into Iberia through brute force, constant war, prevailing by the sheer might of Barca will.
The year of Hamilcar's death it was the city of Ilici that put up the fiercest resistance. Hamilcar's siege of the city had dragged through late summer, through autumn, and on into winter. The quarrelsome people showed no signs of surrender. In their resolve, they even tossed the bodies of the old and infirm over the walls, men and women with their throats cut, a message that they preferred death to starvation: better to be corpses than to be the slaves of the Carthaginians. Patient but resolved, Hamilcar released some of his army for the winter and kept up the siege with a reduced force. He believed that patience would assure them victory. They had recourse to resupply while the suffering Ilicians did not. His position was strong. It was simply a matter of time, and the two sons attending him—Hannibal and Hasdrubal—would benefit from the lesson of patience.
When Orissus, a tribal king from just north of the city, approached them under the banner of peace it seemed reasonable enough. The man had been on favorable terms with them for some time. It was likely he wanted to better his position to exploit the Ilicians' misfortune. He offered Hamilcar entertainment in his stronghold, a reprieve from the siege, and the opportunity to consider an allegiance between them. He spoke with no guile on his face, offering simple truths and promises kind to the ears of battle-weary men.
In private council to consider the offer, Hamilcar asked his sons their opinion. Hannibal, long his father's confidant, warned against accepting. He argued that they should bear out the cold and see the siege through. Let rest come when the work was completed, not before. For his part, Hasdrubal was not yet accustomed to being asked his opinion. He fumbled for an answer, trying to disguise his own eagerness with logic. “We have no reason to doubt Orissus,” he said. “He's been a friend thus far. And there is your health to consider, Father. Cold is sometimes the death of great men.”
Hamilcar heard them both out, standing with his arms folded, the bunched muscles of his arms prickled with cold bumps, his breathing phlegmy and difficult. He pointedly did not comment on the question of his health, but he did overrule Hannibal. It was not simply a matter of pleasure, he explained, but an opportunity to build political alliances.
They set out with a mounted company two hundred strong, leaving some behind to maintain the siege. Hamilcar rode at the side of the Iberian, sharing a skin of warmed, spiced wine between them. He honestly seemed to enjoy the other man's company, although Hamilcar was such a statesman that it was hard to say for sure. The sky was slate-gray and so thick that one could not sight the orb of sun in it. It rained steadily, as it had done all week long, not freezing on the ground and yet so unrelenting as to chill one to the bowels. Hasdrubal, following the muddy flanks of his father's horse, wished only that they would move faster. He had notions of native girls in his head, of wine and warmth and all the tastes he had developed a liking for. Silly things to think on, he knew, not worthy of his consideration. Glancing to his side he saw his brother and knew from his focused, stern face that no such desires clouded his thoughts. Hasdrubal remembered thinking an ill thought of his brother at that moment. It was something he might well have forgotten, but it was welded into his consciousness by the actions that interrupted it.
A Massylii scout came galloping in from the rear and beckoned anxiously for Hamilcar's council. He said something in his own tongue that got the commander's complete attention. He pulled up and moved off to hear the scout. What the Massylii said was this: A mixed company of Iberian infantry and cavalry had dropped into the valley behind them, cutting them off from Ilici and trailing behind them. What number? The Numidian was not sure for the visibility was poor, but he estimated a thousand, perhaps half that again concealed by tree cover. He believed they had seen him and would be fast behind.
“What people?” Hamilcar asked.
The Numidian, without raising his gaze but using only his chin, indicated those he believed responsible.
Hamilcar snapped his gaze around at Orissus. Meeting his eyes was all the confirmation he needed. The Iberian recognized this. He yanked his horse into motion, followed at once by the rest of his company. Hamilcar barked an order. Monomachus and a small contingent of cavalry went off in pursuit. But before Hamilcar could speak another command—with divots of mud thrown high from horse hooves still falling around them—the ambushing army breached the far horizon.
It was not even a battle or a running skirmish but simply pure flight after that. There was no time to consult maps save the internal one that Hamilcar had etched inside his skull. They rode west at a dead run, vaulting over the bodies of Orissus and his men, not even pausing to comment on their betrayers. The opening of a valley to the north brought with it yet another band of attackers. The Carthaginians raced past and forded the river without a pause. They emerged on the other side under a barrage of arrows, some hitting their targets, most skittering across the stones. They were at this for the better portion of the winter afternoon.
By the time they reached the impassable river the horses were lathered beyond all health. Before them churned an unnamed river that would have been easily crossed in summer. But now it was in full spate, high enough to cover the base of trees and churn brown water through branches usually the home of birds and squirrels, not fish. His father gave a command then, the only one of his that Hasdrubal wished he had disobeyed.
“You two,” he said, “ride south with the Sacred Band. Go now, at all speed. Meet me in a week's time in Acra Leuce.”
With that, Hamilcar spun his horse and rode, yelling to the rest of the soldiers to follow him. Hasdrubal glanced at his brother and for a moment saw the same concern on his face. To go upriver was madness. With the Iberians fast behind him, Hamilcar would have no escape route, for the river in its higher sections would surely be a tumbling torrent. Hasdrubal wanted to cry out for his father to stop, to halt, to reach forward and grasp the great man by the hair and stop him. He wanted all this, but turning once more to his brother he found Hannibal's face had changed. The visage now directed at him was set in stone, unkind and pitiless.
“You heard,” Hannibal said. “Turn and ride as ordered. Wipe the questions from your face.”
And so he had. He could no more disobey his brother than he could his father.
It was in a warm chamber in Acra Leuce that Monomachus brought them the news. Hamilcar Barca was no more. Drowned in crossing the upper reaches of that mad river. He and his horse flung and battered until lifeless, pushed and shoved and tossed by the muscle of water around the bone of stone. His father died so that his sons might live, for surely Hamilcar had chosen his route in full awareness of the risks. He had led the pursuers on and thereby sacrificed his own life.
Hasdrubal refused to look at Hannibal, though they heard the news together. He felt a hot anger toward him like nothing he had felt before or since, but it lasted only until he felt his brother's hands on his shoulders, then his arms around him. With that the anger went unmasked and betrayed what it truly was, the shocked sorrow of one who is suddenly an incomplete link in a chain, an orphan not yet ready to lose his father because he has not yet become completely a man of his own. Neither a child nor a father but a brother still. For some reason it was this last realization that set him to tears.
These memories did not leave him until late in the morning, when the preparations for Hannibal's address to the mass of returning soldiers took precedence. Hasdrubal, attending his brother in the last moments before his speech, could hear the gathering crowd outside the city walls: the entire army, some ninety thousand strong, brought together to hear Hannibal's plan for the upcoming campaign. Certainly the men knew whom they were going to war with, and knew that they would take the battle to Rome, but only now, on this morning, would the commander reveal the entirety of the plans to them.
Hannibal dressed with more care than he usually allowed, more attention to luxurious detail. He even accepted suggestions from his vain younger brother. He wore a breastplate with an image of Elissa—Carthage's founder—at its center. The woman's face was beautiful and ferocious and vacant all at once. Beneath this, his tunic was pure white, sewn with red thread and embroidered along the shoulders in gold. Even his sandals were carefully chosen, fine leather tanned to near black, adorned with silver studs. Hasdrubal had never seen him look finer, but Hannibal's mind was on other things.
“At the end of that corridor I will look out across a vast and well-trained army,” Hannibal said. “But can I tell them what the future holds? No, because I do not have that power unless they give it to me. In fact, I'll propose a future, and they'll tell me if I've imagined correctly. And then over this, Fate will sit in judgment.”
“Brother, they would follow you anywhere,” Hasdrubal said.
“Perhaps. The Persian kings believed their troops to be nothing but instruments of their will, yet their numbers were no match for the anger of free men. No, when I step onto that platform I am posing a question. It is they who answer.”
Hasdrubal heard this in silence and nodded his eventual acceptance of it. Still watching the empty corridor, he
