Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  Imago, gazing about him for his fellows' approval, answered with a shrug. “We accept whichever your Roman heart prefers to give.”

  And so Fabius opened his hand and released the folds of his toga in a manner that made it clear which the Roman heart preferred. As he spun to leave, the Carthaginians spoke in one voice, declaring their acceptance of the gift and their devotion to fight it to the end. Thus was the second war between Carthage and Rome agreed upon by cordial means.

  During the winter following the siege of Saguntum, Hannibal released his Iberian troops to enjoy their families for the season, with the order to return in the spring to embark upon a journey to immortal fame. But for the commander himself and those who served him most intimately, there was little rest. To his family, it sometimes seemed that Hannibal had not returned from campaign at all. He was gone on exercises for days or sometimes weeks. When he was at home his time was filled morning to night with meetings and counsels, with planning sessions, with dictating letters to foreign leaders and collecting information from spies. The project he now had before him was a massive puzzle of matters military, geographical, cultural, monetary, issues as diverse as supply trains and political ramifications, topics as varied as naval routes and the physical constitution of elephants.

  He drilled his Libyan veterans beyond any of the soldiers' expectations. They were up before the winter dawns, sent on far-ranging marches in full gear, with food and animals and siege weapons. They prowled the high mountains, going so high as to press through knee-deep snow, scaling rock faces, and rigging rope systems to aid the pack animals, coating their bare limbs with grease and marveling at the way their breath made ghosts before their mouths. He had new supplies of elephants shipped across from Carthage, mostly the native variety from the wooded hills of North Africa. They were not so large as the specimens found farther south, nor even did they stand as tall as the Asian variety, but each was a four-legged juggernaut. With a skilled mahout behind their ears they could mow down the enemy. Just the sight of them might clear a path through the barbarians who stood between them and Rome. Hannibal also called up new corps of Balearic slingers, for he had come to admire the pinpoint accuracy of their strikes, the way they turned the tiniest of stones into missiles that flew at blurred speed. He made arrangements to transfer some of his Iberian troops to defend Carthage, while bringing Africans over to protect Iberia in his absence. He hoped to assure their loyalty by keeping each group far from their homes, away from the enticement to desert, and dependent on their Carthaginian masters. And he sent emissaries to the tribes whose territories they would have to cross, rough Gaelic and Celtic peoples with whom he preferred friendship to war.

  In the days just before the Mediterranean winter loosed its grip on New Carthage, Hannibal received his most detailed map yet of the territory through which his route to Rome lay. Alone in his chambers, he spread it out across his table and bent to study it. On the map the Alps were little more than a single jagged line of peaks, like a strange scar across the land. The document suggested routes through several different passes, but it provided no details, no indication of height or terrain or forage. There was little here from which he could choose a course. What to make of tales of peaks that pierced the sky, of yearlong ice and earthquakes wherein snow and rock flowed in torrents that were like water one moment, then set like cement the next? He wondered how the elephants would fare in those conditions. Some sources suggested that elephants would perish in the cold. Others argued that their thick hides would protect them. He had heard of the bones of mighty pachyderms found trapped in the ice of northern places. Giants, they said these were. If those creatures grew so large there, perhaps the climate would suit his elephants more than people knew.

  If this were not confusion enough, the names of the tribes stood out among the depiction of the natural features: Volcae, Cavares, Allobroges, Triscastinii, Taurini, Cenomani . . . What peoples were these? Some of them were known to him; some channels of communication had long been open. Some of the tribes, like the Insubres and Boii, were actively hostile to Rome and interested in his plans. But others were only names shrouded in rumor and speculation. Blond creatures who lived in regions so frigid as to change their natural skin color, making them pale as marble statues, taller than normal men, and fierce as wolves. They drank the blood of slain heroes and made ornaments from bones and teeth and adorned their hovels with the bleached skulls of their foes. They fought with a wild abandon that had no order to it save the desire for personal glory. He understood they went into battle naked or nearly so, and that they often went clothed only in trousers that covered their legs like a second skin. Such a strange notion: to rarely see the muscles and flesh and hair of one's own thighs. It was hard to know just how accurate these tales were, and yet he did not doubt that any errors were deviations from even stranger truths.

  Standing over the chart he felt a flush of blood tint his face. For all the information, the map was terribly inadequate, the detail etched by a man's pen, pushed by a single hand and mind. It was not the real world but only a vague, incomplete outline of it. The day would come when these mountains and these people were real before him, when he would feel the sharp rocks through his sandals and look upon the barricade of mountains receding before him in solid fact, when he would see these peoples' eyes and smell their breath and grasp their hands in friendship or spill their blood in enmity. Strange that thousands of lives depended on the plans he made now, pulled from the air in calm solitude. He wished his father were beside him so that they could share this, but he pushed the thought from his mind with a resolve long practiced. Uncertainty was the shackle that constrained normal men.

  As he bent staring at the map, his sister appeared in the corridor opening. Sapanibal stood a moment in silence, then stepped through the threshold, nodding to the door servant as she did so. The slave bowed his head and slipped from the room, leaving the two siblings alone for the first time in nearly a year.

  “My brother,” Sapanibal said, “I trust I am not disturbing you.”

  Hannibal looked up from the chart. Seeing her, his face went through a quick transformation. At first he met her with the stern visage of a general. This faded almost to the half-grin of a brother, and fast behind this came the honest, tired expression with which he addressed few people in the world.

  “Many things disturb me, sister, but you are a welcome visitor.”

  “I come, actually, as an emissary of your beloved. She is worried about you. Thinks you're sure to catch a consumptive illness with this winter training.”

  Hannibal smiled and shook his head. “She is afraid for me now, while I'm simply practicing for war? You women are strange. Happy to send me off into battle, but fearful that a cold might fell me.”

  “Small things are sometimes the death of great men. I do not think Imilce is alone in fearing that you tax yourself.”

  “Tax myself?” Hannibal asked. “If only you knew, sister. To see this coming war into being requires an unending vigilance. This is just the calm; come and see the makings of the storm.” He waved her closer to the table. “For all its art, this map is a crude thing, filled with empty spaces, dotted with deaths yet to be written. You know my plans?”

  “No one has invited me to council,” Sapanibal said. “The things I've heard I dismiss as speculation only.”

  Hannibal doubted her knowledge was so limited, but he said, “A land attack. Since the Romans destroyed our navy during our last war, they've believed themselves safe in their own land. The physical barriers have always seemed insurmountable. An army cannot swim the sea. Nor can an army climb the heights of mountains like the Alps and Pyrenees. So the Romans believe, at least. Our spies report they think they'll fight this war on their own terms. They expect me to entrench here in Iberia and wait to defend myself. On this they are mistaken.”

  He paused for a moment and studied the map. Sapanibal, dryly, asked, “Has the commander changed the map of the world to suit him?”

/>   “The map can remain as it is,” Hannibal said. “We will march along the Mediterranean coast this spring, cross the Pyrenees in early summer and the Rhône at midsummer, and traverse the Alps before the autumn. This will be a long and difficult march, but I do not accept that it is impossible. It only means that we will be the first. Think of the things Alexander achieved by again and again attempting the unimaginable. What do you think of this?”

  Sapanibal laughed. “Hannibal asks a woman's advice on matters of war?”

  Hannibal watched her and did not answer but awaited hers. She was the eldest of Hamilcar's offspring and though she was a woman she was easily Hannibal's equal in wisdom: they both knew it. She had made sure he knew it from his earliest memories of her. There was a time, in fact, when she was his physical superior. Her strong, long-legged form had thrown his often during the wrestling matches of their youth. A twelve-year-old girl, in the quick bloom of early womanhood, is in no way inferior to her nine-year-old brother. Hannibal had never forgotten this. It hung behind all discourse between them. So yes, he would ask a woman's advice, and he knew she would give it.

  “Your plan is the best possible one,” she said. “Father would be proud. And what of the rest of us? What fates have you assigned your siblings?”

  Hannibal stepped back from the desk and rolled his shoulders for a moment, as if his day's training had just caught up with him. He sat down on a nearby stool and rotated his head to ease some tension in his vertebrae. The bones made an audible crack, but judging by the commander's grimace this provided no relief.

  “Everyone has a part to play,” he said, “though I've yet to settle everyone's role exactly. I will do so soon. But for your part, I ask—”

  “I will escort your wife to Carthage,” Sapanibal said, “and introduce her to our mother and Sophonisba and bring her more fully into our country's ways.” After a short pause she added, “If that is your wish, brother.”

  “You have learned no fondness for my wife, have you?”

  “What has that to do with it?” Sapanibal asked, with her usual flat frankness. She stood and circled her brother and pushed his hand from his neck with her palm. She stood a moment with her fingers on the firm wings of his shoulder muscles, then she squeezed and released, squeezed and released. “I respect her,” she said. “That is what matters. I understand the value of your union with her here in Iberia. She is beloved of her people, and this is a good thing for Carthage. And, too, brother, I acknowledge your passion for her.”

  Sapanibal pressed her thumbs into Hannibal's back with a force that surprised him, as if the two digits were formed on gnarled tree roots. He almost turned around to check, but her hands held him.

  “If the marriage had been mine to arrange,” she continued, “I might have found you an equally useful, yet somewhat more homely bride. A man should value the bond with his wife and honor her accordingly, but a commander should not mix duty with ardor. Better to respect your wife and stick your penis in some pretty camp follower.”

  Again Hannibal almost turned, for it seemed to him that his sister was speaking with doubled significance about her own marriage. But she stopped any movement with an admonishing click of her tongue.

  “Do you truly mean that?” Hannibal asked. “Father was not so with Mother. . . .”

  “Yes, but her strength equaled his. You are a man, Hannibal. You can have no idea of the sacrifices required of women. Mother was the foundation from which Hamilcar Barca launched himself at the world. But she was never, never a source of weakness to him. This is something you cannot know, but believe your older sister.”

  “So you think my wife is not such a foundation?”

  “I've never said a sour word against Imilce. I'm just voicing my thoughts on a subject, and on the virtues of our mother. Of any wife of yours . . . She should be handled strictly, so as to cause the least distraction.”

  Hannibal heard this with pursed lips, a frown tugging at one corner but not completely allowed. It faded with a few moments of silence. “Sister, we should have spoken more often. Your counsel is wise where I am shortsighted. It would have been good for us to debate the matters of life more fully.”

  “Why do you say ‘should' and ‘would'? Are we not at council now? You speak as if we've no future before us.”

  Just then, both siblings caught movement at the mouth of the corridor. Imilce stepped in. She met the two with her gaze, cleared her throat, and placed a hand upon her delicate collarbones.

  Hannibal placed a hand on his sister's fingers. She withdrew them. As he rose and approached his wife he said, softly and—though his eyes were on Imilce—to Sapanibal alone, “We've a war before us. Beyond that very little is certain.”

  How the child escaped his governess's care none could say, but he was a lively boy, recently emboldened by his mastery of two-legged travel, and such children have their own, secret devices. He progressed unnoticed through several long corridors, through a room set off with a long dining table under which he walked, out onto a balcony into the winter afternoon, and then back into the warmth by another entrance. He stepped flat-footed, bowed at the legs, his fat feet slapping against the smooth stones, chubby legs rotating from the hips so that his cloth-bound behind served as the pivot from which he wiggled himself forward. He pushed through a curtain partition and into a room filled with male voices. These drew him, for among them was the timbre and cadence that he recognized as his father's. It was only there, standing at the edge of the room, looking shyly toward the table and the large men around it, that he was recognized.

  Hannibal's expression had been serious, his hand massaging the ball of his chin-beard in thought. But his eyes brightened on spotting the child. “Little Hammer!” he said, cutting off one of his guests in mid-sentence. “Excuse me, friends, but we're being spied upon.” The commander rose from his place at the table and strode toward the child. He snatched him up and held him above his head a moment, the boy convulsing with sudden glee. “What are you doing here, Hamilcar?”

  “He's come to learn of matters political and martial,” Bomilcar said.

  Bostar, to explain to the guests, spoke in Greek. “Hannibal's son,” he said, “named in honor of his grandfather, of course. He keeps the maids on their toes, but this time he's escaped them.”

  The three Macedonians nodded at this. None seemed offended by the interruption. Instead, one commented on the boy's healthy looks; another offered that perhaps it was not maids the boy needed but young soldiers to keep up with him.

  Lysenthus, head of the Greek party and therefore seated at the center, asked to see Hamilcar up close. He wore a dark leather breastplate on which ridged abdominal and chest muscles had been outlined in silver studs. He was a solid man, scarred across the cheek and nicked on the eyebrow in a raised welt. His straight brown hair hung in somewhat greasy strands around his face. But for all his warrior's appearance he had about him the look of a sensualist, an easy manner and smirking mouth. He reached for young Hamilcar and propped him up on the table before him.

  Hannibal stood nearby for a moment, but as the child seemed fascinated by the Macedonian he returned to his seat. Lysenthus uttered a string of nonsense words to the boy, neither Greek nor Carthaginian but the babble so often spoken to children. Hannibal felt Bostar's gaze and knew he was being invited to mirth at the sight of Lysenthus—warrior of Macedon, personal envoy of Philip the Fifth—reduced to using nonsense words by a small boy. For the first time in the several hours they had been talking, Hannibal noticed that Lysenthus was missing a finger from his left hand. Not an unusual wound by any means, but it surprised him that he only noticed now, when the absence of the digits so stood out on hands cupped around his son's back.

  “I've made a few like this myself,” Lysenthus said. “More than I can count, actually. Will he wield a sword like his father?”

  Hannibal tilted his head and spoke careful Greek, perhaps more pure in his pronunciation than the Macedonians themselves. “If he lives
to see that day, by Baal's grace . . . I believe his fate in life was chosen by powers other than my own.”

  “The child of a lion is a lion, yes?”

  The other visitors agreed with solemn nods, but Bostar was not so sure. “I heard a tale from the land of Chad that might dispute that. It's said that once, not too many years ago, a lioness gave birth to an antelope and raised her with affection.”

  “You're mad!” Bomilcar said, speaking in Carthaginian. “Did I hear you right? A lion give birth to an antelope?”

  “That is what I've heard,” Bostar said, keeping to Greek. “The Ethiopians swear such things have happened more than once and each time foretells a shift in the world's fortunes.”

  Bomilcar frowned at this and looked about for a translation. His Greek sufficed for giving military orders, but was not up to casual conversation.

  Hannibal said, “I know not the order of things beyond the great desert. One certainly hears tales, but this child is born of my blood—a cub from a lion. Perhaps he will exceed me in time.”

  Hamilcar, as if in answer, reached for the dagger sheathed beneath Lysenthus' arm. The Macedonian moved the boy out to arm's length and laughingly asked, “Has he ever held a blade?”

  Hannibal shook his head, lips in a tight line now and forehead creased uneasily.

  Lysenthus held the boy by one hand and with the other pulled the short dagger from its holder. He held it before the child a moment, watching the fascination in his eyes, rotating the blade so that it reflected glimmers of light on Hamilcar's face. The boy reached for it, delicately, as if he knew that he must show care if he was to be allowed the object. Lysenthus, looking only at the boy now, slid his fingers onto the blade and offered the child the handle. The young Hamilcar took the weapon and held it before him, clasped in two hands, upright and as large as a sword to a man. He was all stillness for a long moment, and the party watched in a hush that suggested awe, as if they were witnessing something prophetic. But then the young one remembered he was a child. He let out a babbling gurgle and jerked the knife up and down, suddenly wild. Lysenthus snapped his head back, an instant too late. The tip of the blade sliced a tiny nick in his nose that dripped red instantly. Just as Hannibal snapped to his feet the Macedonian's hand fell over the child's and pried the blade away.