‘How did the beast get loose?’ said a voice. I glanced round to find Osric standing on the step behind me. He was looking grim.
‘I’ve no idea. Have you seen Walo anywhere?’ I asked my friend. He shook his head.
There was the slap-slap of sandals and Protis arrived, running down the steps towards us, almost knocking us over as he skidded to a halt beside us. He gazed at the aurochs with appalled fascination.
‘Find Walo,’ I said to him urgently. ‘We have to work out how to get the aurochs back in its stable.’
Just then, I saw Walo coming down the steps towards us.
‘Are you all right, Walo?’ I called up to him. He appeared to be unsteady on his feet.
‘I must have eaten something bad. I’ll soon be better,’ he answered.
‘Walo, how did the aurochs escape?’ Protis asked.
Walo stared down at aurochs, now pacing around the arena, ignoring the hysterical dogs. ‘I don’t know. I locked up all the animals as usual.’
I came to a decision. ‘Walo, you head back to bed. The rest of us will take it in turns to stay here until daylight. We must make sure no one gets into the arena and is hurt. Then we’ll devise a system to get the aurochs back inside.’
‘What about the dogs?’ Protis asked me. ‘They could get injured.’
‘If they’ve any sense, they’ll learn to stay clear of those horns until morning,’ I told him.
The words were hardly out of my mouth when Walo gave a strangled moan. He was staring towards the half-open door that led to where the animals should have been safely housed. The door had swung back and a pale shape had appeared in the opening. Someone had also let the ice bears loose. One of them was about to enter the ring.
In that instant the situation became a living nightmare. There was no doubt in my mind that we were about to see a fight to the death between the bears and the aurochs. It was to be a repeat of the blood bath of those ancient displays in the Colosseum when exotic wild beasts were pitted against one another. Whether the aurochs would kill the ice bears, or the other way around, I had no idea, though I found myself hoping that the ice bears would be the victors. Modi and Madi were our most valuable animals. If either one of them was injured or killed, it would be a crippling loss. Carolus’s gifts of the remaining animals to the caliph would seem commonplace.
Walo slipped past me before I could stop him. He threw a leg over the low balustrade that topped the surrounding wall of the arena and dropped down onto the sand. His devotion to the well-being of the ice bears had overwhelmed his common sense. The head and shoulders of the bear had emerged from the doorway as the animal paused, gazing about to see what was in the arena. I saw the turned-in front paw and knew it was Modi. Behind him I saw movement and Madi’s shape appeared. Walo was empty handed. Without his deerhorn pipe to soothe them, he would have to make them turn around and go back into their room. If they chose instead to maul him, he was a dead man.
But first he had to reach the open doorway. The aurochs saw the movement as Walo ran. The great beast spun on its haunches and lowered its head. Walo was alert to the danger and swerved away. But it was hopeless. There was no chance that he could get past the aurochs and reach the door. He stopped and turned to face the animal that had killed his father.
My mouth went dry.
With a yell of defiance Protis thrust me aside, hurdled the low balustrade and tumbled into the arena, falling on his knees. He scrambled back on his feet and shouted, waving his arms at the aurochs to get its attention. The brute whirled to face him. Protis shouted again, then pulled his shirt over his head and flapped it in front of the aurochs. He was taunting the beast, drawing it away from Walo, who stood for a couple of heartbeats and then sprinted towards the ice bears.
Time seemed to stand still. Protis kept up his clamour and now he was joined by the dog pack. They were barking and dancing around him, leaping up with excitement. He was like a huntsman surrounded by his pack.
I stole a quick glance at Walo. He had reached the doorway and, hands extended, was pushing and shoving on Modi’s head, trying to make the animal turn and go back inside.
Below me the aurochs pawed the ground, gouging the sand of the arena, still watching Protis. It rolled its great head from side to side, and then flicked up its horns as if rehearsing an attack. Then the great creature dropped its head and launched itself forward with a sudden thrust of the muscled hindquarters. I had witnessed the terrible speed of the creature when it rushed past me in the forest, running down Vulfard. Even so, I was appalled by how quickly it covered the distance to Protis. One moment it was ten yards away, the next it was almost on top of him. Protis must have planned to use his shirt to blindfold the brute. But what had been possible on a beach in daylight with an aurochs tired from a two-mile swim was no longer realistic. The enclosure of the arena was the brute’s familiar territory, the animal was fit and in top condition and the flat moonlight made it difficult to judge distances. Worse, there was something truly evil about the hatred the aurochs displayed towards the human. It was as if all the months of being confined within a cage during the long journey were now concentrated in the ferocity of the onslaught.
Miraculously, Protis managed to dodge the attack. He leaped aside as the aurochs flashed past him, flinging its horns into the empty air. In the blink of an eye it had swung round on its haunches, lowered its head again, and was driving forward at its target. This time Protis did not even attempt to flap his shirt at the onrushing beast. He was only yards from the high wooden wall of the arena. He dropped his shirt, turned, took two strides and leaped upward, reaching for a handhold on the upper edge. He succeeded and hung on, drawing up his legs so that the horns of the charging aurochs smashed into the timber just below him with a splintering crash that I could feel from where I stood.
The aurochs drew back, shook its head as if slightly stunned, and turned aside. Then it trotted away a few yards, wheeled about to face Protis, and waited. The young Greek was dangling with both hands and at the full extent of both arms. He looked over his shoulder at the monstrous beast. It was clear that the vengeful aurochs was waiting for him to drop.
Osric and I bolted for the front row of the spectator seats. Protis was twenty yards away. If we could reach him in time, we could grab his wrists and haul him up to safety. As I ran I flicked a desperate glance towards the doorway where I had last seen Walo. The door was closed. Somehow he had managed to turn the bears around and push them back. What had happened inside, I could only guess.
We were so close to Protis that we would have reached him in a couple more paces, when he lost his grip. Perhaps he tried to pull himself upward onto the balustrade and miscalculated, or the palms of his hands had become too sweaty and he had slipped. He dropped away from us just as Osric and I arrived at the point where we could have saved him. We looked over the edge, aghast. Beneath us Protis was scrambling back onto his feet and turning to face the aurochs. Even then he might have escaped the beast’s next attack if one of the dogs had not bumped into him. They had been circling hysterically, barking frenziedly the entire time. Now, as Protis stood up, one of them scurried behind him, brushing against the back of his knees, and threw him off balance. A heartbeat later the aurochs was coming forward and this time the vicious up-sweep of the horns caught Protis full in the stomach. He was flung high in the air. He cartwheeled and landed limp on the sand. The aurochs had already spun round and was on its victim in a flash. The horns hooked down.