“All right, all right, no need to make a fuss,” Antony said, waving her back into the courtyard. The house on the other side had only leaned over a little. “So she’ll fly out to the Porta Aurelia and meet us on the other side.”
“We’re not letting the beast go spreading itself over the city,” the centurion said. “It’ll grab some lady off the street, or an honorable merchant.”
He was for killing her right there and then, instead. Antony was for knocking him down, and did so. The soldiers pulled him off and shoved him up against the wall of the house, swords out.
Then Vincitatus put her head out, over the wall, and said, “I think I have worked out how to breathe fire, Antony. Would you like to see?”
The soldiers all let go and backed away hastily in horror.
“I thought you said you couldn’t,” Antony hissed, looking up at her; it had been a source of much disappointment to him.
“I can’t,” she said. “But I thought it would make them let you go.” She reached down and scooped him up off the street in one curled forehand, reached the other and picked up one of the squealing baggage-loaded pack mules. And then she leaped into the air.
“Oh, Jupiter eat your liver, you mad beast,” Antony said, and clutched at her talons as the ground fell away whirling.
“See, is this not much nicer than trudging around on the ground?” she asked.
“Look out!” he yelled, as the Temple of Saturn loomed up unexpectedly.
“Oh!” she said, and dodged. There was a faint crunch of breaking masonry behind them.
“I’m sure that was a little loose anyway,” she said, flapping hurriedly higher.
He had to admit it made for quicker traveling, and at least she’d taken the mule loaded with the gold. She hated to let him spend any of it, though, and in any case he had to land her half a mile off and walk if he wanted there to be anyone left to buy things from. Finally, he lost patience and started setting her down with as much noise as she could manage right outside the nicest villa or farmhouse in sight, when they felt like a rest. Then he let her eat the cattle, and made himself at home in the completely abandoned house for the night.
That first night, sitting outside with a bowl of wine and a loaf of bread, he considered whether he should even bother going on to Gaul. He hadn’t quite realized how damned fast it would be, traveling by air. “I suppose we could just keep on like this,” he said to her idly. “They could chase us with one company after another for the rest of our days and never catch us.”
“That doesn’t sound right to me at all,” she said. “One could never have eggs, always flying around madly from one place to another. And I want to see the war.”
Antony shrugged cheerfully and drank the rest of the wine. He was half looking forward to it himself. He thought he’d enjoy seeing the look on the general’s face when he set down with a dragon in the yard and sent all the soldiers running like mice. Anyway it would be a damned sight harder to get laid if he were an outlaw with a dragon.
Two weeks later, they cleared the last alpine foothills and came into Gaul at last. And that was when Antony realized he didn’t know the first damn thing about where the army even was.
He didn’t expect some Gallic wife to tell him, either, so they flew around the countryside aimlessly for two weeks, raiding more farmhouses – inedible food, no decent wine, and once some crazy old woman hadn’t left her home and nearly gutted him with a cooking knife. Antony fled hastily back out to Vincitatus, ducking hurled pots and imprecations, and they went back aloft in a rush.
“This is not a very nice country,” Vincitatus said, critically examining the scrawny pig she had snatched. She ate it anyway and added, crunching, “And that is a strange cloud over there.”
It was smoke, nine or ten pillars of it, and Antony had never expected to be glad to see a battlefield in all his life. His stepfather had threatened to send him to the borders often enough, and he’d run away from home as much as to avoid that fate as anything else, nearly. He didn’t mind a good fight, or bleeding a little in a good cause, but as far as he was concerned, that limited the occasions to whenever it might benefit himself.
The fighting was still going on, and the unmusical clanging reached them soon. Vincitatus picked up speed as she flew on towards it, and then picked up still more, until Antony was squinting his eyes to slits against the tearing wind, and he only belatedly realized she wasn’t going towards the camp, or the rear of the lines; she was headed straight for the enemy.
“Wait, what are you—” he started, too late, as her sudden stooping dive ripped the breath out of his lungs. He clung on to the rope he’d tied around her neck, which now felt completely inadequate, and tried to plaster himself to her hide.
She roared furiously, and Antony had a small moment of satisfaction as he saw the shocked and horrified faces turning up towards them from the ground, on either side of the battle, and then she was ripping into the Gauls, claws tearing up furrows through the tightly packed horde of them.
She came to ground at the end of a run and whipped around, which sent him flying around to the underside of her neck, still clinging to the rope for a moment as he swung suspended. Then his numb fingers gave way and dumped him down to the ground, as she took off for another go. He staggered up, wobbling from one leg to the other, dizzy, and when he managed to get his feet under him, he stopped and stared: the entire Gaullish army was staring right back.
“Hades me fellat,” Antony said. There were ten dead men lying down around him, where Vincitatus had shaken them off her claws. He grabbed a sword and a shield that was only a little cracked, and yelled after her, “Come back and get me out of here, you damned daughter of Etna!”
Vincitatus was rampaging through the army again, and didn’t give any sign she’d heard, or even that she’d noticed she’d lost him. Antony looked over his shoulder and put his back to a thick old tree and braced himself.
The Gauls weren’t really what you’d call an army, more like a street gang taken to the woods, but their swords were damned sharp, and five of the barbarians came at him in a rush, howling at the top of their lungs. Antony kicked a broken helmet at one of them, another bit of flotsam from the dead, and as the others drew in he dropped into a crouch and stabbed his sword at their legs, keeping his own shield drawn up over his head.
Axes, of course they’d have bloody axes, he thought bitterly, as they thumped into the shield, but he managed to get one of them in the thigh, and another in the gut, and then he heaved himself up off the ground and pushed the three survivors back for a moment with a couple of wide swings, and grinned at them as he caught his breath. “Just like playing at soldiers on the Campus Martius, eh, fellows?” They just scowled at him, humorless colei, and they came on again.
He lost track of the time a little: his eyes were stinging with sweat, and his arm and his leg where they were bleeding. Then one of the men staggered and fell forward, an arrow sprouting out of his back. The other two looked around; Antony lunged forward and put his sword into the neck of one of them, and another arrow took down the last. Then, another one thumped into Antony’s shield.
“Watch your blasted aim!” Antony yelled, and ducked behind the shelter of his tree as the Gauls went pounding away to either side of him, chased with arrows and dragon-roaring.
“Antony!” Vincitatus landed beside him, and batted away another couple of Gauls who were running by too closely. “There you are.”
He stood a moment panting, and then he let his sword and shield drop and collapsed against her side.