It was the first daybreak of summer when Phameas had to give his beloved Bodashtart a farewell kiss and depart for the great march to the west.
Some men, usually the young ones, looked forward to going to war. They would see it as their opportunity to earn glory and wealth for themselves and bring excitement into their lives. Not Phameas. He had already tasted more than his fair share of war under Hannibal, and the foulness of it would never leave his mouth. Especially not the coppery tang of blood, some of it his own as well as that of the enemy. It was not a flavor he wanted to ever experience in his life again.
And yet he had little choice this time. Malchus needed as many able-bodied men from the colony as he could field, which would amount to several thousand in total. Even that would seem a paltry drop in the wine jar compared to the tens of thousands Hannibal had commanded in his campaign against Rome. In all sincerity, Phameas doubted it would be enough to defeat the Shaawanaki in one battle, let alone subjugate their entire nation. But that concern had not deterred Malchus or his grandfather the Sophet in the least.
So, war it was then. Hundreds if not thousands would sacrifice their lives, never to see their friends and families again, all for the greed of a few. A few who had the least to lose from such an undertaking. Such as it always was.
However, before the bloodshed would come the days of drudgery. Every army spent the majority of a campaign not engaged in the lethal thrill of battle, but simply marching to where the enemy awaited. This was to be no different, not least because, like the campaign against Rome, they would have to cross another mountain range.
First, through, they had to go through the thick forest beyond the colony.
So far as Phameas had seen, the only roads on this continent of Atlantis amounted to narrow game trails, since the indigenous Atlanteans had neither wheeled vehicles nor even mountable animals like horses. Nonetheless, as Hannibal himself would say, one had either to find or a way or make one. What Malchus arranged was to have the elephants traveling at the front, knocking over trees and tearing out undergrowth with their iron-sheathed tusks. They made a terrible racket of thrashing and splintering foliage, but at least the beasts got plenty to eat, and they were carving a broader pathway for the rest of the army to follow.
Even so, Phameas could never get used to the humidity of this land. Like all Carthaginians, he was used to the dry and dusty warmth of Africa, but the steamy mugginess of the Atlantean summer made the heat all the more oppressive. There did not go a day where he did not empty over half of his waterskin, pouring more of the water on his sweaty brow than down his gullet—and that was when it did not rain, as it often did in this land. The very worst days were those after the rain had fallen, when Phameas’s sandals clacked on mud while the heat returned to harass him once more.
At least the terrain appeared flat early in the campaign. But even that was not to last. After one month of summer passed, the land began to slope upward, with cliffs and outcroppings of rock scattered between the trees in greater abundance than before. If Phameas had found marching through the lowland forest unpleasant enough, the trek over the undulating foothills made his calves burn even hotter. The further east they went, the more severe the rises and drops in elevation. Every so often, Phameas would hear men scream and horses neigh in terror as they stumbled and fell down steep drops, his blood curdling each time.
As the army advanced up the hills, the forest changed character as well. Down in the low country near the coast, broad-leaved deciduous trees had dominated the flora, but as the altitude rose, these gave way to needle-leafed conifers like pine and fir, similar to those that had girdled the Alps back in Europe. The temperature had also gone down, with chilly breezes licking Phameas’s face and pulling on the edges of his tunic. He should have felt relieved that they had left the stinking hot lowlands behind, but instead he could only recall the brutal cold that had decimated Hannibal’s army years ago.
First, it had been too hot, and soon it would be too cold. Such were the extremes one could face while marching on campaign, and Phameas had little love left for either.