by Paul Finch
“It won’t … chase us … all the … way,” Livius stammered. “It … it can’t.”
No-one bothered to argue, their attention too absorbed in the veil of mist ahead, which was shifting at last, revealing a bulk of land that had to be Terra Mars. The temptation was to stop there, grab up what equipment they could and offer some kind of stand. Common sense forbade this, however. There weren’t enough of them to defend an island so large.
As they poled their way past, Ursus turned to Drusus. “If … if we can make it to Terra Venus,” he stammered, “ … I have an idea …”
“Tell me,” the tesserari gasped.
“There are two islets there … linked by the floating causeway.” Drusus nodded, sweat running down his face in rivulets. “We might … be able to set a trap,” the engineer added. “It’ll be dangerous, but we have no choice. We can’t outrun this beast.”
Again the tesserari nodded.
“What are you talking about?” Livius demanded. Neither man replied. “I’m in command here, Drusus! Usurping command is a fustuarium offence!”
The tesserari didn’t answer, for another monumental roar split the humid air around them. It sounded as if the ogre was less than a hundred paces away. Further splashing was now audible, though still nothing visible appeared. Livius urged the men to greater efforts, screeching that he’d have them all castrated if they didn’t put their backs into it.
If anyone was listening to him, they barely showed it. Further blows from his cane elicited no response. Instead, it was Drusus who now took charge. Realising that, as a team, the rowers were tiring badly, he hurriedly split them into two groups of four; the first would row, while the second rested and regained its breath, and, if necessary, defended the raft against incursion.
By this method, they managed to stay ahead of the pursuing predator and actually increased the lead they had. The raft seemed to move more smoothly and swiftly with fewer rowers, and in what seemed less than half an hour, the dark humps of Terra Venus emerged through the fog. So elated were the men by this that again every one again took up a pole, and they sped recklessly on, crashing headlong into the land-mass rather than mooring.
“What do you intend to do?” Drusus asked, leaping ashore.
Ursus indicated the foot-bridge linking the two islets together. “First … we remove the planking and lay canvas over it instead.”
The tesserari was perplexed. “What good will that do?”
“Just listen to me,” the engineer said. “Once we’ve put the canvas down, the bridge will still be sturdy enough to support men crossing it, but not that thing. Nothing that huge and heavy could get over it.”
“So? The bridge collapses and it falls into the water?”
“No.” Ursus shook his head, and led the soldier over the bridge to the first and larger islet, where so much building and drainage equipment still lay in ordered stacks. “We take these piles.” He indicated numerous freshly-cut timber stakes, each one with a sharply tapering point. “We set them up beneath the bridge but place them upside-down. We can do it with spears too.”
Drusus nodded, at last starting to understand.
“The giant runs onto the bridge, and it collapses,” Ursus finished. “It goes down forcibly, because the stakes and spears will pierce the cattle-hides and the canvas footing. Our monster will have dropped its full weight onto a hedge of underwater spikes.”
All the men now stood around, breathless and bedraggled but listening intently. Livius was among them, cold and resentful. “And how do we ensure the beast uses your bridge?” he asked. “Thus far, it hasn’t needed one.”
“This is the dangerous part,” Ursus replied. “We must lure it, and we can only do that by standing as a group, armed and ready, on the second island. With luck, we’ll draw it out of the water to face us. As soon as it does this, we retreat across the bridge. It should follow.”
“And if the plan works, but the monster doesn’t die?”
Ursus shrugged. “Even if it’s wounded, we’ll have gained the advantage.”
Drusus had already heard enough. He quickly set the men to work, directing them to tear up the bridge’s timber surface and lay out the stakes for placement beneath.
Livius watched in silence. He wondered doubtfully if they would have enough time to make the preparations but was desperately hopeful that they would. If every man played his part, then they would all be waiting in the path of the monster as it made its attack. The chance was good that yet more witnesses to his failure would be accounted for.
Drusus himself took the stakes beneath the central portion of the causeway. It was a hazardous task, and he stripped off his clothes to do it, diving through the lily-pads into an icy darkness, densely tangled with weeds. His vision was restricted almost to nothing. But the actual erecting of the stakes was easy enough; the slime at the bottom of the mere was thick as glue, and pressing them down into it, he found they wedged upright of their own accord.
Time of course was of the essence. Several moments passed, and still he’d only placed nine or ten of the spikes. Only when one of the farmers elected to jump in too and assist were anything like the required number put in position. Perhaps thirty were ready when Ursus’s shouts drew the tesserari back up onto the causeway.
Drusus expected imminent attack and ran naked onto the island where the rest of them waited, to grab up his sword. But there was no sign of the ogre. Instead, a weak, red sun began to break through the fret, which was falling apart before their eyes. The small band of men, all now armed and clustered together on the little islet, watched in awe as the clogging mist slowly disintegrated. Soon only ebbing trails of it remained on the vast watery waste.
The darkling sky spread itself broadly overhead; the amphibious vegetation, after its long immersion in mist, was a sudden, startling green again. Yet still there was no sign of the ogre. The men watched and waited, staring as keenly as they could in every direction, scanning the distant tufts of reeds, the pools now glowing scarlet in the setting sun. Nothing seemed to move save the darting shapes of birds and jumping fish.
Tense moments passed before anyone dared voice the hope that the monster had given up. They all wanted to believe this, but in their heart of hearts few did.
And with good reason.
The first intimation they had that death was at hand was the broad V-wash rolling across the brown water toward them. Initially they didn’t see it, so busy were they trying to repress their excitement, fighting the urge to turn and embrace their fellow men because, against all odds, they had survived. Then the lapping of waves caught their attention. They went rigid, bolts of fear shooting through them. And it arose … coming out of the water like a great sea-serpent in a virtual tempest of spray.
The onslaught was immediate and terrifying. Its first blow was a wide, angry sweep with its hammer, which broke both the legs of the one remaining legionary and smashed into the hip of the farmer next to him. Both men went down as if poleaxed. The soldier fell into the boiling water and swiftly sank, never to re-emerge. The farmer dropped onto his side, his blood seeping through the sedge like red ink in blotting-paper. His frantic shrieks went unanswered, however, for all the others were now engaged. Ursus drove his wooden stake like a lance, only to have the beast snap it in half with one swipe of its hand. Livius and Drusus smote it with their swords, the two remaining farmers with their crude cudgels. It rode each attack with ease, scarcely a bead of blood drawn from its coarse, tufted hide.
Triumphantly, it came up onto dry land, towering over them like a great god-bear. The men fell back in disorder, ducking its counterblows, falling all over each other. In no time, the wounded farmer was left alone, and the ogre scooped him up, raised his already shattered body high above its head, and swung him down hard across its raised knee, breaking him further. As it repeated this action, Drusus lifted his shield and closed a second time, but it dealt him a glancing blow across the head that sent him reeling away, senseless.
> Finding himself alone now with only an aged engineer and two frightened civilians, Livius decided discretion was the better part of valour. He backed quickly to the causeway and started to cross it. “Retreat, you fools!” he shouted.
The closest farmer tried to follow but made the mistake of turning his back on the monster, and that was the death of him. The hammer split the back of his skull open like an eggshell. The other farmer also turned and tried to flee, but it caught him from behind, grabbing him by the neck of his tunic, dragging him back and clamping its mangling jaws on his shoulder. Muscle and sinew cracked, and the Briton’s gargling scream was cut short when it turned his face to a mash of teeth and crumpled bone with its hammer.
Knowing that all resistance here was futile, Ursus flung what remained of his lance at the thing, then turned and staggered onto the footbridge, stopping once to grab at the still-dazed Drusus and steer him in the same direction. They tottered along side by side, their feet slipping and sliding on the sodden canvas. The monster gave no immediate pursuit, briefly content to turn the smaller islet into an abattoir, rending the corpses of those it had killed into great, chunky gobbets.
But soon it did come, gambolling like some gigantic ape. The unsupported bridge began to jerk and leap alarmingly, threatening to throw the fleeing men off. They hobbled on all the harder, the first and larger islet just ahead of them. Livius was already standing there, watching their progress with morbid fascination … as if he couldn’t believe they were going to make it. In fact, it seemed to them that they wouldn’t make it. There was no chance at all; Ursus could smell the hot, blood-soaked breath upon them. Then suddenly, there came a series of mighty crashes and bangs as the floor fell away below them.
The next thing the engineer knew, both he and the tesserari had been pitched headlong to either side of the bridge, striking the water forcibly and plunging straight under. In both cases, though, they were only a matter of paces from the islet, and once they re-emerged, were able to scramble ashore. Behind them, the ogre wasn’t so lucky. As Ursus had planned, its colossal weight had forced the inflated hides down onto the sharpened piles. One after another, they had exploded, and the monster had fallen clean through; even the tough canvas was no match for the half-dozen points which then ripped upwards into its mammoth body. Its snarls of frustrated rage quickly gave way to howls of desperate agony.
The men watched breathless and dripping from the first island as the monster floundered like a beached whale, the numerous stakes holding it fast. The more the creature writhed to be free, the deeper the spikes embedded themselves. At length, the waters around it ran purest crimson, and its agonised cries had sunk into ghastly lingering groans. It shot a look of searing hatred towards them, but also one of helplessness and rage. The men stared back in silence. It was an awful, grisly scene, and it seemed to go on interminably. Finally, the nightmarish groans became whimpers; eventually the whimpers themselves failed.
At last the ogre lay still. Its upper torso and head were still visible above the fen, but the eyes were onyx orbs in its primitive face – lifeless and black. A long, dark tongue hung limp from one side of its gaping mouth.
Ursus went down onto his haunches. The expected relief didn’t come. Instead, he felt nauseous and intolerably tired. This was less than could be said for Livius, who now threw his shield down, and triumphantly sheathed his sword.
“A good plan, Ursus,” the optio said. “You’ll be rewarded for this. We all will, I fancy.”
The engineer stared up at him. “How is that so? The mission has been a disaster. Thirteen men have been slain.”
Livius acknowledged this with a half-smile. “Of such incidents, myths are made. And though we’ve taken losses, the Fasci reigns supreme. Gods, we should plant an eagle here as a permanent marker.” He stepped forward. “Come with me, Drusus. We’ll remove its head as proof for those sceptics back at camp.”
“Is that an order, sir?” asked the tesserari impertinently.
“That’s an order.”
Livius strode confidently down the sunken footbridge and waded out into the bloody waters, his junior officer sullenly following. For all the terror and torment of the last few hours, things had turned out passingly well, the optio decided. With only Ursus and Drusus left, there were no witnesses to his earlier timidity, and though his final role in the beast’s destruction had been slight, neither of those men would be in a position to gainsay him when he greatly exaggerated the tale in his official report. In any case, he had survived the ordeal … admittedly without major wounds, but any survival in escapades like this bore the stamp of hero. When he presented the ogre’s severed head at the praetorium in Londinium, the cheers would echo so loudly they’d be heard in the amphitheatres of Rome itself.
The two men were chest-deep and virtually treading water by the time they reached the monster’s twisted hulk. From this close, the stink of blood and bowels was suffocating, the water cloudy with viscera. Insects of every sort now swarmed around them. Livius swatted a few away and then moved forward towards the creature. The monster’s head hung heavily to one side, its neck at a gruesome angle, its features frozen. Inevitably, there was still a menacing aspect to it … the exposed teeth were like ivory swords, the titanic shoulders bulging with rock-hard muscle. Livius, who had been about to draw his sword, decided not to get any closer than necessary.
“Drusus … cut off its head, if you please.”
Irritably, the tesserari made his way forward, gladius raised. Its famous Spanish blade was as hard and sharp as any sword in the Empire, but judging by the monster’s neck, this would take more strength than he felt he had left.
Then it reached out for him.
It all happened so quickly that Drusus didn’t even hear Ursus’s warning shout. The ogre’s clamped hand encircled his neck completely, whereupon it promptly began to squeeze. The tesserari fought frantically back, hewing at its arm, but already the life was being throttled out of him, the crushing grip shutting off his windpipe, forcing spasms of blood into his head until he thought it would explode.
Livius had time neither to help nor escape. The moment the creature came back to life, it balled its right fist and thrust it at him, connecting squarely. Ordinarily, such a blow would have killed a man, driving his jawbone into his brain as surely as any sword. Drained both of blood and strength, however, the monster’s punch was sluggish, almost soft. Even so, the Roman officer was knocked into semi-consciousness, dropping his sword and sinking below the surface. The next thing he knew, the monster was grappling at his neck as well. He struggled wildly to escape, but it still caught him by the scarf, and raised him bodily from the water, where he hung kicking and screaming.
Ursus stumbled forward down the sunken bridge, wading in until he was waist-deep. But there was nothing he could do; he was unarmed and helplessly weak. Used to hard work as he was, his ageing limbs had never ached as they did now.
Even then, the wounded ogre spied him coming and identified him as a risk. A man clasped in each fist, it tried to shift its position but was still unable to free itself from the spikes. Maddened by pain, it slammed its two captives together, so that their heads collided – the crack was shudder-inducing – then cast them aside like broken dolls and again struggled to escape. Fresh blood blossomed on the swamp surface, and the ogre’s cries rose to new tormented pitches, but at last it fought its way loose and was able to lurch towards this latest foe.
Ursus had frozen where he stood, too tired to turn and run, too mesmerised to lift an arm in his own defence. It lumbered towards him remorselessly. It was gored and bleeding, daubed all over with river-weed and pond-mud, yet it was still an awesome picture of destructive savagery. With either hand, it could grind his bones, flatten his skull; a single bite would snap him in half. More than anything else, Ursus wished at that moment that he believed in some god somewhere, so he could beg salvation as his death descended in fury upon him.
And then, incredibly, the ogre was attacke
d from behind.
Mud smeared across his face like barbarous war-paint, the Briton, Jusci, appeared on the creature’s back. With a snarl, it spun around and tried to throw him off. But with his left hand, he clung tightly to its matted hair, and with his right, he drew back Drusus’s discarded gladius. Ursus gaped, as the bold Briton drove the blade again and again between the monster’s shoulders. It shrieked and bucked and threw itself back and forth, but the Iceni held on with grim resolve, thrusting and thrusting with every ounce of strength in his tight, thick-thewed body. Mortally wounded, the monster was unable to thrash about for long. It tried in vain to dislodge the man, but its struggles quickly weakened, and its head began to sag onto its chest. At long last, its eyes rolled white.
Only when it finally slumped forward, and went heavily under the waves, its mane a swirling mass behind it, did the Iceni leap away and, with his bloody blade clasped between his teeth, swim over the sunken bridge to where Ursus watched haplessly. Without a word, the tribesman took the engineer by the collar of his tunic and hauled him toward the shore. The Roman wanted to thank him but couldn’t find the right words. A short time later he had been assisted onto dry land, where he sank gratefully to his knees.
“Good iron,” Jusci said matter-of-factly, hefting the gladius.
Ursus nodded feebly. He was about to reply, when a low groan caught their attention. Both men turned and saw a sodden, bedraggled shape emerge from the water to fall exhausted onto a bed of marsh marigolds.
It was Livius.
Despite the mauling he had taken, he was still very much alive – more than could be said for Drusus. The brave tesserari floated facedown only a matter of feet behind him. Even if the ogre had not quite finished strangling him, the thundering clash of heads had proved fatal, for Livius had still been wearing his helmet, while Drusus had not.