The dogs were closer now, and it seemed that their baying had become more urgent as the scent ran hotter, Timon stood up and unsheathed the sword. He went out amongst the rocks and looked back towards the escarpment. Half a mile back the pack streamed from the forest into the glade. There were thirty of the tall sinewy hounds, long-legged and with rough ginger-brown coats and the heads and fangs of wolves. They were bred to chase and drag down the quarry.
Timon felt his skin tighten and prickle as he watched them string out across the glade towards him. Behind them, running on the heels of the pack were the handlers, with their distinctive green tunics and the dog-whips over their shoulders.
Beyond them again came the war elephants, five of them with the knights and slave-masters in their castles. The elephants followed the pack easily, in that ambling gait which could cover fifty miles in a day.
Timon shaded his eyes and tried to pick out the distinctive figure of the priest amongst the men in the castles. They were too far off still, but the hounds were closing swiftly.
He wrapped his cloak carefully about his left forearm, and settled his grip on the sword, swinging the weapon in a short arc to stretch his muscles.
The leading hounds saw him amongst the rocks, and immediately the deep regular baying changed to an excited yammering. Their ears flattened as they ran, and long pink tongues flopped over white fangs in the wolf jaws, and they fanned out across his front.
Timon stepped back into the opening where Sellene lay, guarding her from the vicious clamouring rush of brown bodies.
The first hound rushed in at him, with its jaws snapping, and it leapt at his face.
Timon took him on the point, in the base of his throat, killing the dog instantly, but before he could clear his blade another had sprung at him. He thrust his cloaked arm into its jaws, and hacked at a third hound.
They swarmed over him as he stabbed and hacked and thrust. He swung the hound that hung on his arm against the rock beside him, crushing in its ribs, but another had locked its fangs in his calf and was tugging him cruelly off balance. He drove the point into its shaggy back and the hound shrieked and released him.
Another went for his face and he struck at its head with the sword hilt. A great furry body smashed into his chest, a tang ripped his shoulder muscles.
There were too many of them, overwhelming him, ripping and tearing at him, smothering him with their weight and strength. He went down on his knees, holding a frothing slavering animal away from his throat and face with one hand, strangling it, but he felt other teeth slashing at his back and belly and thighs.
Then abruptly the dog-handlers were there, whipping the pack away from him, shouting to the animals by name, dragging them back and leashing them in the strangling collars.
Slowly Timon pulled himself up onto his feet. He had lost his sword, and blood streamed down his shining black body from the deep cuts and lacerations that covered him.
He looked up at the war elephant which towered over him. His last hope faded as he saw that Huy Ben-Amon was not amongst the hunters - and that Lannon Hycanus, the Gry-Lion of Opet was laughing.
‘A good run, slave,’ Lannon laughed. ‘I thought that you might reach the river.’ He looked beyond Timon to where Sellene lay. ‘My huntmasters were correct, then. They judged by the sign that the woman had damaged her leg and that you were carrying her. A noble gesture, slave, most unusual for a pagan. All the same it will cost you dear.’ Lannon looked away to one of his slave-masters. ‘There seems little to be gained by returning with them. Execute them here.’
Timon looked up at the king and spoke in a strong clear voice.
‘I am the living symbol of that love,’ he said, and Lannon’s head jerked around as he remembered the words. With the laughter gone from his lips he stared at the bleeding slave king, meeting those smoky yellow eyes. For long seconds, Timon’s life teetered on the verge of extinction, then suddenly Lannon’s eyes dropped away from those of Timon.
‘Very well,’ he nodded. ‘You remind me of my duty to a friend. I will honour it, but I swear you will live to curse the moment you spoke those words. You will live - but in life you will long for the sweetness of death.’ Lannon’s face was a mask of cold anger, as he turned back to his slave-masters. ‘This man will not be executed, but he is declared “incorrigible” and he will be chained with a weight of two talents.’ Almost a hundred pounds’ weight of chains to be carried night and day, waking and sleeping. ‘Send him to the mines at Hulya, tell the overseer there that he is to be used at the deep levels.’
Lannon watched Timon’s face as he went on. ‘The woman cannot claim my protection, but we will take her back with us, none the less. Let her be chained to the castle of one of the war elephants and marched.’
For the first time Timon showed emotion. He stepped forward and in appeal lifted one badly savaged arm from which the dark tattered flesh hung.
‘My lord, the woman is hurt. She cannot walk.’
‘She will walk,’ said Lannon. ‘Or she will be dragged. You will ride upon the elephant and encourage her. You will have time to decide if the swift death I offered you would not have been preferable to the life you have chosen.’
They chained Sellene at the wrists with a light marching chain twenty paces long. The other end of the chain was shackled to the rear wall of the elephant castle.
Timon, wearing his massive chains at neck and ankles, was seated in the castle. He was made to face backwards to where Sellene stood swaying slightly on one leg, favouring her grotesquely swollen ankle. Her face was greyish with pain, but she tried to smile up at Timon.
The first jerk of the chain as the elephant started forward pulled her face downwards on the hard earth, with its sharp shales and harsh clumps of razor grass. She was dragged fifty paces before she managed to roll onto her feet again and hop and stumble after the striding elephant. Her knees and elbows were raw, and there were scratches across her belly and breasts.
She fell and regained her feet a dozen times, each time her body was more battered and torn. She went down for the last time a little before sunset.
