Read Online Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham - Free Book Online

supply the army. He avoided them for a day, but the next afternoon a lone horseman spotted him. The rider sat a rise a little distance away, contemplated him, and then rode forward into a dip. When he emerged Tusselo knew him for what he was, Massylii, slim and dark and so at one with his mount that he rode bareback and without reins. Tusselo raised his hand in greeting, knowing that his solitary travel was over. The rider stopped a short distance away and asked the stranger his business.
    Knowing the man's warm tongue, Tusselo responded in kind. He came bearing knowledge the commander might find valuable, he explained. He had come to serve. He had come to fight for Hannibal.
             
    The siege of Saguntum began early in the spring of the year following the defeat of Arbocala. It went on unabated, week after week, as spring gave way to summer. The city perched on the edge of a rocky plateau, high enough to afford a view of the surrounding hills and out toward the sea. It was well fortified, walled completely, in differing heights and thicknesses as suited the varying landscape. There were towers spaced along the walls at intervals, of such stout proportions that one might have thought the city perfectly defended. Hannibal was intent on proving this belief mistaken.
    Under his direction a mass of men blanketed the ground all around the city, working in a hundred ways to break through the skin of the place and climb inside. One section of wall collapsed during the first weeks in a chaos of dust and debris and falling bodies, creating a great wound in the city's defenses that extended the whole length from one tower to the next. The Saguntines stanched it before the invaders could pour in, building a new shell from the rubble, working ruined homes into the fabric of the wall, throwing up barricades in all gaps, and using whatever materials came readily to hand. Some fought to keep the invaders at bay even as others ran between the defenders, working in stone and wood and earth. The wound remained, scabbed over and livid, yet the city had protection for another day.
    The Saguntines received Hannibal's terms each time he offered them, but they refused to accept them. He knew the source of their resolve was threefold. There was simple loathing of defeat and the indignities it entailed. The stubborn bravado natural to all the Iberians he had yet encountered. And, of course, the Saguntines looked daily to the sea-horizon for salvation. From spies, Hannibal knew of three envoys who had escaped the city to renew their entreaties for Roman aid. He might have intercepted them with ease, but it suited him that they reach their goal and state their case in the Senate. He wanted the Romans to roil and fume. If they stirred to action against him, so too would he against them.
    But despite all his planning, the siege threatened to carry on indefinitely. That was why, one sweltering morning in mid-June, Hannibal decided something must be done. He knew as well as any other that his actions verged on foolhardy, but he awoke to the knowledge that a lethargy had taken hold of his men. The heat of the summer day threatened to stew them slowly and would perhaps turn them upon themselves in surly frustration. He could not allow this to happen. Although he could not break through walls by himself, a lone man can inspire a mass to greatness beyond the power of an individual. His father would have done so, and as he was gone the responsibility fell to the first son.
    He mounted the stallion that had of late become his favorite and rode out onto the debris-laden field between the city's walls and the mass of his fatigued, bored men. He shouted them to action. They looked up at him from the dust and grime. They saw his figure through the wavering haze cast by the heat and thought him a madman or an annoyance. Then they realized who he was and began to make sense of his words. Those who spoke no Carthaginian understood him only when he spoke in