Pride of Carthage (31 page)

By the spring he could see in his arms and abdomen that he had shrunk. His thighs and calves and forearms ached all day long, but not just from labor. His muscles pulsed with pain even at quiet moments. His teeth jiggled in his gums and, he was sure, his hair was falling out at an unnatural rate. His vision seemed to be disturbed as well. He could see objects clearly enough, but he had difficulty translating what his eyes saw into meaningful messages. Thus, though he noticed the horse's rump, he did not fully comprehend how ill-placed he was behind it until the creature kicked him with a muddy hoof. Other times he misstepped and fell to his knees in the muck, not because he had not seen the object that tripped him up, but because it had not fully registered that he needed to consider its influence on his life.

By the end of the first day in the swamp, he had fully reconsidered his notions of suffering. Hell was not frozen and hard. It was wet, damp, soft. It was ankle-deep water. It was mud sucking at your feet. It was not even being able to sit down and take a moment's rest. He should have known that something horrific was in the making when he learned of the placement of troops in the line of march. The best infantry, the Libyans, strode in the front of the line, so that the ground held firm for the first few thousand of them. Behind them came the other African troops, including Imco. Then the Iberian allies pressed through the increasingly sticky churned-up mud. In the rear of all the infantry came the Gauls. By now thousands of feet and hooves had so churned up the swamp that the men were wading and slipping through deep muck, clawing at it with their hands, struggling vainly to keep their loads from becoming soiled.

Watching them, Imco paused long enough to thank the gods for birthing him an African, for the sorry lot of the pale ones was nothing to wish for. Such was the Gauls' misery that they would probably have deserted, each and every one of them, except that Mago and Bomilcar followed them up with the Numidian cavalry. They rode through the swamp like ill-tempered, heavily armed herdsmen, pushing the army forward no matter what. Hannibal provided no one a choice in the matter.

It was a forlorn land; the only plants were thick, leathery grasses and reedlike tufts. Insects rose from the water and danced in swarms as big around as elephants. These seemed to appear spontaneously, deviously, so that if he glanced away for a moment Imco was likely to find himself spun in a confusion of the creatures, inhaling them and catching them in the corners of his eyes and his nose hairs. The white skeletons of long-dead trees dotted the landscape, some reaching for the sky, others lying as if they had finally given up and collapsed from fatigue. Imco had been told they were following a road. Looking through the haze of insects and mist, he saw no sign of such a thing. He had thought it before and now he could not help thinking it again: Hannibal was mad, a raving demon in a warrior's body, a despot who reveled in the misery of those around him. He did not go so far as to share this assessment with anyone, but silently he spoke a tirade against the man.

They could not stop to camp for the night, and so they kept up a squelching, dripping progress straight through and into the dawn. By the time the sun rose again all semblance of organized marching had evaporated. Fever coursed through innumerable men. The ill and dying, the ranting and pitiful were so close around him that sometimes maneuvering through them was like navigating a rough landscape. Imco—again thinking of spirits, as he had begun to do daily—thought he could see the contagion floating through the air from man to man, a diaphanous creature that touched the unwary with contaminated fingers. He ducked and shifted to avoid it, sometimes looking like a man swatting at bats that he could not see.

The only relatively dry spots were the corpses of pack animals. Men tried to catch moments of rest by perching on the flanks of mules and wrapping their arms around the necks of dead horses. Imco saw one man lying on two goats. It was a sorry enough sight in that there was no comfort in his posture, draped as he was across them, toes and fingers and buttocks each dipping into the muck. But it seemed even stranger when one of the goats lifted its head and stared at Imco piteously. It was not dead at all, just sunk up to its neck and disconsolate, its gaze a direct communication from beast to man. What is the point? it seemed to be asking. Imco had no answer. He just walked on. By that evening he was passing as many dead men as animals.

On the third day he caught sight of Hannibal in the distance. The commander rode behind the ears of the only living elephant. He was too far away for Imco to see his features, but others must have. Word spread that Hannibal had been infected by a fever. Some said that he had lost his sight, others that his hearing had gone as well. Strangely, Imco found this news a prod to keep him moving. If it was true, then this journey had reached heights of absurdity that he never imagined possible. Would Hannibal the Blind and Deaf lead them to the gates of Rome? He was sure the commander would try, sitting atop his elephant, barking at them, devising clever ploys that he could neither hear nor see the result of. It was too much to imagine. The more reasonable possibility was that they would soon find themselves swimming amid sharks, leaderless and cut off from home or rescue. No other general could prosecute this war with Hannibal's determination. Without him, they would be pounced upon within a fortnight. The absurdity of this kept Imco going. He had to witness this farce played out. What a tale of woe he would have to tell in the underworld.

They had been four days and three nights in the dismal swamplands when Imco realized his feet were finding better purchase. In the afternoon of the fourth day he stepped out of the water and onto merely soggy ground. That evening he cast himself down and felt the earth's hard contours again. And the morning of the fifth day found him looking out over a land they said was called Etruria. This time, Imco had no difficulty translating what his eyes saw to what his mind understood: rolling farmland, pastures, a rich land in the full bloom of spring. With Hannibal's blessing they were about to plunder it to their heart's content.

Releasing the men to pillage was more than a simple reward for them, more even than a necessary measure to revive their physical strength and morale. In fact, Hannibal needed to keep them busy while he struggled with the curse he carried from the marshes. He was not yet blind, as rumor suggested. Not deaf. But he had emerged with a raging infection in his left eye. He had never felt so malignant a force at work inside his body before. It sought to gouge the organ out and leave the hole lifeless. It ate toward the center of him and left his very understanding of the world in disarray. Synhalus warned him that the infection could well spread, both to his other eye and beyond. The surgeon rinsed the eye often with fresh water, plastered it with salves, and nightly sprinkled it with precious drops of seawater to keep the orb moist and return it to its natural state. He had the commander drink herb teas specially designed to restore health and made him lie facedown so that the evil might loosen its grip and fall from him. But none of this curbed the infection.

As important as these clinical measures were Mandarbal's services. Hannibal knew the priest had been feeling slighted since the campaign began. Though he offered sacrifices at the beginning of each stage of the journey and read portents often among the Libyan and Numidian troops, Hannibal had not consulted him in military matters. Why ask for an opinion he might not wish to accept? With the mark of the divine to give them weight, the grim proclamations Mandarbal enjoyed making could hamper his efforts. And yet Hannibal did request that he intercede with the gods concerning his health. Mandarbal led sessions of prayer and sacrifice, calling upon the gods to drive the illness back whence it had sprung. He slit the necks of three goats, a young, unblemished calf, and a mature bull, offering them up to the deities he believed responsible. All to no effect.

In his own mind, Hannibal knew that there was no mystery concerning whence the illness had sprung. He had felt it leap up from the sodden ground beneath his mount's feet. A single drop of mud stuck to the edge of his eye. He had rubbed at it absently. A grain of the dirt bit into him, slipped around his eyeball and into cover, where it slowly went to work. He had not been the same since. The fluctuations in temperature had not helped. Nor had the constant moisture, the insects, the fevers, the smell of death in the air.

It was not that the march had been any worse than he had anticipated. He looked around at scenes he might have imagined beforehand. The death rate did not surprise him. The losses were at the extreme edge of what he thought possible, but Hannibal was rarely mistaken in his understanding of mortality. It was the fact that he had been personally struck that troubled him. He recalled that only a few years ago he had stood almost unblemished before Imilce, and he remembered once joking with Sapanibal that no simple cold, nothing so mundane, could ever harm him. Now the tissue of his leg bore the scars of that Saguntine spear; his body had failed to fight off the ill spirits transmitted through cold; his very eyes no longer perceived the world completely. He felt the bite of his own arrogance. Some, viewing his accomplishments from a distance, might think that he drove Fortune before him like a mule before the lash. It suited him that they thought this, of course, but he knew the dance between him and the Fates was more precarious than that.

The afternoon after emerging from the marshes he held a council. Throughout it, Mago stared at him in sullen amazement. He hardly uttered a word throughout the meeting, but as it closed he indicated that he would speak to his brother in private. Alone, he wasted no time in voicing his mind.

“How could this happen to you?” he asked. “You are nearly blinded! I can see even now that you only half perceive me. This is all the fault of that Numidian. We should take his eyes for the evil he has done you. Hannibal, surely we can reverse this. You must fight it more forcefully. Have you not heard Mandarbal's proposal? He believes a human sacrifice might appease the god who's afflicted you.”

Noting the fear in his brother's face, Hannibal found his answer coming automatically. He knew how he should respond, and realizing it he also understood that he had been too long wrestling with the same doubts himself. He smiled. Unwittingly, Mago had prompted Hannibal to remember himself.

He said, “Our soldiers kill in our names daily. If a human sacrifice were the cure for this, then I would be immortal by now. No, it would seem that Hannibal cannot take his wounds as a commander should.”

“But this is no wound! No spear did this to you! It is a curse brought down from—”

Hannibal shook his head. “Listen. You have heard of the general Bagora, yes? There is a tale Father told me about him. I've never heard it repeated, but Father believed it to be true. One of Bagora's captains, a brave fighter, was skilled with the spear and famous for his overhand thrust. He was a hero of the early wars with the Libyans, gifted in violence even before he'd taken a woman. But one day, while he worked his damage, he stepped over a man he believed to be dead. The man was not dead, though. He reached up and sliced the hero's spear hand clean off. The captain healed quickly enough, but without that hand he was no longer himself. He refused to resume his post, refused even to aid in training recruits. When summoned to explain himself to his general the young man complained that he was useless. He could not hold his spear! The gods had betrayed him, he who had only strived to honor them. Without another word, Bagora drew his sword and sliced off the soldier's other hand. The hero dropped to his knees and begged to understand. Do you know how Bagora answered?”

Mago shook his head.

“He said, ‘You are useless to me now. But not because you lack one hand, nor because you lack two. You became useless the moment you called yourself useless, when you failed to realize that the gods despise self-pity.”

Hannibal cleared his throat and raised his chin. After a moment of silence, he said, “Mago, I will not be despised by the gods. Let this be the last time I hear you bemoan damage to the body—mine or yours. There should be no such weakness in either of us. Thank you for reminding me of this.”

The second morning in the dry lands of Etruria, scouts returned with word that the Roman forces under Flaminius were encamped near the city of Arretium. This meant that time was short. Word of the Carthaginian presence would reach the consul in days, if it had not already. As he pondered their next move, Hannibal thought of Tusselo. The Numidian had ridden beside him through the marshes. They had exchanged few words, for the route was as Tusselo had described and Hannibal's mind had been otherwise occupied, but now he felt a need to speak to him.

When Tusselo stepped through the open door of the tent, Hannibal acknowledged him by clearing his throat. He had just dabbed at the fluid oozing from his eye; his fingers were dripping with a pungent yellow liquid. He had seen all sorts of fluids emanate from men's bodies over the years. This substance, he knew, had no place issuing from the eyes. He wiped his fingers clean on his tunic.

“You have lost me half my vision,” Hannibal said.

Tusselo did not dispute this. “If I could carve out my eye and give it you, I would.”

“My surgeon is skilled, but not gifted enough for such a transaction. You make a tempting offer, though. My brother thinks I should have your eye as a tribute. I could wear it around my neck as a reminder that my powers of retribution are equal to whatever force did this to me.”

Hannibal let the threat sit for a long time.

Tusselo finally said, “You may have my eye for that as well, if you choose.”

“Hannibal does not inflict damage simply to sate his own vanity. The truth is, I thank you for the path you showed us. I am now where I wanted to be. Italy is before us, her armies behind—just as you said. Come, sit here and look on this map.”

He motioned the Numidian to a stool on the other side of the small table before him. As directed, Tusselo gazed at the chart of Italy. His light brown eyes drifted over the lines and pictures for some time, but when he looked up his face showed little comprehension. “This is different from the land that lives in my mind,” he said.