by Robert Low
‘Anyone hear eagles?’ he demanded. ‘I was listening for them all the time I fought this one. He is brave and skilled, so I thought this might be the time…’
‘Out,’ said Drust, and the woman struggled and fought and shrieked until Praeclarum turned and slapped her once forward, once back, rattling her head. She started to fall and Ugo snatched her up over one shoulder.
‘That will part pay for the handmaidens,’ Praeclarum scowled. Drust stared at the sprawled corpse of Farnah-vant, the raggled neck spilling a viscous pool. He had ruled here for a long time and ruled well if all they had heard was true. Fine and handsome and as unlike Bashto as shit to shining sun – and now he was nothing at all at the hands of a mad Palmyran with bad hair and a strange sword.
They went down through the smoke, cringing from the flames which spouted from the room and the one below it. There were shouts and the screams of maddened beasts, but they made it all the way to what they thought was the bottom, staggering out into clear air, where they wiped streaming eyes and coughed.
By the time they realised they had taken a wrong turn and come out into the central courtyard, it was too late to go back. For a moment they stood in confusion, surrounded by running people and horses and camels, too panicked to notice them. So far…
‘How do we get out?’ Kisa yelled, his voice rising with fear.
‘This way,’ Drust said, though he had no more of an idea than anyone else. Four or five steps convinced him of how wrong he was and, just as he was about to turn and tell everyone to run the other way, a dragon bellowed and Drust watched in fascination as the whole of the main fortress heaved, the plank floors splintering upward as if driven by a fearsome breath. Then light and heat and that same scorching breath slammed into them all like a fist.
There was a long moment, an era, of floating, of a whirl of strange images – wood and shattered mud-brick tumbling in mid-air, a rain of firefly embers, the woman with her mouth open and arms flailing as if she was trying to fly.
Something hit Drust like a horse-kick, drove all the air out and rolled him over and over. He saw flames and a dark shape – Dis, he thought dazedly, but the pain let him know he wasn’t dead.
He tried to look round, but the head on his shoulders didn’t seem to be his own and would not work. When he got it wobbling, he saw blurred, double images of folk running one way, camels another, and fires everywhere. Jupiter, he thought dully. Jupiter threw a firebolt…
Someone coughed and heaved up out of the rubble and dust next to him and it took him a long moment to realise it was the Empress, looking like something coming out of a tomb. In another second, Kisa unearthed himself nearby with a series of gasps like a breaching whale.
‘Others,’ he said, but Drust was lunging at the woman as she tried to run, grabbing her by a torn sleeve and clutching her like a lover.
Kisa looked up and began to stumble away from them both, while Kag turned at the little man’s yelling and stopped tugging Ugo to his feet.
‘Run,’ said a voice, and Drust realised it was Praeclarum, but he was trying to hold onto the woman, who struggled and cursed, though the sounds seemed to Drust to come from a long way off. He did not even recognise the fingers clutching the woman, nor the hand, nor the arm they were all attached to; he could not have willed them loose if he’d tried. They staggered together in rubble and ruin.
Then he saw her look of horror – upwards, at the sky – followed it and saw the entire remaining wall of Farnah-vant’s fortress seem to waver, to rock slightly, as if all the screams bounced it. That’s why Kisa was running, Drust realised.
It fell in one solid piece like a collapsing cliff. The Empress gave a great cry and tried to spring away, but he held her locked with both arms and saw her reach one beseeching hand as if to claw into the dark and be plucked to safety – then the shadow of the falling wall blotted out everything else.
Drust heard Praeclarum scream, but a great roaring rush of sound and dust beat it away, scattered all sound, all sense.
Drust was still standing – or at least he thought he was. No pain – perhaps that was the last gift of the gods. They drive the life from you instantly and you feel nothing, don’t even know you are lying flat and pulped. Perhaps this is my shade, he thought, perhaps this was how a shade felt, standing bewildered like the man he had once been and no more substantial than the clouding dust, waiting to fade finally from the world of men…
Then he felt every bruise and ache and cut. Felt her, clutched close, shaking and crying. She moved, her face lifted, a bewildered patina of sweat, dust and tears. The haze billowed and Drust was suddenly aware of Kag on one side, coughing and snotting, Ugo on another, slapping Quintus awake. Kisa crawled out from a pile of dust and rubble like a spider.
The Empress and Drust stood upright, perfectly framed by the arched window whose flimsy lattice had been splintered out. The rest of the massive wall lay in cracked lumps around them.
‘Jupiter,’ Drust managed to croak, and Praeclarum came up, blinking into his face. She elbowed the weeping Empress to one side, took his filthy face in both hands and kissed him with trembling, dirt-covered lips.
Kag staggered wearily upright, weaving. ‘You are the favoured cock of Fortuna,’ he said, looking at the perfect framing. Then he shook his head and stumbled on.
Drust could not deny it, but all of the moment was kissing Praeclarum.
That stopped when Stercorinus lurched up, pasted with sweat and dust, his sword in one hand and the head still in the other. His clothes – those that weren’t ripped off – were tattered and blackened.
‘This way,’ he said hoarsely and pointed with the sword. ‘There is a way out to the street.’
Ugo hauled up the Empress, who was lolling and mumbling, while Quintus paused, snatched up a swathe of cloth from the ground and slapped out the embers. ‘Wrap that head,’ he growled, and Stercorinus saw the sense in it.
They moved over the shattered compound, littered with mewling camels and mules, crawling, running people. The ground was pocked with broken bales, burning debris and shattered pieces of mud brick; no one bothered with them, one more stumbling group in a crowd of mayhem.
‘What happened?’ Kisa wanted to know, half falling and hauled up by Praeclarum.
‘Hubris,’ Kag declared savagely. ‘All that naptha pitch in one place…’
The burning oil from the fire I started, Drust remembered, dripping through the gaps in the floorboards…
They came out into streets where people ran in confusion and fought through them to the market. The traders had all taken their goods in for the night, but those with homes above the shops were out, shouting worriedly to each other.
The woman started to stir on Ugo’s shoulder and Drust looked at Kag, who stepped sideways and grabbed an awning – without missing a stride he tore it free from the lashings, ignoring the annoyed shouts of the owner.
Praeclarum walked with him and used her knife to cut strips off, using one to gag the Empress. Then, in a last flick of expertise, Ugo dropped the woman onto the spread awning and she was wrapped and trussed and back on his shoulder with only a few strides broken.
They got to the gates out of the city and leading to the caravanserai – only one guard was left, looking uneasy and gawping at the flame-dyed carnage. He waved his spear and said ‘curfew’ in Persian.
A deep coughing thump reverberated out and a blob of fire shot into the sky, trailing a fiery tail. The guard gawped.
‘Tell it to that,’ Kisa said and elbowed past him. Kag, beaming, followed and the guard stepped aside, bewildered and afraid. If he saw the awning bundle at all, he wisely fastened his lip on it.
Inside, they went to their quarters while people huddled and asked what was happening and whether it would be safer to pack up and leave – fire was something they did not like.
They ignored them and gathered what gear they had, realising now how tattered and bloody they looked. Quintus started for the camels, lugging a sa
ddle, but Drust stopped him.
‘No time. Leave now and run.’
‘They will be occupied with that inferno for hours,’ Kisa argued, but Kag hefted a bundle and slapped him on one shoulder.
‘We have their ruler’s head and his concubine.’
That was enough; they ran.
They had made it to a place where the burning city was a red glow before they heard the shuffling thump of camel pads. The enemy made good time, Drust thought bitterly. Went straight to the caravanserai, asking about a handful of strange folk in tatters… and now here they are.
‘Form,’ he called out and they did so, in pairs as they would in the harena. The padding came closer; Ugo dropped the woman at his feet, where she wriggled and let out muffled curses – he ignored her and hefted his axe. They all waited.
‘Ho,’ said a voice and then a pale camel loomed out of the darkness, three more behind it. The rider unwound his face-veil and grinned his death grin.
‘Your faces,’ Dog said and laughed. Then Manius came up, leading more camels, with Mouse and Mule behind with yet more, some of them laden with packs. This is not where we were supposed to meet, Drust thought, feeling chilled.
‘Climb up and let us go,’ Dog said, ‘before those bitch-ticks of Bashto find us. He has only gone and sent word to the Red Serpent to send soldiers.’
‘Why?’ Drust wanted to know as the camel laboriously knelt. Dog laughed and looked at the red glow.
‘That,’ he said. ‘I am thinking he saw his prize vanish in smoke. Did you get the woman?’
Ugo unwrapped her and made the mistake of unfastening the gag; he bound her up again when the vitriol burst out.
‘Well,’ Dog said, ‘Bashto wanted the woman and the death of Farnah-vant – and an intact city with all that lovely Greek Fire ready to sell to the Persians of Ardashir.’
‘And we were not about to be considered in it,’ Drust added as the camel lurched upright.
‘Well, luckily for you, I foresaw this and have a plan.’
Kag cursed him and spat. Stercorinus lifted the bundle. ‘Is this not necessary now?’
‘It is not,’ Dog answered, and almost before he had finished, the wrapped head had been flicked away like an unwanted apple core; the woman listened to it bounce and made hoarse, incoherent noises.
‘What is this plan?’ Kisa wanted to know and at least three heads turned scornfully to him.
‘Run if you want to live.’
Chapter Thirteen
The land was usually green but the weather had changed and withered it to rust and iron grey. Manius had scouted several roads and all of them led up into a great tangle of high ground, ragged as a wolf’s jaw.
They rode hard across this dusted, cold land, looked up at the iron teeth of those mountains – big to the south and east of them, bigger still to the north – and cursed their camels carefully, for they needed the beasts and the favour of Fortuna if they were to get away.
That’s if Dog was right, Drust thought and looked at him yet again; he seemed unreasonably cheerful about their prospects and nudged his beast closer when he saw Drust staring.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘There is a way through the mountain. I have it on good authority and no one else knows of it. If we get the Empress back to Rome, to Uranius, we will get the reward.’
‘Good authority?’ demanded Drust, and the woman, hands tied and ungagged, gave a short, vicious bark of laughter.
‘Some whore told him,’ she spat. ‘You will all die.’
‘The woman,’ Dog replied flatly, bludgeoning the Empress with his death-face. ‘The one you were sure was a spy and handed over to those bow-legged horse-cocksuckers from the Grass Sea. The one I found later and buried – but she had already told me all that was needed.’
Drust gawped from him to the woman. ‘You said her friend had buried her, the one who now dances and eats poppy.’
Dog shrugged. Kag said nothing, his face stony.
‘Look,’ the woman began, and Drust gave Dog one last glare and fought his camel closer to her. She was not young, he saw, every line etched with dust and blackened filth, her uncombed hair free of artifice that kept the grey at bay, her lips unpainted.
‘Do not bother pleading,’ Drust said and tested the thongs that fastened her at wrist and ankle. ‘You will not be released save by death and your man is not coming for you.’
‘Persia will, all the same,’ Dog interrupted. ‘You won’t be any better off with them, for all they will promise you.’
Kag was on his usual fret – if you are leaving tracks, you are being followed. He was less worried about the mountains ahead than the road behind, and each time Drust turned, he found Mule plodding his camel stolidly back from another lookout.
‘See them?’ Kag always asked and Mule would shake his head. Then he’d wait until everyone had passed, stay there for a long time before turning and shuffling after them at a trot that must be killing the beast, since it killed them all to watch.
In the end, they had to get off – all but the woman – and walk.
‘I can feel them,’ Kag would say every so often and then saved his breath. He needed it, for each step was an effort of pain. Quintus, though, was grinning his big wide grin.
‘My balls are heavy, my shield is light, my spatha swings from left to right. Left, right, left…’
They laughed and kept the rhythm like the legionaries who chanted it from one end of the Empire to the other, until the breath left them and it fell apart in gasps and limping.
Mule got on his camel and rode back down the trail until he was small, then stopped, leaped up onto the hump and stood, shading his eyes with one hand, looking for dust. Kag saw this feat when he turned his head to blink dust from his eyes and pointed it out to the others admiringly. Ugo spat and eyed the camel next to him with a bloodshot orb.
‘If he tried it with this flat-footed spitter,’ he offered, ‘he would fall off at once. This is as bad-tempered as my old ma – but her armpits were hairier.’
Mule rode back and walked his grumbling camel alongside Manius, glancing only briefly at the laughing men; Drust knew he was wary of the men he had not known until recently, and it was the same for them. We are former slaves and gladiators, yet we are not so low as a deserter from the army, Drust thought.
‘Dust,’ he growled and they all simply nodded and plodded on.
They filed across a scrub-studded plain, heading towards the tall ground which loomed ever higher, forming into formidable steeps.
‘We are looking for a big tower,’ Dog told everyone. ‘They call it Iron Blade and it is an outwork of the Red Serpent, which ends at these mountains. Those who built it judged that no one would be able to cross them, but they stuck watchtowers up just to be sure.’
They were not manned, he said, not since the garrisons were all withdrawn by the Parthians to fight the usurper Ardashir – but since he had beaten them and killed the king and now called himself King of Kings, it might be that his soldiers were returning to man the Red Serpent and the outwork towers.
They camped near the remains of a building, the mud-brick melted almost back into the landscape. There were some twisted trees, the wood tortured into uneasy shapes, and so they had fires, ate barley porridge, and wondered how close the pursuers were and if they would come all the way up to the mountains.
‘What do we do if this Iron Blade is held against us?’ Kag wanted to know.
‘Avoid it. It isn’t the way out – that lies north and east of it a little. After Iron Blade we are climbing and will find a valley. There lies the way out. Don’t get too attached to your camels, for we will have to leave them eventually.’
‘I will eat mine,’ Mouse declared sullenly and Ugo grinned across at him; they were united in their hatred of the beasts.
There was no camel to eat, just barley, roots and flatbread ugly with grit from poor milling, but there was wine still, though there was no sign of water and that was a worry.
Drust watched them, brooding on yet another enterprise gone to rot – yet they laughed and ate and only now and then peered up at the spangled blue of the sky, so clear and bright that the jagged peaks of the distant north mountains seemed to move towards them.
It made everyone hunch in their necks and shift closer to the fire. Praeclarum slid closer to Drust and sat for a while, then looked sideways at him.
‘You have a face like two miles of bad road – why so?’
‘We have dust and rocks, hardly any coin, weapons, food or water, but bruises and cuts and sores. Nothing much else to show for this endeavour. Is that not enough?’
Praeclarum’s hard nut of a fist smacked his shoulder, but she was smiling.
‘Should I worry? Would it help?’
Drust laughed, despite himself.
‘We are alive,’ she added, ‘we have the Vestal Empress we came for, the two friends you sought and a way out.’
She was right and he found himself smiling back at her.
‘Tell me again why she is important,’ she asked softly as they slid closer, leaching warmth, listening to Kisa yet again trying to get the Empress to confirm what everyone believed – that there was a secret name for the City and that she knew it.
‘You should tell all,’ he said once more, ‘so we know we did not come all this way for nothing.’
The Empress adjusted the tattered remains of her dress, which had been night attire only, and huddled into the only other clothing she had, the awning they’d wrapped her in.
‘I am not here to make you feel better,’ she said.
‘Tscha!’ Kisa growled. ‘You can benefit here too, you know.’
‘I will benefit only when you are taken and beheaded,’ she replied, glaring. ‘The goddess will see to it. Daughter of Saturn and Ops, sister of Jupiter Best and Greatest, Neptune, Pluto, Juno and Ceres…’
Kag laughed. ‘Lady Julia, you are so removed from the gods of Rome you could not see them with the eyes of Mercurius. That’s what happens when you give up your Vestal vows for the cock of a boy-emperor.’
