A giant, fiery-headed statue of a fallen demon crouched upon a soaring stepped pedestal at the head of the plaza, and Hannibal saw this in fleeting glimpses as he approached the wide space. Its bent back was spined with dozens of angelic arrows, but its fist, clenching a broken sword, was raised heavenward. There were a hundred such statues, he was told, strewn throughout Hell, but forever afterward he would regard this one as special. Two large piles, covered with shrouds of stretched Abyssal skin, lay at its feet, guarded by souls picked by Hannibal himself.
Gray crowds were streaming in and he found himself forced to use the bodyguards to clear a way before him. They were efficient legionaries, and their mere presence and number caused enough commotion to part the shuffling souls. Mago tapped Hannibal's elbow and pointed up toward the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. There he saw the dark forms of scattered flying demons leaning on shields and lances, their attitude attentive. A precaution, he thought, nothing more. To Sargatanas, Hannibal was still someone to be watched and measured, and he knew that his demon lord would be swift in his response should any move he make be interpretable as insurrectionist.
But even the presence of heavily armed demons could not dampen Hannibal's elation. This was a watershed moment in his afterlife, a moment that he had to take the fullest advantage of, for there would surely never be another. He saw himself as a torch, one that would either ignite the cold furnaces of emotion in every soul around him or immolate them and himself as well.
At the base of the stepped pedestal Mago cupped his hands, and Hannibal used them to climb up to the next level. Reaching down, he grasped Mago's hand and pulled him up next to him. In this manner the two rose up two more levels until they were twenty feet above the massed murmuring souls. Hannibal had been mended, somewhat, by his new lord and stood tall, a surge of emotional power coursing through his body. He had addressed hosts before, hosts that had been disparate and doubtful, and his formula had always been the same: one part lie to one part hope. This is not hypocrisy, he thought. An army is no different from a sword. It first needs forging and then needs to be trained with and tested in battle. Lies, hope—they are the hammer and tongs one uses to forge the blade. The better they're used, the better the blade.
He stood with his back to them, adjusting the straps on the bundle so that it could depend from his improvised belt. When he turned abruptly around to face them silence descended upon the plaza. It was an old trick that he had learned as a young prince on the walls of his father's city. Mago smiled.
"My name is Hannibal Barca and I remember my Life!" Hannibal began, his voice carrying clarion clear against the distant sounds of Hell. "Yesterday I was as you are now. Tomorrow you will be as I am today!
"Change has been thrust upon us. Hell is changing around us as we stand here. That I stand here before you, addressing you in this way, should be proof enough of that. I know who I was and what I did in my Life. And what I must do now. The path to our redemption lies before us, and it is Lord Sargatanas who will lead us.
"The Fallen are no longer of one mind! The hierarchy of demons no longer united. Some have started to question things ... to change things. Our lord is one such demon; the White Mistress is another. Most of us know something of her; some of us have even been touched in some way by her. She has been fighting this place in the only way she could ... by reaching out to us. It was she who led me to offer myself to her ally, our lord Sargatanas. And it was he who gave me back my past.
"You will ask why I should follow a demon master who has oppressed me. And I would answer by telling you what you already know: Sargatanas' temperance and leniency are like no other lord's in Hell. Our torments, which could have been greater by tenfold, are as nothing to that which he has endured for all these thousands of years. For, unlike us who left our earthly lives behind like corrupt vessels drained and broken, he lost a life of beatitude ... a life at the knee of his creator. Lord Sargatanas can no longer endure the punishments and privations of Hell. As you long for an end to your torment, he longs for that which he lost so long ago ... the tranquility of Heaven."
Hannibal heard the word "heaven" uttered from a hundred twisted mouths and for just an instant wondered what he was offering them. He, himself, was not certain. He had to be careful not to go too far.
"We are all here to be punished for our past lives, and rightly so. None of us are here unjustly. And yet which of you would not try to redeem yourselves, to prove that at your very core you can be more than you were in life?
"Your souls have been punished for what you did in your Life, and that is how it had to be. There are some among you whose heavy sins ensure that you will never leave this place. And that, too, is right. But for most of us, our torments need not be eternal. Just as the transgressions are behind us, so should be the punishments. For what is the good of the lesson if one cannot apply what one has learned?"
Hannibal began to open the tied bundle at his waist. He glanced at Mago, who was nodding encouragingly. Hannibal looked again at the mass of humanity and saw every eye upon him. With a sudden flourish he let the wrapping fall from his waist and grasped the hilt of a sword, pulling it free of its scabbard to hold it before him. He heard a gasp issue from a thousand throats. A soul with a weapon! It was unheard of! He felt their rising excitement.
"If you truly wish to make amends for your sins, then you must take up arms in this holy cause," he shouted hoarsely. "Sargatanas' Rebellion may fail and we all may be committed to oblivion or, worse yet, punishments beyond our reckoning, but at least we will have fought against those forces whose dark influences put us here in the first place. And Heaven, whose lambent Gates may never open to us, will know that good can come from those who seem irredeemable. They will know that even from the darkest bowels of Hell souls can reach for the Light!"
He took a deep breath and raised the sword Sargatanas had given him above his head. Some in the crowd were shouting with newfound fervor, giving voice to a dormant sense of self they had suppressed for so long.
"Will you reach for that Light and fight for my lord Sargatanas and our White Mistress? Will you fight for me? Will you fight for your eternal souls?"
An enormous cry of approval rang through the plaza and Hannibal heard "For Hannibal!" evenly mixed with "For Sargatanas!" Seeing that his words had had the desired effect, Hannibal signaled to the guards below. In an instant they pulled back the skins from the great mounds and revealed a huge pile of weapons, which the suddenly surging crowd began to take up. Hannibal looked up and saw that the demons atop the buildings were paying very close attention; this was a critical moment. The mob could turn either way, and even Hannibal worried that a thousand armed souls might march through the streets to foolishly attack the palace.
He stepped right to the edge of the plinth and shouted, "For Sargatanas!" It took a moment for the souls at his feet to notice him, so engrossed in their new weapons were they, but within a minute, like a tide surging away, the chant was picked up, echoing across the plaza. Abyssal flyers, which had been perched along the high ledges of the buildings in the hundreds, suddenly took wing startled by the noise. Hannibal watched them ascend, and their dwindling body-lights looked like stars climbing into the heavens, perhaps an omen. Again he looked around at the encircling demons and now, with the shouts of "For Sargatanas!" ringing in their ears, he saw that they had relaxed, satisfied. One by one they, too, took wing, vanishing into the dark sky, and Hannibal smiled, even as he continued to pump his sword in the air. He was himself again. Almost reluctantly he sheathed his sword and turned to Mago, who beamed at him and walked toward him. As they clasped hands his gaze traveled up the crouched statue and rested upon the ash-dusted clenched fist, its broken sword frozen in defiance, and he wondered whether this war, already so full of hope, might not end as that one had. He looked high into the sky and saw the stars still climbing upward.