His scream brought the whole complement of upper-echelon officers running to see what had happened.
"What in Tophet was that?"
"Astarte's left tit, don't tell me another bally elephant's gone over the brink!"
"Are you mad, man? Since when does a full-grown war-elephant scream like a little girl?"
"What, d'you mean you didn't have your elephants fixed before you joined up?"
"Fixed?"
"You know." The speaker made snipping motions with his fingers, then thought better of it and made them with both arms.
"How d'you fix an elephant?" someone else wanted to know.
"I wouldn't know, old man. How do you break one in the first place?" The officers all burst into guffaws of comradely laughter.
They were still pounding one another on the back while the young soldier managed to extricate himself and his possessions from their malodorous nest and tried to sneak away unseen. He'd had more than his share of humiliation for the day, and it was still early morning. He might have saved himself the effort. Even the lowest local godling whose earthly purview was nothing more than one lone, lightning-stricken pine tree could have told him that any man who manages to fall into a pile of elephant poo should take it as a definite promise of how good the rest of his luck is going to be.
"Who goes there?" A mighty bellow rang out through the crisp, clear air. It started three small avalanches in the immediate neighborhood and gave a nearby family of chamois a collective heart attack. Tall (by Carthaginian standards), muscular (by any standards), and overbearing (by all standards save his own), Hannibal of Carthage bestrode the narrow world like a colossus, even though his wide stance and heroic swagger meant granting the keen mountain winds open access to his wedding tackle. (Not that it mattered: Ever since the Carthaginians had taken to mountaineering, the enlisted men had gotten into the habit of throwing "Welcome Back, Stranger" parties for their frost-shrunken short-arms each time they successfully answered Nature's call. All of the camp followers had quit in disgust early on in the great climb, when their clients refused to pay them a finder's fee as part of services rendered.).
The young man stopped in his tracks, cringing. Mamma had often told him how his dear, departed father, a soldier through and through, believed that the worst thing a fighting man could do was draw the attention of his superiors. Hugging his Baal-in-a-Box close to his chest, he closed his eyes and concentrated on becoming invisible.
It didn't work. A heavy hand fell onto his shoulder and spun him around. He stared into the blazing eyes of his supreme commander. "What's your name, boy?"
"Ma- Ma- Ma- Ma-" The young man's wholly inadequate chin bobbled like a blob of fat atop a seething stewpot.
"Stop bleating like a damn goat and answer the question!"
"Y- Yes, sir. Mago, sir."
"Mago, eh?" Hannibal rubbed his chin. "Got me a brother named Mago."
"Y- Yes, sir. Capital fellow, sir."
"Did I ask you?" Hannibal's wrath was terrible to behold, but at least it served one kindly purpose: Anyone caught in the full blast found himself about ten degrees warmer for it. Young Mago actually worked up a modest sweat just standing in the way of his commander's displeasure, though he knew he'd pay for it soon enough, and not just by having to chip icicles off his eyebrows.
"No, sir, you did not ask me, sir." Deciding that his best bet was to salvage the morning's collected faux pas, Mago smartened up his attitude. "I apologize for having said anything, sir. In future I will not offer any opinion unless in response to a direct question from you or one of my superior officers, sir. I mean, from you or another one of my superior officers, sir, seeing as you are. Superior. And an officer. Of mine. Sir." He stiffened his spine, puffed out his chest, and for some unknown reason clicked his heels together. This latter gesture only succeeded in refreshing the miasma of pachydermal by-product still hanging over his person.
Hannibal frowned and covered his nose. "Boy," he said, "I don't know whether that stink's coming off of your sandals or your stupidity. I haven't heard so much mindless, senseless, time-wasting drivel since the last time I had to talk with a Roman diplomat. You're not a born Carthaginian, are you?"
"Sir, no, sir!" Mago's stomach plummeted with shame under his general's scorn, but he held fast to his snappy pose the way a drowning man might cling to a spar. "My father was a Canaanite, sir, and my mother's family came from Tin Island. Sir!"
"Tin Island?" Hannibal was at a loss, and he was a poor loser.
"An island in the western seas, sir, beyond the pillars of Hercules and a skosh to the north, famous for its tin mines," one of his lieutenants hastened to explain, sidling up to the general the better to murmur the information with as much discretion as possible. That is to say, not much. Since Mago's unlucky misstep, it seemed as though every man in camp had come forward to see what the to-do was all about. Even some of the elephants were taking an interest from the vantage of their picket lines. "The tribesmen there are said to make excellent warriors. There are rumors that the great Carthaginian navigator, Himilco, once reached those shores, but he found the food so distasteful, the climate so damp, and the behavior of the tribesmen at their ritual ballgames so ghastly, that he determined to leave all future contact with those people to the Greek merchants."
"If that's so, how'd this boy's ma manage to get her a Canaanite husband?" Hannibal demanded.
"Love will find a way?" the lieutenant suggested hopefully.
"Aw, forget it." Hannibal spat mightily into the snow. "I don't got to deal with his ma. You, there! Maggot! What'd you think you were doing, blundering through the officers' part of camp? You lookin' for trouble?"
"Actually, sir, I was looking for a spot of breakfast."
Hannibal stared at him as though he'd sprouted a second head, this one with a visible chin. "Breakfast? Did I hear you right, Maggot? You want your breakfast?"
"Sir, yes, sir," Mago replied. "If it's at all convenient, sir."
"Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, Maggot: It's not convenient. And d'you know why? 'Cause we don't have anything to serve you boys for breakfast, that's why. What d'you make of that, Maggot?"
Mago was not paying full heed to Hannibal's sarcasm. His sense of self-worth was taking a ferocious belaboring under the general's insistence on mispronouncing his name and it left him somewhat distracted. It was a pity that his dear Mamma was not present to remind him that another of his late father's pearls of military wisdom was Never give less than your utmost attention to a testy general, a rabid dog, or a willing barmaid. You never know which way they're going to jump on you.
Had he been just a smidgen more mindful of his perilous situation, he never would have replied, "Sir, if that's the case, I do believe we're all in a bit of a pickle, eh, sir?"
"A pickle…" Hannibal chewed over the word as carefully as though it were the condiment in question. "Is that what you'd call it? Let me fill in a few pieces of the big mosaic for you, boy: Here I am, playing wet-nurse to all of you morons, the sorriest passel of lowdown, worthless sissies ever to escape being infant sacrifices to Baal Hammon back when it might've done us all some good. I herded your sorry asses all the way from Iberia, got you across the Rhфne River, and did what I could so's you'd survive that royal butt-whupping the Allobroges were dishing out when they ambushed us-which, incidentally, was where we lost I don't like to think how much of our supply train. For the honor of Carthage, I forced you bastards to crawl halfway up the biggest, nastiest mother of a mountain range on the map just so's tomorrow we can all climb down the sumbitch and kick us some Roman ass on the other side. You might think that was enough for a natural man to accomplish, but is that what the gods have in mind for me? Oh, no! I got to do even more. I've got to feed all of you limp-lunged, lily-livered ladies, and our Gaulish tribal allies, the Insubres and the Boiis, and the war-elephants. Feed 'em what, you might ask, given what I just told you about our supply train? Well, I'm glad you asked, son, and I'm gonna tell you: I… don't… know!"