THAT EVENING THEY take the elephants down through the sheltering trees to the river. Colossus bellows his approval and wanders downstream. Catharo and Mara get to work with the pumice and the brushes. After the disturbing events of the afternoon, it seems he has recovered his temper. He is playful and sprays the thick green water on himself and on them.
He lumbers up to the bank and goes in search of a light meal. For all his size he is a delicate creature. His trunk encircles a clod of grass, sniffs at it then plucks it out of the ground. He taps it on his foreleg to dislodge the soil, then places it in the side of his mouth, just the roots protruding. He devours this morsel thoughtfully, before proceeding to the next.
Now some soldiers emerge from the tree-lined bank, an ominous presence; they say nothing, just watch. Mara knows what they want. She hopes that if she does not look up, they will move on, but she knows better.
The Macks are all twenty- or thirty-year veterans by the looks of them, seamed and craggy, some with grey in their hair. The leader is a bluff fellow with a scar across his left eye as if it were made of wax that had come too near to a flame and melted; another stares at her like a wolf considering breakfast. Back under the tree a third man, more furtive than the others, is fingering the blade at his belt and looks as if he cannot decide between buggery and slaughter. There’s a younger one with a shrill laugh.
Her husband never looked at her that way, even when he had been away for months; it seems to her that some men hate the very thing they lust for. There’s a poison in them and when it runs it goes straight to their crotch.
‘What’s your name, boy? Come on, don’t be shy. We won’t bite.’
When Mara ignores them, it just goads them more.
‘I bet your pretty little arse is no virgin so don’t come coy with me. Come over here, we’re not beasts in the field, we’ll take nice care of you. Here,’ he says, and tosses a coin in the mud. ‘Here’s some silver for your trouble. You can’t say we’re not generous men.’
‘I’d like to grease him up like a piglet and skewer him up to the lungs,’ the one with the knife says. ‘Come on, let’s stop messing about with this, if he won’t show us the proper favour we’ll teach him to bow to Macedon, just like we were Alexander!’ He grabs his crotch. ‘I’ve got something right here he can pray to.’
One of them grabs her by the arm and pulls her out of the shallows. Mara puts out a hand to push him away; the smell of him is worse than anything else. She hears Catharo wading back through the shallows; this cannot end well now.
The Mack laughs when she struggles, this is what he likes. He grabs her in both arms and carries her back to the others.
‘Are you looking for a fight, boys?’ Catharo says.
‘Who’s that?’ one of them shouts. ‘Is he serious? I shit bigger than him.’
‘I shit prettier than him.’
Catharo smiles. Until now his day has been tiresome. Mara has seen this expression before; it is the expression of a child when someone has given him a new toy to play with.
‘Now give me back the lad. If he comes to no harm, neither will you.’
This is a huge joke, obviously. The big fellow pushes Mara away and puts his hands on his hips. He glances at his friend, sharing the joke. ‘And what will you do, you little freak? Bite off my kneecaps?’
Catharo wades out of the river and stalks across the grass. He smiles. Picking up dung with his bare hands, scrubbing an elephant’s back while he pisses on you, putting up with the stench and the disrespect, well, he doesn’t mind this, it is all in a day’s work. He is accustomed to hardship.
But this is what he really lives for: call him a freak and challenge him to a fight and you have made everything all right again. His face shines.
The big fellow does not understand what happens next. She might almost feel sorry for him. Catharo is fast and mean. The advantage every dog has is that it is fast, low to the ground and hard to hit; Catharo has these same virtues.
There is a blur of movement and the Mack is down, a knee broken, his male parts crushed, and Catharo is kneeling on his neck, deciding whether to break it.
Then everything is motion; the other three, appalled at what has happened to their fellow, draw their weapons and move in. These are seasoned professionals; fighting is their business also. They all have knives in their belts and know what they are about.
Catharo has his own knife, hidden in his leather tunic. He stole it from a Bactrian as soon as he had recovered from his wound. A soldier grows accustomed to fighting men his own size; fighting someone smaller is not necessarily an advantage, speed and getting underneath is everything. It is over quickly; two or three swift darting movements and one is down with his hamstrings cut, the other is squealing and clutching at his male parts, which are bleeding profusely.
But the other one is quick also and is behind Catharo with his knife raised. Her protector sees the strike coming but there is nothing he can do to defend himself.
A shadow passes across the sun. The man looks up and sees Colossus looming over him. The tusker wraps his trunk around the man’s chest and casually dashes him against a tree. There is a dull wet noise, like throwing a watermelon against a wall. The man’s head splits open.
Colossus drops him on the ground and stands over him, his trunk swaying, as if daring him to rise just once more. But there is no chance of that.
The waterboys come crashing through the bushes to see what has happened. They find Catharo standing there with a knife in his hand and three seasoned infantrymen in the mud bloody and screaming, the other pulped under a fig tree.
Catharo wipes the blade of his knife on the tunic of one and pulls Mara to her feet. Now she knows why her father valued him so highly. Even though it was done in her defence, it was a chilling display.
Four of the finest from Alexander’s phalanx, men who can carry an eighteen-foot sarissa all day against endless infantry charges, and here they are spread over the riverbank like a hyena’s lunch.
When he arrives, Gajendra stares at this scene in confusion. He wants to know how this happened. The waterboys mumble and stare at their feet; Catharo says they tripped on a rock. Some blame the elephant; some blame Catharo; some wit claims it is a ritual suicide.
Gajendra looks at Mara and points his finger. ‘Th is is your fault,’ he says and stalks away.
Nearchus finds Gajendra and grabs his elbow. He leads him along Elephant Row, out of earshot of the other mahavats and waterboys.
‘You heard what happened?’ He looks harassed. As Elephantarch he will have to explain this to Alexander. He does not like the idea of some tattooed little Gugga killing good Macedonian soldiers. ‘Who is the demon that did this?’
‘Those men tried to rape one of my waterboys.’
Nearchus is mystified; yes, why is this a problem? ‘Was he good looking, this waterboy?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Perhaps he provoked it.’
‘By appearing handsome?’
‘Whoever did this to these men will have to be found. He cannot get away with this.’
‘What will they do to him?’
Again Nearchus appears confused. He wonders that Gajendra should be so concerned. ‘They will crucify him, I suppose.’
‘Very well. I’ll tell you his name. It was Colossus.’
‘An elephant does not slash a man’s hams or cut off his balls.’
‘That depends on how badly he is provoked.’
‘The men say it was a demon the size of a child. He has a tattooed face.’
‘The elephant was protecting the mahavat. He did all the damage.’
‘I don’t need this sort of trouble.’
‘There won’t be any more trouble after this, do you think?’
‘You have a point.’ He shakes his head. ‘Get rid of him.’
‘Who?’
‘The pretty boy. It’s only a goad to the others.’
‘He’s good at his work.’
‘At clearing up shit? You don’t need to be tutored by Aristotle for that.’
At that moment they both look across and see Mara standing behind Colossus, his hands yellow with dung, up to his knees in mud, his mouth hanging open in exhaustion. It’s like the boy has never done a day’s work before in his life.
‘He’s useless and he causes trouble,’ Nearchus repeats. ‘Get rid of him.’
He walks away.