From Chapter II, The Man on the Elephant, in which the the Carthaginian army crosses a marsh, and Hannibal has a very bad day.

The second day in the Arno marshes, Sosylos said, “Your brother is very ill.”

Mago was not in the mood to worry about Hannibal’s sore head. He had just seen two of his grooms drown in mud, scarcely five yards from where he had been sitting to eat his morning bread. One of them had fallen asleep by the roadside, and begun sinking into ground that had looked perfectly solid a moment before. The other had thrown him a rope and tried to pull him out, only to tumble in himself. They thrashed for what felt like hours, submerged to the waist, then the chest, then the chin, and then disappeared altogether into the quagmire, with Mago still watching, and wishing he was not.

“He’s fine,” he said. “He says he’s fine.”

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