From the Heart of Darkness

by David Drake

  As the rest of the Sarmatians dismounted and began to jostle them around the long tent, Dama whispered, “This isn’t working. If it gets too tight, break for the tent. You know about my bow?”

  Vettius nodded, but his mind was chilled by a foretaste of death.

  * * *

  As the prisoner had said, eleven long trenches bristled outward from the wall of Hydaspes’ tent. Each was shallow but too extensive for the wizard to have dug it in the frozen ground in one night. Dama disliked the way the surface slumped over the ditches, as if enormous corpses had clawed their way out of their graves …

  Which was what the wizard seemed to claim had happened.

  The guards positioned the two Romans at the center of the back wall of the tent where laces indicated another entrance. Later comers crowded about anxiously, held back in a rough circle by officers with drawn swords. Twenty feet to either side of the Romans stretched the straight walls of the tent paralleled by a single row of warriors. From the basalt posts at either corner curved the rest of the tribe in milling excitement, warriors in front and women and children squirming as close as they could get before being elbowed back.

  The Sarmatians were still pushing for position when Hydaspes entered the cleared space, grinning ironically at Vettius and Dama as he stepped between them. A guard laced the tent back up. In the wizard’s left hand was a stoppered copper flask; his right gripped a small packet of supple cowhide.

  “The life!” Hydaspes shouted to the goggle-eyed throng, waving the flask above his head from the center of the circle. He set the vessel down on the dirt and carefully unrolled the leather wrappings from the other objects.

  “And the seed!” the wizard cried at last. In his palm lay a pair of teeth. They were a dull, stony gray without any of the sheen of ivory. One was a molar, human but inhumanly large. The other tooth, even less credible, seemed to be a canine fully four inches long. With one tooth in either hand, Hydaspes goat-footed about the flask in an impromptu dance of triumph.

  His monkey rider clacked its teeth in glee.

  The wizard stopped abruptly and faced the Romans. “Oh, yes. The seed. I got them, all thirteen teeth, from the Chinese—the people who sell you your silk, merchant. Dragons’ teeth they call them—hee hee! And I plant them just like Cadmus did when he built Thebes. But I’m the greater prince, oh yes, for I’ll build an empire where he built a city.”

  Dama licked his lips. “We’ll help you build your empire,” he began, but the wizard ignored him and spoke only to Vettius.

  “You want my giants, Roman, my darlings? Watch!”

  Hydaspes plucked a small dagger from his sash and poked a hole in the ground. Like a farmer planting a nut, the wizard popped the molar into the hole and patted the earth back down. When he straightened he shouted a few words at the sky. The villagers gasped, but Dama doubted whether they understood any more of the invocation than he did. Perhaps less—the merchant thought he recognized the language, at least, one he had heard chanted on the shores of the Persian Gulf on a dead, starless night. He shuddered.

  Now the wizard was unstoppering his flask and crooning under his breath. His cowl had fallen back to display the monkey clinging fiercely to his long oily hair. When the wizard turned, Dama could see the beast’s lips miming its master obscenely.

  Droplets spattered from the flask, bloody red and glowing. The merchant guessed wine or blood, changed his mind when the fluid popped and sizzled on the ground. The frozen dirt trembled like a stricken gong.

  The monkey leaped from Hydaspes’ shoulder, strangely unaffected by the cold. It faced the wizard across the patch of fluid-scarred ground. It was chanting terrible squeaky words that thundered back from Hydaspes.

  The ground split.

  The monkey collapsed. Hydaspes leaped over the earth’s sudden gape and scooped up the little creature, wrapping it in his cloak.

  Through the crack in the soil thrust an enormous hand. Earth heaved upward again. The giant’s whole torso appeared, dribbling dirt back into the trench. Vettius recognized the same thrusting jaw, the same high flat eyesockets, as those of the giant he had killed.

  The eyes were Hydaspes’ own.

  “Oh yes, Roman,” the wizard cackled. “The life and the seed—but the mind too, hey? There must be a mind.”

  The giant rose carefully in a cascade of earth. Even standing in the trench left by his body, he raised his pointed skull eight feet into the air.

  “My mind!” Hydaspes shrieked, oblivious to everyone but the soldier. “Part of me in each of my darlings, you see? Flowing from me through my pet here to them.”

  One of the wizard’s hands caressed the monkey until it murmured lasciviously. The beast’s huge eyes were seas of steaming brown mud, barely flecked by pinpoint pupils.

  “You said you knew me,” continued the wizard. “Well, I know you too, Lucius Vettius. I saw you bend your bow, I saw you kill my darling—

  “I saw you kill me, Roman!”

  Vettius unclasped his cape, let it slip to the ground. Hydaspes wiped a streak of spittle from his lips and stepped back to lay a hand on the giant’s forearm. “Kill me again, Roman,” the wizard said softly. “Go ahead; no one will interfere. But this time you don’t have a bow.

  “Watch the little one!” he snapped to the guard on Dama’s right. The Sarmatian gripped the merchant’s shoulder.

  Then the giant charged.

  Vettius dived forward at an angle, rolling beyond the torn-up section of the clearing. The giant spun, stumbled in a ditch that had cradled one of his brothers. The soldier had gained the room he wanted in the center of the open space and waited in a loose-armed crouch. The giant sidled toward him splay footed.

  “Hey!” the Roman shouted and lunged for his opponent’s dangling genitalia. The giant struck with shocking speed, swatting Vettius in midair like a man playing handball. Before the Roman’s thrusting fingers could make contact, the giant’s open-handed blow had crashed into his ribs and hurled him a dozen feet away. Only the giant’s clumsy rush saved Vettius from being pulped before he could jump to his feet again. The soldier was panting heavily but his eyes were fixed on the giant’s. A thread of blood dribbled off the point of his jaw. Only a lip split on the hard ground—thus far. The giant charged.

  Two faces in the crowd were not fixed on the one-sided battle. Dama fingered the hem of his cloak unobtrusively, following the fight only from the corners of his eyes. It would be pointless to watch his friend die. Instead the merchant eyed Hydaspes, who had dug another hole across the clearing and inserted the last and largest tooth into it. The wizard seemed to ignore the fighting. If he watched at all, it was through the giant’s eyes as he claimed; and surely, mad as he was, Hydaspes would not otherwise have turned his back on his revenge. For the first time Dama thought he recognized an unease about the monkey which rode again on the wizard’s shoulder. It might have been only fatigue. Certainly Hydaspes seemed to notice nothing unusual as he tamped down the soil and began his thirteenth invocation.

  Dama’s guard was wholly caught up in the fight. He began to pound the merchant on the back in excitement, yelling bloodthirsty curses at Vettius. Dama freed the slender stiletto from his cloak and palmed it. He did not turn his head lest the movement catch the guard’s attention. Instead he raised his hand to the Sarmatian’s neck, delicately fingered his spine. Before the moth-light touch could register on the enthusiastic Sarmatian, Dama slammed the thin blade into the base of his brain and gave it a twist. The guard died instantly. The merchant supported the slumping body, guiding it back against the tent. Hydaspes continued chanting a litany with the monkey, though the noise of the crowd drowned out his words. The wizard formed the inaudible syllables without noticing either Dama or the stumbling way his beast answered him. There was a look of puzzlement, almost fear, in the monkey’s eyes. The crowd continued to cheer as the merchant opened the flap with a quick slash and backed inside Hydaspes’ tent.

  Inside a pair of chalcedony oil lamps
burned with tawny light. The floor was covered with lush furs, some of which draped wooden benches. On a table at one end rested a pair of human skulls, unusually small but adult in proportions. More surprising were the cedar book chests holding parchments and papyri and even the strange pleated leaf-books of India. Dama’s crossbow stood beside the front entrance. He ran to it and loosed the bundle of stubby, unfletched darts beside it. From his wallet came a vial of pungent tarry matter into which he jabbed the head of each dart. The uncovered portions of the bronze points began to turn green. Careful not to touch the smears of venom, the merchant slipped all ten missiles into the crossbow’s awkward vertical magazine.

  Only then did he peer through the tent flap.

  * * *

  Vettius leaped sideways, kicking at the giant’s knee. The ragged hobnails scored his opponent’s calf, but the giant’s deceptively swift hand closed on the Roman’s outer tunic. For a heartsick instant the heavy fabric held; then it ripped and Vettius tumbled free. The giant lunged after him. Vettius backpedaled and, as his enemy straightened, launched himself across the intervening space. The heel of his outstretched boot slammed into the pit of the giant’s stomach. Again the iron nails made a bloody ruin of the skin. The titan’s breath whooshed out, but its half-ton bulk did not falter at the blow. Vettius, thrown back by the futile impact, twisted away from the giant’s unchecked rush. The creature’s heels grazed past, thudded with mastodontic force. The soldier took a shuddering breath and lurched to his feet. A long arm clawed for his face. The Roman staggered back, barely clear of the spade-like talons. The monster pressed after him relentlessly, and Vettius was forced at last to recognize what should have been hopelessly obvious from the first: he could not possibly kill the giant with his bare hands.

  A final strategem took shape. With desperate purpose Vettius began to circle and retreat before his adversary. He should have planned it, measured it, but now he could only trust to luck and the giant’s incredible weight. Backed almost against a corner post, he crouched and waited. Arms wide, the giant hesitated—then rushed in for the kill. Vettius met him low, diving straight at his opponent instead of making a vain effort to get clear again. The Roman’s arms locked about the great ankles and the giant wavered, then began to topple forward. As he fell his taloned fingers clamped crushingly on Vettius’ ribs.

  The unyielding basalt altar met the giant’s skull with shattering force. Bone slammed dense rock with the sound of a maul on a wedge. Warm fluids spattered the snow while the Sarmatians moaned in disbelief. Hydaspes knelt screaming on the ground, his fists pummeling terror from a mind that had forgotten even the invocation it had just completed. The earth began pitching like an unmastered horse. It split in front of the wizard where the tooth had been planted. The crack raced jaggedly through the crowd and beyond.

  “Lucius!” Dama cried, lifting the corner of the tent.

  The soldier pulled his leg free from the giant’s pinioning body and rolled toward the voice, spilling endwise the only Sarmatian alert enough to try to stop him. Dama dropped the tent wall and nodded toward the front, his hands full of crossbow. “There’s horses waiting out there. I’ll slow them up.”

  Vettius stamped on a hand that thrust into the tent.

  “Get out, damn you!” the merchant screamed. “There aren’t any more weapons in here.”

  A Sarmatian rolled under the furs with a feral grimace and a dagger in his hand. The soldier hefted a full case of books and hurled it at his chest. Wood and bone splintered loudly. Vettius turned and ran toward the horses.

  The back flap ripped apart in the haste of the Sarmatians who had remembered its existence. The first died with a dart through his eye as Dama jerked the cocking handle of his weapon. The next missile fell into position. The merchant levered back the bow again. At full cock the sear released, snapped the dart out into the throat of the next man. The Sarmatian’s life dissolved in a rush of red flame as the bolt pricked his carotid to speed its load of poison straight to the brain. The third man stumbled over his body, screamed. Two darts pinged off his mail before one caught the armpit he bared when he threw his hands over his face.

  Relentless as a falling obelisk, Dama stroked out the full magazine of lethal missiles, shredding six screaming victims in the space of a short breath. The entrance was plugged by a clot of men dying in puling agony. Tossing his empty bow at the writhing chaos behind him, Dama ran through the front flap and vaulted onto his horse.

  “We’ll never get clear!” Vettius shouted as he whipped his mount. “They’ll run us down in relays before we reach the Danube.”

  Wailing Sarmatians boiled around both ends of the tent, shedding helmets, weapons—any encumbrance. Their voices honed a narrow blade of terror.

  “The control,” Dama shouted back as the pair dodged among the crazy pattern of wagon tongues. “He used his own mind and a monkey’s to control something not quite a man.”

  “So what?”

  “That last tooth didn’t come from a man. It didn’t come from anything like a man.”

  Something scaly, savage and huge towered over the wreckage of the tent. It cocked its head to glare at the disappearing riders while scrabbling with one stubby foreleg to stuff a black-robed figure farther into its maw. Vettius twisted in his saddle to stare in amazement at the coffin-long jaws gaping twenty feet in the air and the spined backfin like that of no reptile of the past seventy million years.

  The dragon hissed, leaving a scarlet mist of blood to hang in the air as it ducked its head for another victim.

  OUT OF AFRICA

  Forty years of African sunlight glinting along Sir John Holborn’s gun barrels had bleached his eyes so that even after long retirement from hunting they were the frosty gray of bullets cast when the lead was too hot. The chill of those eyes softened when they turned from the heavy rifle over the mantle to his young grand-nephew.

  “Go ahead,” Sir John urged. “Pick it up. I wasn’t much older than you when I took my first elephant.”

  Randall carefully lifted the double rifle from its pegs and hefted it. “It’s so big!” he marvelled.

  Holborn chuckled and took the weapon himself. “Has to be big, lad, or the return of the rifle would break your shoulder.” While his thoughts slipped into the past, the old hunter glanced around his trophy room. From the far wall projected the massive head and forequarters of a bull elephant, mounted as if trumpeting. With a single fluid motion, Holborn spun and trained the rifle on the gape of the beast’s mouth where a shot would penetrate straight to the brain. Chuckling again, he turned back to the boy and opened the rifle’s double breech.

  “See lad,” he said, “this is an eight-bore. A round lead ball to fit this barrel would weigh two ounces, and the cylindrical bullets I used were a good deal heavier. You couldn’t put such power in a smaller rifle.”

  “My father shoots elephant,” Randall said doubtfully, “and his rifle isn’t that big.”

  “Aye, your father says there’s been no need for old cannons like this since 1890 and nitro powder,” Holborn agreed. “Well, maybe it did go out of date fifteen years ago; but if I went to Africa again, this is the rifle I’d carry there. Your father may be right to say his .450 express rifle will kill anything on the continent—but will it stop anything, that’s what I want to know. Your Latin is fresher than mine. Do you remember a tag about Africa…?”

  “‘Always something new out of Africa,’” the boy suggested, translating Pliny’s words for the old man.

  “That’s it,” Holborn agreed, “and it’s true, too. If you ever hunt Africa, don’t make the mistake of thinking you know all about her. She’ll kill you sure if you think that.”

  “Why did you stop hunting, Uncle John?” Randall asked curiously, gazing in wonder at the trophies of five continents on the walls around him.

  “Um,” the old hunter grunted, letting the rifle cradle naturally in the crook of his left arm. “For some hunters, there’s one chance for a real trophy. After that, it
’s all the same whether you took it or missed. Gordon-Cummings had his when he bagged a rhino with five feet of horn, while Meyerling muffed an easy shot at an elephant he swore carried a quarter ton of ivory. When you’ve had that shot, the fire goes out of the sport, and it’s never the same again. And I, I had my shot.…”

  Randall could see the old man’s mind focusing on the past. “Tell me about it, Uncle John,” he pleaded.

  “Perhaps I should, lad,” Holborn replied. “I shan’t be around much longer to keep the story, and perhaps some day—but no matter. My last hunt was on the Kagera River, west and north of Lake Victoria. The country was all papyrus swamp.”

  “But what could you do in that?” the boy asked in puzzlement.

  “Hunt hippo, lad,” Holborn replied with a laugh, “and very political hippo they were. That was in ’92, you see, and—well, it’s an old story and doesn’t matter much any more. Our relations with the Kaiser were a good deal better then, and it occurred to some gentlemen in London and Berlin that King Leopold was showing himself quite unfit to rule the Congo Basin. Perhaps Britain and Germany could do better, they thought. Well, nothing came of it, of course … but negotiations got to the point that the Foreign Office thought they’d like to have a man on the ground. They contacted me because no eyebrows would raise at the news Sir John Holborn was back in the bush again. And so there I was, in German East Africa where it borders Uganda and the Congo.

  “There were hippos in the river. Even if I hadn’t cared to try them, I had to keep up the pretence of being strictly a hunter. It was difficult, though, because none of the local boys would so much as guide me into the swamps around their village. They were afraid of the jimpegwes that lived there, they said.

  “Now I hadn’t heard the word before, but it was clear enough from the natives’ description what they meant. After all, only three big animals live in the swamps: the kob and lechwe antelopes that can walk on the marshes with their broad, spreading hooves; and the hippo that browse the edges of the reed mats and keep channels open between them. When the natives said the jimpegwe was a big animal that ate reeds and had a terrible temper, they had to mean some sort of hippo.