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He was used to fear.

In the two decades since his first campaign, the man from Prynesty, a day's walk from

the city of Rome, had marched all over Italy.

He had fought Samnites and Gauls, Etruscans and Lucanians, and never wavered or broken.

Even when javelins whistled through the air by the hundreds, swords clashed on shield,

and the howls of the

injured pierced his ears, he had stayed firm in the face of danger. Over the years, the Prionesteen

had given far worse than he'd taken. Killing had long since ceased to bother him. Scars,

souvenirs of fights won and lost, covered his arms in face. His tile-roofed farmhouse was full of

trophies and mementos he had acquired everywhere between Magna Grachea and Etruria. But now,

he ran. He ran until his chest heaved and his legs burned with the exertion. His helmet

and shield were gone. All his spears had long since been thrown. His sword had snapped in two at some point

during the melee. The only weapon left to him was a dagger, and a dagger wasn't going to do him any good

against an elephant. The animals were terrified. He had lost control of his bladder at the side of

the liquid dribbling down his sweat-soaked legs.

Judging by the smell, he wasn't the only one.

Fighting them was far worse than simply seeing the elephants.

A tusk gored the man next to the Prynestine so badly that he could see daylight through the hole in his chest.

Another man, the Prynestine's wife's cousin cousin had been crushed under one enormous foot. One brave youngster had hurled a javelin at the creature with all his might, like some demigod in one of

the stories. But the missile simply bounced off the elephant's hide, and then the animal

...