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He hated the trumpeting of the elephants.

There were dozens of the creatures lined up ahead in the distance, their vast gray bulk visible against the brown of the Libyan hills,

more of them than the Roman soldier had ever seen before in all his years of fighting, in Italy, Sicily, and now Africa.

The battle-hardened Libyans, Iberians, Gauls, and Italians who filled Hannibal's ranks

had been batten up over the past 15 years.

The Numidians, peerless horsemen who can unleash a clutch of javelins and retreat in a cloud

of dust or worse.

But none of them raised that raw fear in the pit of his stomach, the sensation of a fist

squeezing his insides the way the elephants did.

It wasn't totally rational. He knew that.

Fellow Romans and Italians who had served under their new commander in Iberia assured the soldier

that Publius Cornelius Scipio knew how to deal with elephants.

There was a plan, and if anything, they would do more damage to

the Carthaginians waiting across the plane than to the Romans. That sounded reasonable enough

to him, but he couldn't shake the fear. The Roman had been a young man just entering the

prime of life when he mustered into the army before Cannae, fresh off his family farm

outside the city and ready for an adventure. It had instead turned into

a nightmare from which he couldn't wake. The disaster of the battle, the screams of the wounded and dying,

and the heat of that long-ago summer day stayed with him now, nearly every waking moment.

Shamed by their failure, the survivors of Cannae had never been allowed to muster out.

...