“Is that all you can see?”
Mandarbal considered this. He looked back over his shoulders. An insect landed on his lip but flew away instantly. He said, “Perhaps you have offended a single deity and may yet suffer for it.”
Hanno pressed his tongue against his teeth for a moment. “I would look upon the organ myself,” he said. “Might I—”
The priest stopped him with his hand. His fingertips spotted Hanno's breastplate with blood. “You cannot see the sacred parts. This is forbidden to your eyes. You would profane the rites. I've told you more than enough. Trust when I tell you that the future is not certain. Sacrifice to Baal and to Anath. I will ask El for guidance. Perhaps the aged one will speak to us. And Moloch, also—give praise to death.”
Mandarbal made as if to return to his attendants, but noting the expression on Hanno's face, he paused. “Events will unfold by the will of the gods,” he said. “To know their desire is not always our fortune; to have a part in it, regardless, is the blessing and curse of our lives. Be at ease with it. A thrashing man will always drown; a passive one may sometimes float.”
With that, the priest turned and showed the Barcas his back.
Mago shrugged, pursed his lips, and patted his brother on the shoulder. “What did you expect?” he asked. “They are priests. It is against their creed to speak clearly.”
Hanno took the sacred ceremonies much more seriously than his brother, but he could not deny the simple truth Mago referred to. The priests always left one more ill at ease than before, more uncertain, more troubled by the numerous possibilities. It was a strange art, theirs, but one he could never turn his back on.
Had he had only his own inclinations to consider, he would not have joined his brother for the evening meal but would have retired early to privacy. But, as so often since Hannibal's departure, his presence seemed an official necessity. In honor of the Greek, the officers dined in a style he was familiar with, lounging on low couches in Mago's tent, sampling cheeses and fish, vegetables and goat meat with their fingers. The day was still stiflingly warm. One wall of the large tent was folded back to encourage the first stirrings of an evening breeze. Silenus spoke Carthaginian with a Syracusan accent. He entertained the weary soldiers with tales of his voyage from Carthage to Sicily, from there up to the Greek town of Emporiae in northeastern Iberia, from which he sailed along the coast aboard a trading vessel that dropped him at Saguntum. It was hard to know just where fact met fantasy in the man's story, for his odyssey seemed calculated to outdo the poem sung by Homer. He spoke of pirates off the Aegates, of sighting a leviathan longer than the quinquereme in which he sailed, and of a lightning bolt that darted down out of a clear sky and struck the surface of the water.
“It sounds as though we are lucky to lay our eyes on you,” Mago said. He motioned for a servant to refill the Greek's wine bowl, a task attended by a slim-shouldered Arbocalan.
“That you are,” the Greek agreed. “If I had known that I would miss the commander, I might not have rushed.”
“Better that you delayed no longer,” Hanno said. Without his meaning to reveal it, his voice bore an edge of threat. There was something about the scribe that annoyed him, more so because he chided himself for showing it in the face of a company that seemed kindly inclined toward the man. In a more controlled tone, he said, “There's a great deal you'll have to learn about what we require of you.”
“Of course that is so,” Silenus said. He bowed his head and left it at that.
One officer, Bomilcar, seemed particularly amused by Silenus. Though a giant of a man, perfectly proportioned but at a scale rarely witnessed, Bomilcar was neither a terribly disciplined nor especially intelligent officer. His muscular bulk made him a leader of men regardless. His family was an old one in Carthage, but they had maintained a remarkable purity of Phoenician blood, evidenced by the curved blade of his nose, his sharp chin, and the bushy prominence of his eyebrows.
“Greek,” he said, “let me ask you, how did your gimp god Hephaestus secure Aphrodite as a wife? Why not Ares instead? Why not Zeus himself? Or that one from the sea?”
“The blacksmith has got poor legs,” Silenus said, “but his other limbs function quite well. He spends his days pounding iron—”
“And his nights pounding something else!” Bomilcar was laughing at his own joke before he had even completed it.
Silenus smiled. “Yes, but Hephaestus is known as a kind god, as well. Perhaps Aphrodite finds this a virtue. This may come as a surprise to you, Bomilcar, but I am not personally acquainted with the Olympians. I've invoked their presence more than once, I assure you, but as yet they've spurned me. Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite—I've asked them all to dine but they've ignored me. I caught a glimpse of Dionysus once, but my head was a bit foggy at the time. No, the gods are largely silent as concerns young Silenus.”
“Are you a Skeptic, then?” Mago asked.
“Not at all,” Silenus said. “I've seen Ares in a man's eyes and sampled Aphrodite's handiwork and every day one sees Apollo's labors. I've simply been shunned, and I am bitter.”
Hanno said, “Greeks are strange creatures. They claim to revere their gods above all others and yet at the same time they pretend to believe in nothing. Have you no fear of the insult you may cause and of the punishment brought down on you?”
“Insult to the gods?” Silenus asked. He held his wine goblet beneath his nose for a moment, thinking. “I am too small a man to accomplish that. You see these arms, this misshapen head? What god could reasonably take offense at anything I utter?”
“You toy with questions instead of answering them,” Hanno said. “We Carthaginians fear our gods. We ask daily, hourly, each minute that their wrath be directed at our enemies instead of at ourselves. We never know what will displease them, so we are ever respectful.”
“How unfortunate,” Silenus said. He seemed to have more to say but left it at that.
“Let's not talk of our faiths,” Mago said. “We all honor Baal. That is never in question among this company, Greeks included. But tell us something more useful, Silenus. You have actually been to Rome, haven't you? Tell us of the Romans.”
Silenus picked up on the topic happily enough. “The Romans are an uncultured lot. It is not so long ago that Rome was a flea-infested sewer of no consequence at all. They've no literature to speak of. They appease the gods when it suits them, but they make a muddle of it. They've actually just borrowed our Greek deities and renamed them. One wonders whom they think they are fooling. Not the gods themselves, surely. I imagine that when they decide they need a literature of their own they'll take it from Greece. Take Homer and rename him Pomponius or something similarly absurd and change all the names in the
“If they aren't humbled first,” Bomilcar said. “Which they shall be by Baal's grace and Hannibal's cunning. I wish he were here to meet you, Greek. Then you'd see the face of the future. He'll squash these Romans beneath his heel soon. Hannibal puts steel in all his men's backbones. Rome is no foe to be feared.”
“I am no warrior,” Silenus said, “but I might argue there's a thing even more powerful than steel.”
“And what's that?” Bomilcar asked. “Surely not pen and ink? Are you of that school?”
“No,” Silenus said dryly, looking almost saddened by the admission. “I'm not such an idealist that I believe that. What I'm referring to is not easily explained. I don't have the word for it just yet, but . . . Have you heard of Cincinnatus? During the early forging of the Republic, the Romans battled with their neighbors constantly. In the instance I am speaking of, the Roman army was pinned down by the Aequi, in a dire situation, trapped with dwindling food and water and outnumbered. As things seemed hopeless, Rome looked to the priests for direction, and in answer they were instructed to call upon Cincinnatus, a veteran soldier some years retired into a quiet life. They found him working in his field, plow in hand, sweating, squinting at the sun, I'd imagine, wife and children and some pigs about the place. You can picture it. But still they called him up and bestowed upon him the powers of dictator. He left the plow where it rested and raised a new army from the fields and farms around him. He marched on the Aequi within a few weeks and defeated them soundly. Quite a feat for a humble farmer, would not you say?”
“But Cincinnatus was no humble farmer,” Hanno said. “He was a veteran. Retired, but still a warrior. What point do you wish to extract from this tale?”
“I assert that he was a warrior and also a simple farmer. He was both, and not more one than the other. That is my point. Romans believe themselves to be simple farmers. But they believe that hand in hand with this goes the requirement that they also be their nations' soldiers. Plow one minute, sword the next, depending on the
