Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  He gave up and stamped off, bawling extra-loud orders to his men to clear the way. Dog grinned at Drust, then turned as a weak voice pleaded for water from the fetid depths of the cart.

  ‘Is that you, Culleo? I hope it is. Go thirsty, you shit-breath.’

  They ground on through the dimly lit Forum of a city asleep, the silence broken by dog-barks and cries that might have been lust or panic. There were few people out and about, even when they reached their final goal, the bulked edifice of the Flavian and the Ludus Magnus gates.

  Rutilus was savage with the tousled porter, forcing him to go and fetch the commander of the Urban cohort.

  ‘Dunno if he’s up and about, yer honour.’

  ‘He’d better be. Get Aurelius Scaurus here – he knows we’re coming.’

  ‘See if you can find Cascus Minicius Audens,’ Drust called out. ‘Kick the old bugger awake and tell him Drust and the Brothers of the Sand are back.’

  ‘He’ll come at the gallop,’ Kag added, grinning. ‘If only to get his wagons back.’

  He came faster than the Urban cohort commander, faster than anyone would have credited for a man of his age. He had thrown on a tunic and a cloak against the night chill, but his hair was a puff of white wisps and his face glowed fiery in the torchlight. He came rubbing his hands together and beaming, then stopped and stared.

  Quintus came around the head of the stolid oxen, saw the look and burst into laughter; Audens shook himself from his astonishment.

  ‘I sent you to get a white bear,’ he said, then beamed even wider. ‘This is better – who are they?’

  ‘Traitors to Rome,’ Rutilus said before anyone else could speak. ‘Deserters from the Army who have been stripped of their rights and condemned.’

  ‘Traitors and deserters,’ Audens echoed and rubbed his hands. ‘Better and better. Nothing the crowd likes better than watching Romans who have betrayed them being justly punished. And they are former soldiers too, so they won’t be bumbling about with no idea how to use a sword, like the rest of the noxii.’

  ‘Glad you are pleased,’ Drust growled. ‘We also brought your wagons and oxen, so all’s good – now pay what you owe.’

  ‘Hold up,’ Audens said. ‘These caged were not trapped by you, I presume. These are from the Army, sent by the Law, and cost nothing.’

  ‘Read this,’ Drust answered. ‘If you can.’

  Audens snorted indignantly. ‘I could read before you could pass a solid stool.’

  ‘I meant in the poor light, old one.’

  Mollified, Audens subsided, took the parchment and weighed the seal, squinting to see the stamp on it. When he did his face changed. By the time he had finished reading it, he was nodding and frowning seriously. Then he looked up at Drust.

  ‘Pay in full, it says – and find a place in the Collegium for an urn? What’s that about? One of your lot die up north then?’

  Drust shifted the urn so Audens could see the name on it. ‘My wife.’

  Audens looked stunned. He knew how recently we were married, Drust thought dully. He wonders how I have managed to gain her a place in the crowded burial niches of the Collegium Armariorum, the gladiators’ club. He has seen the stamp and knows who has authorised it.

  Julius Yahya was not a name you questioned.

  * * *

  He sat in the principia as if he were a legate, but that would have been a step down for him. When Drust had first met him, Julius Yahya had been a slave, though one who owned great houses and had his thumb on the rich and powerful. He had been the favoured of old Emperor Servillius Severus, then his son Caracalla, then freed by Elagabalus, and now he was advisor to Alexander’s mother, the true power of Rome. The Severans had been good to Julius Yahya.

  He had the same leathery face, brown with ethnicity rather than exposure to the elements – the likes of Julius Yahya seldom exposed himself to anything as common as the elements. He was average height, still had muscle that age had not turned to string, still had the face of a bland merchant – and the eyes which held a controlled violence.

  Legend had given him a lion’s fangs and roar, a tiger’s claws, the powers of some ancient Hercules, Drust recalled. Now a freedman and no doubt a citizen, he was more powerful than ever before. As powerful as an Emperor.

  He sat, with age-mottled hands and wattled neck, smelling faintly of salt-sweat and expensive perfumed oils. Beside him on the wide desk lay a huge open hand of gilded iron with a scrollwork inscription Drust could not read at this angle.

  ‘You may wonder if I came all this way to the wilds to find out if you had succeeded in the task I set for you,’ Julius Yahya said, his voice low and rheumy. ‘In fact, I came here to deliver this gift from the Emperor.’

  They perched in a half-circle around the desk, staying wisely silent, looking at the open-hand on a pole.

  ‘The inscription you are all straining to decipher reads “Severiana”, which title the Consors Imperii has graciously decided to bestow on the Third Italica,’ he went on. ‘To which end there will be a formal parade to present it and a reaffirmation of oaths from all vexallations.’

  Again no one spoke. Consors imperii – Partner in Rule – was just one of the titles of Julia Mamaea, but the gilded hand was neither here nor there; the oaths were almost all of it, the rest being donatives for doing so. In the aftermath of a rebellion by a Roman senator and elements of the Flavian cavalry, this was as standard as the crucifixions on the road leading all the way to Biriciana. Scores of them and all Roman.

  ‘We have a few prisoners condemned to the amphitheatre,’ Julius Yahya said and pushed a scroll at Drust. ‘To let Rome see how rebellion is punished by the Mother of the Empire. Ex-soldiers and ex-citizens, now traitors, picked by lot from those still awaiting crucifixion. If it pleases you, know that one Culleo and a lower-ranking centurion called Marcellus are among those bound for the amphitheatre. Your carts will convey them to the Ludus Magnus, to the Urban Cohort commander there. You need not worry about your bear-hunting task – your carts now belong to the Army. You will have a full century as escort.’

  How rebellion is punished by the Mother, Drust thought. Not the boy-emperor…

  ‘Audens won’t pay us for men,’ Kag said flatly. ‘He wanted a white bear.’

  ‘Show him that seal and he will pay and thank you for it.’

  No one argued. Julius Yahya tapped the desk and a slave slippered in; Drust wondered what had happened to Verus, the pale, cold-eyed killer they had seen at Julius Yahya’s back last time they’d met. It was a bowlful of years ago, Drust thought. Perhaps he is dead.

  The slave left more scrolls, which Julius Yahya unrolled in the light of a strong lamp; outside the dim of the office they heard the cadence of marching.

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Julius Yahya said suddenly. ‘The entire unit – and your wife among them. I rather think your term as numeroi in the Cohors nonae Batavorum is complete, don’t you?’

  He waved the scroll. ‘Honourable discharges. They will be set in copper too, which is fancy for some almost-unit of the Army, but I am doing well by you for your labours.’

  There was silence – relief for the most part, Drust thought. No one had liked being part of the Army, however tenuous, and now that they were out of it, Drust wondered why Julius Yahya was doing so well by them. A sense of responsibility, perhaps, for how the last couple of enterprises had turned out? He stared at the sign on the wall behind Julius Yahya’s head: ‘The Legatus knows how to do it by knowing who can do it.’

  ‘Which brings me to your next task,’ Julius Yahya said. ‘Antyllus.’

  ‘That was our last task,’ Kag pointed out. ‘It did not go well.’

  Julius Yahya shifted and smiled, though it did not go further north than his thin lips.

  ‘It went as I planned. I included you because I wanted apokalypsis – you know this word?’

  He was looking at Kag when he asked, and Drust had to either admire his marvellous memory from years before
, or admit that Julius Yahya still had dossiers on them all, which revealed – among other things – that Kag knew some finer points of philosophy.

  ‘Change,’ Kag answered, and Julius Yahya made a little sideways motion of his head.

  ‘Not quite. A revelation, an unveiling of the truth, if you like.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Kag growled. ‘Change. Brought about violently.’

  ‘No matter, it worked. The truth was unveiled. Antyllus was forced to move before he was ready, and colour himself purple, he believed, in order to prevent further attempts on his life from gladiators and the like. He has served his purpose.’

  Drust thought fleetingly on what that purpose was, on the weary voice that spoke of the dice in the cup, but didn’t say it. Instead he asked the obvious. ‘Where is Antyllus?’

  Julius Yahya smiled his threadbare smile. ‘Escaped on a fine horse. In Rome, I suspect.’

  ‘Rome – why there? Is he not sought as a traitor?’ demanded Kisa in an outraged voice.

  ‘He is. Rome is safer than anywhere for him. He has friends there still, though they will have their loyalty tested now that he is a failed rebel. However, he has information I need, so I want him alive. I have dispatched Verus – you recall the man from before?’

  ‘Pale. Wasted. Looked like a backstabber in a dark alley,’ Dog declared, and Julius favoured him with a cool stare.

  ‘Indeed. He is knowledgeable in certain areas of Rome – the Hills and the better parts. He is at a disadvantage in others – the parts you know well. The darker areas.’

  ‘Subura?’ Drust said dismissively. ‘Why would the likes of Antyllus go there? He’d stand out like a whore at a wedding.’

  ‘Perhaps. But Marcus Antonius Antyllus is descended from Julius Antonius, second son of the great Anthony who was defeated and destroyed by the Divine Augustus. He is called after his namesake, Julius Antonius’s son, executed at seventeen by said Augustus.’

  ‘All the more reason for him not to be in Rome. I understand the east is popular with those trying to outrun the State’s wrath,’ Kag replied wryly.

  ‘Or the north, beyond the Walls,’ Julius Yahya added, with a wintery smile at the shared memory of their first encounter and the reason for it. It was a brief flicker, dying in the cold recall of that bad time.

  ‘The key here is the Julii connection,’ Julius Yahya went on. ‘The unfortunate General Marcus Antonius was the loyal right hand of Caius Julius Caesar, even after the stabbing in the Senate, even after the whole business with Cleopatra. The gens Julii and the gens Antonii are still tight.’

  ‘And the Julii still have their house in Subura,’ Drust finished.

  ‘That old place?’ Quintus interrupted. ‘Subura grew up around it – the Julii moved out when the great Caesar became richer and more powerful. No one lives there now, I think.’

  ‘That will be for you to find out,’ Julius Yahya said. ‘You will have money and documents allowing you to travel freely, but your best asset is how you can move in that place. That and the people you know there.’

  He leaned forward. ‘Ferret him out of the dark. Bring him to me in Rome. I want apokalypsis.’

  * * *

  I want teeth, Drust thought, softly placing the urn in the dark, dusty niche. He had made a promise to her and would keep it; she was not complete until she had her smile back. He came out of the dim recesses of the Collegium ossuary into the dim light of a puling morning where the others stood patiently. Kag sat on the stone marking the pomerium, the boundary between the dead and the living of Rome. It had originally, according to legend, been the line ploughed by Romulus to mark the walls of the city, but it had been extended many times since. One more, Drust noted, would swallow the Collegium Armariorum and it would end up being demolished.

  The others had small offerings – bread and fruit mainly, because they knew it would not benefit the dead but the scores of living who inhabited the tombs, truly destitute and usually fled. Escaped slaves mostly, Drust thought, who could not risk the grain dole of the City, but depended on the offerings for Dis Pater.

  ‘What now?’ Ugo rumbled, hitching up his toga. He wasn’t used to it and it was as incongruous on him, Kag had noted, as a silk gown on a pig. On them all, if truth be known. They’d bought them from traders on the road down, along with better tunics and proper shoes, but their hair and beards were still wild.

  ‘We find a place to stay, a base – Quintus, didn’t you have a house somewhere in Subura?’ Drust demanded. Quintus had a wide grin and a shrug in reply.

  ‘I did. Just before we left for the Germanies I came home to collect my gear and found everything I owned pilfered and the most of the house in the road. The Vigiles were clearing it up. Those little bucket bastards had pulled the whole insula down as a firebreak to prevent some blaze spreading.’

  It surprised no one. The tenement insulae of Subura were thrown up by speculators and survived a few years until the cheap materials mouldered and even the rats quit. At some point it would collapse and the Vigiles would rush in to make sure no fires started – fires in Subura were as endemic as the rats and more feared. Once firefighting had been the primary role of the Vigiles but now they policed the streets – at least in the better parts; in Subura law and order was dispatched by thug gangs.

  Once that was us, Drust thought, working for Servillius Structus; but now his power is gone and what empire he had made in Subura was broken up among many other, lesser, sharks.

  ‘Then let’s find Milo’s,’ he said and the others nodded and growled agreement. It was a wine shop near where they had all worked when Servillius Structus had been alive, no more than a long walk from his domus and stronghold. The mere mention brought memories back to those who had been part of it; everyone fell silent, speculating on what it looked like now and not wanting to know.

  Drust stuck out his hand, palm down to show the inked letters on the knuckles – E-S-S-S, the mark of when he had been a slave of Servillius. The others followed, even Kisa who had never been a slave and had no such marks; it made a ring of hands and they all intoned the worn words.

  ‘Brothers of the Sand, forged in the ring.’

  They filtered back into the City, trying not to be as outlandish as before, though it was difficult for men wearing the toga and with the wild hair and beards of barbarians. It did not help that Ugo had wrapped his dolabrae to make them inconspicuous and simply succeeded in making them look like cloth-covered axes.

  ‘I could grab a bucket,’ he offered helpfully, ‘and then I would look like one of the Vigiles.’

  Kag shook a scornful head. ‘You would look like what you are – a fucking mad German in a toga. At some point you will need to rid yourself of those bloody pickaxes or we will end up staring at the seepage from the drains in prison.’

  Those that bothered to notice crossed the street as the Brothers made their way to the Quirinal, moving down the High Footpath to greet an old friend, Theogenes the fist-fighter. They stood for a while, reaching out to touch the bronze fingers, shined from so many other times. Theogenes was the greatest hero of the harena, though he never fought in it, for he was a Greek from the time before Socrates and Plato. He did the pankration and pygmachia and served under the patronage of a cruel nobleman, a prince who took great delight in bloody spectacles. He had two victories at the Games, won three times at the Pythian, once in the Isthmian, and a thousand other times in lesser munera.

  He sat at the head of the High Footpath on the Quirinal, a road into Rome which was venerable when the twins were cuddling wolves and being fed treats by woodpeckers. He was bronzed by Apollonius. Or Lysippos, no one was sure. Next to him stood a proud and haughty ruler – mostly ignored by those who came to see the real hero, the boxer. It was his last great victory, the Brothers thought.

  The pugilist sat on a stone, a man running hard into his middle years with a thick beard and a full head of curly hair. He had a broken nose and flattened gristle ears, the slanted, drooping brows that told
of too many blows, and a forehead furrowed with scars more than age.

  All lovingly rendered in bronze, save for the blood, which was copper. He sat with his forearms balanced on his thighs and his head turned as if he were looking over his shoulder – as if someone had just whispered something to him.

  We came here on our wedding day, Drust remembered, to polish his caestus-wrapped fingers, for we are him and he is us. The loss of Praeclarum was sharp as a cold edge then; the others saw it and stayed silent on the fringes of his grief.

  The journey from the Quirinal was long, broken only by a stop at a cookshop for bread and chickpeas and some lora, the wine of slaves, made from the leftover grape pulp mixed with water and then pressed a second or third time. It was like an old friend all the same, and they were refreshed enough to plunge into the Subura.

  The day was well on by the time they reached Milo’s, better known as the Dioscuri after the shrine to Castor and Pollux which stood on one side of the crossroads. At night this was the realm of cut-throats and thugs, every alley, every shadowed recess a potential hiding place. Back in our day, Drust thought, we were the ones who kept the law, the ones the casual thugs feared.

  In the day it was thronged with merchants and customers, hucksters, whores and drunks of all sorts; it reeked of fried cooking and poor oil and the Dioscuri was just one of many wine shops, sandwiched between a cloth-seller and a hand-miller, who would grind your dole grain for a consideration.

  Milo had been a decent four-horse driver in his day – he had taught Sib a few things, but Sib went off to drive for the Reds, and Milo was Green through and through and barely forgave the betrayal. His taberna was decked in green tiles, plastered with graffiti about Green drivers and even their horses. There was a pungent curse along one wall, faded but still legible if you squinted: ‘I call upon you, oh Demon, whoever you are, to ask that from this hour, from this day, from this moment, you torture and kill the horses of the Red and White factions and that you kill and crush completely the drivers Calrice, Felix, Primulus and Romanus, and that you leave not a breath in their bodies.’