Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [150]
Several men whispered prayers.
The elephant, fled from an arena, trumpeted and reared onto its hind legs, silhouetted against the starry sky. A tremendous bear rose over the crest of the hill, looking into the midst of the army with dark, intelligent eyes. It tossed its head and bellowed, each fang as long as a finger.
A leopard, lean and bloodthirsty, lifted its lip and snarled as it came.
The queen marched toward the Roman line, her animals following her, their bodies moving as though powered by a single soul. Her eyes glowed with an unearthly light, and from his position, Augustus watched her, raging. What right had she to bring animals against him?
Augustus nodded at Agrippa.
“Archers!” shouted the general.
The archers, positioned behind the infantry, pulled their bows from their backs and fit the special silver-tipped arrows into them. Each man had been provided with a rich quiver full.
“Fool,” said Cleopatra quietly, as if to herself.
“Fire!” shouted Agrippa.
The men moved to draw back their bowstrings, but then stared at them, bewildered at the lack of tension in the strings, some sort of sabotage of their weaponry.
A rat leapt out of a Roman arrow case. Another. Soon, a swarm of rats covered the ground, and each of the Roman archers stood appalled, their gnawed bowstrings in their fingers, their bows useless.
The rats seethed about Roman feet, climbing Roman bodies, biting and scratching, and the Romans were, for a moment, in total disarray, their archers incapacitated.
“Infantry!” Agrippa screamed, signaling the lines.
“Kill them,” Cleopatra whispered, and every animal on the battlefield heard her command.
Her cats, leopards, lions, and tigers, drew back on their haunches and leapt over the shields and into the legionaries, claws shredding the unprepared men, teeth rending their flesh. No shield could save them. A tiger died, impaled on a short sword, and as it fell, its body crushed the astonished soldier who had slain it.
The world rang with screams, with shouting and moaning, with ululations in the face of foes, and Cleopatra pushed forward, the emperor still her focus. Augustus kept the precious bow behind his back. He felt a trickle of sweat run down his side. Agrippa stood beside him, shouting orders.
Surely the Romans must outnumber the beasts, Augustus thought. They would win. They had the advantage of order in the face of chaos. Chaos could not possibly prevail. A guard surrounded Agrippa and Augustus, tightly spaced, shields raised.
Lightning flashed in the sky, and thunder shook the earth. High above, the heavens echoed with the sound of something enormous, roaring. The hairs rose on Augustus’s neck, and he felt the air charged with the presence of the divine.
Beside him, Auðr’s hands twisted frantically in the air, her distaff spinning threads, trying to balance the dead with the living. The goddess and Cleopatra were both present, but the thread of the Slaughterer was a frayed end in the Underworld, and Sekhmet’s strand, where it had been braided to her child’s, was ragged.
Cleopatra had injured the goddess.
She had pulled a part of her soul away from Sekhmet, and yet she continued to war. Auðr still could not see the entire pattern. Her eyes flickered over the darkness, a swooning miasma. Her lungs were tight. She was not strong enough to hold the two fates, that of the queen and of the goddess, apart from each other for long, and she knew it.
Sekhmet is here, the seiðkona said, and Augustus heard it in his mind. She hungers for Rome. I cannot keep her from you. She will have you.
A bolt of lightning struck the earth just before Augustus’s pavilion, and he leapt backward, his skin singed. Agrippa stayed firm, fearless, devoted. Augustus shook off the terror and shouted orders