the order of things again so that none misunderstand.
“This spring the army of Carthaginian Iberia marches for Rome. Hasdrubal, to you goes command here in Iberia, with all the duties that entails. It will be no easy task to fend off Roman parties while also keeping a tight grasp upon the Celtiberian tribes. It will require all of your skills, and Noba's as well. Vandicar, you and your elephants will sail as far up the coast as possible in transport ships, but by the Pyrenees the creatures will need to be afoot. The rest of us will all march from here in a month's time. We will suffer considerable losses before ever touching down in Italy. No one can say how many, for no one has attempted this before. But we can minimize our losses by carefully managing the march. We must find the best guides for each portion: one pass could lead to death, the next to Rome. We must choose correctly. And we must be stern with the mountain Gauls. We'll send an advance guard two days ahead of the column. They can welcome us as friends and see us provisioned, and they can even join our cause if it is close to their hearts' desires. If they oppose us we'll leave their houses aflame, their men dead, and their women weeping. It's as simple as that.”
Though Hannibal seemed to be ready to move on to the next point, Monomachus signaled with an upraised finger that he would like to speak. “These Gauls will be a thorn in our side each day of our journey,” he said. “I've no doubt that we will kill many of them. But why waste the dead? From the early days of the march, the army should be fed a daily ration of enemy flesh.”
Cries of disgust went up from Hasdrubal and Bostar. Bomilcar slapped his hand down upon the tabletop. Mago blurted, “Is he mad?”
Monomachus spoke calmly over the din. “This way we'll put their very flesh to use. We'll harden the men to the practice and later, should we need to fall back on it in times of famine, the men will find it easier to bear. And also, there are some people who believe one grows stronger by eating the flesh of conquered warriors. Perhaps some essence lives on in the tissue.”
“Hannibal, must we discuss this?” Mago asked.
The commander considered for a moment before answering. “Monomachus, I pray we never become enemies,” he said. “I understand that there is a measure of dark logic in your proposal. An army that not only kills but that dines on its enemies would be an awesome force, preying on the minds and courage of their opponents. But, to be truthful, the idea turns my stomach. And I would not force my men to a practice I will not take part in myself. We will make do as we always have.”
“There are tales of—”
“Let us not think too much on tales. The answer is no. We will make our way through the Alps and smoke the Romans from their den. I will not fail to lead us there through lack of willpower. But we will not become eaters of flesh. Let us move on.”
It was clear that Monomachus had more to say, but Hannibal's voice was firm. Monomachus sucked his cheeks in and stared at a space on the far wall of the chamber.
“Hanno, you will stay with a company guarding the mountain passes. This is our only road to Italy and, once secured, it must be kept open for reinforcements. This is a most important post, for without an artery connecting our army to Iberia we will be cut off within the belly of our enemy.”
Hannibal carried on with his speech, but for a moment Hanno heard nothing save a repetition of the words previously uttered, his fate. What did this mean? A company guarding mountain passes? Was it an insult, to be left on some rocky outcrop among barbarians, a banishment to a snowy wasteland? Or was there some importance to the role and the command—small though it might be—that he would exercise? It was too much to think over quickly, not while he sat among this company, wanting to present an expressionless face, to act as if he had known all along his post and even had some hand in planning it. He felt again the pulsing in his palms. He slid his hands from his thighs, down and out of view.
“Mago will attend me,” Hannibal was saying. “He will be the left arm twinned beside my right. Bostar, Bomilcar, so, too, will you test yourselves on Italian soil. Maharbal, the hooves beneath you will resound in valleys and hills around Rome. This, at least, is the order of the first prong of this attack. Next year we will spend the cold months in the land of the Gauls, where the Boii and Insubres are ready to unite with our cause. The spring of that year we attack, with a larger army than has ever before threatened Italy. Once we have them in a defensive posture, Hasdrubal can follow with another army. Should Baal and the fates favor us, by autumn of the second year hence we will dine within Roman halls, as guests or conquerors, depending on what peace terms the situation dictates.”
“And if we meet Romans while still in Catalonia?” Maharbal asked.
After getting Hannibal's approving glance, Bostar answered. “That could be to our advantage. We know that the Romans will divide their consular armies: one for Iberia, another for Africa. If they do land an army in Iberia, it will certainly be in the north, nearer to their Greek allies in Massilia. It would do us no harm to fight there, far from New Carthage. With our victory, they'll recall the second consular force from threatening Africa.”
“Either course of events suits us,” Hannibal said, “although we cannot count on Rome to do our bidding. We must imagine a plan wherein our actions carry us through.”
“Then why not besiege Rome itself?” Bomilcar asked. “We've made no preparations to take siege engines. This must be reconsidered.”
“Siege will not be our first resort. The engines would be too burdensome to journey with us by land. They might reach us by ship, but our navy is too small. We might build the machines once in Italy, but in any case I believe a siege might be an error. Rome is too well fortified.”
“No city can hold out forever,” Bomilcar said.
“Neither can a small army survive indefinitely on hostile lands,” Hannibal answered. “No, we must meet them on the field of battle and beat them resoundingly. We wound them first and then follow until weakness betrays them. We show their Latin allies not the city of a strong friend under threat, but proof that their masters have a superior on the field. A winner never lacks for friends. Said simply: We march to Italy, we defeat the Romans in battle, we break the old alliances with their neighbors, and then—only then—we press upon Rome itself. I've spoken to each of you fully about these matters. This is how we will proceed. Through the rest of the early spring you will each school yourselves in all the matters important to your roles.
“Now,” he said, leaning over the charts and smoothing them with his hands, “let us examine all these points in more detail.”
Hanno, bending forward with the others, watched his brother's profile: his hair, wavy and dark, forehead ridged with the thoughts he sought to convey, eyebrows like two ridges of black basalt, full, shapely mouth. For the first time he gave a word to the feeling he had for his brother, the sentiment that lingered just beyond his love, at the backside of admiration and adoration, fast behind the awareness that they shared blood and features and a scent so similar even hounds could not tell them apart. In a place further back than all these things, a seed planted in his infancy, there resided an emotion, named now for the first time. It humbled him just to form the word in his head and hear it sound within him.
Hate.
Hasdrubal awoke knowing that he had dreamed of the day of his father's death. He did not remember the particulars of the vision. It faded into the vapors of the unconscious world even as he opened his eyes upon the earthly one. He was left with something equally disturbing—the memory of the actual events, the part he had played in them, and the frightening world in which his childhood was a narrow sliver of his life, maturity demanded even before his body began the change toward manhood.
The second youngest male Barca had emerged into awareness while his homeland was in the depths of defeat. One of the first things he knew of his country was that they had lost a war to a great power called Rome. Lands and property and pride had been taken from them. They had staggered beneath a war indemnity and, further, the city itself had been besieged by its own mercenaries. The outcome of that conflict had been no sure matter. It was only by the belated will of the gods that his father, Hamilcar, had finally managed to raise the siege and drive the mercenaries out into the desert and slaughter forty thousand of them in a trap of epic proportions, leaving a mass grave almost beyond imagination—though Hasdrubal's youthful mind created images of it often.
This was the Carthage into which the boy Hasdrubal came of age. As some children run up dark stairs for fear of the imaginary beast behind them, Hasdrubal ran through his early years pursued by massed armies of the dead waiting to sweep away all he knew in a whirlwind of violence. He might have grown into a shy adult had not his father modeled such complete, military confidence. Hamilcar set out to change this world, with Iberia as his stepping-stone, with his sons nipping at his heels like cubs. With a foothold on the river Betis, he carved his way
