The Emperor's Elefant

Chapter Thirteen

‘the annual Nile flood – a great mystery,’ Abram remarked. The two of us watched a fisherman throwing his net in the mud-laden current. The graceful flare and splash of his net was endlessly fascinating. Standing in a tiny, unstable boat hollowed from a tree trunk, he gathered up the fine mesh hand over hand, swung it inboard, and shook out a silver shower of fingerlings.

‘Why a mystery?’ I asked.

‘The river rises when there is no rain in Egypt. So where does the water come from?’ he answered.

‘Doesn’t your itinerarium provide a clue?’ I asked.

‘The itinerarium only extends so far,’ he replied, pointing upriver with his chin. ‘The source of the river is unknown.’

He had produced the map when we went to the Nomenculator to report what had happened with the aurochs. Paul had pressed us to leave Rome as soon as possible, saying it was for our own safety. He knew of a large party of pilgrims leaving for the Holy Land and he could arrange for us and the animals to accompany them to the port of Brundisium. From there the pilgrims would sail for Jaffa and Jerusalem and we could continue overland to Baghdad. Diffidently, Abram had proposed a quicker route by ship from Brundisium to Alexandria in Egypt, then onward. He unrolled the scroll to show the Nomenculator what he was suggesting.

‘This is Alexandria on the Egyptian coast,’ he had said, pointing to a symbol of a castle. ‘Those lines, like a tangle of green worms, represent the delta of the Nile, each river finding its own way to the sea. And here’ – he had slid his finger to a straight black line that met the most easterly of the rivers – ‘is a canal that links the Nile to the Erythrean Sea. From there one can sail all the way to Baghdad itself.’

The Nomenculator had taken the opportunity to show off his erudition. ‘Herodotus wrote about the canal, if I’m not mistaken. Built by the pharaohs. Emperor Trajan had it dug and cleared when it silted up.’

‘Are you sure that the canal is still usable?’ Paul had given Abram a worried glance. ‘Shifting sand is difficult to keep at bay.’

‘The map has been a reliable guide so far,’ the dragoman had replied reasonably.

Paul had then turned to me. ‘Sigwulf, I think your dragoman is offering good advice.’

‘Then we go through Egypt and use the canal,’ I answered. Months earlier in Aachen, Alcuin had suggested this same route, and indeed our voyage from Italy across the Mediterranean had been uneventful. In Alexandria we had been met by customs officials and taken to an interview with the city governor. His overlord was the caliph and when he heard of the purpose of our journey, he immediately gave his permission for us to proceed. Abram had slipped the port captain a generous bribe for his dockworkers to shift our animals without delay onto two large riverboats that regularly plied the river.

Now, less than six weeks after departing Rome, we were gliding along the braided waterways of the delta heading deeper into Egypt. Watching the fisherman cast his net again, I was confident that I had made the correct choice.

‘That night in the Colosseum, did it involve those Saxons you were so worried about?’ Abram asked.

The abruptness of his question caught me off guard as I kept my suspicions to myself, and I could only answer feebly, ‘How do you reach that conclusion?

‘The knife attack in Kaupang you described to the Nomenculator. Then Protis loses his life in the arena in the Colosseum. You could have been the victim just as easily.’

‘Maybe someone wanted to harm the animals and damage Carolus’s embassy to the caliph, as you had feared,’ I said.

The dragoman tilted his head, squinting through half-closed eyes at the fisherman who was disentangling what looked like a twig from his net. ‘We need to keep alert.’

I was taken aback. ‘Even here? In Egypt?’

He turned to face me. I noticed how much browner he was now, tanned by the Mediterranean sun. He could have passed for an Egyptian himself. ‘Make no mistake. Our arrival in Alexandria was noted.’

‘But we are in the caliph’s territory now. That is security enough.’

He treated me to a sceptical glance. ‘Did you listen to the dock workers in Alexandria, or to the port captain when he spoke with his assistants?’

I failed to see the point of his question so he added, ‘They were speaking Greek. Alexandria may be part of the caliph’s possessions but in their hearts its citizens still think of themselves as Greeks. They were proud members of the Byzantine Empire for centuries and, if asked, they would still serve Byzantine interests.’

He did not have to explain any further. In Aachen, Alcuin had warned me of the hostility of the Greeks when they learned Carolus was sending gifts to their Saracen enemies. To them, the caliph was a foe. I also recalled the Khazar slave traders in Kaupang who would have passed through Byzantium on their way north. They had vanished a few days before I was attacked, and Osric had suspected them as being Greek agents. Unbidden, there sprang into my mind an image of the Greek priest in his dark robes officiating at Protis’s funeral. The largest foreign community in Rome was Greek. They had their own churches, shops and guilds. For every Saxon pilgrim you might encounter in the streets of Rome, you were rubbing shoulders with fifty Greeks. They had the means and resources to organize the events that led to Protis’s death.

‘Protis was a Greek,’ I said. ‘If the Greeks have been trying to prevent our embassy reaching the caliph, we have to remember that Protis lost his life helping us.’

The dragoman was unimpressed. ‘Protis was a Massalian. His Greece was the homeland of ancient heroes. Neither he nor his city had any ties to Byzantium.’

Both of us turned at the sound of a high-pitched cry of delight. It was Walo. He was in the bow of our boat, waving and shouting incoherently. I hurried forward to find out what was the matter.

‘There! There!’ he babbled.

His finger shook as he pointed at the reeds that fringed the river.

I looked in the direction in which he was pointing. The countryside of the delta was so utterly flat that my view was the empty washed-out sky and the thick wall of reeds, taller than a man, on both banks of the river. Wherever there was a small gap in the reeds, it offered only a glimpse of foreshore, a pattern of cracks and fissures where the water level had fallen and the sun had baked the mud into a pale brown crust. I saw nothing unusual.

‘What is it?’ I demanded irritably. I was still trying to come to terms with what Abram had just told me and Walo’s simple-mindedness could at times be exasperating.

‘There! Right down by the water!’

Osric had come forward along the wide deck and joined the two of us. ‘What’s Walo so excited about?’ I asked him.

‘A crocodile.’

Then I saw it. I had mistaken it for a dead tree submerged close to the reeds. A gentle ripple spread out. First a broad snout, the colour of wet bronze, and nostrils appeared, then two protruding eyes. The full size of the beast revealed itself as its armoured back and spine quietly broke the surface followed by the ridge of its long thick tail. I judged the beast to be fifteen feet in length. Beside me, Walo let out a gasp; part delight, part fear. Despite myself, I stepped back a pace, wondering if the animal could swim the short distance and lunge at our vessel. But our Egyptian boatmen appeared untroubled as we glided past the creature and it sank back down, reverting to being a drowned log.

Walo was breathless with excitement. ‘Could you see tears in its eyes?’

‘It was impossible to say,’ I answered.

Walo had pleaded with me on the voyage from Italy to consult the bestiary and to make a list of the animals we could expect to encounter in Egypt and beyond. I had done so, though the book seldom made it clear which country each creature lived in. The crocodile was an exception. The bestiary stated that the crocodile was born in the Nile, and that its skin was so hard that it did not feel the blows of even the heaviest stones. It had fierce teeth and claws and laid its eggs on the land where male and female guarded them, taking turns. It was unique among all beasts in that it could move its upper jawbone.

‘Walo, crocodiles can’t weep,’ observed Osric. Like me, he was not convinced that the information in the bestiary was always accurate. The book claimed that a crocodile shed tears just before and after eating a man, and from then onwards could not cease crying.

‘You saw the creature for yourself,’ said Walo obstinately. ‘It was exactly like its picture.’

‘But the book also says that the crocodile takes to the water only by night. It remains on land by day. So something is not right,’ Osric pointed out.

‘We should ask the boatmen what they know,’ I suggested.

We squeezed our way around the aurochs’ cage, which occupied most of the midships of the boat, and went to where the boat master squatted near the helm. An old man, he was wizened and scrawny, his white hair close cropped to stubble, and dressed in a grubby white gown. I questioned him about the crocodile and its habits, but he found my Saracen difficult to understand, and even when we asked for Abram to help out with interpreting, he still looked puzzled.

‘Show him the picture in the book,’ suggested Walo.

I fetched the bestiary from my luggage. The crocodile was illustrated twice. The first picture showed the beast on a riverbank. From its jaws protruded the naked legs of a man it was swallowing entire. The boat master looked at it with rheumy eyes, and nodded vigorously.

‘You see,’ said Walo triumphantly. ‘The crocodile does eat men.’

My efforts at miming the beast crying tears were not understood so I showed the second illustration. Here the crocodile had an unpleasant-looking creature bursting out sideways from its stomach, through the skin. It was, according to the text, the crocodile’s main enemy, a hydris. It was a water snake that hated the crocodile. If a crocodile lay on the riverbank with its jaws open, the hydris disguised itself as a ball of mud, rolled up to the open mouth and leaped in. From inside the crocodile’s stomach the hydris then ate its way sideways, killing its enemy.

The old man frowned for several minutes at the picture of the hydris, and then shook his head.

‘Why don’t you show him that other Egyptian creature we doubted?’ suggested Osric.

I turned the pages until I found the hyena. Neither Osric nor I believed the animal really existed. The humped shoulders, sloping backbone and ghoulish face were too grotesque. It was shown straddling an open coffin, and gnawing on a human corpse. To my surprise the elderly captain recognized the hyena immediately. He nodded energetically and made a sound like an odd coughing grunt, then smiled at us before spitting a gob of phlegm over the side. He pointed to the writing beneath the picture.

‘He wants to know what’s written there,’ prompted Abram who had come aft to join us. ‘If you read it aloud, I’ll try again to translate what it says.’

With the dragoman interpreting my words, I read out: ‘The hyena’s jaws are so strong that they can break anything with their teeth, then they grind up the morsels in the belly. The hyena is male one year, female the next. It cannot bend its neck, so must turn the whole body to see behind.’

I glanced at the old man to see his reaction. He squatted in the sunshine, arms against his bony knees, expressionless.

‘The hyena can imitate the sound of a human voice,’ I read on, ‘it calls travellers by their names so that as they emerge from their tents, they leap upon them and tear them to pieces.’

‘How would a hyena know my name?’ asked Walo with his usual unanswerable directness.

I ignored the interruption. ‘If it wishes, the hyena’s cry resembles someone being sick. This attracts dogs who are then attacked.’

‘That’s what the old man was doing – imitating the hyena’s cough,’ said Osric. ‘Mind you, if I heard that noise outside my tent at night, I think I’d prefer to stay where I was.’

*

Our travel plans were thrown into utter disarray three days later. Our boats had progressed through the delta, sailing and rowing against the sluggish current by day, tying up at night. The larger animals in our menagerie were bearing up remarkably well despite the increasingly ferocious daytime heat. The crew rigged awnings over their cages to keep off the Egyptian sun, and threw buckets of water over the aurochs and the two bears whenever they seemed to be uncomfortable. The Nile water was tepid, but helped them cool off, and the ice bears had the good sense to spend most of the daylight hours fast asleep in the shade, waking up at night. Walo had clipped the heavy coats of the dogs, and flew the gyrfalcons regularly for their exercise, watched by our boatmen who regarded him with something approaching awe. They took to acting as his lookouts – scanning the banks of the river and drawing his attention to the creatures that he might otherwise have missed. Crocodiles were commonplace. Often half a dozen of the ugly beasts were drawn up, side by side, on the dried mud of the bank, sunning themselves, mouths open. Walo triumphantly pointed out to me that the beasts did indeed move their upper jaws, just as the bestiary had claimed. But we never saw the hydris, the crocodile’s deadly enemy, and it totally slipped my mind that Walo and I had also talked about the hypnalis, the asp that killed Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt.

Had I thought more carefully about the dried and cracked mud of the riverbank I would have avoided the disappointment awaiting us. When we arrived at the junction where the canal met the river, it was to find a sizeable settlement of whitewashed houses and reed-thatched storage sheds. Moored against the riverbank lay a score of boats, empty and idle. The canal itself was dry.

‘If you had got here two months ago, it would have been different,’ the canal superintendent told me, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘The canal is only open when the water level in the Nile is high enough. When the Nile flood recedes, the canal empties out until just a few puddles remain.’

We were seated on cushions on the floor of his office where, at times of high water, the merchants came to pay the tolls that allowed them to use the canal. It was a large, comfortable room, furnished in the local style with low tables and carved chests that contained his ledgers. Slatted shutters over the window openings allowed any breeze to circulate, and the building’s thick mud walls served as a barrier to the heat outside.

‘Right now there are places in the canal where you couldn’t float a child’s toy,’ he went on, shifting his weight on his cushion. He was very corpulent, his thighs bulging under his gown as he sat cross-legged. A thin gold chain almost disappeared into the fleshy folds of his neck.

‘Is there no way of retaining the flood water in the canal?’ It was the sort of question that Protis would have posed. I felt a sudden wrench of sorrow that the young Greek was no longer with us. He would have loved to suggest an ingenious solution to a practical problem.

‘There would be no point,’ said the superintendent. ‘If we sealed the mouth of the canal and trapped the water inside, the summer sun would suck it all up in a matter of weeks or it would seep away through bed of the canal. And there would have to be a system of lifting the cargoes from river level and loading them on canal boats.’

He paused and gave me a calculating look. ‘You are not the first to have arrived here after the canal has shut.’

I waited for him to go on.

The superintendent swatted away a fly circling near his face. ‘If the cargo is urgent, a caravan can be arranged.’

‘A caravan?’ I asked, feigning ignorance though I had been waiting for him to make the suggestion. Abram had learned that the superintendent supplemented his income by privately hiring out the labour force that should have been doing canal maintenance.

‘A road runs alongside the canal almost as far as the eastern marshlands. There it branches off and goes directly to the port at al-Qulzum. The land journey only takes a few days more than if you had gone by water. Regrettably, it involves hiring waggons, draught animals, baggage handlers and guards . . . which, of course, incurs extra expense.’ He paused to allow the last words to sink in.

I decided that, for appearance’s sake, I should haggle. ‘I don’t understand the need for guards. Are the caliph’s governors not charged with ensuring the security of travellers?’

‘The guards are there to protect against wild animals,’ the superintendent answered smoothly. ‘Beyond the marshland the desert is infested with lions.’

‘And hyenas?’ I said, meaning to sound sarcastic.

Unexpectedly he agreed. ‘Of course. Lions and hyenas. They go together and they prey on travellers.’

The superintendent was well aware that I had no choice but to hire a caravan. The canal would not reopen for many months and even if the ice bears survived the long delay, I did not fancy arriving in Baghdad late and with mangy, half-starved animals.

With heartfelt insincerity I told him that I would be most grateful if he would arrange a caravan to transport my menagerie across the desert. He struggled to his feet with an effort and assured me in the same spirit of fraudulent friendship that my well-being and the success of my mission were close to his heart. He would make sure that the caravan would be ready to depart within a week.

Walo was waiting for me outside, shifting from foot to foot with impatience. ‘Can you come at once,’ he blurted out.

Alarmed, I asked, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the animals, is there?’

‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘There’s something you must see.’

His face set in a worried frown, he led me down a side-street of modest whitewashed houses, their wooden doors warped and cracked by the sun. It was mid-morning and there was almost no one about. A few birds like starlings, dark brown with bright yellow bills and legs, flew down to peck at the piles of rubbish. We turned down an alleyway between high blank walls where the outer layer of mud was flaking off in scabby patches, and finally came to the rear of a long, low stable building. From the far side I could hear a medley of strange sounds. The background noise was a moaning and grumbling like a herd of cows in distress. Punctuating this clamour were sudden angry roars and enormous bubbling belches. I could not imagine what creatures would utter such constant complaints. Walo and I walked round the corner of the building and there in front of us was a row of bizarre creatures lined up beside a long water trough. On ungainly legs, they stood taller than a man and had serpent necks. Several of them swung their heads to look at us as we stepped into view, and greeted us with those loud, disagreeable groans.

Walo turned towards me, ‘What are they?’ he asked, obviously perplexed.

‘Camels,’ I told him. I had seen camels pictured in the church mosaics in Rome.

‘But they don’t look like the camel in the book,’ he objected. That was true. The bestiary’s camel had two distinct humps on its back. The creatures in front of us had a single hump covered with unsightly clumps of dark brown fur. They appeared to be moulting.

Walo and I approached closer. The burping and groaning and moaning grew louder and more insistent with each step.

‘They could be the giant offspring of a deer and a cow,’ said Walo. One of the creatures shifted on its great padded feet, lowering its head to inspect us more closely, peering past huge eyelashes. ‘Look! The upper lip is split. It moves in two parts. Like a rabbit.’

He reached up to touch the creature’s mouth.

The camel jerked up its head in alarm, and gave a gurgling grunt from deep within its gut. Its mouth gaped and I caught sight of long yellow teeth and feared it was about to bite. Instead it shook its head violently from side to side, the pendulous lips flapped, and out shot a thick gush of foul-smelling green soup. It splattered over Walo, drenching his head and shoulders. The smell was of rotten grass blended with dog excrement.

*

Twenty of the ungainly beasts laden with bales of fodder and baggage formed our caravan when we took to the road. Only the lead camel had a rider. The rest of us – guards, cooks, attendants, camel drivers, the men leading our dogs on leads, and assorted hangers-on – were on foot. The cages for the ice bears and the aurochs had been fixed onto ponderous wheeled platforms, each drawn by a pair of harnessed camels. A third cart followed with the gyrfalcons in their cages and a great barrel that contained a supply of water for our menagerie.

Our route along the canal bank led across an impoverished land dotted with poor villages where the peasants worked the thin grey soil with mattocks and hoes. Old men sat in the shade of dusty palm trees and veiled women held back their curious children as they peeked from the darkened doorways of mud-brick hovels. The only livestock were flocks of scraggy goats and a few donkeys. All life depended on the spindly wooden structures that, from a distance, I mistook for hangman’s gallows. They were devices for raising water from the canal. A bucket dangled from the end of a long pole pivoted one-fifth along its length from a tall frame. A large stone fastened at the shorter end of the pole served as a counterweight so the bucket could be lifted and lowered with ease. The bucket scooped water, was swung over the bank, and the contents were tipped into a drinking trough for animals or into an irrigation ditch. I found myself wishing that Protis was still with us and could see for himself the ingenuity of this device. Where enough water remained in the bed of the canal, our camels were driven down to stand in the shallow puddles. Walo looked on from a safe distance as they noisily slaked their thirst. According to what I had read to him from the bestiary, a camel prefers muddy water, so it stirs up the silt with its feet before drinking. Our camels failed to do this and I could only presume from the look of mistrust on Walo’s face that he doubted whether they were true camels. His faith in the Book of Beasts was unshakeable.

‘If it gets any hotter, Madi and Modi may not survive,’ I observed to Abram on the evening we camped on the fringe of the marshlands where the boggy ground was too soft even for pack animals. Here the road turned aside, striking into the wilderness.

‘There should be enough water in the great barrel to sluice them down if they begin to show signs of distress, and one of my own men will stand guard over the water cart at night,’ Abram said quietly.

The edge to his voice made me look at him sharply. ‘You still think that someone might try to sabotage the embassy?’ I asked. It had been on my mind too, but the dragoman’s decision-making had been so astute thus far, I knew I should heed his advice.

‘Draining the water tank would be a good way of doing it once we’ve entered the desert. It would be no harm to take precautions.’

Abram’s concerns weighed on me and that first night I found it difficult to sleep. He had replaced all the camp equipment lost at sea when Protis’s ship sank and Osric and I were sharing a small tent. While my friend slept soundly I tossed and turned, swatting away the humming insects, listening for suspicious noises, remembering the sounds that had awakened me on the night Protis had died. Shortly before midnight I got up and went to check on the water barrel, finding one of Abram’s servants on guard and also wide awake. Relieved, I returned to my tent and when finally I did fall asleep, it was to drift off into a troubled dream: I was aboard a ship sailing, not on the sea, but across the land. I had to steer around rocks and trees, down the streets of towns and up the slopes of hills. It left me with a queasy feeling and when I opened my eyes I had a nagging headache and it was daybreak. Judging by the volume of camel grunting and bellowing, the beasts were already being loaded for the day’s march.

Osric was already awake, kneeling to roll up his sleeping mat.

‘Do you remember if the Oneirokritikon says anything about ships sailing on the land?’ I asked him.

He sat back on his heels and waited for me to explain.

I described my dream to him. From outside came shouts and oaths, then the sounds of a stick being used vigorously. Someone was getting the cart-hauling camels under way.

‘There’s a straightforward explanation,’ he said. ‘You were expecting to cross Egypt along a canal by boat. Instead, we are obliged to go by land. That’s a more difficult journey.’

He reached for the walking staff that lay on the ground beside him. It helped offset the limp from his crooked leg while we were on the march. ‘But, since you ask, there was a mention in the Book of Dreams about a ship sailing across the land.’

‘What does it say?’

‘That to dream of sailing a ship across the land, while avoiding rocks and obstacles, foretells a journey beset with many difficulties and dangers.’ He got to his feet and gently poked me in the ribs with the end of the staff. ‘As far as I’m concerned, that’s no prophecy. It’s something we already know. You had better get up now or the caravan will move on without you.’

Later that morning, we found ourselves venturing out into a dun-coloured stony plain. There was no soil, just scoured rock and the occasional patch of sand or gravel. We walked deeper into the barren land, the wheels of the travelling cages crunching on the broken stones of the rough track. The sun was merciless, the bare rock throwing back the heat, and it felt as if we were walking into a gigantic oven. The only plants were weed, thickets of thorn bushes and a few stunted trees with twisted leafless limbs. Every couple of miles we paused to draw off buckets of water from the water cart so that our animals could drink. The water that remained in the buckets was thrown over them to try to cool them off. But it was no more than a gesture. Soon the ice bears were panting and their fur was a lifeless yellow.

‘How many days will we be in the desert?’ I asked Abram after the caravan halted for the night. The camels had been unloaded and hobbled in a tight group, their packs stacked to make an open square around them. Their drivers were lighting fires of thorn twigs. Under a clear sky it was going to be chilly.

‘The guide says we should reach the sea at the port of al-Qulzum in four days’ time,’ the dragoman replied. He looked past me, over my shoulder. ‘It looks as if Walo has found something.’

I turned to see Walo walking towards us, carefully holding something cupped between his hands. When he was no more than two yards away, he announced proudly, ‘It’s a baby.’

I looked to see what he was carrying so tenderly, then sprang back in fright. Cradled in Walo’s hands was a small serpent. The length of my forearm, it had a thick body with dusty brown scales and dark markings. The head was broad and flat.

‘It’s a young one,’ Walo repeated, holding up the snake so I could see it more closely. The hair rose on the back of my neck and I backed away.

‘A young what?’ I asked. I had broken into a cold sweat. I hate snakes.

‘A young cerastes. The parents can’t be far away.’

My mind raced as I tried to follow what Walo was talking about. I had an uncomfortable feeling that the serpent was venomous. Yet in Walo’s hands it appeared completely at ease, not moving, though I could see its black tongue flicking in and out.

‘Look at its head, above the eyes,’ Walo urged, holding it up closer. It was as much as I could do to stifle a groan of fear as I swayed back out of range.

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.’

‘Do they have any idea where he might be now?’

‘The camel drivers think that he will have gone ahead. The road is easy enough to follow and we’re little more than a day’s journey from al-Qulzum. My guess is that he slipped away in the night before he was questioned.’

‘As soon as we get to al-Qulzum we’ll track him down and find out who he’s working for,’ I said grimly.

As it turned out, the interrogation was not possible. We resumed our march and not long after the halt for midday prayers there was a shout from the head of the column. A cloak had been spotted on the ground a few yards off to the side of the track. Someone ran to investigate and found the garment was bloodstained and torn. Another shout came from a man pointing towards a clump of thorn bushes some fifty paces away. Five or six hyenas could be seen trotting off into the desert, their loping strides unmistakable. The caravan halted and after a hasty conference between the camel drivers, a group of half a dozen men, armed with spears, headed cautiously towards the bushes.

Abram and I made our way to where the leader of the caravan was surrounded by several camel drivers. They were passing the torn cloak from hand to hand, talking among themselves in local dialect.

‘They are fairly sure that it belongs to the man who ran away,’ Abram translated for me.

Streaks of dry blood on the dusty ground were signs of a struggle. A line of scuffmarks led towards the distant thorn bushes.

‘I’d say the lions got him as well, poor wretch,’ said Abram. ‘Then the aurochs came along and offered a better meal and they abandoned the corpse and went after larger prey.’

An empty water skin lay among the stones close to where the cloak had been found. A few paces farther on was a cheap cloth satchel with a shoulder strap.

I picked up the satchel and looked inside. It contained half a flat loaf of bread, a lump of mouldy cheese and a handful of dates. More than enough to sustain a man for a day’s walk to al-Qulzum. I took out the food, set it aside on a flat rock, and checked the satchel again. There was nothing that might give a clue as to the identity of the owner; no money, no document. I put my hand inside and felt around. A cloth divide separated the interior, and my fingernail snagged on something lodged in a seam. I picked it out and held it up to show Abram. ‘Do you know what this is?’

He glanced at it. ‘The shell from a cardamom seed.’

‘Cardamom?’

‘A spice, from India. It’s used for flavouring food.’

I flicked the shell away casually, held the bag upside down, and shook it. Nothing fell out.

There was a sudden buzz of excitement from the men examining the bloodstained cloak and we hurried over to see what was causing the fuss. One of the camel drivers was holding out his hand. On the grimy palm were four gold coins.

‘He found them sewn into the hem of the cloak,’ said Abram, listening to their excited chatter.

‘Advance payment for setting loose our animals,’ I said bitterly. ‘Ask if we can take a closer look.’

Abram spoke to the caravan leader and one by one the coins were handed to him so that he could examine them, watched suspiciously by the camel men.

‘Can you learn anything from them?’ I asked the dragoman.

He shrugged. ‘Not really. They’re the caliph’s coinage, local money – and more than a humble camel driver could earn in a year.’

He gave the coins back and we accompanied the group to the thorn bushes to see what they had found. It was a man’s body, part eaten by wild animals. Flies were already gathering on the mangled flesh. There was little to glean about him except that he had been of slight build, with delicate hands and feet, and probably in his early thirties. Except for his sandals and a torn undershirt, nothing survived of his clothing. What he had looked like when alive was difficult to imagine. The hyenas had chewed off most of his face.