Читать книгу Hannibal - Ross Leckie - Страница 6

I am old now, and the time of my people is past. No more will the lineage of Barca fight the Romans whom we hate. The Paradise of Mithra holds all those that I have loved, souls whom the River of Ordeal could not scald. Soon I shall join them.

The ravens and the vultures gather over Carthage. I see its doom. Our ships have long been sunk or captured. Their oars of the oaks of Bashan and the Ashurites are broken, sound no more. My army is dispersed. I am far away.

I sit now naked from the heat in a borrowed room in a foreign land alone. They sent for me. I would not go. Soon they will come. They have thought it too hard, too hazardous a task to wait for the death of an old man.

My body stiffens. My wounds throb. I am as an old and wizened oak tree in a field, against which cattle have rubbed too long. Yet shall I tell my story, and be done. I see my body and its many, many scars. All are in front. The Romans shall not have me.