The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  ‘We… ah, um… lost it,’ Kisa went on, his voice growing high with desperation, ‘… and found it again – but it fell. Snapped a… er… um… leg. The skins are leaking.’

  ‘Leaking?’

  ‘One is, like a poor dam,’ Kisa agreed, and the man licked his lips at the possibilities and stepped out into the street.

  ‘If it is not emptied, it will be lost – bring your helmet and we will fill that first. We might need help,’ Kisa suggested and the man grunted that there was only him, so that would have to do. And he stepped out, pulling off his helmet and eager with the anticipation of free drink.

  Which is when Ugo slid out behind him and felled him with a single smashing blow to the back of the neck; the crack of it was like a branch breaking and loud enough for Kisa to crouch and whimper.

  Kag clapped Kisa on one shoulder. ‘Not bad. Too many ums and ers and ahs, but not bad. We could get you in a Plautus, perhaps as the clever slave who wins his freedom.’

  Kisa swallowed hard and said nothing as the others came up, but his expression made it clear what he thought. Kag simply grinned back.

  ‘Hurry,’ said Kisa, his shadow dancing in the flickering lantern light of the cellar. ‘Why do you wait?’

  ‘Kag is thinking whether it is best to leave this man alive behind us, or slit his throat.’ Praeclarum answered and Kisa looked alarmed.

  ‘No deaths would be preferable. If we kill anyone, they will not spare us if caught.’

  ‘Stupidus,’ Kag declared scornfully. ‘That is clearly the Atellan role for you. You can carry the head of Farnah-vant because you are bound to have an astounding excuse for having it.’

  Drust bent by the guard, queasy about doing it but determined to take it on himself, as leader. Instead, he found no pulse; Ugo nodded and beamed.

  ‘Thought it was a good blow.’

  The cellar was large and vaulted, lit only by the pale yellow of a horn-panel lantern where the solitary guard had made a nest for himself. The rest of the place was a series of alleys between bales, boxes, barrels of pungent spice and ranks of amphorae, stacked like the army on parade.

  ‘Wine, silk and…’ Kag said, stopping to sniff. ‘What is that smell?’

  It was oil, but not the aromatic one from olives they knew so well; this was black, sticky and pungent.

  ‘The black pitch we were told of,’ Kisa said, looking round uneasily. ‘The stuff that burns in the eternal flames of these fire worshippers.’

  Quintus had found stairs and they went up them like prowling cats, latched open the door at the top and moved into another vaulted room.

  Cloth-wrapped meat hung from skewers, together with bunches of herbs; there was an extra warmth here that made more sweat break on them; most of it came from a large clay hump where embers glowed. That and the copper wink of pans and pots and cauldrons told where food was cooked, and Kag confirmed it with a snake hiss in Drust’s ear.

  ‘Kitchen,’ he said, ‘watch for the cook.’

  ‘Too hot,’ Kisa said. ‘He and his helpers will be on the roof, where it is cool.’

  They moved out of it into a bigger room, full of trestles and benches they recognised at once from their own communal eating days. There were stairs in one corner and fat double doors at the far end, which Quintus whispered led to the courtyard beyond, for sure.

  Where would they keep slaves? Drust did not want to go out into that courtyard – there will be sentries, he thought. He went up the stairs, hugging the shadows like a cloak, and found himself in a small square with a shuttered window on one side; passages led off to the left and ahead, with arched doorways blocked by no more than fringed silk and beaded hangings.

  They heard snoring from one, balked at going in, and moved on, dripping sweat. They peered into another and saw nothing in the darkness, save some bulk that looked like barrels and moved towards them. The room was full of them and there was that same sharp, pungent smell which no one liked.

  ‘So much of this black oil,’ Kag hissed in Drust’s ear. ‘Some fire ceremony perhaps?’

  ‘You don’t waste this on the gods,’ Quintus muttered. ‘This is for selling to those who want to make naptha.’

  If anyone knew that, it would be Quintus, who had used the stuff before.

  Ugo came up, a great looming shadow who moved surprisingly lightly when he needed to. ‘There are rooms, lots of them,’ he growled and his bass rumble made everyone wince.

  ‘Important folk sleep here,’ Kisa said, so close to Drust’s ear that his breath scorched the lobe. ‘Rooms to themselves alone. Up higher is where the tally-places are – cool, so the scribblers can work in some comfort. That will tell us where the slaves are kept.’

  They went higher, into another passageway, and saw more shuttered windows; here was where I would have come in if I had been able to climb, Drust thought.

  He moved to an arched doorway – with a proper door in it this time – and opened it; the creak made him wince. His eyes were dark-visioned now and he saw the blue-dim clearly, saw the woman tied by outstretched arms to rings set in the wall, the rich carpet, the small table, the bed and the snoring man. It was the woman from the market, the one who had been whipped.

  The woman saw Drust as he saw her, so he put one finger to his lips and slid forward, Kag at his heels. For a moment, as Drust looked down at the bearded figure – the rider whose bridle he had seized – he considered a simple blow behind the ear. Then he saw the shackled woman’s wound-stripes, her battered face, her bruised nakedness, the blood on her thighs. He raised the gladius and looked at her with silent question.

  Her nod was a tremble of vehemence and Kag grinned and clapped one hand over the man’s mouth, holding it long enough for his bemused, horrified eyes to open. Drust let him see Kag’s wolf-savage smile, the dagger, the blazing gaze of the wall-shackled woman. Just at the point he started to struggle, Drust slit his throat, a simple gesture, a tug that parted the flesh like rind on cheese. He held him while the blood vomited and the man kicked and gug-gug-gugged, trying to tear away.

  When he was silent and still, Drust moved to the woman and cut her down; she sagged against him for a moment, whimpering, then levered herself up, hawked and spat on the dead man in the bed.

  ‘You kill is good,’ she said in Latin. Her accent, Drust realised with a sudden pang of unease, was thick, making the Latin sound awkward. ‘I pull a deep inside not me. His eyes turned seeing me. I wanted to send him to the stone village – pah!’

  She spat again. Kag looked at Drust, bewildered, but took her by the wrist and pulled her off the bed; like a camel train they left the room, desperate to find the others. They were in a smaller room, trying to spark up a lantern.

  ‘Is this her? The Empress?’ Kisa asked, and Kag laughed softly.

  ‘You tell us, scholar. She speaks Latin like she chews cloth.’

  Kisa glanced at Drust, saw the bloody knife. Said ‘Aaaah,’ in a high, thin voice.

  ‘Who did you kill?’ Quintus wanted to know. ‘Are there any others?’

  ‘No, just the one in the marketplace who brought this one in.’

  Kisa whined. ‘In the name of the true God, tell me it was not that one. He is called Zavan, right hand of Farnah-vant.’

  ‘Zavan? You found this out and said nothing?’ Kag demanded, making Kisa step back.

  ‘Zavan,’ the woman said and snarled out words in her strange way. ‘He is planted horseshoes – pig. Dog. Rough uncle. Fit to the Dis…’

  ‘She speaks like that all the time,’ Drust said to a bemused Quintus. ‘It is Latin, but makes no sense.’

  ‘She is Persian, at least in part,’ Kisa answered and then rattled off some long phrase in a tongue no one knew. The woman replied.

  ‘She is called Robab, though that is the name for a stringed instrument for playing music…’

  ‘Not interesting,’ Drust hissed and Kisa stopped, took a breath. He was trembling and nervous and spoke more when he was like that.

 
‘She is from the Oxus, some Bactrian tribe, because that tongue is native to her. That bit about “planted horseshoes” is how you say, “kicked his last”? “Stone village” is a cemetery. She calls him “rough uncle”, which is a bandit, I think. She is talking her own language, but in Latin.’

  ‘How does she know Latin?’ Drust demanded, and Kisa spat and popped out the words, had them fired back.

  ‘She was handmaiden to Farnah-vant’s woman – presumably one to replace the two who ran off. I am guessing that her mistress is the Empress we seek, but you have to wonder why all her handmaidens take to their heels.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  Kisa asked, the woman answered, and he turned, squinting and frowning.

  ‘Up a level.’

  Made sense, Drust thought, it being safer and cooler. Kisa wiped his streaming face.

  ‘They call the Empress “Anahita” here, which is the name of a Persian goddess, a virgin sometimes regarded as the consort of Mithra, god of light.’

  Light flared and Praeclarum arrived, thrusting her torch into the proceedings.

  ‘Linguistically,’ she said drily, looking at the shivering woman, ‘I agree this one is an interest. But she is naked and it would be better for everyone if she was not.’

  Quintus chuckled, took off his cloak and wrapped it round the woman’s shoulders; she clutched it to herself and stood, shaking. A thought came to Drust and made him icy sick.

  ‘Ask her if this Anahita is a slave, or free to come and go.’

  Kisa rattled it off and everyone else exchanged glances. Then Kisa licked his lips.

  ‘She is mistress of the city,’ he answered miserably. ‘Consort to Farnah-vant and beloved by him. This girl was her handmaiden and broke a mirror, so was beaten and about to be sold back up the Silk Road to the Land of No Return. So she tried to run.’

  He looked from one to the other. ‘You saw her fate.’

  ‘So – our once-Empress is no slave willing to be freed,’ Kag said bitterly. ‘Instead, we have a Sabine to be lifted.’

  ‘We cannot stand here all night,’ Praeclarum hissed, and that made everyone look left and right and realise they were standing in the middle of an enemy fortress, with guards likely to arrive at any minute.

  ‘Move,’ Drust said softly. ‘Look for more stairs, go up, kill this Farnah-vant, grab the Empress – and do it as quietly as we can.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Quintus began, then stopped, his mouth open; there was a sound like running mice that made Drust whirl in time to see the heels of the slave disappear down the tiled corridor. He ripped out a hissed curse and went after her.

  There was the flicker of a figure and he went through the arch after it, skidding a little and losing a sandal. He hopped for a second or two and then he saw stairs up and down, just as Kag and the others galloped up.

  ‘She might be making for the cellar and out into the street,’ Quintus gasped out. ‘Hoping to escape…’

  The shrieks let him know how wrong he was. It was wild and high Persian, loud as an alarm-iron from above and Kisa gave a little whimper.

  ‘She is calling for guards, screaming of murder.’

  Treacherous little bitch-tick, Drust thought, but he could see the sense in it for her, even as he went up the stairs, having to elbow past Ugo to be first. Zavan had been murdered by men out to kill Farnah-vant and her former mistress and unlikely to escape or be spared afterwards. Better for her, Drust thought, to make it clear where her allegiance lay.

  When he hit the top step he saw the pale, wild stare flung over one shoulder as she fought the tangle of a curtained arch; Drust thundered after her, ripped through the thin cotton, hit the polished planks beyond and felt his one sandal catch and tear, propelling him forward until it slithered his legs out from under him.

  He gave a yelp as he thundered to the floor and skidded into a table, which careened madly off and hit another; the lamp on it flew off and smashed on a wall – and someone grunted a query, woke in a panicked flurry of movement.

  Drust cursed himself back to his feet, saw the sudden mad flicker of running flame as the oil caught. Beyond it, red-dyed by the sudden soft whuff of blossoming fire, a figure rose sleepily into a growing horror he had only seconds to contemplate. Drust fumbled for the gladius, dropped when he fell – found nothing. The woman was screaming, turning this way and that, and then suddenly darted past and out the door. Drust let her go, busy scrabbling fiercely for the dropped sword.

  Other shadows loomed – this was where the guards slept and Drust had another fierce moment of raking the floor for the gladius when a new, bigger shadow loomed over him and a blade snicked into the firelight.

  Ugo stepped over Drust, beat the man he had stabbed to the ground with his left hand and then kicked him hard enough to shift him backwards; two more half awake men, wild with fear, fell over him.

  A stumble of guards were heading out of the burning room and two more tackled Ugo, who had to wrestle with them. One careered past and came at Drust, who had managed to find his eating knife by the time the man flung himself like a panther.

  They locked, sweating and reeling, fetid breath mingling and the flames scorching them both. Drust’s fingers clawed for the heart in the throat and then he drove the little blade in and ripped it across as if wiping a mouth, scattering little ruby red drops. A gout of blood splashed his eyes, blinding with its hot scour, and he spun away, trying to clear his sight and cursing roundly. The man was gasping sprays of blood, struggling to stay on his feet and finally collapsing at the door, where he tried to claw himself out.

  Kag booted him in the head and then ran him through the back, just to be sure.

  ‘Get up and finish it. We have problems here.’

  By the time Drust was on his knees, the place was running with oiled fire and it was dripping through the gaps in the floor; the man lying in the middle of it drummed his heels and waved his arms as if trying to swim to the surface of a deep pool and take a breath. Ugo grabbed Drust’s arm and hauled him all the way to his feet, thrusting his big face close.

  ‘Got sense? Good. Then move – my arse is burning.’

  Drust ducked out of the room, looked down the corridor and saw the whole gods-rotted moment of it. Kisa was locked in a panting struggle with the dark figure of the slave, who had lost her cloak. Quintus lay on the floor groaning, and Praeclarum crouched and danced back and forth against two guards.

  They had hard leather armour and metal helmets in the Persian style, covering almost all the head save for the face and with a ridged crest. They had shields and even spears – well, they were guarding the boss, after all, so they had to look the part.

  Thing about spears is, Drust thought, smearing more blood out of his eyes, they are useless in a narrow place like a corridor unless you just stand and poke them. Praeclarum was showing them why that was a bad idea, but then the door behind them opened and a new figure appeared.

  He was naked to the waist, which was that of a dancer and how it supported the broad chest above it was a mystery Drust had no time to worry about. He had a too-handsome face with a well-groomed beard and a fistful of curved sword like the one Stercorinus waved impotently behind all of them.

  ‘Kill them,’ this new man commanded, but he only had one guard left to listen – Praeclarum, with a wicked scream, had leaped into a forward roll and come up to stab the other in the groin. His shrieks drowned everything out, including the slave girl, but hers were cut short when the half-naked man sliced her jaw off.

  It was meant, Drust supposed, to remove the head in a casual display of strength and skill, but it fell well wide of the mark. It was also a stroke on someone who might just as well have been a block of cheese or a piece of furniture; with only the briefest of moments to contemplate how her plan had failed, the slave girl from the Oxus crumpled in a bloody heap.

  ‘I will gut you like cod if you fight me,’ the man bellowed and Drust supposed this was Farnah-vant himself. Ugo shouldered forward, gra
bbed the spear a guard thrust at him and pulled hard, so that the owner stumbled forward. The guard should have let it go, but was stubborn and died in an instant of blood and agony that didn’t even give him time to realise what a fool he had been.

  Farnah-vant crashed forward and blades sang like broken bells as Praeclarum and Ugo struggled to match him.

  ‘He’s good,’ said a voice in Drust’s ear and he turned to see Kag gazing admiringly.

  ‘Oh – perhaps we should give him the contest then? Move him up the rankings also?’

  Kag scowled and shrugged – then was flung sideways as Stercorinus bludgeoned his way through. There was a moment when he hovered behind Ugo and Praeclarum, looking for an opening – then he took Praeclarum by the collar of her tunic and yanked her backwards, leaping into the hole she made.

  There was a moment of blistering speed and high, sharp rings, then Ugo lurched backwards and stood, panting. He turned, bewildered, to the rest of them.

  ‘I can’t get into it – too fast for me. Need an axe and can’t swing one here even if I had it.’

  Drust caught Praeclarum by the wrist when he saw her suck in a breath, as if about to dive into a pool.

  ‘Leave them – get into the room and fetch the Empress. Kag – go with her. Quintus, find us a way out of here – we don’t have long.’

  The corridor was filling with smoke and the reek of blood, the stink of fear. There was another clashing ring of blades and then a grunt, no more. Drust shifted closer, stepping over the body of the slave girl, feeling the blood slick against his naked soles; something crunched under his instep and when he looked down he saw part of her jaw.

  He could not see through the smoke now, but Praeclarum and Kag loomed, the latter dragging a woman by one wrist. She was shouting at them to let her go, calling for help – then she saw Stercorinus appear and she screamed, her free hand going up to her mouth.

  He strolled out of the smoke, which swirled round him like a cloak. The curved sword was over one shoulder, dripping slow greasy pits and pats, and in the other hand was a bloody, raggle-necked head that had once been too-handsome with a beard. Now it was slack-mouthed and trailed blood and gleet. He looked at the woman who stared back, a tic starting under one eye.