XL – Roman Generals And Miracle Mutts

Dear Journal:

After the celebrating had died down, I had Brother sit down and explain how he and Tiny had accomplished their miraculous feat. Everyone gathered ’round for what promised to be an interesting story.

And so, the tale began.

Brother, Tiny, and their legion had arrived just a short distance short of the ‘fog’ and began to set up camp. Thracian levies were already there with supplies the trapped legions would desperately need . . . if they were rescued. They had been trapped for some time and everyone doubted that the legions could have lasted so long without reprovisioning. Still, there was hope.

Brother and his staff began to work on ways to go into the fog without themselves being trapped. Plan after plan was put on the table, studied, and discarded. The main problem was simple, yet seemingly impossible to solve. How to see, and thus, navigate in that pea soup out there. No solution seemed to cover that major stumbling block.

(One of the guards told Brother this part of the story.)

Meanwhile, Tiny had been sitting outside the tent, intently studying the nasty mist. There he sat for some time watching and waiting when, suddenly, he sat bolt upright and cocked his ears toward the fog. He ambled a short distance closer and listened again. He moved right up to, but not into, the fog bank and listened intently for some time. Then, he spun around and, with an anxious RUFF!?, sped back into the tent.

In Tiny rushed, right up to Brother, Ruffing loudly. Brother was nearly bowled over by Legion Mutt’s entrance and tried, vainly, to calm Tiny down. Instead, Tiny, would rush to the entrance, Ruff loudly and wag his tail. He repeated this several times when, finally, Brother realised what Tiny was telling him.

He, Tiny, had to go into that mist.

Brother assented and began to order mobilization. I said, began. The order had barely been given when Tiny shook his head to the negative.

RUFFF . . . GRRR . . . RUFF!!!

Then, Tiny turned and, with a last look at Brother, tore out of the tent and INTO the fog. Brother and everyone there stood speechless, Brother silently mouthing the word, Tiny???

Then he roared it. “TINY!!! NO!! COME BACK!!!”

But Tiny had already disappeared. Brother ordered an immediate standdown. What else could he do. Much as he desperately wanted to go in after his friend, he couldn’t. Not without getting lost himself.

And so they waited. And waited. And waited.

Minutes turned to hours. Hours to days. By the third day, Brother was so beside himself with worry that he was preparing to go in alone after Tiny. Hang the consequences!

His troops, however, were not willing to let Brother go it alone. They loved Tiny too. So, come hell or high water, they were ALL going in. It was while this wrangling was going on that it happened. There was an earsplitting howl somewhere deep in the fog.

It wasn’t a howl of pain, or despair. It was more like a guiding howl.

It was Tiny!

Brother stopped and, looking at his officers, shrugged and sat down. He would wait and see, but Legion Mutt was alive and well, somewhere out there.

Hours once again turned to days, but, now, with a difference. Every couple of hours the howls were repeated. And they were getting closer. Then they heard it. Almost out of range came a second howl. Much fainter than Tiny’s howl, yet, unmistakably there.

As Tiny got closer, so did the other howl. There was another mutt out there!

Finally, there was a titanic howl and out came Tiny. He stopped at the fog barrier and waited. Then, he was greeted by a ringing howl from just inside the fog. Tiny retreated some distance as, out of the mist, came ten exhausted, nearly dead Roman legions. They were led by a huge wrinkly mutt, white as white could be.

The Thracians rushed in to help the legions, while Brother ran over and hugged Tiny. The mutt giggled and knocked Brother over as if to say “You worry too much.”

And so, the missing legions were saved and Tiny was the hero of the hour. What happened IN that damnable mist is another story to be told. Suffice it to say, miracles do happen.

Especially if their names are Tiny and Sarai.

Chapter XLI

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