Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  Not long after, a sharp order started everyone moving. Kisa loped back to them and Drust seized him by both arms.

  ‘Well?’

  Kisa winced at the pressure and Drust let go. ‘She was beaten – badly. She was grabbed by six of them and wounded two before they overpowered her. One bled out and died as they escaped – he was the one we tracked – and the one I bound up got his thigh slashed open. The remainder were angry at that. They knew that she had to be brought alive, but unharmed was not specified. So they beat her.’

  Drust’s eyes told everyone more than any words. Ugo laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘There will be a reckoning there,’ he promised.

  ‘What do they want – did you learn that?’ Kag demanded and Drust shook the storms from his head guiltily. I should be asking that, he thought dully.

  ‘Only that Antyllus ordered it and is not happy that they beat her – I do not think those who did it will remain unpunished,’ Kisa replied and paused. ‘But you should be careful here. These men have reasons for turning their back on the Rome they know, and the only way back for them is if Rome is remade in the image of their general.’

  Culleo slithered in to join them. He was licking his lips and looked as if he had been drenched in a rainstorm; his hands shook.

  ‘The soldiers are arguing. Some want to head a little south and west, to go around what lies ahead. Others are scathing them and say they should go straight through. All of them are afraid.’

  ‘Straight through what?’ Kag demanded, and Ugo threw up his empty, fretting hands.

  ‘You had to ask.’

  Culleo licked his lips again. ‘The worst part of the Dark.’

  * * *

  There was no sudden transition from the light to the shadows, but warriors who had been walking stolidly, shields on backs, spears on shoulders, suddenly started to hunch themselves and then crouch.

  The light slowly filtered away from dapple to splintered shafts through a blue-green dim; Drust made the mistake of looking up and grew dizzy with it, panicked at the sudden idea that they were underwater, drowning.

  The ground between the great trunks of crushing trees was a carpet of wriggling ivy and mulch, roots that caught the foot if you tried to walk normally, so everyone had to step carefully and deliberately. The trees were shrouded in moss, hanging like witch hair; mighty oaks wore it like a barbarian king does furs, Drust thought. This was not a good place.

  When the distant, eldritch clacking started, echoing among the shadows, everyone grew more tense still, even Ugo, who wanted a weapon in his hand and kept clenching round the hilt that wasn’t there.

  ‘Auerhahn,’ he said to them. ‘A cock bird, no more. Mating call. Heard it before.’

  It soothed only a little because no one knew what an auerhahn was, while it seemed there were a great many mating cocks in the Dark, and Kag said as much.

  ‘That’s because you and Romans like you have stripped these woods of creatures that eat them – wolves and bears,’ Culleo responded sullenly. ‘There is scarce any of those animals left in these woods, thanks to you – the foxes are not enough.’

  ‘Even so,’ Ugo answered, frowning, ‘there are a lot of auerhahn out there.’

  They were surrounded by a hundred soldiers of the Army, but the Brothers did not feel safe all the way through that wood, and when finally the light grew to dapple and the bird calls to flutes and chirps, they all found themselves wiping sweat and taking great relieved gulps of air.

  ‘I do not care for the Dark,’ Quintus growled as the other warriors grinned and made noises like men who had never doubted their own courage or that they would get through without incident. The standard-bearer strutted – like one of the clacking birds, Kag offered, and that made for laughter.

  The trees thinned to saplings and scrub, then spilled into swathes of long-overgrown pasture land with a few grazing cows and sheep. Drust’s eyes leaped ahead like running deer, almost dizzied at being free of the narrow sightline of trees.

  It also let everyone see the smoke and the distant buildings and the powerful stockade around it. At one end was a square of stone walls, partially repaired with timber and earth, surrounding a single square tower the height of six or seven men.

  ‘That’s a Roman fort, for sure,’ Dog hissed. ‘Hard to get in or out.’

  ‘Give us time,’ Quintus answered, grinning.

  ‘You have no time,’ Culleo spat back. ‘This is the end, thanks to that woman.’

  Dog had no answer to it, but Drust merely shrugged. ‘Have you never been in love?’ he asked and Culleo considered it, ferreting in his beard for what itched him.

  ‘Was married once, but she left me for a farrier.’

  ‘Love is for fools. It’s a surging of blood in the loins.’

  Dog was looking ahead, but everyone knew he was speaking to Drust. ‘There is little mystery and less magic in it,’ he added. Then he turned and looked Drust in the face, using his own, like he always did, as a club.

  ‘She is now a slave, like all of us. We will be worked like oxen until we die and she will be raped. She may even find she likes it in preference to being worked like an ox. That’s what being a slave does to you – makes you grateful for shit you would rave at as a free man. I remember it well. I thought never to be returned to that state.’

  Drust’s face drained and everyone saw it. Ugo pinioned him in both arms and Kag lunged forward to put himself between them, glaring at Dog. Before he could speak – and to everyone’s astonishment – Kisa stuck his own face in Dog’s eyeline, red and angry, his words spitting out like knives.

  ‘You whoreson,’ he hissed. ‘She saved your life at least once – I saw it happen. You kissed her on both cheeks on the day she and Drust were wed, and would defend her in a fight. Yet here you are, snarling out this old putrescence when you know it to be falsehood, when you know you love her as much as anyone here, save Drust.’

  Dog opened and closed his mouth with astonishment.

  ‘Without the rest of us, you are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable as all of us are on our own. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane, a foul and disgusting excrescence with a self-inflicted horror of a face, who can set a man on fire and joke about it. Monkeys look down on you. Dogs piss on your shoes. Even sheep won’t have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, a fool, an ignoramus, Dog; and the sooner you realise it, the better for everyone, including yourself.’

  ‘Ho,’ said Kag admiringly and clapped his hands like a lawyer at a trial. Dog stared, fixed and silent, while Kisa, half ashamed, turned away.

  ‘Missus,’ Quintus said, looking at Dog warningly, and whether he would have upheld that call for a let-off or not was taken from him by men with spears shoving them into moving.

  They came up through small clumps of cattle that Drust was sure were stolen beasts, for he realised that no one lived here and had not done so for a long time. There were patrols, cautious as foxes, horn calls to announce the arrival of Antyllus, but the stockade village was a crumble of ancient buildings, some of them ominous with old char. Everyone seemed watchful, on edge.

  ‘Rome,’ Kag said laconically, while the only ones not armed watched them come up. They were slaves, locals taken in raids – they could be home in a day, perhaps two if they ran, Drust thought. Ugo put him right on that.

  ‘They are from the other side of that forest,’ he said. ‘If they flee north, they will just become slaves of another tribe. If they try to get home they must go through the Dark. They are not yet desperate enough for freedom.’

  The older slaves stared with that silent tolerance for misery that caused people who noticed them at all to drop their heads or look away. The younger ones looked with naked contempt, risking the lash.

  Drust and the others were marched to a large round hut whose daub walls let in light and whose roof looked like a whore fresh-kicked out of bed. It had the must of old, rank straw and death.

  Praeclarum, Drust saw, w
as taken up to the distant arched entrance of the stone fort – it had a wooden gate and, he was sure, a spiked drop gate as well. They would put her in the tower, at the top, he thought. That’s what I would do.

  ‘She will not give in to despair,’ Kag said, coming to squat next to him. ‘Neither should you.’

  ‘Can you see her again?’ Drust asked Kisa, and the Jew shook his head sadly.

  ‘That door is closed. They have their own medicus here, Frontinus by name. It is clear this Antyllus will feed your desire to see and talk to her, yet never fulfil it.’

  And so get me to do anything he asks, Drust finished for him. He nodded admittance of it.

  They’d hardly become used to the splintered dim before men arrived to huckle them out and down the rutted road to the largest building, the one which had once been the meeting house, the longhouse. It was solid with timbers, but the roof was thatch and sprouting spikes like a harridan’s bad wig.

  Inside, even in the bright of day, you needed torches, which was why they found Antyllus outside, sitting in a chair and lathered while a man shaved him. They stood while his cheeks were razored and wiped clean of excess soap.

  ‘This is Lentulus,’ he said, nodding to the man with the razor. ‘He does hair too – when we are done here, he will attend to you. You look like barbarians – but I suppose that was the point when you were sent into the forest to find and kill me.’

  ‘To find you,’ Drust corrected. He felt like a slave again, standing with his hands behind his back facing the master of his destiny. He did not like the feeling.

  ‘The castra has no secrets,’ Antyllus said, taking a clean cloth to his chin. He wore a simple tunic with a broad purple stripe on it and the blood-red boots of a senator; the message was not lost. ‘I knew of your mission almost as soon as you and the rest moved north out of the gates. Erco was told to lead you to the lair of the beast-masks and finish you off.’

  Drust said nothing, but Dog grunted like a boar sensing a rival. Antyllus felt his chin critically, then nodded his satisfaction to Lentulus; it puzzled Drust, because there was a strange deference in it.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘you showed some resilience, which made me think on matters again. I thought it unlikely you would fall in with my plans without some incentive – which is why your woman is now in my tower.’

  He pulled a pouch out from under his tunic belt and Drust’s breath caught in his throat; he knew it well.

  ‘I have her smile,’ he said and dangled the pouch which held Praeclarum’s pearled teeth. ‘If you want it and her returned, you must do something for me. The river crossing you have sought for so long is a day away to the south. The river shallows there and the bridge is still up, too small for cart or beast, which is why it will be unused. All the savages will try to find a way to bring back the livestock they have stolen, and only when they realise that cannot be done will they turn them loose, drop the carts and pack for walking. You must use that bridge to travel to the castra, to Marcus Peperna Vento, and tell him how I am persuaded to return to the fold, with all my men and the standard of the Ala Flavia.’

  ‘Jupiter’s hairy balls,’ Kag spat. ‘Leave us alone, can’t you? Just walk up to the gate and announce it. Then the pair of you can wag your cocks at one another.’

  Antyllus gave a nod and there was a slight movement behind Kag, who reacted too late; the spear butt caught him on the back of the calf and flung him forward, hopping and cursing.

  ‘You will do as I say. I have four hundred men, hardened and trained as light infantry, and Marcus Peperna Vento should want to grab them with both hands – the lands all around him are swarming with raiding enemy. If he vacillates, you will know he means for my death, not my redemption. In which case, find a way to open the gates. Thereafter what happens is down to me and you need have nothing more to do with it. You will have your woman, her teeth, and whatever carts and beasts are left to you – I suspect not many since Peperna has heard that you are dead.’

  ‘Fortuna fuck me sideways,’ Quintus muttered. ‘We did as asked. Well done is ill paid.’

  ‘The price of fame,’ Antyllus answered levelly, uncoiling from the chair. ‘If you would go into the Dark of the north for strange beasts, I am thinking you will enter Hades for a woman who is one of you, even one with no teeth.’

  He stopped and his smile grew wider. ‘I do not ask for Hades. Just the gates of the castra.’

  He stopped, looking uneasy, and his hand strayed to his forehead before dropping. ‘If you listen,’ he said wearily, ‘you will hear the dice rattle on the table. Once they have ceased to bounce we will know.’

  No one spoke. There were answers all of them wanted to give, but none that could be said. Antyllus nodded, satisfied.

  ‘Tonight there is a small dinner, myself and my officers. You will attend. Try and be… tidier.’

  He made to move off, then paused and turned to them.

  ‘One of you is missing,’ he added. ‘The mavro, the Libyan. If you have any way of getting him to join you, I strongly advise it. This is not a place to be skulking alone – Cernunnos will get him, as sure as death.’

  Chapter Six

  A small dinner for officers. Well, the longhouse was no triclinium, even if everyone was arranged around three sides of a long table. Nor would you find larks’ tongues, sterile sows’ wombs and milk-fed snails – here was mutton from four-horned sheep, cheese and wrinkled winter apples, wild boar and a huge cauldron full of boiling beef; it was the table a barbarian chieftain would keep, arranged in Roman style.

  There was ale by the bucket, which only added to the strangeness – but there was a lot of decent red wine, cheering, shouts, and a desperate kind of libation to the gods of Rome, as if to caulk the cracks in something unnatural. If there were those who thought it wasn’t fitting for this sort of native display to have stamped across a decent Roman dinner, they were not eating here, Drust thought.

  Antyllus lay on a decent divan, as did the senior officers, with the standard-bearer, Drust now knew was called Marcellus, on one side and, peculiarly, Lentulus on the other. Even Kisa did not know whether Lentulus was simply a barber, or even a slave – but it was clear he had the influence of a favourite.

  ‘They do not care for us at all, Drust,’ Dog said out of the corner of his mouth, though he didn’t need to be low-spoken; there was noise enough to drown out a shout. ‘We should have let the barber shave one of us at least, it appears.’

  Drust had no answer to what was patently right – Lentulus had come, obedient to his general’s wishes, and been told to sod off, so had to return and admit failure. Nothing came of it, which further annoyed the man, who clearly believed his complaint deserved action.

  Drust and the others ate sparingly and drank less, not knowing what Fortuna might suddenly spring on them. They watched Antyllus lolling on his divan, resplendent in white and senatorial purple and looking down his nose at those he considered lesser folk. Which was everyone.

  He was open-handed and smiling like a boiled cod at those he had invited, his own Chosen, just like some barbarian chieftain sitting in a High Seat, with Lentulus and Marcellus like hounds at his feet. It was clear to Drust that the pair were a lounging slouch of no good who shared only scowls and, he was sure, a mutual fear of Antyllus.

  Drust watched Antyllus and felt like a sacrificial horse, the instant he feels the blade – but the anger at what had been done to Praeclarum burned that away. It flared and consumed everything. Those next to him seemed to feel some of the uncomfortable heat of it; Dog shifted sideways on the bench a little and took a long swallow from his bowl. Then another.

  Kag held his place but he bent to Drust’s ear. ‘Be wary. This is still a Roman dinner and for a general too, but these men of his are strung on tight wires. They are more slaves than we were.’

  Then Antyllus ordered in the dinos, which Drust knew was a big Greek cup for holding wine – but what came in was carried by two men. It was heavy and bronze, worked wi
th scrolls and bunches of grapes, all the trappings. But men came and filled it with wheat beer, which formed a scum like sea foam. They learned later that it had been found here and had clearly been part of some German warlord’s household, long abandoned.

  ‘To the Army,’ Antyllus called, standing up and toasting with his cup. Everyone did the same, including Drust and the others, because they thought it best. When the racket died a little, Lentulus sneered across at them.

  ‘Are they Army, then?’

  ‘They are,’ Antyllus confirmed.

  ‘What army?’ someone shouted, and that burst the rafters until Antyllus held his hands up for silence and cocked his head at Drust.

  ‘Well – tell them what you do in the Legions,’ he said, wryly mocking. He wanted them to admit they had been sent to kill him, to make his officers see how long and gripping his reach was. He wanted to be imperious and unafraid; Drust was not about to be his mammet.

  ‘I can tell you what we don’t do,’ he replied levelly. ‘We don’t salute, we don’t work and we don’t march.’

  ‘We fight,’ Dog added.

  ‘I had heard that,’ Lentulus said. ‘Gladiators, I had heard. Who look like slave scum still and refuse to let me alter their condition.’

  ‘Hard to explain to the castra how we came to be neatly barbered,’ Drust announced, and Antyllus did not want discussion on them returning to the castra, on what he wanted them to do, so he stopped it. Lentulus, however, was vicious with drink and looking for an excuse to use it.

  ‘Well, gladiators still, though I had heard you were poor at best and are now well past that. Just the thing for an entertainment at a Roman dinner.’

  ‘Not this dinner,’ Antyllus said firmly and the fire and steel edge in the voice cut through Lentulus’s fog. Marcellus smiled.

  ‘I thought to see them do what they claim to do best,’ Lentulus persisted sullenly. ‘Fight.’

  ‘Something strange to you, so I don’t doubt it,’ Kag said loudly. ‘Whose callouses come from gripping a pole – oh, wait. That’s the other pederast.’