The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  ‘Five years it took to repair,’ Uranius confirmed flatly. ‘Young Alexander Severus, all of fourteen in the year the Flavian was declared repaired, decided he needed that glory, being newly elevated over the bleeding body of his cousin. Or rather, his mother did. The growlers of the Army are paid in silver – but the important ones are paid in gold. So he has stamped his credentials all over the Flavian with this – look at me, who provides your entertainments.’

  No one spoke for a moment, then Praeclarum cleared her throat.

  ‘So the Emperor, this little boy, wants a fancy beast to show off in the Flavian he now claims as under his own special protection?’

  ‘Get enough of them for one brilliant show,’ Kag growled, ‘and it will make his name ring. Hyrcanian tigers are the least of what the Flavian would eat – especially if it was a delicacy not seen for a generation.’

  ‘We go all that way for beasts that will be slaughtered?’ Praeclarum exclaimed. Now it was the turn of Kag and Drust to stare at her scornfully, these men who had scoured the lands for every exotic animal to feed the devourer that was the Flavian amphitheatre in Rome. What did it matter if you could no longer find Nubian lions or the Duba of Nandi? There were always new beasts… anyone in any village would confidently tell you about dog-headed people two hills over.

  ‘These tigers are giants,’ the Shayk said. ‘Noted for their viciousness and the length of their claws.’

  ‘Which brings us to the meat,’ Uranius went on, sharp and bitter now. ‘We were told Manius and Dog were dead – until now.’

  Drust looked from Uranius to the blandly smiling, sly Shayk. There was a conflict here, he saw, which made the entire scheme even less attractive – they had had enough of such, and the last time they had accepted one it had driven them like a nail into bigger plots.

  ‘We offer you a share in the wealth of whatever beasts you recover,’ the Shayk added smoothly. ‘Not to mention the opportunity to save your lost friends, so clearly alive and in need of rescue.’

  Chapter Three

  Back at the caravanserai, no one was even sure where Hyrcania was. Ugo was not even sure what it was – a mountain range, he thought. Kisa put them all right on it, of course.

  ‘That is what Romans call it. It is Varkâna in Persian – land of wolves – though the Parthians call it Gurgān. It is a great land of peoples who threatened their neighbours to the south – so much so that a wall was built, some say by Alexander, some say by the old Persians. The Parthians certainly tried to man and repair it. They now call it the Red Serpent.’

  ‘Now I know this from you,’ Kag said sourly, ‘I suspect everyone else does too.’

  He turned to Drust. ‘Cut this treacherer’s throat and leave him in an alley – he went to this Uranius and told all he knew. We all heard it.’

  Kisa shrank and looked wildly at Drust. ‘I was sent to help your eminences…’

  ‘You are a money-sucking liar in the pay of that dangerous old goat-fucker,’ Kag fired back. Drust laid a soothing hand on his arm and drew him aside, out of earshot.

  ‘Let him speak. We know he is whispering in the ear of Shayk Amjot, so keep him close. If we throw him out, there will only be another, whom we don’t know.’

  So they went back and smiled at Kisa Shem-Tov, who babbled more about what he had hoped to learn and what he had. He had been sent, he claimed, once the Shayk had established who Drust and the others were and where they were likely to be.

  ‘The Shayk had heard your names,’ Kisa went on, ‘I was to make sure the message was delivered and then make sure you found your way here safely.’

  It came as no surprise to anyone that Kisa Shem-Tov was in the pay of the wizened old desert pirate – but it did not answer Drust’s nagging fears about what the man wanted.

  Kisa looked from one to the other. ‘Provided you are of use to him, you have nothing to fear from Shayk Amjot – and you have every use to him. He is not a man to be crossed – remember, all those armed men you saw, delivered to the city in secret and against the Roman law, are from the Tayy, the same who attacked you.’

  ‘And Uranius?’

  Kisa nodded and frowned. ‘Lucius Julius Aurelius Sulpicius Severus Uranius Antoninus was much more than a simple commander of camels in his day. Attalus believes he is a spy but is not sure for whom. It does not matter much – Attalus is aware that these new Persians, the Sasan, are not the benevolence Rome thought, but are likely to prove worse than the Parthians of old. He believes the Shayk is working with them.’

  ‘Uranius – his name is longer than he is,’ Ugo growled. ‘And has a Severus in it, which is clue enough. Is he a spy for the new Emperor? I won’t have any doings with spies.’

  Kisa made an ambivalent hand gesture. ‘He was an agent for Elagabalus – but who wants those same folk around when you have murdered your way to the purple? It might be that Uranius now serves Alexander Severus in the same way, or that he has wisely been sent here as a lowly commander of twenty camel-warriors by friends trying to keep him safe. Or that the Shayk, who has friends everywhere, contrived to make him his man.’

  Drust knew the little Jew was lying, mainly because his mouth moved but also because he prided himself on the skill of spotting such people, honed in long negotiations for fodder, for profit, for advantage. Yet he couldn’t work out what the lie was and that annoyed him.

  Sib cut the Gordian of it, all the same. He was working on the strap of some gear, but he looked up when Kisa fell silent. ‘We must go to this Wall. There is Manius and there is Dog.’

  ‘A wall,’ Quintus mused and gave Drust a look that needed no words; they’d had no good dealing with walls along frontiers.

  ‘Why is it called the Red Serpent?’ Ugo wanted to know and Kisa put him right on it. It was built, he said, by Alexander – not the current boy-emperor, but the Divine one, the god-Alexander of the Greeks himself – or so folk claimed. Or by the old Persians of Cyrus. It was longer than both the Roman Walls of the north stuck together and made originally from no more than mud.

  Since everyone here had seen such mud walls – sat behind them now, in fact – they were not drop-jawed with awe.

  ‘The whole edifice has thirty fortresses,’ Kisa went on. ‘A canal runs the length of it, providing water for the garrisons and acting like a wet ditch. The Parthians wanted to rebuild it in stone, but there is none, nor enough trees – so they repaired and strengthened it using bricks, thousands and thousands of them, which are made red as blood in the firing and so it looks like a red serpent wriggling across the plain into the mountains. Even so, it is not finished and now may never be until the Persians stop fighting themselves.’

  ‘Well, if we are to cross it,’ Quintus offered up, ‘a camel-sized hole would be handy.’

  ‘More to the point,’ Drust added drily, ‘is where Manius and Dog will be on the far side. And how they managed it.’

  ‘As to that,’ Kisa said, ‘it seems they planned to go to a river called Atarek, where it comes out of the mountains and runs across the plain to empty into the Hyrcanian Ocean. It is there they thought to find tigers. How they crossed the Serpent remains a mystery.’

  Of course it did, Drust thought moodily. Everything involving Dog and Manius is a mystery because neither of them tell half of what they know even to those who should know it all. Yet there was a strange, alien feeling of understanding that it was the nature of folk like them to live and die cheaply in a world of broken promises, fine speeches and false truths, because they had been fed and watered on that for so long that the only reason they now understood had to be carried and a cartload of swords and spears and battered gladiator armour was the best conveyance.

  He saw their faces, carved down by heat and strain, skin pulled tight over bone, eyes peering like wary animals from the perpetual shadows beneath bleached brows. They were the dirty, blooded, ragged remnant of what they had once been, a shrinking ring of a familia of the sands. They had few rules, if any, and there were times they w
ould fight each other, as gladiators were taught to do – but even so, Drust would not leave two of them to die who had begged for help and he knew it was the same for the others.

  Before all of that came the harena, the sands of the ring, as ever. Tomorrow would be the traditional feast, where no fighter with any sense ate or drank but simply endured because the Editor of the Games always put one on, introducing the fighters who would appear next day to the rich and powerful.

  The Editor was Attalus, according to the sudden sprout of wall scrawlings advertising the affair, which meant the garrison had paid and, though the contract did not allow for deaths, Drust was uneasy. He would have refused it, but knew that Attalus held them all in his palm here; he was in this caravanserai because he could not get men nor beasts out of it without permission.

  ‘You are right to be wary,’ Kisa said. ‘I think he means only to take the measure of you, to find out what Uranius and the Shayk are up to – but still.’

  ‘I think he knows what Uranius and the Shayk are up to,’ Praeclarum corrected flatly. ‘I can see – anyone can see – that Attalus is frightened both of Rome and these new Persians. His fear will make him suspect anything and everyone.’

  ‘Including this Shayk?’ Kag countered.

  ‘Especially him,’ Drust pointed out. ‘A friend to the Palatine who controls all the local tribes? He did not provide the coin for Dog and Manius – but someone bigger than him and big enough to frighten Attalus.’

  ‘The Emperor,’ Kag confirmed moodily and everyone chewed on that for a moment.

  ‘There is no telling which way he will jump when the shit starts to fly,’ Sib muttered.

  Ugo scrubbed his head with irritated confusion. ‘Why is it never a straight road where the likes of Dog is concerned? Here we are, it seems, set to travel across yet another Wall because of him. Does no one hear Jupiter laughing?’

  ‘That’s goats bleating,’ Quintus offered helpfully.

  ‘Jupiter Dolichenus,’ Stercorinus corrected, and because this had a taint of Syrian Baal in it, folk stared, silent and moody, back at him. He shrugged.

  ‘That god’s laughter is more of blue-white sound. And the smell of sizzling.’ Kag growled.

  They laughed. There were murmurs and more questions and various answers, then Kag held up a secutor helmet ruefully. ‘Well, we could let Fortuna, Blessed and Divine, fuck Dog and Manius up the arse – but we need a few decent coins here. Look at this – it will no longer take a polish and the dents cannot be fully beaten out.’

  Quintus grinned, then threw a bundle of leather and straps to Praeclarum. ‘There you go. Drust has you down to fight Kag as a retiarius – they don’t care out here, it seems, for Imperial edicts banning women in the harena.’

  She held it up, unravelling it to reveal a leather tunic, cut down and reworked to fit her better than the man it had been made for. It left the arms and legs bare from the thighs down, but she nodded her wary, slightly bewildered thanks to him.

  Drust knew that the costume of women in the harena usually consisted of a loincloth. No helmet, so her face could be seen and drooled over if she died. Bare breasts for the same reason – but women fighters only died if they were supremely inept, for they fought the condemned and untrained.

  No woman had ever fought a real gladiator in a serious bout and she would dance with Kag, who would be a secutor, the sacred of Vulcan. He would chase her round the harena while she fended him off with net and trident as the chosen of Poseidon. Fire and water… well, that was what it was supposed to be but any ideals in it had long since withered. If they played it well the growlers of the garrison would be happy enough.

  They cleaned gear and practised, dancing with trident and net and sword and shield. Stercorinus was a novelty item, like Praeclarum, and Ugo would fight him as a hoplomachus, a big heavily armoured man with a small shield and a tiny little dagger. They went to it, mainly because Drust wanted to know if Stercorinus understood what was expected; the man was all whipcord speed with strong wrists and the blade hissed and sang as it flexed.

  ‘Wish I knew what it was,’ Ugo mourned sullenly, when he sat wiping the sweat away. ‘I would like to have one.’

  ‘You will never find one,’ Kisa declared firmly. ‘They are made for one purpose only – to execute the noxii of Palmyra. I believe Stercorinus came from Palmyra.’

  ‘He’s an executioner of criminals?’ demanded Sib and made a warding sign. Kag laughed.

  ‘If he was and stole it when he ran off, any Palmyrans he meets will take off his head with it.’

  Stercorinus said nothing but did not need to. His name meant ‘Little Shit’ and was one given to the unwanted by-blows dumped in the garbage for the well-meaning to collect up. If they survived, they ended up slaves. If they died, they at least had a tombstone with a name on it. Stercorinus. Or Proiectus, which meant ‘Exposed’. There were no names for girls; girls were never rescued, unless by Christians – and most thought they did that for their own foul rites involving babies.

  Afterwards they sat in the singing twilight, eating bread, smelling woodsmoke and camels, and listening to the murmurs of the herders and packers, who had been appreciative of the free show.

  ‘Six hundred camels,’ Drust growled to Kag. ‘You great liar. We never had more than what we have now – fifty – and we never went south of Petra. Maybe that time we went upriver from the City of Sharp-Nosed Fish looking for Nubian lions.’

  ‘Now we go in the other direction,’ Ugo rumbled, ‘looking for tigers.’

  ‘And a Dog,’ Kag added.

  The others laughed softly and Kag made a little side-to-side head movement. ‘The Shayk was trying to see if we knew how to handle a big caravan. It is my belief he will provide more camels and supplies for us. Cages, too – I am not about to bring a Hyrcanian tiger back on a leash.’

  ‘More than one,’ Quintus pointed out.

  ‘Are we doing this, then?’

  It came from Stercorinus, his voice an astounding rasp from the shadows. Drust did not answer, but he knew they would. There was Manius and there was Dog – yet his sleep was the whimper and quiver of a dreaming pup.

  * * *

  When he woke into the blare and crash of a day of roses, Drust felt gritty and unwashed. Ugo had made his usual shrine, simply one stone on top of another and everyone was amazed and discomfited when they saw Drust spill his morning wine on it as a libation, something he had never done before.

  The garrison vexallations paraded horns and cadenced stamping, the standards hidden by wreaths of roses, their path strewn with them. Drust and the others paraded in the forum in all their gear, wearing head-wreaths of plaited roses; they looked as splendid as they could and had a few of the better-looking herders and packers dressed in the extra finery to make it look as though they were a larger group.

  There were others pretending too – half the beast suppliers had been persuaded to join in as actual venatores and hunt down the creatures they had captured and dragged here. Drust had wanted to find the traders who had brought the Hyrcanian tiger down to Dura-Europos, but it seemed they were long gone, headed east. They might be back, they might not, Kisa told them, spreading his hands apologetically.

  Still, the crowd cheered well, the sacrifices and ceremony seemed to pass off smoothly and, Drust thought, we are off to a good start. Tomorrow would see…

  In the evening, there was no disguising how few they were at the cena libera, held in Attalus’s fine headquarters. It was much as all events were, Drust thought, a collection of fine-bred arses and their women, all trying to be dignified as they eyed up the fighters and picked at plates of olives, peahen eggs, mice rolled in honey and poppy seed, calf liver, and fish fresh from the river.

  Attalus was dazzling in white and a broad-striped toga, smiling and waving, with his wife at his elbow. She was gilded and had never been a beauty, but the East destroyed some women, Drust thought, withered them up and sucked what little juice they possessed – this one’
s face looked like a smashed crab, as Kag whispered to him.

  The fighters, for their part, ate nothing and drank less, but strutted and grinned and winked – even Praeclarum, to the delight of everyone, especially the plump wife of a Narrow-Stripe from the 3rd Cyrenaica. Earlier, Praeclarum had had to be ordered into a woman’s stola and Kisa had made up her face – it did not surprise anyone that he had this art. The result did and everyone fell silent. She had scars and her head was shaved, but there was beauty in her kohled eyes and ochred lips – as long as she did not smile widely, as Kag noted.

  ‘Did you give up using the toothstick after that incident?’ Ugo demanded, and Praeclarum had glared at the laughter, which fell silent when folk saw something of the pain behind her eyes.

  The men, officers and merchants mostly, affected a skill at assessment they did not have, questioned the fighters on how they would fight and discussed the relative merits of the retiarius against the secutor or the murmillo. Attalus particularly wanted to know how Drust would fight and started them all wagering with Shayk Amjot, invited for the sake of polite politics and his immense wealth. Drust, of course, lied. The contests were fixed anyway, but he did not want to help any of them.

  He looked for Uranius at one point but did not see him, and Kag saw it and sidled up to say he had been doing the same, with no success.

  ‘They have kept him away from us,’ he growled and Drust could only agree – he was not surprised and that added to the ruffle he felt, like a cat with the wind blowing from the wrong quarter.

  The women tried not to touch them, because these were – annoyingly – freedmen and not slaves who could be freely groped, but their infamis was affecting enough for one or two of the fine-born to leave damp patches on their ivory chairs when they rose to leave.