The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  He slogged up the bank to the lip of the bank, saw Quintus and Kag moving like a cunning toy, sliding this way and that, perfect and deadly. They had done this before in the harena and the ones who ran at them had no chance.

  Horses spilled right and left, throwing up dust and shrieking. Something like fire made Drust yelp and shake his shield arm – for a moment he thought he had been arrow-shot, then saw the exhausted hornet fall away and buzz the dust; he stepped on it with a vicious curse.

  Men were down or running in a dirty haze. A horse bolted, bucking, slammed into Praeclarum as she tried to protect Kisa; they both went over and Drust darted to them.

  ‘Take him back to cover,’ he yelled. ‘He’s worse than useless in this. They’ll use arrows in a moment more…’

  The riders had worked it out and a few had got to bows and the arrows for them. Ugo moved into the haze, bawling out commands to invisible units; he hit a horse in the face as it kicked past him and the beast screamed and shied away, vanishing into the swirling dust.

  ‘Back to cover,’ Drust yelled, but his shout was choked to a rasp. Kag and Quintus arrived, backing off, shields up.

  ‘Should get back to cover,’ Kag panted, almost chidingly. Drust cursed him, then saw the arrow whick out of the cloud and hiss into the ground.

  They backed off. Something struck Drust’s shield, hard enough to stagger him and skew it sideways; a barbed point stuck a finger-length through it, and he thought, with a surge of fear, of what that would have done to his arm. These round shields are no good, he thought. Boiled leather and no boss, so the next shot could come straight through my knuckles.

  A man lunged out, making Drust yelp and throw up the shield in a reflex; the slashing blow sheared into the rim and part-way down. For a moment they were locked, the man trying to tug his sword free, Drust trying to rid himself of the shield because the blade was touching his arm.

  The man was a greybeard, pocked by scars of old sins and battle, his eyes bloodshot and the welt-marks of stings all over his forehead and down one side. He wrenched just as Drust managed to uncouple his fingers from the grip and the sudden release staggered them both backwards. There was a sudden wind on one side of Drust and then a dull sound, like mud thrown at a wall – the greybeard fell away with a look of surprise and an arrow in his neck.

  A second man staggered out, confused and swinging madly. Sib, able to slide and move, gave him iron in the chest, the dagger in his eye, then threw back his head and howled like a manic pi-dog.

  Another came and another behind him. We are fucked, Drust thought. He saw Praeclarum parry and duck and slice – the man facing her took an arrow and another slammed off her shield. They were coming from everywhere, it seemed, shooting one another in their panic…

  Sib had caught the reins of a horse, vaulted into the saddle with the expert grace of long practice. He turned to say something and the arrow thundered into him, a drum-sound that drove all the breath out. He reeled and looked like he would fall, while Drust gaped.

  Sib slid off the beast, gasping, his legs folding him into the dust; Drust made for him while the horse bolted off. The second arrow came right over Drust’s shoulder, that same dark wind he had felt before. He was trying to shout out even as it hit.

  There was a gout of blood, an explosion of teeth, and Sib went away into the haze, the arrow like a sapling growing out of his mouth.

  Drust went after him, though it seemed Sib had vanished. He heard shouts, the screams of dying horses, and yet they seemed far away; he found himself kneeling by a body and only Sib’s wet bubble of breathing and the pounding of his heart was loud, a bird flutter that roared like thunder.

  Drust knelt, cradling the head, saw the smoke slide into the eyes and grasped and clawed in the slippery mud of gore, as if he could find the source of life and put it back.

  ‘Manius,’ Sib said, stretching out one bloodied hand, and a figure appeared, knelt, took the fingers in a hard grip.

  ‘Here, brother.’

  Sib opened and closed his mouth a couple of times while Drust sat back, his strength ebbing with every last pulse of Sib’s breathing, while Manius crouched and held his hand, and above them all, Dog-Dis grinned his skull-face.

  Chapter Nine

  The harshest truth of the moment was Sib. They brought him down to the scooped-out grave in the first stars of dark. Drust saw Kag’s face and it came to him that he had shrunk and that they all were empty as withered wineskins.

  Kag and Quintus lowered Sib as gently as they could into the shadow beside a gathered pile of stone that they would tomb up round him. The others seemed reluctant to either come or go, Drust was thinking, and not just the strangers, the ones who had come with Manius and Dog. Ugo and Praeclarum and himself stood around for a moment and gradually, one by one, those who had meant something to Sib moved closer to the body. Not so much to look, Drust saw, as to say something final, to him and to themselves.

  Dog, his face made into a bloody parody of death by torchlight, lifted one hand, as if waving farewell, then let it fall limply to his side.

  ‘Gods curse it,’ he said, looked down for a few last moments and then turned and left.

  Then Manius came up and looked down into the dead Sib’s face, left unwrapped. He spoke directly to him, as though he were alive.

  ‘May the gods above and below watch over you.’

  Praeclarum squatted down and reached and took out Sib’s hand, sat there for a long time holding the dead hand in her own and looking intently into the dead face, and she never uttered a sound all the time she sat there.

  Finally, she put the hand down, reached up and gently folded the last of the cloth over the face. And then she got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

  Kisa crouched and threw a handful of dust into the grave, a little hissing rattle of sound that seemed, somehow, louder than a drumbeat. The others, the strangers to them, stood politely and one or two helped stack the stones. Finally, Quintus placed the one with the flat side and an inscription that said Sib’s name and then ‘VI’. Those who knew that was the term for a fighter who had lost and died would know a gladiator lay there.

  They sacrificed a horse, the one Ugo had mouth-smacked which made it easy to catch, and Drust tried to find Mars Ultor or Jupiter in the blood smell, but saw nothing to suggest any god watched. Saw nothing at all, heard only the anguish in men’s voices, tasted only the stink of death. Ugo wailed, Stercorinus mumbled prayers, Praeclarum sobbed quietly where she thought no one would hear and yet, when Drust wept, it was not for Sib.

  * * *

  Later, in the firelit dark, Drust and Kag met Manius and Dog, though it was not anything like the way Drust had envisaged it.

  ‘We arrived too late,’ Dog admitted.

  ‘Timely enough,’ Kag replied, picking his teeth; they had eaten fried goat and greens, the sort of food they had not seen in a while. Grief made it taste of ashes, but they were gladiators and ate what they could when they could get it. There was wine, thin and harsh but still wine, a fire and a surround of more men than they felt comfortable with. The men Dog led, it turned out, were not his but caravan guards for a man called Yalgoz Bashto, or so it seemed when Manius said it.

  ‘You will meet him tomorrow,’ Dog added. Drust looked at him, trying to see past the ink-marked death to the face beneath and realising it was no less a mask. Dog’s eyes, all the same, held something rarely seen, though Drust knew it – fear. He has walked into deeper water than he can handle, he thought, for all his bravado.

  ‘Is this Bashto the reason we are here?’ Kag demanded.

  Dog made an ambivalent gesture and Kag spat in the fire. ‘Do not start with us, Dog. Sib is under the ground and we have all had a hard time reaching here, all because of a message you sent by some madwoman. I will not suffer more of your lies.’

  ‘Madwoman?’ Manius interrupted, leaning forward. ‘What happened to her? Is she alive?’

  ‘Last we saw,’ Drust an
swered, ‘she dances for Shayk Amjot and eats poppy.’

  Manius growled in the back of his throat. ‘He was supposed to care better for her than that. She is Roman. She has a name…’

  ‘If it is Julia you can sod off over there,’ Kag growled. ‘When you reach it, sod off further…’

  Drust laid a quietening hand on Kag’s arm, looking at Manius and seeing lines and frets that hadn’t been there before. There was a scar too, which added nothing to the side with crumpled flesh and no ear. Manius saw him look and touched the place briefly, then managed a wan smile.

  ‘Overseer whip,’ he said, and now Kag saw what Drust was seeing.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. Manius shook his head.

  ‘Mines. I survived,’ he answered and Dog cleared his throat and then spat it out.

  ‘Her name was not Julia, it was Luculla. She was a slave but one who could read and write.’

  ‘So we guessed,’ Kag replied, still looking at Manius, who would not look back. ‘We found a grave, too, of a woman. It had a Roman inscription on a stone which is why we dug it up. That and we thought it might be one of you.’

  Manius wiped his face. ‘You must show me that by and by. There were two Roman slaves, Luculla and Macra, and we sent them out – the one who made it must have stayed long enough to bury the other. That was brave. That was the dancer who eats poppy, though she was more than that once.’

  ‘More than a clever slave who dances,’ Drust said levelly. ‘What would that be?’

  ‘Handmaiden to a high-born of Rome,’ Dog answered. ‘A dresser of hair, applier of make-up…’

  ‘Do not tell me this is all about women,’ Kag said warningly. ‘Not again, Dog. I knew it was not about tigers – but women?’

  There was silence and then Dog laughed, though it had no mirth in it. ‘Talking of women,’ he said, ‘I see the Brothers have a sister. She is no looker and I saw her fight, so I am supposing she was once of the harena.’

  ‘We were all of the harena once,’ Drust replied flatly. ‘They call her Praeclarum.’

  Dog’s head tilted a little, playing shadows over the horror of it, making the skull grin. It was clear he had heard something extra in Drust’s voice and Drust was angry that he had revealed it.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Dog said, rolling the name in his mouth. ‘Now there is a name – what is the other one called? The lean one who looks like a desert pole-sitter who fell off his perch?’

  Kag told him and both Dog and Manius chuckled. ‘I would not say Little Shit to his face,’ Manius added, ‘when I am within the arc of that blade he carries.’

  ‘There is also the Jew,’ Drust pointed out. ‘His name is…’

  ‘Kisa Shem-Tov,’ Dog finished. ‘Yes, we know him. Surprised to see him here, all the same. I did not think he had that much sand in him.’

  ‘I kicked him into it,’ Drust said blankly. ‘He works for Uranius – but I am guessing you knew that, and that you are not thinking you are here for what Shayk Amjot seeks. Enough of trying to put this talk on another path – what are we doing here?’

  Dog agreed. ‘We have some new faces too,’ he added. ‘You will meet them by and by. But I am heart-sorry for the loss of Sib. Do you remember the time he drove that donkey cart round the forum, made it seem like a four-in-hand in the Maximus?’

  ‘Or the time he beat that big warrior beyond the Wall, using only saplings? Like a whip. Beat him bloody.’

  Manius laughed softly at the memory.

  ‘Or the time he and you walked round the harena in the lunchtime heat,’ Kag said to Manius, soft as venom, ‘and he threw little balls with tokens in them into the air for you to shoot open over the crowd?’

  No one spoke while the air coiled; a rogue breeze flattened then fanned the fire.

  ‘Used that to good effect with those naptha pots north of the Britannia Wall,’ Kag went on, silken vicious, ‘though he mistimed it.’

  They saw Manius lift one hand to the shiny scars plating one side of his face, to the ear that was a lump of wasted gristle. Those clay pots of fire, even a cat-lick of it, were terrible.

  ‘There was always the idea that he had timed it perfectly for what he intended,’ Kag added.

  ‘There was no proof of that,’ Dog interrupted sharply. ‘Manius bore him no malice. And speak no ill of a dead Brother, Kag.’

  Manius uncoiled and moved softly off into the shadows. Silence fell, the ice of it seeming to dim the fire to dying embers. Eventually Dog shifted and spoke.

  ‘They dragged him out of the undercroft of the Flavian,’ he said flatly. ‘You remember? He shoved Sib to safety and put himself in danger.’

  ‘We thought him dead,’ Kag muttered. Dog laughed. They all sat and remembered The Hood, Caracalla, Emperor of Rome and if you are measured by the stature of your enemies, Drust thought bitterly, then we were ranked indeed.

  ‘The Hood was never going to make such an easy exit for one of us,’ Dog went on. ‘He sent Manius to the mines, all the way back to Britannia, to the gold mines at Luentinum, a wild place where all those Druids once came from. When Elagabalus took the purple I found Manius again and got him out – didn’t expect him to be alive let alone fit. Seems he found a talent for repairing the hydraulic machines, which saved him from dying of the wet cough or under a pile of roof-rubble.

  ‘Seven years he spent there. Never ask him about it,’ he added, putting his hands on his knees and levering himself up. He wore good boots, Persian trousers, a decorated tunic and over-robe, a linen head-cover that reached to his shoulders, a fancy curved knife thrust into a cloth waistband.

  He and Manius had done well, Drust thought, and said as much to Kag when they had walked alone into the shadows.

  ‘So it would seem,’ Kag answered. ‘Manius deserves it, for sure. Seven years – longer by far for a man used to the open desert and the big night sky.’

  He stopped and shook his head, half admiringly. ‘And they still have told us nothing about why we are here.’

  Drust had realised it long since, but he was dull with unease, with the nag of something that finally could not be contained. He vomited it up while Kag listened.

  ‘The arrow, the one in the face; it came from behind me, over my shoulder, close enough to feel the wind.’

  Kag blinked. ‘He had two in him.’

  ‘The one in his face, the one that…’ Drust stopped, unable to go on.

  Kag hawked and spat in the fire. ‘He had one in his chest that was not likely to be removed without killing him. What are you saying?’

  ‘That it came over my shoulder, from behind.’

  ‘There was fighting everywhere.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Drust echoed dully, then locked eyes with Kag. ‘Or perhaps Manius had spent a long time brooding in the dark hours spent in that mine, or the time since. We left him behind in the undercroft of the Flavian, remember, and it cost him seven years in a dark hole.’

  ‘He left himself behind,’ Kag said sharply. ‘It was bravely done and we all thought him dead at the time.’

  ‘Better, perhaps, if he had been,’ Drust said softly. ‘Sib always said so. Said he should never be allowed into the world because he was a demon.’

  ‘Sib was many good things, but he was hagged by gods and demons both,’ Kag replied.

  ‘He tried to kill Manius that day out beyond the Wall. Tried to kill him in a rain of fire…’

  ‘No one knows that for sure,’ Kag fired back. ‘Only Sib and now no one at all.’

  ‘Manius does,’ Drust said, ‘and now he has answered it.’

  ‘No one knows that either,’ Kag hissed, looking right and left as if someone might be listening. ‘Gods above and below, Drust – do you hear what you are saying?’

  ‘I hear it,’ Drust said sharply, then sighed, feeling a crush on him, like he was buried under stones. Like he was Sib.

  * * *

  His mood was no better the next day and everyone saw it, was wary of it and left him alone, though Praecl
arum kept shooting him assessing looks as they moved up the river. They had camels now, which made most of them groan, but Dog was anxious to put distance between themselves and the fight.

  They followed a track slender as an old thread and strewn with grit until the night closed in, when they moved back to the river. The banks here were less steep, had more trees, and the river was narrower and musical over the stones. They hobbled and unpacked and lit fires.

  ‘Ahead lies a small place called Umut,’ Manius said and widened the grin. ‘It means “hope”, because that is all the folk there have to live on. Beyond that way is the caravanserai, which is seasonal.’

  A brace of shadows closed in on the fire, one of them eating, tearing hunks from a loaf. Dog looked up at them and grinned.

  ‘The big one is called Mouse. That is how his name sounds to us, because he comes from well up the Silk Road, east. He was also a fighter, a wrestler. He speaks decent Latin and better Greek, but cannot read nor write in any tongue. He eats everything, all the time.’

  Mouse was as big as Ugo, who appraised him professionally, but a wrestler who was well out of training. He had a belly, decent breasts, big shoulders and arms with strength in them, enough to let Drust know he would have been formidable when at peak. His face, though, was all of the moment, for it was the Quirinal boxer in the flesh.

  ‘I do not eat all the time,’ he said in a slightly lilting voice, pitched too high for a man that size. ‘I eat when hungry.’

  ‘Which is all the time,’ the other man said. ‘Except when sleeping.’

  This one was introduced as Mule, which was Army, because they carried so much on a march. Drust was certain that the man carried a signaculum in a leather pouch under the neck of his stained tunic and remembered the big Thracian commander, Maximinus, saying how that mark of a legionary was what deserters discarded only at the last. Under his Persian trousers, Drust was sure he would see legs scarred from a centurion’s vine staff, but now the man had hair done in the Persian style, little braids fastened with beads and trinkets.