“Reporting as ordered, Admiral,” Libo said in a whisper.
The man ignored Libo, his attention seemingly consumed by the creature.
“We captured a single ship, Admiral, and destroyed two more. We sighted no more of the enemy. I believe – “
“Shh!” came the sharp reply from Admiral Bibulus, who appeared irritated at the interruption and did not even turn to acknowledge Libo. “Be so kind as to not interfere with the augury, Libo,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Complete silence on deck. That is the given order!”
Libo bowed in apology, and stood to the side, complying with the admiral’s wishes. Bibulus was an eccentric man, and very hard to judge. His face was gaunt and expressionless, except for the eyes that always seemed strained with worry. Libo never knew where he stood with him. Within moments of the reprimand, Bibulus seemed to have completely forgotten about Libo, because he suddenly opened his mouth in expectation.
The creature was stirring in its cage. The dark, hairy shape had begun to move.
Though Libo had seen the creature many times – he called it a creature, for he knew no other word for it – each time shocked his senses as intensely as the first. It defied the eye and had no registry in the brain. Even now, though repulsed by the creature’s sickening movements, he could not look away. None of them could. There was something captivating about its unnatural state.
From the mass of matted hair, a long muscled arm emerged and stretched out to plant an immense, gnarled hand on the floor of the cage. A shorter arm, equally robust, followed suit, but the hand at the extremity of this arm was little more than a stump, showing dirty, blackened stubs where there should have been fingers. Then, with an insect-like movement, the bulging arms dragged the dark body behind it until the creature had gained the edge of the cage opposite the small mound of olives. Even now, with the creature clearly visible in the light, Libo’s eyes could scarcely process its strange shape, nor how anything that was a man – or had once been a man – could exist in such a form. It was naked, but for the mats of tangled hair that hid most of its leathered skin from view. It had stumps for legs that extended no more than a hand’s breadth below its hips. A huge bulge on its back kept its head pushed forward such that it had to periodically rare up its entire body in order to see where it was going, and it was during these moments that one might glimpse the jagged yellow teeth that seemed crammed into its perpetually open mouth. The arm with the giant hand was half again as long as that of any man Libo had ever encountered. Where the other limbs were severely degraded, this appendage seemed to have been endowed with brute strength. It effortlessly propelled the creature along with surprising agility, much like an ape, leading one to believe that the creature could move much faster if it ever needed or desired to.
“He awakes, Libo,” Bibulus said, while observing every movement of the creature. Libo felt slightly uncomfortable that the admiral was speaking to him. “We must have a verdict, Libo. It won’t be long now. Odulph will tell us. Just wait, young man. Yes, Odulph will tell us.”
Bibulus was coaxing Odulph – for that was the name Bibulus had given to the creature – as one might induce a dog to do tricks. A single long, hairy arm emerged from the iron bars. The glistening globules were just within the creature’s reach, but whenever his arm was fully extended, the massive hump on his back prevented him from seeing where his hand was groping. While all on deck held their breaths in anticipation, the twisted hand grasped at the open air, then slapped down upon the bare deck in an effort to feel its way to the pile. It came close several times, each attempt marked by an audible sigh from the onlookers.
Libo tried to remain composed, for he thought the ritual absurd, but he bit his lip for fear of making a remark that Bibulus might interpret as impertinent. The admiral was convinced that Odulph was an augury. He believed it as sure as he believed the sun would rise on the morrow. Libo had witnessed similar such rituals on many occasions, whenever the hesitant admiral was faced with a decision.
“A little closer,” Bibulus whispered slowly, as if afraid that the sound of his voice might break the creature’s concentration. “Just a little closer.”
As the creature struggled, and the admiral watched with cautious expectation, Libo resisted the urge to ask just what decision hung in the balance while the fleet sat off the coast of Epirus with Caesar’s army looking on, and nearly three dozen captured vessels under the Argonaut’s lee. There really was no telling. He had known Bibulus to ask the augury for guidance on strategic issues before, but the admiral had also consulted Odulph on which color boots he should wear, or on which side of his body he should wear his sword, or on which side of the ship he should relieve himself.
One could never be too careful, Libo mused, for there was no telling when a sea serpent might leap from the water and devour one while pissing.
Some said the creature had been born that way. But there were also those who claimed that Odulph had once been a man – that he had once been a horse archer in the barbarian hordes that ranged the great plains of the Far East. There were many such stories of the creature’s origins. According to most, Odulph had been captured while on a raid in the Parthian lands. The Parthians, who harbored nothing but hatred for the barbarian hordes, might have flayed him alive on the spot, as they were wont to do with such captives, but, for some reason, Odulph had been spared. But dying would have been a much better fate than what was in store for him. The Parthian satrap singled him out to suffer special torments for the amusement of visiting dignitaries – and the devilish minds of the Far East had extensive imaginations. Over an untold number of years, in deep Parthian dungeons, Odulph underwent daily tortures of every conceivable kind, his tormentors allowing his open wounds and shattered bones to fully heal between each grueling session. In the few times that he was not being dragged to and from the chambers of pain, he was forced to perform the back-breaking labor of a full-bodied slave. The stories said that, over time, his mind began to devolve from that of a man to that of a beast – but he would not die. No living creature should have been able to withstand the gruesome punishments exacted on him, but somehow Odulph endured. Eventually, the satrap realized that his captive was something of a supernatural phenomenon, and began to consider him in some way protected by the gods. Not wishing to provoke the gods by any further torture, he put his small miracle on display in a cage for all the world to see. The creature spent years as a spectacle in the commercial hub of Carrhae, where travelers from all lands marveled and cringed at the mere sight of him. This lasted for many years, until one tragic day, when it was said that a Parthian boy who had gotten too close to the cage was caught up by a lightning fast sweep of the powerful arm. The boy’s throat was crushed in a matter of moments, and his lifeless body tossed away like a toy doll. It was said that upon slaying the lad, Odulph erupted in a hateful vitriol, shaking his giant, gnarled fist at the horrified onlookers and speaking in his native barbarian tongue after not having uttered a single word in years. Thinking it inauspicious to have the creature executed, the Parthian satrap ordered Odulph’s tongue cut out, and then quietly sold him to a Syrian merchant to be done with him.
And that was how Bibulus came to acquire him.
Bibulus spent years in Syria as proconsul of the province and had somehow learned of Odulph’s existence. It was said that Bibulus had been fascinated by the creature who would not die, and had paid an exorbitant price for him. Bibulus was a superstitious man, perhaps brought on by his own political failures. It was well known that his obsession with the auguries manifested itself during his earlier political life, long before the civil war, when he had shared the consulship with Caesar. He had looked to them to justify his own inaction as Caesar forced through legislation with complete disregard for his colleague. It was said that the consulship of that year was filled by two men, Julius and Caesar, because Bibulus had spent nearly the entire period confined to his villa, reading the auguries. Bibulus never truly recovered politically from that disaster, and, like a man addicted to wine, had pursued more and more means to communicate with the deities to discover their true will, and his true purpose in this life. He believed he had finally found it in the wretched Odulph.