leisure moments. He greeted them with nods and an easy grin. There was in his movements and posture the swagger of a young lion confident with his place among his peers. So he seemed until the first sighting of the crown of one man's black mane. This man was Monomachus. He took the company in with a disdainful glance that touched on everyone but moved on quickly, as if none of those he saw proved to be of sufficient interest. His eyes were intense and bulbous, seemingly too large for his face. Or perhaps they only seemed so because of his shrunken cheeks and the withered, dry pucker of his mouth.
Hasdrubal's glib expression vanished. He whispered to his brother, a little lower than previously, his eyes not upon the man in question but looking off at nothing in particular. “There stands a more ancient form of man than most.”
“I remember him,” Mago said. “He's Monomachus. He created the Lion's Way, did not he?”
Hasdrubal nodded. “And he's no saner now than he was then. He's devoted his works to Moloch, the Eater of Children. He leaves very few of his opponents alive. At least he fights for us. Of this be thankful.”
When Hannibal appeared he swept up onto the platform in a flourish of purposeful energy. He wore the leather corselet he sometimes sparred in. Its polished blackness was as impressively sculpted as hammered iron. He wore a red cloak that fell almost to the ground, but beneath this his arms were bare, as were his legs below the thigh. He gave the impression that he had just come from training, still flushed and warm from it. When his eyes touched on Hasdrubal, the young man felt a warm flush on his face despite himself. His brother's gaze in joy was like the sun bursting from behind a cloud.
Hanno appeared just after him. He nodded at his younger siblings, then crossed his arms and waited.
When he began, Hannibal's voice rang loud and clear, despite the wind trying to spirit his words away. “Remember with me for a moment the grandeur of our nation and the work we've accomplished here in Iberia,” he said. “We who were beaten through treachery have here carved one of the world's great empires. We who should be poor are rich. We who should be defeated know only victory after victory. We've much to be proud of. Be so in the name of my father, Hamilcar, and my brother by marriage, Hasdrubal the Handsome, for they made this possible. Their work was well begun, but it's not yet complete. As they have passed on to Baal, it passes to us to make real the world they both envisioned. We still have an enemy, a single foe, but a foe like none other. You know of whom I speak. . . . Not the Greeks whom we fought so often in times past. Not those Celts still defiant in the north of this very country. Not even the Saguntines, to whom I will direct your attention in a moment. I speak now of that den of thieves and pirates that they call Rome. Need I recount their crimes against us?”
The group murmured that these crimes were well known to them all.
Hannibal said the names anyway, slowly, each word broken into its separate syllables. “Sicily. Sardinia. Corsica. All taken from us. Our wealth. Blood. Possessions. All taken from us. The enormous cost of a war we did not start . . . Heaped upon us to pay for far into the years to come. Our navy destroyed. A people who were above all seamen now limited to a few vessels, cursed to walk instead of follow the wind. These losses are too great for a proud people to bear. And we are proud, are we not?”
All agreed that they were. Monomachus grunted low in his throat.
“Now, friends, the wolf's nose is sniffing even here in Iberia. Again the Romans are on the verge of ignoring honor. They wait not for right but only for opportunity. Some back in Carthage call themselves the Peace Party. They would have us avoid all conflict with Rome—would have us bow and bow again. They argue that we should accept the rule of our betters and profit from what commerce we can, like street peddlers scrounging for business in back alleyways. But what do these peaceable sorts know of the things we have created here? They know only that wealth pours from us to them, and that is as it should be. They need know little else, because it is we here on this citadel who determine the future of our nation. Make no mistake—we are Carthage, the heart and arm of it both. We are a small group here, but each of you is key to this army. Each of you makes Carthage great through your work. Each of you owns some portion of this empire. And what we've built thus far is but the foundation for something larger.
“I will speak to you plainly, so that you'll understand me the same way. We will move against Saguntum in the spring. Either the Romans will come to the Saguntines' aid, or the city will fall to us. If it falls, then the Romans will know what we think of them and they'll have to respond. So, either way, Saguntum is the opening thrust in an attack upon Rome itself. The Romans will be slow to recognize this completely. My sources say that they are now more concerned about events in Illyria than they are about us here. They will move more like tortoises than wolves. By the time they know we are their enemy, we'll be on their soil, with our swords at their necks. So . . . Saguntum this summer. Rome the next. Do any question me?”
Only the wind did, smacking hard across the citadel with three strong gusts. Hasdrubal had known this was coming, but the simple statement of it stunned him. The words seemed to come so easily to his brother's lips. They seemed so reasonable, despite the fact that they introduced the first official mention of a massive endeavor. He wondered if any would object, but from the generals and advisers all was silence until Monomachus said, “None question you.”
Hannibal nodded and said, “This goal is for our closed council only. The mass of men need not know my intentions; neither should the spies of Rome be given warning. But I will not keep secrets from you. This coming year we are still the Carthaginian army of Iberia. Next year they will be calling us the Army of Italy. Come, let's begin. There is everything to do.”
The Numidian spent the last of his silver on the passage to Iberia at the Pillars of Hercules. He traveled solitary, aligned with no city or king or general. Though a horseman by birth, he stood and walked on his own two legs. His head was shaved clean, with skin the color of oiled mahogany. He dressed simply in an earth-colored tunic, with a leopard skin flung across his shoulder and secured before him, a garment and blanket and bedding all in one. His arms bore tattoos, fine lines that were not words but were intelligible to those who knew how to read them. He had a strong hook of a nose and thin facial hair that clung in small curls just under his chin. His eyes were as clear now as they had been in his youth, though at twenty-nine he had seen things that meant the better portion of his life was behind him and now only dimly remembered. His name was Tusselo.
On disembarking in Iberia he began to search. The many signs were not hard to follow. The land had been trodden thin by the feet of so many thousands of men. It was scarred by horse hooves, flattened by the round, padded footfalls of elephants, cut by the wheels of carts and by the myriad other objects that seemed to have been dragged or pushed or somehow conveyed along the ground in a manner that left deep gouges. The farmland to either side had been stripped of its summer harvest. Many of those he passed still smarted from the inconveniences of the earlier horde and by no means was this lone traveler looked upon kindly. He was barred from settled places often, whether city or town or village it did not seem to matter. An old woman in Acra Leuce spat at him in the street and cursed his gods as weaklings. A man in an unnamed town cut him with an Iberian dagger, a clean slash across his forehead that bled profusely but was no real threat. It was a strange encounter, for having cut the Numidian the man just stood back and watched him walk away without further molestation. He was once followed by a band of young avengers who would have punished him for other men's crimes. They came upon him late at night, but he was ready for them and was more a man than they and left them smarting with the awareness of this. He carried a spear for a reason, and he explained this to them at close quarters.
Nor was nature disposed to aid him. The sun burned daylong in unclouded skies. Shade was thin and hard to come by and the landscape filled with hulking shapes in the distance. Once he traveled a barren stretch of land cut by dry rivers, some of enormous girth that might have funneled torrents but now lay parched beneath the summer sun. Later, he traversed a wide, shallow sea, the liquid so potent that it crystallized on his feet and coated them with a crust. Around him little thrived save for thin, delicately pink birds, creatures that stood on one leg and then the other and gestured with their curved beaks as if engaged in some courtly dance. On occasion his passage disturbed them; and the birds rose in great waves, thousands upon thousands of them, like giant sheets whipped by the breeze and lifted into the air. He never forgot the sight of them. Nor of the opal sea in the morning. Nor of a stretch of white beach as smooth as polished marble. Nor the white-winged butterfly that awoke him with a kiss upon his forehead.
He began to despair that he would succumb to some mishap before reaching his goal, but then he crossed the river Sucro and knew that he was close. He spent the night in a village by the sea and found that the people were not unkind to him, stranger though he was. He would always remember eating roasted fish on the beach, served up by an old man with whom he could not communicate in words but who seemed a friend nonetheless. The two sat on the sand near each other and scooped up the flaky white fish with their bare fingers. Tusselo tried to pay the man, but he refused, his hands raised before him and vertical so that no object could be placed upon them. In
