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Against Rome |
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Back to section v of this chapter V. Dorix, The Alps, 218 B.C. vi After
ten days on the road, Dorix was already somewhat disenchanted with life in an
army on the march, the excitement of the river crossing having faded away to a
memory. But as the column crawled easterly along the Druna River for day after
day, and as the mountains grew up beside their way, he was nevertheless
determined to stick it out. This was his adventure, and, though home called to
him from far off, he set his chin and marched forward. Had they not been raised
and trained for war? Besides, if they went back now, Father would strap them
near to death. And Mother, well— So,
for thirteen days, as the army marched up the Rhodanus to the Island and then
along the Druna, the boys walked—not happily, but trying to make the best of
it. At least they were now in the greatest army they had ever heard of. Dorix
thought it might be even greater than Alexander’s army a century ago. Already
Dorix knew this was no lark. Every day was an endless passage through a pall of
dust so thick and never-ending that they covered their faces with cloths. They
were strong lads, and for days they shouldered heavy packs and strode along
without a care, but soon they were more tired than they had ever been in their
lives, for they had never carried all their gear and weapons on their backs for
day after day, on foot, always uphill. They began to shed items from their packs
that they felt they could do without—though not food. Like
the rest of the soldiers, they foraged at every stop as well as on the march,
scooping up anything that looked edible: berries, birds, hares. Where there were
farms, the army bought what it could—they were still in Brancus’s territory,
and orders were out not to steal, though many ignored the orders and purloined a
duck here, a clutch of eggs there, a few apples or pears. Borix complained often
of his empty belly and was one of the first to yield to temptation, stealing not
the eggs but the hen. Dorix
was hungry, too, but his was more a hunger for a world that, while just as
Gallic as his childhood world, was nonetheless new territory, and therefore too
exciting for a rumbling belly to matter much. As
the mountains began to loom ahead, and swiftly at that, for theirs was a swift
pace, there was never enough to eat, and food became an obsession with the sixty
thousand marchers. Dorix
worried. How long would crossing the Alps take them? How long would the army’s
supplies last? What could they possibly find to eat in the nearly bare country
they were told lay ahead when they reached the really big mountains—for the
ones they saw now were by no means the big ones. They would cross at least one
smaller mountain range before the Alps themselves even came in sight. The tales
he heard of those mighty peaks both thrilled and alarmed him. Dorix
and Borix were robust young men, young copies of their father, with identical
strong backs, thick arms, and sturdy legs, already, at sixteen, well along in
their warrior’s training, outdoorsmen all their lives, and thus tanned and
hardened. They bore the same pleasant face, with small noses, rather large ears,
merry brown eyes, and wide mouths—all under sheaves of dark red hair worn at
nearly shoulder length. Despite their redheadedness, neither boy sunburned, so
they had no need of hats except in cold weather. And
while there was a nip to the air when they rolled out of their blankets before
dawn each day and shuffled off into the trees to urinate (Versestus had
reprimanded them once for doing it into the river, reminding them that many men
marched behind them and drank from the same river, downstream), they were far
from cold on the march, except when it rained, which was often. They mainly kept
their heavier garments rolled tightly inside their packs. Mostly they bathed in
sweat on the march, which became half-dried mud as the day wore on, with seldom
a chance to plunge their heads into the rapid river for a moment’s icy relief. The
country grew higher and higher. Dorix had seen mountains before, notably the
Cebenna, an extensive massif north of their home. But the peaks of the Cebenna
were no more than two or three thousand feet high. Some of the peaks around them
now looked higher—perhaps five thousand, guessed one of their older
companions, maybe even six—and some of them had caps of snow, it being already
October. The
army had entered foothills after five days and begun marching up a valley
several miles wide in spots, but occasionally much narrower. The Druna River
roiled along on their left, with occasional stretches where the valley narrowed
and climbed more sharply, these strewn with boulders over which cascaded
ice-cold, racing water. The land along the stream was forested at first with
hornbeams, pines, and sacred oaks, gradually changing to mountain maples and
beeches, silver firs, larch, and spruces, but interspersed with large, rapidly
browning meadows, so there was usually enough space beside the river for the
army to shamble along raggedly with little regard for the column’s width.
Hannibal posted outriders to watch for trouble and, except in the narrowest
stretches of the valley where there might be more danger of attack, let the men
set their marching style so long as they kept a good pace. When
they did march thus loosely, elephants often clumped along nearby, spread out
among the great horde, sat by the odd-looking little brown men said to be from
the Indus or black men from Africa. Dorix had heard of Africa, of course, but
any notion of a far land known as India was new to him. The great Alexander, he
was told, had conquered India a hundred years ago. By
now both boys had ventured close enough to touch the beasts, gingerly, then to
pat them on the flanks as their courage grew. The animals ignored these
approaches. Dorix often snapped awake in the night when one of the elephants
bellowed. Occasionally,
mostly lying in their blankets at night, in the few minutes before sleep felled
them like oxen under a hammer, so tired were they, Borix whispered briefly of
home, father, mother, friends. But Dorix’s homesickness could not compete with
his exhaustion, especially on nights following nights when he had guard duty.
Every second of sleep was precious, even on the hard ground, and their tent
resonated with snores, their own accompanied by those of their tentmates, not
that Dorix heard the cacophony. If Borix lay awake thinking of home or of his
mare, Dorix knew nothing about it. The
men they rubbed shoulders with were rough but mostly amiable fellows, most of
them fellow Gauls of one tribe or another (for each of the peoples in
Hannibal’s army mostly fought with their own kind), with here and there a
sprinkling of Africans, Greeks—and especially Iberians from the central
mountains of Spain, who, like most of the others, spoke a tongue unfamiliar to
the boys. It
was these Iberians whose ways most grated on the two very provincial boys. The
twins, especially Borix, bridled at first when the Iberians spoke
incomprehensible words while eyeing the two lads, and sometimes then broke into
laughter. It was not long before the boys’ thin-skinned outrage at being
mocked in this outlandish gibberish, especially Borix’s, led to real trouble. Half
a dozen Iberians were sitting companionably, talking and laughing as they ate
their evening rations of porridge and bread. When
their gazes once again fixed on the twins, it was too much for Borix. He
leapt to his feet, red-faced and snarling, and shouted at the men, urging them
to get up and fight. “Come on!” he shouted in his own tongue. The
Iberians grinned, not missing Borix’s meaning, and shoved one of their
number—the biggest—to his feet. This man stood half a head shorter than
Borix but possessed greater shoulders and massive hands, with a narrow waist,
muscular buttocks, and thick, ropy thighs and calves. The girth of his chest
considerably out-measured Borix’s. He had a placid face, as did Borix, though
neither man appeared stupid. The
men circled one another for a moment, then Borix lunged—the Iberian
sidestepped and Borix nearly fell. “Come
on, Borix!” Dorix shouted. He too had jumped to his feet, ready to back his
brother at need. The
other Iberians were on their feet now, too, cheering their man on. Other men
were coming at the run, always eager to watch a fight. If they were lucky,
someone might be killed. “No
problem,” Borix said. He danced, watching for an opening, caught the Iberian a
hard blow to the ribs. The
Iberian backed away, huffing to catch his breath, then stepped in again,
striking Borix with a well-aimed blow to the head, almost at the temple. Although
his knees wobbled, Borix stayed up, backing slowly away. When
the Iberian came in again, Borix was ready. This time it was he who sidestepped,
catching the Iberian’s forearm as he passed. With a jerk, he upended the
Iberian, who cried out in pain and slammed hard to the ground, face down. Borix
twisted the arm ungently, holding it high above the man’s back, and placed a
big foot, shod in a rough hobnailed boot, on the Iberian’s buttocks, not
lightly. The
Iberian cried out for mercy. “Hurts!” he said in a Gallic roughly familiar
to Borix. “You’ll
do well not to mock us,” Borix said when it became apparent that the man could
understand him after all. He tossed the man’s arm away and stepped back to
watch the Iberian work his way laboriously to his feet again, a big grin on his
bleeding face—a grin for Borix. After
this, the men began to treat the twins more as equals and to speak in the common
patois that Hannibal’s army necessarily developed. The bruised feelings faded,
and the tough Iberian, whose name was Idontus, was friendly enough from then on.
And
so they marched, Borix with a livelier step, perhaps a bit cocky, ever deeper
into mountain country. *
* * “We
should cross here,” said Talus, chief of the cavalry that Brancus had sent
along to escort Hannibal’s army. “And then I must turn back, I’m
afraid.” It was the fourteenth day of October. The
place he indicated appeared to be a good ford, perhaps three feet deep and the
water not overly swift, fifty or sixty feet wide, with wide spaces on both banks
where the men and animals could congregate and reform a column. Hannibal already
knew they would need to be on the other side of the Druna soon. He did not look
forward to the next leg of the march, for it would take them through rugged,
dangerous country. “We’ll
miss you,” Hannibal said. “You really should ride with us a little
farther.” He smiled at Talus, who had been an excellent guide. Talus shrugged
his wide shoulders. “Well,
can’t be helped, I suppose,” the old cavalryman said, his broad, bearded
face mournful. “You’re into bad country tomorrow, but that can’t be helped
either. No good staying on the Druna now. It just takes you up into higher
country, with no good route from its headwaters to the Druentia.” He raised
his bushy eyebrows and shrugged again. Hannibal
recalled Maharbal’s misgivings for the hundredth time. He tried once again. “What’s
so bad about this valley ahead, Talus?” The
old man looked at Hannibal with troubled eyes. Finally, he said: “It’s
a narrow passage through a long gorge. No way around it, and the tribesmen
hereabouts aren’t to be trusted.” This
was more than Hannibal had yet been able to get out of him. “Ambush.
So that’s why you don’t want to come farther—or why Brancus didn’t want
you to.” “Aye.” “Well,
then, no choice but to do it and get it over with,” Hannibal said. He had used
much of his time on the march to improve his fluency in Gallic. “And we have
our friends the Boii from Italy still. They may not know the fine details of
this land, but they have traveled through the Alps before.” Time
weighed heavier on Hannibal every day and he traveled his way uneasy. Already it
was mid-October and he was just beginning his traversal of the Alps, and in
country much farther north than his plans had allowed for. It
wasn’t just Maharbal’s misgivings about the Gauls that troubled him. He
shared those misgivings himself now. For days the army had seen shadowy figures
slipping along the ridges above them. Each time the river valley narrowed, the
men became more fearful of ambush, their eyes constantly scanning the ridges as
they marched, now in better defensive order, staying close to the elephants if
they could, fists clenched around spears and swords, which they now carried
nakedly, expecting attack at any moment. After
they crossed the Druna, hardly breaking stride except for the wagons, it was
only a few miles upriver to a small valley coming down from the northeast, just
as the Druna angled south again. When they halted at the foot of the steep
valley—which, Hannibal saw with some dismay, both climbed and narrowed rather
quickly—Brancus’s Gauls said their farewells, spurred their horses, and
turned for home. Old
Talus waved and called, “That’s the difficult gorge. Good luck.” Hannibal
did not wait for the Gauls to be out of sight before he gave orders to make a
secure camp. From the look of the valley, which, Talus had said, turned into a
veritable gorge, the men would need a good night’s rest. He
slept little that night himself, and when he did sleep, his slumber was full of
menacing dreams, even though he’d posted a larger guard than usual. In
recent days, the shadowy Gauls on the ridgelines had taken fewer pains to
conceal themselves, often stepping out into the open to stand and watch the
column laboring along. A
few small foraging parties had even been ambushed, a few men killed or
kidnapped. Hannibal
was up very early the next morning, anxious to be moving at first light. Next section of V. Dorix, The Alps, 218 B.C. Back to Top
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