Beasts Beyond the Wall

by Beasts Beyond the Wall (retail) (epub)

  The screamer was a crowd-pleaser venator gored by an elephant.

  ‘Fifty-four hunts,’ his slave said bitterly. ‘Fifty-four and not a scratch.’

  ‘You go too often to the well,’ Baccibus growled, ‘you fall in it one day.’

  They all looked at him; Baccibus was greying and scarred, reminded Kag of some old farmyard rat dog. Twenty years he had done and was still going; today he had arrived saying he was matched against Laticulus, who was a little concerned, since he and Quintus had been rehearsing moves for a week

  ‘Is Quintus ill?’ he demanded. Their lanista, Tarquinus, who had arrived with the stolid Baccibus at his back, gave him a disgusted glare.

  ‘He was given the rudis,’ he growled and saw the astounded eyes. He shook his head; he did not want to criticise Servilius Structus but there were too many being given the wooden sword and none of them, as Tarquinus said often, deserved it. Certainly not as much, even, as Baccibus – but things were not the same as they once had been in his day.

  It went as it always did, though – Drust got a missio, Kag got the win and they lurched off and out. In the dim of the undercroft they were doused with water, armour slaves hauled off their gear and they half lay, half sat, sucking in air.

  A series of catcalls and boos went up and they looked at each other; the howls went on and on and a shape materialised beside them; when they focused on it, Quintus grinned back at them, though his eyes had no mirth.

  ‘Baccibus made a poor show. Slipped or something – Laticulus had to be as inept as a tiro not to kill him. In the end it was a farce and the crowd knew it. They wanted the old boy’s death but that hadn’t been paid for. He got his missio.

  Quintus felt bad for it but Baccibus put him right later, sitting with his scarred hands on his sand-scraped knees, knowing he had done badly, knowing Fortuna wouldn’t smile on him again.

  ‘Not your fault you got the rudis,’ he said. ‘Never feel sorry for grabbing that. One of the only two ways out.’

  * * *

  Drust got up with the others and they moved, slow and purposeful; Kag knew there was something and eventually Drust told him what he’d been worrying at instead of sleeping.

  Kag nodded, said nothing for a bit, then: ‘He found his way in the end.’

  He had. That day, in the cart lurching back to the Ludus Ferrata school, old Baccibus had been nodding off – they all had, rocked and bounced by the slow ox-hauled journey home, slit-eyes glazed and blurred with lashes watching the endless tick of the spokes, lulled by the rhythmic creak of badly greased wheels. It was classed as an accident, but Drust knew better; Baccibus, scarred and limping, his knees ruined, his strength failing, his last fight a farce and his next promising no better, had let his head fall between the spokes and, before anyone knew it, the wheel had snapped his neck like a twig.

  Free. The second way…

  They stripped and washed down, fetched out clean, wrinkled tunics to put on because they would not die dirty this day. Their hair was grown long and they ribbon-tied it back as best they could and Ugo did the same with his beard, which grew faster than the others.

  All of them longed for a decent barbering, for the whole body shave and the oils that left them slick and hard to grip. In the growing light their naked bodies were dull white, pallid as worms save where the sun had been and it cut them in lines, like fresh-broken bread. Save for Sib, of course, with his ruche-skinned blackness wriggling with the old, pale cicatrice of drag wounds and whip marks.

  Kag had a long scar along one side that stood out in the strange, flat light of a winter dawn – the legacy of a knife, Drust remembered, though he couldn’t recall where. Ugo had a puckered wound on the top of his left shoulder and a lump that showed where the bone had healed badly. Quintus had several vicious stripes, pocked with old suture marks, and Drust had his own marks, all of them earned at the wrong end of dangerous places.

  They shivered through their ablutions, same way they had before every fight, then sat with that preternatural stillness that Drust still noticed, for all the times he had seen it.

  Manius came in, took watered wine and winced at what the cold of it did to his teeth. He hunkered and took one of his knives to draw in the frosted rock like a child’s slate.

  ‘Farmstead,’ he said tersely, as if he paid for the words he used. ‘Low drystone walls, some fallen in. Six buildings in poor repair. Smoke from one. No sign of people. Or goats.’

  ‘Is that how they live here?’ Kag demanded. Quintus frowned and said: ‘I heard it was tall stone towers.’

  That was in the north, Drust said, though he was not entirely on steady ground with that. The north, the place they called Thule, the Land of Darkness, held those the southerners called Painted People because they stained themselves with blue dyes. Drust told them that, remembering the soft voice of his ma, whispering through her memories as if to hug them as hard as she hugged him. He could not recall her face…

  Ugo put them all right when they crept up to a high place and peered at it, lying flat and feeling the chill soak of melting frost off the granite.

  ‘It is a little farmstead,’ he said. ‘Should have a dozen people in it. And animals. But there is that smoke…’

  He paused, blinked once or twice. ‘I lived in one. I think. It was up on a little hill, to keep it clear of the floods…’

  ‘How many people are there?’ Drust demanded brusquely and Ugo frowned.

  ‘I cannot see any. This man keeps goats if what we were told is true – he will bring them in at night, let them into a pen during the day.’

  ‘Suck Jupiter’s salty balls,’ Kag swore. ‘There might be a score of people down there. At least. Most of them holding a spear and a shield.’

  ‘I do not think—’ Ugo began and Kag snarled at him.

  ‘No, you don’t. Leave that to those with the power for it.’

  Ugo saw the way of it and subsided, scowling a little. They sat for a time, feeling the seeping cold and wet. Then Drust rubbed his bearded face and groaned himself upright

  ‘Well, if this Brigus is in there, that’s where we must go. I will go down. If I don’t come back…’

  ‘We will go down,’ Kag corrected, then stared round the others. ‘If we don’t come back in an hour, or send a sign, have a talk among yourselves and get to the bit where you come and kick in the door as loudly as if you were a legion.’

  Drust told Kag to shed weapons. ‘There is no point – they will take them from us anyway and even if we get out, we will probably lose them.’

  ‘If we get out?’

  Drust shrugged, trying to be more casual than he felt; his heart was betraying him and he was sure everyone could hear it.

  ‘Malum consilium quod mutari non potest,’ Quintus said cheerfully, but no one cracked a smile at the old fighter’s adage. In Drust’s experience a bad plan could never be changed, mainly because if it was rotten from the start the harena seldom allowed time for a change. He hitched his belt and tunic and took a deep breath. Kag looked at him and they both nodded.

  ‘Anything moving?’ Drust asked the watching Ugo, a last check before they moved down. The big German shook his head and rubbed a knee that was bothering him; the wet cold was not helping. ‘Once you are in there is no way we can smash through it,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘What are they?’ Quintus wanted to know, meaning what tribe. He looked expectantly at Drust, who sighed with an exasperation the tension was setting alight.

  ‘How many times do I have to say it? I am a stranger here myself. They are tribals with spears is all I know.’

  He stopped, a little ashamed of his outburst, but Quintus was still grinning.

  ‘One of them is the lad we need,’ he said, and clapped Drust on one damp shoulder. ‘Fight to the finger,’ he added.

  Drust stood up and the others closed in a half-circle, then put out their right hands, palms down, touching fingers, showing the marked knuckles, then Drust led the way down the bracken- and roc
k-strewn hillside, seeing the place more clearly as they moved closer. There was a fox skeleton mouldering on the tallest barmkin wall like a mantrap and old, dried-out crows were fastened, wings spread, along the wall of one building.

  The wind pulled through the fox bones and all the buildings sagged like half-empty grain bags, the bracken and turf and reed thatch stuck out in clumps like a woken drunk’s hair. Drust wondered how old the place was, how long people had lived here. War had come here with fire and blood, often enough for people to learn from it and flee. Yet there was smoke from one house, which was solid with drystone walls, timber and turf. It had a door that was thick enough to be out of place.

  ‘What a shithole,’ Kag hissed, then nodded at the staked crosses of the crows. ‘Are they some warding curse, do you think?’

  ‘Only if you are a crow,’ he answered, hoping it was true. The house seemed empty as an upturned bowl, so that the faint bleating of goats from one of the other buildings was loud.

  ‘If he lives here alone…’ Drust muttered and left the rest unsaid, but Kag did not need the answer. If Brigus lived here alone and unmolested it was because he was feared or shunned or both.

  ‘Magic man,’ Kag whispered. Druid, Drust thought, then was ashamed at himself; there had been no Druids for several lifetimes. He laid a hand almost caressingly on the timbers of the door, ran a finger round the rim where there was clearly a shuttered grille. It was altogether too much door for such a poor place, but he took a deep breath and began to push.

  The grille slammed open and Drust leaped in shock, half fell over and recovered, annoyed and angry. A soft chuckle wafted out with warm air and the voice that came with it was gentle and female and slid through his ears like poisoned honey. He had learned that language, or something like it, when his ma spoke to him, when she sneaked time to be with him, risking the lash of an overseer’s tongue and worse and speaking only in their own tongue. The last time she had spoken to him at all was in this language…

  ‘We seek Brigus,’ Drust managed to answer, the words falling out like he was stumbling. He managed it in his own tongue, the one his mother had tried to teach him, and the sweat popped like apple pips on him with the effort. There was a pause, then the shutter clattered closed; the wind whined and fingered hopefully at it, then raged biting cold on the two men standing, waiting.

  ‘Come in,’ the voice said in good Latin. Drust, blinking and ruffed as a wet cat, looked at Kag, who grinned back at him.

  ‘A witch, not a magic man,’ he said, then shrugged. ‘Put the ram to the gate, then.’

  There were thumps and clatters, then the door groaned heavily open; a reek of savoury smoke gusted out, so thick with warmth Drust almost groaned. They fell inside, losing sight at once in the dim. Drust was vaguely aware that he was stepping downwards, that the inside had been dug out to let people stand and move upright under a roof that was low to the ground otherwise.

  Drust resisted dragging out a knife, offering gifts to Jupiter, Mars Ultor and any other god that sprang to mind if they would let this end in peace; he was already regretting his decision to leave serious weapons behind.

  There was a bright light that made his eyes water while he fought to adjust to the blue-reeked dim. A wraithed shadow slid into the shape of a man peering suspiciously; he was an oldster, his hair grey and straggled, his beard braids thin and a face like the hindquarters of bad luck. Beyond him, a woman stirred something in a pot over the bright fire and looked up. She was neither old nor young, her hair unbound and a colour that might have been, in the dawn light, silver or gold.

  She said nothing, merely waited for them to duck under her lintel and down the three or four rough steps, with their nerves all raw and one hand at the hilt of their eating knives. The room was grey with smoke, flowered with flame from the open fire; mad shadows jigged on the walls.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Take the warm of the fire.’

  She wore a dark green dress and seemed to have a dark beard or a thin veil – then they both realised it was no beard, but a skin mark of dots and whorls all across her lower chin.

  ‘Salve,’ she said, which took them aback.

  ‘Greetings in the name of all the gods. No evil here, Mother,’ Drust replied in her own tongue, which made her look and pause and then nod.

  ‘Nicely done,’ she replied in the same way. ‘Do you remember more, or is that it?’

  ‘I have more,’ Drust said, though the sweat was squeezing out as he fought to recall it. ‘But my friend does not.’

  She nodded. ‘We will speak Latin, then. I am no stranger to it.’

  Drust looked at the oldster, busy wrapping himself up to go out. ‘Is this Brigus?’

  ‘It is not. He is Necthan and goes to tend our sheep – and bring yours into the fold before they freeze.’

  Kag grunted. ‘I will go with him.’

  There was warning enough in it for the woman to agree with a nod. Ducking at the doorway, Kag half turned.

  ‘I thought you had goats.’

  She laughed, soft and cold. ‘Little brown-fleeced sheep with horns. Romans think all sheep are fat and white.’

  She stirred aroma out of the pot, a rich savour that made Drust’s mouth salivate; he knew it was the same for Kag.

  ‘We have few left,’ the woman added bitterly, ‘so the one killed for this pot is an honour you should give thanks for.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Drust demanded when they were alone.

  ‘Verrecunda,’ she said. ‘Once a power in a tribe that was once a power. Now nothing at all.’

  She loaded from pot to bowl, added a wooden spoon and presented it. ‘Eat. Talk when you are done.’

  He was all but finished when the others fell in, groaning orgasms at the warmth, falling on the hot bowls like pigs at a trough. Last to arrive was Kag, who had made sure of the mules; the old man was with him and Kag clapped him on one wet-wool shoulder.

  ‘This Necthan,’ he said, then frowned. ‘If I have it right – he does not speak any tongue I know, but he knows mules.’

  ‘He knows all livestock,’ Verrecunda corrected, handing them bowls. ‘Fetch the Roman drink,’ she added to Necthan and Drust realised only he had understood it. Necthan went to a dim corner, raked around and came back hefting an amphora that brought surprised noises.

  ‘Jupiter’s hairy arse,’ Ugo declared when a rich amber liquid was poured. ‘This never saw a taberna counter down in Subura – it looks like my piss after a bad night.’

  ‘Then save all your bladder and drink it down,’ Kag answered. ‘This is Falernum, grown to be white and aged for years until it turns to pure gold. It comes from private cellars. Can it be real wine?’

  It was. The taste of it, the sheer wonder of having a wine the Palatine bathed in and Subura never saw was astounding enough without it having made an appearance in a low hut beyond the last wall to the Land of Darkness.

  ‘If we come on dog-headed men or one-horned horses,’ Quintus said, his face splitting with smile, ‘it would not be a surprise after this.’

  ‘Will we meet such things?’ Drust demanded, looking at Verrecunda. ‘Is Brigus as rare as any of these?’

  Necthan let the woman collect the scraped-clean bowls, beaming like a mother at Ugo worrying the last of the pot. Then she squatted, knees up on either side of her chin, dress modestly between her legs and Drust revised how old the woman was; he could barely sit comfortably.

  ‘Brigus was a trader,’ she said. ‘He came three, four times a year, regular as dawns. Brought good needles, spun-wool thread, those bowls you ate from. Had wool, furs, some hides, horn and the like in return.’

  She paused. ‘And iron. Some tin. He traded in corn.’

  Drust nodded; trade in metals was seldom a private enterprise. Trading in corn was a sly term and the look they exchanged confirmed it for Drust – the frumentarii were supposed dealers in it, although that was also the name given to those who went out and took the pulse of Empire. The State was here in the
shape of Brigus and they had been right about that one.

  ‘Are you telling them of Brigus?’ the old man interrupted in his own tongue. ‘That he was like the crow who shows the wolves the way to prey?’

  ‘Keep quiet, old man,’ she answered patiently. ‘The crow also warns prey to run, don’t forget.’

  ‘Ha,’ the old man growled, turning away. ‘You order me like a slave. Those days are done for you.’

  ‘Yet here you still are.’

  She turned back to them, aware that Drust had understood. The others looked from him to her and back. Drust shrugged.

  ‘The old man doesn’t like Romans,’ he said. Kag laughed with delight.

  ‘I like him more and more – I don’t like Romans either.’

  ‘This Roman,’ Manius said, ‘would like to hear why we came all this way.’

  ‘Brigus comes,’ the woman said, ‘trades what he trades—’

  ‘You get the best of wine,’ Quintus interrupted. ‘And salt – I tasted it in your stew.’

  ‘You get good stuff for good stuff,’ Verrecunda replied simply, and there were nods.

  ‘Brigus came to learn more of a woman and child. A Roman woman and child, a boy,’ she said. ‘Brought by a man called Colm. I knew of this man, though the boy had been barely able to walk then, was carried in the arms of his mother when she was given to the soldiers from the Wall.’

  ‘Given?’

  She looked at Drust, then at them all, one by one.

  ‘You know how it works here? Also in the lands some of you come from?’

  ‘Works? How what works?’

  She shifted a little, easing joints. ‘Power. There are chiefs here, but they rule by the bloodline of women. Once I was such and Necthan here was the man I took. He was a war chief in the days when the southerners came to build their new wall.’

  Everyone looked at the old man and Kag grinned and nodded. ‘A fighter,’ he said, beaming round everyone. ‘See? I knew that. You were all blind to it, but I knew that.’

  ‘Age conquers all,’ Verrecunda said. ‘I was of the Red Kites, but that tribe is no more. The Blue Faces and the River People and all the others saw to that.’