The Emperor's Elephant(113)

‘A cameleopard,’ I breathed in wonder. It was everything that the Book of Beasts had promised, and more.

Swishing its cow-like tail, the cameleopard moved around the tree, grazing on its leaves.

‘Why does it not have the pard’s spots?’ asked Walo. The bestiary had stated that the cameleopard got its name because it had the body of a camel and the spotted skin of the leopard. Yet the pelt of this extraordinary creature in front of us had a bold network of white lines on a yellowy-orange background. The colouring had blended with the dappled shadows under the tree. It was little wonder that we had failed to see the cameleopard sooner.

Walo was beside himself with elation. He tugged my arm as he crouched down. ‘Come!’ he begged. ‘Let’s get closer!’

Bending double we crept through the tall grass towards the feeding animal. Soon we were close enough to see the animal’s long tongue licking out to twist off the leaves as it fed in the high branches. The creature swivelled its head towards us and the ears flicked out, listening. In place of large horns there were two short stumps on its head. ‘It’s a deer, not a camel,’ announced Walo.

The cameleopard caught sight of us and took fright. Suddenly it wheeled about and fled, kicking out the long, ungainly legs and running with a rocking motion. Its panicked flight startled other cameleopards that we had not seen. They had been hidden in a fold in the ground, and now they appeared as if by magic. First their heads and then their long necks rising from the grass as they ran up the slope. All of a sudden we were watching an entire herd of them galloping away over the grassland.

The spectacle brought to mind the Nomenculator’s story in Rome, of the timid animals that had been set loose in the Colosseum and hunted down by lions. Surely they had been cameleopards.

Walo was capering with delight. ‘We must catch one and bring it home with us!’ he cried. ‘We can dig a pit like the one in the forest and put down leaves for bait!’

He was thinking back to the day he had seen the aurochs taken in the pitfall. Despite the day’s heat I shuddered. I recalled seeing the aurochs gore his father to death.

For Walo the thrill of seeing a cameleopard wiped away the horror of that memory. He was beaming with anticipation. ‘Catching a cameleopard will be easy!’ he insisted.

‘We should go back to the ship and speak with Sulaiman,’ I said, ‘and ask him if it will be possible to transport a cameleopard aboard.’

We turned around and began to make our way back along the path in single file. Walo led, giving a little skip every few paces. At one point he turned to me, his face radiant, and said, ‘This is the land where the beasts in the book have their homes . . . cameleopards, hyenas and crocodiles. We are sure to find the griffin!’

He carried on a few paces further and came to an abrupt halt. ‘Look,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘it is just as I said. All the beasts live here. There’s an asp.’

He was pointing at an indistinct grey shape lying beside the path, half hidden beneath a fallen tree trunk.

The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I backed away so suddenly that Osric bumped into me from behind. ‘Stay away, Walo!’ I urged him.

But he ignored me entirely. He stepped off the track and approached the grey shape. It moved, shifting and twisting on itself. It was a serpent, scarcely a yard in length, but gross and fat, the head smaller than the bloated body, its skin a pattern of chevrons, grey on black.

It was coiling back, deeper into the overhang of the fallen tree trunk.

‘You see! It retreats in fear just as the book says,’ Walo exulted. He felt inside his shirt and pulled out his little deerhorn pipe, the same one with which he had tamed the ice bears. He put it to his lips, and played the same three notes.

The serpent coiled again, retreating even further.

Walo turned to me with a triumphant smile. ‘The book was right. It fears the music.’

Despite my terror of the serpent, I half believed him. According to the Book of Beasts the asp dreads music. When an asp hears music it seeks to flee, and if that is impossible, it attempts to block out the sound, pressing one ear to the ground, and bringing the tip of its tail around and thrusting it into the other ear.

Walo blew a few more notes and – sure enough – the snake writhed and formed an extra loop, doubling back on itself, and its tail came near its squat, flat head.

I remembered how Walo had handled the little horned snake in the desert of Egypt and wondered if again he would show his uncanny skill with wild creatures.

He was moving closer, slowly and confidently, and playing the notes again. The serpent writhed as if in distress.