Fabius sat down to considerable applause. Not enough, however, to convince Publius that his cause was lost. He rose to answer the old man. He stood firm and straight, letting his gaze move around the room just as the aged senator's had, except that Publius made it clear that he truly saw each face he looked upon.
“I extend my heartfelt appreciation to Fabius,” he said. “What an introduction he's given me! He's been kind enough to argue against my proposal before I've even offered it. Also, I had no idea he cared so much for my well- being. It is surprising, in fact, because I do not recall him protesting when only I among all this company volunteered to take upon myself the war in Iberia. Back then, when my father and uncle were slain, when three Carthaginian armies roamed that land unvanquished . . . well, back then it seems no one deemed me unfit to lead a military venture. Was my age then more advanced than it is now? Did I know more of the conduct of war then? Are the armies of Africa larger than those I met in Iberia? Did Carthage keep all of her finest generals home?”
Fabius muttered that the young one was right to have so many questions. “He asks them in jest, but perhaps they should be considered—”
“Fabius, the floor is mine!” Publius snapped. Having spoken harshly, the consul inhaled, measured a few breaths, let calm ease through the stilled chamber. “The choice you have before you, Senators, has thus far been written in the blood of our nation. You might continue on the path that has seen us suffer year after year of war and that has led to defeats whose names I will not even utter here. You may choose to carry on like that until Hannibal is truly at the gates, or you may choose to boldly finish the matter. Do not be misled by the doubts spawned in timid minds. Ignore the fears of the fearful, the protestations of hand-wringers. Hear my words now and understand what I promise. Granted your permission, I will speed at once to Africa. You will almost immediately hear that the country is aflame with war. And, as soon as you hear that, prepare for the next news: that Hannibal has been recalled to protect his homeland. This is the one and only strategy that can achieve success. The one thing Hannibal will not expect but will most fear. There is no more to my proposal than this. Judge it and weigh it by merit, and merit alone.”
Debate raged for some time after this, until someone remembered that the two consuls had still not drawn their provinces. Nothing could be decided until it was determined whether Publius would be limited to the European or the African theater. This was only a temporary obstacle, however. Publius drew Africa, and a good many senators saw the hand of Fortune in this. It was decided that Publius could plan his attack on Carthage, if he must. But, the senators said, as such a venture was outside the more pressing protection of Rome the consul could not levy new troops for this purpose. He could go, but not with his normal count of two legions. Instead, he could make his war with the disgraced veterans of Cannae who had been banished to Sicily and with whatever volunteers chose to follow him.
As they left the meeting, Laelius rolled his eyes. “So much for gratitude.”
It was a harsh country they wintered in, cold beyond reason. The Cavares welcomed them in their simple manner, but the rough customs by which they lived provided little in the way of comforts. When it was not snowing it was sleeting; when it was not sleeting, a chill rain fell, perhaps worse than the frozen stuff. It seemed to seep deeper into the skin and settle in the bones, in the chest cavity, under the eyes. Days of clear brilliance occasionally scattered the clouds, but the nights after such days were colder still, all the heat rushing up into the heavens.
Silenus caught a cough while crossing the higher reaches of the Pyrenees. He nursed it throughout the long season along the Rhone. He spat up bile that changed color from one day to the next. For a time his body burned with fever. He lay sweating, head spinning; at the mercy of a Cavaris mystic who draped his naked body with shreds of animal fur drenched in various unguents. At first Silenus tried to swat the hooded creature away, especially when he saw the sores festering on his hands and caught a glimpse of the conglomeration of features from behind which he viewed the world, a face as wrinkled and bulbous as if it had been baked of lumpy dough. Later, he grew too weak to move. He closed his eyes and cursed the man in long Greek diatribes that went wholly ignored. Nor did he thank the mystic when he regained his health. Of course he was going to recover, he said. He would have done so sooner if that ogre had not harassed him so.
From then on Silenus ventured out only rarely. When he did, he found the frozen world a strange place indeed. He spent a portion of each day writing down his observations. The bare branches of trees that dipped down into the frigid stream currents fascinated him. The water flowed by in its liquid form, but it clung to knuckles of wood in knobs of ice. He had noticed that men sent to reconnoiter the mountains during clear spells came back with faces and hands as sunburned as they would have been in Africa. And he found certain fishes frozen in chunks of ice. Testing an assertion of the local children, he set them to thaw in a bowl beside his cot and found they returned to life as they warmed, flapping a tail or fin as each came free, rolling their eyes. These northern lands made no sense. He would have rather stayed with Hanno, whom he thought of often. But such a decision was not his to make, and the priority was for him to get back to Hannibal.
The state of Hasdrubal's health began to worry him. He suffered no physical infirmity, but his spirits sank so low that he sometimes received no visitors at all for a day or two at a time. When Silenus did gain the man's tent, he invariably found him in the same position, hunched at the edge of his cot, a black bear fur draped over his shoulders. The upper skull and jaw of the beast rested on Hasdrubal's head. The creature's teeth pressed against his forehead. He had even gone so far as to run the bear's legs down his arms and secure the paws to the back of his hands. He spent the day scratching figures into the dry dirt of the floor, wiping them clean, and then drawing again on some other inspiration. Silenus never figured out just what he was doing. He thought the pictures might be charts, battle plans, a map of the territory they were entering. Sometimes he caught suggestions in the lines that reminded him of parts of the human form—an eye, a lock of hair draped over a forehead, contours that could have etched a chin. But Hasdrubal always scratched through the images before he could really make sense of them.
When asked about his health, his thoughts on the situation they found themselves in, the coming year, the state of the men's morale, the best way to communicate with Hannibal, the prospect of negotiating the Alps in early spring—when asked anything—Hasdrubal, if he responded at all, answered with the same phrase.
“Bears sleep in winter,” he said.
Silenus found no comfort at all in this answer, even apart from the wild smile that accompanied it, the great bulbous swell of his eyes, and the way he chewed on one corner of his lips with teeth that—in the dim light— seemed inordinately large. Asked to explain the statement, Hasdrubal merely repeated it. Then he grunted a few times, as the creature might. Silenus stopped asking questions. Instead, he reminisced about the things he had seen with Hannibal and conjectured with willed optimism about what the future held for them all. He tried to remind Hasdrubal that a world of possibility lay beyond this Gallic hell: people and places and joys yet to be discovered.
He was not sure whether he succeeded in these attempts, but with the first thawings of spring the bear stirred into motion. Hasdrubal gathered together the ragged remainder of the troops he had escaped Baecula with. All told, just over eleven thousand of them had survived the winter, far fewer than Hannibal had at his command at the same geographical point. None of them looked eager to fight, but all wanted out of that cold place and they knew they had mountains to cross no matter what. So they accepted their general's lead.
Hasdrubal pushed the army across the upper Rhone, where the river was narrow and posed only a moderate obstacle. He moved ready for trouble, his lookouts vigilant and his soldiers marching with spears at hand. Silenus had sworn that he could be of no aid in negotiating the Alps, but this was mostly because he wanted no responsibility for errors. In actuality, he managed to have an opinion every step of the way. For some time Hasdrubal joked with him that his only aim was to avoid any route that even remotely resembled the one he had taken with Hannibal. Silenus did not dispute it. Actually, he was happy to see the Barca find humor again. Perhaps his winter-long concern had been unnecessary.
The Gauls, remembering the first passing horde, greeted this new one with curiosity instead of fear. And perhaps with a measure of pity, for Hasdrubal's men looked none too impressive. Even the wild people who perched on the crags offered little trouble: stolen livestock, a camp follower snatched here and there, an occasional trap set more for amusement than to do real damage. The Allobroges would undoubtedly have proved more menacing, but the Carthaginians avoided them.
And they had chosen their route well. The crossing was—by Silenus' reckoning—blissfully uneventful. Much happened, certainly. Avalanches; days spent trekking into dead-end valleys. A blizzard howled over them for three
