Hannibal sighed at this, casually, as if he had heard an unfortunate report of the coming weather. “Of course they won't,” he said, turning and gazing back over the seven hills. “Do you realize that I've never once been beaten in a major battle? Not in Iberia. Not here in Italy. Never once has an enemy army slain men under my command with abandon and celebrated it afterward.”
“I know that, Commander.”
“Tusselo, I fear Rome will win this war out of pure stubbornness. How do you defeat a people who won't admit defeat? It's as if you stab a corpse a thousand times and then step back and, to your horror, the body rises to fight on. You slice off its arm and it picks its sword up with the other arm. You slice that one off, only to discover that the first has grown back. You cut off its head, but then the thing rises and slashes blindly at you. . . . How do you defeat a creature like that?”
The Numidian cocked his head and then straightened it.
Hannibal looked at him for some time, as if he had forgotten something and expected it to soon appear on the man's features. “I've killed them by the tens of thousands, scoured their countryside at will, pried their allies away, and humiliated them day after day. I have burned their crops and looted their wealth. I've sent a whole generation of their generals into the afterworld. All the grief and rage . . . Have I changed nothing? They are stronger now than before. They are more than before. They fight more sensibly than before. They win when they used to lose . . .”
“If that's so,” Tusselo said, “you have changed them very greatly.”
The following morning the troops heard Hannibal's order to withdraw with a hushed silence that included both relief and shock. In the coming weeks they were to make haste along the Via Valeria, around Lake Fucinus, and then down through Samnium and into Apulia. When he reached Tarentum a few weeks later, he would learn that Capua had surrendered, from hunger and in fear that Hannibal had abandoned them. And only two days after this, an envoy from Carthage found him, bearing clear orders supported by the full membership of the Council and sealed with the mark of the One Hundred.
Watching him, Tusselo realized that his commander, who excelled in all things, carried also a burden of sorrows such as most other men could only ever imagine. He was sharing a simple meal with Hannibal on the evening when he revealed his recall to Carthage. On a sign from the commander, Gemel reluctantly read the letter aloud to the small company of remaining generals. Sparely worded, it described the situation, named the participants, and concluded that Carthage was under threat. Just as his father had been summoned home years before to quell the mercenaries, Hannibal was called upon to save the city of his birth from invaders both foreign and African. No, he was commanded to do so. He could delay not at all, but must journey home at once, with all the soldiers he could muster. They would send boats to meet him at Metapontum, but only to speed his return. The same demand had, apparently, been sent to Mago, who was either on the Balearic Islands or in northern Italy.
Isalca used the silence after this announcement to spit vitriol on the Council. As a Gaetulian fighting for Carthage by choice, he owed them no blood allegiance. In this order he found an opportunity to condemn all of the Council's earlier failures, the broken promises, the troops not sent, the support not given. If they had not been petty fools, the war would have been won; instead, it was ruined. He was not sure that he would obey. He would have to speak to his men, but he knew that many would feel as he did: that the best battles of this war had already been fought, and that it had been won or lost at some point that was now behind them.
“There are not so many of us left, anyway,” he added, glancing at the commander.
Hannibal heard all this with his eyes closed, just breathing. Nor did he comment when Maharbal asked to have the messenger brought in and interviewed. The Numidian was particularly interested in the power struggle between the Massylii and the Libyans. What, exactly, had happened? The messenger explained. The blood drained from Maharbal's face. He asked no more. Imco Vaca was in attendance as well. But, like Tusselo, he kept his thoughts hidden.
For some time, the men sat in silence, none touching their food; the only noises were Isalca clearing his throat, Gemel rubbing his fingers over his chin beard, Imco shifting uncomfortably and then settling again. Tusselo realized that at some point the commander had opened his eyes.
When Hannibal spoke, it was a comfort just to hear his voice, for that was the same as ever it had been, only gentler, softer, there being no need to project his words in this small chamber. “The One Hundred,” he said, “did not even mention sadness at my brother's death. They tell me Hanno Barca is dead, but they spare not a word to admit that I might be grieved by this. He's only another failed general, best forgotten. I've always loathed this about my nation. If dead generals are all failed generals, then what is the Carthaginian legacy except a catalog of failures? We are all dust eventually. Nations should have memories. Even if people forget, a nation should not.”
Isalca asked, “Will you obey them?”
Hannibal fixed him with his gaze and stared, just stared until the Gaetulian lowered his eyes. “First I'll pray for my brother. And then, yes, I will go home to save my country. What kind of man would I be if I did not?”
Later that night, Tusselo packed his few things and rode out of camp, thinking parting words and wishing them out to the sleeping men, asking the commander for forgiveness and offering thanks for the gift of time they had spent together. It had not been easy to decide to leave, but neither was the decision a sudden one. He had suspected for some time that his journey might not end the way he had imagined when he first joined Hannibal's army, years before, still fresh from winning his freedom and trying to find his place in the world. He had seen so much. He had watched genius at work and witnessed a mighty, hated nation being humbled. He had had some joy. But none of this had changed who he was, or healed the scars, or returned to him the most precious things that had been stripped from him. So he framed a new vision of the statement he might make, and now he determined to see it made real.
Not far out of camp, he sat his horse atop a shallow hill and looked north across the heaving knots pushed up in the landscape. The month had just passed the Nones by the Roman calendar. The moon hung in a cloudless sky, so clear that he could see the weathered skin of it, cracked and pitted and pale like an old Gaul. It would flesh to fullness in a handful of days, on the day called the Ides in the Roman tongue. It was already bright enough that he could make out fields and huts and the ruts of roads. He could even distinguish a few thin streams of smoke that rose from fires. The signs of man were all across the land. It would be no easy task to map his way through it, alone over much the same territory he had just traversed as one among a great host. But so be it. This was his journey. He aimed to reach Campania under the full moon and work his way steadily north through the rest of the month. By the Kalends he would be at the heart of his goal. He would announce the new month in his own special way. The Kalends, the Nones, the Ides . . . he knew too many of their words. They came too often to his head. He had tried to expel them, but this was not as easy as Hannibal believed. No matter. It would all be undone soon enough. He touched his mount on the neck. She stepped forward and the two of them began the slow descent, toward the north, back toward Rome.
At first he backtracked down the wide, barren road Hannibal's withdrawing army had made. He covered as many miles as he could at night and rested in secluded spots through the daylight hours. Twice he roused packs of dogs that chased him to the outskirts of their towns. Once he had to call on all his skills as a horseman to outrun a Roman patrol. And another time he had to chase, capture, and subdue a Campanian boy who stumbled across his daytime hiding place. The boy could not have been more than ten, but Tusselo had to beat him soundly to shut him up. He even explained to the boy in Latin that he meant him no harm. The wide-eyed, frightened youth did not seem to understand a word he said, although the language should have been familiar enough to him.