The Rogue Knight (48 page)

The Oracle

There was a scratch at the door.

I held my breath as the ostrich quill in my fingers quivered.

A creak sounded. In the dead of night, it was an ominous noise. I pictured an assassin outside my door, a killer with an envenomed blade and cold hatred in his heart. Would he be a Roman spy? Their dreaded legions had never beaten me on the battlefield, a stain upon the vaunted glory of Rome. Or would he be an Iberian bravo whose chieftain I had slain? Maybe he was a Celtic madman. The last had absurd notions about freedom that might have made an Athenian demagogue blanch.

I dropped my ostrich quill and picked up an Iberian short sword. My mercenaries called it the
espasa
. The Romans had named it the
gladius hispanicus
, and after the war had adopted it as their national weapon. It was a double-edged stabbing sword made of highly tempered steel. It was a murderous weapon, perfect for the shove and push of close combat where desperate men decide the fate of nations. I was too old for it now, too sick.

In the flickering lamplight, I noted my veined hand. Once my wrists had been powerful, my arms as bands of iron. By Baal, I yearned for the fire of youth! I’d become like an overused candle, burned out by bitter warfare and racked by a wasting disease. The priest-physicians of Eshmun had assured me that the god might yet heal my illnesses. They were notorious liars, but the hope of health consumed me nonetheless.

My breath rattled in my throat. I hawked and spat on the floor. Old age was disgusting. I shuffled to the door and flung it open.

I almost cried out. The dark corridor was empty. My heart beat wilder because of it. Sickness, age and the hours of darkness heightened irrational fears. I knew that even as I knew that the killer was fast and cunning. I backed up to my writing table and groped for the lamp even as I kept watch of the corridor. Armed with the flickering light, I advanced into the hall, with my sword ready.

I shuffled down the tiled hall and threw open the door to the speaking chamber.

A guard turned. He was a member of the Sacred Band of Baal. His black eyes took in my sword. This was the oval chamber where I often addressed the officers. It held a hundred mementoes from a dozen battlefields, trophies won by cunning and courage. The guard was big, a Carthaginian noble.

“Sir?” he said, no doubt perplexed. I wore night robes and was barefoot. He wore heavy armor and carried a shield and spear.

“Who entered this corridor?” I said, angry at his sloth.

He shook his helmeted head.

I almost put the blade under his throat, suspected him to be part of the plot. Maybe he read my intent.

“Sir,” he said, “you’re pale, your eyes are red. You look feverish. You should lie down.”

I barked an old man’s laugh, which dissolved into a coughing fit. My sword clattered onto the tiles and the lamp dashed out its light as it shattered. The strong hands of youth helped me down the corridor, guided me into my bedchamber as I wheezed.

He tried to lay me down.

“No, no, he’s sure to come here,” I said.

“Sir?” he asked.

“The assassin, you fool!”

The guard backed away. Then his strident voice rang down the corridor—once my voice had sounded as loud as I directed soldiers on the battlefield.

The resident priest-physician in his billowing red robes soon hurried into the room. He fumbled over me while he prattled on with endless advice. I needed rest, to eat more figs, he said, and pray more to Eshmun. As if I could allow myself such luxuries when the hungry wolf of Rome padded before the fat sheep that was Carthage.

Why did so few of my fellow citizens not realize that Rome was a hungry beast set upon devouring the world? One does not bargain with a wolf. One does not attempt taming it, unless he desires the loss of his hand and arm and the eventual tearing out of his throat. There was only one defense against a raving beast, and that was to kill it. In Rome’s case, that would take an army greater than which Alexander the Great had conquered the East. It is well to remember that the mighty Alexander had fought Persians who often ran away. For all their grievous faults, Romans do not run from a fight.

I was building an army that would be a match for Rome. I had vowed it by Baal, Tanit and Melqarth.

“Father, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you asleep?”

I brushed aside the physician’s hands and struggled upright as my oldest son strode into the room. He was the antidote to my fears, the purge to my worries. Hannibal Barca was a son that every father should have the honor of siring. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes as he came to me.

My soldiers already loved him. He sought danger as other young men searched for maidens to deflower. He wasn’t reckless, but desired to prove his courage and the mastery of his skills. Nor as the son of the commander did he lord it over the mercenaries or disobey my commands. On the contrary, Hannibal obeyed my orders without quarrels. He was obedient as befitted a good son and a good soldier. He rode like a Numidian, crossed steel better than any Celtic bravo and had already developed a keen tactical eye. Of all my sons, he most excelled in the military arts. If I could not lead my army into the heart of Italy, I had no doubt that someday Hannibal would. Yet there was more to this grim conflict than just generalship. The old men of Carthage, the Suffetes, the Senate and even the People, had to be cajoled into bravery. The terrible war I foresaw would be as much political as military, as monetary as moral. Hannibal, my prodigy of a son, wasn’t yet ready to take my place as the divine general of Iberia.

This lean young man hovering over my bed reminded me of myself when I’d first been given a command. It had been in that brutal war against Rome, what my Latin enemies called The Punic War, no doubt the first among many.

With a nod of his head, my son dismissed the physician. Then he pulled up a stool and sat beside me.

“You have a fever, father.”

I shrugged. Fevers had often claimed me. I’d learned to ignore them. A soldier cannot allow himself weaknesses. A general must forbid them any place upon his person.

Concern filled Hannibal. “The guard said you spoke about an assassin. Did you actually see this villain?”

“I heard him,” I said.

“Where?”

“Outside the door of my study.”

An intent look fell upon Hannibal. It masked his emotions, his thoughts. It made me wonder how feverish I really was. Had I been acting foolishly?

“The priests may have overreacted, father. I’m sure they read your oracle wrong.”

He meant the priests of Melqarth in Gades. And as he had done so many times before, his ability to read my thoughts astounded me. The Oracle and its recent prophecy concerned my violent death. I admit it had badly shaken me.

The priests of Melqarth were an odd lot, certainly. They went about bare-foot, with their heads shaved and wore white linen robes. Unlike Greeks and Romans, white for Phoenicians was the color of death. Each priest had vowed himself to celibacy and had never known a woman’s embrace. Their temple was the oldest in Iberia, built over a thousand years ago on the eastern end of the isle of Gades. The first Phoenicians to settle in Iberia had erected the temple. No idol stood in its holy of holies, no image of Melqarth. Instead, an eternal flame burned upon the central altar. For over a thousand years, the fire had danced. Almost as impressively, at the temple entrance were two bronze pillars each eight cubits high. Legend held that Melqarth himself had carved the mysterious symbols that adorned the famed pillars.

The Greeks, incidentally, the gossips of the world, called Melqarth Hercules, and placed his tenth labor near Gades. In the Greek legend, Hercules stole the cattle of Geryon and erected two memorials at the western end of the Mediterranean. Greeks called the twin memorials ‘the Pillars of Hercules’, their names being Gibraltar and Ceuta. Gades was several leagues outside the Strait of Gibraltar and lay upon the outer Ocean. I excused the Greeks their ignorance. It was after all Carthaginian custom to sink any foreign trade-ships caught in our waters. Thus, most Greek information concerning these hinterlands was for them second, third and even fourth-hand knowledge. The two temple towers eight cubits high were the real pillars, not mere rocky hills. As one named after the god I could not allow myself such Greek foolishness. Hamilcar meant ‘favored by Melqarth’; and throughout my life, I have felt myself to be so.

“Ignore the priests,” Hannibal was saying, taking one of my worn hands in his youthfully strong ones. “Their warning is mere chatter. For eight years, no enemy has been able to touch you. This fever… it too will pass. You are too young to die now, too needed.”

“No man is too young,” I whispered.

Hannibal smiled. It had such power, able to melt women and befriend soldiers on the spot. He thought that anything he willed to be possible. I had sensed in him for some time this titanic will, had carefully nurtured it without allowing him to think himself invincible. Unfortunately, time and failure, things that come to all men, had not yet tempered this belief in his godlike abilities. I still needed to teach him about the venality of men, how to use that against them. He thought that he understood the power of gold and greed. What Carthaginian wouldn’t? But he didn’t completely, not yet, not deeply enough. It was a possible weakness in him.

“The priests tremble before your audacity,” he told me. “They’ve always thought you’ve moved too swiftly. How many times have they begged you to consolidate your gains before you attempt to conquer yet more territory?”

“I know what they think!”

He nodded, and I saw worry in his brown eyes.

That troubled me. My son not only had a knack for tactics, but he had spent long hours with my spymasters. Six months ago, I’d given him permission to sit with me as I spoke with Hasdrubal the Handsome, the most cunning of my sub-commanders, my son-in-law and chief political agent.

“Too many of the merchant lords of Gades fear you,” Hannibal said. “They reminisce about their old days of power, how before your coming
they
dictated Iberian policy. Some have even mumbled against the needfulness to publicly kneel in your presence.”

“I have made them wealthy beyond their dreams.”

“Your enemies in Carthage sent an envoy three months ago, remember?”

I grunted, understanding his point.

“The envoy has been whispering in their ears,” said Hannibal, “stirring the merchants against you, saying that you will bring the wrath of Rome upon us. A few of the merchants have actually repeated his lies in the marketplace. They say you desire divine kingship in Iberia so you may rule as tyrant in Carthage. I suspect these traitors have corrupted the priests. They use them as their mouthpieces, whispering fear into your mind. They well understand your piety concerning the Oracle.”

Could that be true? I’d always known my time was short. I knew Rome would strike again before Carthage was ready. During these eight short years, I’d forged the Army of Iberia out of wild hillmen, superb individual fighters, recklessly brave and with barbaric notions of loyalty to a person, never to a city or a state. Fortunately, Melqarth was the patron god of this region. As Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great had done, I too had taken clan and tribal superstitions and centered a mystical theology upon me and my offspring. If there was a better way to forge unshakable loyalty in soldiers for their general, I didn’t know it. For them the Barca clan was the favored of Melqarth, his representative on Earth. As I had vastly extended Carthaginian territory in what the Romans called Hispania, power had poured into my hands. The mines in the Silver Mountains, those situated at the headwaters of the Betis River, had given me thousands of tons of purest silver and gold. A third of this wealth had gone to Carthage, to my agents there who kept the rabble firmly in the Barca camp. They and the Assembly of the People were the counterweight against my aristocratic foes. A third of the wealth remained with me, paying for my mercenaries. The last third I’d sent to the Temple of Melqarth and the merchant lords of Gades. I bought temporary loyalty and, perhaps more importantly, I’d purchased information. Thousands each year came in pilgrimage to Melqarth’s Temple in Gades. They came inquiring foreknowledge from the Oracle of the Holy Flame. They sought much but confessed much more, opened their hearts to the bare-footed, shaven-headed priests. Through those confessions, the unwed priests had gained intimate knowledge of the goings-on in Iberia, more than even my clever spies had brought me. I trusted the Oracle, treasuring its words, careful to weigh them in light of godly and prosaic revelations.

It was something I’d endeavored to teach Hannibal and his brothers without allowing cynicism to creep in. Certain Carthaginians, my blessed father among them, had discounted the gods as they worshipped silver, gold and precious stones. I wished Hannibal and his brothers to understand such men without becoming like them, and learn to use the power of wealth without being corrupted by it.

“You will not die through treachery,” Hannibal assured me. He shook his head. “There are no assassins in your house, no assassins within your army. Your enemies have corrupted the Oracle and now use it as a dagger against your mind.”

“There are always assassins,” I whispered.