Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  ‘I thought you had all eaten your horses,’ Quintus laughed.

  ‘Sacrificed to Mars Ultor,’ Frontinus corrected. ‘Save for the general’s own. No Roman general walks these days – and certainly not an Emperor.’

  Kag slithered wetly down from the roof. ‘Who is hanging off the tower?’ he demanded and Drust tore himself from watching Praeclarum to tell him. Kag grunted.

  ‘If we can work out a way to haul him up without getting stuck with arrows, we can get him off it and use the rope to get ourselves down the far side, maybe.’

  Down was dangerous, Dog answered tersely. What he did not say involved Praeclarum. The top of the tower was the last safe place and it was higher than anywhere around it, so could not be shot into accurately by arrows. Quintus watched the door and the stairs that led to the outside; the others were above, hunkered in the lee of the raised lip of wall. The yard below had torches sputtering in the rain and shadows flitting between them.

  ‘Trapped,’ Drust said and spat.

  ‘No one was expecting us to do this,’ Kag growled, then clapped Drust on one shoulder. ‘They had enough men in the tower to prevent it, they thought – never imagined Spartacus would be here.’

  ‘If I had known you were so good,’ he added, ‘I would have worried more when you and I walked into the harena.’ He found a torch and managed to spark it into life with a damp striker and flint. Then he raised it over Praeclarum and examined her carefully.

  He withdrew the light from her eventually and sat back, looking at Frontinus, then Drust. ‘Does not look as if she should be out in weather like this.’

  Drust said nothing, but misery leached from him like sour heat. Kag looked him over in the torchlight. ‘You don’t seem bad hurt – this medicus will confirm it, won’t you?’

  The medicus nodded as if his head would fall off.

  ‘Mind you,’ Kag went on, ‘it was as well you were stopped before you turned us all into meat. You put Macedonicus to shame.’

  They both grinned at the memory of the beast hunter who managed to emulate the fabled Carpophorus by slaying one of every type of beast in the world. On one bloody afternoon he slaughtered a hundred, some with teeth and claws enough to fight back.

  A ragged whisper of a voice broke their reverie. ‘Mark me, lads, I am thinking it is no good matter to be always hitting my man on the head…’

  They stared. Kag smiled and said softly, ‘Welcome, lady.’

  ‘It will do him no harm,’ Quintus added, grinning brightly in the torch glow. ‘Knock some sense in.’

  Drust felt too sick to be annoyed, and besides, Praeclarum was awake and talking lucidly.

  ‘Never thought this would be where it ended,’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t ended.’

  ‘So you’re a medicus as well as a gladiator?’

  ‘Merchant,’ he corrected. ‘And you are drugged, so what do you know?’

  ‘The baby is gone. I can feel the blood sloshing around. I have pissed myself, right? Not piss, though. Not all of it.’

  ‘You tell me what to do and I can do it. If I can’t, this medicus can.’

  ‘Just because you have expertise with a gladius,’ she said, ‘doesn’t make you a surgeon. Frontinus is a good man, though, so don’t kill him with it.’

  Drust said nothing and she sighed a little, slipping into sleep – or death.

  ‘You came for me,’ she said before she went out. ‘Fool.’

  She was asleep, no more. Drust wobbled to his feet, feeling weariness snagged to the bone.

  ‘I will watch her,’ Frontinus said. It was clear he had been doing that for some time and that he did not like what his general had done. Drust heard Dog call his name from above and reluctantly left Praeclarum to climb into the night and the rain.

  ‘Look there,’ he said, peering cautiously through the crenellations. Drust did and saw a figure waving and shouting; he wore a red cloak and a helmet with a centurion’s transverse crest. Marcellus. There were others around him, arguing and moving back and forth like squat dancing bears. The voices were harsh and angry.

  ‘He has made a cat’s arse of it,’ Dog said, sitting with his back to the wall and his bared face turned to the rain. His death-face gleamed and slithered with runnels, the short stubble of greying beard only adding to the horror. He laughed with bitter satisfaction. ‘He thought to have us all snicked off, like threads on a frayed hem. Antyllus will put him up beside Mus when he gets back.’

  ‘If he gets back,’ Drust said. ‘And regarding that – cut Mus free.’

  Fortuna would need to be smiling like an open drain for Antyllus to arrive back here in splendour, he thought. By the look of the men here, the ones tied to him like a dog to a blood sausage, the savour of rebellion was leaching out.

  ‘They won’t follow the likes of Marcellus,’ Sow added, as if he had read Drust’s mind. ‘Antyllus is expecting the centurions of Biriciana to rise up and join him, but that won’t happen. If he tries to force it, there will be a fight and he will lose. He may even die in it.’

  ‘If Antyllus succeeds,’ Drust countered, ‘he will send men back to let these ones know they have a new Emperor. If he fails and escapes, he may come marching back to here as his last refuge. Either way, we all die.’

  Dog wiped the rain from his face and flicked it away. ‘Well, boss – what is your plan for this?’

  ‘Run at them screaming, I always say,’ Ugo called out, and those on the roof laughed – save Kisa, who was shivering; Drust sent him down to the dry with instructions to watch over Praeclarum.

  ‘The simplest plan is always the best,’ Dog agreed. ‘At least we will arrive in Elysium together.’

  ‘Optimist,’ Sow growled. ‘Dis Pater has his eye on you. Mithras, Lord of Light, will hold his hand over me.’

  Dog laughed. ‘We will find out soon enough.’

  Drust wondered how long it would take Marcellus to persuade men to attack the stairs. He got Kag to replace Quintus, looked at bringing Dog and Manius down into the shelter of the tower, but Manius shook his head when given the offer. He had his bow ready but unstrung; the cord for it was coiled under his hat to keep it dry and Drust knew it would be the work of a second for him to brace it if needed.

  ‘When I was barely up to my father’s knee,’ he said, his eyes the only thing visible in the night, ‘I could already stalk the wild duck in the oasis reeds. I wanted to do the same with a lion, but my father laughed and said my little bow would not distress the desert king.’

  Drust waited for more, but none came, so he left Manius there and took watch on the other side.

  Then he heard Kag bellow that they were coming up the stairs.

  ‘Stay here,’ he told the others. ‘Watch for hook-ropes or ladders.’

  Then he plunged down the rickety ladder to the room below, hearing the clash of steel and the bellows from outside the door. The medicus crouched, grim-faced, and Drust pointed the gladius at him.

  ‘One twitch from you,’ he warned but got no further; a dark shape lunged up and into the room, panting heavily and scattering drops of rain which flew molten in the torchlight. He had a spatha, the longsword the legionaries preferred these days, and had lost his shield, if he ever had one.

  Drust sprang forward before the man had a chance to start slashing, locked fingers round his slippery wrist and brought the gladius up, only to find his own wrist locked in a hard grasp. They lurched and Drust banged him into the far wall, but all he could hear was a low growling sound like some backed-up lion in the harena.

  It’s me, he realised, just as the man tried to butt him in the face, forcing Drust to jerk his head and take it on the cheek. The blow speared ice into Drust’s head, made him fighting mad, as he had been before, though now he couldn’t seem to make a sound when he went for him with his teeth.

  He got him down on the jawbone, just where the jowl is, though he was aiming to get in his neck. He wanted to rip the jugular from him, wanted it so bad he could taste
the iron and copper blood long before his teeth clamped on his jaw and went to the bone.

  The man thrashed madly as if he was a fish hooked out of a stream, and now Drust could hear him screaming, faint and as if from down a corridor, behind a closed door. The man bucked and kicked and turned Drust in a half-circle, slamming him into the wall. His only sense was the stink of the man, sweat and fear and shit and the faint, faraway sound of his whimpering howls.

  The man tried to wrench his sword arm free, and Drust spun him in turn; they rolled along the wall until there was none, then went through the door and crashed down the stairs. The sword pommel banged the side of Drust’s head but he saw the spatha fly up and away into the dark and lost his grip as the man lost his. They rolled on the stairs and scrambled up, Drust two steps lower and between him and his friends.

  ‘Mithras,’ the man yelled. ‘Lord of Light!’

  It was muffled to Drust’s ears, but he knew a man called on the gods when he thought he was losing, so he got the gladius up to hip level and went for him, low and fast like a snake from under a rock. Gladiator.

  The man shrieked like a child and spun half round, looking for his sword or a place to run, and Drust drove the weapon into his exposed back, low on one side. It went in like there was nothing there, so that the bang of his hand on the man’s back muscle came as a surprise and he almost let go of the hilt.

  The man screamed again and tore free, the gladius coming out with an obscene slide and sucking sound. They both felt it; he stopped and turned, trying to look as he clamped a hand on it. Felt the blood and panicked, started to babble.

  Drust drove the gladius again, straight for the heart and parallel to his ribs, a perfect stroke. He felt it burst the bag of the man’s heart, lancing upwards and inwards until it grated on the shoulder blade at the back and flexed. As Drust started to draw it out, it sprang back so hard it almost tore from his grip.

  The man was gone anyway, sunk to the steps with Drust half on top of him, hearing him gasping. He tried to get off the man, saw a hand come up and thought the man was trying some last, desperate attack, but his eyes were all dreamy and gone.

  Sow stumbled up, panting and bent over, hands on his knees. Drust, surprised, craned round and saw Sow flap one hand.

  ‘Sorry. Bastard slipped past me. Hit me in the ribs and slipped past me…’

  Drust saw him wince, saw the hilt of the dagger and the last half-inch of the blade. Sow fell forward just as Dog loped up to join them; he bent, felt the neck, gave a grunt which could have meant anything.

  ‘He’s sixed. You hurt?’

  Sick to vomiting, weak, wobbly, but there was nothing like a wound on him; he levered himself off the dead man, glanced at Sow and followed Dog back into the tower room. Quintus came down to take over, grinning his big teeth at them all.

  ‘They never tried to climb to the top of the tower,’ he said, disappointed.

  ‘There are four of them dead at the foot of the stairs,’ Dog said. ‘They won’t be trying that again either.’

  Then he rubbed his slick death-face.

  ‘We lost Sow.’

  No one said much. Quintus and Dog tumbled Sow and the dead warrior down the steps to join the others and Dog paused before he came back into the room.

  ‘I hope he was right about Mithras.’

  Drust wanted to say that the man he had killed had been a follower too, but it would have made no sense to Dog – half the Army worshipped Mithras, the soldiers’ god.

  He had never seen the man’s face, or had a name, but the final fingers had fluttered on Drust’s cheek, trailed down it like a lover’s caress, like a mother’s last touch.

  He felt them long afterwards in the darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  It was a soft morning according to Ugo, some memory from his ma. All the others knew was that a mist sat tight on the hills and flowed into the dark of the trees like a stream in spate. Everything dripped, but the sun was there, a gold coin of promise.

  ‘You still here?’ she asked, her voice a rustle of straws.

  ‘No, lady. It’s a dream brought on by over-medication.’

  ‘What did you give me? Frontinus said he had nothing.’

  ‘Little-known Roman remedy. Powerful stuff called watered wine. For better effects, use less water.’

  ‘Never become a doctor. Your bedside manner appals.’

  ‘At least I am here.’

  ‘And to think once I thought you might be afraid of commitment.’

  ‘You mistook me for a Vestal,’ he answered and then bit his lip. Wrong thing to say, bringing that up, the Vestal who had gone into the punishment tomb on the very day he and Praeclarum had been married.

  ‘This is punishment for that deed,’ she said, and he gripped her hand.

  ‘It is not. She paid the price for arrogance and greed. There’s no curse on you, lady.’

  She shifted slightly. ‘I would smile, but he took my teeth.’

  ‘I will get them back.’

  ‘Don’t have time,’ she murmured, and wheezed in and out for a bit until the idea of breathing caught and stayed. Then she slept.

  Drust climbed wearily back up the ladder onto the roof, where Quintus and Manius watched cautiously over the edge of the crenellations; below was movement, like a disturbed nest of ants.

  ‘Something has happened,’ Quintus said, peering. ‘Lots of shouting but I can’t make anything of it.’

  Manius nodded agreement. ‘I think a messenger came. I think it was not good news.’

  We can only hope, Drust thought to himself, but he did not know where that would leave the Brothers in all this. After a while, Quintus raised himself up, high enough for Drust to feel a stab of anxiety. Then he hunkered down again and grinned.

  ‘They are leaving. Look.’

  They were. Men were streaming out of the fort, out of the raddled village that had grown up around it, men in a hurry and carrying anything they could pack. Quintus was beaming and Dog stuck his head out of the tower trapdoor.

  ‘They are all leaving in a running hurry,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever is coming at them,’ Drust answered, ‘it is not Antyllus in triumph. Keep watch.’

  ‘It is not even Roman,’ Manius declared and took off his leather helmet, uncoiling the bowstring. Drust risked a look and saw the fringes of the forest spew loping figures. Saw something with horns.

  ‘Juno’s tits,’ he swore. The Dark was coming on them.

  * * *

  Ugo’s soft day dragged itself up higher, all silvered milk and wet heat. Kag came to the top of the tower and joined in the careful watch, saw the beast-masked warriors leaping round the tower and the village, pursuing the running Romans. More of them filtered carefully up through the village, poking in houses.

  ‘They have bows,’ Dog noted, and Manius grunted.

  ‘They have sticks with string,’ he corrected scornfully. ‘I have the only real bow in this land.’

  Drust went down to the filtered dim of the tower room, where Kisa had started a fire near the door, so the smoke would be sucked out. It had not entirely worked, but the blue reek was worth it for the smell of hot soup. Ugo was outside the door, hunkered on the steps and watching; he looked up as Drust stuck his head out.

  ‘Nothing yet. They will know by the smoke that someone is here.’

  Drust moved to where Praeclarum lay in a thick miasma of smells. Kisa looked up from where he was stirring.

  ‘She drifts in and out,’ he said. ‘I thought to get some food in her, some heat and strength.’

  ‘I keep coming back,’ she said, making them both turn; the voice was a flutter of sound, no more.

  ‘It’s a good habit. Keep it going.’

  ‘Is it day or night?’

  ‘Sun’s up.’

  She moved, gasped with the pain and tried weakly to feel under the blankets. Drust stopped her, shook his head.

  ‘No need. I cleaned you up.’

  ‘How many times?
’

  Too many was the real answer, but he shrugged. She smiled a little, not showing her lack of teeth, and it was a good thing to see.

  ‘You should get away while you can,’ she said.

  ‘Leave you here alone? I am your latest lover, not your last.’

  ‘That was the wife of the lanista. She loved me, or so she said. Threw a vase at me once – was as big as my head.’

  ‘That sort of size? Doesn’t seem like romance to me.’

  ‘There were flowers in it. I didn’t help as much as I should have. Might have had something to do with the way I let her fall out of a window into the street.’

  ‘You didn’t kill her, she did that all on her own.’

  ‘That’s noble. Like the Vestal. Now you are a priest as well as a medicus. How’s that working out for you?’

  ‘I might take up the work. Convince gullible matrons that their lives are not worthless and their husbands faithful. Just for practice, let me tell you that you’re an attractive woman.’

  ‘Is that a proposal? No, wait. I am already married to you. One of those gullible matrons.’

  ‘I did consider stealing a kiss from you, for all your lack of sugar. I put it down to the fact you are ill – oh, Juno save me, I will anyway.’

  Her lips were cracked and hot, but she smiled when it was done. ‘You should go. Give me iron and leave here, for I am done here.’

  ‘Hist on that,’ Drust ordered severely, as Kisa came up with a bowl.

  ‘Here, drink this.’

  ‘Hemlock?’

  ‘A gruel of leeks and onions. I found some in a corner and they were not all rotted.’

  The blissed look on her face made them all smile. She sank back and licked her lips a little, then looked up at them and it was all different in her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘For the soup. And the kiss. And for staying. They will come for you, you know.’

  ‘I know. But I am from the harena. I throw sparks like a sacked village.’

  ‘I can smell the smoke,’ she answered, then she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Fat grey-bellies sagged in a dull sky and spat rain that was danced across clinging grass. A lone blackbird started from cover and whirred away in a blur. No sign of a mate, Ugo said morosely, which is a bad omen.