Hanno's Sword
NOTE: Each story in this series is built around a group of characters, but the real hero—or heroine—is the sword, “Gray Maiden,” which is traced from its forging through the different hands that wielded it down to modem times. Made for the greatest of the Pharaohs, it saw the rise of Greece and the crowning of Alexander's fortunes; it was witness to the greatness and the decay of Rome; it held back the rush of Islam; it knew the birth-pangs of the New World and the last agonies of the Old. There are wide gaps in its history. For generations upon generations it was hidden in tomb or burial mound or hung in grim quietude on the walls of armories. Yet often when men turned to war, eager hands reached out for it, and swung its shining blade in the van of battle. As some medieval owner scratched in the hard, gray steel—
Gray Maide men hail Mee
Deathe doth Notte fail Mee.
SHRILL through the clamor of embarkation pierced the squealing of the elephants. Hamilcar, picking his way over the trireme's cluttered deck, grinned sardonically at the indignant note of protest.
“The beasts have more sense than we,” he grunted to himself.
A great glare of torches beat upon the quay, and the masts and hulls of the ships appeared and disappeared in the flickering light like living things. Ashore, the streets were dotted with fires that wove a patchwork pattern across the starless mantle of the night. Men's voices, rattling hoofs, the din and crash of shifted cargo were fused in one thunderous cacophony.
“They should hear us in Rome,” mused Hamilcar.
He crossed the grating above the larboard oar-banks, and wrinkled his beaked nose at the fetid stench of the close-packed slaves.
“Phaugh, it is long since I smelt that smell! Sea, there was a time when you meant much to me, but I think Carthage and I are no longer in your debt. Better mold in dry earth than rot in water!”
Forward he came to the ladder ascending to the forecastle, and climbed this to secure a better view of the spectacle; but as he reached the top a dark figure stepped from the shadow of the catapult that cumbered most of the deck-space.
“Back, soldier,” snapped the newcomer. “Your quarters are below.”
“And who are you?” returned Hamilcar coolly.
“My name is Norgon. I command this trireme.”
Hamilcar peered closer as a cresset of pine-knots on the quay alongside flared up in a sudden burst of yellow light.
“Norgon! Cast back, Norgon. Once, when you were a youth, there was a lad named Hamilcar, who rode with you in the armored horse. But that was before Hannibal marched from Spain—or before Hamilcar had sailed from Carthage—or before you captained a trireme. Is it too far gone in the years for memory?”
The other bent forward in his turn, and the two fierce, hawk-nosed faces frowned from under the helmets' rims.
“I remember Hamilcar,” answered the sailor slowly. “But he was young—and beardless.”
“Look,” bade the other. “That was a youth's age ago. By Astarte, friend, there is frost on your head as well as mine.”
Norgon nodded almost wearily.
“It is true, Hamilcar. We have not grown younger, either of us. So you rode with Hannibal into Italy?”
“I led my troop of the Carthaginian horse out of Spain,” answered Hamilcar moodily. “That was fifteen winters ago—a youth's age, as I said. And now I sail back to Carthage, captain of some four hundred Gaulish infantry—I, who was to be general over armies and Hannibal's right hand!”
The sailor's teeth showed in a wolfish grin of appreciation.
“Youth's ambitions! Who realizes them? There was a day I saw myself leading squadrons in a battle that should sweep Rome from the sea. And what happens? I sail a trireme to Bruttium to ferry Hamilcar's Gaulish infantry in the fleet that fetches home the wreckage of Hannibal's army to stand betwixt Carthage and Scipio. The gods will have none of us, old friend.”
“They will have none of Carthage, either,” exclaimed Hamilcar. “Even Hannibal has lost their favor. By the Ram, Norgon, this is a strange experience for some of us, who rode in the rout at Lake Trasimene and Cannæ, red to the bridles with Roman blood! It is a great night for the legions.”
“Rome triumphs,” assented Norgon. “There will be fighting yet, but not even Hannibal can avert the wreck—for Carthage is rotten, old friend, the senate think first of their own fortunes, last of the public good. There is jealousy of Hannibal. Watch what happens after the fleet returns. If Scipio does not take the city the senate will fall upon you of the Italian party and cast you by companies in the Byrsa cells.”
Hamilcar rapped his sword-hilt on the rail.
“Let them try it! Do they think we will go to the furnaces like Nubian captives?”
“Ah, but they will set the city against you! They will divide you against each other. They will tell some of your generals that Hannibal has taken over-much credit, and so—But you know the tricks. Soldiers and sailors are of no use at politics, Hamilcar.”
“I will have nothing to do with such tricks,” fumed Hamilcar. “Sooner than be gulled by a set of fat-bellied merchants I—”
He broke off as the continued squealing of elephants was dominated by an angry trumpeting. Up the quay, where a giant quinquereme was berthed, arose a frantic babble of voices.
“There is trouble with the elephants,” he said, leaning over the rail to peer into the darkness.
Norgon shrugged his shoulders.
“We have scant room for men. It is foolish to embark elephants when there are plenty at home.”
“No, no, Hannibal is right,” said Hamilcar. “Leave anything that is strange to them for the Romans to study, and they soon learn how to use it or counter it. We can not abandon the elephants.”
He called down to an officer who was hurrying along the quay.
“What is wrong? Are men needed to handle the elephants?”
“No more men are needed,” replied the officer. “One will not follow its mates aboard the quinquereme, and Baraka, the captain of the elephants, is taking it back to the stables.”
“Is any one hurt?” asked Norgon.
“The General Hanno. I go for the physicians.”
“Hanno!” exclaimed Hamilcar. “That is strange.”
“Is this the Hanno who is called 'of the Sword?'” asked the sailor.
“Yes, he was in charge of embarking all troops. Gods, if he should meet his end through a sullen beast, he whom no steel could touch!”
Norgon signed himself with the crescent.
“I have heard of him. He has a wizard sword.”
“I know not if it be a wizard sword,” said Hamilcar; “but it is a sure blade, and a true. And of all of us who followed Hannibal from Spain Hanno has been foremost in every battle—and never a scratch to show for it. Still, I would rather die under steel than be smashed by an elephant.”
They fell silent as a little procession of men passed up the quay.
“I should like to learn more of this,” said Norgon. “How if we followed them? There is ample time.”
Hamilcar tugged thoughtfully at his beard.
“Yes, there is no man in the army like Hanno—and no sword to compare with his. My Gauls are safely stowed below. So lead on, Norgon. How shall we go?”
The sailor raised a coil of rope from the base of the catapult and tossed it over the ship's side.
“A sailor can land this way,” he replied. “And if a soldier can not, there is the gang-plank in the waist.”
Hamilcar slung his big shield on his back with a resounding clang.
“A soldier can follow anywhere a sailor he has ridden with of old,” he growled.
A moment afterward they were striding together up the quay, threading a path between parties of soldiers, slaves loading stores and troops of frightened horses. Away in the distance they heard again the angry trumpeting of the elephant.
“After all,” quoth Norgon, “a wizard sword can not keep a man from death for ever.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the soldier, “but it has its uses.”
They had almost caught up with the group surrounding the injured officer when a tall figure in gilded mail stepped directly in front of the litter-bearers.
“Hannibal,” murmured Hamilcar.
The Iberian slingers who carried Hanno halted, and their officer, a dissipated-looking Greek, came to the salute. But Hannibal paid no heed to them. He had eyes only for the limp body the Iberians carried shoulder-high, and at a word from him they lowered their burden gently to the stones, while he stooped over it. A mutter of voices came faintly to Hamilcar and Norgon, then Hannibal rose quickly and delivered a curt order to the Greek mercenary.
“To the Temple of Juno,” he said. “In all things do as Hanno bids you.”
The next moment he was gone, his face very sad and white in the torchlight, his broad shoulders braced back as if with the physical exertion of supporting his responsibilities.
“So that is Hannibal!” commented Norgon as the Iberians lifted the litter and continued on their way. “Gods! He has aged no less than we. Well, what next?”
Hamilcar was staring after the litter.
“Some one must fall heir to that sword,” the soldier reflected aloud.
“And why not you?” gibed Norgon. “Or I, eh?”
“Why not?” echoed Hamilcar. “I— We are old, but with the gods' favor—and that sword— Come, it is worth trying!”
“Anything is worth a trial in defeat,” endorsed the sailor. “But why carry a dying man to the Temple of Juno?”
The soldier knit his brows, puzzled.
“I do not know, unless— Ha, yes, Hannibal has reared there tablets of bronze inscribed with the names of his victories, the towns he has taken, the provinces he has ravaged and subdued, the consuls he has humbled. And Hanno, like the old lion he is, will die in the shadow of the great deeds he helped to perform.”
Norgon's features twisted as if with pain.
“Great deeds,” he repeated. “And for what purpose? Rome triumphs, despite them.”
“Yet it is not we who have fought with Hannibal who must own shame,” cried Hamilcar. “The legions have never seen our backs.”
“That is the shame of it,” answered Norgon. “Fourteen campaigns has Hannibal waged, undefeated. And now he must leave Italy because Carthage is too weak to stand without him. Carthage defeats him, I say, not Rome!”
“I would I might never see Carthage again,” scowled the soldier.
“Moloch hear me, but I feel as you! But what next?”
“The sword!”
“Jackals' work, but jackals we are, old men who have failed. Come, then!” A note of hopefulness rang in his voice. “Perhaps we shall have to fight the Iberians.”
“Those fellows!” snorted Hamilcar. “I know Colchus, that Greek who commands them. Leave them to me! We are not mercenaries.”
ON THE steps of the temple they met Colchus and his Iberians descending, and the Greek hailed Hamilcar with an amused leer.
“So the sword draws you, too, old wolf!”
“Have you a better right to it?” growled the Carthaginian.
“There are two of us, Greek,” added Norgon.
“Two or twenty, I care not,” answered Colchus coolly. “Hannibal bade me see that Hanno passed as he wished; and he wishes to pass, undisturbed, here in the temple.”
The Carthaginians stepped back, crestfallen.
“Oh, if Hannibal will have the sword it is not for us to push forward,” grumbled Hamilcar.
“Not he,” denied the Greek. “But the plain truth is that Hanno is of no mind to yield it up so long as he has strength to hold it. He would have us set him down under those tablets Hannibal placed above the altar, and there he lies, pulp from the thighs down, the sword in his hand. 'I am finished,' he said. 'Send away the physicians. But perhaps I can last until the Romans come, and if the gods will that, I would face them armed.' Yes, Hamilcar, to Hannibal he said: 'Grieve not. I would rather end so. And it is fitting I should hold the army's rear. It will seem like old days when we lured Sempronius to the shambles at the Trebia.' He—Hannibal—could have wept, I think.”
“A man to share deck-room with, this Hanno,” remarked Norgon.
“Honor to him,” rumbled Hamilcar. “He is luckier than we, who may live to wear Roman chains.”
“He who lives, lives,” said Colchus cynically. “Better be a horse-boy alive than a king and dead. But as to this sword—”
“No, no,” protested Hamilcar, “I will be first to defend Hanno's right to it. Tanit send me a like death!”
The Greek shuddered.
“A poor prayer, my friend. Death comes, in any case. But you mistook me. What I would say is that Hanno's life ebbs fast. By morning he will have no more need for his sword, and then—”
“Why, then,” rasped Norgon, “the best man who claims it will have it.”
“Something like that,” agreed the Greek. “But by Hercules, three claimants are enough. We shall do nobody a service if we spread the news. Now, I suggest that we tarry patiently against the morning's coming, and when the gods have accepted Hanno's spirit we poor mortals, betwixt us, one way or another, can arrange who shall inherit Hanno's sword.”
Hamilcar looked questioningly at Norgon.
“My ship can do without me,” said the sailor slowly.
“And so can my Gauls,” affirmed Hamilcar. “We shall soon be bound fast to your decks, eh? And there should be luck in this sword.”
“Luck?” grumbled Norgon. “Humph, if to be crushed by an elephant is luck! But I own to a wish to see so strange a blade. And at the least, a man may say with truth that he would be honored to possess the sword of Hanno.”
“Honor is often luck, and luck is usually honorable,” said Colchus, chuckling. “Shall we pour a libation to the gods in Hanno's behalf—and perhaps each man for himself? I know a wine-shop behind here in the Street of the Rhodians where they had some sound Carian this noon. There may be a skin or two left.”
Norgon ran his tongue over sun-dried lips.
“Now, that is a suggestion surpassing all else you have said, Greek,” proclaimed the sailor. “Wine? By the Ram, let us seek it out!”
“A man never knows when he may drink again,” said Hamilcar. “Lead, Colchus. We must take all we can with us. Bah! What else is left to us but to drink?”
“You are not happy,” answered Colchus, with a shrug. “He who is unhappy should drink deep. But let me post my Iberians. They will keep the sword safe for us. And afterward we can decide who shall have it. He must be a deep drinker, for the sword has drunk deep. Yes, it is always thirsty—like a young maid for love, Hanno said. He is a droll fellow, Hanno, lying there with his crushed legs and the gray sword he can scarcely lift. He says he is thinking of the lives it has taken. 'I accustom myself to the company of ghosts as I wait to hail Charon's bark.' He has as pleasant thoughts as Hamilcar.”
“He knows a man's death is not worth considering when a whole nation drifts toward death,” replied Hamilcar.
“He knows death is the surest of messengers,” said Norgon. “Yes, yes, he would be a good shipmate, this Hanno. Why fear the unescapable? If the sword could not protect him—”
“Yet the three of us seek the sword,” jeered Colchus. “For myself, comrades, I hold that no man welcomes death before he must. Until the shadow falls life savors sweet on the tongue, and if a certain sword will win me one more kiss or another cup of wine I'll slay my shield-mate to have it.”
“Humph,” growled Hamilcar, “we are warned in time.”
And the sailor menaced the Greek—
“Remember, there are two of us!”
“It would seem the advantage is on your side,” grinned Colchus.
CHOKING and sputtering as the water sluiced through his beard, Hamilcar pulled himself up on the bench.
“Brrr! Squolsh! Has that Greek— May the Furies—”
“Yes, all drunk as Greeks,” answered a voice like the edge of a saw. “Ha, it is good for you Hannibal is not here! An empty town—except for a handful of neighing Iberians—and an elephant and drunkards! Ill work, I say. Phaugh! Drunk as Greeks, and the three of you officers!”
Blinking the water from his bleary eyes, Hamilcar peered unsteadily across the table at a little, bow-legged man in the light brass breastplate and helmet of the Numidian Horse, whose flatness of nose and kinky locks betrayed the half-breed.
“Hold your tongue,” snarled Hamilcar. “Are you always free with your betters?”
“If you are my better, you will have to prove it,” said the little, bow-legged man composedly. “Who are you?”
“I am Hamilcar, of the Gaulish infantry.”
“And I am Mago, of the Numidians. Why did you not send to warn me when the fleet sailed?”
Hamilcar staggered to his feet, amazed, and for the first time perceived his two companions huddled amongst the floor-rushes. The sailor was snoring audibly.
“'The fleet sailed!'” he repeated dumbly. “When?”
The little, bow-legged man lifted his eyebrows.
“When? The Iberians say it was on the verge of dawn. It seems there was a sudden alarm—a trireme came in with word the Roman fleet was off Tagentum—and our people were away as swiftly as they could fend oars.” Indignation grated in the thin voice. “Baal's wrath, it was not like Hannibal to flee without giving the outposts time to draw in! Here am I left with close to three hundred men, and not a ship for the lot of us.”
Hamilcar propped his aching brow on one hand, and tried to think.
“It must have been sudden,” he groaned. “Last night there was no intent to sail before dawn. We—the three of us stopped for a drink—to pour a libation—”
“To guzzle a vintage!” rapped the little Numidian. “What am I to do with my men? The Romans are fond of us Numidians! Well, what do you say? Don't sit there like an offering on the altar!”
The word “altar” reminded Hamilcar of Hanno—and the sword.
“What of Hanno?” he asked eagerly. “The General Hanno, fool! He lies in the Temple of Juno—”
The Numidian whistled softly.
“So that was why the Iberians were posted there! They would not let me in without their officer's permission, sent me here to find him. So Hanno was left to command us? That's not so bad. He—”
“No, no,” exclaimed Hamilcar impatiently. “He is dying—or dead. An elephant crushed him, and Hannibal ordered him left in the temple. It was his wish.”
“Was that why Baraka, the Captain of the Elephants, was left, too?” demanded Mago. “He waxed sullen when I called to him as we passed the barracks, said something about one of his beasts being mad.”
“How should I know?” answered Hamilcar. “Gods, what a mad business! Is it to be wondered that an elephant should go must?”
He dragged himself to a window whence he had a view of the bay, sapphire-blue against the green of the shore slopes—and empty! Not a ship, not a sail, near at hand or within the scope of the horizon's band. A few people moved in the sunny streets, a troop of Numidians were picketed at the next corner. In rear of the temple stood a brace of the Iberian sentries Colchus had posted before they began their carouse.
“The wreck of the wreck of an army,” he muttered.
“What?” snapped Mago.
But Hamilcar ignored the question.
“Is there more water? Help me with these others. Make haste, man! We have scant time. If the Romans learn of this our lives will not be worth a broken javelin.”
The Numidian picked up a big, brown amphora from the floor and sprayed a stream of water on Norgon's head. Hamilcar fell to work on the Greek. The sailor came to first, groaning and belching windily, presently cursing and complaining; but Colchus must be pummeled as well as soaked before his sodden wits threw off the effects of the wine.
“Drunk as Greeks,” complained the little, bow-legged horseman as he labored over Norgon. “A woman could have slain the three of you as you lay here.”
“Only one Greek,” said Norgon with drunken gravity. “Two Carthaginians, one Greek, all three drunk—drunk as—drunk as Romans.”
“Where's—sword?” asked Colchus abruptly.
He swayed to his feet.
“You get sword, Hamilcar?” he pressed.
“Hanno still has the sword,” replied the Carthaginian, “and your Iberians mount their guard. Come, friends, let us go to him, and ask his advice. If he lives, that is.”
“Why—ask—advice?” challenged the Greek. “Take sword—that's all.”
Hamilcar explained their plight, and Colchus sobered as if a keen wind had blown through his brain and cleansed it of the night's vapors.
“Great Hector, this is bad! The fleet gone—and the Romans beyond those hills. How close, Mago?”
“No legions nearer than Venosa,” said the Numidian; “but horse—” he waved a hand vaguely—“who can say? Anywhere out there.”
“Perhaps we can find a ship,” spoke up Norgon hopefully. “I am a sailor, my friends, I can sail a ship for you—”
“There may be a fishing-boat or two on the beach,” said the Numidian bruskly; “but everything that would keep afloat sailed with Hannibal. All the townsfolk went who might be accused of friendliness with us. Forget the sea. We can not take to it, if we wish.”
There was an interval of silence, and in the midst of it the stamping hoofs of the horses at the corner beat like distant drums. A bee buzzed in and out the window.
Colchus reached under the table and dragged out a flabby wine-skin.
“Here's a drop to settle our stomachs,” he said casually. “Well, why be cast down? All Italy is in front of us.”
“If we can ever wriggle out of Bruttium,” returned Hamilcar.
The Numidian nodded approval.
“Yes, yes, we are in the heel of the sack here. If we are to break free we must have elbow-room.”
Norgon stared at the three of them, aghast.
“You are out of your minds! What hope for us is there in Italy? Gods, it stretches away for hundreds and hundreds of stadia, long and lean like an Iberian. We are down in his foot. Will the Romans let us escape clear up his leg?”
“Who can say what the Romans will do?” retorted Colchus. “But we can say this, comrades: They are not so well-loved in Italy, are they?”
“My Numidians know the hills like their own deserts,” added Mago. “We have raided in every province for fourteen summers, now. But he was right who said we should seek Hanno's advice. Hanno of the Sword is the general for me—after Hannibal. Ha, many is the time I have followed him in the slaughter, him and his Gray Maid!”
“So you know the sword, too!” commented Colchus.
“Who does not? The best blade ever forged, men say. Wizards wrought it. He who wields it need never fear steel.”
“But it is of no avail against an elephant afraid of a gang-plank,” amended the Greek. “And now there are four of us to heir Hanno!”
The Numidian looked puzzled.
“I have no claim to it.” He shook his head. “The spirits protect me! The sword is not my weapon. I fight with bow and javelin.”
“He is right,” said Hamilcar. “Well, have we talked enough? Here, give me that skin, Colchus! The man might have thirsted a week. Will you drink, Mago? No? Then one draught to cleanse my mouth. The rest is yours, Norgon. A monster, this one; he could drain the sea! I am full of wine-courage, friends. Let us see what the wreck of a wrecked army can accomplish. If Hanno yet fives, he is the man to relish such an undertaking. Come, Colchus, and pass us through your Iberians.”
“I come,” countered the Greek grimly. “The sword is my weapon. By Hercules, though, I am glad Mago is neutral in this matter. Two to one are sufficient odds.”
THE Iberian sentries stood aside from the temple door with a dry rattle of missile-pouches as the four officers tramped across the pillared porch.
“A gloomy place to die,” grunted Mago, then corrected himself at sight of the interior, lofty and spacious, the altar opposite the door bathed in sunlight that flooded down from an opening in the roof, “but a soldier could find a worse tomb.”
“A tomb it is become,” said Hamilcar, pointing to the still figure that lay on a heap of cloaks and hangings at the foot of the altar-steps.
The words echoed back from the marble walls, and a hand fluttered amongst the tumbled cloths. Eyes gleamed vividly in the leaden face. But the voice that answered Hamilcar seemed to come from a great distance.
“You, Colchus? And who else?”
The Greek stepped forward, suavely deferential, contriving a certain martial dignity, for all his wine-spotted cuirass and dingy helm and the floor-rushes in the folds of his kilt.
“Three of our captains, Hanno. We come to you for advice. The fleet is gone, and we left behind with a handful of men.”
The eyes blazed brighter, the timbre of the far-off voice was more definite.
“Left! How chanced it? That is not like Hannibal.”
“Why, Mago and his Numidians held the outposts, and there was no time to call them in.” Colchus hesitated. “These others—bided with me.”
The four had advanced closer to the altar's foot, and Hanno's eyes surveyed the two Carthaginians with a kind of satirical humor.
“They bided with you!” An uncanny touch of mockery in the feeble tones. “Did they drink with you?”
“Some while, yes,” Colchus answered unwillingly.
“I thought so.” The mockery was more pronounced. “By the Sword, I could wager Hannibal sent to withdraw you, Colchus, and you were not to be found. So your men were left—and these others. How are you called?” He addressed Hamilcar abruptly. “I have seen you, but your name—”
“I am Hamilcar. I hold a command in the Gaulish infantry. My friend Norgon is a captain in the triremes. He—came with me. We were curious about your accident.”
“My accident!” The eyes twinkled with raillery. “It was not—my sword? I marked Colchus hungering for it—last night.”
Hamilcar swallowed hard.
“Any man would wish to have Hanno's sword,” he said stiffly.
“Humph! An honest man. But there are four of you.”
“Mago says the sword is no weapon of his,” replied Hamilcar. “We others— Well, when three men desire the same thing there is always a way to settle it.”
Hanno's head shook ever so gently; his bloodless lips quirked into a smile.
“No man gains anything by fighting for this sword; it goes where it will. It is a wanderer.”
His right hand fumbled in his cloak, and raised a long gray blade a few inches from the folds. The steel was marked with little whorls and wavy fines, and in it were etched letters and symbols in many tongues. It hovered in air for a breath or two, then sank again as his hand wavered beneath the weight. Tiny beads of sweat on his brow told of the effort he had made.
“I—weaken,” he said irrelevantly.
There was silence while the four officers grouped around him stared down at his grizzled face and the shattered remnant of what had been a giant's frame.
“Heed me,” he said at last. “If Hannibal is gone, I command here. When I am dead— Humph, let the sword command. You hear? He who has the sword commands. I know you captains, always jealous, always disputing with one another. So let the sword be arbiter. But never fight for it. Remember, it goes where it will.”
The perspiration covered his whole face. Norgon stooped quickly, and offered him a little amphora of wine which rested on the altar-step. The dying man sipped a swallow, then motioned it away.
“There is no luck in the sword unless it comes to you of its own accord,” he resumed. “So my father said, and he had it of a Roman in the sea-fight of the Agates Isles; and the Roman had it of a Cretan pirate, and the pirate had it of a drowned man. But he—the Cretan—had known of it before, or so he said. It has a long history, old as human fife, I think. Men have slain each other with it for ages. What tales it could tell!”
He took another swallow of the wine.
“They say it is a lucky sword. Well, of that you must judge. True, it kept me safe from steel's edge, as it kept my father and the Roman, and the Cretan and the man who was drowned. But all of us came by death in the ordinary course. Still, every man has his own idea of luck. But the sword's luck goes only to him who comes by it naturally. Fight for it, if you will. One of you will win, but the sword will not stay with him for that reason. No, no! Gamble for it, rather—and if it will have none of the winner, if by any mischance it goes to another, leave it with him, unless it seeks a new master.”
The four who stood over him eyed one another uncertainly.
“But if we fight, Hanno,” said Colchus, “it will be as much of a gamble for the sword as if we pitched knuckle-bones.”
“You can not afford to sacrifice your lives in that fashion.” The faint voice became stern. “It is for you four to carry your men safe out of Italy. And that will require the wits and craft and weapon-skill of every one of you.”
“But how?” queried Hamilcar.
“Take to the mountains—the Numidians know every byway. Ride like the wind—and always north and west. Fight when you must, but flee when you can. In Apulia and Etruria the people are friendly to us, hostile to Rome. You can find friends elsewhere. When you reach the northern mountains cross into Gaul.”
Hanno's voice was so low that they had all to bend down to hear it.
“But then?” asked Colchus.
“No, I can say no more. From Gaul you may reach Spain. Or, if Carthage is beaten, you might do better to take to yourselves wives in some far country of the North beyond reach of the Roman eagles. The sword will see you safe.”
“Safe?” queried the Greek eagerly. “Did you say it would see us safe?”
Hanno's eyes lighted up once more with a gust of vitality.
“Not all. No, no, my Colchus, be reasonable. Men must die to carry some of you safe, but safe some of you will be—if you follow the sword.”
Hamilcar bent closer to the general.
“Give it to one of us,” he urged. “Give the sword to one of us for a sign.”
The grizzled head rolled in negation.
“The sword goes where it will. That is how to make sure of its luck. Gamble for it. Follow whoever wins it. And if it leaves you altogether, forget it. You can not compel it. Remember that. It comes to a man, and fights for him. Sometimes it will fight for his son, and his son's sons. But it stays with no man longer than it fists.”
“But if it goes to a Roman?” cried Norgon.
“It came from a Roman. If it wishes to, it will return to a Roman.”
The sweat was heavy as dew all over Hanno's face. His voice choked.
“Lift me,” he ordered abruptly. “Yes, by the arms, two of you. Face me— Where are those tablets? The tablets Hannibal set up for the Romans? My eyes are dim. Show me.”
Colchus and Norgon raised him; Hamilcar turned his lolling head toward the angular lines of Punic lettering erected on the altar. The little bow-legged Numidian was crying.
“Is my sword in my hand?” asked Hanno. “Leave it to me—while I live—or I will set a curse upon you all. Ha, the light grows better! I see the tablets, now— The Trebia—forty thousand Romans slain; Trasimene—the Consul Flaminius killed—fifteen thousand Romans slain, twenty thousand taken; Cannæ—seventy-two thousand Romans slain or taken of eighty-seven thousand— The light grows dim again'— Who said Hannibal was beaten? No, no, Carthage is beaten—Rome is beaten—never Hannibal— Ho, Keepers of the Underworld, a place for Hanno! I am weary of victory.”
MAGO brandished a javelin at the statue of the goddess behind the altar, brooding and aloof.
“How could a man live in the shadow of that stone witch?” shrilled the half-breed. “Let us destroy it!”
But Colchus waved him back.
“You err, friend. It was an elephant, not a statue, destroyed Hanno. And this temple he would have for tomb, even as Hannibal left it. What we came for was the sword.”
The Greek's hand hovered toward the plain hilt of the weapon that Hanno's fingers clutched in a grip that impressed the silver-wire binding upon the stiffening flesh. But Hamilcar thrust him aside.
“You are hasty,” rebuked the Carthaginian. “Have you forgotten so soon the injunction Hanno laid upon us?”
“Yes, yes,” assented Norgon. “Not so fast, Greek, not so fast. Gamble for it, said Hanno.”
“What harm to try its balance?” scowled Colchus. “But have your way. How will you gamble for it?”
“So,” answered Hamilcar, and he plucked a handful of floor-rushes from the folds of the Greek's kilt. “Here, Mago, you will have none of the sword, you say?”
“The sword is not my weapon,” returned Mago doggedly. “And whatever you say or Hanno thought, I think there is bad luck in this sword.”
“What you think is of no account,” Colchus snapped ill-temperedly. “This affair lies between us three. We—we are white men.”
“White or black, all men must die,” said the Numidian serenely; “and I think, too, that he who keeps away from that sword will live longer than those who are tempted to it.”
“Very possibly,” interposed Hamilcar; “but death owes none of us anything; we have played with it too long. As for Mago, if he is good enough to command Numidians he is good enough to fight beside me. So I suggest that we give him these rushes to hold. Each of us three shall draw one from his hand, and he who has the longest shall have the sword.”
“A fair device,” approved Norgon.
Colchus gulped down a curse.
“There is no skill in drawing a rush by chance,” he objected.
“No, it is an honest gamble such as Hanno had in mind,” Hamilcar agreed smoothly. “But if you wish, Colchus, you may have the first draw.”
“Yes, let him have the first draw,” rumbled Norgon.
The Greek hesitated, then snatched at the three rushes projecting from Mago's clenched fist.
“It is not very long,” he said dazedly.
“Not so long as this, by Tanit's help,” said Norgon, drawing his rush in obedience to a gesture from Hamilcar.
“But longer than the third,” said Mago, opening his hand to reveal Hamilcar's.
Colchus cursed openly, but Hamilcar clapped Norgon on the back.
“You win. Ha, a sailor, you shall command soldiers! The hills shall be your sea, old friend. Take up the sword. Go on! Hanno would have wished it so.”
Mago nodded approval of this.
“Luck won him the sword, whether it be good luck or bad luck. But what happens if Norgon is slain? Who has the sword, then?”
“Why, we can draw again,” offered Hamilcar.
But Colchus objected vigorously
“Not so. Let whoever first reaches the dead man's side take the sword. That is the fairest way to permit the sword to choose a master.”
Hamilcar shrugged his massive shoulders.
“I am content; but it is my hope that we shall need no fresh master for the sword. Come, take it up, Norgon.”
The sailor stooped and gently unfastened the dead fingers from the hilt. A great fight shone in his face as he straightened himself, and swung the gray blade at arm's length.
“Gods, what a sword!” he exclaimed. “It is as if it were a part of me. It balances like a leaf in the air. And the edge! See!”
He dropped it flat across his arm, and razorwise, shaved the hairs off a patch above his wrist. Hamilcar pointed a trembling finger at the whorl-marked steel.
“There are marks on it. Other men have set their names to it, perhaps.”
Colchus, craning closer, his envy momentarily forgotten, cried out at a certain symbol immediately under the hilt.
“That is Egyptian. By Hercules, it is a Pharaoh's mark! And beside it is the Egyptian Seft for sword. Ah, Norgon, great is your fortune! A king's sword should carve you a rich future.”
The sailor grinned in embarrassment.
“For my future, I hope only that it will see me clear of Italy. I have had too intimate an acquaintance with oar-slaves to desire to spend my days rowing in a Roman trireme. But the morning wanes, friends, and we have to decide on our course. What are we to do?”
Nobody spoke for a considerable interval, and again through the silence sounded the stamping of the Numidians' horses outside and the buzzing of the bees.
“There are some few—drunkards,” Mago stressed the word faintly—“scattered about the town, who might be flogged to willingness to bear arms. Also, there is Baraka and his elephant.”
“That elephant has taken sufficient toll,” protested Colchus.
“Nevertheless, an elephant is feared by the Romans,” said Hamilcar; “and if this one is out of his mad fit he is safe to employ. How if we go to Baraka, and learn his mind concerning our plight—which is no less his plight?”
And as nobody answered:
“But Norgon commands us. It is for him to say what we do.”
“I asked for advice, old friend,” quoth the sailor; “and I am free to admit to you that I am accustomed to fighting afloat rather than ashore, and what is more, I know nothing of Italy, while you know it as I do the sea. So those who have advice, render it. Hamilcar has spoken. What say you, Colchus?”
“I say that it was a wise gamble for the sword which placed us under a leader who is ignorant how to conduct us to safety,” rasped the Greek.
“Are you better informed?” snapped Hamilcar.
“If he is ignorant of Italy, he is willing to ask advice—and to fight beside Numidians,” spoke up Mago.
“That am I,” declared Norgon heartily.
“My advice,” continued Mago, “is to mount every man you can, take Baraka and his elephant, and strike over the hills into Lucania before the Roman legions close in. We shall have to fight, as it is; but from Lucania we can work into Apulia, and so, with some help from the countryfolk, northward toward Etruria. That is as far as my mind sees today.”
“And far enough,” sneered the Greek. “For who ever heard of a Numidian who predicted the future! The man might be the Delphic Oracle!”
“What is your advice, then?” asked Norgon.
“Fight free of the Romans. What else is there to do?”
“And that is what Mago advised, although in more considered terms,” remarked Hamilcar.
“It is all any man can advise,” said the Numidian. “We are the spoil of luck, subject to the whims of that sword. It would be folly to plan far ahead. Talk to Baraka, Norgon, and if he agrees, then we can leave the town.”
“And—this?”
Norgon pointed to the body of Hanno.
“Leave him,” said Hamilcar. “It was his wish to receive the Romans when they enter.”
“He mocks them as he lies,” exclaimed Colchus in sudden awe.
A beam of sunlight from the roof trickled across the gaunt features, revealing the lips parted in a sinister grin of derision.
“They know more than we, the dead,” murmured the Greek, awe turned to superstition. “Zeus guard us! Is it us he mocks, by any chance?”
No man answered him, but the four stole silently from the temple's echoing emptiness. It was as if a chill had fallen in the full tide of sunny noon.
BARAKA was a wispy, leathery bit of a man, with a white kilt around his loins and a tangled mass of lank black hair through which his eyes smoldered like hot coals. He was half Indian, offspring of a Sidonian mother and a Hindu mahout, sullen and aloof as one of his own beasts. He received the four officers at the entrance to a courtyard wherein the slayer of Hanno was picketed, vast rump swaying rhythmically as the pliant trunk conveyed bunch after bunch of hay into the cavity of the mouth, little eyes squinting with sidewise cunning at the visitors.
“Why should I go with you?” he answered disagreeably. “The Captain of the Elephants is important no longer. Hannibal sails away without even a thought for me!”
“I might say as much,” returned Mago. “My Numidians were forgotten.”
“Who would have expected you to hide yourself with a beast that had gone must?” demanded Colchus. “It serves you right.”
The hot eyes sparked at the Greek.
“Nobody interfered when I calmed the Big One, and led him off before he might trumpet his way down the quay,” retorted Baraka. “But that is the old story: A man is given respect while he is needed. Hannibal returns to Carthage, and the Captain of the Elephants is no longer necessary.”
Hamilcar made a gesture of dissent.
“You have served under Hannibal as long as I, Baraka,” he said. “You know as well as I that Hannibal never abandoned any faithful officer, if he could help himself. There was an alarm in the night. 'Roman galleys off the capes! The Roman fleet off Tagentum!' By the wrath of Moloch, who could stop to figure what each man did? 'Cast off,' ordered Hannibal, for what was left of the army was more valuable than you or I or that great idiot of a beast that waggles his tail like a Nubian dancing-girl.”
“Was there no summons through the streets?” asked Mago.
“Oh, yes,” Baraka admitted. “The quay-guards ran from door to door, and the trumpets blew twice. But naught was said of the Big One here—and was I to abandon him?”
“We are not suggesting that you abandon him,” said Colchus.
“I am finished with the army,” replied the Captain of the Elephants. “Hannibal left me here—and here will I stay, and the Big One with me.”
“And bide the coming of the Romans?” inquired Hamilcar.
“Why not? I have faced Romans before today. They will have little sport out of me.”
“But the Big One,” said Norgon slyly. “He will fare ill at the Romans' hands.”
A look of uncertainty clouded Baraka's face; the smoldering eyes lost some of their fire.
“I had not thought of that,” he answered. “But the Big One can take care of himself. A whole cohort of Romans would not be able to harm him when he has on his armor.”
“They would not try to harm him,” said Hamilcar. “They would capture him, and learn from him the use of elephants in war, so that they might readily resist our elephants in the future. And that would mean the death of many elephants, Baraka.”
The Captain of the Elephants shuffled his feet in the dust, more uncertain than ever.
“True,” he conceded. “And you? What can you do for the Big One?”
“Why, if we succeed,” replied Norgon, “we will break out of Italy into Gaul—”
“Across those snow-mountains?” Baraka was aghast. “Ah, my Big One's feet were cut to the quick by the ice! Take him through there again? Never!”
“Then will he become a chance for the Romans to learn how to master his brethren,” insisted Hamilcar. “And afterward, probably, they will poison him.”
Baraka's face became livid.
“Not while I live! First I will venture the snow-mountains with him. Yes, I will wrap his feet in hides. Some way I will get him through.”
“But before we get him through the snow-mountains we must pass the length of Italy,” Norgon reminded him. “And if that is to be done, we have no time to lose.”
“It will not be I who delay you,” shrilled Baraka. “Gather your men, and see if I am behind them when your trumpets sound!”
“So you come with us?”
“Come with you! What would you have me do? Stay, and assist these cursed Romans to slay elephants as they do Carthaginians? Bah! And though Hannibal left me, I may yet surprize him by guiding the Big One up the road to Byrsa one of these days. Let us escape from Italy, and it will be because the gods owe us no favor if we do not find a path into Spain or pick up a ship that can ferry us oversea.”
Norgon hesitated.
“We have all taken pledge of loyalty to this sword,” he said finally, exhibiting the lean gray blade. “It was Hanno's, and—”
Baraka cackled.
“I have heard of it! A wizard sword—which could not preserve its owner from the Big One's feet. Heh-heh! He tramples hard. Well, if you will follow it, I have nothing to say. Myself, I ride the Big One's back. The rest is for you to manage.”
“We have agreed,” explained Hamilcar, “that he who carries the sword shall be leader.”
“Let him be,” assented Baraka. “What have I to do with a sword? It is not my weapon. If I can not ride from Italy behind the Big One's ears, no sword will hew me a path.”
Colchus exhaled a deep sigh of relief.
“Then it is still between the three of us!”
“You are not anxious for me to live long, my friends?” observed Norgon dryly.
Hamilcar shook his head, annoyed.
“This is a bad spirit for men in our position,” he declared. “By Tanit, Colchus, our lot will not be improved if Norgon is slain. Forget the sword!”
Mago, the little, bow-legged Numidian, wagged his black face at the others.
“Who can forget the sword?” he reminded them. “It is like a god, for we trust in it and fear it—and my experience is that the gods are as likely to deal harm as good. That is the trouble with them: they do not act like men, so you can never be sure of them. But you have set up the sword to lead us, and therefore, I say, you must respect it, you three. You can not forget it, any more than you can forget the gods.”
FR0M the shelter of the cedars they had an unobstructed view of the valley below them, the deep, turgid brown of the river distinct between bands of greenery. The bridge at the foot of the hill on which they stood was barred by a mass of fallen trees on the farther side, and steel sparkled frequently in the opposite copses.
“I have marked two vexilia,” said Mago dolefully. “That would mean six hundred legionary cavalry, and there must be four hundred or more auxiliaries.”
“And we are a scant four hundred men,” grunted Norgon.
“And an elephant,” added Colchus with his wonted cynicism.
Hamilcar tugged savagely at his beard.
“A crossing we must make or else turn about and set our backs to the sea and slay as many Romans as we may,” growled the captain of Gaulish infantry.
“The legions are not up yet.” Mago attempted encouragement. “And if we could once get an arrow-shot beyond those fellows over there we would be sure of gaining Lucania. I'd cross to the Tyrrhenian shore, and—”
“You might as well talk of crossing to the Punic shore,” sneered Colchus.
But Norgon shook himself from the contemplative mood which had possessed him, and broke in upon the Greek.
“I have a thought, friends. At sea when we sight an enemy we close him to ram or board, unless he be too numerous. In that case, we endeavor to divide his ships, so that we may contrive to fall upon one division with a chance of conquering it. Now, here before us, as Mago has said, the Romans are twice as strong as we, and every moment that passes brings their supports nearer. If we are to pass the river we must pass at once.”
“Hannibal, himself, could not be more inspired!” exclaimed Colchus sarcastically. “But I could have said as much in six words.”
The sailor went on without noticing the interruption:
“And to pass the river we must trick the Romans into one place—and then come upon them unawares from another direction.”
“That is a wise thought,” endorsed Hamilcar.
“Colchus spoke more truly than he intended, perhaps,” observed Mago, with a sour look at the Greek. “That is the kind of plan Hannibal used again and again. He would trick the Romans to mass their strength in one position, and after he had succeeded outflank them and throw us of the horse upon their rear. Whoo! Many a legion have I broken that way.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Hamilcar, “on a level plain, all else being equal, I would back your Numidians, Mago, against twice, yes, and thrice, their number of Roman horse.”
“But we are on one side of the river and the Romans on the other,” pointed out Colchus. “Also, I see no level plain.”
“If we can beat the Romans on the level we can beat them on the hillsides,” declared Norgon. “How if we divide our forces thus? I will take Mago and his Numidians and the bulk of the Iberians, and ride down-stream around the next bend. In the meantime, Hamilcar and the rest, with Baraka and his elephant, must attack the bridge. And while they are occupying the Romans' attention, we will surprize a crossing and come down upon the Romans in flank and rear.”
“It will be a pretty task for Hamilcar and his men,” commented Colchus. “I am disposed to accompany Norgon.”
“You are not necessary to me,” answered Hamilcar bruskly. “Leave me a score of your slingers, and I will be content.”
But Mago looked worried.
“You will have only some six score men, Hamilcar,” objected the little cavalry officer.
“What of the elephant?” gibed Colchus.
“The elephant will be worth more in this affair than all the rest of us,” replied Hamilcar. “Go on, Norgon. You need have no fears for us. We will develop an attack that will draw every Roman within five stadia of the bridge. To horse, Mago.”
“Perhaps I should stay here,” said Norgon uncertainly. “On my ship I always knew where I should stand in a fight, but ashore—”
“You should stay where you will be safest,” advised Colchus. “But I was forgetting the sword. You have no occasion to be concerned.”
Mago snorted contemptuously, and Hamilcar answered the sailor:
“We who retain her can not clinch the victory, old friend. That is for Mago's column, and the commander's place is where the victory is to be won.”
Norgon stared down at the tumbling brown water, and shivered slightly.
“After all, I am to fight in my own element,” he said. “But I could never abide fresh water. There is no kindliness to it.”
“Trust to the sword,” said Hamilcar lightly. “It will lead you safe.”
HAMILCAR allowed an ample time for Norgon to reach the cart-track which paralleled the river, and then sent forward his slingers and a half-dozen Cretan archers he had dug from the wine-shops and brothels of Bruttium along with a few score mingled spearmen and sworders, Carthaginian heavy infantry, Gauls, Iberians, Libyans. The slingers, from the river-bank, employed their long-range slings, casting leaden balls at the enemy on the hill-slopes, while the archers raked the approaches to the bridge. Few as the missile-troops were, the viciousness of their attack and the boldness with which they descended to the river-bank completely distracted the attention of the Romans, who rapidly concentrated at the bridge-head, even dismounting a portion of their legionary cavalry in preparation to meet the anticipated attempt to force a passage.
Several bow-shots distant, in the shelter of a clump of trees, Hamilcar formed his handful of dismounted infantry, less than a hundred in all, but hardened soldiers to a man, typical of the disciplined mercenaries who were dreaded by the most veteran Roman legions. In advance of them he stationed the elephant, with Baraka mounted on the beast's back. And a fearsome sight was the Big One, arrayed in his battle-armor, frontlet of plate-mail covering skull and trunk, padded saddle-cloth hanging from his flanks, with sheets of chain-mail pendant from the howdah on his back and sheltering his vitals. Baraka, perched on the beast's neck, wore a fight shirt of chain-mail and a peaked helmet; but the only weapon he carried was the ankus with which he guided his charge. In the howdah were four of the Cretan bowmen.
Hamilcar waited until he judged his missile-troops were likely to reveal their weakness, and shouted to Baraka to rush the bridge with the elephant. The ankus tickled the beast's tough hide, his master's voice urged him on, and the Big One lumbered down the road in the midst of a cloud of dust that might have been stirred by a thousand men. Simultaneously, the slingers abandoned their long-range weapons, and took to the clumsier slings they employed for short-range work, casting stones the size of a clenched fist with a drive that knocked armored men completely off their feet.
The Romans, dazed by the cloud of dust and the hail of missiles falling on the bridge-head, closed the gaps in their ranks, and formed closely across the road, just in time to receive the terrible impact of the Big One's charge. A score of men were crushed under the immense feet or hurled to destruction by the flailing trunk; the Cretan archers aimed their shafts right and left. But the Romans refused to retreat. They saw their comrades ground to red paste, and stepped into the ranks to meet a similar fate.
In the midst of this boiling uproar Hamilcar launched his infantry at the shattered barricade at the bridge-end. He crossed the structure unopposed, but notwithstanding their terror of the elephant, the Romans came at him resolutely on horseback and afoot, so that he was obliged to shift his formation to a compact circle, which wheeled slowly from right to left, with the effect of presenting the attacking troops with a constantly varied succession of opponents.
The Carthaginians' weapons were soon red to shaft and hilt, their shields were hacked and marred, their numbers were reduced a third. Baraka succored them twice, charging through and through their attackers and giving them a momentary interval of rest. But presently he was obliged to protect himself, for the Romans leaped from their horses and ran at the Big One, reckless of death if they might hamstring a leg or thrust a spear up under the protecting drapery of the saddle-cloth and the flaps of chain-mail. And Hamilcar knew that he had exhausted his opportunity. A howl from Baraka sent the Big One crashing into the woods out of reach of pricks and slashes, and the little band of mercenaries were left to hold their own.
The dismounted Romans drew back, and a column of legionary cavalry was formed to ride down the Carthaginians. The Roman trumpeter had his instrument to his lips when another trumpet blew in the woods above the bridge. Baraka's howl became a yell of exultation. Hoofs thundered in the tree-aisles, and the Numidian horse burst into the open, behind them Colchus' Iberians, casting middle-size pebbles from the waist-slings which they used for ordinary work. The Big One rushed into view again, trumpeting madly in response to the blasts of the Numidians.
“Forward,” cried Hamilcar, and his infantry trudged out from the bridge-head, shields braced and chins up, doing their share anew to break the Roman array.
At the edge of the trees presently, where the road wound away out of sight into the purple hills, Hamilcar caught up with Colchus, who was wiping his sword on a handful of grass.
“Mago has ridden on after them,” said the Greek casually. “It was best to disperse them while we had the chance.”
“But Norgon?” panted Hamilcar. “Where—”
Colchus held out the sword in his hand at arm's-length and surveyed it critically, and Hamilcar recognized the familiar gray sheen of the steel.
“It was too bad about Norgon,” answered Colchus. “Too bad! He couldn't swim.”
“Not swim! But—”
“It was the river, you see. We had to cross where it was deep and swift, and he—”
Hamilcar's hand fastened on his own sword.
“Did you try to save him?” he demanded.
“Try?” The Greek's eyebrows rose. “Why not? Only think, my friend! Mago was there, and several hundred others. It would have looked well, would it not, had I seemed loath to haul Norgon out? But the truth is that I and one of my Iberians and three Numidians went after him, but he slipped from his horse's back, and when we finally reached him he was dead.”
Hamilcar's hand opened and shut spasmodically on the hilt of his red blade.
“You were—first?”
“I was, as witness this sword.” And with satisfaction he proceeded: “It is evident that I was destined to possess it. Why, Norgon had it scarcely a day, eh? Ah, yes, it was intended for me.”
“Take care, lest it leave you as swiftly as it left Norgon,” snarled Hamilcar.
“No, no,” retorted Colchus cheerfully. “I intend to be careful. It is all very well to have a wizard-sword, but I don't mean to place too heavy a burden on it. The gods will do much for a man, but they expect him to do something to save his own head. Now, Norgon was a good cupmate and a fine companion, but—”
“He was my friend,” warned Hamilcar. “Let that suffice.”
“And a shipman. Therefore he could not swim,” added the Greek mockingly. “But he is dead, so—Zeus be his friend! We live. I hold the sword. Do you recall our compact?”
Hamilcar tugged hard at his beard.
“I do,” he answered slowly. “I am one to keep a compact. You are chief. What will you have of me?”
Colchus slapped the gray sword into its sheath.
“First, a disposition to believe well of a fortunate friend who could not have helped his fortune had he wished to, which I am bound to say— But my topic is not congenial to you. Very good! I suggest, then, that we collect our men and as many Roman horses as possible, and press on after Mago. The road is open to Lucania, but the man who does not seize his opportunity when it comes— Ah, the forbidden topic again! Suppose that we agree simply to continue after Mago? It was his recommendation.”
THE girl fled from the gate in a flutter of ragged brown garments, white limbs glancing in the sunshine. They had a brief glimpse of her traversing the vineyard, but the olive-trees beyond swallowed her completely. The same drowsy stillness settled again upon the weathered farm buildings and dusty fields.
Colchus caressed his chin and straightened in his saddle. Days of command had lent him an air of power.
“A fat place,” he observed. “It would be well if we halted here. There should be meat for the men and grain for the horses—yes, even hay in plenty for Baraka's pet.”
But Mago offered a decided negative.
“Hascar's troop that I sent ahead report the road clear. It would be foolish to delay. By tomorrow we shall be in the Etrurian foothills.”
“Why hurry so?” complained Colchus petulantly.
He peered back along the jogging ranks of the Numidians, thinned by weeks of marching and fighting, privation and illness, to where the Big One ambled sedately like a mound in motion under his thick coating of dust. And behind the Big One lay the quiet farmstead and the orchards in which the girl had vanished as soon as they had noticed her. Not a human soul was in sight of the column. Above on either hand rose the Sabine hills, lush-green foliage streaked with the brown bars of the tilled fields or the petaled loveliness of orchards. But nowhere was there sign of man, woman or child, no, not so much as the smoke of a deserted hearth. The fertile country was vacant, abandoned, although the sudden discovery of the girl lurking under cover of the farm-gate might be taken to prove the contrary.
“That cohort we whipped on the wooded hill must be a long day's march rearward. There's not a Roman nearer than they.”
“Ah, but these Sabine folk are unfriendly,” answered Hamilcar, who had ridden up from his motley company of mounted infantry. “This is very different from Apulia, where the villages clamored to feed us.”
“Perhaps,” Colchus agreed reluctantly. “But that girl—a hamadryad, by Aphrodite! She gave me a look.”
“How often have we urged you to leave women alone?” growled Hamilcar.
Mago, being a Numidian half-breed, rumbled a less polite comment into his woolly beard.
Colchus only grinned at both of them, and deliberately shortened his reins.
“It is not I, my friends, but they! There is something about a Greek—”
“Yes, a vanity as great as the Big One,” snapped Hamilcar. “Have you forgotten the woman in the village beyond Venosia—and that was Apulia!—whose husband—”
“A mischance, my Hamilcar! Such little tragedies befall all of us. Come, come, are you jealous?”
Hamilcar smothered a curse.
“I beseech you to use your wits, for your own sake, if not for the rest of us. That is all. Remember, you are chief.”
“And it is a pity if a chief can not have a few privileges,” retorted the Greek.
“For example, turning aside from the road to try the knife of some chance-met Sabine girl,” remarked Mago.
“Why not?” Colchus grinned broader than ever. “By Hercules, this is a dull life! Ride, fight, ride, fight! Now, I caught a glint in that wench's eye that augured—”
“Are you going after her?” demanded Hamilcar.
“I am, my Hamilcar. And before you have traveled another four stadia I shall be up with you again, richer in experience and happier in spirit.”
“Let him go,” advised Mago. “It is his own responsibility.”
“But he is chief,” persisted Hamilcar, “and I, for one, have felt eyes watching us all day from the hillsides.”
“What Sabine farmer can harm me?” laughed Colchus.
He touched the hilt of the gray sword.
“Have I been behindhand when the steel was singing, friends? Say, who led in every bicker since we broke out of Bruttium? Whose blade has been the most merciless? Whose head has been oftenest imperiled? Eh?”
“It is true,” Hamilcar admitted unwillingly. “By the anger of Moloch, I never saw a man pass through such onfalls as he, Mago! And no steel could touch him.”
“Humph,” grunted Mago. “Hanno died and so did Norgon.”
“I shall not encounter an elephant on a Sabine farm nor attempt to swim a river,” replied Colchus, reining out of the column. “Continue, friends. I shall be with you again before you have tired of discussing my recklessness.”
He touched spurs to his horse, and cantered down the long line of Numidians and mounted infantry, waved to Baraka high up behind the Big One's flapping ears, and rounded a curve in the white track of the road.
“Talk to a jackdaw, talk to a Greek,” commented Mago.
“He is a good fool,” answered Hamilcar. “Let us be fair. We have had brave leadership from him.”
“No man is a good leader who turns aside from his comrades to pursue an enemy's woman,” denied Mago.
They rode on in silence, the trees beside the way whispering gently in the breeze, the sun striking warm on the ribbon of the road, the country becoming wilder and more mountainous as they advanced, for they were heading into the ridge of the Apennines which separated Sabinia from Etruria. No longer were there cultivated fields and orchards on either hand, and the few habitations they saw were herders' cottages high up in the hills. Hamilcar lost the sense of being under the constant observation of unseen eyes, but his uneasiness increased, and at a crossroads where the track forked in different directions he came to an abrupt halt.
“It may be that I am as much of a fool as Colchus,” he announced; “but I can not continue without him. Suffer me to take a troop of your men, Mago, and I will fetch him back.”
The little Numidian squinted his yellow eyes toward the tail of the column.
“We have gone a good four stadia,” he returned. “He should be up with us. But if aught has happened to him it is his own fault. Let him go, Hamilcar.”
“You forget the sword,” the Carthaginian reminded him.
“It would be well for you if you forgot the sword,” snapped Mago. “You do not require a sword to be chief.”
“Hanno said the sword should lead us safe from Italy,” insisted Hamilcar. “And it is a good blade. You have seen it flash in the thick of the slaughter.”
“And I saw Colchus take it from the hand of a drowned man,” replied Mago. “Oh, well, have your way! You are as crazy as Colchus. I will wait here for you—and if we are delayed we must make a night-march.”
“I will not delay you long,” promised Hamilcar.
The Carthaginian ordered the rear troop of Numidians to wheel out of the column, and led them back at a gallop; but as he reached the Big One he moderated his pace, and hailed Baraka, sitting astride the thick neck, disgruntled and sullen.
“Did you mark what became of Colchus after he left us?”
“I looked back once,” answered Baraka. “He was riding into the yard of that farm we passed.”
“Then he was not trapped on the road,” Hamilcar muttered to himself, and spurred his horse on.
Two score men, riding with loose reins, made short work of the distance the column had traveled so slowly. The buildings of the farm showed through the roadside trees, and at the entrance-gate the hoofmarks of the Greek's horse were plainly cut on a plot of turf. Hamilcar followed the hoofmarks to the housedoor, where Colchus appeared to have dismounted; but the hoofmarks continued on around the house into a rear yard rimmed by barns and sheds. The door of one barn stood open, and a Numidian officer, who rode beside Hamilcar, pointed to the print of sandals on the earthen sill—and close by was the unmistakable imprint of a naked foot, a woman's foot, slender in the heel.
“Ho, Colchus!” called Hamilcar.
No answer.
“Colchus! It is we, your comrades!”
And again:
“Colchus! Hamilcar calls.”
The Numidians stirred restlessly, and Hamilcar vaulted down from his saddle.
“It is strange,” he muttered, and peered into the barn's shadowy interior.
The sunlight dappled the earthfloor a spear's length inside the door; beyond that was darkness, a vista of wooden-wheeled wains, ox-yokes, tools, heaps of fodder, and overhead a tangle of beams. From one of the beams dangled a dark object, which swayed and turned continually—a sack? Hamilcar asked himself. A slab of salt meat? No, too large.
The Carthaginian stepped across the sill, and started violently. The hanging object was a man.
“A file of troopers hither!” he called harshly. “Quick!”
The Numidians scrambled from their horses, and pelted in after him, bows bent, javelins poised. But all they saw was a dead man, swaying and turning at the end of a rope that hung from a roofbeam.
“Make a fight,” ordered Hamilcar.
An under officer took touchwood from a brass firebox, blew it alight and kindled a wisp of hay, and as the flame torched it was reflected dully on a gray shaft embedded in the dead man's chest.
“Higher,” commanded Hamilcar. “Lift the flame higher. Yes, it is he.”
For the fight fell on the face of Colchus, a face distorted and askew, black with congested blood, dragged over to one side by the loop around his neck, the knot tight under one ear. In the Greek's chest was buried the sword of Hanno.
“Slain by his own sword!” exclaimed Hamilcar. “But no, that is not possible. He came in—with the girl—” the Carthagianian stooped to the floor—“yes, here is her footprint again—he came in with her—they dropped a loop from above—she guided him into it. Gods! What an end. To be strangled to death in a Sabine barn for a farm-wench! A wench who lured him to his death. And they buried his own sword in his breast as he kicked at the rope! Buried it in mockery.”
Hamilcar put his hand to the hilt and sought to draw it forth, but the blade was caught between the ribs and it resisted him. He stepped back.
“Sword, sword,” he said, “you have much to answer for. Three men who have carried you are dead—and the Gods only know how many owners died before them! Good luck, they call you. I wonder! Yes, I think I will leave you.”
One of the Numidians nudged his elbow, suggesting that they set the farmstead alight; but Hamilcar shook his head.
“It would be a signal to every Roman officer in these hills. No, no, Colchus deserves no revenge, for if ever a man was his own Nemesis it was he.”
The Carthaginian started to leave the barn, but in the door he turned for a last look at the sword. Its gray blade stood out a span from the Greek's body, and it seemed to throb with life in the twilit gloom as the dead man twisted and swayed. A mighty itch to possess it, to feel the cool strength of its hilt in his palm, assailed him.
“Why should I fear it?” he whispered to himself. “I am not a fool like Colchus. Surely, it will be only a source of safety to a soldier who exercises due prudence. Moreover, Hanno said that it should lead us—some of us—out of Italy. We swore that he who carried it should be chief—and I alone am left of the three who took the oath! By Tanit, this is fate! Sword, you are mine.”
He retraced his steps, gripped the edge of the Greek's corselet in his left hand and with this leverage drew the dripping blade from the corpse's chest. Free of the dead man, it swung feather-fight in his grasp, keen, trenchant, dully threatening.
Hamilcar wiped it on a fold of Colchus's kilt, then slashed through the rope that had hung the Greek.
“Bury him in the yard,” he ordered the Numidians as what had been Colchus sagged to the floor. “Not deep, for we have far to ride tonight. There is death in these hills.”
THE wind that swept the pass was edged with the freezing breath of the glaciers that scarred the Alpine peaks. The Iberians shivered as they took their stance, and mechanically slung their missiles at the figures of the Romans bobbing among the boulders a bowshot distant. Hamilcar shivered, too, for all the plundered cloak of fur which wrapped his shoulders; and he felt the quivers which wrenched the bony frame of his horse whenever the icy blast yelled off the mountains and tunneled through the depression of the pass.
A short cast above the line his men had strung from cliff to cliff, Baraka's Big One teetered monotonously in the lee of a rock, more clumsy than ever in full war panoply and the huge bullshide boots which Baraka had fashioned to protect the elephant's corns from the sharp rocks and icy stretches of the mountains that shut off Italy from Gaul.
Around an elbow of the pass hoofs rattled, and Mago galloped into view, his black features gray with the cold.
“Brrrrr, what a land!” he chattered, reining in beside the Carthaginian. “If we might only have found a ship!”
“What use to weep for the unattainable?” answered Hamilcar. “If we had made for the coast the legions would have gathered us in long ago. How do you progress up ahead?”
“Ill. There is a walled village in a bowl beneath the crest of the pass. I must have the Big One to crack it open for us.”
Hamilcar frowned at the Romans edging steadily forward upon the tenuous line of Iberians.
“These border legions are stout fellows,” he said. “I can not hold them unaided.”
“True, O Hamilcar,” assented the Numidian; “but if we do not carry this village we are hemmed between it and these Romans—and my people report it is stuffed with light troops.”
“You are right,” agreed Hamilcar. “Take Baraka. I will retire slowly as far as that elbow in front of us. There I will leave a dozen to keep the legionaries in check, and with the rest hasten after you. We take the village or we perish. And it will be hard if after all the perils we have survived some of us do not escape.”
“There are not so many of us even to perish,” replied Mago grimly, eying the wide intervals in the ranks of the slingers. “Well, may the gods have their will of us!”
And he rode away to accost Baraka, and lead the Big One up the rough slope of the pass, while Hamilcar turned his attention to the withdrawal of the Iberians as unostentatiously as possible. But the pursuing Romans were wily antagonists; they understood the gradual acceleration of the retreat, and pushed forward the more boldly. Instead of a dozen, Hamilcar must leave a score of slingers at the elbow bend, and the remainder of his scanty force must mount their staggering horses and racket up the pass after the Numidians to lend their strength to the storming of the village.
Two stadia beyond the elbow the pass widened into a valley, and in the midst of this the village was situated, a huddle of stone huts, the roof-timbers anchored with boulders against the fury of the mountain gales. The crude stone wall surrounding it would have crumbled at a blow from a catapult, but was a formidable obstacle to a handful of troops without siege equipment. Mago was an experienced campaigner, however, and he had grappled with the situation before his chief arrived.
The Big One, rumbling and grumbling, was backed off a couple of bow-shots from the village gate; Baraka touched him with the ankus, shrilled in his grotesque ear; and the immense beast lowered his armored head and lumbered into a run which was amazingly fast. The Roman auxiliaries on the walls showered the elephant with darts, but his armor protected him from all save surface scratches, and these only stimulated his rage. Squealing viciously, he thundered into the gate, burst its leaves asunder and pranced along the village street, trunk brandished against all who stood in his way. After him poured the Numidians, with the survivors of the column's infantry, and Hamilcar and the Iberians bringing up the rear.
The garrison took to the houses, defending themselves desperately, but whenever Mago or Hamilcar had difficulty in forcing an entrance they called the Big One from his parading and bade him shove in a wall, usually with the result that the inmates were buried beneath a heap of the loosely mortared stones and the heavy roof. The auxiliaries lacked the dare-all spirit of legionaries, and soon crumbled into flight, until the hollow of the valley was covered with men struggling in groups and individually.
One company of the auxiliaries made for the upper mouth of the pass, a precipitous gut in the cliffs, and Baraka sent the Big One careering after them. The elephant by now was in a fiendish temper. He had been on short rations for several days; he disliked the cold of high altitudes; he objected violently to the boots which Baraka had put on his feet; and he had slain enough men to have a craving for bloodshed. So he kept after the fugitives relentlessly, trampling on them or throwing them against the rocks whenever he overtook them.
As he neared the entrance of the pass Baraka perceived the difficulty of managing the great beast in its constricted space, and endeavored to turn him from his prey. But the Big One refused to be amenable. Despite the goading of the ankus and his master's shrill adjurations, he lumbered on into the gut. An arrow found a crack in the scales which protected his trunk, and the pain of the wound drove him frantic. His squeals resounded between the beetling cliffs. He caught a man in his trunk and beat him to a pulp against a boulder, then lurched on, eyes flaming, entirely heedless of the narrowing path, intent on destroying the enemies in front of him. One after another, he trampled them; but two men reached a section of the pass where the walls were so close that they could scarcely squeeze through shoulder to shoulder as they ran.
“Stop, my Big One,” bleated Baraka. “Here is no path for you. Turn back, Great Baby of my heart! Turn before—”
But the elephant plunged into the straitened gut at a gallop. His tough hide chafed against the rock walls, tearing down a succession of loosened boulders and icicles that redoubled his rage. Heaving and straining, he wedged himself farther in the narrow way, and when Baraka prodded him with the ankus, begging him to back, he trumpeted savagely, tossed up his trunk and caught the Captain of the Elephants in its supple grasp. A moment he dangled his master before his little red eyes as if gloating over the murder of one he held responsible for his plight. Then he hurled the unfortunate man after the two auxiliaries who had eluded him, and Baraka became a red splotch against the cliffs.
Hamilcar and Mago, called into the pass by the first of the Numidians to respond to the Big One's frenzied trumpeting, realized the danger to the whole column if the way continued blocked.
“We must slay him,” decreed the Carthaginian.
“Easy to say,” retorted Mago, cautiously investigating the elephant's restless hind feet. “But his vitals are at the other end.”
“Hew him apart, if necessary,” replied Hamilcar impatiently. “I care not how many men we lose. He stands between us and Gaul, no less than did your village.”
FIVE men died or were mauled before the spears of Numidians and the swords of Carthaginians, Iberians and Gauls finally severed the spine of the Big One's mighty bulk, and it was possible, as Hamilcar had said, to hew him apart and so make room for the column to pass. But even when this had been done there was trouble with the horses, which shied at the bloody rocks and chunks of monstrous flesh and limbs. The pursuing legionary infantry were at the mouth of the defile by the time the column was moving again, and in its winding precipitous depths there was scant opportunity for the accurate, long range slinging of the Iberians, which had been the most effective resistance the column could offer against superior numbers. The rearguard of the Carthaginian troops and the van of the pursuers were crossing swords as the last of the Numidians passed the scattered remnants of the Big One.
Mago came to Hamilcar with a worried look on his face.
“I would try to ride the Romans down if the footing were better and our horses were not so worn,” he said. “But my men feel the cold too much to be on their mettle.”
“This is work for the Iberians and Gauls,” replied Hamilcar. “Rest easy. I will see to it.”
The Numidian tarried, his pride hurt because the situation was beyond him.
“If it were a field for horse—” he began, and Hamilcar clapped him on the shoulder.
“This is a field for infantry. You have done your part. Now we shall do ours. Push on over the crest, and we will overtake you as soon as we have given the Romans a bellyful.”
“But you?” protested Mago. “You are chief, Hamilcar. You must not risk yourself. We—”
“Each to his destiny,” retorted Hamilcar. “Cheer up, man. In this defile the Romans can never overtake us. We will hold them until nightfall, then slip away and rejoin you. Tomorrow we shall be looking down on the plains of Gaul.”
“May Tanit guide it so!” exclaimed the Numidian.
Hamilcar laughed, balancing the gray sword in his hand.
“This guides us!” he answered. “From end to end of Italy it has carried us. Will it fail us now? I think not!”
But Mago called back over his shoulder:
“I trust in you, not the sword! It is an evil friend, that sword, too thirsty, too changeable. All it seeks is the slaughter.”
“So that it slays our enemies, why should we care?” replied Hamilcar. “It is like a woman, a lustful maid, ever hungry, never content. Feed its wants, and it will be faithful to you.”
But as he picked his way among the weary Gauls and Iberians of the rearguard he found himself thinking otherwise.
“So Colchus talked—yes, and Norgon said much the same. But neither of them did it serve so long as me. Phaugh, I am an old woman from the cold and hunger and toil of the fighting! A sword is a stout friend to the man who wields it with skill, no more. When my arm falters, my head will fall. Yet no steel has touched me since I drew it from the Greek's breast—and today I require its help more than ever.”
He circled it around his head, and the keen purr of the blade seemed to become a hiss, strident, menacing.
“That is not a happy song you sing, sword,” he muttered. “It bodes ill—for some one. Ho, men, let me through! Way for Hamilcar! Gray Maiden will make good the rear.”
They stood aside readily enough, courage spurred afresh by the presence of the commander they believed invincible and the sword whose fabulous powers were debated at every camp-fire. Hamilcar took his place in the rear rank of four men, stepping over the body of a dead Carthaginian infantryman who had been impaled by a Roman pilum. On his right hand an Iberian and a Gaul fought with long, straight swords similar to his own; on his left a Carthaginian cut and thrust with a shorter broadsword not unlike the weapons of the Roman legionaries, who crowded into the pass behind their convex shields. The Romans' pikes were gone; the fighting was hand-to-hand, sword-to-sword, the individual skill and strength of the Carthaginian mercenaries against the disciplined effort of the legionaries.
And if the numbers were unequal, Hamilcar, himself, seemed equal to a century. He was not content to meet the Roman advance. At times, when the pressure of the cohort jamming the mouth of the pass became so severe as to threaten to burst the fragile opposing line like a stream in freshet, he would spring forward alone, the gray sword darting and leaping, swooping and hovering, agleam with dreadful life and hunger, slashing gaps in the Roman ranks that slowed the steady tread of the legionaries and gave his men time to regain their wind.
Step by step he contested the pass while the sun sank lower and the bitter cold made the fighters shiver in their sweat. The Romans reached the narrowest section, where the Big One had stuck, just short of twilight, and here for some reason they seemed inclined to rest, nor was Hamilcar loath to seize the chance to ease his aching sword arm. Beyond this point the pass widened again, so that a dozen men might tramp it abreast, and he knew that on such ground the Romans, with their undrained reserves, would plow ahead almost regardless of the resistance his battered fighters might attempt. So he was prepared for the fiercest struggle of the day when the ordered tramp-tramp-tramp-clank-clank-clank of the legionaries echoed up the defile.
“To the last, men,” he said briefly to his cluster of exhausted mercenaries. “There will be horses for you above—and tomorrow, remember, the plains of Gaul!”
A tired cheer answered him, and they dressed shields as the Romans loomed in the twilight, a brazen double file.
Hamilcar made the gray sword hiss in air, and strode out in front of the Carthaginians.
“Two at a time!” he exclaimed. “This is a simple task, Gray Maiden. What are two Romans to you, who have slain them by cohorts?”
One of the two he cut in the neck below the helmet-strap; the other sank, pierced through the groin. He stepped forward to receive the next pair, sword raised to strike. But something swished overhead. He looked up, startled, as a net dropped around his shoulders. A roar burst from his lips, and he drove the sword into the armpit of a Roman in the second rank; but when he strove to lift his arm the heavy cloth-strips of the net entangled the blade, one of his own men stumbled against him in the confusion and he plunged to his knees. The next moment he was down on the rocks, and the Romans rolled over him. The hobnailed sandals stamped into his flesh, the press of bodies suffocated him. He could feel the life ebbing from him under the cruel battering of human mallets, but he had no sense of resentment, only an amused wonder.
“No steel could touch me! Ho, Norgon, I-”
THE Tribune Paulus Sulpicius looked up from his seat by the camp-fire, and dropped the stylus with which he was scratching his brief report, as the centurion entered the circle of the fire light.
“What success, Valentius?” he asked.
The centurion's armor clashed in the splendid movements of the salute.
“The Numidians escaped. They had too long a start for us. But most of the others we slew.”
“That is well,” said the tribune approvingly. “Your name goes with this to the consul, my Valentius. I am pleased with you. Ha, you have a new sword!”
He pointed to the long, gray blade that shone naked in the centurion's hand. Valentius extended it for inspection.
“I took it from the body of the officer who withstood us so long in the pass, him we overcame with the net you bade us knot out of the strips of our cloaks. It is a fine piece of steel.”
“A soldier's weapon,” agreed the tribune, handling it lovingly. “You have earned it, and if I have my way you shall swing it next at the head of your cohort. He was a gallant enemy, that Carthaginian. His sword should be a lucky one. May it carve you a path to command of a legion!”
The centurion received back the sword.
“We took some prisoners,” he answered. “For information. They say that is a magic sword. Who carries it can not be slain by steel.”
“Such superstition is Punic, my Valentius,” returned the tribune indulgently. “Bethink you, he who carried it last is dead, and how he came by his death matters little. Man lives while the gods indulge him. When they will he dies.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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