by Robert Low
‘You sent me a message, Shayk Amjot.’
Drust deliberately called him by name, omitting the many polite honorifics, and it did not go unnoticed; the little man shifted on his cushions and then made a gesture that caused the shadows to shift. They coalesced into a new shape and both men looked at it.
A man in knee-length breeks and a simple tunic, the collar wrecked by sweat – an Army tunic, belted and with a dangling knife scabbard, Drust noted. He wore nothing else but solid Army boots and his face was round and bland, the colour of old olives and split across the middle by a waxed line of moustache that crept into a neck beard; it served to highlight a mouth whose lips were thin and unsmiling. He had eyes like goat droppings on a dune and smelled of nard, the perfumed oil legionaries preferred.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said in Latin, which threw Drust, but Kag had got to it at once.
‘Uranius,’ he said and the man inclined his head. Shayk Amjot laughed, a high cackling sound, and Uranius managed a thin smile.
‘My apologies for the subterfuge,’ Uranius said, ‘but you have seen how my commander behaves. He does not trust me.’
He saw them looking round and smiled. ‘Do not concern yourself looking for the doors. If murder was in this it would be done before now.’
‘Explain,’ Drust said simply and Uranius took a breath.
‘I was not always as you see,’ he began bitterly. ‘Once, I was commander of the guards of the Emperor.’
‘Which one?’ Kag demanded and Shayk Amjot cackled again – it was as good a warning as any that he spoke Latin well enough and Drust hoped everyone had noted it.
‘Antoninus,’ Uranius answered, then waved a hand as if swatting a fly. ‘Elagabalus as was.’
‘You were purged,’ Kag interrupted, grinning with a complete lack of sympathy. It was Kag’s belief that if you fastened yourself to any star you only had yourself to blame when it hit the ground.
‘We all were,’ Uranius answered. ‘Some more than others – I was blessed by Fortuna to only end up here, staring at the arses of camels.’
‘Nothing wrong with camels,’ Praeclarum said. ‘In the desert.’
The Shayk leaned forward the better to look at her. ‘What is her name?’
Drust told him, not liking the new steer of this conversation; the Shayk clasped his gnarled hands together and grinned. Then he repeated her name in his own tongue. ‘Remarkable’, Kisa translated, which was close enough.
‘What do you want for this woman called Remarkable?’
Kag laughed and Drust thought it at least polite to tell him a sale was not offered and the woman was not a slave. The Shayk subsided sullenly, and Uranius looked at him then back to Drust.
‘The Shayk collects exotica,’ he said smoothly. ‘You may have seen one outside.’
‘The dancer,’ Drust said and Uranius nodded.
‘That was the spur for your being here,’ Uranius went on. ‘The message you have was carried by this woman – she is called Diwan.’
The Shayk chuckled. Drust knew diwan to be the name for a kilne, a Roman couch, but he said nothing; it was Praeclarum who said it, flat and blank.
‘A piece of furniture you lie on.’
‘Just so,’ Uranius said warningly. ‘However, that name is not the one she was born with. She knows Latin well enough to sing a lullaby – and write it down.’
‘Meaning what?’ Kag demanded.
Uranius shrugged, but Drust saw the man’s eyes hood like a gloved hawk.
‘Meaning Dog and Manius, who cannot read nor write, got her to pen their message and carry it a long way.’
No one answered, for it begged more answers, and they did what they always did and waited.
‘There is a new dynasty, from the House of Sasan,’ Uranius went on. ‘When the camel-herders who have nibbled off pieces of the old Parthian kingdoms are dealt with, the Sasan will be a new power in the East. For now, Rome has respite. This will help us.’
Drust saw Shayk Amjot’s narrow-eyed squint and thought that more of a true feeling for Rome than any of his bland smiles.
‘Us?’ Drust asked. Uranius nodded.
‘You are Drust – Servillius Drusus. The one with you who looks as if he would bite is called Kag. I do not know the woman, but Kisa Shem-Tov is known to me.’
Kisa had no graces left, not even one which permitted him to look embarrassed or ashamed.
‘You are sometime gladiators, though freedmen and citizens, I understand,’ Uranius went on. ‘The others of your little familia are Quintus, the mavro Sib, and the northerner, a barbarian from the Germanies called Ugo.’
‘Kisa is indeed known far and wide,’ Kag said, grinning viciously at the little man, who widened his eyes and spread his hands.
‘I learned this not from Kisa but in conversations with others – mainly the one you know as Dog, though he was Crixus to me. He went around veiled, which was wise, for his face is a horror.’
This was so we know he has seen Dog, Drust thought. The clever ink marks of a skull had been worked onto his face so that it looked like his head was inside out. Once seen, never forgotten. His heart was pounding with this confirmation that both of them were alive, but he tried to show nothing.
‘So you know Dog. And Manius?’
‘Manius is tall, with part of his face and an ear melted. No hair grows on that side.’
Drust nodded. That’s what Roman Fire does if you get too close, he thought, but mostly he was filled with the savage exultation that both of them were still in the world. Take that up the arse, Dis Pater…
‘Shayk Amjot informed me,’ Uranius went on, ‘that the woman came down from the north with a party of traders – the Silk Road is not one trail but many. She came from the place your friends went to, bringing their message for the Shayk – and, ultimately, you.’
Drust stirred. ‘Then we must speak with her…’
‘Her mind is gone,’ Uranius replied and then looked bitterly at Shayk Amjot. ‘She is now dependent on the mercy of the Shayk.’
‘If she has knowledge of Dog,’ Kag said viciously, ‘it might be better if the Shayk gave her to us.’
Uranius scowled. ‘Dog and Manius are as dependent on the Shayk. Some time before, a caravan came down the same route, from Hyrcania they claimed. They dealt in beasts and had one in a cage – a huge cat with fangs and claws.’
‘Tiger,’ Kag said with awe. ‘A Hyrcanian tiger.’
‘They are long gone,’ Kisa declared loftily and Drust laughed him into frowns.
‘The Shayk bought the beast,’ Uranius said. ‘We both saw the worth in it and so did the Emperor Antoninus – Elagabalus – when he came here from Emesa. The Shayk gifted it, but the Emperor asked me to organise a caravan to go and find more of them. That was the year before…’
‘Before Elagabalus was ousted in favour of his cousin,’ Shayk Amjot interjected in a high, slightly cracked flute of a voice, the Latin only slightly accented. Drust and the others could only stare until Praeclarum cleared her throat.
‘Why would you want strange cats?’
There was a moment of bewilderment, then the Shayk cackled and Uranius smiled thinly.
‘I want this woman,’ the Shayk said. ‘She is delicious.’
‘Touch one of your little rat claws on me,’ Praeclarum declared firmly, ‘and I will gut you like a fish.’
There was a moment of shocked silence and then the Shayk laughed and clapped his hands with delight. Uranius stepped into the coiling tension.
‘Such a beast is a rarity,’ he began, but Kag growled across him.
‘Such a cat is much more than that. It is a prize worth its own weight in gold – and it weighs a great deal.’
Praeclarum radiated a flush of embarrassment. ‘Does it have six legs? Wings?’
‘Stripes,’ Drust told her, watching Kag’s glaucous eyes, glazed with all the possibilities. ‘Size of a small horse and thought to have been hunted out of the world.’
&nbs
p; He fell silent, for he had seen one only in his lifetime and was glad he did not have to face such a thing in the harena. Even dead it had been a fearsome engine of muscle and claw and fang that sent a chill through him.
Uranius saw that he knew the beast and nodded. ‘The Hyrcanian tiger has been hard to find for years – some said that there were no more, that the harena had devoured them all.’
‘I saw one when I was a boy,’ Drust answered dully. ‘Never since.’
‘The Shayk gifted this one to the Emperor Antoninus in honour of his name as the Sun God, Elagabalus, but in the way Syrians have it – Ilāh hag-Gabal, God of the Mountain. It died gloriously in the Flavian and the Emperor wanted more.’
Nicely fawned, Drust thought, flicking a glance at the impassive old man. Kag was less admiring.
‘So now the new boy-emperor Alexander wants the same,’ he said flatly and Uranius nodded.
‘He wanted a new caravan to follow the old across the Wall of Alexander and into the lands of Hyrcania,’ he said.
‘You sent an expedition there. You sent Manius and Dog.’
Uranius nodded. ‘Yes. Dog led it. Several score camels, packers, drivers, scouts, guards.’
Kag laughed aloud.
‘You gave Dog a caravan,’ Drust said dully. ‘And sent them off. And are surprised you never heard from them again.’
‘They probably went straight back to Antiochus and are now somewhere in Subura, enjoying the money they made from selling camels,’ Kag added.
Shayk Amjot slapped his knee and cackled out his laugh, nodding appreciatively. ‘So I said, so I said.’
That was when Drust looked sideways to catch Kag’s eye; this old pirate would not have trusted Dog and Manius with such a camel train unless he was not the one ultimately paying for it. Someone else had stood surety, someone powerful enough for Shayk Amjot to obey.
It would take no less than an Emperor, Drust thought.
The Shayk leaned forward. ‘We thought them dead and gone,’ he said. ‘Until the woman came with a message and we knew they were alive.’
Drust’s ears roared for a moment and his vision blurred. When it cleared he found himself looking at Kisa Shem-Tov’s hesitant smile.
‘You knew. You had it sent on to us.’
‘It was meant for you,’ Uranius corrected. ‘We made sure it reached you.’
Drust looked at Kisa Shem-Tov, who had stayed silent and shadowed and now blenched under the cold eyes. His smile was wavering thin.
‘So,’ Drust said, more to the Shayk than Uranius. ‘Now you know why we are here. Why are you?’
‘One camel for one man,’ the Shayk said suddenly, and Uranius blinked, taken off balance. Kag, on the other hand, merely grinned back.
‘Each one carries water in two amphora quadrantal – which should be covered – and as many congius waterskin as you can pile on it. They will always leak.’
‘We took four hundred men and six hundred camels down from Alexandria into the lands of the Himyar and Saba,’ he added. ‘Half the camels died, killed by the goat-fuckers of the desert tribes, and the rest of starvation and thirst – never let it be said that camels don’t need water. They need it to eat and if they don’t eat and are worked on long marches, they die like flies.’
Uranius was stunned to silence, but Shayk Amjot chuckled and nodded, satisfied.
‘These will do well, Uranius. You have told me true about them all save this Remarkable.’
Uranius shifted slightly. ‘I do not know much of her, save that she was purchased as a slave following the death of the wife of a lanista.’
Even Drust had not known this and could see that Kag was wide-eyed with wanting to know more. He did not have to wait long.
‘Something about a toothstick,’ he added, puzzled. There was silence and then the Shayk’s slightly amused voice cut it.
‘You killed a woman over a toothstick?’
‘Not mine,’ Praeclarum answered flatly and now it was the Shayk’s turn to be surprised; everyone else too – Drust and Kag stared open-mouthed, and Kisa crouched, his eyes glittering as he sucked in this new knowledge.
‘She did not like me using her toothstick,’ Praeclarum went on, trying to keep her voice level and seemingly unconcerned. She even spread her hands. ‘Some women are strange about such matters, it seems. We had shared intimacies in the times she demanded liaison – our mouths were on parts that… well, I need not become gross.’
Everyone stared; the Shayk licked his withered lips and Praeclarum smiled.
‘Yet she objected to my using her toothstick and grew angry when I pointed out how ludicrous that was. Grew angrier still when I asked if she shared one with her husband. Grew unreasonable when I said I was more at risk than her, given the poor state of his teeth.’
She stopped and frowned. ‘In retrospect, that was perhaps unwise. But I was angry.’
‘You killed this… woman… over a toothstick?’ Kag repeated disbelievingly.
Praeclarum spread apologetic arms. ‘Not “this woman”. Wife of the lanista – well, you are a slave, so you do as ordered. I did not kill her. She came at me with a silly little paring knife and I believe there was stored resentment regarding interests from certain other quarters – not encouraged by me, you understand – and this lanista’s wife did not care for it. Besides, it was the hot season, you understand, which makes everyone a little mad. I stepped aside and she went out the shutters, over the balcony, and fell into the street. Naked. Broke her neck. The lanista did not want to admit what had been going on, so it was hushed up as an accident – besides, female fighters were no longer of value, so I was put up for sale, to be bought by Quintus on behalf of this…’
She stopped, not knowing exactly what the group was, but it let Drust find some words.
‘School,’ he said dully. ‘We are a School. Of gladiators.’
Shayk Amjot smiled his knowing smile, which Drust was growing to hate. ‘Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari. I will endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword,’ he said, but now no one was surprised by what this Persian knew.
‘They are perfect,’ he added to Uranius then turned to Drust. ‘It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience, as your Caesar once said.’
Kag smiled, though it was cold. ‘Best of all to find those who can do both – but the Divine Julius was never one to endure pain, for all his bold words. He had folk to put up his tent on campaign after all. The only pain he suffered was a dozen daggers in the bowel and it did not last long.’
The Shayk beamed, wisely not showing his gums, and it annoyed Drust on a visceral level that a raised-up desert-walker should be applauding their education in philosophy.
‘You want us to go after this lost caravan,’ he said brusquely, ‘which seems to me to be pouring good money after bad. Besides, you have the Army here. Uranius has the best camels around – send him.’
Shayk Amjot nodded slowly, then laced his furze-root fingers as far as they would go and leaned forward a little.
‘Two desert legions exist in Rome,’ he said in his soft, high, accented Latin. ‘One is the lie of bold fighting men and the women who flutter at the feet of these dashing, romantic warriors of the sands. The other is the truth – that they are the scum of the world, controlled only by the vine stick.’
Drust heard Uranius clear his throat meaningfully, but Kag laughed.
‘No argument from us,’ he answered as languidly as he could. ‘Only the goat-fucking mavro of the desert are a match for their thieving and murder – and exceed all in treachery.’
Shayk Amjot growled and the room seemed to grow dark, as if the air had sucked the lamps low. Uranius cleared his throat warningly.
‘I was the one who organised and financed the original caravan,’ the Shayk declared, and Drust looked at Uranius then, saw in those eyes the lie of that.
‘I am willing to do so a
gain for these beasts are worth four times their weight – more – in gold,’ the Shayk went on, and this time Uranius had veiled his stare so Drust could not be sure – but he smelled the lie in that too.
The Shayk suddenly paused and hauled out a coin, which he spun through the air. If he was hoping for them to fumble it to ring on the floor, he was disappointed – Drust flicked a hand and snatched it, then turned it over in his fingers.
It was an aureus, a new mint – not pure, because no coin was these days – but with a high enough gold content to be worth what it claimed. It had the Emperor’s portrait on one side and the Flavian amphitheatre on the other.
‘You see what it says?’ Shayk Amjot demanded.
‘P M TR P II COS PP,’ Drust intoned. ‘Pontifex Maximus Tribunicia Potestatis Bis Consul Pater Patriae. A list of titles.’
‘Priest of Rome, Consul of the People and the State,’ the Shayk corrected, and Kag grunted assent.
‘I hope for its brothers and in quantity,’ he growled. The Shayk seemed to agree with a flap of one hand.
‘You see the image of the Flavian?’ he said and now he was talking to Drust, who nodded. ‘What does it mean?’
‘The Emperor likes his games,’ he answered and the Shayk nodded.
‘You only put images on coins which make a statement to the people who will see and use them,’ he declared. ‘This is a new coin, minted by a new Emperor. Young Alexander Severus has, rightly, put his portrait on the front, so he becomes known while his coins are used more and more because they are trusted. Thus, he is trusted – you see?’
Drust did, though he did not like to be lectured on the Imperium Romanum by a camel-herder, however rich. For all that, he was curious. ‘And the Flavian?’ he asked.
‘Because that place has now become the focus of politics in Rome,’ the Shayk answered simply. ‘And thus the wider Empire. Feed the Flavian, you feed the people of the Empire with what they need, you feed the middle class and they feed the ones on the Palatine.’
‘The Flavian was damaged by the whim of Vulcanus,’ Uranius added meaningfully and Drust nodded; they’d all known of the fabric cracks that had closed the entire edifice down after the earth had shifted. It had reopened but had been littered with builder’s mess for a long time after.
