"Hunh! What kind of herbs have you been putting in your stewpot? It'd never happen. Like our Roman friend here said, Hannibal's crazy, but I don't think he's crazy enough to listen to an elephant."
"Unless the elephant were a touch mad, too, I suppose," Mago remarked. "As my dear Mamma always used to say, the only thing a madman respects is someone madder than he. I believe the phrase was coined during a particularly strenuous ballgame where the opposing team won by chopping off the- Ow!"
"Sorry." The Roman shrugged and looked sheepishly at the bloodstained knife blade that had just slashed through one of Mago's bonds and a bit of his wrist as well. "Slipped." He quickly severed the rest of the thongs binding Mel and Mag, then helped them to their feet.
"Look, we honestly appreciate the effort," Mel said as he rubbed some feeling back into his legs. "But weren't you paying attention? We won't be able to get away. Hannibal will come after us. He will come after us with his one remaining elephant and he will have her crush our skulls because he is stubborn and determined and just plain crazier than a cross-eyed camel. Do you understand that?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure." The Roman didn't look at all worried. "But like your friend here says, the only way to stop a crazy is to show him you're crazier than him." He reached under his cloak and tossed the newly freed Canaanites a pair of deadly-looking shortswords. "This is not a problem. C'mon. It's time we taught Hannibal a little… respect for the enlisted man."
Hannibal was deep in happy dreams of all the ways he would make that pair of elephant-eaters suffer for their crimes before he killed them. His one regret was that he could not do the same to their Gaulish helpers, lest he risk losing valuable allies. No matter. He would just have to take all the nasty, bloody, agonizing, creative tortures he would have used on the Gauls and transfer every last one of them to Melqartpillades and Mago. The best part of it all was that since the two of them had been lying out in the snow for so long, there wasn't as much risk of them bleeding to death before he'd had his will of them.
A childlike smile curved the corners of Hannibal's lips, but it quickly vanished as a panic-stricken voice outside his tent broke his sleep with the cry, "The prisoners have escaped!"
"Escaped?" he bawled, sitting bolt upright in the predawn blackness. "By all the gods at once, don't those Canaanite swine know there is no escape for them as long as I'm alive? Eshmunamash! Eshmunamash, get your ass in here and help me put on my armor. Eshmuna-! Damn, I knew I should've got me an aide-de-camp with a shorter name. Might as well start getting dressed myself, then go find that worthless-"
He was still mumbling imprecations as he struck a spark to the wick of little oil lamp beside his bed. The flame caught and flared. Light filled the tent.
Light danced and glittered in the glazy eye of the severed elephant head at the foot of the Carthaginian general's bed.
Hannibal screamed.
East of Appomattox
Lee Allred
Even a marble man has his limits. Perhaps they might not think so back home, but London was not Richmond. London was too damp and chill and Robert E. Lee too old to pretend otherwise.
He cleared his throat and called to the young office clerk on the other side of the wooden railing. "Young man," he asked, "might I have some hot tea while I wait?"
The clerk's only response was to duck his head and hunch himself over his paperwork.
Lee had expected as much.
The small wall clock struck the quarter hour. Big Ben, on nearby Westminster's clock tower, echoed a muffled reply through the thick walls of the squat Foreign Office building. For several minutes the only other sound in the room was the scratching of the clerk's pen nib. It was a small office, just big enough for the bench Lee sat on, the clerk's desk, and the wooden railing separating the two. A swinging gate in the railing allowed the clerk passage into the hallway, a side door near his desk to what Lee assumed was the office of whatever official the clerk served. From the looks of the rusted hinges, the door saw little use.
The clerk set down his pen and blew on his hands to warm them. Lee allowed himself a slight smile. This cramped, drafty excuse for an office was just as cold for a Londoner as it was for a son of gentle Virginia. Lee's smile vanished as a new current of cold air blew down the back of his neck. He drew the collar of his military cloak tighter.
A military cloak, thought Lee. He shook his head.
Ambassadors do not wear military uniforms. At least, not ambassadors from America-either of them-but Longstreet had insisted Lee do so. General Lee, after all, was still well thought of in London even five years after the war. The President had hoped Ambassador Lee would be just was well regarded.
Well, that only proved Longstreet was no more infallible than Lee was, regardless what any of the new history books said about Gettysburg. Lee and his uniform had fared no better in London than his predecessors. The British had shuffled Lee from one government office to another until he had at last been led to this forgotten hallway where now they studiously avoided recognizing his existence, let alone that of his nation.
He had sat here unattended to for hours. Now it was nearly the end of the working day. He wondered if they would simply shut up the building for the night with him still sitting on this hard, cold, splintery bench.
Enough.
He took hold of his cane with his good arm and heaved himself up off the bench. He stepped over to the wooden rail and, leaning over, tapped the cane on the desk of the startled clerk.
"Young man, I do not fault you for doing what you clearly have been ordered to do. Your obedience is commendable in one so young. But as I am a guest-however an unwanted one-in your establishment, propriety, sir, common decency requires that you as host see to it that an old man with a bad heart does not die on the premises. Surely Her Majesty's government has at least the manners of a third-rate hotel. In short, sir, I am freezing to death!"
The rusty latch of the side door clacked open.
The boy's head slowly turned in its direction. Lee, however, pretended not to notice. He rapped his cane again. "I repeat myself, young man, in case my Virginian tongue falls hard upon your English ears. Might," he said slowly, pausing on each word, "I have some hot tea while I wait?"
The side door opened an inch or two at this, just enough to show Lee a glimpse of a portly red-haired gentleman. The man humphed in a deep voice and said gruffly, "Smedley, fetch some tea."
"B-but-sir! You said-!"
"Fetch some tea, Smedley. The British Empire isn't about to fall merely because you bring an old man some tea. See to it, boy!" A pause. "And see you do nothing more."
Smedley gulped and nodded. He scurried through the gate in the railing, past Lee, and down the hall out of sight.
Lee turned to speak to the man, but the door quickly shut and the door latch clacked into place. Lee returned to his bench.
Smedley returned shortly. He carried a wooden tray with a battered tea service. He placed the tray on Lee's bench without a word and fled back to his desk.
Lee shrugged and poured himself some tea. He squeezed a slice of lemon into his cup. The juicy spray carried in the room's draft, filling the cramped office with the smell of lemon.