that. He realized dizzily that he was on a slight rise scarcely worthy to be called a foothill, looking down on the river valley. They were not, then, that far away from the snake’s territory. He felt queasy, and not just from the poison. Fear could do that to a man.
“What?” he managed, and with the word, felt that it was not just his leg, but his entire body that swelled with the venom.
“Give him water,” Marcus directed one of the men, but he didn’t even look toward Flavius. He was watching the river. Watching and waiting. “There,” he breathed. “There you are. We see you now.” He turned and shouted to someone behind them, “Do you mark him now? You can’t miss him. He’s as big as a city wall, and so shall we treat him. Take your best aim and let fly.”
One of the men held water in a cup to his mouth. Flavius tried to drink. His lips, his tongue, all parts of his mouth were stupid and swollen. He wet his tongue, choked, gasped in air, gulped water, and then managed to pull his face away from the offered cup. Someone, somewhere was beating a drum, a slow thwacking noise. It made no sense. As he pulled his face away from the cup, he heard the familiar thud and then deep vibration as a ballista launched a shot. Four others followed in succession. He knew them now, knew the deep thock-thock-thock as the bowstring was racheted back, and then the release, followed by the deep hum of vibrating leather. They were using shot, not bolts, and the men on the rise were shouting and leaping in excitement as each missile was launched. “That’s a hit!” someone shouted, and “Look at him thrash! Look at him thrash!” another replied.
Flavius forced his eyes wider and managed to focus them on the scene. Marcus had chosen to attack the snake with ballistae. The men on the weapons were working frantically, loading and cranking and adjusting each launch to target the writhing snake. Below, each heavy shot of stone either sent up a plume of brown water as it missed, or thudded harshly against the scaled back of the snake before splashing into the river. The snake was in the deep reeds, but from his vantage, Marcus could look down on him. He had glimpses of the broad scaled back and his lashing tail, but even when no part of the snake was visible, they could track him by the way he parted the reeds and sent brown tendrils of mud unfurling into the tan waters of the river.
“Can’t kill him,” Flavius said, but it came out as a muted mumble and no one paid him any heed. He caught only glimpses of the battle, for the men in front of him shouted and leaped and pounded one another with each successful hit on the snake. But Flavius knew snakes. He’d held them in his hands when he was a boy and knew how supple they were, how flexible their ribs. “Head,” he suggested, and then, from swollen lips, he shouted at Marcus, “Head. Skull!”
Had he heard him, or had he figured it out for himself? “Aim for his head. All of you. Focus your missiles on his head! Quickly, before he finds better cover or goes back deep into the river.”
His men complied, ratcheting and loading and raining a hail of rocks down on the snake below. Battered and confused, the creature turned first one way and then another, trying to elude its mysterious enemy. Its tail, Flavius saw, did not thrash so wildly as it had; perhaps one of the missiles had done some damage to its spine after all. Another hit, this one closer to the snake’s wedge-shaped head, and suddenly its movements slowed and became more labored. It more twisted than thrashed now; Flavius caught a glimpse of pale belly scales as the creature rolled in agony.
And then, the hit. Flavius knew the death blow when he saw it. The rock struck the snake’s head and stuck there, wedged into the animal’s skull. The twitches became ever slower; undeterred, the men on the ballistae continued to rain stone after stone down on the creature. Even after it was still, they assaulted it, pelting its yielding body over and over.
“Enough!” Marcus shouted at last, long after Flavius knew the snake was dead. He turned to someone, spoke over Flavius’ head. “Send two men down to be sure of it. And when they are sure it’s dead, I want them to measure it.”
“It’s a hundred foot if it’s one,” someone observed.
“Closer to a hundred and twenty,” someone else opined.
“No one’s going to believe us,” someone else laughed sourly
Flavius saw Marcus stiffen. The poison was working in him, and his vision wavered before him. He had a glimpse of Marcus’ set jaw and grim eyes. Then, as he gave in and closed his own eyes, he heard Marcus say, “They’ll believe us. This is no wild tale from Africa, no braggart’s boast. They’ll believe because we’ll send them the hide. And the head. We’ll skin it out and send it back to Rome. They’ll believe.”
And they had. Flavius had ridden in the oxcart alongside the salted and stinking hide. The severed head, missing a number of souvenir teeth, had been at the end of the wagon. The sight and the smell of it baking under the hot African sun had sickened him almost as much as the poison and infection coursing through his body. He had leaned against the side of the wagon, his bandaged leg propped up before him and stared at it blearily. He could see the broken tooth in the snake’s jaw, and knew where the rest of it was. Up against the bone in his thigh, snugged in tight. The healer had judged it safest to leave it where it was. “You’ll heal up around it, never know it’s there,” the man had lied to Flavius. And Flavius, too sick and weary to consider the idea of letting him dig in the wound for it, had nodded and accepted the lie.
Marcus had come to bid him farewell. “You know I’d keep you by my side if I could, but it’s for the best that you go home. You can tell my tale better than anyone else. And no one will doubt you when you’ve got both skull and hide to back you up. I’m sorry to send you home like this. But I promise that at the next muster, you’ll join me again. I hope you don’t think I’m breaking my promise.”
They both knew to what he referred. Flavius had sighed. Even if he had told Marcus that he never wanted to go soldiering again, his friend would not have believed it. So he summoned a smile and said, “As I recall, you only promised that you’d never go to war without me. And I don’t recall that I ever said I wouldn’t go home without you!”
“That’s true, old friend. The promise was mine, not yours. Well, travel well. And send me word of my family, and tell my boys of our deeds. I’ll be home again soon enough. And next time we form up, be sure that you will march with me again.”
And he was home again soon. That time. Flavius squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, wishing he could shut out the sounds of the crowd as well. The catcalls were getting louder. Marcus had never grasped that for Flavius, war was a duty, not a call to glory. So the next time there had been a muster, as Flavius limped forward on the leg that had never fully healed, Marcus kept his word. Flavius was once more chosen to march with him.
And he’d ended up here. An escaped slave in Carthage.
He looked at what he had fashioned from the serpent’s tooth. He balanced it in his hand, considering. A pole sling worked best with a rounded stone. This missile might well tumble. The bars of the cage might deflect it. It was a stupid plan, a hopeless gesture. He looked up at his friend, and what he saw decided him.
Some flung object had struck Marcus’ brow. Bright blood trickled from the split. But more than that, the setting sun cast a red light on him. His bared skin looked scarlet in the dying light. Red painted him, just as if he were riding in a chariot through Rome, riding to have his Triumph recognized. He stood upright, trembling with the effort of remaining so. His ruined eyes stared to the west.
Flavius stepped out into the street, walked determinedly to the best vantage point. He’d have one chance, and the pole sling demanded space. Marcus was visibly failing as petty stones and flung insults filled the air and his ears. Flavius considered well. Then he took a deep breath.
“Ware serpent!” he shouted.
Marcus did not turn toward him. Perhaps, his grip on the bars tightened. Perhaps not. He might never know that his friend was there to witness him die, might never know what Flavius risked in raising his voice. A few people had turned to stare at him, hearing his foreign words. He busied himself, settling his missile in his sling, testing the swing of it. He fixed his eyes and his heart on his friend. He nodded a farewell Marcus could not see. Then he launched the tooth. It flew true. He saw it strike Marcus’ chest, saw it sink into his heart. Marcus jerked with the impact.
“Memento mori!” he shouted, and at those words, his friend did, for the last time, turn toward him. Then he sank, dead but never relinquishing his grip on the bars, onto the spikes that had so long awaited him. The crowd roared in triumph, but he was past hearing them. Consul Marcus Attilius Regulus was dead, slain by a serpent. It no longer mattered that fools continued to hurl stones and offal at him. He was gone.
Flavius stood but a moment longer. A few people had marked what he had done, but they marked also that he gripped his staff tightly, and that he did not avoid their stares. They turned away from him and continued to pick up stones and hurl them at Marcus’ body. Like soldiers hurling rocks at a dead serpent. Better to taunt a dead lion
