‘You’re very sweet, but don’t be fooled: we’re nothing to these imposing fascist bastards. Let’s move on, otherwise we’ll be in the papers next spring when some unfortunate anti-social shepherd whistling a folk tune, wearing thick socks and knickerbockers, knapsack slung over his shoulder stuffed with hard bread, mouldy cheese and cheap red wine, comes across a defrosting, decomposing black hand sticking out of the snow.’

‘Don’t be so morbid,’ I said, chortling, as we got into the car. ‘Let’s go further up.’

I’d acquired new leverage since my return. So.

We set off for the top, Jessie muttering almost inaudibly under her breath.

Somewhere in the distance, another avalanche was being exploded.

Dusk began to settle around us surprisingly quickly.

The setting sun turned white peaks aflame with crimson.

The ascent was exhilarating: the whole world dropped away at our feet as we headed into the new unknown.

Then I began to see movement, here and there. Indiscernible objects that almost took shape before they disappeared, then reappeared as, surely not, elephants! Laden with packages? When I peered more closely, they became translucent and faded away. Suddenly huge rocks were being thrown in front of us. Or were they people hurtling to their deaths? An alpine wind sounded like a falling man’s reverberating cry. Behind us, the march of heavy feet. Or was it the engine’s rumble as we staggered up ever steeper inclines? Down in a ravine, fires were burning like little candles in the growing darkness.

I cast a sideways glance at Jessie. She was concentrating on the increasingly precipitous winding road.

Rounding a bend, I saw a band of soldiers: short men, African men, burdened with baggage, carrying shields, swords, javelins strung across their backs. They were weary. They wore crude leather boots and the ragged pelts of skinned animals. They were gone.

Inside my head was a voice that bristled with a gruff, no-nonsense machismo.

Never seen snow or mountains,

scorching white or burning cold.

Never seen the scale of them,

how man’s bones could fill with ice,

then, frozen numb, snap off

like brittle branches, one by one.

I was born Hannibal of Carthage,

son of Hamilcar ‘The Lightning’ Barca,

250 years before your Jesus Christ.

And it was my life’s duty to honour

my dad’s intent to take the army of Rome,

who patrolled the Mediterranean

with their flash ships and falsetto sailors

as if they owned the very sun itself,

the sun that turned my Carthaginian Sea

into sheets of glinting, hammered brass.

But the Alps were not the desert

or the forests steaming with humidity

and teeming with wildlife that me

and my soldiers knew so well.

To cross it with an army was to come up

against a ruthless triumvirate:

Emperor’s Mountain, Snow and Ice

And their ever-faithful ally General Cold.

Need I tell you, Mr Second-in-Command,

no one had effing done it before.