Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  “Till they tell us it is,” Cispius added, but he had relaxed also.

  “Well, if you’re ready, Macsturnas,” Saxa said. He nodded to Veturius. “Take us through, my good man. I’m quite interested in what my son thinks of the creatures.”

  “Why do you need such walls, Master Veturius?” Hedia asked. “Are your animals so dangerous as that?”

  Corylus flinched minusculely. He’d been so focused on Varus that he hadn’t noticed Hedia was at his elbow until she spoke.

  The servants had stepped aside as they neared the gate, allowing the principals to come together for the first time since they stepped out the front door of Saxa’s house in Puteoli. Alphena, who must have been at the end of the procession, had joined her parents also. She wore a stony expression.

  “Well, they’re dangerous enough, Your Ladyship,” Veturius mumbled, refusing to meet Hedia’s eyes. “But the cages that held the bloody creatures all the way to here ought to hold them now. The problem’s the boys here in the port—aye, and some of the girls too. They’d creep in at night for a lark, don’t you see, if we didn’t have walls like these—”

  He slapped the coarse tuff with his right hand. It sounded as though he’d laid into it with a harness strap.

  “—to keep them out.”

  Macsturnas had leaned close to Paris and was whispering urgently, presumably to forestall another impatient outburst. The aedile had no intention of letting a boorish associate turn Saxa into an enemy.

  “Does it matter if a few kids look at the animals before they’re shipped to Carce?” Alphena asked. Varus’ sister was a fairly good-natured girl underneath, though half the time she seemed determined to prove something. She drove herself and everybody around her to distraction when she got frustrated. For now, at least, curiosity seemed to have drawn her out of her earlier bad temper.

  “Well, it’s not that, mistress,” Veturius said. “You see, we just keep the rare stuff and the carnivores in here. I’ve got pasture outside the city for the bulk animals, the deer and wild asses and bulls, that sort of thing. Even the ordinary elephants. But when there’s a big load like now, the aisles between the cages here are pretty tight.”

  Corylus had seen his father wince, but there was no harm done. Cispius sold perfumes and unguents to upper-class households and thus knew not to call a senator’s daughter “mistress,” instead of “Your Ladyship.” An importer whose clientele was brokers—slaves and freedmen—who handled beast hunts and gladiatorial bouts didn’t normally need to worry about forms of address.

  “I don’t see…,” Alphena said, letting her voice trail off as she apparently realized that interrupting a man like Veturius wasn’t going to get information out of him more quickly. “No, no, just go on.”

  Cispius had been the Alaudae’s First Centurion, the legion’s highest permanent officer—directly under the legate whom the Emperor appointed. At that time Veturius had commanded the tenth company of his tenth cohort. In the Alaudae the Tenth of the Tenth was the Special Service company rather than being a posting for the legion’s most junior centurion. It handled raids and patrolling, the sort of jobs that the Scouts did when Cispius became prefect of the 3d Batavians on his final posting.

  Scouting and the things that scouting requires take a toll on a soldier even when he retires with all his limbs and not too many physical scars. Corylus was only ten when he moved with his father to the Batavians on the Danube, but even then Veturius drank enough to be noticed in a community of professional soldiers.

  “Well, some kid would be poking a stick at the baboons, but he’d jump back when they banged into the bars and a lion would reach out a paw and grab him from behind,” Veturius said earnestly. “Or it might be the other way around, you see? And when there’s a fresh kill like that and blood all over, hell, why, the whole compound screams and carries on all night.”

  Veturius surveyed the crowd, noticing the number of attendants for the first time. “Say, Your Lordships,” he said in concern. “You might want to leave most of this lot outside. I don’t mind the trouble, I don’t mean that, but I guess some of these slaves are pretty expensive, right? Believe me, they won’t be pretty anymore if they lean close to look at a leopard and he claws their faces off.”

  “I think that’s a fine idea,” Hedia said briskly. “Leaving the servants outside, that is. My daughter and I—

  Hedia nodded regally toward Alphena.

  “—are both wearing new garments—”

  Hedia extended half of her short cape like a blue silk wing. Alphena wore a similar garment in white, appliquéd with symbols of the zodiac.

  “—which we don’t want splashed with blood. Syra”—Hedia’s maid, listening at her mistress’ side—“you’ll stay here with Balbinus and the others.”

  “Yes, ladyship,” the girl said. Her face relaxed from its previous look of blank horror. Corylus wasn’t sure that Hedia was really that callous, but her maid obviously found it possible.

  Hedia made a gracious gesture with her left hand. The men in the gateway turned together like drilling soldiers and led the way into the compound.

  Veturius was that callous: he couldn’t have done his job with the Alaudae if he hadn’t been. After Cispius retired, he had dried his friend out and set him up in this importing business, which had become very successful. But that hadn’t made Veturius the man he might have been without twenty years on the Rhine.

  Corylus kept his right hand on Varus’ elbow, using light pressure to direct him. With his left hand he motioned Hedia and Alphena to follow the two senators. The man Paris stepped in front of them.

  Paris flew aside just as quickly. The servants of both senatorial households were waiting in the street, but Pulto didn’t take the direction as applying to him. He’d grabbed the old man’s wrist, bent his arm behind his back, and pushed him away sharply enough to spill him in the dust with a squawk.

  “Thank you, Master Pulto,” Hedia said, nodding pleasantly. She swept into the compound behind her husband.

  What an empress she would make! Corylus thought, then felt a chill in case he might have spoken aloud. That sentiment would mean a number of executions if it reached the Emperor’s ears—and the youth who voiced it would be on the first cross.

  The roadway from the gate to the harbor was wide enough for loaded wagons, though the paths between rows of cages were much narrower. Cages of birds and smaller monkeys were stacked two and three high.

  Pulto walked beside his master and Varus, whistling something cheery between his teeth. He had obviously reacted badly to hearing some scraggly farmer be disrespectful to his betters. Veterans like Cispius and Veturius, let alone the senators, were Paris’ betters in Pulto’s opinion.

  Well, in the opinion of Pulto’s master, also.

  The animal Corylus had heard as they approached now screamed again, louder by far without walls of the compound to muffle it. Corylus looked toward the sound. To his amazement the head and trunk of an elephant were fully visible beyond wheeled lion cages that were eight feet high.

  “What’s that?” Corylus said—directing his question toward Veturius but speaking to anybody who might have an answer. “It looks like an ordinary elephant, but it’s bigger than even the ones they bring from India sometimes.”

  Everyone in the group looked at him. Saxa’s face went blank, then melted into concern: he must have noticed that Varus wasn’t in a normal state. At least he didn’t blurt something out.

  “Your son’s got a good eye, Top!” Veturius said, referring in army slang to his former superior. “Come on over here and I’ll show you. We leave plenty of room around him, though he hasn’t been a problem since we got him off the boat.”

  The visitors dutifully followed Veturius past hyenas held four to a cage. There wasn’t room for the beasts to pace, but they watched the humans with hatred that was almost palpable.

  Paris didn’t make another attempt to hurry the process, but the look he fixed on Pulto was as angry as that
of the hyenas. Pulto was used to civilians hating him; one more wouldn’t be a concern.

  Corylus suppressed a smile: like Veturius, he’d formed his sense of humor on the frontier. Paris might feel ill-used, but he’d actually been lucky. Pulto wore hobnailed army sandals, which he would have used if the farmer had actually touched Master Corylus in stepping past.

  The elephant’s hind legs were chained to bollards sturdy enough to tie up a giant grain ship; the area in front of him had been left clear. He was huge, more like a building than a creature of flesh and blood.

  Though the elephant had the build and large ears of his African kin, Corylus had never seen one of those that was much more than seven feet tall at the shoulder. This monster was well over eleven feet tall, bigger even than the Indian elephants like Syrus, which Hannibal had ridden over the Alps.

  “You see…,” Veturius said. His voice was strong and animated now that he was discussing his importing business instead of wondering how to deal with noblemen. “The ones you’re used to, the elephants we mostly get, they come from near the African coast. South of that’s desert, so of course you don’t get elephants there, there’s nothing for them to eat, right?”

  The elephant curled its trunk, raised its massive head, and screamed louder than any living thing Corylus had heard in the past.

  “But south of the desert, then there’s more grass and more forest and Hercules knows what kinds of animals,” Veturius resumed as his visitors lowered their hands from their ears. “They’ve got elephants like this as was floated down the Nile from way beyond the First Cataract. And if you come here with me, I’ll show you what else we got, the things I asked my friend Cispius to bring his son to see.”

  Veturius, limping as he walked more quickly than he had done earlier in the afternoon, stepped around the elephant’s plaza to a cage on a cross street wide enough for a wagon rather than an aisle. Corylus followed with the others, guiding Varus as he had been doing since his friend went into his dream state.

  “Stand well clear, if you will,” Veturius said. “They’ve got a reach that’ll surprise you. They came down the Nile on a barge same as brought the elephant there, straight out of the dark heart of Africa!”

  Corylus moved to his father’s side, directly in front of the cage where he got the best view through the close-set bars. They were welded iron, not the usual wood pinned or lashed.

  “Here they are, Your Lordships,” Veturius said. “Scaly apes like nothing seen before in the Republic!”

  Corylus looked at the four creatures; they met his gaze calmly.

  Those aren’t apes, and they sure aren’t men, he thought.

  But they might very well be demons.

  * * *

  THEY LOOK LIKE THEY stepped out of a nightmare, Alphena thought as she stared at a lizardman. A membrane flicked sideways and back across the creature’s left eye; then the same thing happened to the creature’s right. The lizardman seemed very patient … and amused, though Alphena couldn’t have explained why she felt that.

  “How did you capture the creatures, Veturius?” Saxa said, leaning toward the cage. Cispius grunted; Corylus stepped sideways to put his body between the senator and the lizardmen.

  “Father!” Alphena said. Did I ever call him that before? She pulled Saxa back by the wrist and elbow. “You’ll be killed if you’re not careful!”

  Saxa looked startled, then understood what had happened. “Oh!” he said. “Well, I don’t think I was really in danger, do you, my child? But thank you.”

  He looked at the lizardmen again. “Their arms really are very long, aren’t they?” he said in a reflective tone. “Though their bodies aren’t the size of ours. Thank you very much, my dear, and—”

  Saxa looked at Corylus, who had slipped to the other side of Varus, concealing himself as much as possible behind his shorter friend. For a commoner—even a knight—to physically interfere with a senator was potentially very dangerous, but Corylus hadn’t hesitated when he saw the risk to her father.

  “—thank you, Master Corylus. I’m afraid I was very foolish.”

  Alphena looked at the lizardmen again. They were creatures of nightmare, all right, but they weren’t from the particular nightmare that had been torturing her for the past three nights.

  She’d dreamed of three short Nubian women dancing in a circle, naked except for a belt of iridescent stones around the waist of each. They weren’t frightening, nor was anything else that Alphena remembered from the dream, but she woke every night sweating and a cry choked in her throat.

  Whereas the lizardmen were merely interesting, the way an ancient bronze sword would interest her. And speaking of bronze, what were those collars they were wearing?

  “Strictly speaking, I don’t capture animals,” Veturius said. “Ordinarily, I mean, I hire local Nubians to do the catching and bring the beasts to where I set my camp. If I went south with enough men to do the whole job myself, I’d need an army. You go march into Nubia with an army and the tribes’ll treat you the same way they would a Prefect of Egypt who decided to advance the Republic’s boundaries some.”

  “There were periods when Egypt was ruled by Nubians,” said Corylus, nodding. “I was wondering how you managed to bring animals back from that far south.”

  He and Varus knew lots about that sort of thing. Alphena didn’t resent the education her brother and his friend had gotten: she didn’t care who ruled Egypt, let alone making formal speeches about whether a stepson or the wife’s steward was guilty of her murder. But she resented that she hadn’t been given the choice.

  “Yeah, that can be a tricky business,” Veturius said, bobbing his head like a sparrow drinking. “I don’t take so many men that I look like I figure to stay, but I need enough that the locals, they figure it’s cheaper to take my pay for the animals they bring me and as porters.”

  He lifted his hands, palms up. He was missing his left little finger, and the fourth finger stopped at the first joint.

  “Nowadays, the chiefs know I’m coming back, so they’ll make more trading with me than just trying to take it,” Veturius said. “Also, they know that taking it wouldn’t be so easy as it maybe seemed first off. I hire pretty good boys, you see. Most’ve ’em decided that Nubians’d be a nice change from Germans or Sarmatians. And I’ve got Parthian archers who can shoot over a shield or through it, whichever they choose. But early on, I tell you, there was times I wished I was back on the East Bank of the Rhine.”

  Cispius snorted. Veturius met his old friend’s eyes. Alphena was suddenly aware of a kinship like nothing she had ever had with another human being. It went beyond shared danger: it was a shared trust.

  They’d trust Corylus! And they would, because Corylus had been on the East Bank too; he’d proved himself.

  I will make myself worthy of trust. Whether or not anybody else knows it, I will know.

  “Anyway,” Veturius said, “we’d just set up down below the Third Cataract; that’s way south. I put out the word to the tribes to bring us animals, pretty much anything.”

  He knuckled his nose as he frowned in concentration. A scar ran from below his right eye to the base of his jaw on the left; his nose dipped in a saddle where the line crossed it.

  “We pay in cloth and glass beads and brass wire,” he muttered, gathering his memories. “The Nubians like them better than silver, which they can’t do much with. Pound for pound, it’d be easier to carry silver, but that’s not a choice. Anyway.”

  Veturius gestured with both hands again. “We just set up, like I say, and here comes a couple Nubians with these apes, neck-yoked like slaves, each one to the one ahead and walking on their own. They asked what we’d pay for ’em—they’d never seen the like before. And I said, same as for baboons, since that’s what they likely were. Only they weren’t baboons. And I don’t bloody know what they are!”

  “My friend Varus and I are also at a loss, Veturius,” Corylus said, speaking clearly and with his voice raised. He was focus
ing all attention on himself—and away from the youth at his side. “Now that we’ve seen these lizard apes—lizardmen, I should say—we’ll be able to enlist the aid of greater scholars than ourselves.”

  He’s covering for my brother. Varus and Corylus hadn’t discussed the creatures or anything else since Varus slipped into his present state. By speaking for both of them, Corylus concealed the fact that his friend was only physically part of the world around him.

  Instead of coming to Puteoli with the rest of the family, Varus had remained in the town house in Carce while he took classes in speaking and argumentation from Pandareus of Athens. Varus had sent a messenger to inform the family as a courtesy that he and Corylus would be visiting Puteoli to view some unusual animals. Saxa had decided to join his son and his friend.

  Whereupon Alphena had announced she would go also.

  She hadn’t known then why she said it, and now in reflection she didn’t have any better notion of what had been going on in her mind. She had just said it; and once it was said, there was no taking the decision back. Not for her.

  Hedia’s decision to join the group as soon as Alphena spoke was as certain as sunrise: she thought her daughter was too interested in Publius Corylus, and she didn’t trust anyone else to chaperone the girl effectively. Hedia’s attitude infuriated Alphena.

  The possibility that there might be some truth to her mother’s opinion made Alphena even more angry. She had learned by experience that Hedia was extremely perceptive. That was true whether or not Alphena liked the things that Hedia perceived.

  “Lord Macsturnas, may I ask…?” Corylus said, turning from the beast catcher to the aedile. “If these lizardmen will be going to Carce for your show with the rest of the consignment of animals?”

  “Why, yes,” Macsturnas said, looking puzzled. “That is … I mean, is there some reason they shouldn’t?”

  In a tone of rising agitation, he went on, “Is there something you’re not telling me? There is something you’re not telling me!”

  “No, my lord, there is not,” said Cispius, stepping between his son and Macsturnas. Cispius didn’t raise his voice, but he was suddenly in control of the situation.