by Robert Low
They spoke among themselves and with the women and the others in the caravanserai, switching seamlessly between three tongues. Two of the girls returned, wearing elaborate costumes in eye-watering colours, and the third tapped a drum while the pair danced.
They had their left hands on one hip and bent like reeds in a high wind while they twirled, the long, flowing skirts turning, the bells at wrists and ankles jingling. They all sat entranced until the girls pulled down their tops to reveal small, round breasts, and slippered towards the roars of approval, while hard-eyed men watched from the sidelines to make sure no quarrels started.
Praeclarum smiled and stared straight ahead. It would have been polite to ask her to leave, but Drust did not want to ask her to leave. In the end, she rose up and left of her own accord, despite the chaffering from Ugo, who had the drummer woman on his lap, and Quintus, who had the other two on either arm.
Kag slid to Drust’s side, head to head so he could talk above the din without shouting; Drust saw Kisa look at them, then pretend he had not.
‘Stercorinus has gone to find a temple he has heard of,’ Kag said. ‘I set him to finding out what he could about where this Farnah-vant lairs – and where his slaves are kept.’
‘Is he the one for it?’ Drust asked. ‘I hear he is god-hagged by prophesies of his death. Is there a temple to his god here?’
‘The temple is not to his god – perhaps he is looking to change, see if he can avoid this prophecy. Mind you, it is one of those fire-worshipper temples, so that’s no good thing for us. Perhaps you should question Praeclarum more on it – last thing we need is a Stercorinus rolling his eyes and drooling.’
A bench went over and Quintus was glaring at someone who was blatantly annoyed at his monopoly on the girls, but Ugo stood up and the man backed away. This will not end well, Drust said and Kag nodded agreement.
‘Best we put a stop to it.’
‘Get them out of here,’ Drust instructed. ‘We have rooms to go to.’
‘They will take the girls,’ Kag warned and Drust pointed to the man who ran the taberna. Kag grinned and went off. Salt it with silver, Drust thought. It was always the way…
He went to her in the dark, fumbling up the stairs to where she had a room of her own, away from those who would quarrel and try to tup her. The room was dark and he heard her turn in the bed, so he paused, frozen.
‘Who is that there?’
He leaned his back on the door, closing it.
‘Me. Drust.’
There was a rustling as she got up and then a soft chip-chip and sparks flew.
‘I need to know more about Stercorinus,’ he said, and the soft flare of flame on candle stub brought her into view, no more than an arm length away. ‘Kag sent him out to ask about Farnah-vant and slaves and anything else that might be useful. I am wondering if he is sound.’
‘Liar.’
She held the candle higher and the flame made her face golden, her eyes flicker with small lights. Her laugh was low and hoarse.
Drust tried for words and failed. He knew she was right and he fought to deny it, but he wasn’t ready for this. Neither was she. She did not move away when he went closer, so near he could smell the clean of her and see the flush on her skin. When he kissed her, he felt her lips, soft as pulp and her breath smelled of citron. Her head was a deep fuzz of new growth.
She set the candle down and went to the truckle bed and climbed on it, tucking her feet up; she looked like the girl she had once been and Drust’s mouth was dry.
‘Quintus says it is always a bad idea, this,’ she said and laughed nervously.
‘It is for Quintus,’ he said. ‘Yet you are here, looking like a bride.’
‘And you are here, with your mouth open and the eyes of someone needing his colt watered.’
Drust flushed. She laughed softly and held out her arms.
* * *
They moved in a group and only got a few looks from those who wondered at sun-slapped grim men dressed like wanderers from the Grass Sea beyond the Red Serpent, and yet so clearly Roman. Yet it was the bāzār of Asaak and folk were used to stranger sights; they parted briefly, then fell back in behind the group, a wake of noisy crowd who were only interested in profit.
In one section wooden stalls were piled high with skeins of wool and thread, glowing with all the colours of the rainbow. Next to it, brushes and brooms hung like broken branches and baskets in all shapes and sizes dangled from the awning rims like garish mushrooms.
There were bales of fabric everywhere in shrieking colours and patterns, and folk who argued, crumpling the cloth with their hands to test texture.
There was a stir among the throng around the craftsmen, where Ugo and the others were headed, past the rope-makers to the leather and metal workers banging great sheets of brass, copper or iron. They were making them into pans, pots and cauldrons; Drust looked round, smelling the forge metal and disappointed that all they did with it was tinsmithing.
The stir rippled like a pool from unseen fish and they all saw the horseman, armoured in a coat of splint-metal, his helmet off so that everyone saw his savage glare. Behind him came men in leather and on foot, holding panting dogs on chains, and in the middle a woman stumbled and fell, staggered up and was dragged on, fastened to the crupper of the uncaring rider.
The Brothers backed off a little way, into the raw cotton and combed wool piled in bales. The young men beating the wool with long thin whips stopped to stare unsmiling at the procession; the wisps fell round them like a memory of snow.
‘No Empress, that,’ Ugo offered.
‘A good eye you have, giant of the Germanies,’ replied Kag laconically, ‘but the man beating her with a stick is a better sign that she is a slave of no account.’
The whack of the stick on the woman was loud and sent her spinning, only to be dragged a little way until she scrabbled back to unsteady legs. She was fine featured under the dirt and bruising, and Drust stepped forward.
‘Greetings to you, Mistress, in the name of the gods above and below.’
Her head came up, wobbling on the stick of her neck. She knows Latin, Drust thought triumphantly, then turned to see the others watching. He reached up and took the bridle of the armoured rider’s horse.
‘Hold up,’ he said. The rider snarled and Drust felt Kag and Ugo close in. The moment hung like a bad cloak on a shaky peg.
‘That is a poor way to treat a woman,’ Drust declared in Persian and the man looked down astonished – as if a monkey had spoken to him, Drust thought; he tried not to boil up.
‘Step aside. She is no woman, but a slave bound for Farnah-vant.’
‘A slave, eh? Then it is a poor way to display trade goods. If I buy, I expect them in good condition.’
The rider jerked at his reins, but Drust’s grip was stronger. The rider scowled. The woman’s eyes had lost some dullness.
‘She is not for sale, even if you rag-arses could afford her. Now stand aside.’
He raised the little whip he carried and heard the growl from too many throats just before he saw what made it; the whip lowered and he blustered instead.
‘She is bound for Farnah-vant and her fate is sealed. So stand aside, dogs, or face the same.’
Drust let go the bridle of the horse, smiled at the rider as he jerked savagely, making the horse squeal and toss its head. The man sneered his way past and the cavalcade followed on; the woman turned red, hopeless eyes briefly on them, then was swept on into the crowd.
‘What was that?’ demanded Kisa, appalled at the stares from all round. The others knew more and waited, looked steadily at Drust.
‘That was Fortuna,’ Drust said. ‘Follow the goddess.’
‘Looked like one of those girls from last night,’ Quintus declared. ‘All of them, in fact.’
‘You should know – you had all of them.’
‘It has been a time,’ Quintus admitted, grinning.
They went on, shouldering through the stink of
the meat stalls and men carrying bloody carcasses on their shoulders, stripping flesh from heads of sheep and smiling-proud of their agile hands.
They moved round porters carrying heavy loads, ducked past shrieking demands to consider wares of all kinds, gasped through the swirling throat-catch of spices piled on trays, a rich flood of colour and scent that made everyone stare as if their heads were on stalks.
‘Look,’ Praeclarum said once, pointing. ‘That is where those women get the stuff they put on their hands.’
‘Tell Quintus,’ Kag advised. ‘He thinks they have given him a rash on his nethers.’
They laughed and moved past the bright red dye that women used on the palms of their hands, for no reason anyone could understand. The stalls drifted to threadbare, then shifted into other buildings. Here were two-floored tabernae for travellers, others were caravanserai compounds for the favoured.
One of these was a fortress which brought everyone up short, watching the rider, the men, the dogs and the staggering woman swallowed by the shadowed door. This one had four floors at the front, a gatehouse tower of intimidating solidity. The other sides, two floors high, formed a courtyard. If it ran true to the way others were built, Drust thought, then the other buildings were used as stables and storage on the ground, while the floors above were used as living quarters.
It was fitted with huge wooden gates, decorated façades and high-hooped entrances, and the top floors had large, arched windows with shutters and latticed coverings for when the weather got too warm. But this was a giant of a place.
‘It is hot now,’ Kag said when the high openings were pointed out, ‘and the nights are warm – those shutters will be open. An agile person could be up those walls and in easily enough.’
‘Let me know when you find one,’ Drust said scornfully. ‘What would such an ape do when he got up there and inside – open those big heavy doors to let in the rampaging army of a handful of men? I know enough about these places to know there will be many guards all over the place – many slaves too. We could spend hours trying to find her.’
‘Fortuna will favour us,’ Quintus pointed out. ‘That slave speaks Latin and I am betting sure she knows where to find this Empress.’
‘Perhaps she was the Empress,’ Kisa offered and they fell to debating the point, eventually deciding that the woman was one of the others, like the one in the grave and the one who had escaped back to Shayk Amjot.
‘Handmaidens,’ Praeclarum said scornfully. ‘To a woman much prized, who has been here for four years at least and may not want to leave at all, let alone quietly.’
‘That is a good point, well made,’ Kag agreed, then grinned again. ‘It comes to me that if anyone could get in those shutters it would be a remarkable woman like yourself.’
She took him by the arm and hustled him right up into the lee of the walls, then slapped his palm against it. He stroked, looked up and then nodded grudgingly.
‘Smooth as the arse of last night’s whore,’ he admitted. ‘I had no trouble climbing that but I doubt anyone would scale this.’
‘Besides,’ Quintus offered, ‘our Praeclarum must be exhausted after all the sleeping she did last night. We saved you a place by the fire, but you never came down?’
‘I did not want to witness you rutting,’ she answered, and Drust looked left and right, anywhere but directly at her.
‘Well, we can hardly go through the door,’ he said, to change the subject.
‘A double fist will fell any enemy if it be delivered without warning,’ Ugo rumbled and then shrugged. ‘I have done so many a time.’
‘Not here, I think,’ Kag replied, thrusting a beggar out of the way with a disgusted snort, and never breaking the stride of his speech as he berated the man. ‘Go and fight someone, or find work, you bitch-licking tick. Become a slave if you must – but begging? Have you no pride?’
‘I have traded only a little,’ Kisa said and they stopped to listen to him, frowning. ‘I have seen you at the work of it and know you to be skilled. I have watched long hundreds of goods in trains up and down camel trails all over Syria, and in the end realised that folk trade only the one thing – do you know what it is?’
One thing? There was a moment of pause, then Drust answered. ‘Desire.’
‘Just so,’ Kisa said admiringly. ‘Traders have what people want and everyone’s desire is different, so you have to find it if you are a trader. That takes many forms, so you also have to keep a note of it or trust to memory. In there will be bills of lading, lists and more that will tell us where to find the woman we saw, and she will tell us where to find the woman we want. Since this is the biggest building of its kind in the city, there also will be Farnah-vant.’
‘None of which gets us inside,’ Drust replied, bringing them back to the main problem.
Stercorinus stopped so suddenly that folk collided with his back and cursed, hopping to prevent knocking him over. He simply nodded down the street and they all saw it, a set of double doors set down a ramp. A side entrance into the fortress, open to reveal barrels and bales and sweating slaves and watching guards.
‘If we get in quick and quiet,’ Kag said softly in Drust’s ear, ‘we can pluck her out like snicking meat from a whelk with a little knife.’
* * *
It was, as Ugo said while they ate their evening meal in the insect-pinged torchlight, a bloody big whelk and a piss-poor knife.
‘Who here is skilled in sneaking?’ he demanded and waited.
‘Quintus,’ Kag said. No one argued.
‘Which of us who can sneak cannot read?’ Quintus said and slapped his chest.
‘Who can read and sneaks like two camels fucking?’ Kag added and slapped Kisa on the chest; the little Jew acknowledged the laughter.
‘I will go,’ said Praeclarum. Quintus ruffled her bristling hair, which made her smile. Once, Drust thought, she’d have taken off his hand – the thought made him warm inside, a feeling he suddenly realised he had not had since Sib died.
‘We should all go,’ he said suddenly and then faltered when he felt the eyes; he could not say it was because he liked the glow of brotherhood. Kag, however, nodded and sucked barley porridge off his spoon. He had not shaved nor had his hair cropped because, though they wished for it, they could not look like Romans.
‘It’s sound enough – but we should leave Ugo behind with Kisa.’
Drust knew why he did it. They all did – especially Kisa, who tried to look sorrowed about it while hiding his relief. But Drust did not want it, not now. There had to be a gesture, if nothing else, to the ring of palms.
‘We will all go. Even big Ugo can wait in the street and thump those we miss.’
Ugo lifted a hand, turning as if to an amphitheatre crowd in victory, but Kag scowled.
‘The Jew will raise the alarm first chance he gets.’
‘Why would he?’ demanded Stercorinus mildly, as usual surprising everyone from the shadows. ‘He will then die with the rest of us.’
Kag had no answer; Kisa looked sick and stared at the floor.
‘So,’ Drust said, ‘we all know what we are doing? We find the lists and ladings, whatever is written that will lead us to the slave woman we saw. We get her to tell us where the Empress is kept and where we can find Farnah-vant. We free the one and take the head of the other.’
‘Be sure to get it the right way round,’ Kag added, and the laughs were as soft as the padding of wolves setting out on a hunt.
Chapter Twelve
They came down the night-washed street hugging the shadows and sweating in dark hoods, even if they were only loops of faded red cloaks. Kisa led the way, while Drust brought up the rear, and in the moonlight and empty of people, the street seemed larger, Farnah-vant’s citadel bigger than ever.
Voices shrank them into the shadows, and Praeclarum slunk off a little way and peered round the corner. When she returned, she had a thoughtful look.
‘It is the entrance we saw. There are slaves mo
ving off into the building. They have been unloading goods from a camel-string.’
Kisa raised his head slightly and sniffed like a dog finding a new arse. ‘Smell that? Achaemenis, which is added to wine to make it stronger.’
Kag sniffed, found nothing but camel shit and scowled when he reported it. ‘How do you know the smell of this… stuff?’
‘Achaemenis,’ Kisa repeated patiently and stared Kag in the eye. ‘We use it too, as frumentarii. You feed the right amount in a couple of cups of wine and a prisoner will tell you anything you want to know.’
‘Kag does that after a bowl or two of bad Kos,’ Ugo rumbled, but Kisa never took his eyes from Kag.
‘If you get the measure wrong, though, there is only death in it,’ he said.
‘No matter to us if these Persians like their wine strong. It means the doors are open for us,’ Quintus flung in. ‘Move, brothers.’
‘What will you do?’ Stercorinus asked drily. ‘Rush in and slaughter everyone?’
‘It would be a fine matter,’ Kisa said, white-faced with terror in the moonlight, ‘if this was achieved with no killing at all, which will raise alarm and we will never escape. Also, rushing in is likely to cause the same.’
‘Did you miss the part about cutting the head off the ruler here?’ Quintus pointed out and Kisa’s face flamed, visible even in the dim.
‘Apart from that one,’ he muttered.
‘Then we must be quick,’ Drust said and laid out a plan which left Kisa trying to work spit up into his dry mouth at what he had to do. Which was simple enough. Once the slaves had gone, dragging the grumbling beasts with them to where they could enter the compound and stables, Kisa walked up to the open door, kicked it hard, and tried to smile when the truculent face appeared.
‘We… ah… missed a camel,’ he said to it and Kag rolled his eyes. Drust could almost hear the squeak of the guard’s brows as he frowned.
