The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

  He stopped and turned, grinning his horror of a face at Kag. ‘See? Not the only one who knows the finer things. I wonder what gods Ovid prayed to when he realised he should have told his pillow-talk instead of waiting?’

  ‘Probably the same ones we are about to beg abjectly to,’ Praeclarum declared, ‘for help against those.’

  They all stopped and stared at the line of warriors stretched implacably across the path. Armed, armoured in long ring-coats cut for riding, with shields and spears and bows; they all had blank, silver faces save for one, who was cloaked in a white that seemed to dazzle. He stepped forward, his ornate helmet held in the crook of one arm, his black-bearded face smiling with triumph. His oiled ringlets tinkled with small silver bells when he shook his head with mock amusement.

  ‘Well,’ he said in Persian, ‘what is this that comes from the mountain? I was told to expect a woman of high birth – which one of the pair of whores would that be?’

  Kag spat at Dog’s feet. ‘No one knows of this mousehole, you said. It is a secret way through the Red Serpent Wall, you said.’

  Dog shrugged and his swords came out; the men on the path closed ranks at the front and the ones behind unshipped bows. Drust stepped forward.

  ‘You can’t fight this,’ he said. Dog looked at him and his laugh had neither warmth nor mirth in it.

  ‘This is what happens when you get cunt-struck. You can’t save your woman by throwing down your blade.’

  Praeclarum shouldered him aside so roughly that Dog staggered and would have fallen if Drust had not caught and steadied him.

  ‘You can’t save even yourself by behaving like a fat cock,’ she growled on her way past, striding towards the Persians. ‘When I do what I do, spring up off this path, high as you can get. Do not hesitate.’

  She strode on towards the black-bearded Persian, her arms wide to show she was unarmed.

  ‘What the fuck is she doing?’ demanded Dog.

  Drust had no idea, but something clicked behind them, and Mule spun, appalled that he had forgotten to keep watch; the sound that came from him was a long, slow whimper as the stone, dislodged by a massive paw, tinked and rolled down towards him. He looked back up to a ledge where there was another opening into the temple, too high for mere mortals.

  The huge beast looked even more ghostly in daylight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It came padding out of the mountain, extended claws clicking, big head swinging left and right as it prowled the ledge, back and forth, back and forth. Afraid, Drust thought wildly, of a gauntlet of men madly scrambling to the illusion of higher ground. Like the cats released into the Flavian to tear the noxii to pieces but who were cowed by the blast of noise and people and shrank to the edges, cowering.

  It dropped to the ground, a near-silent affair of fluid muscle, then stopped belly-flat. Drust saw the silver-faced men flinching and drawing back, the ones behind trying to get their bows up; the commander stared, his mouth a circle of horror, and Drust knew the faces behind the masks were the same.

  Praeclarum turned, dragging something from inside her tunic, and Kag said, ‘Oh fuck,’ very softly as she held up the last cub, the one she had plucked from the floor and put under her tunic and leathers for the warmth. Now Drust knew why the tiger had followed them.

  Awake and chilled and roughly shaken, the cub made a little piping snarl of resentment that the mother heard, which made her hindquarters twitch and her tail whisk and her ears go flat.

  ‘No…’

  Drust heard the voice but could not equate it with himself, was starting forward when Kag and Dog grabbed him, pinning him despite his flailing struggles. Then there was a blast of cold air, or so it seemed, and Drust saw a monstrous pale shape flying in mid-air, a shattering of images as if seen in the shards of a broken, slow-moving mirror.

  The huge paws, big as eating bowls. A mouth curled back in a completely silent snarl, the fangs as long as curved daggers. Praeclarum, tossing the cub casually at the Persian commander and flopping like a dead weight to the ground.

  The commander shrieked and fumbled, his reflex catch failing as the cub squirmed. He batted it once, twice, while someone behind him got off an arrow at the tiger as it landed in a skidding spray of grit and stones, right in front of Praeclarum.

  There was a pause; Drust saw Manius at full draw, the arrow quivering in his grip. ‘Shoot!’ he screamed, but Manius simply held the pose.

  Then the commander gave up with the cub, turned and started to elbow back through the ranks behind, which started them doing the same; the cub fell, unseen and screaming in a high, thin wail.

  The mother sprang over Praeclarum into the middle of the running panic of men; screams got loud and Drust saw men flying everywhere, bits of scales scattering like leaves, helmets rolling and tumbling. The cat was never still now; the commander was grabbed by the neck and shaken viciously sideways until his head tore loose in a spray of blood. Talons raked and punched.

  In a moment, there was no one left save those who could not run; one of the silver-masks was crawling, his legs raked to bloody frets of sinew and bone from the rear talons of the beast, which casually closed massive jaws on his face until it crunched. When it turned, the silver mask was fixed to one fang, crumpled like cloth; she shook it free, to tinkle softly on the stones like a knell.

  ‘Shoot,’ Drust whimpered, but Kag slapped a hand over his mouth and Manius held the draw, though it quivered violently now.

  The cat snuffled in the gore, pawed over a body; someone else was screaming in pain, but the tiger did not seem to care – it found the cub, lifted it gently in those massive, blood-soaked jaws and padded soggily back to Praeclarum. No one moved. No one breathed.

  The tiger nosed her limp body with its bloody muzzle, still with the cub in its jaws – then it stepped over her and loped silently past everyone, gave one mighty, easy leap and vanished back into the mountain.

  Suddenly released with everyone’s breath, Drust staggered and slid down to where Praeclarum was lying, skidding to a halt and, now that he was there, unable to touch her, to do anything.

  Her head turned. One eye opened. She grinned gums at him and sat up.

  ‘Woo,’ she said. ‘Ma’s breath stinks a bit, let me tell you…’

  She got no further, the words crushed out of her by Drust’s arms, so that she had to gasp at him to leave off. When he did, she flung her own round him and they laughed, shaky and high, while the rest closed in on them.

  ‘Clever,’ Dog said admiringly. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I worked with cats,’ she answered, climbing to her feet and looking down at the bloodstains on her tunic. ‘You can starve them for days, but they won’t even attack all those who sit passive, wailing or praying. We had to convince them to get up and run, because it’s what makes cats hunt. If they didn’t run about, we told the noxii, there would be worse fates in store for them.’

  Ugo, stepping carefully in the welter of bodies, paused and raised his axe, then brought it down with a casual, dull clang; the screaming stopped.

  Mule crouched in the path, staring back up at the mountain stairs, to where they curled round out of sight and into the lair. Drust had an idea he would be doing that in his dreams for the rest of his life.

  ‘Six dead,’ Kag called out, stepping carefully over bodies. ‘There were twenty at least.’

  ‘They won’t stop running until tomorrow,’ Kisa declared vehemently, shaking his head and staring wide-eyed at the headless body of the commander, the neck raggled with bloody flesh.

  ‘Ring-coats cut for riding,’ Quintus pointed out. ‘Somewhere there are horses.’

  ‘They may not run,’ Kag declared, and Drust nodded, squeezed Praeclarum one more time and drew out his sword. He felt big and filled.

  ‘Finish them,’ he snarled. Dog laughed, then started the hard work of worrying one of the scaled coats off a dead man.

  ‘There’s a lot of coin in all this,’ Kag said, looking round. ‘We
may have done ourselves some good after all.’

  ‘Watch the real prize,’ Drust muttered, feeling his omnipotence draining away; he was surprised when Praeclarum laid a hand on his shoulder, sensing it. Then he felt the warm glow of it anew and waved to Mule to bring the Empress down towards them, away from any possible return of the beast; it was not an idea to make Mule easier in his mind.

  ‘Shame about that cub,’ Praeclarum muttered. ‘Would have been a good prize.’

  ‘Not weaned,’ Manius said as they began to trot downslope. ‘Would have died.’

  ‘A bit of intestine as a teat and goat’s milk,’ she argued, but Manius’s laugh was a scoff of scorn.

  ‘You’d try and feed a Hyrcanian tiger on goat’s milk?’

  ‘It would die,’ Quintus declared flatly. ‘Trust in those who have captured every beast known. Help me with this…’

  They stripped the dead, who marbled softly in the chill air sighing round the rocks and stones. Ahead was a long, gentle scree-slide around a corner and down into the ochre and tan and fuzzed green of a rolling plain.

  ‘Can we move?’ Mule demanded, looking anxiously back the way they had come.

  ‘Do not fret,’ Manius said, his dark face gleamed with sweat where he had been hauling the boots off someone whose legs had been savaged by claws. ‘The beast will die soon.’

  Praeclarum looked at him and Manius shrugged. ‘I saw an arrow – one of those silver-faces got lucky. In the belly, though the shaft snapped off and only left a nub end. It will fester, though.’

  Drust saw her glance up at the lair and straighten thoughtfully.

  ‘Don’t think of it.’

  She bridled for a moment, then shrugged ruefully. ‘Shame to think all those cubs will die.’

  ‘All things die,’ Dog said, shaking himself in the new coat, so that he rattled and shushed. He grinned his death-grin and looked from arm to arm admiringly. ‘That’s the truth that is, right there.’

  ‘Truth is salt,’ Kag growled, hefting scales over his shoulder. ‘Everyone loves the taste and it is so valuable you can use it like coin. But too much makes you sick up a dog.’

  ‘You should wear that,’ Mule pointed out, cheered by the idea of the beast being dead. Quintus grinned.

  ‘Too big for him and too heavy. But it’s too much coin for him to leave behind.’

  They chose new helmets, unfastening the ruined face masks, though Dog had one which worked; when it was raised he looked like a strange-beaked bird.

  ‘Keep it down,’ Kag advised laconically.

  ‘I am crushed,’ came the muffled reply from under it. ‘A man of lesser character might take offence.’

  ‘What character?

  Manius looked at Drust, who nodded permission for him to lope off down the slope. Drust watched him go, wondering if he had really shot Sib. At least he had held his hand from shooting the beast, which would have put Praeclarum in danger, for sure. So he was not as viciously dark as Sib had thought and Drust too, for a while. Dark enough, all the same…

  Mule had re-tethered the Empress to him and Kisa was kneeling beside her, still trembling from the beast. So big, he said aloud. So… powerful. He looked up as Drust approached, his face pallid as a worm.

  ‘Tigers were never in it,’ he said shakily, and Drust acknowledged the attempt at humour with a smile, then moved to kneel by the woman. The Empress, he corrected. Here was a woman who had been born into the upper ranks, who had dedicated herself to a goddess, the very soul of the City – and who had sold it for an Emperor. She heard the voices, felt the heat of Drust, and the blind face turned, seeking him. Like a cub to the teat, he thought, a flower to the rain.

  She was nothing like as loveable. She was tattered and filthy, one hand a claw stripped to the bone and, despite washing and unguents, still unhealed and unhealthy looking. Her face was scoured on one side and across the forehead and the bridge of her nose; it wept in sympathy with the ruin under the strip of cloth across her eyes; fluids stained with blood leaked from under it. All her arrogance was gone, all her fire, all her courage.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  She moaned, which was answer and yet not the one he sought.

  Mule fumbled in his trousers, found what he was looking for and pissed with grateful grunts.

  ‘In the name of all the gods you worship,’ Kisa said. ‘Have some respect.’

  ‘She can’t see,’ he replied sourly.

  ‘She can hear – and smell,’ Praeclarum spat back, coming up unheard and tearing the leather leash from him. ‘Why don’t you go with the rest and leave her to me?’

  Mule shrugged, tucked himself away and moved off, swaggering more than was necessary.

  ‘Get that seen to,’ she shouted after him. ‘Whatever it is makes it smell like that.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ he called back and the others laughed.

  ‘No cure for being a cunt,’ Dog said loudly from under the silver mask. He guddled in gore for a moment – the headless commander, Drust saw – and came up with a wooden tube.

  ‘This is something for you,’ he said, waving it at Kisa. ‘Have fun.’

  Drust took it, wiped it down his tunic and then did the same with his fingers.

  ‘What do you do for fun?’ Kisa demanded sourly and Dog turned the blank silver face towards him; Kisa did not know which was worse, that or the one beneath.

  ‘I sharpen my blades.’

  Drust pulled out the scroll within the tube, unrolled it and saw at once that it was Pahlavi, which he did not read. He handed it to Kisa, who squinted at it; Drust saw his face grow pale.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘It is from Shayk Amjot to one Xosrov – could this be the one with no head? No matter. These are Parthians from the old regime, serving the ruler of Gorgan. That’s the area along this side of the Red Serpent,’ Kisa said, raising his head from the letter. ‘It means…’

  ‘It means that some commander has just seen his king die and a new one break everything apart,’ Drust answered. ‘So he has seized what he could.’

  Kisa nodded soberly and bent back to the letter, peering and following his finger. ‘Not quite. The House of Ispabuhdan has ruled here since the time of Darius and now looks to find a way to offer allegiance to the new shahanshah, Ardashir, and Shayk Amjot is offering his services. This letter was being taken to Gorgan, but the Shayk asked the commander to make his way to the White Tiger Mountain and wait for any sign of a party of barbarians with a high-born Roman woman. This commander is instructed to take the woman alive and…’

  He stopped and Drust heard the letter rustle in his shaking hand. When he met Kisa’s gaze it was stricken, set in a face drained of colour.

  ‘Me,’ Kisa managed. ‘He instructs these Parthians to make sure I am taken alive.’

  ‘The rest of us die, of course,’ Kag put in, hearing this. ‘You are spared that at least.’

  They were laughing the way wolves might, and Kisa was amazed at how little fear they showed. He said as much and Quintus clapped him on one shoulder.

  ‘We gave ourselves to Mars and Dis long since,’ he said with his big, wide grin. ‘Every day since is a gift from them.’

  ‘And everything in it is the blessing of Fortuna,’ Kag added and flung his arms wide, staring up at the sky.

  ‘Goddess, I salute you,’ he bellowed. ‘Fortuna, you doubtful, fickle, vicious cunt – sometimes you kiss me and allow me a squeeze of your tits.’

  He turned, tossing a purse in his hand. The coin he pulled from it was gold and Persian.

  ‘You bastard,’ Mule declared moodily. ‘What have I done that she spurns me?’

  ‘You pull out your cock too carelessly,’ Quintus declared, his grin wide. ‘It is a failing.’

  ‘I would not worry, Mule,’ Dog said cheerfully into the harsh laughter that followed. ‘Fortuna is the goddess of bastards and the desperately broken; she will never be faithful, for her heart is on a wheel.’

  They took what the
y could wear and carry, but found no more purses of gold – to Mule’s annoyance. Praeclarum and the Empress sat together and Praeclarum stroked what was left of the Empress’s ruined scalp. Kisa sat with the letter clutched so tight it appeared through his fingers.

  ‘What will become of her?’ Praeclarum asked Drust, who thought hard for an answer that was not a lie. In the end, he opted for harsh truth.

  ‘She will be given back to the goddess she betrayed,’ he said and she winced; everyone knew the punishment for a Vestal who broke her vows.

  ‘Walled up? For obeying the Emperor?’

  ‘She knew what she was about,’ Drust replied, and Kisa slackened his grip on the letter, smoothed out the crumples and rolled it into some semblance of neatness and carefully slotted it back in the case.

  ‘They will not,’ he said, and Drust saw he wasn’t trying to balm Praeclarum. ‘Her father is rich and powerful enough not to have that happen. She might be a fallen Vestal – she is also an Empress.’

  ‘She knows too much,’ Kag said harshly. ‘Whether it is all bollocks or not. They will six her.’

  ‘Then why should we bring her back?’ Praeclarum demanded. Kag squatted by them both, turning up the blind face of the Empress by her chin.

  ‘Because the Palace on the Hill wants to know she is captured and then dead and no threat to Rome or advantage to Parthia. Or whatever is replacing it. And they will pay us for that, which is what this is all about.’

  He let the woman loose and her head slumped; she mumbled.

  ‘Not tigers,’ he grinned and levered himself to his feet just as Manius loped back in and squatted for a moment to get his wind back. Then he waved his unstrung bow back the way he had come.

  ‘Twenty-one,’ Manius said. ‘They have a camp, horses tethered and hobbled – tents too. They have been here a while.’

  ‘Twenty-one,’ Kisa exclaimed in shock.

  ‘With bows,’ Kag added, and Drust knew it was not just to make the little Jew wobble on his rock seat.

  ‘We have a bow,’ Quintus declared and Manius made a little side-to-side head gesture. He fumbled in his tunic and came up with a small triangle of green which he studied. Drust knew it was the strange concoction he chewed, a mix of leaves from his own lands and a resin from farther east which made him spit like he passed blood.