The Rogue Knight

by Vaughn Heppner

  “The priests tremble before your audacity,” he told me. “They’ve always thought you’ve moved too swiftly. How many times have they begged you to consolidate your gains before you attempt to conquer yet more territory?”

  “I know what they think!”

  He nodded, and I saw worry in his brown eyes.

  That troubled me. My son not only had a knack for tactics, but he had spent long hours with my spymasters. Six months ago, I’d given him permission to sit with me as I spoke with Hasdrubal the Handsome, the most cunning of my sub-commanders, my son-in-law and chief political agent.

  “Too many of the merchant lords of Gades fear you,” Hannibal said. “They reminisce about their old days of power, how before your coming they dictated Iberian policy. Some have even mumbled against the needfulness to publicly kneel in your presence.”

  “I have made them wealthy beyond their dreams.”

  “Your enemies in Carthage sent an envoy three months ago, remember?”

  I grunted, understanding his point.

  “The envoy has been whispering in their ears,” said Hannibal, “stirring the merchants against you, saying that you will bring the wrath of Rome upon us. A few of the merchants have actually repeated his lies in the marketplace. They say you desire divine kingship in Iberia so you may rule as tyrant in Carthage. I suspect these traitors have corrupted the priests. They use them as their mouthpieces, whispering fear into your mind. They well understand your piety concerning the Oracle.”

  Could that be true? I’d always known my time was short. I knew Rome would strike again before Carthage was ready. During these eight short years, I’d forged the Army of Iberia out of wild hillmen, superb individual fighters, recklessly brave and with barbaric notions of loyalty to a person, never to a city or a state. Fortunately, Melqarth was the patron god of this region. As Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great had done, I too had taken clan and tribal superstitions and centered a mystical theology upon me and my offspring. If there was a better way to forge unshakable loyalty in soldiers for their general, I didn’t know it. For them the Barca clan was the favored of Melqarth, his representative on Earth. As I had vastly extended Carthaginian territory in what the Romans called Hispania, power had poured into my hands. The mines in the Silver Mountains, those situated at the headwaters of the Betis River, had given me thousands of tons of purest silver and gold. A third of this wealth had gone to Carthage, to my agents there who kept the rabble firmly in the Barca camp. They and the Assembly of the People were the counterweight against my aristocratic foes. A third of the wealth remained with me, paying for my mercenaries. The last third I’d sent to the Temple of Melqarth and the merchant lords of Gades. I bought temporary loyalty and, perhaps more importantly, I’d purchased information. Thousands each year came in pilgrimage to Melqarth’s Temple in Gades. They came inquiring foreknowledge from the Oracle of the Holy Flame. They sought much but confessed much more, opened their hearts to the bare-footed, shaven-headed priests. Through those confessions, the unwed priests had gained intimate knowledge of the goings-on in Iberia, more than even my clever spies had brought me. I trusted the Oracle, treasuring its words, careful to weigh them in light of godly and prosaic revelations.

  It was something I’d endeavored to teach Hannibal and his brothers without allowing cynicism to creep in. Certain Carthaginians, my blessed father among them, had discounted the gods as they worshipped silver, gold and precious stones. I wished Hannibal and his brothers to understand such men without becoming like them, and learn to use the power of wealth without being corrupted by it.

  “You will not die through treachery,” Hannibal assured me. He shook his head. “There are no assassins in your house, no assassins within your army. Your enemies have corrupted the Oracle and now use it as a dagger against your mind.”

  “There are always assassins,” I whispered.

  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.

  Table of Contents

  Book One

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  C
hapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Book Two

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

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  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

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  -25-

  The Sword of Carthage

  Prologue