Pride of Carthage (23 page)

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 men 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?”

“I am yet composing it,” Silenus said. “It will be a tale of winter madness. You'll have a part in it, my friend. Be sure of it: the Goliath of the peaks.”

“Your tongue knows no fatigue,” Bomilcar said. “If your limbs fail you, perhaps your tongue will sprout legs and run you up these peaks.”

Silenus seemed to find the image amusing. He might have said more, but Bomilcar kept trudging on and was soon receding into the white expanse above them. The Greek whispered to Mago, “I'd wager he has been perfecting that line since the Rhône.”

In the almost-warm hours of the midafternoon, they trudged their way ahead at the rear of a long line of men. Though not as heavily laden as Bomilcar, Mago also chose to walk, an offering of sweat and labor to the common soldiers around him. And it was quite an offering. The irregular snowfalls, the cool nights, and the strong sun of the clear days created layers of slush beneath the surface snow, divided by skins of ice that tricked one into thinking they provided adequate support. A foot would punch through the top layer, the man's weight driving him down through the slush till he found purchase. Carefully, he would take one step and then another, finding security in the movement, believing he would go no farther down. But then, on a sudden whim of the living ice, he would break through again, first sinking to ankle depth and then up toward the knee and eventually as high as the waist. The pack animals, struggling against the stuff, sometimes sank so deep that only their frantic heads thrust out above the snow.

Thanks to a slightly larger ration than the common soldier's, Mago could function better than most. At first he tugged at men and dug away the snow with his hands, cut the white flesh with the blade of his sword, and slapped the men and beasts back into movement. Later—his hands too numb to hold his sword properly, too frozen even to scoop the snow—he shouted encouragement, orders, curses to keep them moving. This went on for hours, unchanging moments passing one into the next, each step like the one before it. The face of one man merged with the face of the man before him. The half-buried body of any individual looked like all the others. The glazed eyes, the cracked lips, the mumbled entreaties, the stiff limbs jutting up from ice: it no longer had a beginning and seemed to have no end. It was just the way of the world, and the things that had been life before made no sense anymore.

He could not count the number of times he believed he had reached the summit only to discover that he had mounted a lump in the mountainside, a protrusion, a ledge, beyond which new heights stretched. It was maddening. He was sure the landscape altered itself with malignant intent. It sprouted higher and higher each time he looked away. And the foul thing of it was that the world never betrayed its trickery. It always sat still and impassive under his scrutiny, like a great beast with its shoulders hunched in innocence.

At some point that he did not recognize at the time or remember later Mago gave up on the others and moved past them in silence. He lost Silenus, but such was this climb—now you passed a man; a little later, he passed you. That was just the way it had to be, he realized. Each had to just struggle on—he just like the others. His extra rations were not enough to set him apart. His body was feeding upon itself. He could feel the process draining him, dissolving the tissue beneath his skin, sucking the fluids from his muscles and leaving them leathery cords, striated bands stiff in movement and slow to answer the instructions he willed upon them.

He was on all fours—scraping them forward inch by inch—when a burst of air hit his face with a force that nearly shoved him back down the slope. The air was sure to have been cold, but he felt the force more than the chill. At first he cursed it and ducked beneath his elbow, thinking he had reached yet another rise, with yet another view up toward the insurmountable. He felt his breath rushing back from the bitter cold just before his face. There was no warmth in it, and he wondered if he had begun to go cold on the inside. First his feet and then his hands, his knees and forearms, perhaps now his chest itself: all the parts of him were slowly freezing solid and becoming one with the mountains. He found this a pleasant thought. He could lie motionless and no longer struggle. He could remember stillness. It was possible to stop laboring and rest. The Greek was right. Such heights as this were not meant for mortal men. Why fight this truth when one could sleep instead? It was not so hard to give up. It was only hard to carry on.

And so Mago might have stayed if the voice had not reached him. He lifted his head and, squinting into the wind, realized why it buffeted him so forcefully. There was nothing above him but sky. To the south, a patchwork of clouds drifted across a blue screen. Mago rose to his feet and stumbled forward. The ground beneath him was suddenly bare rock, marbled by windswept currents of snow. The mountains dropped all the way to the valley floor before them. He could almost make out the flat plain and its imagined lushness. He was at the summit!

A madman stood atop a boulder, no more than a stone's throw away. It was the madman's voice that stirred Mago: He pointed out and shouted to the passing soldiers that the goal was in sight. “Look,” he said, “the rich land of Italy! See it here, the rewards for your labors. We've brushed our heads against the roof of the world and need go no higher. The way is down from here. The hard work is behind you! Carry on quickly and lay your head to sleep on flat ground!”

Mago hardly recognized the shouting figure. His beard bristled wildly about his face, grown uneven and unkempt, the hairs laden with ice, even as his forehead dripped with sweat. A crust of reddish black clung to his cheeks. The man pulled off his helmet and waved it above him in triumph, revealing a mass of woolen hair pressed to his scalp in a rough impression of the headgear. He was a wholly wild creature, garments flapping about him, like some mad prophet yelling into a gale. But Mago knew exactly upon whom he was gazing. He could hear him plainly now, and he saw in his brother's eyes a sparkling enthusiasm like none he had seen before. Mago drew close enough to reach up and grasp his foot.

Hannibal looked down and smiled, joy written in the creases of his forehead and curve of his mouth. He spoke so quietly that Mago had to read the words on his lips. “Rome will be ours,” he said. “Rome will truly be ours.”

Mago nodded an agreement he did not feel. He wanted to share Hannibal's enthusiasm, but nothing was yet complete. The way was indeed down, but it was not to be easy. In many ways, the worst of the mountain crossing awaited them. The altitude that it had taken them days and miles to climb to was to be descended in only a portion of the distance, making the route almost unnavigably steep. Looking down from beside Hannibal's boulder, Mago wondered if the Allobroges had not led them to the most terrible pass in the Alps. The bastards might yet defeat them.

Imco Vaca had known no joy since leaving northern Iberia. Not a moment of happiness. Not an instant of pleasure. He felt as if he had been transported here and dropped down in the mountains by some creatively spiteful being intent on seeing poor Imco suffer. It made no sense otherwise. Ice and snow? Ridge upon ridge of jagged rock teeth? The small finger on his left hand black and hard as a twig? This must be somebody's idea of a joke. The fact that he could remember every step of the way, from sunny Iberia, up through the Pyrenees, into the Rhône valley, and all the way across the Alps explained nothing. Nor did it matter that he passed within spitting distance of the commander. Yes, Hannibal spoke encouraging words, but he was such an insane-looking creature that Imco would have crossed the street to avoid him had they met in some civilized city of the world. He walked past him without a word, determined to get down from these heights and fast.

But he was somewhere in the middle of the line, and the trail the scouts found twisted and turned down the mountainside. The snow he had to walk along had been softened in the sun and then compressed beneath thousands of feet into a sheet of rutted, dirty ice. Each step had to be taken with the greatest of care, but this was not possible in such fatigue, at the edge of starvation, on frostbitten feet, laden with heavy packs. Imco saw several of the men below him lose their footing. They clutched and struggled for purchase as they began to slide down the slope. They called out for help, naming men and then gods, and then as they blurred into unimaginable speed their cries became sound alone, distorted and echoing through the mountains.

The sight of the elephants was constantly baffling. The paths seemed impossibly narrow, but somehow the creatures moved forward as steadily as the men. He once spied a cow elephant negotiating a tiny shelf of rock. She balanced in such a way that her feet fell in a nearly straight line. It was a dainty move, something fit for a circus of curiosities, but she pulled it off with a finesse that Imco wished he possessed.

Toward the end of the second day he had to traverse a path that bent at an angle about fifty yards in front of him. Beyond the corner, yet another precipice, empty space stepping off into nothing. He could see the signs of thousands of feet already gone past. Though the way was clear in front of him, he saw two men stumble near the bend, one taking out the knees of the other and then the pair clutching each other, lucky not to have slid over the edge. Be careful when you reach that area, Imco thought.

Just then, he spotted a garment on the snow a few steps away, discarded in someone's sliding haste earlier in the day. He decided to fetch it up and sling it around his neck and present it to some unfortunate later. He lifted a foot toward it, but knew in an instant that this move had been misguided. His other foot slipped out from him as if he were kicking a ball. He landed on his outstretched hands and the heels of his feet. For a moment he held still, but then, slowly, painfully, he felt the four points of his limbs slithering over the ice. He tried to dig his fingers in and slam the soles of his feet for purchase, but he slid on, speeding up. He tried to think himself lighter, to rise up off the ice with the power of his mind and find purchase on the air itself. When this did not work he flipped over and embraced the slope for all he was worth, feeling the contours slide beneath him, each footprint and divot and ripple. He was sure the surface would drop away from him at any moment. He yelled his anger and fear right into the ice, his teeth so close to the surface he could have bit it. He might have done so, but even in such a state he knew his teeth should be protected. They were one of his best features.

He was not sure why he stopped moving. He only realized it because his yelling became the only noise in a silent world. The two men he had seen stumble were gazing at him from a few strides away. He had slid all the way to the bend. The precipice yawned just beyond his feet. He looked at the men, shook his head, and conveyed by rolling his eyes the depths of his impatience with all this; then he rose, very slowly, and moved on. He did not reach for stray garments again.