The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  ‘Dreams…’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘Dreams… what have you done?’

  They told her and Kag held out a new, evenly frayed toothstick. ‘See if you can take care of the few you have left. It is a disgrace what I removed.’

  Praeclarum trembled and that made everyone dumb and fixed to the spot, for they had never seen this before.

  ‘The lanista,’ she said and stopped, trembling on the brink of something which made everyone else want to walk away and hug her at the same time.

  ‘The one whose woman ended up in the street?’ Quintus prompted, and she shook her head, then flinched at the pain and worked her jaw a little.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, muffled by swelling. She spat blood and looked at it for a moment. ‘He thought to break me – like a horse, he said. So he put a bit in my mouth and used the reins to haul on while he took me like a Greek boy. Bite down, he would say and laugh because the quarrel had all been about teeth. I bit so hard my teeth cracked. Every time…’

  No one spoke. Quintus patted her arm and offered her more wine. ‘This cup is normal though we can get more of the other if you are pained – it came from the blood-rags of a woman in the camp.’

  Praeclarum’s stare was jaundiced. ‘Unused, I hope.’

  They laughed and for a moment it seemed to Drust that the mud-hut room was soft with glow – then a great thunder of sound smashed it; dust trickled from the roof.

  ‘One of your relatives is at the door,’ Kag said laconically to Ugo. ‘Go see which sister it is.’

  Yet he had weapons up as a scowling Ugo crossed to the barred door and opened it, then stopped, staring. He stretched out a hand, laid it flat on a barrier and pushed.

  ‘It’s a cart,’ he said. ‘Someone has run a cart against the entrance.’

  Drust felt his bowels leap up to his throat, then crash to the floor.

  ‘Darab,’ he said.

  A voice hailed them and Quintus cautiously unshuttered the narrow window.

  ‘You are blocked in,’ the voice said and Kag came snarling up to the opening.

  ‘Darab, you cock-rotted fuck.’

  ‘I am here and you are there,’ Darab answered, trying to sound mild but failing to keep the tension from his voice; that put some steady back into Drust.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to stay there,’ Darab said, and Drust knew he was nervously eyeing the blocking cart, which was shifting under the efforts of Ugo’s straining shoulder. Drust signalled the big man to leave off with it; he had worked out that Darab and his men could not set fire to the house, even if the other trains would let him.

  ‘So we stay. What now?’

  Darab, his face a gleam of sweat and shadow, nodded once or twice, as to convince himself that his plan was working.

  ‘We are taking the train,’ he said. ‘All of my guards and most of the herders and packers – one or two have family in Dura, so they are headed back.’

  ‘They fear the wrath of Shayk Amjot,’ Sib offered up. ‘As should you.’

  ‘The Shayk sold us out,’ Darab flung back savagely and then looked backwards as something smashed and voices bawled. The others here are not so amenable to his plan, Drust thought, but when he looked at Kag, he had a mournful headshake that let him know it was unlikely anything would be done. That was why the caravanserai was quiet; everyone else was keeping their heads down.

  ‘The Shayk will hunt you down,’ he reminded Darab, who spat derisively.

  ‘He won’t give a fuck. Not him is paying you for all this, nor was it last time. Romans are paying for this and who cares about them?’

  ‘You should care. We will hunt you down,’ Quintus added. ‘Even if you know the way to the moon.’

  ‘If you leave tracks,’ Kag confirmed viciously, ‘you will be followed.’

  ‘You have money,’ Darab said. ‘Kisa told us of it. Hand it over and stay there with the woman until morning, then go back. It would be best – and if you don’t, the Jew will get it.’

  Praeclarum surged up to the shutter and spat bloody spray. ‘You maggot fuck. When I get you I will slice off those little rat balls you have and use them as earrings.’

  Drust stilled her with a hand to her arm. Kisa was out there and he looked at Kag, who scrubbed his head with confused annoyance; he had been thinking, Drust was sure, that the mountain Jew had gone over to Darab.

  He drew Kag aside and told him what to do. Kag fetched his belt-purse and softly emptied it of fifteen iron links for ring mail and a solitary as – this was his decoy purse for thieves; the real one was fastened round his waist under his clothes and dangled as a third ball, which no one could get at that he wouldn’t immediately feel.

  He gently loaded the empty purse with a quarter of the coin they had and gave it to Drust, who hefted it so that Darab could hear the chink.

  ‘Show me Kisa,’ he said, and Darab barked an order that brought men from the shadows into the wan light of torches. The little Jew wobbled on his feet and his face looked strange and lumpen where they had beaten him.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he slurred. ‘I do not like pain…’

  ‘No one does,’ Kag answered gently and then snarled like a rabid dog; Drust saw Darab draw back a little, then recover.

  ‘Throw out the money. Stay in your hut until morning or it will be the worse for you, you Roman shits.’

  Drust lobbed out the purse and saw it snatched up with a triumphant cry. Now he knew why no one had come to help – nor would they; they were all happy to see Romans robbed, would not piss on them if they were on fire.

  He said as much while the noise of camels grumbling into movement knifed them all with the knowledge that they had lost almost everything else they possessed. Kisa lay on the other side of the wall beneath the window, huddled up and breathing hard.

  ‘Fortuna needs a sacrifice,’ Ugo growled.

  ‘Fortuna needs a kick in the fork,’ Kag responded bitterly, and Stercorinus finally shifted, clearing his throat as he did so – but it was only to put distance between Kag and himself, as if waiting for thunderbolts and eagles.

  ‘Shall I open the door?’ Ugo asked mildly. When the cart was manhandled far enough from the door, Darab and the train had gone into the dark and the caravanserai was alive with people complaining. The keeper, a short bustling man, tried to keep the peace between the outraged and men he could see were grim and well armed. He promised to send word of the theft to the garrison at Van, though he did not know who commanded there now, or even if there was one.

  ‘Everything is in the air,’ he declared, spreading apologetic hands.

  ‘Your guards were not,’ Drust pointed out. ‘Where were they?’

  ‘Not protecting this man,’ Kag added, tilting Kisa’s chin so the extent of the bruises could be seen; it was enough to make the keeper wince, and Kisa tried to protest but only blew air from between two strips of savaged liver which had once been his lips. One eye was closed in a blue-black sea and he seemed a leer with bruises.

  The keeper spread more hand and, in the end, agreed to sell them a camel apiece and a spare for water at reasonable prices. By the time they had organised it and given a little to the uneasy herders and packers who were heading back to Dura, the purse had more wind than coin. Yet when they were out of sight of the caravanserai, Drust set up a small shrine of rocks, dedicated it with wine to Fortuna and left two more gold coins, one for each of her lovely eyes.

  Kag grumbled at it and Stercorinus got off his knees from where he had been performing his own prayers, to the sky and the sand it seemed.

  ‘It will be a good sacrifice the goddess will hear,’ he said in his grit-rasp. ‘A good sacrifice should hurt and that is clear from Kisa.’

  There was laughter, little and not long – but it is a start, Drust thought.

  Towards the end of the second day out, they came on the answer from the goddess and, as ever with those deities, it was cruel and oblique, marked by circling birds and those who flapped
off the corpses, too full to fly.

  They picked a way between the ruin, camels snorting the stink out of their noses; the dead had not been lying long, but even a few hours in the heat was enough, and Darab, when Drust found him, was blue-black already.

  ‘Arrow-shot,’ Sib said, moving cautiously round the lumped flesh of men and camels. ‘Well mounted men on horses, not camels, did this.’

  He swooped, rooted in the dust and came up with a prize. ‘At least one attacker died,’ he said, bringing it over so everyone could see. ‘They took away his body, but missed this.’

  It was a mask, gilded silver and tarnished here and there so that the bland face looked plagued; it had the remains of hinges at the top end where it had been torn free from the helmet.

  ‘Parthian,’ Stercorinus growled and spat. ‘Not Daylami either, but real Persians who have metal armour and bows. Blades and long spears too, though they are fast horsemen, not the big oven-wearers.’

  ‘They took the goods and the camels to carry them,’ Sib said, and Quintus straightened from rifling the dead Darab, unconcerned by stink or rot. He grinned his big grin and hefted a familiar purse.

  ‘They wanted only camels and water and what riches they could see,’ he said, tossing the money to Drust. ‘Poor raiders, these.’

  ‘Raiders in a hurry,’ Kag said, looking round and squinting, ‘with no time to search bodies properly. We should fear what they feared.’

  ‘Fortuna smiles,’ Praeclarum lisped and spat; it was only faintly tinged with blood now, Drust saw.

  ‘That would have been us,’ Ugo added. He stretched out his arms, one hand holding the long-handled axe, and began chanting until Kag slapped his arm.

  ‘Do it on the move, giant of the Germanies.’

  They crawled on over the slashed land, which had once been a prouder mountain until the winds had beaten it down to a hunched old man whose breath was heavy with dust and sand.

  Yet they were together, Drust thought, and Fortuna did smile, for not all her riches came as gold and the lopsided swollen smile from Praeclarum seemed as glowing.

  Chapter Seven

  The flame of that warmth has died to embers in this place, Drust thought miserably. Another mud-brick shithole beaten by a harsh sun on the shores of the Hyrcanian Ocean, it had a name, but no one could pronounce it and Kisa had given up trying to tell them. They needed a ship and some open water – even if they had to steal one, which statement filled Kisa with open dread.

  This was, yet again, a place he knew well – he pointed vaguely to the west and declared that his mountain home lay there. In a day he had found a ship and announced it with as wide a grin as his battered face would allow.

  ‘It is a good one, carrying trade stuff across to the other shore, the Varkana shore. The trade place there is called…’ he broke off and considered it, then threw away the idea of trying to get them to say it. ‘No matter. It is not much famous, save for a holy tree of the unbelievers, but slavers take shiploads of goods across to save time and losses.’

  He stopped because so many words pained him, and for a man who had nothing but his wit and his tongue, the binding of his speech caused him more agony than his bruises and swellings.

  ‘If it is a good one,’ Kag replied morosely, ‘then we almost certainly cannot pay for it.’

  It was a truth that raked Drust, so he did not like to hear it. They had sold the camels and made no profit, stood in poor sandals and worse tunics and cloaks, armed with the remains of their old trade.

  ‘Manius and Dog may not recognise us,’ he admitted, and Quintus smiled.

  ‘As long as we are Brothers with blades, we are war in the hand and they will know us.’

  Praeclarum laughed at his bombast and others joined in, but it was a brief spark in a dying fire as far as Drust was concerned. They were sleeping at the harbour, as close to a smith’s forge as decency would allow; it was as well, he thought, that the weather was dry and still warm save at night.

  ‘Did Dog and Manius leave from here?’ Ugo asked and Kag put him on the straight. Dog and Manius had probably gone across the Red Serpent if they had been daring and idiot or rich in bribes. Otherwise they had gone this way, but from some other shithole port.

  Beyond the Red Serpent Wall. Across the Hyrcanian Ocean – Drust could scarcely believe he was about to do this. Once, a trader had come to them when they were in the City of Sharp-Nosed Fishes, south of Alexandria, bringing a single long blade which was not a spatha and not quite a Parthian sword. He wanted to sell it, without hilt or bindings, and asked such a ludicrous sum that Drust and the others had laughed aloud – but the smith who was brokering the deal had said it was the finest forged steel he had ever seen. The trader said it had been made from quality iron brought from a place called Stone Fort, all the way down the famed Silk Road.

  We did not buy it, Drust recalled – yet I am about to sail across to a place a mere hawk and spit from Stone Fort, which the God Alexander knew as Marakanda.

  ‘These people call it Samar-Qand,’ Kisa confirmed when Drust brought up the memory.

  ‘Well, we might pick up some decent blades,’ Kag growled, squinting at the worn gladius and working at the loose hilt bindings. ‘This rattles like Praeclarum’s teeth.’

  ‘You lie,’ she fired back, grinning bare gums at him. ‘You took them all.’

  Later, when everyone slept, Kag and Drust sat staring at the dying coals, listening to Ugo snore. He had the mightiest night-noises of any man Drust had heard; his snores resonated, right up to the point he seemed to stop breathing entirely – and just when you feared he had died, he began again and you fervently prayed that he would.

  The night was warm so they needed no shelter, but the banked glow of the forge fire was a comfort against the dark, so they kept close to it and sweated as they talked, soft and low. The smith slept with his family nearby and was glad of the protection.

  ‘Darab was hunted down,’ Kag said eventually and it matched cogs with Drust’s own thinking.

  ‘Persians. They were after us all – but how did they know where to look? Who sent them and why?’

  ‘The Shayk,’ Kag decided after a hard think.

  Drust wondered why the man who had paid for the entire train had then made sure it was destroyed and everyone killed. Kag shrugged.

  ‘He found out there were no Hyrcanian tigers at the end of it.’

  That was possible, Drust thought, but since no one knew what was at the end of it, it still made little sense to destroy your own money in such a senseless act. The only certainty was that Dog and Manius were at the end of it – and that they had been sent in search of something other than big cats.

  ‘Something the Shayk does not want us to find,’ Kag mused. ‘Or keep if we do. That and hubris – he does not strike me as a man who takes well to being duped.’

  He has uncovered the truth of this affair, Drust thought, and it is something that does not sit well with him. What it might be remained a mystery – but it was clear that the Shayk had informed the Parthians, these new ones of the House of Sasan.

  ‘It must be important,’ Kag agreed, ‘for him to reveal his true allegiance.’

  ‘Only to us. We were meant to be dead with Darab and the others.’

  ‘He will know no Romans were among those killed,’ Kag added, ‘so we are safe only for a little time.’

  ‘Long enough to get away from here. He will want to make sure no one can speak of it.’

  Like Kisa, Drust thought, glancing to where the little man slept, whimpering like a pup now and then. He had suffered a great deal and Drust felt a flicker of sympathy. Yet there was the nag that the Persians who had hunted them knew where they were headed – someone had left a trail like breadcrumbs and Kisa was the favourite in that contest.

  ‘Everyone who hears of it marvels at us doing all this, travelling this far,’ Kag said softly after a while. ‘They cannot believe we would do this for Manius and Dog.’

  ‘Don’t you h
ave a Greek with something to say on it?’ Drust asked lightly. ‘One of those philosophers you love so much?’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘We are men of the hot sand and the cold steel. Ignorant, stubborn, more god-hagged than any priest but only half religious. Suspicious of change and life beyond the horizon we can see, unlettered – mostly – but magnificent with an intelligence of our own world.’

  He shifted and smiled. ‘There is a philosopher – can’t remember his name, but Greek as you suspect – who says that folk grow sour if they stay in the same place, that they never amount to as much as if they had moved, gone elsewhere. That does not apply to us. We know our place. Our country is the sands and it is harsh and demanding so that only the best stay alive. We are the best and staying alive is a greater triumph than going away and winning riches.’

  He stopped, shook his head as if half ashamed. ‘That is why we will go and rescue Dog and Manius.’

  ‘Heya,’ Drust echoed, soft and admiring.

  He shifted his gaze to Praeclarum, swaddled in a cloak and sitting, head slumped forward. Her lips puffed out with every breath for her mouth was looser without teeth, but since they ate the fare they had always been used to she did not suffer hunger. A farro gruel of leeks and barley was no trouble to gums.

  Her eyes flicked open suddenly and caught him staring. He dropped his own, pretending to be looking elsewhere, but he felt hers on his face like a heat.

  * * *

  He had bare arms on a big body with enough muscle left to show that, before age and good living, he had been as feared a sea-rover as he claimed. Well, for a Cadusian goat-kisser, Drust thought. He had silver rings on his arms and in his ears, and a fat, false smile plastered in the little clearing between all the red-gold hair where he hid his face.

  He was called Atakan, which meant ‘having ancestor’s blood’, according to Kisa, and if it were true, the man would have a lot of ancestor blood, all of it different. His name was Cadusian, a people once great but who had been faded even in the time of Divine Aurelius Augustus, who had fought them in their last blaze of glory. His dress was Arab, yet he wore a Persian fire-worshipper amulet and had ink-marked designs spiralling up his arms like a Scythian.