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The Emperor's Elephant(3)



As the huge beast stepped on the false ground the covering of hurdles collapsed immediately. With a great flurry of broken sticks and earth sods the huge creature tumbled into the pit, bellowing with rage.

Perhaps Vulfard had mistaken the precise location of the hidden pit. Or misjudged the length and reach of the long horns. The verderer was unbalanced and teetering on the very edge of the pit when the aurochs dropped forward. With amazing agility for such a bulky creature, the aurochs twisted sideways in mid-air. The tip of the right horn snagged the verderer’s jerkin, just below the armpit. One moment Vulfard was on the edge of the pit; the next he was dragged down with the enraged beast.

Aghast, I lurched awkwardly to my feet and ran forward, my legs already wobbly with fear. Reaching the edge of the pit I looked down. Nothing could save Vulfard. He had landed alongside the animal and managed to push himself upright in the gap between the side of the pit and the aurochs’ hindquarters. For a brief moment he was clear of its horns. But the enraged monster squirmed round and I watched as it drove a horn straight into Vulfard’s chest. The horn spiked Vulfard like a pig on a roasting spit, passing right through him. With a savage twist of its head the aurochs tossed Vulfard high into the air. The verderer spun, then fell back. The aurochs caught him on both horns, then tossed him again. I prayed that death would come to Vulfard quickly, so badly broken was his body. It flopped limply as the aurochs flung its victim upwards again and again. After several lunging, maddened attacks the brute allowed the wreckage of what had once been a man to drop into the churned mud of the pitfall’s floor. To my horror the aurochs then backed away into the small space available, lowered its head and deliberately spiked the corpse again. Lifting Vulfard on its head like some grisly trophy, the aurochs shook its head from side to side as a terrier might shake a rat in its jaws. A terrier would have growled its anger; the aurochs bellowed and bellowed hate and frustration.

Only when Vulfard’s mangled corpse was a bloody pulp did the aurochs finally drop its victim into the slime and mud. Little by little, the frenzied bellowing died away, and from where I stood above, I could see its flanks heaving in and out. Then the beast raised its huge head to me, its mad, white-rimmed eyes glaring malevolently.

In the terrible, empty interval that followed I became aware of Walo standing on the opposite side of the pit. He too had been looking down at the gruesome death of his father. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was shaking violently. For a desperate moment I thought that Walo would hurl himself down into the pit to try to retrieve his father’s body or avenge his killer. Instead, as the aurochs ceased its bellowing, Walo threw back his head and, between great sobs of anguish, let out an awful, long-drawn-out howl.





Chapter Two




MY SUMMONS TO the royal chancery had arrived three weeks earlier. The compline bell in the dome of Aachen’s basilica was tolling when a nervous-looking young clerk with rabbit teeth knocked on my door. He stared at the ground and mumbled his words because I had not had time to slip on the eye patch I usually wore in public. The Franks and my own Saxon people believe that someone who has eyes of different colours bears the mark of a person touched by the evil one. One of my eyes is blue, the other a greenish hazel. This oddity saved my life as a teenager when my bitter nemesis, King Offa of Wessex, invaded and seized my family’s insignificant little kingdom. Offa slaughtered my father and brothers but, fearful that ill luck would follow my murder, he spared my life, choosing instead to exile me to the court of the king of the Franks and the most powerful sovereign in Europe whose rule now extends from the Atlantic coast to the dark forests beyond the Rhine. That exile had a cruel streak. Offa anticipated that I would suffer all the disadvantages and sorrows of a winelas guma, a ‘friendless man’, a prey to all who would harm or exploit him. Against all odds I had prospered. My service in Hispania had been rewarded with an annual stipend and the gift of a small house on the edge of the royal precinct.

The young messenger on my doorstep also made it clear that he preferred not to come into the house. I guessed it had something to do with the fact that I shared my home with a foreigner of sinister appearance. Osric’s dark Saracen skin, sardonic manner, and the twisted leg must have made him an alarming figure to the desk-bound gossips in the government bureaucracy. Osric had once been a slave, charged by my father with my upbringing. Now he was my trusted companion and friend.

I stepped back inside the house, put on my eye patch, and collected a heavy ankle-length cloak. At that late hour the braziers in the chancery offices would have been allowed to burn out, and the place was notoriously draughty. Then I followed the messenger along the footpaths that criss-crossed Aachen’s royal precinct. We had to go carefully in the fading light as the place was still a construction site. Piles of sand, brick or cut stone were dumped here and there, apparently at random. Temporary workshops and storehouses sprang up overnight, forcing one to make a detour. A familiar track was suddenly blocked by recent scaffolding, or fenced off by a barrier to stop one falling into a trench being dug for the foundations of a new building. For as long as I had known Carolus, the king had been pressing forward with his grand design to make himself a new capital in the north, the equal of Rome, and he was sparing no expense. His treasury, the tribunal building, and the garrison block were complete. But the towering council hall, large enough to seat an audience of four hundred, was still a shell, while his most ambitious structure, the royal chapel, was not yet ready for its ceremonial consecration. It had acquired bells and marble columns and a pair of great, ornate bronze doors that had been locally commissioned and made a fortune for the foundry owner. But an army of workmen still had months of labour before they finished cementing into place the brightly coloured mosaics that would dazzle the congregation.