Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant (32 page)

Now I understood what Walo was talking about. Above each eye of the little serpent projected a short spine like a tiny horn. There sprang into my mind the picture of the cerastes in the Book of
Beasts. It was a serpent with a horn above each eye and, as I recollected, a body that had no spine so that it could tie itself in knots. As if to confirm my thoughts, the serpent slithered and
twisted in Walo’s cupped hands, rearranging its coils into tight loops.

‘It was hiding in the sand, just as the book says,’ stated Walo proudly. ‘The horns were standing up, attracting the birds so it could ambush them.’

‘I suggest you return it to where you found it,’ I croaked, ‘its parent might come looking for it, and that could be fatal.’

Casually, Walo lowered one hand and poured the snake from one cupped palm to the other, like a length of scaly rope.

One of the camel handlers was walking past. He took one look at the serpent and let out a yell of alarm, then took to his heels.

Abram came to my rescue. ‘Walo, the cerastes’ parents will be distressed if they find their baby missing.’

Reluctantly, Walo bent down and placed the serpent gently on the ground. There was a writhing motion and, before my eyes, the serpent began to move away sideways, propelling itself in a series
of ripples. When it reached a patch of soft sand, it paused then, with a sinuous swimming motion, pushed up the sand around itself until it had disappeared. Only when I looked closely and very
cautiously could I still see the sinister flat head just above the surface and the two protruding horns. I promised myself that whenever we camped, I would borrow Osric’s walking staff and
poke every suspicious mark in the ground.

That same night we heard our first lions. Their deep, hoarse roars sent shivers down my spine. They began at a distance, then came closer and closer and, finally, from several directions as the
beasts prowled around our camp. The sounds were unmistakable, several long roars followed by shorter coughing grunts gradually fading away to nothing as though their lungs were empty. Creeping to
the flap of our small tent I looked out and saw bright flames leaping higher from the campfires as the night watchmen threw on more dry twigs. The light cast flickering shadows on our animal cages.
The aurochs was standing up, motionless, a hulking dark shadow behind the bars. I detected no movement from where Walo had chosen to sleep on the ground beneath the ice bears’ cage, the dogs
tied beside him. To my right and at the outer edge of the firelight, several pairs of animal eyes shone in the darkness. For a chilling moment I feared that our dogs had got free. I plucked up my
courage and was about to crawl out of the tent and retrieve them when a branch on the fire flared up. The sudden strengthening of the light revealed the shapes of three or four wild animals. They
had the shape of large dogs but oddly distorted. By the time I had recognized the coarse heads and over-size shoulders and the sloping loins, the creatures had wheeled about and darted away. Some
time later I heard a new sound from the darkness, a chorus that was part howl, part laugh, and knew that I had seen hyenas.

The boldness of the lions was troubling. The following day, and the day after that, several of the tawny creatures kept pace with us, not far off. They were usually in twos and threes and made
no attempt to conceal themselves. Our camel drivers took precautions. Men armed with spears and bows walked on each side of our column, and we stopped well before sunset so that there was time to
cut thorn bushes and construct a barricade around the hollow square inside which they hobbled the camels. The bonfires they built were much larger than before, and they kept them burning brightly
throughout the dark hours. On both nights, without fail, we heard the deep, coughing roars of the lions, followed by answering manic cries from the hyenas.

‘They’re laughing at us,’ observed Osric. Our little group was sitting close to one of the bonfires as we began a third night in the desert. The calls of the wild beasts had
started earlier than usual, even before it was fully dark. This night the hyena pack was leading the chorus.

‘They’re laughing at the lions, not at us,’ corrected Walo. He showed no signs of alarm even though I had reminded him of the bestiary’s warning about the creatures.

‘Why would they want to mock the lions?’ Osric enquired.

‘Because they hope to shame the lions into action.’

Osric threw me a quick sideways glance. He was always careful not to make Walo feel as though he was being teased. ‘I thought lions were meant to be courageous,’ he said.

‘The hyenas think the lions are foolish to be scared of the noise of our waggon wheels,’ said Walo firmly. I realized he was reciting what I had read out to him months earlier from
the bestiary: that lions fear the noise of waggon wheels and the sound of a white cock crowing.

Abram spoke up from the other side of the fire. ‘And why aren’t the hyenas fearful too?’

Walo was in no doubt. ‘They are very hungry and must be fed. They want the lions to kill one of us so that after we bury the body, they can dig up the grave and eat his flesh.’

At that moment a great hoarse roar shook the air, louder than anything we had heard before. It came from somewhere in the darkness to our left, beyond the three waggons drawn up in a line as
part of the barricade surrounding our camp.

‘What do you think, Sigwulf? Are the hyenas encouraging the lions to attack us?’ said Abram turning in my direction.

‘It’s possible,’ I answered. ‘Every night I’ve seen the eyes of three or four hyenas shining in the darkness, close to the camp. They’ve been watching us, and
waiting.’

‘Nasty-looking beasts,’ agreed Osric. ‘I’ll be glad when we get to al-Qulzum.’

‘The hyenas are patient because they know something will happen,’ said Walo softly.

I heard Abram suck in his breath, a derisive sound, and was reminded how he had teased Protis for his belief in the Minotaur.

‘Walo may be right,’ I intervened. ‘Maybe the hyenas do know what will happen. The Book of Beasts says that in the eye of a hyena there’s a stone. If a man puts that
stone beneath his tongue, he will be able to see into the future.’

‘Can’t be a pleasant taste, I’m sure,’ said Abram with a yawn. ‘I’m going to turn in.’

He got to his feet and went off to the tent he shared with his three Radhanite assistants. Walo, Osric and I stayed by the fire a little while longer, and when Walo left to make a final check on
the ice bears, Osric and I retired to our small tent.

As Osric was taking off his heavy sandals, he suddenly turned to me. ‘If the Oneirokritikon can help us interpret our dreams, maybe the stone from a hyena’s eye really can help man
look into the future.’

I was too tired to think of a sensible reply and, for the first time since we entered the desert, I found that I could shut out the noises of the wild beasts, and fell asleep almost at once.

*

‘The aurochs has escaped!’ The blunt announcement brought me sharply awake. I sat up, reaching for the cloak I had been using as a blanket. There was just enough
light to make out Abram’s head and shoulders thrust in through the tent flap. I guessed it was just before sunrise, that quiet, still hour when the world seems to be waiting silently for the
dawn of the new day. In the background I could hear the bubbling and groaning of the camels. But there were no lion roars.

‘When did it happen?’ I croaked. My lips were cracked and dry.

Abram dropped his voice, now that he had roused me. ‘Less than ten minutes ago. My man guarding the water tank heard the creature jump down from the cage. He came straight to me and raised
the alarm.’

‘Where’s the aurochs now?’ I asked, rolling off my sleeping mat and hurriedly pulling on my boots. I did not even pause to give them a shake in case some crawling creature had
occupied them during the night.

‘He says it ran off into the desert.’

‘Thank God it didn’t decide to go into the camp,’ I said. I didn’t want to imagine the havoc had the beast attacked the camels or gored the men.

I crawled out of the tent and together Abram and I headed at a fast walk towards the three waggons, dimly outlined against the sky where a sliver of moon hung close to the horizon. The bonfires
were still alight, but had been allowed to die down. Firewood was scarce.

‘My man guarding the water tank thinks he saw someone near the cages, about an hour ago, but he couldn’t be sure,’ said the dragoman.

‘What about the caravan watchmen?’

‘I haven’t asked them. I wanted to report to you first.’

We reached the aurochs’ cage. The door was hanging half open. There was enough moonlight to cast faint shadows in the marks made in the sand by the animal’s great hooves as it jumped
down from the waggon. I clambered up and checked the hinges of the gate. They were undamaged. Normally the door was held shut by two heavy wooden bars, thicker than my wrist. They fitted into deep
slots on either side of the frame. Both bars had been removed and placed to one side. I ducked inside the cage itself. There was a half-full fodder net, a bucket of water, and several piles of
pungent aurochs dung. The aurochs had not broken out. It had been set free deliberately.

Abram’s assistants were standing beside the waggon as I jumped back down to the ground. ‘Are the ice bears safe in their cage?’ I asked them.

‘They were, just a moment ago,’ answered one of the men. ‘I woke Walo and he’s gone to make sure that no one has interfered with the gyrfalcons.’

‘The dogs?’

‘All present and unharmed.’

So it seemed that only the aurochs had been targeted by the mysterious attacker. A figure loomed up. It was Walo.

‘Everything all right with the gyrfalcons?’ I asked him.

He nodded.

I became aware of an increase of noise from the hobbled camels, a hacking cough as someone cleared his throat, then spat, a stirring among the shapes of camel drivers sleeping on ground bundled
in their cloaks. The camp was waking.

‘We must track down the aurochs as soon as there’s enough daylight. It should be easy enough to follow.’

‘And when we find it, how do we recapture it?’ asked Abram.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, suddenly despondent. After my first, active response to the crisis I was beginning to succumb to an overpowering weariness as I grasped the extent of
the setback. ‘We’ll think of something. Right now we must pack our gear as usual and be ready to move. The caravan can’t linger or Modi and Madi will melt.’

It took another hour for the caravan to get under way. First came the morning prayer, then the camels were given their ration of fodder and the men sat down in small groups to breakfast on flat
bread and a handful of dates washed down with a few gulps of water. By the time the camels had their packsaddles and loads securely in place or had been harnessed to the waggons, the tracks left by
the aurochs were easy to see. It had walked straight into the desert.

Leaving Osric in charge of our remaining animals, Abram, Walo and I set off in pursuit. We had gone no more than a mile and were still within plain view of the caravan behind us when we topped a
small rise in the ground and came to a sudden halt. We were looking down into a shallow depression in the desert’s surface. The floor of the depression was a flat expanse of gravel dotted
with small boulders. Stretched out on the gravel lay the body of the dead aurochs, the head and long horns twisted at an unnatural angle. Crouched on their bellies and feeding on the corpse were
five lions. They were tearing and ripping at the flesh, their heads half buried in the entrails. One of the lions noticed our arrival. It raised its head and stared at us with its great, yellow
eyes. We were close enough to see the jaws smeared with fresh blood.

For a long moment we froze, too shocked to move. Then, very slowly and cautiously we backed away, down the slope and out of sight of the great beasts.

My voice was unsteady as I whispered, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We must get back to the caravan.’

‘What about the horns?’ asked Walo.

I was so dumbfounded that I just stared at him.

‘For the king,’ said Walo. Only then did I remember the great silver-mounted aurochs’ horn in Alcuin’s room on the day when he had told me that I had an audience with
Carolus. That time seemed impossibly far away.

‘No, Walo. It’s too dangerous,’ I said. It would have been the duty of Vulfard, Walo’s father, to present the horns of any large game animals to the king.

‘If we wait until the lions have stopped feeding—’ Walo began.

‘No!’ I hissed, angry now. I took a grip on his elbow in case he tried to get past me. ‘We leave the aurochs where it is.’

We trudged our way back to the caravan, with frequent glances behind us to make sure no lion was following. In a strange way I was feeling relieved. From the moment I had first laid eyes on the
aurochs in the forest I had disliked and feared the brute. It was a danger to anyone who approached it, even to give it food or water. Always angry and malevolent, it had killed both Vulfard and
Protis. If the opportunity arose, it would kill again. Perhaps it was fanciful of me to think in such terms, but I detected something deeply wicked about it. Of course I regretted all the months of
wasted effort it had taken to bring the beast so far, only for it to be torn to pieces in the desert. Yet I was thankful that it was the aurochs that had died, not the ice bears. I resolved that
there was no point in brooding over the fate of the aurochs. What mattered now was bringing Madi and Modi and the other animals safely to Baghdad.

For that, I needed to find out who had set the aurochs free.

The answer was presented to me as soon as we caught up with the caravan. Osric had been making enquiries among the camel drivers.

‘A man is missing. He disappeared from the camp during the night.’

I felt a surge of excitement. ‘Does anyone know anything about him? Where he comes from?’

‘Apparently he joined at the start of the caravan, offering to work as a general assistant for almost no pay. The other camel men were puzzled. He wasn’t very good at his job. They
say he behaved more like a town dweller than someone who had worked with the caravans. He got himself bitten by a camel.’