Hannibal. Ross Leckie

months more we marched and skirmished. We came to a plateau, ringed with peaks. “It will be here,” my father said. That moonless night the dark was suddenly ablaze with light. In a ring, around, above us, burned a thousand fires. Our elephants, uneasy, trumpeted their alarm. My father simply slept.

      He gave his orders in the half-light. “Beef, Hamilax, as much as they can eat, and all the dried figs too. Send me the commanders,” and to them my father gave his plan. With stomachs full, our army formed into one square. The syntagmata and elephants were its outer rank all round. The cavalry and slingers were within. When the sun rose, we were ready.

      They came in silence from the peaks above, very many, four or five to each of us, ordered this time, menacing. Their slingers shot. Our shields were raised. Their first charge was exploratory, by light-armed men. They lacked the heavy cavalry or elephants which could have breached our line. Our slingers killed or wounded many as they came. The next was far more serious, of heavy infantry behind high Roman shields, pressing hard upon our eastern side. A second force attacked us from the north. A third approached our southern side. Well out of shot, the mercenaries were forming for the charge in ranks upon our eastern side. They began to run, a wave of men towards us, three deep, greater by 200 strides than was our length.

      In unison, our trumpets rang. My father was chewing calmly at a fig. From the east, the sun behind them, banners waving, arrow-shaped, a host of cavalry rolled towards us in a cloud of dust.

      “Nar-a-vas, Nar-a-vas.” Hamilax began the shout which all the ranks took up. The horsemen caught the main mercenary line, cut through it cleanly, wheeled and cut again. Of its own volition our square became a charging line and I was among them on my pony by my father in the dust and blood and noise. A bearded Gaul ran to me. In one sweep my father’s sword cut off his swinging arm. His blood sprayed me. I gloried in the battle and since that day I have loved to fight and know no fear.

      I still see now my father embrace Naravas when, hours later, all was done. Together they themselves cut off the arms of Spendius, using his own sword. Zaracas too we captured, wounded but alive. We saw to one elephant, its trunk cut off, its entrails hanging. Hamilax killed it with a chisel between the ears.

      We left the carnage to the lions and the vultures. Spendius, his stumps bandaged, was thrown over a horse. Zaracas was dragged behind. Late in the evening, ten days’ hard march later, we came to Tunis. Approaching across the plain, we had expected to see Haggith’s campfires burning. “Perhaps he has already taken the city,” Hamilax said.

      “Perhaps,” my father replied.

      In the dark, the crosses were eerie. At first light the next morning they were not that. Haggith was there, what was left of him. They had crucified him with a dagger in his mouth, having cut off his genitals, his toes and fingers. On both sides away from him there ran a line of crosses round the city wall.

      My father sent a force to cut the bodies down. Fire from the walls repelled them. He sent Hamilax to Carthage for catapults. We waited. He had men scour the countryside for wool and this, soaked in pitch, was tied round rocks and stones. Then my father had all our men, Naravas’ too, equipped with bows and set to making arrows, their heads daubed in pitch.

      Tunis’ buildings were not of stone but clay and wattle, roofed with grass. We prepared for weeks. We were ready, yet still my father waited for one more thing to be right – wind.

      The catapults were set up, sixty of them. A dry wind came from the south and blew all day. Before the walls in sight of all, my father had Spendius and Zaracas brought and held. His first sword-stroke cut off Spendius’ head. His second cut the torso from the hips and the mercenaries on the walls of Tunis watched in silence. Zaracas he split first to the hips with one great downward swing.

      Without the arms of Spendius there were still ten pieces of two men, catapulted into Tunis. That done, great braziers were lit before each troop of archers and each catapult. At one trumpet, a rain of fire fell upon Tunis. It burned for three days and nights. Four times, each of those days, my father renewed his hail of fire. He knew how much water there was in Tunis.

      Irregular groups of mercenaries sought a different death. Some, on fire, jumped from the walls. Others ran from the gates. Some of these were killed. Most were captured and then crucified upon the crosses of Haggith and his men. All about the crosses and our camp sat and squawked the black and bloodied ravens.

      Of course Carthage rejoiced when we returned, our bodies blackened by the smoke, our clothes fouled by the reek of burnt flesh. “Hamilcar, our saviour, Eye of Khamon,” cried the people, even Baalhaan, wearing his tiara with its eight mystic tiers, an emerald shell in the middle. I slipped away. I wanted to see Silenus. I had missed him. He was not in our classroom. But a scroll was open on his desk. It was the fourteenth book of Homer’s Iliad and, returned from the Truceless War, I read:

      Ζεὺς

      ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν

      ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄϕρα ϕθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος.

      The gods decreed that from youth even unto old age we should labour, fighting in arduous wars, each of us until we are dead.