Whatever debate the tribal leaders had, it seemed to lead to no organized action. They collected at the waterfront, shouting insults across at the Carthaginians, calling them cowards, women, dogs. Hannibal held his men, silent, watching, waiting. Something about this calm enraged the Carpetani further. A single soldier stepped nearer than the others and sent his spear across the river. It fell short. The point bounced off a rock and the spear skittered across the ground and rolled to rest at the foot of a Libyan. The infantryman picked it up and considered it, weighed it and tested its grip. Then he tossed it down as useless.
Whether this single action served as a catalyst for the mob to move or not was uncertain, but move they did. One flank of Iberian soldiers waded into the water far off at the downstream edge of the river. Others, seeing their boldness, marched in also. Soon a wavering, ragged line of soldiers reached midstream, up to their waists in the current. Hannibal remained silent until some of the enemy crossed the midpoint and began to emerge from the deeper portion of the river. Then he called the Moorish javelin throwers to the ready. A moment more passed and he had them heft their weapons. As the first Iberians stumbled into knee-deep water, he gave the call. The trumpets blew the quick, deafening blast that signaled the spearmen, and a thousand javelins took to the air. The Iberians were ill prepared for the volley, their shields held at awkward angles or up over their heads or caught in the current and tugging them off balance. The missiles pierced their simple tunics and leather breastplates, drove into the bones of men's skulls, and tore through shoulder joints, or thrust through the water to find thighs and groins. Another volley followed and after that the javelin throwers hurled at will so that the air was a whir of missiles finding targets picked out at the spearmen's discretion.
Hannibal, speaking to nobody in particular but within earshot of his brother, said, “I need a greater foe than this.”
The Iberians kept coming until finally, through sheer numbers, they pushed the battle to ground on the Carthaginians' shore. The two sides engaged in earnest. Though the Carpetani were full of rage, they were also sodden and tired. They found the Libyans savage opponents, burly-armed and black-eyed demons who fought in their own version of a phalanx, shields locked tight, their heavy spears forming a living being with thousands of iron-tipped arms. Hannibal rode his stallion into the fray and hacked from horseback with his sword, yelling confidence into his men. Hasdrubal shadowed him and saved his life by sinking a spear into the neck of a Carpetani just about to do the same to the commander. But the two brothers were not long in the thick of battle. Hannibal galloped out again and shouted his next order to his signalers.
The resulting call sounded from the trumpets and when the answer came it did so not from the field of battle itself but from behind the tribal force. The elephants, their mahouts riding just behind their heads, roared out of the old camp and toward the unorganized backside of the enemy. Upon turning to see these great beasts hurtling toward them, the Carpetani realized the complete misery of their coming fate.
Hannibal's stallion spun and snapped his neck from side to side, seeming to be looking for something to sink his teeth into. The commander cuffed him about the ears and yelled to his brother over the din of slaughter: “Do you understand this? Do you see the truth here before you? These people will always be beneath us. They never look upon the past to create something new. They only take what is given to them and perpetuate it. They've never fought a man like me, and they will always be as they are and will never change except by dying into something new. That time has come. This will be your work, Hasdrubal. When I march on Rome, I will leave Iberia in your hands. Next year you'll not only rule over these people, you'll also bring them into our world and mold them into soldiers for Carthage. Today we slay them; tomorrow we resurrect them in our image. Do this, Hasdrubal, and the world is ours to shape.”
The next morning Hannibal rode for Saguntum. He left his brother to bring home the full weight of the victory to the cities and towns that had so foolishly sent their men out to slaughter. The commander's leg pained him terribly after the efforts of the previous day. He rode with a small corps of the Sacred Band and seemed intent on punishing himself throughout the journey, driving on as the pain grew, sometimes slapping his thigh in defiance of it. He thought often of Imilce and that was another stab of frustration, which left him little joy from his recent victory. Now behind him a day or two, the Tagus was like a distant memory from another man's tale.
Nor did his return to Saguntum improve his mood. Though he arrived in the dead of night he soon learned that the siege was no further along. For all the labor done in the weeks of his absence, the scene viewed under the moonlight appeared just as before he had departed. He found Hanno in his cottage and called him out. An anger came upon him quickly and with a fury he did not often show outside of battle. He addressed it to his brother, his face inches from Hanno's. What had Hanno been doing with his command? How had three weeks passed with nothing to show for them?
Hanno did not answer the questions directly but stood in his loose sleeping garments, reciting a chronology of the things they had accomplished. If he was taken aback by his brother's outburst he did not show it. Nor did he react when Hannibal waved him to silence and said, “Hanno, what a gift you would have given me if I'd returned to dine inside those walls. Instead you've worked on at a snail's pace, taking your pleasures in your summer home. How would this please our father to see?”
He sat down on a stool and closed his eyes to the view of the city and tried to shut out the pain of his leg. “They tell me you have been troubled by omens and signs,” he said, almost too quietly for Hanno to hear. “Did not our father teach you that these signs are way markers for our path forward? If you displease the gods, it's not through your actions but through your delays. We will destroy them, Hanno. That's how we honor the gods, by victory in their names. We will end this within a week. Everything we have, we throw at them now. Saguntum loses all except the memory of my name and the knowledge that the will of Baal acts through me. That is how this ends, and on the day I name.”
When he saw the city was finally falling, Imco Vaca chose to enter via a different route than on the last such occasion. He scrambled up the giant wooden stairs of a siege tower, following on the heels of one man, feeling the claws of another behind him. He moved frantically, his whole body alive with purpose. Before he knew it, he had reached the top of the structure and found himself spat out as if by a great mouth. He landed on the top of the wall itself, but he and the man before him both stepped right off the wall and fell free through the air some twenty feet down to a lower landing. Imco thought surely this would end him, but again providence aided him. The man before him took the impact and cushioned Imco's fall. Afoot again, Imco fell in with the stampede of invaders as if he had followed a precisely chosen course to that moment.
The mass of Carthaginians hit the waiting defenders with a force that rocked both groups. Weapons were useless and they stood eye to eye. Then that moment was gone and Imco was hacking with his sword, thrusting, ducking, spinning. He took a Saguntine down by slicing his leg through the knee joint. He missed another with a downward blow, but caught him under the chin with an upward jerk. The point of his falcata slit the man's windpipe. He heard the soldier's breath escape the wound in a rasp. Another thrust a spear at him, but it glanced off his helmet and the Libyan beside him put his spear inside the Iberian at the armpit. Imco's helmet had twisted sideways. He fought without correcting it, a little blind to the left side but no worse for it because he fought to the right. For some time he struggled within a mixed company of friend and foe. But soon his singular progress took him away from his comrades and he knew that he would not die that day. It was like a billow of air blown into him, the knowledge that some god favored him. The defenders recognized this as well as he. They gave way before him as his sweeping blows became wider.