthage (9 page)

Silenus smiled. “Yes, but Hephaestus is known as a kind god, as well. Perhaps Aphrodite finds this a virtue. This may come as a surprise to you, Bomilcar, but I am not personally acquainted with the Olympians. I've invoked their presence more than once, I assure you, but as yet they've spurned me. Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite—I've asked them all to dine but they've ignored me. I caught a glimpse of Dionysus once, but my head was a bit foggy at the time. No, the gods are largely silent as concerns young Silenus.”

“Are you a Skeptic, then?” Mago asked.

“Not at all,” Silenus said. “I've seen Ares in a man's eyes and sampled Aphrodite's handiwork and every day one sees Apollo's labors. I've simply been shunned, and I am bitter.”

Hanno said, “Greeks are strange creatures. They claim to revere their gods above all others and yet at the same time they pretend to believe in nothing. Have you no fear of the insult you may cause and of the punishment brought down on you?”

“Insult to the gods?” Silenus asked. He held his wine goblet beneath his nose for a moment, thinking. “I am too small a man to accomplish that. You see these arms, this misshapen head? What god could reasonably take offense at anything I utter?”

“You toy with questions instead of answering them,” Hanno said. “We Carthaginians fear our gods. We ask daily, hourly, each minute that their wrath be directed at our enemies instead of at ourselves. We never know what will displease them, so we are ever respectful.”

“How unfortunate,” Silenus said. He seemed to have more to say but left it at that.

“Let's not talk of our faiths,” Mago said. “We all honor Baal. That is never in question among this company, Greeks included. But tell us something more useful, Silenus. You have actually been to Rome, haven't you? Tell us of the Romans.”

Silenus picked up on the topic happily enough. “The Romans are an uncultured lot. It is not so long ago that Rome was a flea-infested sewer of no consequence at all. They've no literature to speak of. They appease the gods when it suits them, but they make a muddle of it. They've actually just borrowed our Greek deities and renamed them. One wonders whom they think they are fooling. Not the gods themselves, surely. I imagine that when they decide they need a literature of their own they'll take it from Greece. Take Homer and rename him Pomponius or something similarly absurd and change all the names in the
Iliad
. They are shameless, I assure you. This could well happen.”

“If they aren't humbled first,” Bomilcar said. “Which they shall be by Baal's grace and Hannibal's cunning. I wish he were here to meet you, Greek. Then you'd see the face of the future. He'll squash these Romans beneath his heel soon. Hannibal puts steel in all his men's backbones. Rome is no foe to be feared.”

“I am no warrior,” Silenus said, “but I might argue there's a thing even more powerful than steel.”

“And what's that?” Bomilcar asked. “Surely not pen and ink? Are you of that school?”

“No,” Silenus said dryly, looking almost saddened by the admission. “I'm not such an idealist that I believe that. What I'm referring to is not easily explained. I don't have the word for it just yet, but . . . Have you heard of Cincinnatus? During the early forging of the Republic, the Romans battled with their neighbors constantly. In the instance I am speaking of, the Roman army was pinned down by the Aequi, in a dire situation, trapped with dwindling food and water and outnumbered. As things seemed hopeless, Rome looked to the priests for direction, and in answer they were instructed to call upon Cincinnatus, a veteran soldier some years retired into a quiet life. They found him working in his field, plow in hand, sweating, squinting at the sun, I'd imagine, wife and children and some pigs about the place. You can picture it. But still they called him up and bestowed upon him the powers of dictator. He left the plow where it rested and raised a new army from the fields and farms around him. He marched on the Aequi within a few weeks and defeated them soundly. Quite a feat for a humble farmer, would not you say?”

“But Cincinnatus was no humble farmer,” Hanno said. “He was a veteran. Retired, but still a warrior. What point do you wish to extract from this tale?”

“I assert that he was a warrior and also a simple farmer. He was both, and not more one than the other. That is my point. Romans believe themselves to be simple farmers. But they believe that hand in hand with this goes the requirement that they also be their nations' soldiers. Plow one minute, sword the next, depending on the call of the country. After his victory Cincinnatus laid down the title of dictator and walked away from the rule of Rome and returned to his farm. He picked up his plow where it lay and carried on with his real work of choice.”

Mago doubted that the man's plow had stood untouched in the fields and said so. Silenus waved this away as superficial. “That is a detail of the storyteller. It enhances the tale's symmetry, but should not distract from the truth of it. Still, my point—”

“I understand your point,” Hanno said, “but no army of farmers can stand against an army of trained soldiers, men who have chosen war above other paths. A soldier who has just stepped from the field cannot hope to defeat one who has been drilled and drilled again, one who knows nothing but the life of the sword and scorns men who would break their backs trying to grow plants from the dry earth. Our army succeeds not despite the absence of civilians, but because of it. No man in the Carthaginian Council could last a day in battle beside my brother or me. I'd wager that the same is true of Roman senators. I think this Cincinnatus is just a fiction, a detail from an earlier storyteller, to use your words.”

Silenus shrugged. He lifted his bowl and realized it was empty. Holding it up to be refilled, he said, “But if I understand the possible plans this conversation has suggested to me, then your brother would consider attacking the Romans on their own soil. Men fight differently with their wives and children at their backs. The Saguntines demonstrate it at this very moment.”

Hanno studied the Greek through narrowed eyes. “One wonders if you are suited to the job required of you.” Without awaiting a response, he rose, bade them fair evening, and turned to leave.

“Hanno,” Bomilcar called. “You haven't said whether we resume in force tomorrow. I know the signs were troubling . . . but my men are ready to push the assault. Adherbal says—”

“I know,” Hanno snapped, “but architects do not give orders. They follow them. And I've not made up my mind. I must think on it more.” He stepped out into the summer night and stood for a moment with his eyes closed, feeling the movement of the evening air across his face. The scent of cooking meat floated to him. Beyond that came the flavor of incense and the musty rankness of horses, and, behind it all, the dry smoke of a thousand small fires. He heard bits of conversation, a yell in a language he did not recognize, laughter like that of children at play, and a prayer spoken loud to Shalem, the god who most loved to contemplate the setting sun.

He moved off toward the cottage he had been staying in of late. It was somewhat farther up the slope, set back on a flat shelf and abutted by a stony outcropping. It had been a retreat for one of Saguntum's wealthy leaders, just far enough from the city to provide some quiet, high enough up for the air to be better than that found near the sewers of the city, with a view that one could contemplate indefinitely. Hannibal would not have approved—rather a simple tent or the bare ground, like the men who served them—but the commander was away. Hanno was no stranger to the trials of camp, but when opportunity allowed he preferred solid walls around him and comfort in his bed and the privacy to share it as he saw fit.

While he ascended the hill, the sky bloomed in magnificent color. The horizon glowed radiantly auburn, as if the air itself took on the warmth of the sun and hummed with it. Even the smoke rising from the city caught the crimson heat. Highlights swirled into the billowing gray and black. Hanno remembered the earlier mention of Hephaestus. The sky around his volcano-forge would look much like this. . . . He shook his head to clear it of Greek thoughts. There was only one aspect of Silenus' stories that he cared for: the notion that the Romans read the prophecies correctly when they sought out Cincinnatus. Would that he had such wisdom himself, for he was more puzzled about how to proceed than ever. Was he the drowning man Mandarbal referred to? He felt this to be so, but how did one float in a sea as tumultuous as the one he found himself in?

As he reached his cottage, a figure rose from the ground before it, no soldier or guard but one of the young men who cared for the horses in the hills beyond the camp. He was perhaps fifteen, bare-chested and lithe, a Celt with hair touched by the sun and large black eyes that he kept lowered as the general approached. Hanno did not pause to address the boy, but he was warmed by his presence and thankful for the silent company he was to offer. He walked past him without a gesture or greeting. The boy waited a moment. His eyes rose enough to take in the scene of the city before him, and then he turned and stepped through the threshold.

Hannibal met Hasdrubal en route from New Carthage, and the two brothers rode together at the head of a force of almost twenty thousand. In the week they spent riding inland Hannibal kept his brother tethered to his side, discussing tactics with him, testing his knowledge of the country, quizzing him on the various chieftains, their characters, flaws, and virtues. He needed to know that this young one was capable of the things that were to be asked of him, and the time left for training diminished daily. The army was a mixed company made up partly of the veterans stationed at New Carthage, with some Iberians from the southern tribes, completed by new Libyan recruits and a unit of Moorish mercenaries, and augmented by a company of elephants fresh from North Africa. They had never fought together as one body, but at least they knew the commands as given by the trumpet. Even more important, Hannibal trusted the generals overseeing them to carry out his will.

The farther inland they marched the hotter it grew, dry and unrelenting through the day and a slow bake at night. When they looked back on the column, the army faded rank after rank into a thickening cloud of dust. Hasdrubal once commented that the men were like individual licks of a great fire—a fitting image, Hannibal thought.

Though he spoke of it to no one, Hannibal's wound troubled him constantly. It had half healed into a ragged, fearsome-looking scar, and the leg was just barely sound enough for him to walk and ride. Synhalus had opposed this excursion, and Hannibal soon acknowledged the physician's wisdom—if only to himself—as days in the saddle took their toll on him. At night the pain of the wound gnawed at his leg with such convulsive ardor that he once dreamed a miniature fox had been sewn alive into the wound. He awoke drenched in sweat and angry at himself. A man should control his pain and not the other way around. His father had exemplified such strength during the last decade of his life, and Hannibal was determined to be no different. To prove it he brought his fist down upon his thigh as if to punish the creature within it, to beat it into submission. This proved largely impossible, however. He was glad when battle came, for during it he truly forgot the pain and had no purpose save one.

The Massylii scouts had brought back partial reports earlier in the day. Therefore Hannibal knew as he approached the river Tagus that the Carpetani were near at hand. But it was not until the full force of the barbarians blocked their path that the situation became completely clear. They stood on the near bank of the river, thousands upon thousands of them, a force larger than any they had yet mustered. Hannibal knew at a glance that this horde represented not a single tribe but the confederation of several. They outnumbered the Carthaginians by at least three to one. Moving forward in a semi-ordered mob, they shouted out in their various dialects and blew their horns and bashed their spears and swords against their shields.

The Barca brothers watched this from atop anxious horses. Hasdrubal cursed that they had no choice but to engage fully, but Hannibal shook his head. It was late afternoon already; the sun was slipping behind the hills to the west. He gave orders for the army to back and fight, back and fight. He engaged chosen units briefly and then withdrew them, inflicting what damage he could with pikemen and with the quick spears of the Moorish skirmishers. The elephants wreaked some havoc among the Carpetani but even these he held at close rein.

The afternoon passed into evening, and it appeared—not solely to the Carpetani but also to many among the Carthaginians themselves—that the Iberians had bested Hannibal's men for the day. As the sun set, the Carthaginians turned from warfare to architecture, building the fortifications to protect them till the morrow. Hannibal instructed them to make a great show of it, with plenty of noise, to make it clear that they were settling in for a prolonged fight the next day.

Toward the end of the night's first quarter, Hannibal and a group of scouts led the infantry and most of the cavalry on a five-mile hike upstream. They traveled silently, through what cover of trees as they could. They cut through a narrow pass in the hills and dropped down to the river level and forded it, blessed for most of the crossing with moonlight so bright above them that it lit the river rocks and the hillsides in pale, ghostly gray and etched ribbons of white into the dark water. The march back down toward the enemy army was carried out in the black hours after moonset and before the dawn. The next morning the tribes woke to find their enemy largely behind them, somehow transported to the other side of the river. This threw them into confusion, into quick consultations, arguments, and impromptu councils.

“Watch them,” Hannibal said to his brother. “Just watch them.”

Whatever debate the tribal leaders had, it seemed to lead to no organized action. They collected at the waterfront, shouting insults across at the Carthaginians, calling them cowards, women, dogs. Hannibal held his men, silent, watching, waiting. Something about this calm enraged the Carpetani further. A single soldier stepped nearer than the others and sent his spear across the river. It fell short. The point bounced off a rock and the spear skittered across the ground and rolled to rest at the foot of a Libyan. The infantryman picked it up and considered it, weighed it and tested its grip. Then he tossed it down as useless.