Pride of Carthage (18 page)

By the time Imco could see the stones in the knee-deep water where the barge grounded, he had forgotten the fear that had huddled him beneath his shield. The bloodlust on the underside of cowardice is a powerful thing. Imco felt it in the completeness of his being. He jumped ashore and his first strike was into the calf of a young man in full, frantic flight, for some reason running along the shore instead of away from it. The Gaul went down and spun around and looked up through a mass of dirty blond locks. For some reason that was not entirely clear to him, Imco aimed his next thrust directly between the man's grayish blue eyes.

By the fifth day of the crossing the army was over, save for the elephants and their keepers. These last had been preparing since they first arrived on the banks. A few rafts had been sent into the current with single pachyderms aboard, but more than one of the beasts panicked and dove headlong into the water. Two made their way back to the near shore; another two managed to progress all the way to the far side, the spine of their backs, the crests of their skulls, and their trunks jutting out of the water. It seemed to the watchers that the elephants had somehow found shallow portions of the riverbed just perfect for their crossing. One of the mahouts swore that the elephants had swum, and that he had known them to swim even farther in his eastern homeland, but he was shouted down as mad.

The small rafts were deemed too risky, and so they decided upon another method. Vandicar ordered the elephant handlers to build a jetty far out into the water. Beyond this they constructed rafts of stout trees, some as thick around as a man, lashed together with great quantities of rope. They shoveled earth onto the rafts and set tufts of grass atop the dirt; they even secured leafy trees in upright postures. Even greater stretches of rope were purchased from far and wide up and down the river. The ropes were tied together and secured to the raft and rowed across to the far shore, where it took a whole corps of men to hold the rope steady against the bowed pressure of the river.

Loading the beasts onto the floating islands was no easy task. Cow elephants led the way, calmer than bulls and more inclined to faith in humans. Behind them a few bulls followed nervously, testing the ground and finding it questionable and expressing as much with loud bellows and flapping ears. Vandicar cursed them in his Indian tongue. The chief mahout seemed to have no fear of the beasts whatsoever. He smacked them on the bottoms and yanked on their tusks and even seemed to spit in their eyes when he was truly angry.

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.”