‘The Dragon,’ Kisa breathed, but Drust had no time for him; he was searching, eyes like frantic squirrels, for any sight of her. Found none.
‘The Dragon wants to talk,’ Kag said. ‘Now the dance begins.’
Drust heard it, but it meant little – his belly lurched sickeningly and ice formed in the sweat down his spine. The man with the standard raised it high and cleared his throat.
‘Marcus Antonius Antyllus Augustus, Vir Ementissimus, Defender of Rome.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Kisa said. Drust looked quizzically at him and Kisa bowed his head and sighed wearily.
‘They’re about to throw purple over him,’ Kag said grimly. ‘Salute your new Emperor, lads – at least until the Legions get to him and make him a god.’
‘No wonder they wanted him dead,’ Quintus said and they watched as the Dragon stepped out of the ruck of guards and peeled off the helmet.
Underneath he was a menagerie of man, with a beard like a badger’s arse, the glaucous eyes of a fish, a corvine nose. He grinned horse teeth, wiped the gleam from his face and blew out his cheeks.
‘That will do for that,’ he said in a slightly high-pitched voice. ‘Too hot for ceremony, but the lads love it.’
The lads looked as if they would love a bucket of wine and a decent meal, Drust thought, but he was walking cautiously; Marcus Antonius Antyllus might look like a collection of harmless animals, but Drust had seen his work and it was every bit as crazed and bloody as a barbarian altar. Besides – he had Praeclarum, he was sure of it.
Antyllus thrust one arm out with the helmet clutched in its fist; the standard-bearer took it. Antyllus did not look at him but up at the rotten-tooth tower and then right and left of it.
‘This was Rome,’ he shouted in an aloes voice. ‘This was the Empire before those who should have known better gave it up and left it to rot.’
His men agreed with shouts and a rattle of weapons on shields. Antyllus looked at Drust and the others. ‘Good men died here and those who left them behind feel the betrayal still in their sons and grandsons. Now this boy, this Alexander in name only, is looking to do the same – pull back, shrink the Empire.’
‘Is he?’ Quintus bawled, thumbing snot from his nose and inspecting it. He wiped it casually on his tunic and grinned his big grin. ‘I never knew that. Did you know that, Kag? Ugo?’
‘Have some respect,’ the standard-bearer growled, his voice metallic under his own face-masked helmet. Dog thrust his stubbled death’s head at him.
‘You must be boiling in that head-cauldron,’ he shouted. ‘Take it off so I can see your face and mark it to be ripped off later.’
‘What do you want?’ Drust asked Antyllus. It was as if a pile of anvils had fallen from a cart. There was silence for a moment, then the birds seemed to come back to life and an owl fluted deep in the dark trees.
‘You were sent to kill me,’ Antyllus replied.
‘To persuade you to return. They said you were unsound,’ Drust responded. ‘That your methods were… suspect.’
‘Makes Caligula look like a model of rectitude was what they said,’ Kag confirmed. Antyllus turned and looked from one to the other and they all saw it, those glaucous fish-eyes changing to something that seemed to resemble the reflection of fire on sharp steel.
‘I am unsound to those who have no love for Rome,’ he answered and then took a brief, shuddering breath – to still the rant boiling up in him, Drust saw. ‘Do you think my methods are unsound?’
‘I see no method at all,’ Drust said, looking round. ‘I see troopers with no horses running around the woods where they have no right to be, stirring up the tribes.’
‘Now we have seen what those tribes will do,’ Antyllus replied softly. ‘What they are capable of and what the Army’s response will be. Is it to your liking?’
He waved a hand vaguely southwards. ‘There, a few weeks’ march away, is Italia. A week or two beyond that is Rome. While this boy-emperor dilutes the soldiers with gluttony and greed, the wolves of these woods whet their fangs and prowl.’
Culleo made a noise that might have been agreement and then fell silent.
‘Rome,’ Kag said mournfully and Drust wanted to turn and tell him to shut up because he did not like the look in those fish-eyes and Praeclarum was in his clutches. ‘Rome won’t care for you,’ Kag went on. ‘They have had enough of usurpers.’
Antyllus flung up one hand as if swatting away a fly, then looked up at the trees and the sky. ‘Well, you have come to kill me and failed. Now I need you to help me instead, and I hold your wife. You have until the sun touches the top of that great oak. If you have not thrown down your weapons and come out to kneel at my feet, I will show you what I have learned from the blood altars in these woods. I do not need all of you.’
* * *
‘Why does he wait?’ Dog demanded as they crouched like feral foxes, laired up and looking for a way out.
‘Because he has a use for us,’ Drust answered, though he did not know what it might be.
Manius came loping up and he looked stricken, a face like a blinking calf, new-born to the world; it frightened Drust more than Dog’s ever had.
‘I can’t smell them,’ he said. ‘I can’t hear them, can’t see them – but I know they are there… I know it. I need to find…’
Dog loomed over him, all set to snarl, but saw Drust’s face and clicked his teeth shut. Kag gave Manius water and everyone else walked away from them.
‘He is done up,’ Quintus said.
‘Surprised he lasted this long,’ Dog said. ‘That leaf he chews has finally addled him.’
The Dark has addled him, Drust thought, a man from the slow, rolling sea of desert sands, trapped in a labyrinth of pillars and shadows.
‘We should go out,’ Culleo pleaded, sweating and shaking as the lack of drink eroded everything in him, crumbling it like surf on a sand wall. ‘Talk to him. Agree to whatever he wants. He is a senator of Rome—’
‘And you think… what?’ demanded Dog. ‘This makes him any less savage than a haruspex of the woodlice tribals round here? You should stand, just once, in the middle of the harena and look round at the expensive seats down the front. You will see your senators there, howling for blood like any tree-humping German or Gaul.’
No one answered, because they wanted to make a fist of it, though they did not want to die. In the end, Drust thought wearily, we will have to throw down our weapons, otherwise we will never rescue Praeclarum.
Antyllus gave away his true nature when he sent men in before the sun touched the oak, shifting them in sudden as a bowstring snap, heralded only by the crashing of undergrowth and the snarls. They had retrained well, Drust thought admiringly.
Drust heard Kag bellow out ‘Jupiter’s balls’, but he barely had time even for that before the figures crashed down and Drust, with the flicker of them at the edge of vision, crouched, hunched and spun, so that the one who came at him realised too late that his powerful spear-lunge had left him open as a whorehouse door.
Drust’s gladius pinked him, a sickening tug that he tore away from, shrieking with the shock of it rather than the pain; there would be no pain for him yet, Drust thought, so he would fight on, not knowing he was already dead.
The foolishness of this man, a Roman when all said and done, angered Drust, who took the gladius and his shield and beat him like an evil stepchild. Kept smashing down until something flitted once more at the corner of one eye and he spun away, crouched and snarling.
Dog went past, looking like the lost son of Dis, though there was slaver spuming from his mouth and bristle beard. He had no shield, two swords and went rolling into the pack of fighters, screaming spittle.
Quintus was with him, guarding his back, but he paused and looked Drust up and down. ‘There are more and that one is assuredly dead,’ he offered quietly. Then he trotted on.
Ashamed, Drust clenched his sticky hand on the hilt and took a moment to look round, seeing too many enemies and
the poor cover of the ruined walls. He lurched into the fight, came up behind the man fighting Kag, the pair of them trading blows and looking for openings while two more looked to come against Kag’s back. Drust hit the man in the back with the shield edge and heard a crack like splitting wood. He fell like a lopped tree. Kag, panting, blinked at him as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
‘Form, form…’
Kag bawled out an echo of it amid the shouts and curses. One by one the Brothers backed off, breaking in pairs to move to the cover of old stones and spiked earth, where Manius had his bow.
There was a horn blast that stopped the renegade Romans; they turned and trotted off while many lay like ragdolls and one or two limped or crawled – at least one, unseen in the bloody grass, called out in a voice high and thin with fear. Drust did not need the language to know a plea not to be left behind.
His comrade heard it, turned and darted back – Drust heard Quintus yell out admiringly at this act of Roman courage, but Drust wanted to do something, a gesture to stop the man in his tracks, because one man moving forward at speed could drag another and another until the bastards had turned and then the Brothers were all dead.
He brought up the sword and swept it down, roaring ‘Roma Invicta!’ and meaning to point it at the running man, save that it was greased with the redhead’s blood and flew out of his hand, while he stood and gaped, appalled at the loss.
It went out and away like an arrow, spun once and smacked the running warrior in the face, hilt first, with a sound like a wet clot thrown at a wall. The man went backwards as if hauled off his feet – Drust darted up to him, afraid he might get up and run off with the gladius.
He got to the man as he struggled up half blinded and spurting blood from a ruined nose. Drust went for the sword, slipped and fell in bloody mulch, got it in his hand and swung from where he lay. It cracked the warrior’s naked knee and he howled and fell over again while Drust gasped and slavered for air, almost done.
He half rose, slipped and fell on the crawling, mewling warrior as he struck out again, aiming for his head and missing by most of the length of it. The point went in the back of the man’s neck while Drust’s vision circled and shrank to pinholes of murky twilight. He lay face down on top of the man he had killed, sucking the last gasps of the warrior’s breath, jerking as the man kicked and flailed to final stillness.
They dragged Drust off the body, turned his face to the sky and slapped it sharply once or twice until sense came back. He found he was looking at Quintus, who beamed.
‘Back, are you? Well, that’s a good thing – that was as flashy a move as any I have seen practised. I would not use it in the harena, mind – no one will believe it isn’t faked.’
‘You couldn’t do it twice,’ Dog echoed flatly. ‘Is this your new harena name – the Butcher?’
‘Ho,’ Kag said scornfully. ‘This from a man who set a prisoner on fire?’
‘Enemy?’ Drust managed and Kag helped haul him up to weave on legs that were not his own, it seemed.
‘Out there still, making demands.’
‘Well,’ said Quintus thoughtfully, ‘this Antyllus lad is happy to throw just enough men at us to make us think and let him know what we can do.’
* * *
‘Throw down your weapons and come out,’ the standard-bearer bellowed. ‘You cannot stand against us.’
‘I heard this only an hour since,’ Kag said, just loud enough for those around him to hear and they laughed even louder, which did not please the shouter. He was a scowler now that his face mask was up and his accent, Sow was sure, put him somewhere in Gaul.
‘There are a lot like him,’ Culleo pointed out. ‘They have bows too.’
‘We have a bow,’ Quintus replied, but even as he spoke he was looking round. ‘Where is Manius?’
‘Far away,’ Dog answered, bitter as lye. Drust hoped that the mavro was close but well hidden – or had found the Colour again, whatever it was. He looked round at their fortress, a half fallen tower of rotten stones splintered with ivy and saplings. Bad place to fight, he thought – but at least these are the ones who hold Praeclarum; he searched, hoping to find she was with them.
‘Come out. The general has promised no harm to you if you do. We have your warrior woman…’
‘There are more plots among the trees here than in the palaces of the Palatine,’ Dog observed moodily. ‘What do these ones truly want?’
The standard-bearer waved one hand and Drust’s heart kicked up into his mouth as a huddle of men moved forward, shields up and spears ready. In their midst, walking unsteadily, was Praeclarum; Ugo roared and banged one dolabra on his own helmet, chewing the air in a frothing fury. The standard-bearer had his helmet off, the better to be heard, and showed that he was too fair for heat; his face was a bag of blood with blue eyes. He waved one hand at the men surrounding Praeclarum, his eyes fixed on Drust.
‘Your wife,’ he said. ‘If you and your men do not throw down your weapons, the general will have her ride the sapling. This is a method we learned from these woodlice.’
Drust did not know what it meant, but was certain it wasn’t a good thing – Sow told him in a few terse words that it involved tying her between two young, bent-over trees and then cutting the ties so that they sprang apart in opposite directions.
‘Fortuna’s tits,’ Kag growled. ‘That’s barbarian for you.’
‘Did you miss the crucifixions in the harena?’ Quintus demanded and Kag fell silent. Drust looked from one to the other and then dropped his sword and shield at his feet. The others said nothing but did the same – only Culleo hesitated, licking his lips until Dog’s stare made him curse and throw down his sword.
‘Now we are fucked,’ Dog spat bitterly, looking at Drust.
‘Fortuna favours us,’ Kag replied firmly, and Quintus grinned and shook his head.
‘Fama is the goddess in this. Let’s see if her hand holds true over us.’
‘She is not a goddess,’ Kisa muttered, outraged. ‘She is a literary conceit, no more. Ovid made her.’
Quintus looked at the men coming up, spears ready, to collect the discarded weapons, while the standard-bearer swaggered forward, his grin greasy on his sweat-smeared face.
‘Now you have insulted her,’ Quintus said wearily to Kisa, ‘and that is why your name will never be known even to the wind.’
Drust tried to move towards Praeclarum but found men with spears blocking his way. Antyllus stepped up, grinning and wagging a finger.
‘Not yet, gladiator. Once we have spoken and made agreement, but not before.’
Drust didn’t like the little tick, but he held all the sharp edges and the lives of his Brothers and, above all, the life of Praeclarum, so he merely nodded.
‘Let’s get to it then.’
Antyllus scowled, not liking this disregard and having planned to throw more fear into them. Instead, he was forced to bawl out for his men to move off, and contented himself with getting the standard-bearer to shove Drust a few staggering steps.
When he had recovered, Drust found Kag’s sweaty face at his ear with a brief, urgent whisper.
‘Manius is missing.’
They moved off through the trees and Drust tried to keep the group surrounding Praeclarum in sight – tried to keep her in sight. Everything else disappeared to the edge of his vision, so that when they ground to a panting stop, he knew only that Praeclarum was hurt.
‘Let me see her,’ he called out to the standard-bearer, who simply looked back and shook his head.
‘He is worse with his bloody mask off,’ Kisa whispered, wiping sweat from his face. Kag squatted and looked at the ground to hide his moving lips.
‘These are not the ones we fought in that grove with the draco standard,’ he said. ‘Those are the barbarians of the Dark. Erco sent us to them, which means he was in the pay of this Antyllus.’
‘Which means this Antyllus knew everything about us and our mission the minute we stepped fr
om the gates,’ Quintus said, and Ugo, fiddling awkwardly with little twigs and his belt, nodded. He was missing the heft of his two weapons and it made him fretted.
All Drust’s attention was on the knot of men with Praeclarum in the centre. Drust finally tore his eyes from her as she sat, head bent and breathing hard. The men were small – cavalrymen usually were, because the horses were small – with large shields, all of them marked exactly the same, though scarred and in need of new paint. Most had kept to clean chins and short hair, Army-style, but some had beards and had started braiding them. They still had large spears and small, broad-bladed throwing ones, ringed coats and the longswords of cavalry; these were not the beast men they had fought at the altar.
If he’d had any more thoughts on it, they were driven out of Drust by Praeclarum tilting sideways like a half-emptied bag of grain. He sprang up and took two steps, only to be met by one of the soldiers using his spear like a door. Drust never broke stride, simply shifted into fighting stance, dipped a shoulder and heaved; the man went backwards and there was a sudden boiling of movement and shouting.
Ugo hauled Drust to a halt while men formed a barrier of spears around all the Brothers; Antyllus came up, scowling and sweating, helmet in the crook of his arm.
‘Do not do that again. I need you alive, but there will be pain if you persist.’
‘She’s sick,’ Drust said, struggling in Ugo’s grip.
Antyllus looked across and then uneasily back at Drust. ‘She will be attended to when we reach our destination.’
‘I can attend her,’ Kisa said suddenly and slapped his chest. ‘Medicus. One of your own is injured – I can look at him too.’
Antyllus glanced over to where the injured soldier sat, holding his arm. Then he nodded. Kisa smiled briefly at Drust and went across.
‘Manius is following us,’ Dog whispered in Drust’s ear, then glanced to where Kisa squatted with the wounded warrior. ‘I hope our Jew doesn’t kill anyone – he is no more a medicus than I can fart coins.’
‘He has magic,’ Kag said, and not all of his tone was ironic.
Beasts From the Dark Page 8
