by Robin Hobb
“River dragon,” someone said into the silence that followed the scout’s words.
Marcus’ eyes snapped to the men clustered at the edge of the firelight’s reach. Perhaps he knew who had spoken, but Flavius didn’t. In any event, he didn’t single out anyone. “Ridiculous,” he said scathingly.
“You didn’t see it,” the first scout said abruptly, but before he could continue, Marcus cut in with, “And neither did you! You saw something. Probably a glimpse of a hippo, and then a glimpse of a snake, and in the reeds and the evening light, you thought they were one and the same.” He pointed a finger at the one scout and demanded, “How did you get wet?”
The man drew himself up. “If I could finish my report, sir. That head came up out of the reeds. It lifted its head higher than I’m tall, and it looked down on us. Then it whistled. Startled us both, and I shouted back at it. Big as it was, I still thought it would turn aside and go its way. Instead, it came at us. It darted its head at me, mouth open, and all I could see was row after row of teeth, in a maw the size of a cart. Carus shouted at him and threw his javelin. It stuck in him, made him angry. He roared again and went for me. I jumped to one side and ran. I thought it was solid riverbank, but it wasn’t and I went right over the edge and into the water. Lucky for me, because it lost sight of me.”
The other man took up the tale. “That’s when it turned on me and came after me, but I was already moving by then. It stopped to rub my javelin off. I heard the shaft snap, like it was nothing. I’d run up the bank and I think it was reluctant to come out of the reeds and cattails. I thought Tullus was dead. When he came out of the reeds and joined me, we decided we’d best come back to report this.”
Marcus had crossed his arms on his chest. “And the light is almost gone. And no doubt by the time we reach the river tomorrow, your giant snake will be gone as well. Go about your duties, both of you. Glowing eyes!”
And with that sharp remark, he dismissed not only the two scouts but all of the men as well. Just before he turned away, his eyes met Flavius’ and he gave a small toss of his head. He knew that he was summoned, but privately. In the dark and almost quiet hours of the restive camp, he went to Marcus’ tent.
“I need to know what they saw. Can you go out, before dawn, and then come back to me? If anyone can read the ground and let me know what is out there, you can. I need to get our troops across the river, Flavius. I’d like to cross here, at first light. But if there are hippos and crocodiles, then I need to know before we enter the water, not when we’re halfway across.”
“Or giant snakes?” Flavius asked him.
Marcus gave a dismissive laugh. “They’re young and poorly armed. I don’t blame them for running back here, but they have to learn that what I need is information, not rumors. I’ll have them here to hear your report in the morning. And that’s when they’ll face their discipline as well.”
Flavius had nodded, and gone off to take what sleep he could.
A Roman camp stirs early, but he was the first to arise that morning. He took with him not the arms of a warrior but the tools of a hunter. It did not take a lot of modification to turn a pike into a pole sling. It had greater range and could launch a heavier weapon than his small sling. If there were an irritable hippo or basking crocodiles, he wished to turn them away before they got too close to him. The gladius at his side was for closer occasions. The short blade was good for both stabbing and slashing. Flavius hoped it came to neither.
The banks of the Bagradas River teemed with life. Brush edged it and deep reed beds lined it. He followed the same well-trodden game trail that the scouts had investigated the day before. Animals knew the best places to water and the safest places to cross. That this path was so well trodden made him suspect he’d find a safe fording for the troops. Closer to the river, the brush to either side grew thicker and the reeds and cattails before him loomed taller. He was reassured by the plentiful birdsong and the darting of the busy feathered creatures. Off to one side, he heard some larger creature startle out of its wallow and then crash off into deep brush. It was a four-legged beast, he was sure of that. It increased his wariness, and he went more slowly. The ground began to become bog. He reached the edge of the reed bed and looked down a clear channel, almost a tunnel of a path that led out into the open moving waters of the river. On the far side, a similar muddy track led up the opposite bank. So. A place to cross. He decided to wade out and check the strength of the current and the footing. He was knee-deep in the water when suddenly all the bird noises stopped.
Flavius halted and stood still, listening. His eyes sought not color or shape but motion. He heard only the lapping rush of the water, saw only the normal movement of the reeds in harmony with the water’s flow.
Then, a sling’s shot away from him, the tops of the cattails moved against the current. He remained as he was, breathing slowly. A bank of the cattails bowed in unison, and then, a distance from that motion, a group of reeds bowed in the opposite direction. The next motion of the reeds was closer to him, and suddenly he realized that he was hearing a sound, one that had blended with the water noises when it was distant. But now it was closer. Something scraped through the reeds. The tall standing grasses rubbed against a creature’s hide in a long, smooth chorus. Flavius parted his lips, took a silent breath. He’d find out what it was now, before it came any closer. His pole sling was loaded. In a motion so practiced and natural that he gave it no thought, he tipped the pole and snapped it forward.
The missile was one of his own devising, heavier than he would have launched from a hand sling and with one end pointed. Sometimes it tumbled and struck blunt end first. Other times, the sharpened end bit. He cared little what happened this time; his intent was to startle whatever it was into betraying itself. His missile flew silently but when it struck, all silence ended.
The creature’s whistle was like a shriek of wind. Much closer than he had expected, a head reared up from the reeds. It turned its outraged gaze from its own body to see what had dared to attack it. Flavius was already backing up before it turned its boxy head and fixed its eyes on him. Even in the clear morning light, they burned orange. It took in breath with a sound like cold water hitting hot stone, its slit nostrils flaring as it did so. Then it opened wide its mouth and he saw, just as the scout had reported, a maw the size of a cart, lined with rows of inward-leaning teeth. He stumbled backwards, then spun and fled. The massive head struck the ground a pike’s length behind him. The shock of the impact traveled through the wet soil; he felt the weight of the creature’s head through the soles of his feet, and abruptly he was running as he had never run before. He risked one glance back when he gained the top of the bank. He saw nothing.
Then, just as he dared to take a breath, the immense head on its thick neck rose again from the reeds and rushes. It stared at him, and a long forked tongue emerged from its blunt snout, flickering and tasting the air. It regarded him with nothing of fear, only malevolence, with lidless orange eyes. It opened its maw and again that whistling shriek shattered the air around him. Then it came on, moving much faster than any legless creature had a right to. Flavius turned and fled. He ran and heard the gruesome sounds of an immense footless creature coming after him. His terror put the spring of a boy in his man’s legs and his heart thundered in his ears. When he finally mustered the courage to glance back, the snake was gone, but still he ran, unable to stop, almost to the outskirts of the camp.
He hurried through a camp that had begun to stir, pausing to speak to no one. He would start no rumors until Marcus had heard his news and decided how to deal with it. His mouth was dry; his heart still shaking when he stood before Regulus to make his report. It was to his commander, not to his old friend that he said, “They told you true, sir. It’s an immense snake, the likes of which no one has ever seen. I’d estimate it at one hundred feet long. And it’s aggressive. I hit it with a sling stone, and it came after me.”
He watched his friend absorb the news. He peer
ed at him and perhaps a smile threatened as he challenged him quietly, “One hundred feet long, Flavius? A snake one hundred feet long?”
He swallowed in a dry throat. “My best estimate, sir. From the size of the head and how high he lifted it, and from how far away the reeds were stirred by his tail.” He cleared his throat. “I’m serious.”
He watched Marcus rethink his words, his face growing still, and then his jaw setting. He saw his commander announce his decision. “Regardless of its size, it’s still just a snake. A wolf or a bear may stand and face one man, or even half a dozen, but no creature will take a stand against a legion. We’ll form up and march down there. Doubtless the noise and activity will scare it off. What did you think of the river? Are the baggage train carts going to have any problems crossing there?”
Before Flavius could reply, they heard wild yells, and then a sound that stood all the hair up on Flavius’ back. A shrill whistle split the air. It was followed by shouts of “Dragon! Dragon!” The whistling shriek of the creature was repeated, more loudly. It was followed by screams, very human screams that abruptly stopped. More shouting, panicky, wordless yells.
Marcus had been half-dressed when Flavius arrived. Now he hastily buckled his breastplate and snatched up his helm. “Let’s go,” he said, and though a dozen men fell in at his heels, Flavius felt the words had been meant for him. They went at a dogtrot through the camp and toward the river. Flavius drew his shortsword as he ran, hoping he’d never be near enough to use it. All around him, other men in various stages of dress joined the hurrying throng. “Archers to me!” Marcus shouted, and within a score of strides, he was flanked by bowmen. Flavius doggedly held his place just behind Marcus’ left shoulder.
They did not reach the edge of camp before a tide of shouting men met them. They carried one man, and though he was still roaring with pain, Flavius knew him for a dead man. His left leg had been shorn away at the hip.
“It’s a dragon!”
“Snake got two of them right way. They just went to fetch water.”
“Eyes the size of cartwheels!”
“Knocked down six men and crushed them. Just crushed them!”
“It ate them. Gods help us, it ate them!”
“It’s a demon, a Carthaginian demon!”
“They’ve set a dragon on us!”
“It’s coming! It’s coming!”
Behind the fleeing men, Flavius saw the great head rise. Up it went and up, higher and higher. It looked down on all of them, eyes gleaming, forked tongue long as a bullwhip flickering in and out of its mouth. Flavius felt cold, as if evil had looked directly at him. The creature, dragon or snake, whistled then, a high powerful gust of sound. Some men cried out and others clapped their hands to their ears.
“Archers!” shouted Regulus, and a score of flights took wing, their hiss lost in the snake’s long whistle. Some arrows missed; others skipped over the creature’s scaled back. Some struck, stuck briefly, and then fell as the snake shook itself. Perhaps six hit and sank into the creature. If it felt any pain, it did not show it. Instead, it struck, the immense head, mouth open wide, darting down to seize two soldiers. The men shrieked as it lifted them into the air. It threw back its head and gulped, and their comrades were suddenly visible lumps moving down the snake’s throat. Flavius felt cold. The snake had seized them so quickly, they could not be dead. They had been swallowed alive.
Flavius had not heard the command given to fire again, but another phalanx of arrows was arching toward the beast. It had come closer and they struck more true. Of those that hit, most stuck well. This time, the snake gave a whistle of fury. It flung itself flat and wallowed, trying to dislodge the arrows. Its whipping tail cleared brush from the riverside.
“Fall back!” Regulus shouted, and in a matter of moments they were in full retreat from the creature. It was not the most orderly withdrawal that Flavius had ever participated in, but it achieved its goal. The ranks of men reformed defensively as they put distance between themselves and the Carthaginian monster. Flavius’ knees felt rubbery and his mind still reeled from that one revealing glimpse of the full extent of the creature. It was more than a hundred feet long; of that, he was sure. How much longer, he had no desire to know.
“It’s not following!” someone shouted.
“Keep moving!” Regulus ordered. “Back to the camp and man the fortifications.” Then he cast a sideways look at Flavius. “Go see,” he said quietly. Heart in his throat, Flavius turned and began to walk back through the crowd of oncoming men. When he had passed the last stragglers, he pushed on, ears strained and his sling at the ready. He knew it would not do much, but it was his oldest and most familiar weapon. And, he thought to himself, it had a lot more range than a gladius. He grinned, surprising himself, and walked on.
When he could see the bodies of the fallen, he stopped. He scanned the surrounding brush and saw no sign of the immense creature. It had wallowed out a section of brush and grasses where it rolled to dislodge the arrows. He stood a time longer, surveying the scene. When first one carrion bird and then another swept in and landed near the bodies, he judged that the serpent was truly gone. Still, his advance was cautious.
All the downed men were dead. One breathed a little still, air rasping in and out of his slack mouth, but his torso was crushed and there was no light in his eyes. Sometimes the body took a little time to know it was dead. He stood from appraising the man and forced himself to walk on. The serpent had cut a large swath through the brush in its retreat. He found no blood or any sign that they had dealt it significant injuries. He followed it until he could see the river and the crushed reeds where the creature had returned to the water. Down there, it could conceal itself. He would go no farther. There was no need of it.
When he reported back to Marcus, he realized how shaken his friend was. He listened gravely to what Flavius told him, then shook his head. “We are here to fight Carthaginians, not deal with a giant snake. The idea that it is some kind of demon or dragon set on us by the Carthaginians has shaken them. I don’t intend to challenge it again. I’ll send a burial detail for the fallen, but I’ve decided to move downriver. I’ve already sent the scouts ahead, looking for a place to cross. We can’t linger here. We’ll move on.”
Flavius had felt relief but also surprise that Marcus would follow so sensible a course. He had expected his friend to dig in and do battle with it. Marcus’ next words cleared away the mystery. “It’s big, but it’s only a snake. It’s not worth our time.”
Flavius nodded to that and withdrew. Marcus had always been about being a soldier. The stalking that a hunter did and the necessity of trying to think like his prey in order to hunt it had never appealed to him. War he saw as a challenge between men, demanding an understanding of strategy. He had never seen animals as complex and unpredictable, as Flavius did. He had never seen animals as worthy opponents, never understood Flavius’ fascination with hunting.
Now, as Flavius looked up at his friend in his cage, he saw too clearly the animal that Marcus had always lived inside. The man’s mind was slowly giving way to the beast that enclosed him. Pain wracked him and demanded his attention. He saw the tremors that had begun to run over Marcus’ body. His knees shook, and a trickle of blood-tinged urine ran down his leg and dripped onto the street and the passersby below him. A shout of outrage greeted this, and the market crowd that had almost forgotten the dying man above them once more turned their eyes upward.
The woman who had been spattered tore her scarf from her shoulders and threw it to the ground. She looked up at Marcus and shook her fist and shouted obscenities at him. A wave of mocking laughter followed her words, along with pointing gestures and other mocking shouts. A few onlookers stooped to pick up stones.
* * * *
The pain, for a time, had come in waves that threatened to sweep his consciousness away. Through each engulfing surge, he had held tight to the bars of his cage as a drowning sailor might cling to a bit of floating wreckage. H
e knew it offered him no safety, but he would not release his grip. He’d die standing, and not just because a fall would mean being impaled on one of the coarse spikes sticking up from the bottom of his cage. He’d die upright, a Roman citizen, a consul, a soldier, not curled like a speared dog.
The pain had not abated, but it had turned into something else. Just as the crash of storm waves can eventually lull a man to sleep, so it was with the pain now. It was there, and so constant that his thoughts floated on top of it, only disconnecting when an especially sharp jab penetrated his mind. The pain seemed to provoke his memories, waking the sharpest and most potent of them. His triumph at Aspis; he had seized the whole city with scarcely a blow. That had been a summer! Hamilcar had avoided him, and his army had virtually had the run of Carthage. The plunder had been rich, and he’d lost count of how many captured Roman soldiers he had regained. Oh, he had been the Senate’s darling then. Then, the prospect of being granted a Triumph and paraded through Rome had loomed large and fresh before him, as keenly imagined as when he had been a boy. It would be his. He would be acknowledged as a hero by cheering, adoring crowds.
But then Manlius, his fellow consul, had decided to sail back to Rome, taking the best of their plunder home. And Hamilcar, general for the Carthaginians, had perhaps decided that gave him some sort of advantage. He had brought his army to an encampment on high wooded ground on the far side of the Bagradas River. Regulus had not been daunted. He’d set out to meet and challenge him, taking infantry, cavalry, and a good force of ballistae.
But then they had come to the river. And that damn African snake. Some of his men had believed it a Carthaginian demon, sent by Hamilcar to attack them. When he had seen it for himself, he hadn’t been able to comprehend the creature. Flavius had tried to tell him; that was the first and last time he’d ever doubted his friend’s evaluation of an animal. He’d lost thirteen men in his first encounter with the creature, too big a loss against such an adversary. He’d been intent on Hamilcar and fearful of losing his element of surprise. And so, he’d withdrawn his men, surrendering the riverbank to the immense snake, as he never would have conceded it to any human opponent. He’d marched his men downriver, looking for a good place to ford, while his baggage train and the heavier wheeled artillery had followed on the higher, firmer ground.
