Several lesser officers stood or sat about the chamber as their injuries allowed.
Mago watched his brother with a pained expression that had nothing to do with the physical. By the grace of Baal, he had survived the battle largely unscathed. He and his handful of attendants had fought near the front ranks of Gauls. His voice was still raw from all the yelling, from his crazed attempt to manage the wild energy of barbarians, to control their retreat and stay alive and watch Hannibal close the jaws of his trap. In the hours of battle, moment after chaotic moment passed as if it might be his last, each instant laced with a hundred ways for him to die. He had personally killed more men than he could count. He had stepped back, always at the edge of the retreat, receding before the Roman line as it trod over his soldier's bodies.
One of his guards had been impaled beneath the chin by a Roman spear. The weapon struck so hard that Mago, standing just beside him, heard the vertebrae snap under the pressure and saw how strangely the man's head hung from the spear point, attached to the body by tendrils of flesh but no longer connected to the framework hidden beneath. He still carried the sickening image in his head, ready to impose itself on any person walking past, any face he looked at. Nor was it the only disturbing image. He tried to flush these out with reasoned thought and celebration, but as ever he hid within himself the strange duality of character he had always found in battle. He was both inordinately skilled at it and absurdly haunted by it afterward. Strangely, it was he and Hannibal—the two most slightly injured—who seemed most troubled.
Hannibal was still whispering the dead man's name when Gemel stepped into the tent. He had assisted the commander for some years now, but he seemed nervous in his new role as Bostar's replacement, clumsy in it and hesitant in his speech. He lowered his head and stood in silence.
But Hannibal must have sensed his presence. Without lifting his head he asked, “What do we know for certain?”
Gemel glanced around at the others, but they all knew whom the commander addressed and with what question. “We can be sure of little, sir,” he began. “The Gauls suffered most. They are still counting, but they may have lost more than four thousand. We cannot account for two thousand Iberians and African troops, and we lost at least two hundred from the combined cavalry. Commander, I am sure of none of these figures. This is just the best we could gather throughout the day.”
“And of the enemy?”
“Your estimate, sir, would surpass mine in accuracy. We've captured a full twenty thousand—many of them wounded and dying—and taken both their camps. Some hid in Cannae itself. We are still rounding them up. A few escaped to Canusium and Venusia—”
Hannibal lifted his head. “Just give me numbers, Gemel, a simple tally.”
“The best figure I can give this morning comes from the Romans themselves. They say they were ninety thousand strong. Twenty thousand of these we captured. Perhaps another ten thousand escaped us. So . . . This field may well be the death of sixty thousand of them.”
Maharbal could not help but speak up. “Do you hear that, Hannibal? Think of it—sixty thousand! And the figure may be higher than that! Let me do what I proposed earlier. My men could ride before the dawn. Do not consider me injured—”
“I've already answered you, Maharbal,” Hannibal said. He touched on the horseman with his one-eyed gaze, briefly. “I rejoice that you are so hungry to sack Rome. But he is a fool who does not place himself within a framework of other men's actions. We are not the first to conquer Roman legions on their own land. The Gauls sacked the city of Rome and had their way with her as if she were a whore. They left loaded with plunder and stories of their own greatness. But what did it come to? Rome went on. The Romans crept back into their city and built it again and spread their power and now have little to fear from the Gauls except annoyance.”
“We are not barbarians,” Maharbal said. “Their story is not the same as ours.”
“Pyrrhus of Epirus did battle here—”
“Nor are you Pyrrhus!” Maharbal cut in. “He knew how to win a victory, but not how to use one. Do not make a different form of the same mistake.”
Hannibal glanced up at him again, studying him as he might a stranger who had spoken out of turn. But after a moment he seemed to find the man he recognized and spoke to him with tired patience. “Pyrrhus defeated Rome on the battlefield,” he said, “a deed that earns him my respect. Again and again he emerged victorious, but still he gained no foothold. Though he won, he lost. Rome replaced its soldiers like the Hydra replacing heads. That's what Pyrrhus never understood. Rome always has more men. Not because their women push them out of the womb any faster, but because they use the wombs of others. If they run low, they call upon their municipal cities, upon the colonies, and, beyond that, upon the allied states. It is that that gives them power. Sever
He indicated this with the edge of his hand, cutting the air before him. Then, remembering the body of his friend, he pulled his hand back. “This talk is pounding my head to pain. Gemel, have they found the slain consul yet?”
“No. He may've been stripped by camp followers already.”
“Keep looking for him. He deserves an honorable burial, even if he was a fool. And see to it that the allied prisoners aren't mistreated tonight. I'll speak to them tomorrow morning. I want to send them home to their people friends instead of enemies. Have special presents sent to the Gauls, along with wine and heaps of praise and the cuts of meat they most favor. And Gemel, have careful counts for me before the dawn.”
As the secretary withdrew, Monomachus said, “The gods, too, deserve praise for our victory. We should offer sacrifice. With your permission, I'll select a hundred Romans from the prisoners. We should torture them in the old ways, and offer sacrifices—”
“No. We offered enough sacrifices yesterday. And what is this man lying before me if not a sacrifice?”
This did not move Monomachus. “You know I'm sworn to Moloch. I can feel his hunger. This battle did not sate him.”
“Don't talk to me of this.”
“In your father's time, we—”
“Stop!” Hannibal snapped to his feet. “Have all my generals gone mad? There will be no sacrifice! We will not march on Rome and this is not my father's time! You are my councillor only as long as I tolerate you and that may not be much longer. Leave me now. All of you. Go!”
Monomachus turned away without comment and filed out with the others. Mago started to leave also, but Hannibal stayed him with a glance.
Alone with his brother, the commander asked, “Why is my heart so troubled? I should rejoice, but instead I feel a new weight draped over my shoulders. I should honor my generals with praise; instead, I only find fault with them. I craved Roman blood for so many years; yet I do not want another victory like this. Mago, when I looked upon Bostar's face it was as if I were looking at yours, or at my own.”
“I know,” Mago said, “or I upon yours.”
“This victory was not worth his life. I would undo it all to have him back. How strange, my brother, that a man like me, who wants only to defeat his enemy . . . How strange that in mourning I would trade everything that this companion might live.”
“No good can come from talking so,” Mago said. “You will not have to look upon a field like Cannae again. You will not have to bury your brothers. Surely, this is the end of war. Never will the world see another day like this. That is what you have accomplished. Bostar would reverse nothing that happened here.”
Hannibal placed his fingers on the wood of the funeral table and pressed till his fingertips went white. “I know nothing of what Bostar thinks now. By the gods, I want to win this! It is all the work of my own hands, but at moments I look down and realize that I'm seated on a monster fouler than anything I could have conceived. Sixty thousand of them dead? Sometimes I wonder who is more bound to Moloch—Monomachus, or myself.”
Hannibal dismissed the thought with a tic that upset and then released the muscles of one side of his face. Mago had noticed this tic several times in the past few weeks. He did not care for it, for during it Hannibal's face was briefly not his own. It was an ugly mask, similar to his, but different in disturbing ways. One of the torches
