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Yet the thought of going on alone was enough to still Vendorix’s tongue. This was not much like his other recent travels. The two men were traveling in unfamiliar country and might need to rely on each other to make it through. He knew he was barely thinking straight through his cloud of anxiety over the boys, so it would help to have another pair of eyes, another set of ears, another mind.

The two men had traveled quickly east towards the Rhodanus, following the wide swath of destruction left by an army of some sixty thousand men and their animals. An army on the move—one as big as this—ate out the countryside across an advancing front several miles wide. The ground was stirred to mud, dust covered every log and every leaf that was left, and the landscape was absent of cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, cats, grain, fruit, burnable wood, and anything else edible or stealable.

Obviously many of Vendorix’s neighbors to the east had lacked his foresight and preparation. Here and there they came upon burned buildings and human bodies, mostly Gauls—those with the anger and temerity to oppose Hannibal’s passage. His dogs sniffed the bodies curiously. Geta looked mournful.

“Artio! Belenus! Come!” Vendorix shouted at such times. They rode on, the big white shepherds obediently following, but still veering off every few minutes to inspect something new.

Vendorix’s own lands were a mess, certainly, but it could have been far worse, as he now saw with his own eyes, traveling through country he had traversed only half a month ago when he’d gone to warn the Romans. The country had been whole then. Now they saw few living people.

Damn Hannibal!

In the vast mire left by the army’s passage, Vendorix had little hope of picking out the tracks of his sons’ horses, even with the aid of his dogs, as Geta helpfully reminded him. The only thing he could do was follow Hannibal’s path of destruction, in his agony of fear both hoping and not hoping that his boys had gone that way, too.

But now they had reached the river—to Geta an insurmountable obstacle.

The river was indeed wide here, but Vendorix had crossed it to the south before and knew that if it could be crossed there, it could be crossed at many other places, too. Still, no point in arguing with Geta; he’d already tried that enough over the years to know what little good it did. And he did appreciate Geta’s coming with him, though he rode much of the time with his teeth gritted.

Sure enough, after riding only a couple of hours north along the forested bank, for the first time in days not following a path of destruction, they encountered a bent old man with a sturdy boat and sturdy arms.

“Can’t take your horses,” the old man said. He had one droopy eye and one cauliflower ear, and perhaps three hairs on his wrinkled head.

“Then we’ll go on until we find a boatman who can,” Vendorix said, tightening the drawstring of his purse again.

“Well,” the old man allowed, “you could do what Hannibal did. It’ll cost you, though.”

Vendorix looked sharply at the man.

“You ferried Hannibal’s men?” he asked.

“Me and many more,” the old man said.

“When?”

“Four days ago.”

“Well, how did you get his horses across? He has thousands of them. And what about his elephants?”

So it was that they learned the story of Hannibal’s crossing—tethering the horses behind boats, and ferrying the elephants and wagons on rafts. What they did not learn from the old man was that Hannibal was probably no more than ten or fifteen miles east of them at this very minute, on his way north, having brought the last of his elephants across the river that morning.

It was not long before they had crossed over themselves, one at a time because of the number of their animals, their saddle horses and pack mules swimming gamely behind, although with miserable looks of protest.

The boatman insisted the dogs be physically restrained. Artio, the female, looked bewildered as Vendorix tightly gripped a shock of thick white hair at the back of her neck. When they landed on the far side, Artio leapt out and begin to sniff everything nearby, while the horses and mules clambered up the bank and shook, spraying Vendorix and the boatman with cool river water.

The boatman cursed, but returned to pick up Geta and the other animals. Belenus, a huskier male version of Artio, looked cowed in Geta’s grip. Geta’s only remark as he seated himself gingerly in the boat was, “This thing looks ready to sink,” which Vendorix heard plainly across the still river. When Geta joined Vendorix, the dogs reunited joyfully, as if they’d been parted for months.

They were resting the horses before reloading them when a party of mounted Cavares approached. Vendorix and Geta looked up at them blandly, not expecting trouble from these distant Gallic kinsmen. The dogs barked wildly and bared their teeth at the mounted men until Vendorix hushed them.

Vendorix spoke first.

“We’re seeking Hannibal,” he said.

The men started at the name. When Vendorix tried to explain further, one of them told him to shut up.

Just then another man, unusually fat for a Gallic warrior but obviously their leader, rode up to join them.

“Rosta,” said the man who’d hushed Vendorix. “He says they seek Hannibal.”

“Hannibal?” Rosta spat viciously.

And before Vendorix could explain, Rosta had motioned for his troopers to take Vendorix and Geta into custody, then pointed at their gear and told them to put it on their mounts. All attempts to clarify the situation were met with grunts and hard shoves, so Vendorix shut up for the time being. No use antagonizing them, although he was filled with alarm as he cinched the load on his pack mule.

“No good will come of this,” Geta said.

When the horses had been saddled and the mules repacked, Rosta and his five Cavari warriors led them down the bank a short distance, then took a narrow track through the screen of white willow and osier. Vendorix commanded his dogs to follow, and the Cavares merely shrugged and permitted it.

In half an hour, they emerged into a large clearing around a small hill. Surmounting the hill was a strong stone oppidum, and the clearing was filled with many more houses than at Vendorix’s oppidum. This was a good-sized town. Smoke rose from some of the houses, and the village clattered with familiar sounds.

As they rode down the street towards the fort on the hill, people stared, catching at their children, and village dogs came out to snarl at Vendorix’s dogs, who growled and snapped back. It took sharp commands from both sides to settle the dogs down.

Vendorix took in the inhabitants, noticing, for one thing, that many bore obvious signs of a recent fight: bandages, crutches, splints. These men had probably tangled with Hannibal, unless Vendorix missed his guess, which might explain some of their suspicious, even hostile attitudes.

Their captors took them straight up to the fort, where they were admitted at the gate, told to dismount, and parted from their animals, the dogs now led away barking and growling on tight leashes of sturdy rope.

Silently, Vendorix and Geta followed their captors into the strong stone building, where two clearly high-ranking Cavares rose to their feet, staring.

“Mares, we found these by the river. They say they’re seeking Hannibal,” Rosta said.

“Why?” asked one of the Cavares, apparently called Mares, a well-groomed man with a blue scarf not much different from Vendorix’s own bright green one. He directed his hostile gaze at Vendorix and Geta.

“When Hannibal passed our oppidum, my sons ran off to join him,” Vendorix said. “They’re only sixteen.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mares said. He studied Vendorix’s face closely.

“Believe what you like. It’s true. The silly fools wanted a great adventure.”

“Well, maybe they got one. But you two are another matter. We’ll have to see about you. If what you say is true, that’s one thing. If you are Hannibal’s scouts, that’s another.”

With that, the Cavares unceremoniously shoved Vendorix and Geta into a small, dark room behind a bolted door. Why couldn’t it have been two rooms? But Vendorix instantly regretted the uncharitable thought.

Days passed. Ten days, if Vendorix had not lost count.

Vendorix paced the floor, banged on the door, shouted for the guards. The guards brought them food only once a day, in the morning: cold porridge and stale bread, not much of it, and warm, unpleasant-smelling water that tasted like failure. Their night soils were seldom removed, so the place soon stank, and of course there were flies and other insects. They thought they heard rats rustling as well.

Each time the guards came, Vendorix badgered them with questions—but got only silence or curses in return. When would they be released? Why were they being held? Why wasn’t he believed? He needed to talk to Mares—or Mares’s superior. Every day put more distance between him and his sons, and he was sick with worry.

“They’ll kill us soon,” Geta said every couple of hours for ten long days.

Next section of V. Dorix, The Alps, 218 B.C.