The Rogue Knight (49 page)

He shrugged in the manner I use whenever dismissing trivia. “The soldiers love you,” he said. “So sleep. Gain strength. Recover.”

My eyes grew wide. “My food,” I whispered. “Someone has been poisoning my food.”

He frowned, hesitated, and said, “I will begin testing it.”

“No!” I said, clutching his wrist. “No. I do not want our foes striking down both you and me together. I will only drink from a well or a river, only eat bread from the common table and fruit I pick off the trees with my own hands.”

Hannibal hesitated again, but nodded shortly. “It will be as you say, father.” He smiled, standing. “Now go to sleep. Rest as I make the rounds.” He strode to the door, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

I wanted to warn him to be careful, but that would only worry him again concerning me. My behavior obviously troubled him. Therefore, I did what had won me many encounters. I practiced trickery, what the Romans called ‘Punic faith.’  I pretended to sleep even as through slitted eyelids I watched my splendid son watch me. At last, he closed the door.

I waited until I heard his footsteps retreat down the hallway. Then I arose, fumbled in the dark until I held my short sword. I eased open the door and crept stealthily through the corridor. I returned to my study, closed the door and jammed wood-splinters under it. By the time an assassin hammered through that, my guards would appear and skewer him.

I opened the grille of a small, bronze stove and from the embers lit a candle. Sitting at my writing table, I picked up the fallen ostrich quill and dipped it into lampblack ink.

The nature of men is to forget. We are sad creatures limited in our ability. Long ago, a Siceliot (as the Greeks in Sicily are called) had told me that the lightest ink was better than the deepest memory. Others have known this.

Ptolemy—the cousin of Alexander the Great and the first Macedonian pharaoh of Egypt—wrote an account of Alexander’s fabulous victories. Ptolemy had been a commander in that army, an eyewitness to the staggering events. Pyrrhus the Great Captain, the Master of Elephants, who fifty years ago defeated Roman and Carthaginian arms in Italy and Sicily respectively, penned a treatise on generalship. Through it, he preserved knowledge of his martial achievements. In my younger years, I had studied Ptolemy’s accounts and Pyrrhus’ lessons, and learned much from each.

Rome’s war against Carthage—the First Punic War—had been the longest, continuous armed struggle in recorded history. The largest naval battle ever fought had been between these two giants of the Western Mediterranean. By wars end the Romans had lost 700 galleys sunk and the Carthaginians nearly 500. But what occurred in Africa before the walls of Carthage was the most horrific. All that I am, all that Hannibal may become, the life or death of Carthage, all harkens back to those two fateful years in Africa. I’d lived through them. I’d been an eyewitness and a grim participant to the horrors and triumphs. Who better than I then to write about those momentous years?

I have another, selfish reason for telling this tale. I drift near the River Styx and have felt Death’s chilly breath upon my neck. Whether an assassin’s blade strikes me down, treachery betrays me or poison withers my limbs, I shall die violently and that soon. The Oracle knows. The priests of Melqarth have not lied. Men’s memories are weak, as I have said. They easily forget. My tale is inked insurance toward the speedy fall of Rome. For I have learned a secret, a potent and powerful truth. It lies in the
gladius hispanicus
, in the Iberian
espasa
—and it lies in what I learned those long years ago on the battlefield of Tunes.

Therefore, since my remaining hours are few, I must set the tip of the quill onto parchment and hurriedly scratch out the bitter story of my youth.