These actions went uncommented upon for a while, but then one of the young males took exception to it. He cocked his head. It was not an angry motion, but it was swift enough to catch Vandicar off guard. The elephant's tusk nudged him in the shoulder. One of the man's feet got tangled in the other. He reached out for support from a sapling that had no roots and therefore was no support. A moment later he landed in the river: flat-backed, arms out to either side, mouth an oval of surprise. This seemed to confirm the suspicions the young bull had. He pivoted and bolted back onto solid ground, bringing in his wake the rest of the elephants, male and female alike. When it came down to it none completely trusted the mad fellow, certainly not now that he was climbing out of the water looking much like a drenched rat.
Eventually though, the creatures were brought across—some afloat and some swimming—and the army departed again. They kept the Rhône to their left and followed it northward. Hannibal knew that at some point it would curve up into the Alps and that in being farther from the coast they were farther from the Romans. Though he had been tempted to engage with Scipio's legion, he preferred to gain Italian soil, then do battle in the Romans' own country, where any victories could be quickly followed up. Also, they were nearing the greatest natural challenge of the journey. Already he sensed the growing buzz of anxiety in the army. They had put more than a normal season's trials behind them, but it was the unknown test of stone and ice that now kept the men awake at night, murmuring around the campfires. Hannibal saw all this, for his eyes were quick and his fingers touched each segment of his host like those of a physician who probes a patient's body in places far removed from the perceived point of illness.
Thus it was no oversight but a conscious decision not to enforce his expulsion of the camp followers. It would have been hard to implement the order in any event, but also Hannibal knew that a portion of his fighting men would slip away with the expelled. Among them a few of the officers hid slaves and concubines. Even some of the paid foot soldiers employed the followers, to carry out their foraging duties, to secure food and comforts. Many, of course, answered sexual needs. Men in a conquering force are rarely without some spoils, coins or weapons or jewelry; the camp followers provided entertainments on which to spend these trinkets. A few among the Libyan veterans had acquired slaves from among the Gauls. As Hannibal knew these men took seriously their right to the spoils of war, he said nothing about this. Perhaps, also, even the many with no direct stake in the camp followers were encouraged by the normality they suggested. If women could journey into these wildlands, along with thin-armed children and men older than battle age and even goats and pigs . . . then surely men in the prime of health were suited to it. Hannibal knew this line of thinking and allowed it for the time being, though he also knew it for a delusion. None but the strongest had any true place in this venture.
He was surprised, in fact, that the noncombatants held on as well as they did. The marching had never been easy, and now they were crossing territory with no roads worthy of the name. They forced their way through forest and over ridges and across rivers with all the order they could muster in the broken terrain. And this was not much. It was not winter yet, but already the chill hours just before dawn were hard on those from warm climes. Increasingly, they awoke to damp mornings and a low mist that was cool to the touch and hung among them a little longer each day. Stepping out of his tent one hushed morning, Hannibal looked over a camp dusted with frost, sparkling in the pure, early light. The thin threads of ice melted quickly, but all the army recognized them as harbingers of the coming season.
Hannibal paused the march long enough in the region of the Cavares to hear a dispute between two brothers, each of whom laid claim to the chieftaincy of their clan. Occupied with their own turmoil, they showed the Carthaginians no hostility. Instead, they asked for Hannibal—as a foreigner with no personal stake in the affair—to judge. They agreed that they would honor his decision. Hannibal wasted no time. He heard them out and promptly deduced that the matter was one of the younger brother's might overthrowing the elder's right. He sided with the elder brother, as age is the determining factor in such matters. In pronouncing his decision, he cited the precedent of thousands of years of history.
The Carthaginians marched out with no inkling of whether the decision would hold, but serving as arbitrator had served their cause well enough. The older brother provisioned the army handsomely from their autumn supplies. He sent them off with an escort force that flanked them through a rolling landscape that began to give way to ever higher vistas, all the way into the foothills of the Alps.
The Cavares turned back at the Druentia River, a vicious, multichanneled torrent, rock-strewn and swirling. It was a nasty, frigid confusion and an ordeal to cross. It was now—as they were left friendless at the foot of the mountains, bunched up against the banks of these spiteful waters—that the men's grumbling grew truly audible. None carried his complaints directly to the commander, but Hannibal heard enough through his generals. The men wondered whether this mountain crossing was truly possible, especially so late in the season. Did the commander not see, as they did, the decrepit huts of the straw-haired peasants? The shriveled cattle, the sheep shivering with cold, rivers tumbling and frothing? This was no land for civilized men. Did Hannibal wish to be famous for marching an entire army up into white oblivion? Delegations of soldiers proposed new plans to their officers: they should winter where they were; they should attack Massilia; they should retreat to Iberia with the considerable booty of the long campaign.
Hannibal heard all these complaints but answered them, for the time being, with silence. He was personally among the first to succeed in crossing the Druentia, visible to many as he balanced on the slippery back of a hewn pine. He wrenched his way through the branches, jumped from the trunk to a boulder, and then dove, flat-bellied, into a stretch of moving water. He finally emerged on the other side, dripping and frigid. He looked back at the waiting army with an accusation etched in his stare. The others, grumbling, could not help but follow his example.
Soon after, a delegation arrived from the tribe into whose lands they were about to enter, the Allobroges. It was a small group, five elders, each with a few warriors in support of him. Monomachus—trusting no people as little as he did Gauls—escorted them into camp personally, his handpicked corps flanking the party, strong armed Libyans who shared their general's lust for carnage. Hannibal granted the Allobroges an audience before his tent. He sat on the plain three-legged stool he always brought with him on campaign. It had been his father's, as he explained to the delegates through his translators. After exchanging the customary pleasantries and accepting the gifts the Gauls offered—most notably, the enormous gilded skull of a stag—he asked them their business.
The leader of the delegation, Visotrex, stepped forward to speak for them. A screen of unkempt hair hid his face; the dull silver strands must have once been blond. His words came out with a rasping deepness that made them completely beyond Hannibal's comprehension, so that for once he had to rely entirely on his translator. Visotrex claimed that his tribe had heard all they needed to of Hannibal and the powerful army he led; they had no wish to clash in arms. He came to offer free passage through their lands, guides even, for the routes were difficult and only a local's knowledge would see them through without grave loss.
Hannibal asked the man to pull his hair back from his face. Visotrex did so. His visage was one of caved depressions, his eyes so deep-set they huddled in shadow, his cheeks receding beneath his facial bones, his mouth a pucker sucked back against his teeth. There was a growth on his neck that might have accounted for the strange constriction of his speech; it bulged as if the man had swallowed a lime whole and carried it stuffed to one side of his throat. For all this, the Gaul's face was unreadable, a fact that Hannibal noted well.
“You speak for all your people in making this offer?”
Visotrex said that he did, looking to his companions for verification.
They nodded and spoke in their tongue until Hannibal waved them to silence.
“And are you a chieftain, or simply a messenger?”
The Gaul said that he was a chieftain, as his father before him had been, and that his son would lead his people after his death. Saying this, Visotrex indicated the young man standing behind his left shoulder. Hannibal took him in. He was a head taller than his father, wide-shouldered, with little in his well-formed face to connect him with his sire.
“This one is your son?” Hannibal asked. “He looks to be blessed by the gods.”
Visotrex, for the first time, showed an emotion. Pride. He said, “In him I see the future of my people. This is a fine thing.”
“Yes, it is,” Hannibal said. “You are wise to come to me like this, as a friend, with no suspicion, no hostility. As you have been told, we've no quarrel with you. Our enemy is Rome alone. But the path to them takes us through your lands. If you're true to your word, you will find our passage no great burden. You may profit from it, in fact. I ask only that you travel at my side while we're in your country. If I may offer you our hospitalities even as you offer us yours . . .”
Visotrex, who had followed the speech with one ear tilted toward the translator, stiffened at the last suggestion. He seemed unsure of how to answer it, even glancing to the others for some direction. Finally, he gestured with spread hands: This was not possible. A chieftain had many duties. There were ceremonies he must preside over, so what the commander suggested could not be—
“Then I will have your son,” Hannibal cut in, “as my guest. I will show him the same courtesy I would show you. The son of the chief is the future of the people, yes? I'd be honored to have him as my escort. Thank you for your wise counsel. My generals will speak with you of our route.”
Without awaiting a reply, Hannibal rose from his stool and retreated into his tent. He stood there a moment, just inside the flap, listening to the short, confused conversation that followed. Visotrex, once he fully understood the commander's words, tried vainly to dispute them: A mistake had been made; for many reasons, he could not agree to leave his son. But, just as he would have instructed them, Hannibal heard Bostar and Bomilcar close down the discussion and move the party away.
As they receded, Mago and Monomachus entered the tent. Hannibal saw the questions on their faces, but spoke as if they had simply come to hear his instructions. “Tomorrow morning we'll call the men to full dress and have them march in battle order,” he said. “Tell them it is meant as a display and that the grander the spectacle they make, the less trouble we'll have with these Allobroges. I will speak to the assembly then. And when we march, I want the chief's son always at my side.”
“You do not take the Gauls at their word, do you?” Mago asked.
“No, you should not,” Monomachus said. “I fear there is treachery in this. I would slice the man's throat and listen for what truth escapes without his tongue to first twist it.”
“I hear you both,” Hannibal said, “but we cannot deny that these people offer us much. Baal knows that we will all benefit if they are true to their word.” He parted the tent flaps with the wedge of his hand and watched the receding backs of the Gauls and the escort that flanked them. “But do not think me misled in this. We can trust them no more than one does a captive wolf. We must hold close to our swords that which the chief values most highly. His heir; his people's future.”
That evening Hannibal lay staring up at the fabric of the tent above him. He had to quash the whispered fears eating at his army's morale, and he had to do so in a single speech. He would offer encouragement to his men every step of the way, but he could not be seen to be fighting a losing battle, like a mother imploring her children to behave. He tried to compose in his mind the words he would say on the morrow, but each time he began, his thoughts ordered themselves differently and looped off in varying directions. He pushed all such thoughts from his head toward the middle hours of the night. He knew what his men needed to hear, what his father would have said. Best simply to stand before them and speak the truth as it came from his heart.
Having dismissed the subject, he worked his way through a catalog of other difficulties. He searched in his short conversation with Visotrex for signs of deception. He reviewed his knowledge of the names and histories of Gallic tribes, but could retrieve no memory of having heard of Visotrex. He did believe, however, that the young man he called his son was indeed his offspring. Fatherly pride is easy to spot and hard to hide. Hannibal knew the threat implicit in his securing the young man as hostage, but whether Visotrex would eschew any treachery to preserve his son's life he could not measure. He put the issue in its place and moved on.
He would press Visotrex for extra supplies as soon as he could: skins and furs, dried meats that were easily carried, footwear suited to ice and snow, grease for the men to cover their bare skin with. He would demand more than they could spare and therefore get somewhat more than they would like to give. He wondered if he should paint the elephants with a mixture of animal fat and herbs, as some had suggested. Vandicar was against it, but even he could not say what would become of the beasts. Hannibal needed them alive and impressive, especially for the descent into the Padus valley. His men would be weakened, half-starved, frostbitten, feverish by the time they emerged. The army he would speak to tomorrow bore little resemblance to the one that would stumble into Italy in several weeks' time, even as the current army was diminished from the one he had left Iberia with months ago. But if the elephants still walked upright they might distract the Carthaginians' enemies from their army's other weaknesses. Yes, they should be covered in animal fat, he decided. It could do them no harm, and he could not afford to neglect them.
He went once more through the mental map he had of the distribution of the Gallic tribes in the Padus valley, deciding on the best entry point, the preferred route by which to reach the Insubres and the Boii, the two tribes who were already in revolt against Rome. And he decided to issue a new warning to the camp followers: if they chose to follow farther, they would be tolerated only so long as they were not a burden. The first sign of delay or weakness and they would be dispatched and left unburied, unburned, unmourned, food for wolves. They should abandon this journey and make their way home as well as they could. He would say this, but he already knew it was too late. Cut off from the army, the camp followers would be pounced upon by marauding Gauls before an hour had passed. This issue decided, he went through others yet waiting for his attention. This list was long. Only when he felt sleep truly weighing heavy on his lids did he let his mind wander to Imilce, and that only for a few moments. More was hard to bear.
The next morning Hannibal stood on a rise before the gathering army. The ground was nowhere truly flat, but on the rolling, tree-dotted landscape the ranks of soldiers before him seemed to blanket all the habitable earth. Behind him, a slab of gray granite jutted up from the trees and stretched toward the sky—impressive, yes, but also a sign to his men that he would not be cowed by the scale of the mountains awaiting them. The Gallic envoy stood beside him. Together they watched the men march into position, first one contingent and then another, the various nationalities, differing in race and custom, in armor and preferred weaponry and artistry of shield and helmet. It might have looked like a conglomeration of brutes. It was a conglomeration of brutes. But there was order in it. The various parts made an unlikely whole.
Hannibal waited until the hush had settled and grown into an energy of its own. Sixty thousand men in silence, horses and elephants quiet as well, beyond them along the outskirts the camp followers, silent wraiths, seldom seen but always seeing. The commander held the silence still longer, listened to it build. Then, motioning so that the translators knew to begin, he turned and addressed Visotrex.
“What have our visitors to say to this?” he asked. “Does my army offend the eye, or is it a thing of wonder?”
Visotrex consulted with the others in his party. He answered that before him
was the greatest army he had ever seen. “Truly,” he said, “the world is Hannibal's to shape as he sees fit.”
After waiting for the Gaul's response to reach the masses in their different tongues Hannibal asked, “Do you hear that? The elders of the Allobroges look upon you in fear. These old men who themselves live in this country you find so harsh . . . They see you as a mighty army, engaged in a quest like none the world has ever known. They see the greatness in you and have come to offer us safe passage through their lands. They wish to escort us through, just like the Cavares who led us this far. But what am I to say to them, when among you there is talk of fear? Talk of these mountains ahead of us. Of the Romans waiting to meet us on the other side. What do I say to these men who see before them an undefeatable army? Would you have me tell them of your doubts?”
He paused and let the various translations flow through the army. Visotrex said something to the Gallic translator, an Iberian trader Hannibal had employed since the Pyrenees. The man did not speak. He would not look Visotrex in the face but stared only at the ground below him. The Gaul nudged him angrily. Without meeting his gaze, the translator trudged away a short distance, turned, and set his gaze on the commander, completely ignoring the Allobroges.
Hannibal did not acknowledge the exchange. These words were meant for his army, not for Visotrex. When he began again, he spoke while on the move, slowly, with natural pauses so that the translations never lagged too far behind him. He walked close to the troops, strolling the various lines of them in easy appraisal, something humorous indicated in his gait. “Tell me truthfully, what's this I hear of fear in your hearts? I believed myself to be in the company of the heroes who carved up Iberia, who strode across the Pyrenees and hacked a path through tribe after tribe of barbarians. Is there not a man among your number named Harpolon, who slew the champion of the Volcae with one swing that loosed his head from the body that supported it?”
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