The Saguntines received Hannibal's terms each time he offered them, but they refused to accept them. He knew the source of their resolve was threefold. There was simple loathing of defeat and the indignities it entailed. The stubborn bravado natural to all the Iberians he had yet encountered. And, of course, the Saguntines looked daily to the sea-horizon for salvation. From spies, Hannibal knew of three envoys who had escaped the city to renew their entreaties for Roman aid. He might have intercepted them with ease, but it suited him that they reach their goal and state their case in the Senate. He wanted the Romans to roil and fume. If they stirred to action against him, so too would he against them.
But despite all his planning, the siege threatened to carry on indefinitely. That was why, one sweltering morning in mid-June, Hannibal decided something must be done. He knew as well as any other that his actions verged on foolhardy, but he awoke to the knowledge that a lethargy had taken hold of his men. The heat of the summer day threatened to stew them slowly and would perhaps turn them upon themselves in surly frustration. He could not allow this to happen. Although he could not break through walls by himself, a lone man can inspire a mass to greatness beyond the power of an individual. His father would have done so, and as he was gone the responsibility fell to the first son.
He mounted the stallion that had of late become his favorite and rode out onto the debris-laden field between the city's walls and the mass of his fatigued, bored men. He shouted them to action. They looked up at him from the dust and grime. They saw his figure through the wavering haze cast by the heat and thought him a madman or an annoyance. Then they realized who he was and began to make sense of his words. Those who spoke no Carthaginian understood him only when he spoke in Greek, or in Celtiberian or Numidian. Some spoke still other languages and received his message through translation or by inference. He began simply anyway.
Get up and be men, he told them. Get off your lazy backsides and follow me through the walls of this city and through to the orgy of a lifetime. He told them they had everything they needed to storm the city that very hour. All the manpower and the machinery, the weapons and the opportunity. They needed only the balls to make it happen. They had been spurned and spurned again by the smug gluttons of Saguntum. Right now they were being laughed at and humiliated. Even the women and children of the city must think them pathetic, worth neither friendship nor obedience nor even a fuck.
He rode into a corps of Celtiberians, the big horse unwary of stepping on them. The soldiers jumped up and peeled back to allow his progress. They were pale of complexion, some with dustings of gold in their hair. Many of them were seeing their leader close up for the first time and they stared at him with slack jaws.
“Saguntum,” he said, voice not nearly loud enough to carry to them all but reaching many. “Does this task seem daunting, my friends? Does it tax you and strain your patience and will? So it should. This is a great city, whose foundations run deep, whose walls are thick, and whose inhabitants are thickheaded and vain. These months of work have pained us all—me as well as you—and yet we are here for a goal of undeniable worth. We came here at the bidding of our friends the Turdetani, those good people who suffered beneath the repression of the city behind me.”
A shout went up, which must have been the Turdetani responding to the mention of their name. Hannibal acknowledged them with a nod and spurred his horse in their direction. “There are issues of right and wrong to be discussed,” he said, “a dispute best handled by an impartial party. That is why I offered to be a judge in the matter. But rather than discourse like honorable men, these Saguntines called upon Rome to clap its mighty palm down on us. This before we'd chosen sides and taken up arms. Romans came to my fortress and stood before me and told me, Hannibal, what I could do and what I could not do. They told me that I was a child and all of you my bandy-legged playmates. Is that how you see yourselves?”
Hannibal kicked his horse into a gallop that sent infantrymen diving out of his path. The translation took a moment. As the various precincts understood his question, the answer rolled back like claps of thunder during a storm, some loud and some far and some near at hand, some sharp and others grumbling, in increasingly angry tones as if this insult was more than they could bear, something they had not considered before but which touched them sorely. In many languages, the men replied in the negative. They were not playmates; Hannibal was no child.
When the commander spoke again he did so from deep within a host of Libyan mercenaries. The soldiers reached up and touched his legs as he passed. They were copper-skinned men, noses and chins like features carved in granite and left rough-edged. In many ways they were the core of his army, battle-hardened veterans whose families had fought for Carthage for several generations. The relationship between the two peoples was not a formal alliance; Carthage was not sworn to protect the Libyans, nor was their king, Syphax, bound to her. But Syphax had continued the long-standing tradition of allowing his men to hire themselves out as mercenaries in the Carthaginian army, especially as a portion of their pay went to him in one form or another. The Libyans around Hannibal did not speak as he passed, but each stomped one foot in a throbbing rhythm.
“Who are the Saguntines to call another our master? Does that sound like the action of a people to be pitied? Nor shall they be pitied. Not for the injustice that began this conflict, nor for the months of labor they have caused, nor for your brothers who have been sent on to the next world. Just in the last few days I detailed to them through one of their citizens my terms for their surrender. Even at this date Hannibal conceded the possibility of mercy. But I went spurned.”
He paused at the edge of the Libyans, facing a company of mounted Massylii Numidians, these men easy on their horses, dark and tattooed as was their custom, with matted ropes of hair brushing their shoulders, eyes that sat deep and moved heavily. These men were also paid for their services, but they had been offered to the Carthaginian army by their king, Gaia, who made it clear he longed for an official, lasting union with Carthage.
When the various translations ceased and the crowd hushed, Hannibal spoke in rhythm with the throbbing beat still kept by the Libyans. “So let this now be known: That city, when it falls, goes to the men who capture it! What booty may be found there, in gold, in coins and jewels and weapons. In men and children. In women. Hannibal claims none of it. We will send some tribute to Carthage, so that the people may understand our work, and portion some to fund this great army. But beyond that Hannibal gives it all to those brave enough to take it, to do with it what they please. This siege has gone on long enough, my friends—let us now raze this place and be done with it!”
He did not have to await translation to get the men's roar of approval. Those who understood his Carthaginian shouted their immediate pleasure. Others joined in, perhaps not understanding completely but knowing that something unusual was being offered to them and willing to express joy and get the details later. They fell on Saguntum that day with an enthusiasm that must have rocked the defenders. The motley soldiers of Carthage threw their bodies at the walls as if they could claw through the stone itself. The Saguntines in return hurled down their spears and stones. Bodies were impaled and burned, skulls shattered and limbs snapped. But each man that fell was stepped upon by another willing to climb over his body and get for himself a portion of the city's riches. And perhaps each man was aware that the body he climbed over made one fewer to divide the treasure with.
Nor were the soldiers without a model of bravery. Hannibal was among them. Later all the men would claim to have labored beside him at some point during the day. He dragged back the battering ram and ran forward yelling his fury into the base of the wall. He scaled the lower portion of a ladder and only just jumped to safety when a log was set rolling from the wall above, peeling off the men before and below him and leaving them shattered and broken. He landed awkwardly from his leap and limped so markedly that Mago convinced him to mount again. He did so, and rode exhorting the men. It was atop that churning mass of muscle that the hand of another's fate touched him in a way it had never before.