Do You Fear His Gods?

1.

We were dead before the battle ever started, and we knew it. This whole campaign was a death wish. We had fools and bumblers giving us our orders, and they had the greatest mastermind who had ever led soldiers in battle. He might as well have been a god.

Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca, by way of marriage brother of Hasdrubal, and sworn enemy of Rome.

There is a story that gives this monster his origin: as a child, his father guided him to a temple where infants were sacrificed to Carthage's evil gods, and his father made him swear to be Rome's endless enemy. When one sees the corpses left in Hannibal's wake, one feels that it must be true.

Seeing the carnage that Hannibal caused, you must assume that I hate him, and perhaps I should. But when the battle began, my curses were directed towards Gaius Flaminius. There is no form of execution that would be too brutal for him. That fool led us along the bank of Lake Trasimene. My brother's in arms died because he thought he would win glory. They had a god of war, and we had a politician. We needed a champion of our own, but who could we offer against Rome's greatest enemy?

When Hannibal's army surrounded us, we knew how it would end. Our backs were to the lake, and we were surrounded on all sides. Can you imagine the terror? Our sworn enemy, the tool of all of Carthage's foul gods, leading his forces for a massacre.

They will never call me a man back in Rome, so I know that I cannot return. But I saw those forces and I realised that only one path remained for my survival. Carthaginian hearts have no capacity for mercy. Seeing the Roman army so deftly defeated--defeated even before half our soldiers were dead--I believed that Rome would fall so that Carthage could rise.

I dropped my arms, and I threw myself upon the mercy of the lake.

"Coward!" someone screamed.

Should they have seen me, they would have killed me just as willingly as a Carthaginian, but they didn't. My life was over, but I wanted to live.

2.

I wasn't the only man who tried to escape via the lake, but I saw no others who survived. I shed my remaining clothes and tried to dry myself. I wanted to flee, but where could I flee too?

That was when the first body washed up on the shore. He'd also abandoned his weapons, but dozens of wounds slashed across his back.

Rome was defeated. The seven hills would become Carthage's vassal state.

3.

If I did not find a fire, I would die when the night came. But, thinking about that overwhelming, monstrous army wiping our Roman forces away like no more than a scrap of food, I couldn't imagine that I could light a fire without inviting my own death.

After dark, I saw a fire in the distance. Perhaps I could be a Carthaginian slave. Surely that would be preferable to freezing to death, naked and afraid, on the banks of this site of massacre.

4.

Two men sat at the fire. One of them was old, clean, and dry. He wore a long, elegant robe. I couldn't imagine why he was there. He should have been sitting in the forum, or entertaining other nobles in his home. He looked like the sort of man who should have an entourage wherever he went.

The other man looked as haggard as me. Half of his face was obscured by blood. A patch of skin was ripped open above his temple. I couldn't say for certain, it looked like he'd taken a stone to the head in the Carthaginian's first volley.

I stepped into the heat and light, drawing both of their attention.

"You there," the bloodied soldier said. "You. Are you a friend or foe of Rome?"

"Friend," I said.

The soldier looked to the old man, who gave him a nod. "Then join us," the old man said. "Sit, and tell me all that you saw today."

"Who are you?" I asked.

The old man smiled to the bloodied soldier. "I am a man with a fire."

Should I have feared him? Yes. But that day, fear was the only thing that I had felt. It had become like a foul smell that one becomes too familiar with. The soldier had lost much of his blood, and he slumped to the ground like a man exhausted.

"Tell me," the old man said. "What did you see today?"

"I saw Rome's destruction."

The old man smiled. "Indeed."

5.

The bloodied soldier lay in a heap. He still breathed, but slowly. I'd told the old man everything I saw, and I told him that Hannibal's forces were unstoppable. I told him that Rome could not withstand such a force. Rome's people would be weakened. Without young men to pass on their legacy, the city would become nothing but old women until Hannibal finally achieved his purpose.

"He swore to the gods," I said, feeling delirious. "His father swore him to it. He'll wage an endless war, and there is no force among men that can stop him."

"Do you fear him?"

"Aye."

"Do you fear his gods?"

"I don't know his gods, but I know him."

"Did you see him?"

I thought back to the battle, and the way that his forces emerged like one colossal monster. Nothing from any myth of legend could compare to that beast. It was a massive mouth, and it bit into our forces with divine power. It was more than human. It might be more than a god.

Nothing could stand against that. Not a soldier, and not the Senate and People of Rome.

That was Hannibal.

"I saw him."

"What will he do when he finally conquers Rome?"

"I don't know."

"Imagine it."

I stared into the fire. The old man never left his place, and neither did I. The bloodied soldier might not be capable of moving. No one had added fuel to the flame, and yet it still burned. It's light emphasised the old man's skull, like his face was hovering in the dark.

"They will sack the city," I said. "Hannibal swore endless war, so there will be no quarter. He'll topple our buildings, and he'll kill and enslave everyone within the walls. What he can't topple, he will burn. Our old men will be taken off to Carthage, and our young men will serve their empire. When it is over, Hannibal will salt the earth so that nothing can grow here again. It will be worse than Brennus. It will be worse than anything we can imagine."

The old man nodded. "That's what I see too."

The fire trembled. In its embers, I thought I saw Rome's hills and streets. I hadn't eaten since before the battle, and I felt light-headed and weak. It wouldn't be long before I was slumped over beside the wounded soldier.

6.

"Would you save the city if you could?"

"I fought for it."

"Yes, but would you save it?"

"Of course I would. I'm a Roman. My father was a Roman, and his father was a Roman."

"Do you respect the city's gods?"

That was harder to answer.

"Soldier?"

"The gods have abandoned us."

"Have they? Or have you abandoned them?"

I looked up from the fire that burned without fuel, and after a day of fear, my terror escalated again.

7.

In the fire's embers, the city was no longer Rome. It was a city that I had never seen, but I knew it to be Carthage. I saw a scene of horror. A temple to dedicated to a god of war. A city in agony in the face of defeat. The fire burned with hate.

Hannibal wanted to go to war, but his father made him swear that oath. He could never become a friend of Rome, so his war could never end.

Perhaps that child could have lived a different life, but the moment he swore that oath he was locked in. He would become a sword in the hand of his city's gods, and in return they would give him greater might than any general that had ever lived. His father made him swear the oath at a place of sacrifice because it was a sacrifice.

Hannibal sacrificed all other lives for the sake of his war.

8.

"If Rome's been punished by its gods, then Rome deserves it," the old man said, a slight smile in his voice. "Of course, punishment never feels good. But isn't it endlessly valuable for teaching virtue?"

"What do you want?"

"What do all gods want?" the old man asked. "Your city can still be saved, and I believe you know how."

"I don't."

"Are you sure?"

I stared at my hands. Even with the fire's heat, I felt cold. "Tell me what to sacrifice to stop Hannibal and save Rome."

"A sacrifice has been provided."

His gaze fell on the wounded soldier.

9.

I told myself what anyone would tell themselves in that situation: there was no difference between this and any other war. What was a war, after all? It was an exchange of sacrifices. A soldier is just a person who has been handed over to death in exchange for victory. This soldier who had been wounded for the sake of Rome--he would have handed me over to death as well. That was what it meant to be a soldier.

And the old man was smiling, grinning, mouth open, hungry.

"A sacrifice has been provided," he said.

So I caught the unconscious soldier by his arms, and I hauled him to the fire. It wasn't a bonfire, I realised. It was a pyre.

10.

Embers erupted into the sky as the soldier tumbled into the wooden boards. The fire washed up, hotter than before. For a terrible moment, the soldier screamed. The fire burned too bright to be looked at, like the sun itself, and then it collapsed.

There was just a skeleton. No old man. Just a skeleton on the bank of the lake, badly charred.

I told myself that I'd made the right choice, and I hoped that was true as the sun rose on a new day.

I hadn't killed anyone, I told myself. After all, we'd all been dead before the battled ever started.