Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  They had a deal of time to wait in the undercroft, while the illusion of shade vanished in a fetid heat that drove them to strip off their gear and make their way out and up to the tiered seats, where Dog and the others had been ticketed. Curtius came with them; there was no sign of the scroll case and Drust did not ask where he had hidden it.

  The others were pleased to see Drust and Ugo again, especially when they dropped linen bags into their laps, full of food filched from the feast the night before.

  ‘Oho – I love these,’ Quintus declared. ‘Roasted mice in honey and poppyseed.’ He grabbed a handful stuffing them in his mouth, chewing with relish.

  ‘Better than chickpeas,’ Kag agreed and offered the bag back to Ugo after taking out some pastries. Ugo shook a mournful head.

  ‘Drust said not to eat or drink anything. In case Julius Yahya had poisoned it.’

  ‘A little more advance in your warning would have been good,’ Quintus said, his chewing slowed. Drust laughed.

  ‘He would hardly poison the food and drink at that feast – too many tasters, too many high and mighty.’

  Curtius was squinting myopically against the glare; above, the sailors from the Misenum fleet, used to running the ratline rigging of ships, were busy as apes throwing out the shade of the massive awning. Even torn and threadbare here and there, it was still welcome.

  ‘I think Brasus won,’ he said. ‘Can you see better than me, lads? He was up against a decent Gaul called… I forget his name. But he has won a few…’

  ‘Is Brasus the hoplomachus?’ Kag demanded and Curtius nodded. Kag shrugged.

  ‘The hoplomachus got a let-off.’

  Curtius sighed. ‘Well, I made an offering to Mars Ultor to keep that Dacian arse around for a little longer – but the Ludi Romani devour fighting men. The Emperor’s purse is deep for deaths. Brasus will fight once more in these Games and I do not think he will make it.’

  Drust sat and raised his head to a brief cooling breeze; the sky was growing darker and he thought it might rain. He said so and Dog frowned.

  ‘I hope not. That’s not the best I have seen the sand; it will turn to porridge in the wet. Like that time at Alba Fucens.’

  ‘It was Beneventum,’ Quintus argued. ‘Ended up like a comedy act – if I had worn shoes they’d have been sucked off my feet.’

  ‘That’s the one. It was Alba Fucens.’

  They argued it back and forth and it was all to fill the space with sound so that they would not have to think on what was going to happen once the lunchtime follies had run their course; they were on the last act of it now, showering the crowd with tokens and even launching them from a small ballista so they’d reach the top tier.

  Once Manius and Sib had done this, Sib throwing wooden balls up for Manius to shoot with blunted arrows; the balls bounced into the crowd, each one with a token. It seemed an age ago…

  Drust lived because other men bled. This was his world, a stinking menagerie of death that he had once thought he could escape. With all they had gained – The Place, a slice of old Servillius Structus’s enterprises, a measure of notoriety and fame – he’d thought he had succeeded, but it was illusion.

  This was where he was destined to be, dragged back to it by Mars Ultor or the harpy claws of Fortuna, or even Venus – a dozen gods might decree it. I have seen the light fade from a man’s eyes many times, he thought, and each time the last puff breath, the final birdwing flutter of a heartbeat simply marked the primal truth of my existence. I can wear a toga and pretend otherwise, but I am a slave of the harena when all’s said and done.

  He must have said the last out loud for he felt their eyes on him and opened his own.

  ‘The sand is in your blood?’ Curtius asked wryly. ‘Maybe. As long as your blood is not in the sand, Fortuna smiles and shows you her best tits.’

  They laughed, but it was strained. Did they yearn for something else, something not filled with the iron-reek stickiness of blood or the high, thin stink of fear? Did Dog look at his hands and wonder if they were meant to hold something other than his twin swords? Did any of his tremble?

  They all wanted to ask Drust about his plan, but did not. When they embraced, it was clear everyone imagined it would be the last time. Just as he was leaving, Drust stopped, turned and grinned at them.

  ‘Ladle,’ he said. Let them make what they could out of that.

  He explained it to Ugo when they climbed back into their gear, now slimed with the cold grease of old sweat; Ugo grinned, shook his head in mock wonder and then laughed. When they shuffled into the dark tunnel that led to the harena, the Gate of Life wasn’t open, so Drust could stare blindly into the darkness and wonder if it perhaps went on forever, so that he would walk and walk until he grew tired.

  When he stopped and looked back, there would be darkness where he had come from. He would sit down in the darkness – perhaps even stretch out, close his eyes and rest. Perhaps there would be no beasts in this dark… perhaps Praeclarum would guide him to the light of a field in Elysium.

  Sconced torches were lit, blowing away the dark and making splintered shadows while they waited, fetid with their own rankness and whistling, nervous breath. There was perfume too, from incense brought by some for a last offering to some god. Ugo crouched with a handful of aromatic smouldering twigs and washed his head and face in the smoke, muttering prayers. He offered it to Drust, who shook his head. What god would he pray to? It seemed every one he had sent prayers had fucked all the Brothers over in the end.

  There was always an end to the tunnel and always a man waiting to die beyond it.

  For now, they waited here for the trumpets to blow and the Gate of Life to open. The figures loomed and shifted, some doing a little dance from foot to foot, others jumping on the spot to settle their gear. Drust saw one he knew, a Greek called Dyad, who had chosen the name because it was a symbol meaning ‘power’ to those who secretly worshipped Pythagoras. The crowd knew him as Silver-Arm for the ornate shoulder-to-wrist guard, the manica, he wore. He was a retiarius, a net man, and had won a score of fights.

  Then there was Tiridates, who looked round and caught sight of Ugo, head and shoulders above those visible in the blood-dyed dim.

  ‘You are doing this after all?’ he asked, and since no one answered him, heads turned. Tiridates smiled, his face dancing with shadows and flame.

  ‘You think you can stand on your own without falling over at your age? You should be home, dozing.’

  ‘I’d leave it is what I’d do if I were you,’ Ugo grunted back.

  Tiridates laughed. ‘Fair enough. Couple of hours and you’ll be fine – no, wait, which way does time run again?’

  ‘Are you crazed?’ an anonymous voice asked, and Tiridates snorted, then slotted on his helmet.

  ‘Am I the one with the grey hairs fighting alongside my granda?’ he demanded in a voice made metal by the golden cat mask.

  Ugo leaned over him like a falling pillar. ‘Beware the old in a place where the young die.’

  There were chuckles at that until a voice boomed out, making them wince.

  ‘Get ready. Remember, there is no summa rudis in this fight, no let-offs, no mercy. It is the last pair standing who will win – or the last man if your pair-brother gets killed. You kill your man or he kills you. If you cling to the edge of the ring, men will come and make you fight in the middle.’

  The man, a referee normally, was dressed as Hermes and carried a hook on a stick which he waved meaningfully.

  Someone snarled at him. ‘You come at me with that and I will stick it down the bloody stump of your neck.’

  The referee adjudicated at contests when the fights were normal. This was not normal and hadn’t been done in so long that most were hazy on the rules. The one thing everyone was sure about was that no one else was about to get into the harena with forty desperate, skilled fighters and try and poke them with a sharp stick.

  The trumpets blared. The double gates ground open, letting in t
he sear of light and the great blaring roar, like some waiting beast. They shuffled forward out onto the sands, walking stiffly, the clench in their arms and legs louder than a hungry baby’s wail.

  Out in the ring, they moved swiftly, left and right along the curved walls, giving the crowd no more notice than if they were flies that swarmed horseshit.

  Drust blinked in the sunlight, took a deep breath that sucked up the faint ammoniac reek of the polluted sand, a smell so familiar it brought a physical stab in his core. He looked at Ugo, who looked back and grinned, then put his helmet on, becoming featureless and sinister.

  Soon there would be the scent of blood, Drust thought, fresh as forge iron. The gates banged shut, the thunderous noise of the eager crowd faded to small echoing shouts, and they waited for a distant figure on a far balcony. Drust slid into the cave of his helmet.

  The Emperor stood, raised one hand and waved. Trumpets blared – the crowd drowned everything out with a huge roar that buzzed Drust’s ears.

  The pair stood, backs to the wall, weapons ready, watching the pair on the right, the pair on the left, and only a score of feet between all of them. The pair on the left were moving even before the musicians took the trumpets from their lips. Easy meat, that’s what they think. The old farts – take them out quickly, early blood…

  They are moving for me, Drust thought wildly.

  The leader was a retiarius with a dark blue kilt held up by a broad belt, two greaves to the knee, bound in padded wraps and the elaborate arm guard with its flare at the shoulder. His head was bare save for a loop of ribbon, the ends hanging down past his chiselled cheekbones. He was grinning, the net looped over one shoulder like a cloak. He hefted the three-tined fishing spear and closed in while the crowd roared; he’d have been more impressive if he hadn’t been barley-fed, the diet aiming for layers of fat rather than muscle – but he was still fast on his feet.

  The other one was a hoplomachus, armed and dressed like Ugo, a shapeless head encased in iron, a big shield, yet he had somehow managed to get a spatha, a long sword.

  I am in trouble here, Drust thought, and hoped Ugo was watching his back from the pair on the other side. It came to him that they might not last long enough to work the plan.

  The retiarius flicked the net off his shoulder with an easy gesture, whipping it at Drust, who blocked; the lead weights rattled off his shield and he would have been ready to respond save that the hoplomachus was coming at him with the longsword.

  He parried it, letting the longer blade glissade off, then surprised the big armoured man with a fast respond, a stroke that might have taken him under one man-breast if he’d not shied away from it. Drust drew blood all the same and felt a leap of triumph at that.

  It was short-lived; the air inside his helmet was coarse and the sweat ran in his eyes. It was always the problem with enclosing helmets and big shields; you either finished your man quickly or ended up puking on your knees, drowned and blinded in sweat.

  He had lost sight of the hoplomachus – he had no edge-vision at all – and moved away from where he had last seen him until his back slammed into something solid. He heard voices and shouts behind it, loud enough to be heard over the howling crowd, and he knew it was one of the grilled doors leading into the harena; behind it were the beast handlers and the referees with their goads. He knew that because he felt one in his back, propelling him forward as a voice shouted at him to get to the middle.

  The retiarius closed in, then stopped in confusion, looking at a cushion which had impaled itself on his upturned fork. Let no one tell you that there is any refinement in the expensive front seats, Drust thought. Everyone is the same at the Games and the only difference was that the cushions at the front were better.

  He couldn’t tip the neck guard of the helmet back far enough to look up, but that was just as well; the retiarius, frowning, was shaking his fuscina to free it of the cushion, while more debris was showering down – fruit, vegetables, empty lunchboxes, wineskins and anything else they could hurl, all accompanied by bestial curses. The crowd were disgusted that they could not see.

  Drust lunged at his opponent, blurry with stinging sweat tears; his shield slammed the man and he yelped, lost interest in the impalement on his trident and backed off. There was a flash at the edge of the eyeholes in Drust’s helmet and he reared back into the grille, just avoiding the slash of the spatha. He felt the goad in his back and his anger made him whirl and stab through the square opening; the man with the goad looked astonished as the gladius went in his throat and out again, leaving him coughing blood and sinking to his knees.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Drust muffled out, then had to turn back to the retiarius, who had freed the trident and had it in one hand, close to the butt end. He was good with it too, flicking for the face, then the foot.

  There was a deep clanging sound and the hoplomachus appeared in Drust’s vision, staggering sideways as he dropped his longsword. Even as he straightened up, a second blow came whistling round and this one took him in the throat, just below the helmet.

  Drust saw Ugo appear in view, swinging the cut-off spear like a long axe. It confused the retiarius entirely; this was not how a hoplomachus was supposed to fight. Neither is one supposed to have a fucking spatha like your pair-brother, Drust thought savagely, then sprang forward.

  He stepped on the trailing edge of the net, the retiarius hauled it in and Drust went over, feeling his ankle tangle. In a fury he rolled into it, slashed the retiarius in the knee, just above the padded greave, then stuck the gladius in the man’s instep.

  He was levering himself upright when Ugo gave the man a massive two-handed blow across the belly, slicing the broad belt and going downward into the thigh. Then he thrust the point of it into the man’s face, straight into the gasping O of his mouth. The lips seemed to close obscenely round it, were cut in half when it came out. He vomited blood and fell to his knees.

  Drust finished him with the usual blow to the back of the neck, then stuck the sword in the sand and fumbled until he had the helmet off. He saw Ugo do the same and they stood for a moment, gasping in dusty air and wiping the salt-stinging sweat from their eyes.

  ‘The other ones?’ Drust managed to gasp.

  ‘I killed one. The other felt a pair come up behind him and backed off.’

  Ugo looked back to where he had been. ‘He’s gone down, I think – we’ll have this new pair to bother about soon.’

  ‘You hurt?’

  ‘Sweaty is all. I see you sixed a referee.’

  Drust was not at all sure whether ‘no rules’ included that, but he saw the angry faces behind the grille, heard the accusing voices. He would have spat at them but he had no moisture, and was also sure they wouldn’t be opening that grille and stepping into the harena.

  Around them the fights went on; several men were down, others were dancing in the middle of the harena, a couple of pairings were taking a watchful break like Drust and Ugo, who picked up a wineskin thrown from the front seats and shook it, then grinned and put it to his lips.

  ‘That has some decent swallow in it,’ he declared and passed it over for Drust to drink. It was calenum, the patricians’ favoured tipple, and the two gladiators drank it down and flung away the skin. Then Ugo hefted the spear and nodded in the direction of a pair who were coming closer; they were dressed in leather – mostly strap – carried two swords and wore full-face helmets. Fast and deadly then, working as a team. Young enough not to be gasping with sweat in their eyes, Drust thought.

  ‘Time,’ Ugo called out, almost gleefully – then he stepped forward and threw the spear. It was never meant to be thrown, wasn’t balanced and missing nearly half its length – but it arced the scant few feet, hit one of the swordsmen in the chest and bowled him backwards with a shriek. When he stopped sliding and the sand settled, the spear stuck out like a new tree and his pair-brother stared, horrified.

  Drust wished he had saved some of the wine to pour on his face and sluice away the paste made
from sand and sweat, but there was no time – he closed in on the stricken lone fighter, who looked, licked his lips and backed off.

  ‘Rear.’

  Drust allowed himself a swift, darting look and saw two more fighters coming at them from behind, hoping to sneak in; Ugo had turned on them and scooped up the dropped trident. Drust cursed, then lunged at the lone man.

  The man had lost faith when the spear skewered his pair-brother and now he committed the worst crime of all – he ran. After a few steps, Drust gave up chasing him, let him run into the howls and debris from the crowd. He’d only find more enemies in a ring, he thought, and turned back to help Ugo.

  He had shuffled through the glaring white sand for a few steps when he heard a change in the crowd, a subtlety he was attuned to over the years. When he whirled, it was to see the lone fighter charging at him, sweated face snarling.

  Bastard, Drust thought, he faked a retreat – a decent ploy but there were no tiros in this affair. He dropped to one knee and let the man slam like a bull on his shield, then levered with all his strength and a huge roar to help it.

  The fighter went over his head, trailing sand and yelps. When he crashed to the ground, Drust heard all the air leave him in a rasp, but gave him no time to find more; he thrust the gladius in his neck once, twice, three times, then risked a look to see how Ugo was doing.

  One of his opponents was down, but the big man was bleeding from the head and a slash across the thigh. The man against him might have been a murmillo when he started out but he had long since ditched anything heavy and was now armed with a long spatha and a spear. When Drust arrived at the edge of his vision, he backed off, panicked, but it did him no good. Drust and Ugo closed on him, slashing, stabbing, banging him with Drust’s big shield until he went down. Then they rained blows on him; Ugo finished him off with the rim of his hoplite shield, a crushing blow to the skull.

  They stopped, panting and gasping, looking around. There were bodies everywhere, but still a lot of men struggling and dancing. None of the Dis were out with their hook-and-chain servitors dressed as denizens of Hades; no one was going to be dragged off by the heels, not in this frantic affair.