Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  They wandered out, hitching their togas and muttering about the feel of them. In the end, they took them off and bought cloaks with hoods from a merchant – the same Gallic cloaks that had given Caracalla his name. They wandered in tunics, the toga looped and wrapped round one arm, or held like a bundle of washing so that they could conceal their blades; Dog walked with his hood up to hide the worst of his face.

  ‘You can’t fight wearing one of these affairs,’ Ugo growled disgustedly, thrashing his toga-clad arm.

  ‘Not going to fight, are we?’ Kag pointed out as they went past a line of coffered slaves being touted at reasonable prices. They looked, partly because they had been in that position and some could even recall it, partly because of curiosity; they had once bought and sold for the Ludus of Servillius Structus now long gone.

  It was Kag who spotted him, who turned and whispered, smiling, to Drust. ‘That one. The one with the scar on his right arm. That’s Stolo.’

  He was right. They stared until the dealer spotted a potential sale and moved across, smiling, looking them up and down, assessing their wealth and likelihood. Then his grin shone like a lighthouse flare.

  ‘Drusus, isn’t it?’ he said and slapped his chest. ‘Marcus Octavius Balba – we did business when old Servillius Structus had the Ludus Ferrata.’

  Drust remembered him and said so, which made the man beam. He was short, stout and with a clench of curls salted with age. He indicated the line of slaves.

  ‘These are on their way to the Graecostadium, but I can sell them sub hasta for a while if you have an interest.’

  Sub hasta, ‘under the spear’, was an auction wherever the dealer stood, as opposed to the official version at the Graecostadium.

  Kag moved to Stolo, who looked at him dull-eyed. Kag kept his face steady and close until recognition dawned – and when Dog drew back his hood and stepped up into Stolo’s eyeline, the man whimpered and drew back.

  ‘Ho, ho,’ Balba said, clearly taken aback by the sight himself. ‘This is a valuable property. I don’t want it dropping dead thinking Dis Pater has come for his due.’ He tried looking round to encourage a laugh, but none came.

  Kisa lifted the placard round Stolo’s neck and read it aloud. ‘Age – 26. Sex – male. Physical attributes – strong and fit, former soldier. State of health – fit. Good looks – personable. Skills – former soldier. Intelligence and education – above average. Can read and write.’

  ‘You lie like a fallen tree,’ Kag spat out. ‘Add ten years to his age. Don’t forget to point out the strongest parts of him are his legs, which carried him away from the fighting.’

  ‘Ho – I am an honest dealer here—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, you mangone bastard,’ Quintus growled. ‘This is one condemned to the harena – if he had been caught and delivered with the others we brought from the Army up north, in chains and shackles and bound for the noxii executions at the start of the Ludus Magnus.’

  His voice turned heads and people paused to listen; this was better entertainment than some Sibylline faker of prophecies or a snake-charmer with a flute. ‘Mangone’ was a reasonable name for a slave dealer, but delivered in the way it was seemed destined to start a fight.

  Balba thought so, for he turned and started waving for his strong-arms to close in; Drust took him by the front of his tunic, while Ugo moved like a huge boulder that stopped the strong-arms dead while they considered it.

  ‘Do you want me to call for the Urban Cohort?’ Drust demanded, soft and sibilant. ‘Tell them you harbour an escaped deserter, condemned in absentio to the Flavian?’

  Balba blinked once or twice, then tried to wrench himself free. When that failed, he gave up and shook his head miserably.

  ‘Unshackle him, turn him over to us and we will deliver him to where he should be.’

  ‘You are just stealing a slave,’ Balba blustered. ‘Worth a thousand sesterces at least—’

  Drust shook him and Balba gave in. Stolo was unshackled and Quintus took him by the neck of his filthy tunic. ‘Try to run and I will cut you down.’

  They moved swiftly off, one on either side with a hand under Stolo’s armpit, walking hard enough for him to have to trot, and because he was weak and had been beaten, he frequently lost his footing and was dragged until he recovered. Drust chivvied them on; he did not want to wait and see if Balba finally worked up enough courage to call for the law. Probably not, he concluded, since he almost certainly had a couple more in his coffer that would not stand scrutiny.

  By the time they reached Milo’s bar Stolo’s toes were battered and he whimpered a lot, so they stopped at the fountain outside the temple to Castor and Pollux, dashed water in his face and on his feet, then let him drink.

  ‘What will you do with me?’ he managed to gasp.

  ‘Think of the worst,’ Dog growled, shoving that face at him again. ‘Then double it.’

  Stolo moaned and shook his head. ‘When the gods decide to fuck you, you are truly lost. I mean – in the whole of the Empire, we end up on the same street in Rome.’

  They lifted him up and carried him into Milo’s, laughing and pretending he was one of them and already drunk while they dragged him past the leaners on the bar and down the stairs. There were a couple of people at a table who decided elsewhere was better when Dog glared at them and told them to fuck off.

  ‘You are death to custom,’ Milo declared bitterly, but was interested in what had been brought in.

  ‘Bring him wine,’ Drust said. ‘Mulsum. Put some life in him.’

  ‘So we can take it back later,’ Dog answered. Stolo, drank the sweet wine in three gulps and lolled back, blowing out his cheeks.

  ‘I did nothing to you,’ he declared mournfully, and Quintus laughed out his astonishment.

  ‘You left us on the wrong side of the river, you and that fuck Tubulus. You ran back to the bridge screaming that everyone else was dead, so the engineers cut it.’

  ‘We ran, for sure,’ Stolo admitted wearily. ‘Like a four-horse from the tape drop – but by the time we got to the centurion he was coping with a flood of runaways from that village. I tried to tell him the headman there had been a traitorous fuck, but he was too busy.’

  ‘So who ordered the bridge cut?’ Ugo demanded disbelievingly.

  ‘Some tribune arrived with a detachment of men and a funny-looker in a hooded cloak. Not Army, but the tribune practically sucked his cock. They spoke to the centurion and then to Tubulus. I fancied I was next and didn’t like it, so I made myself scarce behind some oxen. Then Tubulus shouted that everyone else was dead, the centurion ordered the bridge cut, and that was that.’

  Kag squinted and scowled. ‘A tribune? A funny-looker in a cloak? You expect us to believe this horseshit? Everyone from your old unit did die and it was only the blessings of gods above and below that we didn’t.’

  ‘Save for one,’ Drust said quietly, and everyone looked ashamed at having omitted her. ‘What did the cloaked one look like?’

  ‘Like a week-old corpse,’ Stolo replied sullenly, then glanced at Dog. ‘Not as much of a frightener as him, mind, but bad enough. Pale. I mean, like the colour had been sucked out of him. Eyelashes and hair too. Made me determined not to go with him like Tubulus did, the skinny arse. I slipped off then and kept slipping. Don’t know what happened to Tubulus – never heard or saw him again.’

  Kag looked at Drust. No one else spoke and then Drust took Stolo under the chin.

  ‘We know this man. His name is Verus and he is more dangerous than plague. I will give you one chance. I have a toga I can give you. Here is enough for a decent tunic and some shoes – your feet are too fucked for you to run far on them naked.’

  Stolo looked from one to the other, astounded, then licked his lips. Drust saw it and smiled; Stolo didn’t like that smile and showed it in his fearful eyes.

  ‘I know, I know – you are wondering how far you can run. Well, you can try it. I give you the toga to hide those ridiculous skin-marks
– SPQR is the folly of youth and at least you had it done on the chest, since anywhere that can be seen is a violation of regulations.’

  Drust reached out a finger and touched the faded lettering on Stolo’s forearm. ‘But Roma Invicta here is just a fuck you to regulations.’

  ‘I was broken for it,’ Stolo admitted. ‘Got passed over for rightful promotion then got drunk and then got the skin-mark and then got broken from the rank I had.’ He shook his head. ‘I was truly a stupidus back then. That’s when the gods decided they’d had enough of me. I could not do worse.’

  ‘Ho,’ Kag declared. ‘Says the man who ran off and left his comrades.’

  Stolo dipped his head and stared at the floor. He knew what the punishment was and everyone saw him tremble at the anticipation. Drust took Stolo by the stubbled chin and forced him to lock eyes.

  ‘Well, here’s why the gods above and below put us on the same street in the greatest city in the world. I give you this one chance. You can run until you do something foolish that will reveal you are probably a deserter. Or you can go out, quiet and slow, keeping your head down and sure in the knowledge that here, in this place, you have a refuge and friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ Stolo repeated. ‘A refuge? How can I trust you?’

  Dog snarled at him. ‘You got his wife killed,’ he said harshly. ‘If Drust hands you this lifeline instead of wrapping it round your treacherous neck and strangling you, then you had better take it.’

  ‘And if you betray it again,’ Quintus added, with a grin that his eyes had no part in, ‘then we will queue up to cut pieces off you.’

  Stolo flicked out his tongue, looked at the wine cup as if willing it to refill. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Pick up any trace of this Verus. He is in Rome. Be careful – he is more than just a fright to look at.’

  Stolo looked round them all, then nodded briefly. ‘I felt bad about them cutting that bridge.’

  ‘Never felt bad about running, though,’ Kag pointed out. Stolo had no answer. He drank another cup of mulsum, ate a sausage, and then left with Kisa to buy shoes and a decent tunic; they both wore the toga like gentlemen.

  Kisa came back in an hour and joined the quiet throng round the table. They ate chickpea stew and bread, drank watered wine, and talked.

  ‘He has shoes and a tunic,’ Kisa told them, ‘so that’s the last you will see of Stolo.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Drust answered. ‘But if he comes up with word of Verus it will be a worthwhile wager.’

  ‘You think Verus came down to the bridge to make sure we stayed on the wrong side of it?’ Kag demanded.

  ‘You know anyone else who looks like that?’ Quintus countered. ‘He was making sure Julius Yahya got his due.’

  ‘Stolo might have seen him before and just lied to us,’ Dog pointed out, but even he did not sound convinced by that.

  Verus was there at the bridge, Drust thought sourly, and he had it cut to make sure we would not return to safety. He had been told to leave us out there to accomplish his master’s plans.

  Apokalypsis.

  * * *

  He slept, but the waves kept coming so he was not surprised when the ghosts turned up a little later. He was almost pleased to see them, or so he told himself, if they were all old friends come to escort him quietly to the core of the dream, because he knew that’s what it was. He was walking across some parched desert to somewhere, yet he felt bone-weary and unable to resist anything, so he might well be about to stand in front of Jupiter or Mars Ultor, or the entire pantheon.

  Fine for you, who had a life.

  Lupus Gallus was gloomy as he walked alongside, in the same patched tunic he had worn on the day he’d died. City of Tibur, Drust recalled, and a long time ago, when Lupus Gallus and a host of others had fought as, supposedly, the Roman legions of Caesar against the tribes of Britannia – sixteen light chariots with javelin-thrower and driver.

  They won, Drust remembered hearing, and were lauded for it, all but Lupus Gallus – silly fucking name only a tiro would use. Wolf of Gaul. More like a foolish pup. Last time I spoke to him was just before we escaped under the Flavian. I told him his footwork was still awful and would get him killed… the scythes on the chariot he failed to dodge cut the legs out from beneath him.

  Yet I wept for him, Drust recalled, the last time I ever did for anyone until Praeclarum. I could not tell you why – he was hardly my last best friend.

  I owed you money – besides, your tears were nearly all relief that you still had both legs.

  Drust had no answer and wondered why Lupus Gallus had come to haunt him in the first place. At least, he saw, he had his legs back in death, but he was nowhere near my best friend…

  That would be your wife, as is proper.

  The lilting accent made him turn, head heavy as a slaughter-stunned ox so that he could feel it wobble on his neck as watched his mother step forward, arms clasped round her to hold the palla he remembered, the one she had got off – as he found later – Servillius Structus. Black and fringed, with a swirl of red flowers and firebirds – silk, she had insisted, from Parthia. So exotic and outlandish she did not dare wear it, as a slave, beyond the privacy of Servillius Structus’s home.

  I never had anything as beautiful, save you, my son – and my memories of home. Better things to keep in your head than spirits, Drusus.

  You loved your Britannia home, Drust remembered. Even though it was far away and long gone for me. Few there would have known you if you’d gone back – and none would know me.

  Ach – that’s just family. You think you know them, Drusus, but you do not.

  Back on you with that, ma, he mocked – you think you know me, but you don’t.

  She laid a hand on his shoulder, staring into his face from beyond the grave with that old, familiar look that ripped the heart from him.

  Every little lad thinks his ma does not understand him. Silly Drusus…

  Then the wave truly hit.

  When I saw her lying there, after the last breath had sighed from her, all pale and ravaged, I cried out for it and could see it and nothing else for a time, so beautiful and so broken; I would tear out my eyes if I could but she’d be there in the holes, painted with blood in the holes; I can see her, all white and her eyes gone fish-dead, cold stare frosted like old stars, and me like the splintered club used by Hercules…

  * * *

  He woke to the shouts and hammering blows on the shutters of the taberna. Milo lived on the first floor and had stuck his head out of the window to rain curses on whoever thought they would get a drink at conticinium, the time when even animals had the decency to shut up.

  ‘It is Ahala,’ Drust heard. ‘I need to speak with Drust.’

  Milo bawled for Salvius, the kitchen slave; Drust imagined it was because Calida was already in the room with him and in no condition to answer a door. By the time the shutters had been raised and lamps lit, Drust and the others had roused up and found some light that allowed them to see Ahala, followed by Milo and Salvius, come down the stairs.

  ‘Fetch some wine for everyone. Conditum, the good stuff,’ Milo said tersely, and Salvius scurried to obey, wiping sleep from his eyes.

  All of them saw Ahala’s face as he looked round them, one after the other. Then he sat heavily and Drust’s heart seemed to turn over in his chest.

  ‘Come from Caesar’s house,’ Ahala said. ‘Got word that there was a disturbance up there. Noises and stuff. The baker has a shop and feared he’d be broken into, so he sent a slave for the Vigiles…’

  He stopped, shook his head. ‘Commander Scarpio took my section and we went up and hammered on the door, demanding entrance as Vigiles on duty. Got no answer. Commander says break it down, so we did.’

  The wine arrived and he grabbed the nearest one and drank it off. Everyone waited, fretting with impatience but saying nothing.

  ‘Porter was dead. Big lad, too – I fell over him in the dark because I couldn’t see him. Black as H
ades he was, but his throat was slit. Female slave, similar, in the atrium.’

  He stopped and looked at them all, then shook his head again.

  ‘There was another. Scarpio sent me because I said I knew who he was, who his friends were. Said I should bring you at once because he’s never seen anything like this in his life.’

  ‘Manius,’ Kag said dully.

  * * *

  They went along the Via Argiletum at a fast walk, a ground-eater they had used before on long journeys when time was of the essence – the closing of a city’s gates, or a curfew on leaving – right into Tartarus, the heart of Subura’s darkness.

  ‘He might have been born a nobile,’ Kag muttered as Ugo brandished a torch and snarled at the shadows, ‘but the Divine Julius spent a deal of time among the populus Romanus.’

  ‘This is like the Dark,’ Ugo growled. ‘Without trees.’

  The villa stood on a corner of the Argiletum, a spit away from the Temple of Peace and the Forum Nervae. It was hard to believe that in daylight this was a place of markets and strollers. It was hard to believe they were standing in it, panting and sweated and peering broodingly at the shadows, listening to the shouts and shrill, the night sounds of Subura; this district belonged to someone else, with his own thugs wondering what all the fuss was about.

  The domus was typical – it had been built to look inward and the walls, though peeling and slathered with signs and graffiti, were solid blank bulwarks against the populus Romanus in the streets surrounding it. It had been here before any insulae and just in case anyone had ideas, the Julii had at some point added long iron spikes to the top of the walls and fixed them in concrete.

  The double doors of the entrance were flung wide and two hard-eyed Vigiles stood, spears ready, buckets and axes stowed neatly behind them. On either side, the inset shops were also unshuttered – a cloth-seller and what Drust took to be the baker Milo admired. Everywhere blazed with torchlight.