time splattering a Numidian's upraised arm. Soon the men caught on and balls of snow cut through the air in all directions, men shouting and laughing. In a matter of moments, the soldiers remembered themselves. They often looked spear and arrows in the eye—what had they to fear from snow? The light mood changed, however, when Balearics began to fling ice balls from their slings. The impact of these on their targets was too much like actual warfare. With effort, Hannibal reined the men in and ordered the march to proceed.
Within a few hours, the snow had lost its strange aura and become a commonplace annoyance. It fell even more steadily, the flakes smaller but vast in number. White blanketed the stones and earth around them. It hung on tree branches and gathered on the soldiers' shoulders, atop their heads and helmets. They fought the cold with their labor, trudging forward beneath their armor and packs and weapons, but the furnace within them was dim, and it faded as the day progressed. Their naked arms and legs turned blue, grew sluggish and unwieldy. Ice collected between exposed toes, and some men, walking on numb feet, stumbled and fell and were slow to rise.
In the higher reaches they came into a treeless landscape, seemingly devoid of life, with jagged stone raised like weapons against the underbelly of the sky. Mago found something appalling in the silent bulk of the peaks, in the way they rose one after another like an army of gathering giants, in the strange dividing line where the earth ended and the infinite sky began, and in the awesome spectacle of elephants kicking their way through snow. He was sure that the earth had not witnessed such a spectacle since long ago when the gods roamed the earth in physical form, hunting the great beasts whose bones still emerged from the ground on occasion. In those times, anything was possible.
As it was now, under Hannibal's leadership. He seemed to be everywhere at once, no visible sign of fatigue on him. Mago was asleep each evening upon throwing his body down, and it seemed that the sound of Hannibal's voice both led him into slumber and pulled him out of it. Throughout the morning he rode through the company, extolling all to work on, to persevere, spinning grand notions of the bounty awaiting them in Italy, telling them that their deeds would be written of by poets and sung at campfires in times far from this. Here was their chance to be immortal. Had the Ten Thousand faced more than this? Did this not rate next to Alexander's marches through the Persian mountains? They would be remembered just as those of old were, but no such honor comes easily. On the first night they slept on snow-covered ground Hannibal tossed a thin blanket down on the ice, pulled a cloak over himself, and fell into an instant, deep slumber. Men, hearing his snoring, shook their heads and grinned despite themselves. What army ever had a leader superior to this?
The next morning Hannibal rode down the line telling the men they were near the top of the final pass. His scouts were certain. They had only to struggle a little longer and Italy would be theirs. To falter now would be the greatest of tragedies. Failure here would anger the gods themselves, who rarely see men come so close to everlasting fame.
Mago, leaning hard on his spear as he rested beside Silenus, heard the scribe mumble the reply, “Why settle for Italy? Why not a conquest of the heavens? I think the gates are up here, just a ten-minute walk or so. . . . Don't look at me like that,” Silenus said, although Mago had not yet glanced at him. “This was not my idea. Did anybody ask my views? Do you know that it is said these regions are not meant for men? The closer we get to the gods, the harder our own lives become. Tell me you cannot feel it. Even the very breath coming in and out of your lungs is a labor. Tell me you do not feel it.”
Mago prepared a smile and searched for a quick rebuttal, but nothing came to him and the effort tired him. He rested a moment longer in silence. Just as they were about to move on, he noticed Bomilcar's familiar form approaching them. He nudged Silenus and the two watched the man's progress. He walked with his weapons and a full pack, as he had since the beginning of the climb. To be an example among his men, he had explained. He took each step deliberately. He planted one foot and gave it a moment to meld with the ground. He pushed his enormous frame up and then planted the next foot, pulled the tree up by its roots, and repeated the motion. Mago and Silenus watched him ascend toward them for some time. Though he did not look up, he seemed to know just as he was passing the two. He said, “What tale have you now, Greek?”
“I am yet composing it,” Silenus said. “It will be a tale of winter madness. You'll have a part in it, my friend. Be sure of it: the Goliath of the peaks.”
“Your tongue knows no fatigue,” Bomilcar said. “If your limbs fail you, perhaps your tongue will sprout legs and run you up these peaks.”
Silenus seemed to find the image amusing. He might have said more, but Bomilcar kept trudging on and was soon receding into the white expanse above them. The Greek whispered to Mago, “I'd wager he has been perfecting that line since the Rhone.”
In the almost-warm hours of the midafternoon, they trudged their way ahead at the rear of a long line of men. Though not as heavily laden as Bomilcar, Mago also chose to walk, an offering of sweat and labor to the common soldiers around him. And it was quite an offering. The irregular snowfalls, the cool nights, and the strong sun of the clear days created layers of slush beneath the surface snow, divided by skins of ice that tricked one into thinking they provided adequate support. A foot would punch through the top layer, the man's weight driving him down through the slush till he found purchase. Carefully, he would take one step and then another, finding security in the movement, believing he would go no farther down. But then, on a sudden whim of the living ice, he would break through again, first sinking to ankle depth and then up toward the knee and eventually as high as the waist. The pack animals, struggling against the stuff, sometimes sank so deep that only their frantic heads thrust out above the snow.
Thanks to a slightly larger ration than the common soldier's, Mago could function better than most. At first he tugged at men and dug away the snow with his hands, cut the white flesh with the blade of his sword, and slapped the men and beasts back into movement. Later—his hands too numb to hold his sword properly, too frozen even to scoop the snow—he shouted encouragement, orders, curses to keep them moving. This went on for hours, unchanging moments passing one into the next, each step like the one before it. The face of one man merged with the face of the man before him. The half-buried body of any individual looked like all the others. The glazed eyes, the cracked lips, the mumbled entreaties, the stiff limbs jutting up from ice: it no longer had a beginning and seemed to have no end. It was just the way of the world, and the things that had been life before made no sense anymore.
He could not count the number of times he believed he had reached the summit only to discover that he had mounted a lump in the mountainside, a protrusion, a ledge, beyond which new heights stretched. It was maddening. He was sure the landscape altered itself with malignant intent. It sprouted higher and higher each time he looked away. And the foul thing of it was that the world never betrayed its trickery. It always sat still and impassive under his scrutiny, like a great beast with its shoulders hunched in innocence.
At some point that he did not recognize at the time or remember later Mago gave up on the others and moved past them in silence. He lost Silenus, but such was this climb—now you passed a man; a little later, he passed you. That was just the way it had to be, he realized. Each had to just struggle on—he just like the others. His extra rations were not enough to set him apart. His body was feeding upon itself. He could feel the process draining him, dissolving the tissue beneath his skin, sucking the fluids from his muscles and leaving them leathery cords, striated bands stiff in movement and slow to answer the instructions he willed upon them.
He was on all fours—scraping them forward inch by inch—when a burst of air hit his face with a force that nearly shoved him back down the slope. The air was sure to have been cold, but he felt the force more than the chill. At first he cursed it and ducked beneath his elbow, thinking he had reached yet another rise, with yet another view up toward the insurmountable. He felt his breath rushing back from the bitter cold just before his face. There was no warmth in it, and he wondered if he had begun to go cold on the inside. First his feet and then his hands, his knees and forearms, perhaps now his chest itself: all the parts of him were slowly freezing solid and becoming one with the mountains. He found this a pleasant thought. He could lie motionless and no longer struggle. He could remember stillness. It was possible to stop laboring and rest. The Greek was right. Such heights as this were not meant for mortal men. Why fight this truth when one could sleep instead? It was not so hard to give up. It was only hard to carry on.
And so Mago might have stayed if the voice had not reached him. He lifted his head and, squinting into the wind, realized why it buffeted him so forcefully. There was nothing above him but sky. To the south, a patchwork of clouds drifted across a blue screen. Mago rose to his feet and stumbled forward. The ground beneath him was suddenly bare rock, marbled by windswept currents of snow. The mountains dropped all the way to the valley floor before them. He could almost make out the flat plain and its imagined lushness. He was at the summit!
