The scent of pine needle fires, offered up to Tanit, was rising straight up to the stars, still visible through the forest’s canopy. In the wake of Annibal’s elephants, coated with white ochre, cold bluish patches of vapor and smoke came floating up from the embers extinguished by the fresh-fallen snow. The army crossed the last mountain pass in silence, in the icy and shimmering mountain dawn, shields and caparisons aglow from the silver rays of the early morn.