The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  ‘This stone is highly prized,’ Kisa hissed, looking right and left as if to see ears sprout where none had been. ‘The men of Rome believe this lājavard has… powers. Women of a certain type, the expensive kind, wear it round their neck for the same reason.’

  He made an age-old gesture, crooking his arm at the elbow and Praeclarum laughed aloud, then hushed herself as someone stirred.

  ‘It makes you hard?’

  Atakan grinned. ‘Like bar iron, lady. I would not know, for I do not need it – but those who do will pay for a mere chip of it and pay a great deal.’

  Praeclarum sat back, one eye shut, thinking and looking from one to the other.

  ‘Three-fifths to two?’ she queried. ‘When we do as much hauling and all the fighting?’

  Drust almost clapped his hands with delight for her.

  ‘What fighting?’ Atakan answered scornfully. ‘There is no one to fight – but you folk look better waving swords. They will piss their robes and flee, then all you have to do is dig out the eyes and be gone.’

  ‘Eyes?’ Drust asked and Atakan nodded.

  ‘Did I not say? There is a likeness in this temple, a great head which may well be the face of Ahura-Mazda, who knows. It is hollowed out at the back – some say a priest stands in it and makes out that the head speaks, which may be true, but I have not seen it myself. The eyes of this statue are pieces of lājavard, big as your fist, the sort with gold flecks in it too, or so I have heard. There is an everlasting fire-flame behind it which makes the eyes glow as if it lived.’

  Praeclarum looked at Drust, who stayed as grim as the stone head he had just heard about. He did not like it, did not like or trust this Atakan, but he knew the men needed something to hold in their palms, something that spoke of Fortuna’s smile. Free passage and possible riches? It could hardly be turned down, so he nodded slowly and spat on his palm.

  ‘I agree.’

  Atakan slapped his hand and then rose up, cracking his knees and grinning. ‘Bring your men to the ship,’ he said as he went. ‘I want to sail on the tide and it turns in the dark.’

  He went off and Praeclarum shifted slightly, staring at Drust.

  ‘If the others do not agree?’

  ‘Why would they not?’

  ‘It might seem foolish to some. And angering a god is never a good idea – ask Odysseus,’ Kisa pointed out.

  ‘I lead here. No one else.’

  Kisa shrugged. ‘If you tell it right,’ he said pointedly, ‘they will not resist.’

  They woke the others and Drust told it, then listened to them worry at it like a dog on a bare bone until he reminded them there was a ship waiting. So they went, mumbling and growling as they walked.

  In the end it came down to whether Kag thought this was a good idea. Drust felt the weight of his eyes but resisted the temptation to pay him or any of them any heed.

  ‘We are not pirates,’ Kag said thoughtfully and Quintus snorted scorn, which got laughter. Kag shrugged.

  ‘My purse says it is a wonderful enterprise,’ he grunted, ‘though my bags say it is not.’

  ‘Your bags?’ Ugo demanded and Kag grabbed at the hem of his tunic and the baggy Persian trousers worn beneath.

  ‘They are shrinking, drawing tight and making themselves small, though it is a difficult matter for such large affairs. They are hiding, lads, because they know something is wrong.’

  ‘Jupiter’s hairy arse,’ Quintus declared with mock, grinning disgust, ‘I am passing up riches because of the state of your balls?’

  ‘Mine are bigger than his,’ Praeclarum muttered and folk laughed aloud.

  ‘What does Drust think?’ Sib asked, and there it was, the bit that had always mattered and taken so long to get to.

  Drust thought that it was as mad as a helmet full of frogs. There were mouth-frothers who would not undertake this, for if it had only been a matter of dragging his ship across a narrow neck and shouting loudly at some robes, then Atakan would have tried it before now. There must be muscled men for hire round here.

  It stank, he wanted to say, worse than a three-day fish or an unwanted guest, and he should never have agreed to it.

  ‘I have already made the deal,’ he said mildly, ‘so that’s why I am thinking on it.’

  He stretched and yawned as if it was all no matter, then pointed to the great bulked shape and the ramp that led up into it.

  ‘There is the ship. Wake me when we get to this fire temple and when you run at these fire-starers I will be there. Right behind you.’

  They laughed.

  ‘I will buy new trousers,’ Kag declared, ruefully examining the torn and stained remains of his once splendid Persian affairs. More laughter, and while the shadowed crew of the ship watched them warily they huddled together in the dark.

  ‘Once this temple affair is done with,’ Drust said, more confidently than he felt, ‘we will be dropped at the mouth of a river where it meets the sea. If we keep following it inland, we will come across Manius and Dog and find out what this is all about.’

  He looked at the dim figure of Kisa, who nodded.

  ‘Said like that,’ Stercorinus declared, ‘it sounds easy.’

  A little later they were woken by the slap of bare feet, the soft cries of the crew. Things rattled and flapped and the deck lurched; they were underway.

  For a moment there was silence, then Kag thrust out his hand, palm down. One by one the knuckle-marked – and those who weren’t, but knew the significance – added a hand to the splayed wheel of it. Praeclarum, half embarrassed but all determined, added her own and exchanged grins with Drust.

  ‘Brothers of the sand, brothers of the ring,’ Drust declared and everyone growled assent – then Sib stood up and moved urgently to the freeboard, peering back at the flickering lights of the quayside.

  ‘Look there,’ he said, so they all did. Drust saw men and horses, the firelight glinting blood on metal helmets and blades – and faces. Silvered faces. He heard shouting.

  ‘That was proof Fortuna smiles anew,’ Kag declared. ‘I know those faces – I have one in my bundle.’

  The Persians who had slaughtered Darab and the others, thinking we were in the mix, Drust thought, and the cold slid down him like iced rain at how narrow had been their escape. The others merely grinned; Ugo brought out a leather skin and poured wine into the sea, an offering to Fortuna and Neptune, for you can never have too many gods offering help.

  But they didn’t think on it for longer than it took to feel pleased they had escaped in time. They started curling up back to sleep to dream of riches, while Drust sat long into the dark, brooding on what lay ahead and what they had hopefully managed to avoid.

  * * *

  Running in any direction was an awkward business of stumble and roll, for the dark and the arid, uneven sprawl of ground, cut about by crevice and knoll, made movement difficult even at a walk. Drust was running all the same, as fast as weary legs and borrowed leather war gear would let him, and he could hear Sib muttering out his fear on one side and Kag grunting on the other. Behind was baying and not all of it from dogs; Drust wondered if the others had got back down the cliff to the ship.

  He wondered if the ship was still there and the one thing he did not marvel at was how rotted the affair now was. If it was a game of tali, he thought, feeling his lungs burn, he would have flung his bones away and given in long since, for he was throwing nothing good in this game. Should have done that as soon as I found that the temple was on top of the cliff, not at the foot, he thought. How was it, then, that such an egg of a place had not been robbed from the landward side before? How was it that Atakan had said that it could not be reached because of the cliffs?

  That revelation had come after a long sail and a muscle-cracking haul over the little ridge of land, which had proved rockier and wider than they had been told; Atakan had shrugged and said it had looked narrower to him when last he had been there. There were the marks of old firepits and Atakan said folk came here
now and then, in the hope of being able to run the inflow, which vomited like an open gullet not far away, spilling the Hyrcanian Ocean into this Black Lake.

  The sail across the inner lake had proved strange, not only because the winds were swirling but because it did not feel right to those who had sailed the Middle Sea. Atakan said it was the salt in it, coming up through the tunnels from other seas that let Poseidon swim the world. None of which made anyone easier.

  They arrived at the far shore, a vast expanse of salt pan which had glowed in the dusk like a winding sheet. Atakan had turned the bulky ship, fat belly painted red and black and with eyes in the prow that looked at the sea. He had followed the curve of white coast towards a distant line which slowly grew to be high cliffs and only then revealed a collection of leather war gear, mouldy old chest-pieces and helmets and round shields, Greek stuff the men of Great Alexander would have recognised at once. In the gathering dusk Atakan had proudly shown them the fire temple, as if he had built it himself for their pleasure; it was a faint smudge on top of the grey-blue cliffs which fell sheer to the sea.

  The only way up was a winding, narrow stairway, and Atakan argued that Drust had been mistaken when he’d thought it at the foot of the cliff.

  ‘The land around it is barren and waterless,’ he declared blandly, ‘which is why you cannot approach it from that side. It has high walls and even if they are rank white-livers, a locked gate is a locked gate. Up the steps, however, there is no gate.’

  ‘You could defend those steps with a pizzle-rotted old man and a stick,’ Kag noted, but Atakan scoffed at them.

  ‘It is night and we are unseen. A swift gallop up those steps and all the riches are yours.’

  They looked at one another and everyone thought the same – there was no swift galloping up that, not if you wanted to keep your footing and not plunge off. If someone with a bow positioned himself just right he’d have all of us, Drust had thought, and it was small comfort that Atakan’s men wanted to join in; Atakan was scowling at that but did not dare say anything about it, or the fact that Drust left Kisa and Stercorinus behind to make sure they had a ship to return to.

  Drust led the way up the steps, a long, knee-ache of a climb, but no one opposed them even when they reached the top and passed under a crumbling brick archway.

  Which was Fortuna’s smile and Mars Ultor’s hand, since everyone was sweating and bent, hands on knees, trying to suck in air. For all the night had been chill, the sweat was rolling from them and thigh muscles quivered like fly-bitten horses.

  The temple had been a complex of structures big and small, and folk had fled, as Atakan had said they would. At the centre of a huge square of square buildings was another brick square, each wall an arch; it was easily found in the night because of the flame at the centre of it, a steady, strange flicker that went from red-gold to murex purple and back again.

  Under one archway sat the head, just as Atakan had said, and it was true what he had told them of the light making the eyes glow – if you stood a certain way you could see it. The flame murmured softly out of an altar built round it, came right up out of a hole without so much as a single stick to feed it. That was as unsettling as the eyes.

  Drust sent Sib and Ugo right and left to guard, while Kag and Quintus scrambled up the plinth to the bearded face, using their daggers to hook stones out.

  ‘I do not care for this,’ Praeclarum muttered. ‘It does no good to offend gods, no matter that they are not your own.’

  Kag laughed, dug the second eye out of its socket and stuffed it in a bag, which he handed to Drust to fasten to his belt. With a series of hissing cries, everyone was brought back together and set off back to the steps and the long descent. Drust felt the head behind him and turned to see the eyes now blazing blood-red, which was as unsettling as the shouts in the dark. Going down those steps, Sib moaned, was going to be worse than coming up, for it seemed the fire-starers were making a fist and would swing it at them.

  It was more like two to Drust – a sudden flurry of little arrows and stones which clattered round them, and a rush of men out of the dark which caused a dog-pack of fighting, all snarl and confusion. Drust batted a shadow away with his old shield, slashed at another and ran on, the bag of stones dangling like a sheep bollock from under the face of his shield.

  They were nothing much as fighters, these men, but they had courage and ferocity, numbers – and dogs. It was not long after that, stumbling and staggering, sweat and dust choking him, that Drust realised only Sib and Kag were there and they were all separated from the others.

  Worse than that, they had missed the steps entirely. Drust was still wondering where they were when the ground went out from under his feet and he rolled in a whirl of black and stars and black again. A hand gripped him under one arm and hauled him up.

  ‘Perhaps Praeclarum was right,’ Kag said hoarsely, ‘that stealing the eyes from a dead god’s head was not worthy of us.’

  ‘How is that working out for you?’ Drust spat back angrily, shaking him off. ‘The thinking? Hopefully it will get so good you will bring this up before we set off on such an enterprise.’

  The baying was louder and now there were bobbing lights too.

  ‘They really want their eyes,’ Sib growled, and Kag spat dust and sweat.

  ‘So do we,’ Drust answered. ‘Run.’

  They ran, but only for a short distance before Drust slammed into the back of Sib, who squealed and grabbed hold of him. Kag skidded to a halt and the dust puffed up blue-grey in the moonlight – ahead was blackness, part of it sparkling with stars and part of it dancing with moonlight. Night sky and sea…

  ‘Mars Ultor,’ Kag panted, and the baying rose up mournfully. Drust saw with a sick lurch that they stood at the edge of a precipice.

  ‘It is never good to run in the harena,’ Kag snarled and his grin was feral. ‘You only arrive back at the fighting.’

  ‘I saw that show,’ Sib responded, though he was round-eyed and darting glances right and left. ‘The Ludus, back when I was a tiro – Christians did not fare well in it.’

  ‘We are not Christians,’ Drust spat back and threw the bag at Kag.

  ‘I will stand guard while you get out of that leather and your boots. Do not let go of the bag when you jump.’

  He stepped forward, ripped off his own helmet and gritted teeth at that too – Fortuna is a fickle cunt, he thought, who gives with one hand and steals with the other. It hadn’t been much, but it and the leather and the shield were more than they’d had and a sign the goddess had been favouring them at last.

  More fool us for believing that, Drust thought, starting to heel off a boot while keeping crouched, shield up, sword ready; behind, he heard Kag grunt, wriggling out of leather.

  Sib, who had no leather, had had time to think and wail, running this way and that like a hen pursued by a rooster with intentions. He dragged off his own helmet and flung it away.

  ‘Get over,’ Drust roared, not turning round; he could see the torches and vague shapes between them.

  ‘The sea might not be entirely beneath,’ Sib shouted back.

  ‘Jump far,’ Kag snarled, hauling off his own boots.

  ‘There may be rocks…’

  ‘Jump farther.’

  ‘I cannot swim.’

  The last was a despairing whimper and Kag, sword in one hand and the bag in the other, whirled and booted Sib hard – his vanishing shriek was loud and pungent.

  A dog burst out, howling, plunging forward to where Drust stood. It was a slew-hound, all nose and no fight, though it tried to bore in for the ankles, so he cracked the rim of his shield on its skull, then broke its back with the sword.

  ‘This is how to lose all fear,’ Kag bellowed, his voice high and crazed. ‘Jump off a cliff.’

  Drust was watching the second dog, cursing Kag to the banks of the Styx to get jumping; Kag laughed and stuffed the bag inside his stained tunic.

  ‘I hope you can swim in leather,’ he sh
outed and his grin was wolf-savage now. ‘And I can hit water and not stone. If not, we will walk in Elysium.’

  ‘Stop talking and jump,’ Drust harshed back at him, and Kag flung back his head and bellowed for Mars Ultor to see this moment. His screaming was a descending note as he fell.

  The second dog was a nasty lump of fur with a mouthful of blades which leaped on Drust, all froth and snarl. He took it on the shield, whirling it sideways, though the weight wrenched the shield away; the dog rolled over and over, only to get up and shake its head.

  Drust heeled off his second boot and kicked it defiantly in the direction of the dog, which skittered sideways and then launched itself, baying in short, furious snarls; stones whicked past Drust’s head and he turned, took a deep breath, then leaped, feeling the dog snap at his heels.

  There was a moment when he hung like a crucifixion. Long enough to see his ma and wonder at it, at whether she watched constantly from the Other and only now, with his death, could he see her. Then he felt the first sickening tug of falling, heard the descending, mournful baying of the hound, falling with him in a frantic flurry of uselessly paddling legs.

  Then he plunged into the blackness.

  * * *

  We stood there, Kag and I, reaching out to touch the fingers, shined from so many other times. Theogenes was the greatest of the harena, though he never fought in it, for he was a Greek from the time before Socrates and Plato. He did the pankration and pygmachia served under the patronage of a cruel nobleman, a prince who took great delight in bloody spectacles. He had two victories at the games, won three times at the Pythian, once in the Isthmian and a thousand other times in lesser munera.

  He sat at the head of the Old Footpath on the Quirinal, a road into Rome which was venerable when the twins were suckling wolf teats. He was bronzed by Apollonius. Or Lysippos, no one was sure. Next to him stood a proud and haughty ruler – and everyone thought this was Theogenes and his cruel patron, but Kag knew different.