Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  Hanno finally peeled his fingers from his forehead. He looked around at the junior officers and gave them his decision. It was a choice for which he was to suffer terribly.

  The first boulder announced itself with a tremor, a rumble that came from no specific direction but was transmitted through the bones of the earth itself. Mago felt it in the soles of his feet. When he saw it—a chunk of stone as large as an elephant, gray just like those beasts, first sliding down a sheer section of cliff at near free fall, then striking the slope and churning, end over slow end, snapping and pushing trees out of its path—he thought the commotion of the army had loosened it. The boulder landed on the ravine floor a short distance away, crushing under it a mule and the two men driving it. Then the whole scene flooded with a dusty confusion and a rain of smaller stones. And that was just the beginning.

  The army had made steady progress in the days leading up to this one, but they spent the bulk of the fourth day winding into a narrow defile. They had to travel a few abreast, for the rock walls closed in on either side, sometimes rising up vertically around them. Mago rode near the vanguard, with the bulk of the cavalry and the two Allobroge guides, while Hannibal brought up the rear with corps of infantry. They progressed awkwardly, negotiating the stream that wound in front of them at each step, climbing over rocks, managing the horses, convincing the elephants that nothing was amiss. The line must have stretched for miles; the front of the column could not see the rear, and communication between them was difficult. It was a perfect trap.

  A chorus of shouts went up from high above, followed by spears thrown down in a coordinated hail. The bulk of a freshly hewn tree careened to earth in a spray of pine needles. More boulders fell, and smaller stones, and more trees. The damage they did was amplified by fright. Pack ponies made easy targets and when wounded began to scream in pain. A few bolted and this maddened others. They looked wide-eyed around them and kicked out at the men trying to steady them. They bared their teeth, for they were not sure who was causing this alarm and believed it to be anyone who sought to control them. Mounts steady and calm in battle were caught off guard by this, and more than one threw its rider. And the elephants . . . They had been spread along the lead of the column and this was fortunate. Mago watched a single creature, maddened by three darts in the back, as it roared down the narrow passageway, trying to flee, knocking over carts, trampling men, and butting horses out of its path.

  “General,” Maharbal called, “what is your command?”

  Mago spun and called out, asking the question he already knew the answer to. “The Gallic guides—where were they? Somebody grapple them,” he said, but his order was unanswered in the chaos, and the Gauls were nowhere to be seen. He scanned the heights for some way to dislodge the attackers, but there was no clear route. And, it now seemed, there were too many of them up there to deal with quickly even if they could gain the heights. It was clear the head of the column was outside of the main danger, but any sense of relief this provided was short-lived.

  Gauls poured out of a ravine a short distance ahead of Mago's position. In an instant they cut the army in half and inflicted terrible damage on the confused Iberian unit they met. They worked under a protective cover of spears thrown down from a knob on the cliffside that offered a view up and down the ravine. It was clear that this was the center of the ambushers' operations. Mago noted as much. He was to the rear of the Iberian soldiers, but rushed forward to direct their charge. A few moments' observation changed his mind. Stones of all sizes fell among them, denting helmets and knocking them at strange angles on the wearers' heads, battering shields more forcefully than the blows of any sword. He saw one man impaled through the foot by a spear, pinning the limb to the ground. The man threw his head back in a howl of pain that Mago could not hear for the other noises. It was short-lived anyway. Stationary target that the man now was, two other spears pierced him. One slammed through his lower back and out his pelvis. A death wound if ever there was one.

  Mago called for an ordered retreat, which was easier requested than accomplished. A sliver of rock sheared from high above fell among them. It was as tall as a man and twice as thick. It impaled the path like a spearhead. The men around it stood back in horror. When it stayed upright, however, they dismissed the threat of it and moved around either side of it like water around an obstacle. There seemed no end to the confusion. No end to the objects hurled down on them. Mago was kicked in the flat of his upraised palm by a frenzied stallion. The blow spun him with a force he thought might have shattered the bones of his fingers. But his hand was only bruised, and it tingled the rest of the day.

  He did not reach Hannibal's council until after dark, traveling in stealth with a small contingent of guards. He found the officers huddled around a fire in the cover of a lean-to, talking in low voices that betrayed their fatigue and dejection. As he stepped into the circle of firelight, Bomilcar rose and grasped him in a quick, painful embrace. The big man tended to be both ferocious and affectionate after battles. “You are sound?” he asked.

  “Yes, but only by the whim of the gods. Monomachus was right,” Mago said, nodding at the taciturn general. “This was treachery planned thoroughly. How did you fare back—”

  He did not complete the question. His eyes were drawn to one among the group and this silenced him. Visotrex' son sat among them, leaning back against a pack, still as one contemplating the fire. Mago stood gaping at him. Though he had just witnessed a day of carnage, something in the young man's presence beside the fire seemed even more horrific. His jaw hung open and his eyes stared straight before him. The damage to him was not obvious, and yet it was clear that he had been dead several hours now, his skin a pale greenish blue.

  Hannibal had looked up long enough to study his brother, to inventory his body parts and verify his health. Then he lowered his gaze and watched the fire. Bostar answered Mago's unfinished question. They had suffered badly, he explained. Four hundred dead among the Libyans, for example. If they had not placed their best infantrymen to their rear the army might have been wholly lost. They had faced about at a moment's notice and fought with a resolution that would have impressed even Spartans. Bomilcar asked Mago his news and he confirmed what they had already been told. The army was cut in half, spread thin, its entire length overseen by hostiles who held all the high ground. This information given, the council fell silent, awaiting the direction of their commander.

  When Hannibal spoke his voice betrayed a melancholy unusual to him. He did not look at Mago directly, but it was clear he was answering his brother's unasked questions about the Gaul. “Just before it started I had been talking to him of his people's customs and of his family. Do you know that he is the father of two children, twins? Two girls? I had, for a moment, convinced myself that he was being true with me. That his people were to be true to their word.”

  “They nearly destroyed us, Hannibal,” Bomilcar said. His deep voice made the statement hard to refute.

  “I know. I know. It was my sword that slit his belly. It does confound me, though, that men should be so foolish. This Gaul need not be walking in his underworld right now. Nor should my men have suffered so.”

  Bomilcar spoke louder, as if his commander's hearing was in question. “Had they destroyed us they would be the richest tribe in these accursed mountains. That's all the reason they needed.”

  Hannibal studied the fire a moment longer. “Quite so,” he eventually said. “Mago, just before you arrived I realized something. When the first rocks rolled down and the cries of alarm went up, this Gaul jumped back as if to draw his weapon. I beat him to it and sank my own into his belly. Such was the bargain his father traded him into. But what seemed odd to me then was the look of astonishment he fixed on me. It was an honest look, the face of a man just realizing he'd been deceived. Do you know what I am saying?”

  Mago thought that he did. “Visotrex had not told him of the planned ambush. His own son . . .”

  “What kind of man woul
d do that? It is right for a father to die for the sake of his son, but not the other way around. Not like this. What is the honorable means of burial for these Gauls?”

  They all looked to Bostar. He shrugged at first, but then offered, “I believe they make elevated platforms, wrap the body tight in skins, and post mourners to keep away the wild beasts.”

  Hannibal nodded. “Let that be done. I will not see his body defiled more than it already has been by his father's avarice. Who will carry out this rite?”

  The group was silent. And the one who answered did so without speaking. Monomachus grunted a reproach to his fellows, strode forward, and grasped the Gaul around one thick ankle. He dragged him away by it, like a laborer resignedly accepting one last chore for the day.

  When the sound of the body scraping across the ground faded and only the crackling of the fire could be heard, Hannibal said, “I can feel already the strains on my humanity.” He inhaled, drew himself up, and retrieved his commander's voice. “Now, we've much to do tonight. Sit down with us, Mago. Remember that half of our army is separated from us. We've had no word as to how they manage. We must devise a method to unite with them. The way must be opened.”

  The younger Barca thought about this. “It can be. I will tell you how,” he said.

  Later that night under the cover of cloudy darkness, Mago led a small force out. They gained some height by shimmying behind a flake of granite that led to a hidden chamber, which provided access to a zigzagging route up a nearly sheer stone face. Several times Mago doubted he could find a route that would bring them up as high as the protrusion from which the Allobroges coordinated their attack. But his whispered prayers seemed to help them onward. They were in place a couple of hours before dawn. Mago, from hiding, studied on the Gauls' fires, caught occasional breaths of their conversation. For a time he heard the sonorous rhythm of someone's snoring, so loud he sent a few scouts to investigate it. But the offender could not be found near at hand.

  At the first light of dawn they sprang. The Gauls, unprepared, were slaughtered over their morning meal. Another rain of spears fell, but this time it was the Gauls pinned to the ground beneath them. The way was opened. The two arms of the Carthaginian force joined again. Though the army could not command all the heights of the ambush gorge, they did march through, suffering still more men dead, climbing over bodies, following in the swath of fear the elephants cut through the barbarians. When the gorge widened they gained some relief. They halted in a section of the valley open to the blameless sky that did not toss down boulders or trees or darts.

  The ground was flat and easily defended, snow-dusted, with an enormous rock at one end, upon which lookouts were posted. If the Allobroges were to attack here, they would have to fight as a massed army. Fatigued and injured though they were, many among Hannibal's troops welcomed such an encounter for the opportunity to pay back the wrongs done to them. But there was no sign that the enemy cared to pursue them further, except in small bands that attacked stragglers. Mago figured that the work of scavenging from the dead in the gorge was enough to keep the Allobroges occupied for a week. The army spent two uneventful days nursing wounds, numbering the dead and the missing, taking stock of the injured animals and lost supplies, welcoming the stray soldiers and camp followers who trickled into camp, a testament to human resilience, to the dumb, animal instinct for survival.

  It seemed no time had passed at all when Hannibal had the horns sounded early on the third morning. They were to march on. The soldiers rose damp from their slumber, pulled their clothing tight against the chill. They looked for the sun, but the sky hung low and heavy with cloud. As they rose the roof of the world descended to meet them. Snow. It began in mid-morning, first one giant flake and then another. Many of the men had never seen the likes of it before. The Tartesians pulled red ribbons from their bags and wrapped them tight around their heads with ceremonial import. The Libyans tried vainly to avoid the flakes, lest they be weapons of Gallic magic. They dodged and wove, so serious in their alarm that the northern Iberians fell to the ground in fits of laughter. Tribesmen from the center of Iberia simply stopped, dropped their loads, and stared about them, gape-mouthed and indignant. The Numidians watched this all with disdainful eyes. They murmured to each other from horseback and tried to appear calm, although few could help but swat the gathering flakes from their arms and shoulders, quick gestures as one might use to dislodge scorpions.

  Mago himself felt a growing sense of dread, but before it could take hold of him completely Hannibal acted. The commander dismounted at a central spot among the men and chided them for fearing puffs of white less substantial than pigeon feathers. He tilted his head up and caught the flakes on his tongue, encouraging others to do the same. His beard had grown thick over the last few weeks, but there was no disguising the smile of mirth hidden beneath it. He scooped up snow in his hands, shaped it into a ball and hurled it at his brother. Mago stared in bewilderment, unmoving, as the ball exploded on his chest. A moment later Hannibal repeated the maneuver, this time splattering a Numidian's upraised arm. Soon the men caught on and balls of snow cut through the air in all directions, men shouting and laughing. In a matter of moments, the soldiers remembered themselves. They often looked spear and arrows in the eye—what had they to fear from snow? The light mood changed, however, when Balearics began to fling ice balls from their slings. The impact of these on their targets was too much like actual warfare. With effort, Hannibal reined the men in and ordered the march to proceed.

  Within a few hours, the snow had lost its strange aura and become a commonplace annoyance. It fell even more steadily, the flakes smaller but vast in number. White blanketed the stones and earth around them. It hung on tree branches and gathered on the soldiers' shoulders, atop their heads and helmets. They fought the cold with their labor, trudging forward beneath their armor and packs and weapons, but the furnace within them was dim, and it faded as the day progressed. Their naked arms and legs turned blue, grew sluggish and unwieldy. Ice collected between exposed toes, and some men, walking on numb feet, stumbled and fell and were slow to rise.

  In the higher reaches they came into a treeless landscape, seemingly devoid of life, with jagged stone raised like weapons against the underbelly of the sky. Mago found something appalling in the silent bulk of the peaks, in the way they rose one after another like an army of gathering giants, in the strange dividing line where the earth ended and the infinite sky began, and in the awesome spectacle of elephants kicking their way through snow. He was sure that the earth had not witnessed such a spectacle since long ago when the gods roamed the earth in physical form, hunting the great beasts whose bones still emerged from the ground on occasion. In those times, anything was possible.

  As it was now, under Hannibal's leadership. He seemed to be everywhere at once, no visible sign of fatigue on him. Mago was asleep each evening upon throwing his body down, and it seemed that the sound of Hannibal's voice both led him into slumber and pulled him out of it. Throughout the morning he rode through the company, extolling all to work on, to persevere, spinning grand notions of the bounty awaiting them in Italy, telling them that their deeds would be written of by poets and sung at campfires in times far from this. Here was their chance to be immortal. Had the Ten Thousand faced more than this? Did this not rate next to Alexander's marches through the Persian mountains? They would be remembered just as those of old were, but no such honor comes easily. On the first night they slept on snow-covered ground Hannibal tossed a thin blanket down on the ice, pulled a cloak over himself, and fell into an instant, deep slumber. Men, hearing his snoring, shook their heads and grinned despite themselves. What army ever had a leader superior to this?

  The next morning Hannibal rode down the line telling the men they were near the top of the final pass. His scouts were certain. They had only to struggle a little longer and Italy would be theirs. To falter now would be the greatest of tragedies. Failure here would anger the gods themselves, who rarely see m
en come so close to everlasting fame.

  Mago, leaning hard on his spear as he rested beside Silenus, heard the scribe mumble the reply, “Why settle for Italy? Why not a conquest of the heavens? I think the gates are up here, just a ten-minute walk or so. . . . Don't look at me like that,” Silenus said, although Mago had not yet glanced at him. “This was not my idea. Did anybody ask my views? Do you know that it is said these regions are not meant for men? The closer we get to the gods, the harder our own lives become. Tell me you cannot feel it. Even the very breath coming in and out of your lungs is a labor. Tell me you do not feel it.”

  Mago prepared a smile and searched for a quick rebuttal, but nothing came to him and the effort tired him. He rested a moment longer in silence. Just as they were about to move on, he noticed Bomilcar's familiar form approaching them. He nudged Silenus and the two watched the man's progress. He walked with his weapons and a full pack, as he had since the beginning of the climb. To be an example among his men, he had explained. He took each step deliberately. He planted one foot and gave it a moment to meld with the ground. He pushed his enormous frame up and then planted the next foot, pulled the tree up by its roots, and repeated the motion. Mago and Silenus watched him ascend toward them for some time. Though he did not look up, he seemed to know just as he was passing the two. He said, “What tale have you now, Greek?”