Pride of Carthage (24 page)

The third day was even worse. He first understood this when a groan of exasperation flowed up the line. An avalanche had wiped out a portion of the path below. It was a particularly steep section, offering no alternative routes. They would have to clear the slide. This was bad enough, but then he learned that many of the boulders mixed in with the snow and ice were too large to be moved even with the help of the elephants. They would have to break them into smaller pieces. Someone—whose expertise on this matter Imco doubted—suggested that they build a great fire around the rocks in question, making them red hot so that they could then be drenched with water and vinegar. The change in temperature, this man said, would split the stones and make them more manageable. It sounded dubious.

Imco spent the day hewing trees and dragging them through the snow to the fire. It was absurdly difficult work, as dangerous as battle. Stuck up to the waist in snow, hacking at the base of a tree that was so hard it did more damage to his ax than the blade did to it, Imco found himself crying. This was not exactly out of fear. He was not sure what he had to be afraid of anymore. The tears were not quite the product of sadness, nor of fatigue, nor of anger: he had felt all these things long enough that they were just part of his being now.

Memories brought the tears, the recollection that he had once been the child of a mother, that there was a woman living in the world who had slapped his bottom and wiped his mouth when he was sick and fed him bread dipped in olive oil. Everything about this seemed impossibly tragic. So much so that he did not even cheer with the rest when the rocks exploded amid plumes of steam and flying debris. What a silly thing to find joyful, he thought. Cracked boulders. More hiking. More cold. How did these things compare to the embrace of the fat woman who had created you? He could not help thinking all these men were mad, not only the leader.

Then something unexpected happened. He awoke one frigid morning at the foot of the Alps, four days after they had begun the descent. Italian soil lay beneath him. The awareness that they had done the impossible dawned on him as gradually as the brightening day. The army that had left New Carthage numbered upward of a hundred thousand. Now, they were down to a dejected, battered, and emaciated remnant of that. Perhaps thirty thousand, perhaps fewer. They had lost thousands of horses. And the elephants, though all still lived, were gaunt versions of their former selves. The rich train of booty and the thriving community of camp followers were, as far as he could tell, no more.

But on that morning, even knowing all this, Imco peered out his tent flap and looked up at the clear white-blue Italian sky. They were here. Despite it all, they were not defeated. He swelled with a sudden, long-absent enthusiasm. Things might yet look up. There might still be rewards awaiting him, pleasures that his mother's image had no place beside. Once again, Imco remembered himself, the soldier he had become and the mission he was part of. They were a storm about to break over Italy. What army could possibly stop them now?

Aradna considered herself blessed to have found the dead man. Though she had seen many corpses in her time, she would never forget the way he sat upright with an arm stretched out before him, like a blind beggar beseeching pity from unseen passersby. Perhaps it was because of this posture that so many had ignored him. Aradna, however, could not help but notice him when a raven perched on his shoulder, looked about, pecked at the man's lip, and looked about again. His features were those of an Iberian Celt, and he was older than most warriors. His eyes were open, lips crusted and peeling, cheeks blackened by frostbite prior to his death.

But it was not enough to deter her from reaching out and touching the garment draped over his shoulders, a thick cloak of wolf fur that might well have been cured earlier on the march. She wondered for a moment that a man could freeze with such a garment on him, but then she noticed his other hand. It pressed against a brown stain on his tunic, fingers stuck either side of an arrow shaft. His death must have been slow, his upraised hand an entreaty for medical attention that never came. It was not exactly easy to pry the cloak off him, but Aradna managed it. She trudged away wrapped in it and renewed in her belief that Artemis looked kindly upon her.

Such thoughts were truly acts of faith considering the hardships of the past weeks. The soldiers complained of their lot, but they knew nothing of true privation. She walked the same ground they did, through the same ravines and over snowy passes and across rivers cold as liquid ice. But she got no rations. The people she marched with held few supplies in trust and each harbored a deep suspicion of any person's actions toward them, kind or cruel. They had been cut to ribbons in the gorge, their numbers halved in that single afternoon and dwindling ever since. The loose order that had bound them to the army vanished. Supplies were abandoned to the Allobroges. Men and women were cut down and robbed of their possessions, some captured alive and deprived of their very freedom.

One evening the stragglers' camp she slept in was raided by local brigands. She had jumped to her feet at the first sound of confusion, but a man grabbed her wrist and began to drag her away. She yanked so hard against him that her upper arm popped out of its joint. The strange sensation this gave her attacker provided her a quick moment of confusion. She bashed his foot beneath her heel and fled. Her loose arm blinded her with pain, but the movement of running shifted the joint home and the pain was gone in an instant.

For a time after that she traveled alone, mingling with the rear of the army, scavenging on the debris left in their wake. She took even more care to attract no attention. Like the others, she had not bathed in weeks now. But she made sure that she was filthier than most. She caked her face with dirt and grease. Her hair grew into thick knots, hung with twigs and bits of rubbish. She strung a dead mouse around her neck. She ran her fingers through the stink of her armpits and then pressed the scent onto all her garments. She considered the fumes that met her nose when she squatted and thought that she might smear this scent on her outer garments as well. It was a short-lived idea, however. One could never tell what might stir a man's loins. She had heard of stranger things.

But even filthy and disheveled and starving, Aradna was a beauty. Men could not help but notice. A Gaul stopped her one clear morning at the foot of a scree slope. He was upon her suddenly, long sword in hand. He stepped from behind a tree as if he had lain in wait for some time and had chosen this moment for the fineness of the crisp air and the quiet solitude they found themselves in. He indicated with a thrusting pelvis the activity he had in mind. She spat at him. He ignored this, calming her with his weaponless hand, patting toward her to indicate that it would not hurt. Just a small thing, he seemed to be saying. Just a moment of your time. He never lowered the upraised sword. She hissed at him and gestured with her hands that he should pleasure himself and leave her out of it. But behind the bold rejection, she knew the threat he posed. He was a strong man in his prime who would happily injure her to have her. He might lop off an arm to punish her, or beat her senseless and carry her into slavery.

Aradna dropped to her knees in the scree, opened her mouth, and motioned that she would receive him with it. He was wary of this, but as she sucked air in and out of her lips he began to think again. His trousers were down to his knees the next moment. Aradna almost smiled. The weakness of men never failed to amaze her. As he shuffled forward he did not notice that she grasped a jagged stone in either hand. She drew her arms up and back and snapped them together with a motion like a bird flapping its wings to take off. Her two hands brought the stones together on his penis. She turned and fled, but not before blood splattered her face. She shook her head at the foolishness and at the curse of the beauty she had never asked for and could not dispose of.

By the time she reached the snowy plains the stragglers had so thinned that she walked alone. She inspected bodies for coins and valuables, cut flesh from frozen pack animals, added and subtracted clothing as new pieces were presented to her. Midway up the slope the gradient lessened briefly and Aradna came upon a strange pit alongside the path. It was a crater with sloping walls the height of several people in depth. The base of it showed the rocky frame of the mountain itself. In the center of this stood a lone, dejected donkey. The creature was completely still, head hung low, eyes fixed on nothing at all and seeking nothing at all. A urine stink seeped up from the pit, strong enough to make Aradna clamp a hand over her nose. She realized that the donkey had nothing to do with the shaping of the depression. It was simply a spot that man after man had chosen to urinate in, so melting the snow and ice and leaving a steaming pit behind. The donkey must either have stumbled into it, or else sought it out in a desire to touch his hooves to solid stone. Aradna watched him a moment, thinking. Then she slid-climbed down into the hole. Gifts like this should not be questioned, just received gratefully.

She and the donkey reached the saddle of the pass late in the afternoon. Without knowing that Hannibal had done so before her, she climbed onto the lookout rock and took in Italy from the same vantage point. The army trickled down before her like a slow-moving stain, a river of filth cutting its way through the white slopes. The descent would be brutal. The night fast approaching a challenge just to live through. She could see these things plainly. But it was pleasing to look down upon the army marching before her. This was good, she thought. Good. The land they now entered was nearer to the place of her birth than she had been since she left as a baby in her father's arms. She felt the weight of her treasure bag between her breasts, heavier now than before because she had never ceased her scavenging. One would have thought it strange to look upon her, but beneath the hard actions and filth, behind tolerance for human misery and her scavenger's callous heart, there resided a quiet child, who could yet imagine beauty and still conceive of a life lived with joy. She saw the pathway to that joy before her, and so proceeded.

Aradna kicked out her foot and slammed her heel into the ice, dragging the reluctant donkey behind her. She took one step and then another, urging the beast down into the rich land of Italy.

The autumn of his first year in sole command of southern Iberia marked the zenith of Hasdrubal's Dionysian debauchery. He ended the campaigning season as early as he could and returned to New Carthage. Away from the stern eyes of his brother, he submerged himself in excess. Each evening the Barca grounds of New Carthage became a labyrinth of festivities, games and music, carnal consumption. Servants stoked the fires high and pushed into them stones, which, once they were white-hot, were pulled from the fire with care and doused in water, making the rooms almost tropical, inducing sweat and thirst, turning garments damp against the skin so that they slipped from shoulders and were soon upon the floor in formless heaps. Though Hasdrubal was careful to acknowledge the beauties of aristocratic blood, he made sure the functions were attended by the finest-looking daughters of Iberian chieftains, by prostitutes, by servant girls. Nor was he envious of other men. To be a friend to Hasdrubal was a privilege all aspired to. The steamy rooms were replete with the seminude forms of young soldiers, bodies hardened by war and training. Mix into this an abundance of red wine, rich meat and sauces, fruits and their juices, and incense, and one had night after night of scenes that would have impressed even Alexander's Macedonians.

Considering all of this, Hasdrubal looked to his impending wedding day with some trepidation. On his own he would not have wed himself to any one woman just yet—or ever, in fact. And if he had to choose a wife, he would have picked one of the more debauched vixens in his entourage, someone who could keep up with him, someone who likewise craved sexual variety. But the choice was not his to make. In the early winter he received a letter from the Council of Elders. It was written with aged formality, so convoluted that it was almost incomprehensible. He deciphered it only with Noba's aid.

The elders were ordering him to wed a daughter of the Oretani chieftain Andobales. He had not known that the Council was in contact with Andobales, but those old ones had long fingers, as Hamilcar used to say. The union was of strategic importance. The Oretani had been on the ascendant over the last few years. They managed to exploit the Carthaginian presence in Iberia to their benefit, striking at first one tribal neighbor and then another while delicately avoiding stirring Carthaginian wrath. They even turned Hanno's debacle of a few years earlier—when he led two thousand of them right into the trap set by the Betisians—to their account. They never failed to mention it, to smart at the terrible blow to their manhood. Andobales had even protested Hannibal's union with Imilce, asking whether it indicated that the Betisians were Carthage's favorites. For all these reasons, the Council was resolute in its decision that a high-level marriage was necessary. To disregard the order would be treason. The elders made it clear that they had the leverage of withholding reinforcements and the power to replace him if he refused.

Hasdrubal chafed at this insult. When Hamilcar or Hannibal ruled Iberia, few such orders had issued from Carthage. He stormed about his chambers, calling down curses on them for meddling; he threatened disobedience or outright revolution. But in the end he saw no way to refuse them. The move made sense. Carthaginian authority had been difficult to maintain even during the height of Hannibal's power. The Iberians around him seemed to buck against African domination. Hasdrubal had tried throughout the summer to make it clear that his authority was as real as his brother's, but the Iberians were ever restless, always inclined to see only the faults of their present situation, only the benefits of a change.

So, much sooner than he would have liked, Hasdrubal found himself hosting a wedding banquet. Andobales arrived in a swarm of confusion. His people were loud, inclined to laughter and consumption, to anger and deadly pride just as quickly. Andobales himself was a large man, a warrior all his life. He had fought with neighboring tribes—or with Carthaginians or with Romans—each year since his tenth birthday. He wore his strength as sheer, massed bulk that increased throughout his torso and up to his hunched shoulders. He was a massive boar of a man, with a face that seemed to have been pressed between two stones and elongated through the jaw and nose. Looking upon him, Hasdrubal could not help but wonder what sort of daughter he might have produced. He had never seen or spoken to the girl and had no idea by what reasoning she was chosen as his bride, for he knew Andobales had several unwed daughters.