“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 parting, Tusselo walked away a short distance and then turned to wave a good-bye. But the old man had turned his back to him and was kicking the sand to cover the spot upon which they had sat. Tusselo found something disquieting in this.
A week later he caught sight of scavenging parties sent out to supply the army. He avoided them for a day, but the next afternoon a lone horseman spotted him. The rider sat a rise a little distance away, contemplated him, and then rode forward into a dip. When he emerged Tusselo knew him for what he was, Massylii, slim and dark and so at one with his mount that he rode bareback and without reins. Tusselo raised his hand in greeting, knowing that his solitary travel was over. The rider stopped a short distance away and asked the stranger his business.
Knowing the man's warm tongue, Tusselo responded in kind. He came bearing knowledge the commander might find valuable, he explained. He had come to serve. He had come to fight for Hannibal.
The siege of Saguntum began early in the spring of the year following the defeat of Arbocala. It went on unabated, week after week, as spring gave way to summer. The city perched on the edge of a rocky plateau, high enough to afford a view of the surrounding hills and out toward the sea. It was well fortified, walled completely, in differing heights and thicknesses as suited the varying landscape. There were towers spaced along the walls at intervals, of such stout proportions that one might have thought the city perfectly defended. Hannibal was intent on proving this belief mistaken.
Under his direction a mass of men blanketed the ground all around the city, working in a hundred ways to break through the skin of the place and climb inside. One section of wall collapsed during the first weeks in a chaos of dust and debris and falling bodies, creating a great wound in the city's defenses that extended the whole length from one tower to the next. The Saguntines stanched it before the invaders could pour in, building a new shell from the rubble, working ruined homes into the fabric of the wall, throwing up barricades in all gaps, and using whatever materials came readily to hand. Some fought to keep the invaders at bay even as others ran between the defenders, working in stone and wood and earth. The wound remained, scabbed over and livid, yet the city had protection for another day.