Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  He stopped and his thin, cracked lips tightened in pain; for a terrifying moment Drust thought he had died. Then he sucked in a gasping breath.

  ‘No one has mismanaged their funds more spectacularly than I,’ he added and coughed out another laugh. ‘Save, perhaps, my father.’

  ‘So Julius Yahya bought your debts,’ Dog said grimly. ‘Bonded servitude we know well. What did he want you to do?’

  ‘Play the game,’ he answered.

  ‘A game? That’s what all this is to you?’

  ‘Of course. The board consists of seas and kingdoms, the men in them are counters, placed and struck from it according to the skill of the players.’

  ‘Gambling,’ Quintus replied slowly. ‘That’s what got you into this mess.’

  ‘Of the highest sort,’ Antyllus answered. ‘Julius Yahya wanted me as a player on the board, or so I thought, and so that’s what I became. I had a moment when I thought I might be the one to exercise his will, but I was not sure who I was playing with – or against.’

  ‘You never play any game with the likes of Julius Yahya,’ Dog growled, while Antyllus took some thin wine from a skin brought by Ugo. When he had finished sipping from it, the big German dropped it on the bed close to Antyllus’s wasted hand.

  ‘In the end, I realised I was not a player at all, just a counter. I was to take out a force, to make a core of loyalty – I was told the Mother of the Empire wanted a new candidate for the Purple.’

  ‘You believed that?’ Kag demanded with disgust, and Antyllus coughed out a bitter laugh.

  ‘Of course. Why not? You have Julius Yahya telling you, and the nature of the woman herself – she had the last Severan to claim the title dragged out in chains to die and he was her own kin. She did the same with his mother – again her own kin.’

  He fought for breath, giving time for the others to admit all of the truth in that.

  ‘Still,’ Quintus said, ‘I wouldn’t have put my life on it – and I am a fucking gladiator who once had no choice.’

  Antyllus nodded weakly. ‘You and I are the same, then. I had no choice in the end. I suddenly started to get letters from senators I did not know well nor had written to. They were all polite and offering help – I learned later they’d been told this was to do with my possible censure by the senate for having gone off into the north with a lot of Romans. And all of them were from supporters of the Emperor. I found out more. I wrote my own letters in secret to those I trusted and a few answered; some of them sent word of offered bribes to implicate colleagues, some even spoke of Julius Yahya, and I knew I was caught in a plot. In the end, Julius Yahya caught a whisper of it and grew suspicious. He sent you, so I was forced to move.’

  ‘Apokalypsis,’ Drust said and Antyllus groaned agreement.

  ‘I adopted the Purple but I knew it was a wild cast of the dice. When it failed, I fled to what friends I thought I could trust, hoping to find time to use what I knew. In the end, even the likes of Ulpius Ralla betrayed me, when he realised what I had.’

  Drust felt a prickle of excitement. ‘Which was what?’

  ‘Documents. Letters, replies, admissions of bribes, of payments made, of coercion – all confirming that Julius Yahya has organised a plot to implicate the Emperor’s supporters, backed by the Mother.’

  There was a stunned silence, then Dog snorted derisively. ‘Julius Yahya is the Emperor’s man – why would he plot against him?’

  ‘In a day or two,’ Antyllus answered, his voice gone dreamy, ‘the Circus will start the races. Presiding over the opening will be Julia Mamaea, Mother of the Emperor.’

  ‘And?’ demanded Kag. ‘This is nothing sinister – she is there every year.’

  ‘Not alone. Always with her son, the Emperor. It’s a statement. A move in the game. But this year she is alone and Alexander will be at the Flavian. He has organised, for that same day, a castra dolo. Twenty pairs, to the last pair standing.’

  Drust had never seen a ‘circle of treachery’, when paired fighters fought to the death with no referees, making and breaking fleeting alliances for advantage. It was a fabulously expensive undertaking – but it would suck all but diehard racing fans from the Circus Maximus, leaving Julia Mamaea looking down on a threadbare crowd and made to look a distant second to her son.

  Antyllus saw that Drust had got to it and he racked out another painful wheeze.

  ‘You see? Julius Yahya does not work for the Emperor, but the Mother. She sees her power being challenged by a boy becoming a man and less inclined to give in to her. This is how the game is played in Rome.’

  So she had organised a little rebellion as a counter. A nothing spasm of coup in a distant German forest, easily dealt with and with an aftermath of proscriptions which would include the innocent supporters of the Emperor as well as the guilty greedy. A statement, a message as unsubtle as nailing someone to a post through the eyes and cutting out their tongue, and from a woman who could kill her own son’s wife as easily as stepping on a roach.

  Little or not, it was a dangerous and reckless move. Such small beginnings could easily spill out of control, like a fire in Subura…

  Outside was a flurry of noise. Inside was a last wheezing gasp.

  ‘I was sending the documents with Lentulus to a place of safety when this Verus arrived. I did not know your Manius was there – I thought only that I was under attack and that Carbo the porter had fallen.’

  He stopped, fighting pain and oblivion. ‘He was fast, that Verus…’

  ‘He has done for you,’ Drust said. Then added viciously, ‘Now you know how my wife spent her final moments.’

  There was a soft puff of sound from the bed, a voice scarcely more than the mourn of the wind. ‘My neck. I kept it…’

  Silanus burst through the door, eyes wide with shock. ‘Riders – a dozen or so.’

  ‘Ha,’ Kag declared savagely. ‘Now we make a fist of it.’

  Drust thought swiftly, whirling to Lentulus. ‘Tell us where these documents are.’

  ‘Keep me safe and I will show you.’

  He was a rat in a drain and Drust wanted to six him then and there; the little barber saw it and blenched, taking a step back. Drust fought the urge to ram his gladius in the man’s neck, a struggle that left him trembling as he turned back to Dog.

  ‘Make sure he stays alive,’ he ordered, and then went to where there was shouting and the clash of steel; he thought he heard a gurgle of bitter laughter from the bed.

  In the peristyle and atrium men fought, stumbling over the fallen statues and twisted roots of a place in ruins, the tiles uneven, the ground pocked. Steel clashed and shadows lurched in the sparking torchlight.

  Watch for Verus, watch for Verus, watch for the backstabber…

  A man came at Drust, stabbing with a gladius; Drust sidestepped, thrust the torch into the man’s face and heard him scream, saw the beard catch fire. He did not wait for more, simply slid his own blade in and out of the neck like an adder bite.

  There was another to fill the hole, slashing left and right and left again, scattering sparks from the torch as Drust used it to fend off the strokes. The man thinks he has a spatha, has been trained to use that longer sword. He has a beard like the other one, is big and strong, and though the tunic is the colour of oatmeal, he is not some hired thug, gladiator or anything like it.

  He was Army and almost certainly Praetorian; for a moment the thought chilled Drust almost to a standstill and the man saw it, gave a growl of satisfaction at what he thought was an enemy on the point of wetting himself, and bored in.

  A figure came speeding past trailing the sparks from a torch, dipped briefly and made a movement, then rushed on, heading for the door. Drust had a brief moment of insight – Stolo. Chicken heart, legs of a hare.

  Still, he had expertly hamstrung the Praetorian with a single stroke; the man found he had no working legs and collapsed in a limp heap, bemused. Drust gave him no time to mourn, gave him iron into the neck, the heart in the thro
at.

  Even as he brought the blade out he caught a flicker at the edge of vision, enough to know it was a sliver of pale in the dark, moving round all the fighters, heading for the sickroom.

  ‘Dog!’

  Dog had seen it and sprang forward, two swords moving like silver bars of light; then he gave a scream and reeled away, one sword falling to allow the hand to clutch his face. Drust tried to run to help, but another of the Praetorians closed in on him, forcing him to parry and strike; their blades rang high and thin.

  He had time only for a brief glance as Ugo grappled with an opponent and hurled him away; the man gave a despairing shriek as he pinwheeled through the air, and the pale-haired Verus had time to throw up one flapping hand before he was struck, the pair of them tumbling away into the dark.

  There were shrieks from horses and the sound of hooves flailing away into the distance. Someone bawled an order, had it repeated, and suddenly Drust’s opponent stepped back, then again. He pointed the blade in a wordless gesture and backed off.

  Drust let him. He saw that the fighting had stopped and moved as fast as he could stumble to where Dog raved and cursed, his face covered in blood. Quintus was with him, trying to get him to stop clutching with his hand so something could be done.

  ‘Lentulus?’

  Dog spat blood in a burbling curse and indicated the ground at his feet; he was sitting on the little barber, whose face was purple in the torchlight. Drust forced Dog’s hand away and saw the extent of the damage – a deep cut from the left of the jaw all the way up the cheek to the hairline, washing his skull face with crimson.

  ‘Need to stitch that,’ Quintus said, ‘when I can see.’

  He set to do what he could while Dog cursed him for inflicting more pain. Ugo lumbered back, growling about how Verus was nowhere to be seen. ‘I saw him struck by a fucking big beefy palace rat – but there’s not even a splash of blood.’

  Kag came in and, to Drust’s surprise, Stolo was with him, minus the torch and with his teeth clenched to stop them chattering.

  ‘They are all Praetorians,’ Kag announced disgustedly. ‘Luckily those Palace turds are well removed from any fighting other than over coin or quim.’

  ‘How can Verus summon up a dozen of that lot?’ Ugo rumbled and rolled a shoulder. ‘I think I might have strained something throwing him.’

  ‘Poor fucking you,’ Dog managed between pain grunts.

  ‘He clearly has one of those sealed scrolls Julius Yahya hands out and the Mother of the Emperor to back it up,’ Quintus muttered, busy trying to staunch the blood from Dog’s face. ‘Gods above and below, that’s a deep one – I can see your back teeth.’

  ‘I saved you from worse,’ Ugo pointed out, and Dog acknowledged it with a weary flap of one hand, then winced free of Quintus.

  ‘Jupiter’s cock, you fumble-handed fuck – are you trying to peel my face off?’

  ‘Hard to see where your face actually is,’ Quintus spat back. ‘Hold still or bleed to death.’

  ‘Fourteen Praetorians, all of them time-served,’ Kag said. ‘A little flabby here and there, but nonetheless Praetorians. We should be cheering, for six of them are dead – well, three were dead and three were hurt but are dead now. The rest are gone, running.’

  He stopped, slapped Stolo on one shoulder, staggering the man forward a step. ‘You have this to thank for it – he cut their horses free and waved fire at them until they ran off. Their owners panicked, thinking more gladiators were coming down on them.’

  Drust nodded, feeling a wash of relief. Their own horses were slow, but quicker than walking; they could make a run back to the City…

  ‘We lost Quadratus,’ Silanus said grimly. ‘And Sura has a wounded arm.’

  If Sura could ride, then he would be safe. Quadratus had taken a slash across the throat and Drust was sure that was Verus’s work. They brought him in and Drust, half ashamed to admit it to himself, did not recognise the man and made a mental note to look more closely at the faces of those who now worked for him; just one more matter in an endless list. It seemed the burden of family was growing day by day.

  They laid the dead Quadratus beside the mumbling Antyllus.

  ‘What about him?’ Kag asked.

  ‘Let him die,’ Dog mushed through the rags soaking up the blood of his face. ‘I will drag that fucker Verus back here and lay him at the feet of his master.’

  Ugo frowned. ‘You would not do that to a sick rat.’

  Dog, who knew he owed his life to the big German, stayed silent and sullen, while Drust looked at the clotted gladius in his hand as if he had just spotted it. He saw he hand tremble, wondered if it had been doing that since he first noticed it, or had stopped and was now starting again. Not that it mattered…

  He looked at Antyllus, the venal, reckless gambler who had killed his wife and unborn child as part of his ‘game’.

  The wind whined, tearing up leaves and whirling them in mad circles over the corpses, scattering the desperate insects, bringing the cloacal stink of wet mud and salt.

  A dying man in a dead land, Drust thought. Fitting enough. Then a thought struck him, the words Antyllus had said right at the last: ‘My neck. I kept it…’

  He reached down, felt the thong and cut it, bringing up the pouch with Praeclarum’s pearl teeth inside. The sight of them made his eyes blur, but he knew where to find the heart in the throat just by touch now.

  The bloodied sword, with no moon on it, stayed secret and silent all the way in and out. Then they set fire to the bed and rode out, beating the fat drays into a semblance of gallop.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the ride back Lentulus was strapped to the horse, though he protested. ‘I will lead you to what you need,’ he claimed, ‘if I can be assured of my safety. Have I not already proved this?’

  As if to offer some reinforcement of his good intent, he spilled the story of Antyllus out, a bilious vomit of greed and ambition. Antyllus had continued to add to the debts of the family and then found them mysteriously gone and a benefactor offering help. By the time he discovered it to be Julius Yahya, it was too late – but he was dazzled by what seemed to be the regard of this powerful man.

  ‘He encouraged the general,’ Lentulus told them. ‘Got him to lead the disaffected of the Army out into the wilderness and Julius Yahya’s influence prevented trouble over it. For a while, the general thought he was appreciated in the highest circles – then letters started arriving. They came from senators and quaestors, all professing to be friends of the family, of him. Offering support. None of them solicited by Antyllus.

  ‘The general grew alarmed. He realised this was not just fawners seeking to ingratiate themselves into his good graces – someone had prompted them, coerced them even, but they were all of the blandest sort. None mentioned rebellion and few confirmed help; those that did professed to assist him in rehabilitating himself to his peers for what he had already done. The one thing that struck him was that they were all people who supported the young Emperor rather than his mother. Or had offered Julius Yahya resistance and slight.’

  ‘So Antyllus rebelled?’ Drust demanded incredulously.

  ‘He wrote some quiet letters of his own and discovered what Julius Yahya was up to.’

  ‘So he rebelled?’ Drust echoed incredulously. ‘That was his best plan?’

  ‘He was about to return to the castra when he had word of a plot to have him killed,’ Lentulus added bitterly. ‘Then Erco intervened, and when that failed he had no choice. You know the rest – save for the fact that he knew Julius Yahya had marked him and that his only recourse – in his own eyes anyway – was a last throw of the dice.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Kag muttered and no one disagreed – though Lentulus provided some contest.

  ‘He thought he had a loaded die in the throw.’

  ‘The letters,’ Drust said. Lentulus nodded.

  ‘A scroll case stuffed with them and other notes. As long as he had them hidden, he thought he had le
verage with Julius Yahya – he was giving them to me the night that… creature… Verus came at us in Caesar’s house.’

  ‘Why you?’ Drust demanded and Lentulus drew himself up a little.

  ‘He had his reasons.’

  Drust did not let it go loose, all the same. Back at The Place, they sat round the table, gnawing hard cheese, olives and twice-baked Army bread. Lentulus, miserable as twenty miles of bad road, sat like a condemned man and refused to tell where the scroll case had been taken – though he would lead them to it. He also refused to tell why he had been charged with the task of hiding it. In the end Drust let him fall silent, but no one could come up with an answer as to why the likes of a barber in the Army should be so trusted by the likes of Antyllus.

  Still – if he led them to the prize…

  ‘What then?’ Kag demanded, and they looked at each other until Drust blew out his cheeks and said what they all already knew.

  ‘We hand it to the Emperor.’

  ‘Of course,’ Quintus declared, beaming. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

  Drust savaged him with a glare. ‘I say it because that’s what must happen. Not anyone else – the Emperor’s own hand. Even then, there is no guarantee we will be safe.’

  No one said the obvious, though it hung there like a bad smell – how do you get to the Emperor without going through all the court officials, the Praetorian and the rest? It was impossible.

  ‘First,’ Drust said, looking at Lentulus, ‘we had better get to the scrolls.’

  ‘I said I would take you. It was a promise made to a dying man.’

  ‘Whom you left to die, alone and in the dark,’ Drust pointed out, which made Lentulus lick his lips.

  ‘He was shaved,’ Drust added. ‘Last time I saw him he had a good-going beard. But you were at the villa and shaved him. Then left him.’

  Lentulus flapped one weary hand. ‘What else could I do? I am no medicus. I can pull a tooth, bind a wound – or give you a trim and a shave. I learned that to avoid fatigues. I write a decent script and that got me out of building roads or marching camps. But nothing I learned would let me save the general. So I shaved him, my number one best job, then left him with watered wine to hand if he needed it, safe and in the dark.’