Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham Read Free Book Online

sure if they were hunting him or simply driving him forward.
    Over the space of several days after his arrival at New Carthage it all became clear. There had been no attack on Hamilcar's forces. The only attack was the one upon Hanno's. And as that had proved successful, the whole territory was thrown into confusion once more. Hanno did not see his father till they met on the field a month later. But if the old soldier had forgotten his anger during that space of time, it did not show. He found Hanno in his tent. He strode in unannounced, in full battle armor, helmet clenched in one hand. The other, his left, he swung up like a rock and slammed across the bridge of his son's nose. Hanno's nose poured blood instantly, the stuff thick in his mouth, running freely from his chin down onto his tunic.
    “Why must you always disappoint me?” Hamilcar asked. His voice was even, but cast low and scornful. “Next time you lead two thousand men to their deaths, stay with them yourself. Have at least that dignity. In my father's time you would have been crucified for this. Be glad we live in a gentler moment.” Having uttered this and thrown his blow, the old warrior spun and pushed through the tent flap.
    That night Hanno sought no treatment for his nose but slept wrapped around it. The next morning his physician threw up his hands. It would no longer be the envy of the women, he said, but perhaps now he would look more like a warrior. Hanno walked out to take his place beside his father with his nose swollen, his eyes black and puffy. Within a fortnight Hannibal led a force against the Betisians and met them in an open field. By the end of the afternoon he had their headman's skull on a javelin tip. By the end of the week he had their main settlement, and their allegiance ever after. Such was the difference between his brother and him. Hanno never forgot it.
    Hanno roused himself. He realized he had been standing above the pen for some time, watching the handlers at their work but not actually seeing them. He turned and walked off. The elephants did not need his inspection. They were well tended. Of course they were.
             
    More so than any of his brothers, Hasdrubal Barca lived his life astride a pendulum swinging between extremes. By day, he honed his body to the functions of war; at night he sank up to the ears in all the pleasures of consumption available to him. Hannibal had once questioned the structure of his days and whether his habits were suitable for a Barca, suggesting that Hasdrubal's pleasure-seeking indicated a flaw that might weaken him with the passing years. Hasdrubal laughed. He proposed instead that his devotion to the body was the greater discipline. The fact was, he said, that he could rise from an all-night romp and still train with a smile on his face. Perhaps this was a sign of stamina that Hannibal had never himself mastered. As for indications of decay or weakness, at twenty-one his body was a chiseled monument surpassing even his eldest brother's. So, for the time being, he passed his days and nights as he saw fit.
    During the winter, he kept to a strict training routine. Three days after his return from Arbocala he began the regimen again, already ill at ease after a few days of uninterrupted leisure, the celebration of victory almost too much even for his own resources. He slept naked, always in his own bed, always completing the night alone, no matter whose pleasures he had shared earlier in the evening. His squire, Noba, woke him just as the sun cleared the horizon line and rose up in spherical completion. Together they bathed in the chilly waters of the private bath on Hasdrubal's balcony. Noba once had to break the skin of ice upon the water before they could enter, an unwelcome task for an Ethiopian. Hasdrubal found this ritual dunking to be the surest cure for the fatigue caused by the previous evening's debauchery.
    He broke his fast with a small meal of something dense and