In all the movement and action, his mouth open and yelling, horse swirling beneath him, men rushing about him, he did not notice the falarica let loose from a tower high on the wall. He did not see the fingers that released it or hear the prayer on the lips of that person. The spearhead itself was four feet long, followed by a compartment smeared with pitch and set aflame, behind which stretched ten feet of shaft that gave the weapon a deadly weight in falling. It cut a fiery, indirect path toward its target, first up into the air, then arching, arching, losing upward speed, but gaining from gravity's pull as it returned to the earth. In the time this missile was in the air Hannibal and his mount circled and pranced and galloped a short distance and pulled up. He and the horse might easily have been yards from the spear when it struck the earth. This fact would haunt him afterward though he would never voice his questions about what this meant for the will of the gods or the intentions of the fates.
A guard next to him shouted a warning, too late and unheard anyway. The point of the falarica slammed into Hannibal's leg and through his flesh and muscle and past him into the leather of his saddle and farther still into the back of the horse. It broke two of the mount's ribs and lodged so deeply inside it that the wound was mortal. The horse was dead on its feet. Hannibal batted at the flaming pitch along the shaft as if he might right the matter with the fury of his palms. Then he felt the horse start to buckle and knew that he might be crushed beneath it. So he did what he had to.
As the horse fell to one side, he wrenched himself the other way. The sharp prongs of the spearhead ripped sideways through his leg, pausing for a moment against a thin ribbon of reluctant flesh, then tearing free. Hannibal landed on top of the horse. He tried to spring away, but as one leg was useless, he ended up with his chest on the horse's rump. In one of its last acts on this earth the creature kicked, and Hannibal was made aware of three things. The air was knocked completely out of his chest so that his lungs were momentarily flat and useless. He realized in midair that the force of the blow had sent him over the heads and beyond the first few who had come to aid him. And as he rolled and scraped across the ground and settled in an undignified jumble, he understood that he would never be able to stand before Imilce as he had in the past. He was no longer perfect. This thought stunned him even more than the pain, even more than the proximity of death, the few inches that placed the spearhead in one portion of his body and not another.
When the messenger found him, Mago was at the far edge of the camp, surveying the quantity and abundance of lumber recently hewn for siege engines. He left directly. He cut through sections of the camp he had never explored before: the tent neighborhoods of the various tribes, wherein each people kept to its way and lived by its customs. He passed the hovels of camp followers—squat dwellings of animal skins, others woven of plant matter, and some built of bricks of mud and feces; he passed through open-air markets, carcasses hanging to air, fly-spotted, the ground below them splattered with offal, the air rife with the scent of slaughtered flesh, with the stench of fish guts. Beyond the confusion created by the mass of nationalities there were women in abundance, cooks and prostitutes and maids, wives and sisters and even daughters, especially from the Celtiberian tribes who were not so far from home. There were children among them, the same urchins who made their lives in the alleys of cities, quick and nimble and somehow thriving beneath the feet of warriors. The lanes were even patrolled by the requisite stray dogs, thin-limbed and shorthaired and none of them of any particular breed. Like the children, they managed to eke out an existence in and around the machinery of war. There was little order to it, except for the knowledge that each and every soul within miles knew the name Hannibal Barca.
But few of them recognized the Barca striding past them behind the messenger, which suited him well as yet. Mago had been face-to-face with his responsibilities as never before. He kept a daily record of all notable developments, organized the notes and engineering reports from Adherbal, kept track of morale in the various contingents, settled disputes in Hannibal's name when the weary soldiers turned their frustrations against each other. He was even left in charge of requisitioning supplies for Vandicar, the chief mahout, whose elephants were as sorely taxed as any soldier by the siege work.
In his attempt to fulfill all the tasks set for him, Mago found himself down among the soldiers, examining the machines and learning about strategy from those who would answer his questions. At first he was hesitant in dealing with men older than he, more experienced than he, with scowling faces and opinions they did not mind spouting at the least provocation. But each evening as he completed his work he catalogued the day's interactions and noted where he had been lacking.
One morning Mago yanked the young cavalry general, Carthalo, from his horse and held him pinned beneath his foot. The horseman's infraction had come the day before, a matter concerning his disregard for an order he saw as beneath his men, but Mago had needed the evening to devise his response. It came as a surprise to many—Carthalo included—but went unnoticed by few. The youngest Barca was growing to fill the promise of his family name quite quickly.
Mago nodded to the guards posted outside Hannibal's tent. He slipped quietly past them and into a gloomy haze of incense, the close, moist smell of sweat and exhaustion, of blood and vinegar. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light the room came slowly into relief, its sparse furnishings ordering themselves before his eyes. A single wooden table stood at the center, cluttered with maps and other papers and surrounded by stools pushed back a little distance. Just beyond the table, lining the far wall, Hannibal lay on a small bed. He was propped up on one elbow and from that position watched his physician, Synhalus, who worked beneath the lamp glow provided by his assistant.
“Welcome, brother,” Hannibal said, his tone surprisingly light. “Sorry to call you away, but I need your services as scribe. The sickly creature who last had the post died most unpleasantly. My surgeon here says it was the cost of his sexual habits, consumed from the loins up into his abdomen. I would prefer a death in battle, to be sure.”
The Egyptian physician glanced over his shoulder and seemed to consider the interruption for a moment. He exhaled and pushed himself to his feet and spoke a few words to the commander. As he did so, Mago was provided a view of his work. His brother's leg was bare, punctured at mid-thigh in a circle of jagged flesh that cut deep into the muscle. The surgeon draped a wet cloth over the wound. The white material flushed on contact and then, gradually, deepened to a red and on toward brown.
“Don't think me too infirm,” Hannibal said. “They pierced the skin and muscle of me, Mago, but not the bone, not even the main artery, and certainly not my heart or resolve. I don't doubt I am the victim of some stable boy who snatched up a javelin when he saw his chance for glory. It does vex me, mostly because my foolishness broke our momentum and the siege carries on. Come in and sit. Synhalus is leaving me now but he will soon return. He has all manner of tortures planned for me this afternoon, but he thinks he can keep this leg from becoming the death of me.”