Beasts Beyond the Wall

by Beasts Beyond the Wall (retail) (epub)

  ‘There speaks one who knows only himself,’ Kag spat back; they glowered at one another.

  ‘We need the horses,’ Manius pointed out. Then he fished in his tunic and pulled out the diploma; even in the dark it seemed to glow.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Take all our proofs of citizenship until we reclaim them. Surely that is surety enough, even for you.’

  ‘Fuck your mother, whoever she was,’ Dog growled. ‘I get a pile of copper and you get all the gold?’

  ‘Then I will fetch the fucking horses,’ Quintus said exasperatedly. Dog’s scowl deepened, crumpling the skull tattoo into a parody, but he nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Mark me well,’ he said, turning into the shadows, ‘if you fail me I will track you down. What happens then will not be pleasant.’

  ‘I will not be hard to find,’ Kag snarled back. Drust dragged him away and they watched Dog vanish into the dark.

  ‘We should six him,’ Sib said fearfully, and Manius looked at him, then followed Drust deeper into the streets and houses.

  Eboracum had been small and badly built at the start, an unplanned riot of alleys and bad streets. In the three years that the entire Empire had been ruled from it, it had swelled like a sick toad and there had been even less planning to that.

  It took Drust an hour before he finally was convinced they were on the right street and most of that was smell – the meat market stank of old blood and rotten entrails, mingling with the wood smoke of cooking fires. Faint flickering lights behind ill-fitting shutters, or simple cloth coverings revealed that this was not the fashionable end of the vicus.

  ‘That one there,’ Ugo said suddenly, pointing to a two-storey affair of peeling plaster and leaning walls. The roof tiles gleamed in the wet but that was the only light; the place seemed dark and cold. They huddled together on a corner across the way while the drizzle sifted down on them; the streets in every direction were deserted and the only sound was the rain and a distant, mournful dog.

  ‘Perhaps Kalutis has already legged it,’ Quintus offered, and Sib spat.

  ‘Never trust your ptolemy,’ he intoned bitterly, ‘they are worse than Greeks.’

  Drust licked his lips and thought hard. Then he told Manius to stay and watch and led the others across the street in a low-crouched run into the dark lee of the building. He tried the door, found it open – to his surprise – and showed that to Kag.

  ‘Too convenient,’ he said. ‘Only Stupidus would enter.’

  ‘If Stupidus does and makes it…’ Quintus hissed back.

  ‘He is still Stupidus but has fucked Fortuna in her arse. Next time…’

  ‘Just get in,’ Drust growled, and let them follow him or not.

  Inside was darker still and he waited until his eyes adjusted, eventually making out a stairwell leading up and a room off to the right. There was a smell, one he knew well.

  ‘Blood,’ he whispered, and Kag nodded. Sib raised his head and worked his nose, frowning.

  ‘Oil?’ he said. ‘The sort you clean armour with.’

  The sparks were large as cartwheels, a brilliance of orange that revealed the presence of shadows. Kag went into a fighting crouch and growled – then a torch burst into a sun that scorched their eyes to tears. Through the blur they could make out the shades of big armoured men – and a red cross on a wall.

  ‘Stand where you are and drop your weapons,’ said a familiar voice, and Drust’s belly dropped to his knees. He had wiped the tears from his eyes and the red cross had leaped into a horror of splayed blood and nails – Kalutis was crucified to the wall. He had been slashed with a steel-tipped whip and whatever he had told them had kept all the Heavies of the Praetorian waiting here in the dark for them.

  They were Danube men, too, the ones old Severus had replaced the original guard with when he assumed the throne. They were loyal to him and his sons and Drust knew it was all up the moment he’d heard the voice. He’d only heard it once before, when it had said, laughing: ‘Just a bit of fun…’

  That was a moment before he had kicked the boy who’d owned it in the groin. Drust was sure the man who shouldered his way into the light of the torch had not forgotten or forgiven.

  He was still as handsome as his father had been, dark olive face made darker still by the lighting which mercifully hid the frets and eye rings of venality and debauchery. He had close-cropped hair and a curled fringe of beard round his jawline and across his lip, while his eyes were dark, cold pools under a terror of knit brows.

  This is what that golden boy will look like in a few years at court, Drust thought. Who could not fail to see that little Helios, the tiny Sun God, was the offspring of this man?

  ‘You dance well,’ Caracalla growled. ‘With some partners you should not even be looking at, let alone guiding in false steps.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Kag said.

  ‘Sorry about your father,’ Quintus offered, his smile wavering. The Emperor looked at them all, one by one, and shook his head. Then he looked at Drust with eyes that promised chains and beatings, pain and death.

  ‘It has taken a long time,’ he said, ‘but be assured of how the Parcae work – everything turns on the wheel and all life is a circle, like the moon. The Goddess Selene promised me revenge and here it is.’

  He leaned back and exhaled, like a man who had just savoured a good wine. ‘You are bound for the sands, little man, you and your friends, back where you came from. There you will find out what it means to injure an emperor.’

  He turned and left, replaced by another figure Drust knew well, this time in the full panoply of his centurion office.

  ‘Macrinus,’ Drust said, and the centurion smiled; he nodded to the Heavies, who closed in and started huckling them out into the rain – Drust saw Manius on the wet cobbles, pinned by a hobnailed foot.

  ‘All this because Drust kicked him once?’ Kag spat out. ‘Served the little bugger well for running round in the dark clubbing people.’

  Macrinus stared for a moment, then laughed and shook his head. ‘I cannot fathom how you can have come so far and still live with the level of ignorance you possess. There are stones with more sense – and corpses that look and smell better.’

  ‘Fuck you, too, Roman,’ Ugo muttered, but Macrinus seemed more amused than ever and leaned forward to where Drust was now kneeling, feeling the wet seep up the hem of his tunic.

  ‘The Hood,’ he said in a soft, sibilant whisper, ‘is a bugger for the women. He would fuck a knot-holed floor in a barber’s if there was a lick of hair on it.’

  The delivery shocked everyone to silence. Macrinus stroked his beard and shook his head once again with mock awe.

  ‘In all that time, with all those women, what is the single lack in it?’

  He waited. Nothing came. Ugo was frowning so hard Drust could hear his brows squeak – then, like a flash of bright white light, it came to him.

  ‘No by-blows,’ he said, and Macrinus slapped his hands together with genuine joy.

  ‘There it is – you throw the dog at the last,’ he said and leaned closer still. ‘He is a mule. Someone kicked all the children out of him on a hot night on the floor of a cheap Roman eatery.’

  Drust felt the world was roaring at him, that all the blood in his body was drained away. Everything became clear and he felt sick – the boy, the little Sun God, was from before that. He was the only son The Hood would ever have.

  I did that, Drust thought. Oh, gods above and below – I did that…

  Macrinus straightened and was no longer smiling as he indicated to nearby men to drag them away.

  ‘There was a deal of pain for a long time after – and then the knowledge that all the seeds had been crushed from him. No man forgets such a thing, particularly a man charged with preserving a dynasty. I would not expect to come out of the harena through the Gate of Life this time.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rome, the following year

  In the consulship of Hedius Lollianus Terentius Gentianus
and Pomponius Bassus

  It was the second hour of the night, and the third day of the Romani games was winding to a close, mainly because the light was too bad for the audience to properly see. The fighters couldn’t see properly either but no one cared about that.

  Sophon wandered up to them, as he had done on the previous days, and nodded, grinning out of a mouth made lopsided by an old wound. Even if a sword hadn’t done it, Drust thought, he’d have a permanent sneer.

  ‘Missus,’ he said, as he had said for the last three days, and jerked his thumb. ‘Move it.’

  They got up and moved through the sweating, fetid throng under the Flavian, where the noise was a shrieking horror of ungreased machinery, men being sewn up by a squinting medicus, and the fighters who had walked through the Gate of Life and were loud and proud about it.

  Some of them Drust and the others knew, but any who met their eyes averted them; most studiously found something else to be doing until the band passed into the reeking shadows, following Sophon and sliding between sweat-gleamed slaves and fighters.

  They went into the tunnel that led to the Ludus Magnus and in the beating heat of Mensis September the arched roof dripped with sweat as if it rained.

  No one spoke on the way out in the scarring light of the Magnus, where the oval harena was a miniature of the Flavian. It was surrounded on all sides by three-floored buildings housing barracks, messes, armouries, offices – 3,000 people worked here.

  The State kept and trained its own gladiators, but other owners could use the Magnus too, especially on important game days – there were no more important ones than those of the Ludi Romani. Fifteen days of blood and howling from the time of Tarquinius until now. Once they had been held exclusively in the Circus, but when the Flavian was built, that was the preferred spot and the Circus ended up as a great egg-shaped market stall for those days because no one could be bothered with chariot racing.

  Fifteen days and every one a torture of waiting. Drust knew The Hood would eke it out, bringing them every day as if they were due to fight, and sitting them in the heat and blood reek of the Flavian underbelly, listening to the catcalls of the fighters, the bellowing of slave-masters, the shudder of elephants dying above. They sat and waited and waited and waited for the call to go out and die.

  Which would not come until The Hood was finished twisting his knife of fear in them. He had buried his father and deified him, withdrawn the Army from Britannia and come back to Rome, dragging the entire court with him. Since then he had worked to undermine his brother and all his supporters – Drust wondered how the javelin of Julias fared now.

  Most of the fighters here belonged to the State, mainly the Emperor, though several senators had their own, calling them ‘family’. They were organised into decuriae of ten and there were a lot of them – at important games permission was given to some favoured outsiders to use the facilities of the Ludus Magnus and Servilius Structus – supplier of Circus horses, grain, fighters and special sand for the Flavian – was one of those. Drust and the others knew the place well from their days in the Ludus Ferrata.

  It was no great trial, then, for them to be shoved back into the cramped single-person cell rather than the wider rooms that held groups of fighters – all of the same fighting class, because no gladiator ever fought one of his own style, so some small measure of friendships might safely be formed.

  Still Drust and the others had been awarded the rudis, the wooden sword releasing them from slavery, so it grated on them almost as much as it did the other fighters – and the lanistae – who knew them. None of them wanted to see such folk forced back to the sand to die.

  Except Sophon, their old lanista. He had volunteered for this – though the coin he had from the State helped him eke out a life after Servilius Structus had decided he was too harsh to keep as a trainer.

  ‘They might let us train a bit,’ Ugo said ruefully, studying his biceps one by one. ‘Even lift some weights. Get used to armour – it’s been weeks.’

  ‘No one will get armour,’ Kag explained patiently as they filed into the only communal room they were allowed in, the mess. ‘Or weapons. We are not expected to fight, just to die.’

  There were several messes, usually dominated by one family or another, but the visitors all mingled in where they could; this time, whether by accident or design, Drust saw they had been ushered into one where he recognised men from the Ludus Ferrata. He half expected to see Servilius Structus, but he did see a couple he knew.

  For all that, they were placed at their own bench-table, apart from everyone else. Sophon, his duty done, swaggered off to find folk he knew and would tolerate him, while Drust and the others collected up wooden bowls and spoons, to be served up barley porridge and fava beans, standard fare. It produced a layer of fat which most fighters thought beneficial if they were cut – though some preferred to stay lean and fast, depending on how they fought. You could always tell the barley men – they were the ones who farted everywhere they went.

  They filed back, sat, ate silently and drank water from wooden cups. Then Kag said: ‘Isn’t that the new kid, the one from Gaul? What was his name again?’

  Drust looked up. Lupus Gallicus, he remembered. Ridiculous name no self-respecting fighter adopted, but the Gaul had been a swaggering novicus, still under six months’ training and not allowed to fight a real bout when they’d known him in the Ferrata.

  He was now a thraex, one of the most popular of styles, all flash and fancy hat, and it showed in his own appearance – he had a lithe, muscular, olive-tinted body which he managed to show off even under a wool tunic. He had dark curled hair and a smile which rivalled that of Quintus.

  ‘Ho, I remember you lot,’ he said cheerfully, leaning on their table. ‘You used to be good entertainment once. Well rehearsed.’

  ‘You used to be a snot-nose,’ Kag said blandly. ‘An arse calling himself Wolf? Only thing worse than that is a lion-fighter calling himself Androculus.’

  Lupus’s olive skin darkened a little round the face and his smile grew twisted and ugly.

  ‘Well, I am no novicus now. Nor tiro. I have twelve wins under my belt, have gone up in the world and will go higher still. You, on the other hand, are on a nosedive, that’s clear.’

  ‘Twelve wins in the provinces,’ Drust said, and though it had been a guess, he saw by the man’s face that he was right. ‘Your footwork was always poor,’ he went on, studying him. ‘If it is still the same I would not bet on you past tomorrow – there are too many real battlers in these games.’

  Lupus had a retort somewhere in him and given a week might have brought it up, but he was saved the effort by the arrival of an older man that Drust and the others also knew – Curtius Martialus, who had been with Servilius Structus when Drust was a lad. He was slab-faced and silvered where he wasn’t bald, with a bad limp and rheumy eyes which he laid on all at the table.

  He had three others with him, a greybeard like himself and two younger ones, all in stained tunics and carrying shovels and picks. The old man was hunched and small, his sons straighter but no taller.

  ‘Drust, Kag – I would say it was good to see you, but it isn’t,’ Curtius said. ‘Not under these circumstances. Still, maybe I can lighten your burden – Lupus, you stumbling fuck, piss off out of it and leave decent fighters alone, but only after you attend to these people. They seem to want to talk to you.’

  He nodded to Drust and the others, scowled into Lupus’s face and went off with a bandy-legged limp.

  ‘Gods above and below,’ Sib said, ‘how old is he? I remember him taking me on my first overseas.’

  ‘Me too,’ Quintus mused, then looked round. ‘All of us, I expect. Those were the days.’

  When we were young, glad to be out of the harena for a time and not expecting imminent death, Drust thought to himself, but was saved from more mawkishness by the greybeard.

  ‘Beg pardon, your honour,’ the old man said, looking at Lupus. ‘I am Gaius Plancus. These are m
y sons Caius and Marcus.’

  ‘I make my mark on wooden swords and the like later, down in Chio’s. See me there,’ Lupus said, and then flushed when Drust and the others laughed; Chio’s was a notorious dive in the middle of the Wolf’s Den in Subura.

  ‘No, beg pardon,’ the old man said. ‘I am here about the sewers.’

  ‘Do I look like I am the Procurator of the Ludus?’ Lupus spat back, and had more which was wrenched from him by Sophon. No one had heard the man come up and Drust marked that; he could move quietly when he chose, could Sophon.

  ‘You don’t look anything like the Procurator of the Ludus,’ Sophon said to the flustered Lupus. ‘You look like a sack of shit that needs clearing out of the sewers. Perhaps you could do old Plancus here a favour by flushing off.’

  Lupus hesitated a moment, thought better and went. Plancus, bemused and uneasy, looked from Sophon to Drust and the others; his sons smirked behind his back.

  ‘Come for the sewers you say,’ Sophon declared, and Plancus recovered himself, nodding.

  ‘As I said. Blockage somewhere in the system. Me and my lads are here to clear it out but we need some help. A few slaves for the heavy work. I was told to look for Sophon – sorry, I mistook that young fella for him – is it you?’

  ‘Flattery will get you on,’ Kag interrupted, laughing, and Sophon’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘It will, as much as your mouth will lead you down a blocked alley. Yes, I am Sophon and here are your helpers, Plancus, all neatly gathered together and waiting.’

  Plancus looked delighted; he had clearly been expecting no more than two and now he had a pack.

  ‘Well, don’t hang about,’ Sophon said to Drust and the others, his grin straking back to show teeth on one side. ‘Take up the tools. Get digging.’

  They followed Plancus and his sons, who had clearly been here before and knew the way.

  ‘Always choking up,’ Marcus explained as they went. He was like his dad must have been when young – pale, sanded and plump, he looked like a happy ginger pig and his brother was much the same.