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Chapter Text

Crack! Crack! Crack!

…The horns struck each other with a rather dry sound, openly reminiscent of bone striking bone, and neither animal was giving way.

The animals present here were a pair of mountain sheep rams, clearly equal in strength and rank (by the mountain sheep standards), both equally invested in showing each other as to who was boss here. The mating season was still some weeks away, but the preliminaries were already on, it looked like.

“What is going on here?” Ms. Celestine, the team’s photographer, asked, as the rest of the archeologists were observing the free show from their truck, and at a safe distance away from the mountain sheep.

“Precisely what is says on the tin,” said Volodya, one of the older interns, (not that Ms. Celestine was any older than he was, but everyone was older than Leon, the youngest member of the team, period). “A manly male contest of strength-“

Crack! Crack! Crack!

“Will this happen regularly?” the photographer still wasn’t particularly happy about the fighting sheep.

“Yes, which is also why we’re staying away from the mountains – the main reason, of course, is that we’re looking for graves of the ancient steppe nomads, and they just didn’t go to the mountains if they could help it, let alone be bur-ied on their slopes…”, commented G.B., the team’s field leader, (with Rosen, his more scientific counterpart nodding In agreement – manly posturing aside, no one wanted to fight a wild ram – their head-butt attack could break human bones)…

Crack! Crack! Crack!

“…So,” Alexander, the driver of the team’s truck vehicle, (he was the only one with a driving license for this sort of vehicle, apparently), “Are we getting a move on or what? The sunset has begun in earnest, I do not want to drive on the local dirt roads in the dark, and the village is some distance away yet…”

Alexander didn’t finish, as from the darkening mountain slopes came an unexpected, sharp, alarm cry of some mountain gamebird, following by the desperate fluttering of its’ wings.

Instinctively, the humans looked in that direction – no, nothing, the evening shadows effectively swallowed the bird whole-

-but the leopard that came bursting out of the same shadows was quite real and visible, (and it was a regular, spotted leopard – not a black panther, BTW). Running down the slope in leaps and bounds, it slammed into one of the mountain sheep, clamped its jaws over the sheep’s nose and muzzle, and jumped – while still carrying the other animal – onto the humans’ truck.

The humans scattered, even as the truck rocked from the impact. They jumped through the truck’s doors and the rear exit and scattered through the rocky (sandy) dunes. All of them, except for Alexander, who hit his head on the steering wheel and was either knocked-out, or stuck, or both.

The leopard sat on the roof of the truck’s cabin and roared its’ challenge into the evening, (the sun set in all of the uproar), the echo amplifying the roar even louder.

…Paradoxically, the leopard is named the smallest of the big cats, and it is shorter than a human is tall, but it is much brawnier than, say, a puma is, and right now, as it crouched on a truck and roared its’ challenge into the evening-

-Cartoon, Celestine’s loyal terrier sidekick, jumped from her grasp and barked back, telling the much bigger animal to sod off: when all was down, Cartoon was a dog, a leopard was a cat, and no dog was afraid of no cat, so hit the road, Jack!

As Cartoon barked at the big cat, the latter gave the dog a flat, unimpressed look, and situation could have deteriorated even further, when a new sound sounded – a gunshot.

The shot, in fact, missed the leopard by a wide margin, and intentionally so, (but not entirely), but the leopard abruptly stopped, gave the dog and the humans a disdainful look, it grabbed the sheep, jumped off the truck, and in several bounds It vanished up the mountains. (The sun has set; the stars and the moon were up in the sky).

The archeologists approached the truck. “Alexander? Are you alive?” G.B. called out.

“Yes, but I’ve been better and am in no position to drive,” came the flat reply. “Can someone take over from me or do we break camp here?”

“I can drive,” Rosen spoke, unexpectedly, the moonlight reflecting from his spectacles, “but you ought to supervise next to me-“

“First I need to bandage him up,” G.B. said flatly, (there was no love lost between the two men in charge of the expedition, and it showed). “Someone, turn on the lights…”

Someone did, and a quail – maybe the same one who caught wind of the leopard’s attack - flew out of the darkness, landed on the truck’s roof, and went to sleep.

The humans just silently watched it. “A perfect end to a perfect day,” Cartoon said flatly, but because he was a dog, and he did not speak human, no one understood him, not even his mistress Celestine.

…It took a while for the truck to get moving again, and an even longer while to reach the village. (Cartoon was right to be sarcastic), but reach it the archeologists did, and tomorrow was a new day.

End?

Chapter Text

“Is it just me, or did we get a metaphorical lemon in those camels?” Volodya asked Ms. Celestine, as the two of them, plus Leon, plus Cartoon the dog, were trying to bring a (dromedary) camel family to heel.

So far, the camels were refusing to cooperate: the parents were clearly protective of their calves, they were positioning themselves between the calves and the humans, stomping their feet on the ground, gnashing their considerate teeth, and threatening to spit. The spit of camels (and their American cousins) is more like a vomiting-up of a chewed-up cud that flies through the air at a speed and when it hits, it hits with a force of a strong strike.

So far, though, neither of the adult camels spat – they just threatened to, and also gnashed their teeth, and a camel’s bite is also nothing to experience either.

“Heel!” Volodya snapped at the father camel, as he was trying to flank the beast. “Heel, I say! Bad camel!”

The camel was not impressed and whirled around, trying to get into the melee, but Volodya was ready for this, somehow, as he grabbed the camel’s muscular neck and vaulted onto the camel’s humped back. The camel blinked, realized that it was not a bronco stallion, and abruptly hankered down, implying that it could wait until the human got bored and left.

“Arf! Arf! Arf!”

It was then that Cartoon the dog, supposedly intimidated by the mama camel into leaving, returned, and began to bark at the latter.

The mama camel was not impressed as she readied up to launch a ranged at-tack at the dog for real, but-

“Oink! Oink! Oink!”

-the dog brought back up of his own: an adorable pink piglet sidekick, and about half a dozen more as observers.

The camel blinked and tried to think – there was something wrong about those piglets; well, not exactly ‘wrong’, but-

“Oink! Oink! Oink!”

The mama pig was not as tall as the adult camels, but she was just as long as they were, and just as heavy – and contrary to popular stereotype, there was little fat in her bulk. Clearly, she was a match for the adult camels, and more than that for the camel calves. Therefore, upon seeing her, the camel family changed their minds abruptly and began to return home.

“Yeah, no,” Leon and Volodya exchanged a look, and working together for a change, they got Celestine, (and her dog) onto the mother camel’s back, so they arrived at the local village in style – and the locals allowed the archeologists’ team to use the camels as transport for a while.

(At least until they discovered that while most of the archeologists’ team were roping the camels, their last two members, the local guides, Paulie and Georgie, assimilated expats from the north, had ‘liberated’ several of the village chickens, and cooked-boiled them with rice. After that, the hostilities resumed – but that was another story).

TBC

Chapter Text

“Remind me, why is it our job to do this?” Volodya commented to Celestine and co. (really, Leon and Cartoon the dog); “I am in no rush myself to excavate yet another Scythian grave slash tomb, but to search out for Georgie and Paulie isn’t much of an alternative.”

“True, but without them we just don’t have enough manpower to excavate,” Celestine pointed out in an even voice. “You are just one man. Leon is just one boy-“

“Hey!” the ‘boy’ in question protested, his voice carrying everywhere over the silent steppe. Well, not exactly silent – the flies and the butterflies were relatively silent as they flew from flower to flower, but the bees, the wasps, and the like were buzzing both busily and loudly as they did the same thing… Still, there were no other humans in sight – or any of their domestic animals either… Something might have been wrong…

“-Fine, Leon is just one teenager,” Celestine continued meanwhile, oblivious. “Cartoon is a dog – and I can’t forget when he tried to steal and nibble on that human bone, Bronze Age or not – and I’m a woman, Alexander hasn’t fully recovered and is our driver, and G.B. and Rosen aren’t good at digging. Without Paulie and Georgie there just aren’t enough people to uncover the missing tribe!”

Volodya gave his interlocutrix a look. “I know,” Celestine looked away first, “that you’re the least one enthused about our mission, but-“

Cartoon suddenly began to bark and raced off. “Follow him!” Celestine cried and the trio of humans raced through the ‘carpet’ of wildflowers.

As luck would have it, Cartoon chose to run through a tangle of spiky local shrubs – he was small enough to pass through them without stopping. The three humans were not so lucky, and when they stopped running, Celestine and Leon found one of the locals – Paulie – and the young man was out of it, possibly high as well…

“Celestine!” Leon called out, in alarm. “I think that he’s bitten!”

“What? Why? Where?” Celestine replied, as the two of them began to get Paulie off the ground, (not very successfully).

“Well, I think that I see marks on him-“

Cartoon’s growls stopped Leon’s reply, as he and Celestine looked around to see as to what, or who, had alarmed their dog. At a first glance – nothing, but at a second, (or perhaps a third) Leon and Celestine began to reckon that they saw a snake-like, a serpentine head among the swaying (in the wind) flowers…

“Um, is it a cobra?” Leon began to ask, as he and Celestine began to feel as if they either were imagining seeing a reptile among the flowers, as there was nothing and no one there, or either there was someone there, but not necessarily a cobra-

“What is going on here?” Volodya cried out, causing the others to look in his direction – and see that he was helping Georgie along: the latter was in a bad shape, but not as bad as his friend was…

“Arf!” Cartoon barked once more, but not as intensely as before: the humans looked at him, then in the direction he was barking at, but there was nothing now, just some rustles among the wild grasses and flowers, (as if a creature or two were running/crawling through them, unseen)…

“…Right,” Volodya tried again. “Ms. Celestine, I know that you’re a woman and all, but Leon and I will need your help in getting those two back to camp-“

“I can walk,” Georgie muttered.

“…Ok, then Celestine can support you as you get along, while the two of us are dragging Paulie,” Volodya muttered back. “Any other ideas?”

Celestine and Leon looked at each other – they had none. Cartoon was not forthcoming with any of his own either – rather, he was eyeing something in the long grass, which was swaying and rocking – not from the wind but from a fight between two or more creatures…

Some time later, in the village…

Georgie was recovering, after all – he was exhausted, if not outright fatigued, but nothing more.

Paulie, meanwhile, was slower to recover – he was as bad as Georgie was, plus he was suffering from some blood loss…

“So, what happened?” Celestine asked Rosen.

“Well, remember how we began to pack and those two gave us the slip to go around the village and make trouble?”

“And they got chased out, yes.”

“Well, this is pretty much it – they ran away, got separated, got heat stroke or something like that, though Paulie has it worse than his friend, what with the blood loss, but otherwise, they’re still two peas in a pod: Georgie is muttering something about scaring away a vishap dragon, while Paulie is muttering about a beautiful girl, or a beautiful snake-girl – I didn’t quite understood him…”

“Woof!” said Cartoon, who understood perfectly, (and maybe more than what his humans did).

“Ok, but what do we do know?” Celestine was the amateur in this expedition, until now her photo shoots only occurred in big cities, but even she understood the concept of being understaffed…

“Ahem!” someone coughed; Celestine turned around, and sure enough, several villagers stood there, of both genders.

“Yeah, we made a deal with them – we’re hiring some of their menfolk to do the work of Georgie and Paulie,” G.B. commented from his vantage point. “Aren’t we lucky?”
Celestine did not through her sandal at him, but only just.

End