They had edge and point but no bow. No one mentioned the missing Manius or where he might be, but Drust did not think the man was dead. He was sure he would know and the gods would not allow him to pass lightly.
‘I can use a knife,’ Kisa offered and Sow grunted in the dark; it was now a blackness where you could not see anyone beyond touching range unless they had a grin like Quintus.
‘You can only use that close up,’ Sow pointed out. ‘You don’t want to be close up to anything in this place. When it gets light I will cut you a staff. You can hit with a stick can’t you?’
Drust almost heard Kisa hackling up then. It might not be his preferred place, he said, and he might not know the ways of the forest, or how to move in it, or whether he looked at ouzel or blackbird. But he knew a tit when he saw one.
It made everyone laugh, but it was all too loud and Drust hissed urgently at them to leave off. Kag’s voice, low and soft, drifted from a little way away.
‘Stick with me, little Jew, and do as I say and we should be fine.’
He’d managed a small laugh, adding, ‘It’s a ring ouzel, not a blackbird.’
‘Arse,’ Dog growled.
‘It’s a merle,’ Ugo said.
They stayed crouched and silent and sweating all through the night, which fretted them with rustles and squeaks, owl calls, and the howls of what might have been wolves. In the morning, they worked the stiffness out, pissed in brief spurts; Sow cut Kisa a stout branch, the noise of the work making everyone wince. They moved on, swinging their heads from side to side like blinded beasts. Peculiarly, Ugo took the front position.
‘I was barely walking when my da’ took me on the hunt,’ he said as they walked, looking everywhere but at the others just behind him, ‘and he taught me some of it. I have forgot a lot, but some of it sticks. We used piss to hunt. Hinds’ is best, though not when they’re carrying, o’ course – but there’s better eating in a doe. Stags’ is easier to get – all you need is hind piss if you want to take one in the rut, but you needs must be good and hungered, for it is poor eating – stringy and tough. Too full of black phlegm humours, thin because it forgets to eat. You can use stag piss at any time – even if he has no interest in a hind, a stag will come at the smell of a strange male in his lands, just to find out…’
He stopped, listening; those nearest saw his hands clench and unclench on the shaft of each dolabra. They stood in wary half-crouch; Ugo went on.
‘All that’s bow and stable,’ he said, speaking soft and low and almost to himself. ‘The game driven or lured to where you stand – noble-born would scorn it in favour of thrashing about with horses and dogs, blowing horns. They weren’t hunting for to survive, mind, just for sport.’
He knelt briefly, peered, rose up and prowled on.
‘Best way,’ he said, ‘is use a stick, scuff the leaves off of an area about the size of a man’s head. Drop some fewmet and add some piss – you get it everywhere if you look, they marks boundaries with it. Then you wait. A stag will come, thinking it is a scrape from a rival. Sometimes a hind, though the scent of a stag usually means nothing to them.’
‘You can track boar too, though that is harder,’ he went on softly. ‘Look for scraped-up mast as a starting point. That’s where they have snouted for food. They might even come back, so waiting is best. You can never move quiet enough to fool a woodland creature – and smell is your enemy. Never believe the wind is right. Never.’
He stopped again, glanced around, then up at the sky, judging the wind by the movement of the branches and leaves. They had all scorned Ugo’s claims of knowing the forests, because he had been a mere boy when plucked up as a slave. No one scorned now, for he was something dark and feral.
It started to rain, brief and savage and only touching them after it had stopped, the memory of it sifting through the canopy to the deep green-blue where they moved.
‘Birch,’ Ugo said, nodding to the surrounding trees. They were wet, the colour of mottled cream. ‘Lady of the Woods, that’s birch. You make brooms from birch, for they sweep out evil with the dust.’
He went on like that for a little while, muttering soft as if he prayed – talking past his fear, Drust saw. They slunk past sprouting stands of hazel – ‘the nuts has wisdom in them and if you make a seeking-rod from the wood, you can find lost things.’
Oak was the gate into the secret heart-places of the woods, they learned, and when they came on one spreading a canopy over a clearing, Ugo stopped and took a breath; it was now so dark they saw him only as a shadow and brief gleams of sheened sweat.
‘There will be willow soon,’ he said. ‘Which means grief – you knows what willow looks like?’
They all nodded and Ugo worked spit into his mouth and swallowed it; his throat is dry, Drust realised. It made his own shrivel.
‘The oak is the gate,’ he went on. ‘The willow is the guardian. After will come elm, which grows from stakes put in corpses. Gallows trees and coffins is made from elm. This is how you make a holy place, a sacred place. We will find the Blood Tree soon.’
‘We are moving towards one of their sacred places?’ demanded Kisa fearfully.
‘That’s what the giant of the Germanies has said,’ Quintus replied. ‘I shall never question him again on the ways of the Dark, except perhaps to ask how the fuck we got to this part of it.’
‘Fortuna guides our steps, the fickle bitch,’ Kag added in low, bitter tones; Dog spat.
‘Fortuna is nowhere near here, nor any other god of Rome,’ Ugo said. ‘This is the land of Cernunnos, stag-headed god of the Gauls and Germans. We are here because you followed me and I followed the… pull. I tell you this because I will not say another word, nor make a sound from now on, and neither will you.’
They moved on, with the whistle and call of birds as incongruous as a helmet on a donkey. As if they were not being hunted by monsters…
The woods unnerved Drust more and more; they seemed braided, knotted, twisted as if tortured and silently screaming. Trunks split and ran horizontally, offshoots like snakes. The rain sifted down on mulch while unseen needle beaks stitched songs into the fractured sky; an eyelash in a sliver of granite sky through the canopy became a swooping fret-winged crow.
Drust saw watching eyes everywhere. They came past willow, almost bare as claws and clumped with a hanging of leaves like patched hair, seeming to bow, polite mourners, as they passed. There was a sighing, like regret.
Then Ugo stopped and stood still. Drust felt the blood surge and pound in him; he watched as Ugo pointed and every heart lurched at the sight, the shift of shadows, eldritch in the weak light splintering through the foliage.
A fox face, tall even for one raised up to stand on two legs. Tall as a man, peering through hawthorn with the dark slender of its shadowed body barely visible. To the left was a bear; beyond that some other animal Drust could not identify.
Then they came in a silent rush, shadows like splinters of the dark detaching and so fast that Drust could only sweep the gladius across his front to divert the cut; there was a deep toll of doom as it hit another blade and the push of it spun Drust sideways. He kept it going, turned full circle as he stepped past one side of the plunging attacker and used his shield like a swinging door to slam him in the back so he shot forward into a trunk face first.
There was another coming at him and he slashed him on a wildly upthrown arm, heard bone break and a howling yelp. Not unworldly beasts then – they could be hurt. If they could be hurt they could be killed. Drust started to move on… then recoiled as the same man came at him.
The warrior stumbled forwards, snarled from a withered wolf’s face with a man’s eyes. He should be writhing in pain, blind with it. Or dead. He should have had one shattered arm flopping uselessly, yet he had a pair of axes in his fists and smelled rank, like mouse piss.
Drust avoided a swinging axe slash from the broken arm, but there was no grip in the hand and the axe sailed away into the shadows; the man never see
med to notice it, just kept swinging as if he still had it in his fist. Drust backed away, mouth dry and the sweat on him like a cold sluice – then he felt anger burn in him. He was Drust, a fighting man of the amphitheatre, not some spear-waver from an arse-end kingdom, made witless by a man smelling of rodent piss.
He slammed the shield like a fist into the shape, heard it grunt and saw it fall, then followed it up, banging and scoring ruts in the mulch as the man rolled away. He missed with two, hit him with two and stopped, panting with the effort and covered in sluices of blood; the man was pulped to the shoulders and, just as Drust saw he was still moving, another figure lunged from behind.
The shield was buckled from his frenzy and he was already too late to use it and knew it – but he whirled and snarled the sword up in a last desperate block. The arc of a dolabra passed over him like a rolling wheel and thundered into the black figure Drust had missed entirely. The one he had sent flying into the tree, he thought, dully. The one who should have been out of the fight or dead.
Ugo lumbered after the weapon, gave a final chop to the figure, then stuck out a hand to help Drust up. He was scowling.
‘They die hard, these beast-masks. Fuck the foul mothers that made them.’
They came flitting out of the blue dark, scuffing through the mulch and witch hair moss, leaping and growling and howling like the animals their masks made them. They were terrifying, eldritch… But the Brothers knew this game, had seen all the ways of it in the harena, from the elaborate face-mask secutor helmets to the full lion-head Persian ‘barbarians’.
It had probably worked well for these men before – a lot of howling beasts from the Dark would have made even hardened legionaries shriek like girls and lose their innards – but Drust watched a fox-pelt go down under a flurry of vicious gladius stabs from Dog, saw a stag-face stagger and fall in front of Kag and Quintus, as if dragged down by wolves. Sow’s sword broke the shins of a running figure but lodged in the bone of it; he grabbed up the man’s fallen spear and rammed it into the belly of another so that he jerked on the end like a gaffed salmon.
Kisa, to Drust’s astonishment, leaped on the back of a wolf-masked figure, one of the four Ugo was slashing and hacking at; he stabbed a little knife in the man’s eye and fell with him – they rolled into the flurry of leaves and mulch and blood and struggling, roaring madness. Vanished from sight.
Drust knew what to do. He did not care for it, but he knew, twirled the gladius as if it was part of his arm and then lunged forward, banged a man off his feet with the remains of his shield, stabbed another away and headed straight for a knot of them, the ones round the black oak – the Blood Tree.
The air went like a spoon in gruel, thick and slow. An axe flashed and he blocked it, the jar through the shield almost ripping it from his grip; splinters flew. Someone hurled forward, snarling high and yowling like a cat, his fingers like claws on the edge of the shield and his weight dragging it down and Drust with it. He wrenched most of it free and booted the man hard when he fell, missed him with a sword swing. Ploughed on. Got smacked in the side of his head by something hard or sharp or both; white light blew sense away and he stumbled and staggered through it until focus came back.
Another axe flashed and he hit the wrist that held it with the shield boss, about all that was left to him, stabbed into the withered wolf-face and tore the weapon free as the man fell away, trailing blood.
He saw Praeclarum. Saw her, clear as if on a summer’s day against the blue of a clear sky, standing high on a stone tower. She smiled like a mother watching her child do something clever – then reached out and took him, down and down into a harsh embrace. He felt it, grinned a bloody smile at the slow – so slow – crowd in front of him. The side of his head hurt. Felt like ice.
‘Come,’ he said to them and did not wait, moved forward as if through a hayfield, the battered remains of a broken shield in one hand, the gladius in the other, circling like a sickle of light and chaff flying away from it. He cut, struck and spun, moved as a maiden does at a dance, and the blades whicked past him like horseflies while those that held them fell away.
He laughed for the joy of it. Then the great stag loomed up and he blocked his blow, scorning it, though the last of the shield was sheared and left him with a fistful of metal boss and ragged splinters. The great stag bellowed, the horns of it wide and terrible, the axe seeming to make the air scream as it hissed around.
Drust gave him no chance and fell on him like the wrath of an avalanche, slamming him with the last remains of the shield; if the gods had been kinder, a jagged stick of it should have gone in his eye, but his haired face with its dark pits of eyes jerked to one side and it went in his cheek. It drove him down to the ground and Drust with him. Then he drew back the gladius and pegged him to the ground like a curing hide.
Men roared, the sound like the rush of an approaching wind. They surged away from him then, backed away until he was in a half-circle, the hem of which heaved and struggled with other fights – but they were distant matters to Drust who only saw the circle of horned stag-men. The one at his feet shrieked and writhed, but he was fastened by the face; men moved to get to him and Drust saw them.
There was one, larger than the rest, who closed swiftly, head lowered as if about to ram Drust with the spread of strange horns. He was fast and hard and had a great club, like Hercules – but Drust was woven war and red death and to touch him was doom.
That lasted until the stag-man smacked him so hard Drust’s helmet strap broke and it flew off. So hard, his head almost turned completely around and he found himself in the bloody mud of the forest floor, mouth full of old leaf, grunting and mewling. He rolled, because it had been practised and practised; the club slammed a spray of blood and twigs into his face, just where he had been.
The stag-man was bellowing in a rut of rage. Drust rolled and he kept slamming, kept missing, cursing with frustration. Drust had lost the gladius, threw the metal boss of the shield and it smacked his attacker, though it was as if he threw a pine cone at a great oak.
Then the horned man was closing and Drust had nothing in his fists but clenched mud and blood and knew he was doomed.
The arrow came out of nowhere, struck the man hard; Drust saw him gasp with the power of it, reeling – but not falling. A second punched between the horns and blew brains out of the back of his head. He barely yelped, but went down on one knee.
Then, as Drust watched in sick fascination and terror, the stag-man rose up, rose right up over him and he knew what the club would do. The stag-man roared out and rushed forward the last few steps – or so his ruined mind believed. He went sideways like a crab, hit a tree and fell, mumbling and burbling.
There was a series of wails and a horn blast; in another few seconds the Brothers were panting and slashing at shadows.
Ugo bawled challenge like a bull. Quintus and Kag stood, slathered in bloody sweat and gasping, wild-eyed, and still trying to work out how badly they were injured. Kisa puked while Dog uncoupled himself from his fighting crouch and grinned his bloody death grin at a shadow.
‘Timely,’ he said. ‘Good shot too.’
Manius slid from the Dark, unnocking an arrow. He looked round at everyone from the dark pits where his eyes were.
‘I found the Colour of this place,’ he said. ‘I have been tracking them and you. I know where the tower is from here. I am here. I am far away.’
No one spoke, just concentrated on breathing and examining one another for wounds. Drust stared at the dead, the monstrous army of Cernunnos; the stink of mouse piss was strong.
‘They bled only a little,’ Kag said, and Kisa, wiping his mouth and spitting, looked up and then around in a dazed sweep of eyes.
‘Some foul brew. I have heard of this – they can feel no pain, do not bleed, and if you kill them you also have to push them over before you can say they are dead.’
Drust blinked, swallowed the dry rasp in his throat and dashed sweat from his eyes, despite th
e sudden chill; a wind washed through the black-shadowed glade. He turned to Manius, who was crouched like a hound.
‘My thanks,’ he said. ‘That was a good shot – where have you been?’
Manius shrugged. ‘Far away.’
Dog laughed and looked at Drust pointedly; he might just as well have put a finger to the side of his head and made little circles.
‘Monsters…’ Kisa managed, looking round. Dog laughed and toed the stag-man over as far as Manius’s arrow would allow. Ugo muttered some prayer or spell.
Even in the dim, this Cernunnos was revealed as old, his matted grey-white hair worked into antlers with twigs, his beard full of woven-in leaves, more twigs, little bones, coloured ribbons. His skin felt cold and normal as any fresh-killed man would. Yet he had fought like a man a decade younger, using only a knotted club; Drust’s head still throbbed.
‘They died hard,’ Kag reminded them. ‘Is anyone hurt badly here?’
They had slashes and cuts and bruising, some that needed needle and gut. Dog had the worst of it, a slash across his midriff that gaped like a lipless mouth. Kisa did his best with needle and poor thread, apologising the while. Dog simply grunted. ‘An inch deeper and you would not need to bother.’
Ugo clapped Kisa on the shoulder and declared him winner of the Games. ‘That knife in the eye trick,’ he said and shook his head admiringly. Kisa looked sicker than ever.
‘We should lay the stag-horns out on their altar,’ Ugo added. ‘In honour of the gods here.’
‘Fuck their gods,’ Dog spat back. ‘Let the birds and animals have him then. Fitting, for these forests beasts to return to the Dark.’
‘Besides,’ Sow pointed out wearily, ‘you killed them in droves, for all their brews and forest strength.’
It was true enough. They had been no warriors, just priests, potioned with secret brew and desperation. Protecting their own, as Sow said.
Kag looked scathe at him. Shrugged.
‘The world is like that, isn’t it? Two peasants fight each other over some patch of land that gets ridden and ravaged flat next day by a warlord and his Chosen. Who are slaughtered to a man the day after that by Rome and the Army. Merchants ruin folk out of their houses, their livelihoods and their very lives. A man who had a homestead and a wife and a son and a decent plough ox cuts the same merchant’s throat for revenge. Thus is the world ruled, by gods above and below in turn.’
Beasts From the Dark Page 11
