‘Badger,’ he declared, ‘scraping up new bedding. Squirrels cracking hazelnuts, or stripping the bark from branches and letting it fall.’ He broke off and frowned. ‘Never found out why they do that – they don’t eat it, just let it fall.’
Drust looked at him. ‘How do you know this stuff?’
Sow shrugged. ‘Told you – lived close to the dark wood as a lad. Not to say we weren’t feared of it, for we went in a little way now and then – but there are bears and wolves, as you know. Well, not here, because Rome has paid for them all to be hunted out.’
He shifted a little. ‘The mavro says he can smell something he don’t like. That Kag said to come and tell you.’
Drust went to where Manius and Kag crouched in a stand of trees draped with green moss, tendrils of it trailing down; here the canopy was thick and the light made it look as if they were all underwater.
‘Smoke,’ Manius said as the others gathered, scarcely wanting to breathe aloud let alone speak. Now that he said it Drust could smell it, a mix of sharp woodsmoke – the sort that brought a pang for old comforts – and a harsher char. The memories that brought made the Brothers look from one to the other and it didn’t go unmarked.
‘What is it?’ Culleo wanted to know, the note of his voice rising. Dog laid a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder.
‘Something to make you stay quiet and soft, like you were trying to catch a monkey.’
Drust didn’t think Culleo had ever seen a monkey, but the man got the gist of it all the same.
‘Softly catches yer monkey,’ Kag added, licking his lips.
Quintus grinned. ‘See that? I never understood that. You can never creep up on a monkey – we tried, the gods know it. Down south of the Nile, you remember, lads? You have to knock the little fucker over with a stone or a stick and net it while it’s still dazed and on the ground. If you are catching it for the beast masters under the Flavian, that is. If it’s just monkey meat, you get Manius and his bow.’
‘That how you got your last woman?’ Kag spat back. ‘She looked like a monkey.’
‘My last woman was your old ma,’ Quintus whispered back, but he was already peering through the foliage.
Drust’s last woman looked at him and smiled, rinsed her mouth with the vinegary wine and spat; he did not like the way she looked but said nothing, just indicated to Manius to lead them out towards the complex smell of cheer and death. The wind was soft, like a thin cry over stormy water, and it came with a sharpness, a hint of something, but so faint Drust couldn’t drag out the memory. He glanced at Kag and caught him looking back; he nodded briefly, as if they had agreed something.
They crept on, to where the trees thinned and the grass seemed to rise up to their shoulders – all but Ugo. There were saplings here, but the grass was everything; then Kisa trailed seeds out of it, frowning.
‘Some of this is wheat,’ he declared and they all got the picture of it – old fields, given back to the woods, but the grass was the predator here, even choking the trees. Insects pinged and hummed and the heat seemed to sizzle; Drust almost wished for the dark shade of the forest they had left.
Then Ugo pointed and everyone squinted towards the misshapen tawny mounds they had thought were old fodder-stacks; they weren’t, they were buildings, constructed low to the ground so that their thatched roofs came down almost to touch it.
Old, like the fields, Drust thought, blowing insects off his lips. He saw there was a longhouse, the roofbeam of it broken and sagged in the middle, and the other buildings clustered round it.
‘Twenty folk,’ Kisa whispered. ‘Maybe more.’
‘None now,’ Manius answered, his voice normal enough to make everyone wince and cringe. ‘Save for them.’
There were six, swinging and black with flies which droned up like baleful priests to reveal that the dead wore strip-skirts made from their own flayed flesh. Two were women, but it was hard to tell with the breasts cut off, and the rest were men pout-lipped from their own genitals. All had been there a long time, marbled and desiccated so that one had a leg fallen off.
Another had a piece of bark hung on a cord round the ravaged neck. The crude scrawl read: Roma Invicta.
‘Here is your Dragon in action,’ Praeclarum muttered and spat sideways.
‘Weeks old,’ Kag pointed out, but the cloud of flies was getting to him and he backed off, spitting and waving.
Culleo stood, arms dangling, his stare black. ‘We were happy until the time of Sulla and Marius,’ he growled to no one – or perhaps to the dangling dead. ‘Then we found out we were barbarians, were naked, sinful and owed allegiance to another world and different gods from another sky.’ He scoured them all with his mournful eyes. ‘Good of the Romans to let us know.’
‘You should watch him,’ Kisa whispered like a hissing oracle, arriving at Drust’s shoulder as Culleo crept out of earshot.
‘The lack of drink has addled him,’ Drust answered, though he had no conviction in it. Truthfully, he thought Culleo was infected with the Dark and, even after all his years as a Roman, was feeling old blood urges lurch up in him.
‘He has seen the truth of Rome,’ Kisa added.
‘Which is?’ Drust asked, though he was scanning, scanning…
‘That the roads that never bend, the marble glories, the Flavian and their like are all impermanent as a dream at the crest of a dune, as if they were born of the cloudless sky. You go out to other folk’s lands and force them to want finer shoes and carriages, cheap food from cookshops, free grain to make into free bread, and all they have to do to get it is be a fool in a toga.’
‘Fuck you, Kisa – this is what happens when you are fed Greek philosophers.’
Quintus came up and Drust saw him scowl. He had never seen Quintus scowl. ‘Rome is eternal,’ he growled at Kisa. ‘Athens is a goddess, Alexandria is a whore like Babylon, Jerusalem is a spade-beard with a secret knife – but Rome is a solid-chinned man, full of righteous anger and a good meat pie, drinking wine in a taberna before he goes out to add to the Empire.’
There was soft laughter and Drust saw the grin reappear on Quintus’s gleaming face.
They had never wanted it more, Drust thought, the brick and marble and smoky skies; the cloacal stink of the Tiber and the spiced cookfires of a thousand nationalities. They wanted to be down in the glow-lit dark of Subura, listening to the shrieks and arguments, the sharp, high cries that might have been deadly argument or fierce sex. Rome was the blare of trumpets and bloody death in the afternoon, the shrieking of women at market, the cries of all humanity, crowded on seven hills crusted with people from all four corners of an Empire spanned by straight roads and Law. They wanted it like a mother’s hug.
Rome, Drust thought, is the pulsing heart of the world and would only be brought low by its own self…
‘Might as well be a thousand miles away,’ Kag grunted when Drust spat some of this out. ‘Which is fuck all use to these Romans here.’
‘You have to ask,’ Praeclarum offered, looking round, ‘why they left this message?’
‘The Dragon,’ Dog growled, ‘marking his territory like any midden hound.’
‘I understand that,’ Praeclarum answered quietly, ‘but why here? Look at it – no one has lived here for years. A message is only worth the effort if people see it.’
Drust felt the chill freeze the sweat on him. No one lived here, but people came. They met here, a landmark in a dark wood with no other features. They met here and went raiding… this message from Antyllus had been left for them.
The others had got to it as well, and Dog cursed, then nodded admiringly to Praeclarum. Ugo rolled his shoulders and said: ‘eyes on stalks.’ Suddenly, everyone felt that they were being watched.
‘Manius,’ Drust said, and the man raised an arm, then slid out into the tall grass and vanished, leaving only a small blob of blood-red spit.
‘He is not here,’ Quintus said, wiping his sweaty grin. ‘He is far away.’
&nbs
p; ‘His head is up his arse,’ Dog answered moodily. ‘That stuff he chews will get us all killed.’
Drust doubted it. What would get them killed would be vengeful men with sharp points and edges, and those they met an hour later, stumbling across old walls of thrown-down stones, no more than hip-height where once they had been taller than four men.
‘The old frontier of Rome,’ Culleo said pointedly. ‘Before they pulled it back.’
‘A hundred years ago at least,’ Quintus said. ‘And only a dozen miles of Rome given up. I would not look to seeing your tree-fucking friends at the gates of Rome before the world itself ends.’
‘I meant nothing by it,’ Culleo muttered. Drust had taken his helmet off to feel a breeze and mop the sweat from the leather lining. He had barely slid it greasily back when his world exploded into a star of light and a noise like he had been the clapper in a bell.
The part of him not muzzed by it said ‘arrow’ and ‘helmet’ and he could have sworn Fortuna said ‘lucky bastard’ in his ear – then Praeclarum hauled him sideways, away from the struggle. Dog and Kag stood shoulder to shoulder, Ugo lurched left and right, and where he carved blood flew, while Quintus danced and stabbed and blocked the blows directed at him.
‘Are you here?’ Praeclarum asked and Drust scrambled to his feet, weaving slightly and still hearing her voice as if from a long way off. He waved her into the fight and got his gladius out, though it felt heavier than it ever had; since the last fight he had held onto the egg-shaped shield and was glad of it now.
He heard Dog roaring curses at them, saw Manius flitting to the flank, nocking an arrow as he did so. Hammer came reeling out of the tall grass screaming and bloody – the warrior who followed him saw Drust, checked and then lurched on, a spear in one hand and a long shield in the other. He had a silly helmet with horns, slightly askew, but Drust was fighting for sense and the spearman gave a foot-stamping assault, all blinding hand speed, so that the spear whicked and flicked and suddenly the gladius was gone.
Drust hadn’t felt it leave him, but he managed to block with the shield, the spear smacking and scoring it, making him stagger and fall. The spearman was a plump, pimpled youth with a shock of red hair and a speckle of new beard, which let his triumphant grin show.
I am on my arse here, Drust thought, scrabbling backwards, looking at being skewered by a young ginger pig – he felt something under his fingers, managed to roll away with it when the spear stabbed.
Hammer’s hammer, Drust realised wildly. The spearman lunged again and Drust let the point go over him and swung the tent hammer at his ankles, felt it jar, heard the crunch and saw him fall, screaming and writhing.
Drust rolled up to his feet, weaving like a tree in a wind, while the spearman screamed and flapped his empty hands at the white bone and bloody flesh where his shin should have been. Drust beat the man’s silly horned helmet as if he worked at a forge making nails. It was poor work, that helmet; the segments split at the seams and blood came out the man’s mouth.
There was fire, a sudden flare of heat and smoke and crackle, and Drust heard Kag yelling for everyone to get out of the field, that the grass was alight. He stumbled forward and saw two more spearmen – all beard-braids and slaver – look at him and shriek like girls. He realised he had become their worst nightmare, some great hammer-wielding god with fire and smoke at his back. He laughed; his head was iced but his back was flushed with heat.
The first one went down without so much as raising his spear; the hammer took him in the face with no more resistance than beating in a bird nest. The next waved the spear and tried a jab, but he was looking to run. Drust broke the shaft with one blow and then smacked him on the upswing, and his jaw flew off trailing blood and the middle of his last shriek of terror.
The next two tried to come at him together but one lost heart in it and ran off sideways, throwing away the spear he had in one hand and the torch he had in the other. Drust felled the second with a blow between neck and shoulder that gave a crack like a splitting tree.
There was a moment when he stood, turning this way and that in the smoke, looking for enemies, then Kag stepped up and squinted at him.
‘You have Fortuna’s own blessing at your call,’ he said and pulled off Drust’s helmet, handing it to him. ‘I saw you put that war hat on an instant before the arrow struck it. One eyeblink slower and Praeclarum would be counting the inheritance.’
Drust laughed. Kag laughed. They stood, leaning against another and choking with smoke-wracked laughter until they saw Kisa kneeling beside Hammer. Drust became aware of the clotted horror he held and felt guilty about having made such a mess on it.
‘Is he hurt?’
Which was the question of a stupidus from the Atellan Farces when you looked at where Hammer had clamped both hands on the open slash across his belly, as if he could hold in the blue-white entrails. He hoped so hard that his fingers had kept the grip even in death, and Kisa confirmed it when he looked up, blank-faced, and shook his head.
Culleo spat. Sow gave a low whimpering moan but no one else said much save Dog, who pointed out it might be a good idea to put some distance between them and the fire. They shifted away, leaving Sow and Culleo to ransack Hammer for anything useful, as if it was their right and no one else’s.
‘This one is alive,’ Dog said suddenly, toeing a body; it moaned. Kag and Ugo hauled the man upright, where he stood, leaking blood from wounds on his head and arms. He was young and dark-haired, neatly cropped, clean-shaven. Drust saw the blood all over his tunic and the braccae, those trousers the northmen wore, loose and eye-watering with colour, tied at the ankles. He saw the man’s scored shield lying nearby, an egg-shape of green and gold designs exactly like another not far away. Even the ginger pig, leaking blood from under his eyelids, was a Roman in a bad helmet.
The smoke stung eyes and the man hung between Ugo and Kag, limp and muttering, as Dog called Culleo and Sow to him.
‘Ask him who they are and if there are any more.’
Culleo spat. ‘They are from the Dark. They worship blood and should die…’
Drust slapped his shoulder, then looked pointedly at Dog and indicated the shields. The man’s head lolled.
‘He is no woodlouse,’ Drust said. ‘He is Roman – look at him.’
‘Fortuna’s fat tits, so he is,’ Kag growled and slapped the man on his shoulder. ‘Roman, are you? Speak up, you snail slime.’
‘I am Roman, of the Ala Flavia,’ the man said, puffing blood from his smashed lips. ‘General Antyllus is a fount of mercy and bountifulness; be a source of mercy and bountifulness to him. If you will be such, you will find salvation. Otherwise you can go fuck a pig.’
Drust paused, considering; he needed information but thought this man wasn’t about to give any. He looked round to where everything seemed to be burning and thought it might be a better idea to quit this place. Everywhere was shrieking and burning now.
The man spat, weak and bloody; it trailed down his chin.
‘All the tribes of the Dark are out,’ he managed in a voice like a soft sigh. ‘They are coming – but we are Roma Invicta. Our anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. We are coming like fire…’
‘You are a traitor, according to what we’ve heard,’ Quintus said and shook the man. ‘Roman – where is your famous general, Antyllus?’
‘Bitterness is a god that gnaws its master,’ the trooper said and then grinned bloodily at them. ‘The Dragon is coming and he will bring the light of Mithras to the Dark… I am raven. I am the flame.’
‘The Dragon has already tried with the fire thing,’ Ugo grunted, looking at the flames and billowing smoke. ‘Not very good, is he?’
‘I remember a saying,’ Dog said suddenly, picking up an extinguished torch and moving to where the flames flickered; they were growing too close, Drust thought.
‘Make a fire for a man and he’ll be warm for a day?’ Kisa suggested scathingly. Dog laughed and ran the torch round the hem of t
he lolling Roman’s tunic.
‘Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.’
Kag and Ugo leaped back with curses, letting the man collapse, burning and shrieking, to the ground. He tried to get up and run, but his sinews were twisting and he simply flailed around, screaming through the flames until they ate his voice.
‘Jupiter’s fat cock, Dog – who pissed on your shoes?’ Kag snarled, but Drust was sick of the heat and the flames and pork-sizzle stink of the man dying in fire.
‘Manius – scout ahead. The rest of you, head west. Let’s get out of this blood wood once and for all.’
They moved. ‘Where’s Praeclarum?’ Drust asked, and when no one replied, asked it again.
There was no point in a third time; no one knew and she had simply vanished.
Chapter Three
He was cold, all the sweat on him a chill grease of fear and panic. Yet Drust burned with a furious anger and a need to be up and running after her, wherever she was, whatever direction, pick one, he would find her… The act of sitting still, fighting to think, trembled him in spasms, made him tighten his hands to fists so that the inked letters on his knuckles were stark against the clench.
They came to him silently. Dog laid a hand on his shoulder, Quintus on the back of his neck like he was a hound in need of calming. Ugo patted him briefly, awkwardly, then growled off to stand nearby, waiting like a fretting horse.
Kag knelt in front of him, forcing Drust to focus and look into determined eyes. ‘We will get her back,’ Kag said, putting out his hand, fingers splayed to show his own tattooed knuckles – E-S-S-S. Ego sum servus Servillius – I am a slave of Servillius. All slaves were marked somewhere and even freedom would not make these disappear; you lived with them either by hiding them, or wearing them like a curled lip. There were no hidden markings here.
Beasts From the Dark Page 5
