The Red Serpent

by The Red Serpent (retail) (epub)

  The man laid down his cup and waved; slaves brought three more cups and set them down, then filled them. The man signalled expansively for them to drink, and Drust did when he saw the turbaned man’s eyes seemed clear enough and he appeared to be in his right mind.

  It was hot and the fragrance was strong but the taste, as Kag said later, was similar to caldarium water that had been given a severe beating. Neither of them could see that this was worth much in trade with Rome or anywhere West – but silk and riso, a little white grain prized as medicine, would fetch high prices in the City.

  ‘Forgive me,’ the man said suddenly, unfolding himself from the floor and bowing. ‘I am Bashto. You need not bother with more, because it is unpronounceable in your tongue – I do not think you even have the letters for it.’

  Kag said his name, short and barked. Drust did the same.

  Bashto nodded and smiled out of his black-bearded face, sipped his perfumed hot water, and revealed his sorrow for the villagers of Umut. He was the perfect figure of a concerned uncle and it was all a lie, Drust saw.

  ‘Raiders,’ he said finally to Dog. ‘I do not think they were from Farnah-vant, but I will not stay here very much longer just in case he has found me. What must be done must be done swiftly now.’

  There wasn’t much else, though Drust and Kag wanted answers they did not get. In the end, they were ushered out and none the wiser.

  ‘It is just his way,’ Dog said, shrugging. ‘He is more ruffled than he allows by the presence of these raiders – but the country all round here is stiff with followers of the old Parthian king, supporters of the new usurper, and those riders from the Grass Sea in the north who are taking advantage.’

  He paused and looked from Drust to Kag and added, ‘We do not want to be where these silver-faces you spoke of appear.’

  * * *

  In the quiet dark where fires bloomed, surrounded by the high mud walls of a compound, men chaffered and laughed, feeling safe. Drust did not. Kisa was no better and said so.

  ‘This Bashto sat drinking his heated water and ignoring all the people being killed,’ he pointed out. ‘I do not trust him.’

  Coming from him, this announcement made for some genuine laughter that made him pull in his neck and sit, sullen and scowling and silent.

  They sat round fires made from dried camel dung and twisted wood and spoke of women and drink after that, swallowing locally made wine made from fermented dates and raisins. Drust sat and listened, watching Praeclarum who was sitting with Stercorinus, the pair of them talking, head to head and with urgency. He felt an unreasoning rush of resentment.

  A silent shadow came quietly and invited Drust to follow him. He knew it was a slave come from Bashto and, when he rose, Kag cocked a quizzical head, but Drust signalled him to stay. Dog hissed warningly about guarding his tongue.

  The trader was at the entrance to his fine tent, sitting on cushions in loose trousers and an over-robe against the night chill. He held bronze curve of metal, staring at the stars and lifting it up to eye level now and then.

  ‘Tishtrya,’ he said dreamily. ‘Queen of the skies. The Greeks call her Seirios. She has smiled on Persia since the time of Keyumars, the first man and king.’

  Then he spread his arms wide and declaimed in Greek: ‘For Zeus it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations and for the year devised what stars chiefly should give to men right signs of the seasons, to the end that all things might grow unfailingly. Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.’

  He stopped. ‘You understand Greek?’

  ‘Enough,’ Drust answered.

  ‘You have read Aratus of Soli? The Phaenomena?’

  ‘If it was not on a wall in Rome, then no, I missed it.’

  Bashto pulled his guttering torch closer, bent and made a note. ‘It is written,’ he declared expansively. ‘Everything we learn, we write and keep for others to read.’

  ‘That I know well enough – tithes, taxes, bills of lading…’

  ‘Wayfinders,’ Bashto answered, smiling broadly. ‘Isidore of Charax and his Stations.’

  Drust had never heard of the man, nor his stations, but he did not think he would be long ignorant. He was right.

  ‘Did you know he was born in the city now ruled by the diseased prick Farnah-vant?’ Bashto said and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘The man who laid out the ways from Antioch to the Pandyas.’

  He peered at the sky, squinting over his strange device, then sighed.

  ‘Mind you – he did the distances in “ropes”. How long is a “rope” in the name of Holy Fire?’

  ‘Long enough for what you need,’ Drust replied and Bashto chuckled and nodded.

  ‘You may as well measure the depth of a woman’s part as the length of one of Isidore’s ropes.’

  ‘I know the answer to that,’ Drust said flatly. ‘Deep enough to lose your house, your slaves, your money and, finally, your mind.’

  Bashto laughed.

  ‘Is this woman you wish returned one of those with such a depth?’ he asked, clapping his hands softly to bring another shadow with cups. More of the chay stuff, Drust saw; he wished for a decent wine.

  ‘I ask because I am aware that some of your kind,’ Bashto went on carelessly, ‘keep such folk to read and write for you. Some clever slaves can read and write and are useful to those who do not.’

  ‘She is not a slave,’ Drust answered, stung by this reference to perceived ignorance and suddenly aware that this trader was mostly right. I call myself a trader, Drust thought, but I can barely master the lading, the lists, all the clerk work. This Bashto would be effortless at it.

  ‘Then why travel all this way to rescue her?’

  ‘Friendship. Besides – she is a citizen of Rome and Rome honours that.’

  Bashto sipped appreciatively, smacking his lips. He does not know who or what this Julia is, Drust thought, for all his tallies and scribbling. He knows she is important enough to have brought desperate men at great expense to pluck her from the city.

  ‘Ah,’ Bashto said knowingly. ‘Cicero’s civis romanus sum. But this is not the Empire.’

  Drust said nothing and eventually Bashto sipped and smiled and made marks on his papyrus.

  ‘This Dog claims you and your friends can kill my enemy and rescue this woman, so I have agreed to help – the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all. I am simply wondering why she is worth such attention.’

  ‘Are you writing of what we say?’ Drust asked and Bashto paused, blinked a little, and then laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘I am writing about the star,’ he said. ‘In a wider sense, I am also making a writing of all that has happened to Persia since the time of the first man to the coming of Sekandar – the Great Iskandr. Six thousand years, which will be lost to memory if I do not write it down.’

  ‘The gods will know,’ Drust answered, for something to say.

  ‘Which ones?’ Bashto countered. ‘There are so many. The Greek ones, of course. The tribes north of here worship rocks and stones and I myself was born to people who think the sky itself is god. Of course, I am more enlightened now.’

  ‘Now you are what – a fire worshipper in the Persian way?’

  Bashto paused, frowning, then clapped his hands to summon a man. There was an exchange of whispers, the man left and returned with a cloth-wrapped bundle which Bashto took and unwrapped.

  It was a small figure, made of jade, smooth and deep green as a summer sea. It looked as if a portion of the water had been shaped into a sitting man holding a drum – then Drust realised it was not a drum, but a bowl held in the crook of the man’s impossibly positioned legs – no one, he thought, can sit comfortably like that, not even Berber women. Above it, a smooth, bland-smiling face seemed to be
lifted a little, as if contemplating the sky, and one hand was turned so that the fingers were uppermost, the forefinger and thumb making a tiny circle.

  ‘It is a representation of Buddha with his offering bowl,’ Bashto said. ‘It is carved from jade dug out somewhere far to the east, which is also where this Buddha was born. He was a prince, I believe, but became a wandering holy man and a teacher. His teachings are now followed by so many people that I suppose he has become a god to them.’

  ‘Do you follow this god?’ Drust asked, and Bashto smiled indulgently, as you would to a child; Drust did not care for it.

  ‘He is not a god, just a man.’

  Drust drank chay and thought while Bashto lectured.

  ‘This Buddha person taught many things, mainly about how to give up the matters of the world – power, riches, the lusts of the body, the appetites. He sat under a tree and lived on what folk placed in his bowl. Eventually, he went out of his body – you understand?’

  ‘He died?’ Drust asked.

  ‘No. He just left his earthly body for a time and then returned to it.’

  ‘Like the Christian god.’

  Bashto frowned. ‘I have heard something similar about the Christ… perhaps he did it for the same reason, to gain more in the life that comes after this one, you understand?’

  ‘Well, if the Christ did that, then Romans helped him with nails and a couple of bits of wood. I know of such matters,’ Drust spat back, annoyed. ‘When we die we go to Elysium or Tartarus and reap the rewards of what we did in life.’

  Bashto smiled.

  ‘Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud; a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. This Buddha wrote that, according to a strange book that came all the way down the Silk Road from the far east and the Land of No Return,’ he added, then took a deep breath. ‘But you have not told me about this slave woman.’

  Drust heard laughter from the fires and wanted suddenly to be away with them. There were too many matters whirling here and he wanted to sit with the others and try and sort them out amid the comfort of familiar banter. One thing he was certain of, all the same, and he leaned forward so that Bashto listened expectantly.

  ‘The enemy of my enemy,’ he said darkly, ‘is my enemy’s enemy. No more.’

  He got up and moved off, back to the flicker of fires. A flash of lightning in a summer cloud; a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

  Chapter Eleven

  They came up to the city of Asaak across a bleakness of gritty dust, pallid scrub and the tortured remnants of strangled trees. Not even birds seemed to want to challenge the sky in such a brooding place.

  The city flourished, all the same, on a feeder stream of the main river and bright with its gold – the orchards of etrogim that had been made on the other sides splashed brightly out of the tan wastes. But the main wealth of the place was that it squatted on the trade routes and sucked the juice from them.

  ‘He’s not a tyrant, nor a monster,’ Dog said when they assembled at the fringe of fields, carefully hidden from any eyes. That surprised Drust; they had just been tasked to kill Farnah-vant, ruler of the city, and it seemed strange to hear Dog making excuses. He said as much and Dog shrugged.

  ‘Bashto wants him dead and proof that it is done, but all that will happen afterwards is that someone else will fill the hole he leaves. Tithes and taxes won’t change – Farnah-vant is like Servillius Structus when all is said and done.’

  Manius laughed quietly from the shadows at the mention of that name, but Drust knew what Dog meant; when the old man died – peacefully in his bed, which he hadn’t deserved – no one inherited what he had built. His organisation fell apart in petty squabbles and fighting until another strong hand beat everyone to submission.

  ‘Have you told Bashto this?’

  ‘Bashto is a poet,’ Manius declared darkly. ‘A dreamer with a head full of the old times, when Persia was great and before Iskandr came to ruin it all. He looks at the Red Serpent and wails about how the world will never see the likes of it again. Oh Persia, where are thy heroes now?’

  He laughed. Dog laughed. Drust felt acutely aware of all the Persians lurking in the undergrowth round them and wondered how many spoke good enough Latin to understand.

  ‘No matter what I think, or you, or anyone else – the price for Bashto’s help in this is the death of Farnah-vant,’ Dog said. ‘When you have the Empress, move fast back to here. Then we will head for home.’

  Drust was none too sure of how this would be done, though he and the others had asked it, along with other questions. The Empress had been imprisoned as a slave for at least four years and, since Farnah-vant dealt in slaves among other commodities, it was something to note that she was still with him.

  Dog had made it clear that Bashto was to be avoided once they had the Vestal Empress and no one doubted the implied treachery in that. Yet it seemed strange as a two-headed calf that folk would take this secret name of Rome seriously.

  ‘That’s because you are not Roman,’ Praeclarum told them when they had brought this up. They started to argue, then realised it was true. They were citizens, had lived inside the Empire – inside the City itself – for most of their lives, but they were still not Roman.

  Nor was it clear how exactly they would get back over the Red Serpent and away to safety, though Dog hinted he had a way. For now, though, there was only the subterfuge of getting into the city – four camels, three of them laden with bales of silk, though if any guard dug too deep they would find the core of it was cheap felted wool.

  For a moment they all stood together, then Dog thrust out his hand, palm down. Manius did the same and, for a moment, Drust hesitated, and Manius’s eyes flickered though his face remained stone. Then Drust thrust his own hand in and one by one everyone did the same – Ugo, Kag, Dog, all of them.

  ‘Brothers of the sand, brothers of the ring.’

  ‘Fortuna smile on you,’ Dog said as they broke apart. ‘Remember – watchers will be here for when you get back. If you take longer than thirty days, though, I will consider you dead.’

  ‘Consider coming to find out,’ Kag declared sourly, then looked at Manius. ‘When this is done, Brother, we need to talk.’

  ‘Sib’s death was none of my doing,’ Manius answered quietly. ‘But if you need such a talk I will be waiting.’

  They moved out of the shelter of the trees, kicking reluctant camels and feeling the heat of the men at their back. Wondering if they would meet again.

  ‘I will meet Manius again,’ Kag said, smacking a camel viciously enough on the rump for it to moan and trot.

  ‘You think he did it?’ Drust asked and Kag frowned.

  ‘That we will speak about,’ he said and Praeclarum arrived at his other side.

  ‘Both arrows were the same,’ she said and Kag scowled at her.

  ‘This is none of your concern. Men are speaking here and you are ill equipped.’

  Praeclarum’s lip curled. ‘Am I part of this or not? Is my risk the same? Was Sib not a friend – recent, I will allow you that, but a friend?’

  ‘How do you know about the arrows?’ Drust asked and Praeclarum’s gaze was flat and hard.

  ‘Who cleaned him up and helped wrap him for the grave? I did. Ugo too, so you can ask him and neither of us was Stupidus. We examined the arrows and they were the same – grey or speckled brown feathers, no markings on the shaft. Same as every other shaft we found.’

  ‘Manius used the same,’ Kag argued.

  ‘Everyone did,’ Drust pointed out, yanking the camel away from grazing.

  Kag sighed and rubbed his face. He did not want it to be true, yet he could not rid himself of the nag and neither could Drust or any of the others.

  ‘There is more,’ Praeclarum said, ‘and it concerns Stercorinus.’

  Kag spat in the dust. ‘He is more god-hagged than ever. He says nothing and sits alone and prays when he t
hinks no one can hear or see him.’

  ‘His death is upon him,’ Praeclarum answered, ‘or so he thinks. His gods told him he would die under the eye of an empress, listening to the cry of eagles.’

  There was silence while they sought out Stercorinus with their eyes, squinting through the haze to where he stalked, as seeming solid as ever, cradling his sword.

  ‘Is there more?’ Kag asked bitterly.

  ‘Does there need to be? Would it help?’ Praeclarum countered, which was so like Stercorinus that Kag laughed, choked in the dust and had to stop.

  Quintus came up. ‘The gates can be seen. Get ready.’

  * * *

  They called it a city, and for this part of the world it was, Drust thought – but the truth was that Asaak was the least part of a district in Antioch. If you dropped it in Rome it would vanish entirely, like a drip in the sea.

  They had been guided to the caravanserai just outside the walls where dealers had swarmed them, looking to snap up bales of silk before these new arrivals could find others to haggle with. Drust resisted them, paid to stable the camels and store the bales; he wanted no one unpacking them and discovering the truth.

  They spent the night in the caravanserai and everyone’s unease about what they were doing, about Manius, about Dog, was salted with food and drink – and women.

  Three girls, with their hair in some impossible fastening and their faces painted in amazing masks, leaned over the railing of a balcony that ran round the second floor of the taberna. They smiled and beckoned and smelled of flowers; if they were bothered by the look of the Brothers they did not show it.

  Shame, however, made the men douse themselves and comb the raggles and worst of the nits out of their hair – then they came back and sat, scrubbed and damp and astounded. Praeclarum did the same, smiling at the others watching the women drift back and forth.