He was to lead a patrol from a conquered capital of the Betisians, up the Betis River toward Castulo, branching off before he reached that town and following a tributary south to New Carthage. His orders were to march the troops home by a prominent route, feeding the Iberians' sense that they were inevitably surrounded by a more organized foe. It was a routine procedure, usually done in pacified territory, meant mostly as a show of force to natives of ever-doubtful allegiance. Hamilcar gave him a company of two thousand Oretani soldiers, Iberians who, though not completely loyal, were believed to be tamed at least.
The mission started unremarkably, but three days into the march a scout brought his guide information that changed their course: The Betisians were planning an offensive to retake the recently captured city. Their troops had not all surrendered. In fact, many had been held in reserve and were hidden in a valley stronghold in the Silver Mountains, waiting for the Carthaginian force to diminish. With Hanno's group on the march via a northerly route and Hasdrubal on the southerly, they saw their opportunity to attack Hamilcar's dispersed forces.
Hanno heard this information with a calm façade, though his heart hammered out a more frantic reception. He began to give orders to turn back, but the scout suggested something different. Why not send a warning to Hamilcar? Hanno's was still a strong enough force to contend with the rebellion, so long as they were forewarned. With a messenger dispatched, Hanno himself could march on the Betisians and rout their unprotected stronghold. Their camp, not marked on any map that the Carthaginians held, was hidden away in a narrow defile easily accessible only from either end. The scout assured him that it was a valuable settlement and that taking it would do much to disrupt the tribe. The Betisians would have nothing to return to and would thus truly be ready to come to terms with the Carthaginians.
Hanno tried to imagine what his father would have him do, or what Hannibal would have done faced with the same circumstances. His information was reliable, he believed, for the messenger was of Castulo blood and they had been faithful allies for almost two years now. Should he not seize the opportunity? He could turn a routine mission into a small victory, and then return home to casually present his father with details of a blank spot on their map. It was a risk, yes, and it was beyond his orders, but had not the Barca sons always been instructed to think on their feet? He imagined the dour look his father might turn on him if he went home with the news of this opportunity offered and passed upon. And that he could not face.
He turned the column for the defile and entered it two days later. The guide moved forward to scout with an advance party of cavalry. The route largely followed the course of a narrow stream, hemmed in on both sides by trees. It was narrow enough that the line thinned, first to four abreast and then to three. It broke down even further as the men jumped from rock to rock or splashed through small pools. It was a fair day, warm enough that the soldiers drank handfuls of the cool water and talked rapidly in their native tongue. Hanno led the company from horseback, he and a group of twenty of the Sacred Band at the front of the line. There was a nervous energy among them, the Band looking one to another, whispering that the guide should have returned by now, or they should have caught up with him. But still they came on no settlement, nor were there many signs that an armed force had passed this way recently. Hanno took note of this and yet, inexplicably even in his own reckoning, he did not halt the march. The column moved on into slightly easier territory, although steeper on both sides and still tree-lined.
They had all but cleared the rise at the far end of the ravine when it happened. He knew he had been led into a trap when he heard the first arrow sink into the soil a few feet from him. It was almost silent, a muted thwack that only in its wake carried the whistle of its falling and only in its quivering shaft betrayed the speed with which it had appeared. For a few moments Hanno was frozen. He saw and felt the world in surreal detail: the feathers of the arrow gray and imperfect, the breeze on his skin as if it were a gale across a fresh wound, a single bird clipping its song and rising, rising up from the ground and away. Then another arrow struck home, not into the soil this time but through the collarbone of an infantryman a few feet behind him.
Hanno spun to give his orders—exactly what they would be, he had not yet formulated—but it did not matter. The din and confusion were beyond his control already. The arrows fell in a hail, glancing off armor and some finding their homes in flesh. The soldiers ducked beneath their shields and sought to see from beneath them. The Betisians crashed down through the trees, tumbling at an impossible speed and angle, more falling than running. Some tripped and whirled head over heels, others slid on their backsides. All screamed a war chant at the top of their lungs, a song they each sang the same but not at the same time. Two ragged walls of Iberians smashed into the thin column from either side, instantly shredding any semblance of order. Before the battle had even progressed beyond this chaos, a new wave of war cries fell upon them. The archers had put down their bows and were now running to join the others, swords in hand.
A lieutenant tugged on Hanno's arm. “We must go,” he said. “Those men are lost.”
“Then I, too, am lost.” He tried to spin his horse but the Sacred Band drew up close around him. One snatched his reins from him and another prodded his horse and all of them moved forward, forming one body. Hanno cursed them and lashed out and even moved to draw his sword. But it was no use. A moment later they were over the rise and all was downward motion. They were soon met by a contingent of Numidian cavalry and with these in their rear they kept up a running fight for the rest of the afternoon and sporadically over the next two days. But the Betisians chased them halfheartedly; they had more than achieved their goal. Hanno was not sure if they were hunting him or simply driving him forward.
Over the space of several days after his arrival at New Carthage it all became clear. There had been no attack on Hamilcar's forces. The only attack was the one upon Hanno's. And as that had proved successful, the whole territory was thrown into confusion once more. Hanno did not see his father till they met on the field a month later. But if the old soldier had forgotten his anger during that space of time, it did not show. He found Hanno in his tent. He strode in unannounced, in full battle armor, helmet clenched in one hand. The other, his left, he swung up like a rock and slammed across the bridge of his son's nose. Hanno's nose poured blood instantly, the stuff thick in his mouth, running freely from his chin down onto his tunic.
“Why must you always disappoint me?” Hamilcar asked. His voice was even, but cast low and scornful. “Next time you lead two thousand men to their deaths, stay with them yourself. Have at least that dignity. In my father's time you would have been crucified for this. Be glad we live in a gentler moment.” Having uttered this and thrown his blow, the old warrior spun and pushed through the tent flap.
That night Hanno sought no treatment for his nose but slept wrapped around it. The next morning his physician threw up his hands. It would no longer be the envy of the women, he said, but perhaps now he would look more like a warrior. Hanno walked out to take his place beside his father with his nose swollen, his eyes black and puffy. Within a fortnight Hannibal led a force against the Betisians and met them in an open field. By the end of the afternoon he had their headman's skull on a javelin tip. By the end of the week he had their main settlement, and their allegiance ever after. Such was the difference between his brother and him. Hanno never forgot it.
Hanno roused himself. He realized he had been standing above the pen for some time, watching the handlers at their work but not actually seeing them. He turned and walked off. The elephants did not need his inspection. They were well tended. Of course they were.
More so than any of his brothers, Hasdrubal Barca lived his life astride a pendulum swinging between extremes. By day, he honed his body to the functions of war; at night he sank up to the ears in all the pleasures of consumption available to him. Hannibal had once questioned the structure of his days and whe
ther his habits were suitable for a Barca, suggesting that Hasdrubal's pleasure-seeking indicated a flaw that might weaken him with the passing years. Hasdrubal laughed. He proposed instead that his devotion to the body was the greater discipline. The fact was, he said, that he could rise from an all-night romp and still train with a smile on his face. Perhaps this was a sign of stamina that Hannibal had never himself mastered. As for indications of decay or weakness, at twenty-one his body was a chiseled monument surpassing even his eldest brother's. So, for the time being, he passed his days and nights as he saw fit.
During the winter, he kept to a strict training routine. Three days after his return from Arbocala he began the regimen again, already ill at ease after a few days of uninterrupted leisure, the celebration of victory almost too much even for his own resources. He slept naked, always in his own bed, always completing the night alone, no matter whose pleasures he had shared earlier in the evening. His squire, Noba, woke him just as the sun cleared the horizon line and rose up in spherical completion. Together they bathed in the chilly waters of the private bath on Hasdrubal's balcony. Noba once had to break the skin of ice upon the water before they could enter, an unwelcome task for an Ethiopian. Hasdrubal found this ritual dunking to be the surest cure for the fatigue caused by the previous evening's debauchery.
He broke his fast with a small meal of something dense and meaty—cattle liver topped with eggs, venison on a bed of onions, stewed chunks of goat—and then it was on to the gymnasium. Hasdrubal and Noba had received the same instruction in hand-to-hand combat, but Noba carried with him earlier knowledge, the wisdom of the martial arts of his southern people. The two men merged these tactics and pressed beyond them. They wrestled each other into awkward positions and then talked through the most efficient, deadliest way to free themselves, the quickest way to deal a deathblow. They made killing a game, a physical and mental exercise that they joked their way through, lighthearted, companionable. Yet they both learned their lessons well and on more than one occasion credited their survival to tactics first thought up during these sessions. From wrestling, the two moved on to weapons practice. They sparred with thrusting sword or sweeping falcata, Spartan spear or javelin. When Hasdrubal tired of those, they experimented with using different shields as weapons, fighting with broken swords, with the shafts of blunted spears, or with the spearheads minus the shafts.
Before his afternoon meal, Hasdrubal walked stairs in the gymnasium with an ash beam balanced on his shoulders. He stripped down to nothing for the exercise, grabbed the straps that aided his grip, and hefted the beam with the full exertion of his body, slowly finding the balance point, sliding his body underneath the weight, and coming to peace with it. He took each step deliberately, pressing his foot down into the stone and thereby lifting himself and the weight carried like outstretched wings. It was a slow ordeal, a hundred steps up, a slow turning, and then a hundred steps down, another turning, and on again.
Groups of young noblewomen sometimes gathered to watch him. They whispered among themselves and pointed and laughed and sometimes called out to him, asking him whether he ought not exercise that third leg, for it was limp and lifeless compared with the two others. Hasdrubal kept on at his work, giving them little more than a smile or shake of his head. Instead of being bothered by their teasing, he was amused, flattered, encouraged, reminded that pleasure was never that far away. He slipped out from under the beam only when his legs were useless, rubbery things that wiggled beneath him and disobeyed the instructions his mind gave them.
The rest of the day was spent in training of a less overtly physical sort: honing his horsecraft, practicing the tribal languages, studying accounts of earlier campaigns, learning from the mistakes or triumphs of others, and fulfilling whatever obligations Hannibal had assigned him. A week after their return from campaign and the appearance of the surprise envoy from Rome, Hannibal called a meeting of his brothers and all his senior generals. Mago met Hasdrubal in the gymnasium baths. They had agreed to attend the meeting together so that Hasdrubal could fill his younger brother in on any details that eluded him. The elder brother stood naked before Mago as Noba pounded out a massage on the wings of his back. The squire's dark face was calm and somewhat vacant, his body lean and tall, perfect in a manner unique to his people. The muscles of his arms popped and contracted at their work.
“You should train with me,” Hasdrubal said. “Carthage will make a man soft. Too much palm wine and too many Nubian servant girls to rub you with oil. You need a good thrashing and then for Noba here to beat the fatigue out of you.”
The Ethiopian patted his master on the back and stepped away from him, indicating that he was finished. Hasdrubal rolled his head on his shoulders and stretched his torso at several angles, as if he were testing that the parts still functioned as they should. Then he began to dress.
“So,” Mago said, sitting on a stone bench and looking into the yellowish water of the baths, “is it a certainty, then? We attack Saguntum in the spring?”
Hasdrubal slipped on his undertunic and tugged it into place. “It's a certainty that we'll be at war with someone. Hannibal will spend the winter securing the goodwill of our new allies. He will succeed, in part, but never completely. Men who have just been soundly beaten and humiliated are slow to grow into true friends. If it were my decision we would not attack Saguntum next year. You know I like a fight, but there's enough fight left in the rest of Iberia to keep me occupied. Our brother, I believe, has long wanted to chastise the Saguntines. That Roman envoy only succeeded in making the prospect irresistible.”
“Perhaps that is why it's a sound move to attack Saguntum,” Mago said. “To show our new allies that we can share common enemies. It will take their humiliation and heap it onto another people.”
Hasdrubal glanced up for a moment and took his brother in frankly. He sat down beside him and laced up his sandals. “Perhaps,” he said. “In any event, Hannibal rides before the vanguard of reason. He leaves it to the rest of us to catch up. By the way, watch yourself or you'll find you have been betrothed to some chieftain's daughter. That is a sure way to secure their goodwill—to make them family.”
“You make that sound unpleasant. Hannibal has done so himself.”
“True, but not every man's daughter is an Imilce. Truth be known, brother, I like this country. I am more at home here than in Carthage. The Celtiberians make good allies and amusing enemies. And I've even grown to appreciate their women, pale things that they are. Mago, you would not believe this creature I've been screwing lately. She's beautiful, yes? Silver eyes and a gentle voice and a mouth that always seems in a pucker, you know? She thinks up things that would make an Egyptian blush. She does a trick with a string of beads . . .” Hasdrubal's eyes rolled upward into a flutter. He leaned back against the stone wall, momentarily lost in contemplation. “I won't even describe it. I don't know what you'd think of me.”
“Is this love or just passion?” Mago asked.
“It is the love of passion, my brother. The love of passion.”
The two brothers were among the first to climb the winding stone staircase to the top of the citadel, where the meeting of the generals was to take place. The tower was open to the air, a round platform ringed by a waist-high stone wall. It offered a view of both the fortress and the turquoise sea stretching out to the horizon. A wind whipped and buffeted the brothers, cold and mischievous. It made talking a challenge, but what Hannibal had to discuss he did not mind shouting out. And they were far from prying ears anyway.
Most of the officers were still settling in after the Arbocala campaign. If they were surprised to be called to a meeting so soon, they did not show it. They mounted the platform, shadowed by their squires, with a variety of characters reflected on their faces, as different in temperament as in the shades of their skin.
Maharbal, the captain of the Numidian cavalry, stepped onto the platform with a stern demeanor throughout his entire body. He wore his hair long. The thick, wi
ry strands gathered at the back, secured with a strip of leather. His dark skin had a reddish hue, as if baked by the sun and ripened to a rough, thick coat. His nose was slim and sharp; his chin protruded as if his face were a hatchet meant to slice the wind. Indeed this was just what he was famous for, the speed and precision of his riding.
“He is new to leadership,” Hasdrubal said, “sent by King Gaia of the Massylii. He knows his men and their horses and commands a devotion that almost rivals their admiration of Hannibal himself. He has almost too much power, but he has thus far proved true to us. We would be legless without Numidian horsemen.”
Adherbal, the chief engineer, also arrived early, dressed in a flowing Carthaginian tunic. He set his palms upon the stone wall and gazed out over the city he had helped create. His eyes moved with a singular intelligence, as if the wheels of his thoughts spun behind them, figuring calculations and making measurements even as he smiled and spoke and listened. Recently, his skills at building and knowledge of the laws of physics had been used to destroy cities rather than create them.
“If we lay siege to the Saguntines it'll be his machines that win it for us,” Hasdrubal said.
Just before the meeting, the others arrived in quick succession. Young Carthalo commanded the light cavalry under Maharbal. Bostar and Bomilcar: the first Hannibal's secretary and the second a favored general. Synhalus, the oldest man of the group, had served as the Barcas' surgeon since Hamilcar's time. He was the slimmest of them all, fine-featured and intelligent, of Egyptian blood. He had quiet eyes and full lips and a face not given to showing emotion or betraying any thoughts whatsoever. A man named Vandicar stood beside him, the chief mahout, a native of the distant land of the Indians. His complexion was a touch darker than the Carthaginians', but his closely cropped black hair was absolutely straight, oily and dense. Behind each of the primary players stood their squires and assistants, quiet shadows like Noba who heard all with blank faces, trusted aides and friends, battle-hardened soldiers in their own right, some free, some bound by slavery.
Pride of Carthage Page 4