The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  ‘He commands fuck all,’ Dog said.

  ‘Wait,’ said the Empress, looking desperately from one to the other. ‘Think. It may need all of us to get out of here.’

  That brought everyone up short and they looked at the hole in the roof, which Drust now had to admit was easier falling down than climbing up; even standing on Mouse’s shoulders, he thought, I could not reach the crumbled lip.

  ‘True,’ said Stercorinus. ‘The more you kill, the harder it gets.’

  He was whey-faced and slumped, slathered still with blood and sand and cradling the blade; Praeclarum was tearing strips off her own tunic to bind one side of him with, but each new one flushed with scarlet eventually.

  ‘Have you a plan, woman?’ Dog demanded, looking at the Empress.

  She nodded eagerly and pointed to the table.

  ‘Take that and lay it up as a ramp. Then we can get out whenever we like – though I would wait until the storm is over.’

  ‘Then do it.’

  ‘We could use your strength, Persian,’ Drust said, looking at the heft of the table. ‘Also, we will have to move the bales on it…’

  ‘You are treacherous,’ Borzin snarled, though everyone saw him wipe his dry mouth. ‘You have two of the biggest men I have seen.’

  Drust shrugged; Dog laughed. Then Mouse and Ugo and Kag worked swiftly, lifting the mouldered bundles and bales while others watched Borzin carefully. A bale withered away in Mouse’s hand, spilling the blackened contents, and Manius pounced like a striking serpent, rubbed one of the objects on his filthy sleeve and then held it up, turning it this way and that.

  ‘Silver,’ he said and they all peered. It was a small bowl, beautifully chased with dancing figures.

  ‘A votive object,’ Kisa noted expertly.

  ‘Silver gilt,’ Kag declared with disgust, taking the chance to pick one up. ‘Cheap stuff.’

  ‘Tawdry,’ the Empress agreed. ‘Like all your dreams of riches.’

  ‘Enough on that,’ Quintus spat, and the Empress smiled a sneer at him, then turned to Drust.

  ‘This is all of your life and beyond,’ she went on. ‘Even the Elysian Fields will be a patch of waste ground in Pluto for you. Do as this Borzin says – throw down your weapons and surrender.’

  ‘You think that favours you, woman?’ Dog answered dryly. ‘What do you think the Persians will do with you? You are no better with them than the Empire.’

  ‘The Empire sold me,’ she spat back bitterly. ‘My husband’s mother – the one you dragged by the heels – sold me to prevent him living with me ever again. That’s how I ended up in the hands of Farnah-vant.’

  ‘You didn’t seem to mind those hands much,’ Praeclarum declared, straightening from Stercorinus. ‘You went to him with handmaidens, slaves like yourself. You tried to kill them all – one is buried in a shallow grave and one is poppy-mad in the clutch of Shayk Amjot. What did they do – get in the way? Remind you that you were a Roman and a Vestal, which would be inconvenient? You are the abomination here, lady. You defile the name of Empress and even of woman.’

  ‘Slave,’ she answered viciously. ‘A foul little slave, no matter what these others try to make you. All of you are slaves, born and bred, and nothing will ever change that. They want me back and sent you – think on that.’

  ‘You think on it,’ Dog said. ‘They don’t want you back to feed sweetcakes and good wine in the bosom of your loving family. They will pay to put you in a hole where you can explain to Vesta why you did what you did.’

  She did not answer and they sweated in the wind-tossed dust to crack the front legs off the table and raise it up with everyone working at it. Slowly, slowly, it wavered up until, at last, the stumps of the broken-off legs hooked into the hole’s rim; dust sifted down like a waterfall and Drust wondered how solid the rim was. The table was now a steep and smooth incline; above it the wind mourned for the ones it could not reach.

  After that, they stripped the bodies of anything useful, which was just about everything. Praeclarum caught Drust’s eye when he looked at Stercorinus, and they moved quietly away from the others, head to head.

  ‘His god lied,’ she said flatly, and Drust felt the weight of it; he hadn’t known the man long but they had already shared more than two lifetimes, it seemed. He thought of Sib and did not want to lose yet another.

  ‘Does he say so?’

  She shook her head. ‘All he will say is that part of it was being watched by a powerful woman, a queen or greater. With eagles crying above. The spear took him by surprise.’

  ‘He is not dead yet,’ he said, but Praeclarum persisted.

  ‘If I fed him the soup,’ she whispered, ‘you would smell it in half-a-candle.’

  There was nothing more to be said, but Kag knew as soon as Drust looked at him and nodded imperceptibly. Everyone shared out what they had taken from the dead, according to their needs, and Dog looked across at Borzin, still crouched in the half-dark with the woman held by one arm.

  ‘Come out and fight, horse doctor,’ he said. ‘I want the rest of that fancy armour.’

  Borzin said nothing and everyone sank into themselves, listening to the wind rising to an eldritch howl, watching the dust and grit swirl into the hole and then get scooped out again.

  Then suddenly Mouse gave a bellow, and they all turned in time to see the woman leap up onto the table-ramp, scrabbling for purchase – and getting it. Behind her, a bewildered Borzin leaped up, his blade ready – but he dared not come closer. She was almost at the lip when Mule grabbed the trailing edge of her tattered skirts and hauled her up short.

  The others sprang to help; the Empress lashed out a foot and took Mule full in the face, so that he sprang blood and fell back with a yelp, thumping into the dead horse and rolling away; his loud howls drowned the final rat-scrabble of the Empress clawing out of the hole.

  Then she was gone, leaving only curses. Mule staggered up, holding his bloody nose with one hand. Quintus roared out a curse, and Kag flung his new helmet down in frustration.

  Then there was a sudden flurry that brought all heads round in time to see Borzin, curved sword drawn and a feral snarl on his lips. He had lost the protection of the woman and now there was only one option for him – fight his way out.

  ‘I’ll have that war hat back, slave,’ he said to Kag, who turned a cold, hard glare on him. His growl was deep in the back of his throat, but Dog laid a hand across his chest. Kisa was yelping and whimpering like a kicked pup until Praeclarum slapped him hard once or twice; eventually he shook himself, then fell on his knees and moaned.

  ‘Mine,’ Dog said.

  Borzin came forward, his red-rimmed eyes narrow as an angry boar and the curved sword flicking this way and that, like the taunting tongue of a hunting snake. He had no way out other than up the same ramp and too many enemies to make that feasible, so Drust was struck by his courage. He is more than the title ‘horse doctor’ would suggest, he thought…

  Borzin struck and Dog parried it, the blades rang like bells and sparks flew; there was hardly room for dancing and ducking, so it gave the advantage to the man with the armour. He crouched and came in like a boar, low and hard, with that single curved tooth slashing up. Dog blocked two more blows and then Borzin hooked the gladius out of his hand; everyone watched it spiral off.

  No one had seen such a thing before and hands went to mouths, throats clogged. Dog was the only one unconcerned, his death-face grinning in savage triumph as if he had already won. He reached down and flicked out the knife from his boot as Borzin slashed, missing and hitting one of the mouldy bales, old dust flying. He did it again and again, slashing and howling while Dog grinned his skull-grin and did not seem to move much – but each sway, every lean made the curved sword cut air.

  Once Kag started forward and Dog snarled at him, never taking his eyes off the Persian.

  ‘Stay back, or I will cut your heart out.’

  Then he turned back to Borzin, who stood like a sacrifice bu
ll, heaving in breath, the sword wavering in his grip and his head swinging from side to side.

  ‘This is the ring, horse doctor,’ he said, twisting his skull into a leering grin. ‘This is the harena, our place, the place of Dis and Mars Ultor. We and the gods live here and heathen fucks like you have no place in it other than to kneel and receive the iron.’

  This is no more a fighting ring than I can fart gold, Drust wanted to shout, but the air was thick with strangeness, the shadows danced and grunted, the wind shrieked like a crowd demanding blood.

  The end came swiftly, it seemed, after so long a fight. Borzin was big and armoured thickly, a weight that made him launch himself, feeling his strength wane. He snarled out a flurry of blows, and Dog made one shoulder dip, took one step and flicked out his arm.

  Borzin felt it go in, under the armour, into the armpit. He was still staring disbelief when Dog plucked the curved sword from Stercorinus’s weak grasp and brought it down like a scythe of light.

  It was a poor stroke. It should have taken Borzin in the forehead, splitting his head down through his face. Instead, it missed, carved his ear, smashed his shoulder blade and went on through the splinted metal and leather slantwise down his chest, where it stuck. His screaming fall bent it almost double and Dog let it go.

  There was a moment of ragged breathing and moaning wind, then Dog moved unsteadily to sit. Drust felt as light as the corpses in the corner.

  ‘Good stroke,’ Stercorinus growled hoarsely, ‘but it is polite to ask before you borrow. Give me my sword back.’

  Outside, the wind screeched laughter like the Fates gone mad.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They crawled out on the second day, trembling and fetid, to find the world altered beyond all recognition – moved from here to there and back again. The old streets they had come up were gone, buried under dust – yet others had been exposed, new walls melted by the rake of a wind which had picked up fist-sized rocks. They shuffled down them, exclaiming when they saw a splintered horse leg and a human arm, though the very armour on it was frayed and the hand flayed to ruin.

  Kag found a camel alive, standing near where it had allowed itself to be buried and shielded from the wind and stones. That made him shout and beam with delight, as if he had found his own da in the ruins. It even had the pack, lopsided but intact, and they fell on the water and food.

  ‘This is why the folk of this place prize such beasts,’ Mule declared proudly, as if he had raised it himself.

  ‘Does it have a name?’ Quintus demanded sarcastically. ‘If it does – is it the one camel-name you remember?’

  Mule frowned over it for a while, then brightened.

  ‘It does have a name. Fortuna’s Blessed.’

  He went off laughing and the camel trailed behind him like an obedient dog. Manius shook his shaggy head and watched it admiringly.

  ‘Horses die, men die – but that hairy hunchback simply buries its snout in the sand and lets such winds blow until they crack their throats.’

  Horses had died, that was clear, Drust saw. Men, too – they found some of them half buried and dragged them up, stripping off their ring-coats and taking their weapons. It was a grisly task – some of them had no faces and their equipment seemed to have been ravaged by some clawed beasts. But they still managed to get themselves better equipment than before – and were sure that not one of the pursuing warriors had survived.

  ‘There was a long hundred of them at least,’ Mouse marvelled and shook his head. ‘The wrath of Fei-lan is fierce.’

  It took some time to find out that Fei-lan was a god of wind from further east than anyone had heard of, and through all the talk Kag nodded absently and stared across the ravaged waste. Finally, he looked at Drust. If you are leaving tracks, Drust thought…

  People moved back and forth, awed and searching for anything that might be useful. Drust listened with only half an ear, searching for signs of the Empress, with Praeclarum at his side. Perhaps, like the camel, she had burrowed into the ground, he thought. He could not believe she had gone far.

  The wind had been the wrath of Aquilo, or Boreas, or Jupiter, or Mars Ultor, that was certain, but now it was as if it had never been. Drust looked at the peaks around him, sharply cut against the cloud-wisped blue sky on a diamond-bright day, a day like clean linen.

  The horizon was far away and Drust recalled how this was only a few footsteps into the fabled trade routes east, the ones that trailed great caravans of rich spice, fine silks, jade, gold. It was hard to believe; there seemed no road at all, only the merest thread shrouded with new dust. He squinted, looking for the spice trains, the dancers and pilgrims, the jugglers and travellers. There was nothing but an endless ochre dusted thinly with green stretching east and west, lonely and bare as a carcass picked by crows.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Kisa asked plaintively and Kag blew out his cheeks.

  ‘Be mannered, be efficient, salute frequently and have a plan to kill everyone we meet.’

  Drust turned from the weak laughter to ask Dog which peak they were heading for – and saw the figure, stumbling this way and that, falling over and getting up again, reeling with no direction. There was a strange mewling that unnerved everyone, even when they saw where it came from.

  ‘Jupiter’s cock…’ Quintus cried out and everyone saw the figure stumble and turn, head to one side to listen, tilted slightly to the sky.

  The skin was flayed from one side of her face, the beautiful eyes were now gaping pits, and her lips were scoured off so that she opened and closed her mouth like a fish. The only sounds that came out were meaningless whines, croaks and rasps, for the flaying wind had stolen even her voice, so all you could hear in her throat was the blood. She huddled in darkness, her mind a bowl scoured out. She was querulous and afraid and tears of blood tracked through the layered dust.

  ‘The Empress Julia Aquilia,’ Dog said, and no one cared for the cruel leer in his voice. ‘No relation to any of the other Severan Julias save by marriage and a shared viciousness. No friend of the gods of Rome, who have decided to stop her mouth on the secret name of the City.’

  ‘Friends,’ Drust said softly, ignoring Dog. She knew his voice, shrank away from it and moaned, flapping her hands; the fingers on her left hand were bloody stumps with bone showing like new splintered wood. Dog stood and watched as they captured her as they would an abandoned dog, wrapping her up like a child.

  ‘Should leave her,’ Mouse said. ‘She cannot speak the secret word of the City now, can she?’

  Praeclarum looked knives at him. ‘She can write,’ she answered simply, and left Mouse frowning.

  They went on, upwards still to where the air was cool and you could taste wet in it. Above, the peak brooded down on them like an accusation.

  ‘White Tiger Mountain,’ Dog said on one of their rest halts – frequent now because of the Empress and Stercorinus, who no longer walked upright cradling his sword; he crept in a hunch, one arm across his body as if to keep people from seeing the wound, the sword trailed behind him, scouring a groove, bumping over stones.

  Praeclarum had bound the Empress’s eyes out of kindness, but she had a face like half a skull made of tight dried flesh – Manius looked her over on one rest stop and gave a mirthless laugh.

  ‘She looks like she was made from bits of Dog and me,’ he growled, but only Dog laughed. The Empress made sounds, was eyeless and incoherent, and Praeclarum had cropped her head because there were parts on it where the hair had been scoured to bloody scalp. She went where she was bid, without demurring, ate what was thrust in her hand, and it seemed to Drust that all her hate and hubris had been scraped out of her, by whose god he did not know. Everyone saw the terrible price for it, all the same; everything that had made her was gone.

  At one halt, Dog doubted she could remember the secret name of the City, let alone write it out if tasked.

  ‘You want to cut her throat, then?’ Kag answered, chewing and drinking sour wine. ‘I mean –
we still get the reward if she is dead, right?’

  Dog said nothing, which told everything, so Kag spat out grit from the bread and swilled the wine round his mouth. ‘There’s your answer then. We carry her if necessary.’

  ‘Where to?’ Drust demanded of Dog, who looked up at the peak in answer; Drust had had enough of that.

  ‘Not good enough. If you die, I need to know how to get everyone else to safety.’

  Dog looked at him and grinned. ‘If I die it will be too late for safety.’

  ‘This is not the time to test me, Dog,’ Drust answered levelly, and eventually Dog shrugged.

  ‘There is a temple,’ he said, scratching in the dust. ‘Somewhere up ahead. We enter it from here and come out on the other side of the mountain. It is the only way through the mountains here – and the only way to avoid the Red Serpent, which lies to the west and ends at these mountains, which are as good a barrier as the Wall itself.’

  ‘A temple,’ Quintus repeated. ‘To what gods?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Dog answered. ‘Are we going to make offerings?’

  ‘It might be advisable,’ Mouse put in. ‘Can’t have too much holy help – are you done with that bread?’

  ‘The only muscle you have left is in your jaw,’ Dog growled at him and threw the bread. Mouse caught it and looked aggrieved, but he ate it.

  ‘Where is this temple?’ Drust demanded, and Dog waved airily.

  ‘Up there somewhere.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Kag spat back. ‘Up there? That’s all you have?’

  ‘It’s a temple,’ Dog growled, half rising. ‘What more do you need? How many fucking temples do you think there are up there?’

  ‘One less than what we need,’ said Kag, getting to his feet. ‘I do not like having been dragged here, having had to do what had to be done, just to be told the arse who said he knew the way is a face-fucked Stupidus.’

  Dog’s growl was incoherent and he was springing when Drust rose up and banged him in a short, sharp shoulder charge; Dog went sideways and sprawled in the dust, his fancy new helmet spilling and rolling. He got up, pig-eyed, to find Drust pointing a gladius at him.