It took another hour for the caravan to get under way. First came the morning prayer, then the camels were given their ration of fodder and the men sat down in small groups to breakfast on flat bread and a handful of dates washed down with a few gulps of water. By the time the camels had their packsaddles and loads securely in place or had been harnessed to the waggons, the tracks left by the aurochs were easy to see. It had walked straight into the desert.
Leaving Osric in charge of our remaining animals, Abram, Walo and I set off in pursuit. We had gone no more than a mile and were still within plain view of the caravan behind us when we topped a small rise in the ground and came to a sudden halt. We were looking down into a shallow depression in the desert’s surface. The floor of the depression was a flat expanse of gravel dotted with small boulders. Stretched out on the gravel lay the body of the dead aurochs, the head and long horns twisted at an unnatural angle. Crouched on their bellies and feeding on the corpse were five lions. They were tearing and ripping at the flesh, their heads half buried in the entrails. One of the lions noticed our arrival. It raised its head and stared at us with its great, yellow eyes. We were close enough to see the jaws smeared with fresh blood.
For a long moment we froze, too shocked to move. Then, very slowly and cautiously we backed away, down the slope and out of sight of the great beasts.
My voice was unsteady as I whispered, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We must get back to the caravan.’
‘What about the horns?’ asked Walo.
I was so dumbfounded that I just stared at him.
‘For the king,’ said Walo. Only then did I remember the great silver-mounted aurochs’ horn in Alcuin’s room on the day when he had told me that I had an audience with Carolus. That time seemed impossibly far away.
‘No, Walo. It’s too dangerous,’ I said. It would have been the duty of Vulfard, Walo’s father, to present the horns of any large game animals to the king.
‘If we wait until the lions have stopped feeding—’ Walo began.
‘No!’ I hissed, angry now. I took a grip on his elbow in case he tried to get past me. ‘We leave the aurochs where it is.’
We trudged our way back to the caravan, with frequent glances behind us to make sure no lion was following. In a strange way I was feeling relieved. From the moment I had first laid eyes on the aurochs in the forest I had disliked and feared the brute. It was a danger to anyone who approached it, even to give it food or water. Always angry and malevolent, it had killed both Vulfard and Protis. If the opportunity arose, it would kill again. Perhaps it was fanciful of me to think in such terms, but I detected something deeply wicked about it. Of course I regretted all the months of wasted effort it had taken to bring the beast so far, only for it to be torn to pieces in the desert. Yet I was thankful that it was the aurochs that had died, not the ice bears. I resolved that there was no point in brooding over the fate of the aurochs. What mattered now was bringing Madi and Modi and the other animals safely to Baghdad.
For that, I needed to find out who had set the aurochs free.
The answer was presented to me as soon as we caught up with the caravan. Osric had been making enquiries among the camel drivers.
‘A man is missing. He disappeared from the camp during the night.’
I felt a surge of excitement. ‘Does anyone know anything about him? Where he comes from?’
‘Apparently he joined at the start of the caravan, offering to work as a general assistant for almost no pay. The other camel men were puzzled. He wasn’t very good at his job. They say he behaved more like a town dweller than someone who had worked with the caravans. He got himself bitten by a camel.’
‘Do they have any idea where he might be now?’
‘The camel drivers think that he will have gone ahead. The road is easy enough to follow and we’re little more than a day’s journey from al-Qulzum. My guess is that he slipped away in the night before he was questioned.’
‘As soon as we get to al-Qulzum we’ll track him down and find out who he’s working for,’ I said grimly.
As it turned out, the interrogation was not possible. We resumed our march and not long after the halt for midday prayers there was a shout from the head of the column. A cloak had been spotted on the ground a few yards off to the side of the track. Someone ran to investigate and found the garment was bloodstained and torn. Another shout came from a man pointing towards a clump of thorn bushes some fifty paces away. Five or six hyenas could be seen trotting off into the desert, their loping strides unmistakable. The caravan halted and after a hasty conference between the camel drivers, a group of half a dozen men, armed with spears, headed cautiously towards the bushes.