Beasts From the Dark

by Beasts from the Dark (retail) (epub)

  ‘Better odds than what you propose,’ he began, but Drust stopped him with an upraised hand.

  ‘It’s not like I don’t have a plan.’

  They waited. Nothing came. When they realised nothing was about to, Quintus flung his hands in the air and walked a half-circle, growling curses.

  ‘If the worst happens,’ Drust said into the outbursts, ‘then take the scroll case and work out another way to do it. Or run and hope everyone loses interest with the deaths of Ugo and me.’

  ‘Either way, we are face down on the bed with the gods lining up at our arse cheeks,’ Dog mushed bitterly.

  ‘We have already assumed that position,’ Ugo said, quiet and calm. ‘We did from the moment Fama put our foot on the road of this enterprise.’

  ‘Not a goddess,’ Drust replied, smiling.

  ‘A literary conceit of Ovid, or so I have heard,’ Quintus agreed and managed a poor copy of his old grin.

  ‘We’ll give the case to Kisa when you are dead,’ Dog said and managed a lot of venom through his swaddled face. ‘Maybe he can think of something – but it will be too late for you pair then.’

  ‘Always is for the Horatius,’ Ugo responded, then looked round their raised eyebrows. ‘What? He was the lad on that bridge, wasn’t he?’

  ‘The very same,’ Kag said and clapped his good hand on Ugo’s forearm. ‘Well done, giant of the Germanies – thing to remember about that heroic defending is that two others were with him and no one remembers their names.’

  ‘Herminius and Lartius,’ Drust corrected soberly. ‘And no one wants to recall them much because they were the ones who ran away.’

  There was silence after that, broken by the return of Curtius, belching and wiping his mouth. He looked round them all and spat an olive stone over the balustrade.

  ‘I have seen twenty miles of bad road that looked better than your faces. This must be serious.’

  Drust put it to him and could feel the others, tense as hauled hawsers, hanging on the answer. Curtius, to his credit, never put any of the arguments against it, just tilted his head sideways a little, like a bird working out how to smash a snail to get at the food.

  ‘This is a wild throw of the dice,’ he said eventually, ‘but if you are set on it…’

  ‘Ulpius Ralla,’ Kag said desperately. ‘What will he think when a pair of oldsters turn up as part of his contribution to the Emperor’s Games?’

  Curtius rasped a hand over his stubble, then shook his head. ‘Three pairs he promised and three pairs will appear – he won’t know any of their names, let alone their faces.’

  ‘His name is probably in those scrolls,’ Dog pointed out.

  ‘Which make clear he was misled and by whom,’ Drust answered, then turned to Curtius.

  ‘Have you a place to hide this? Make sure it is safe – I’d hate to win through after all only to find you have forgotten which drawer you put it in.’

  Curtius took the case, looked at him, then Ugo. ‘Win through. You make me laugh, Drust, so you do.’

  ‘There is a plan,’ Kag said bitterly. ‘Or so I have been told.’

  Curtius looked round them all, then back at Drust. ‘Well, auctoratus – swear the oath, hand on heart.’

  Auctoratus – the name struck a chill through Drust. A voluntary gladiator, a man who had chosen to be bonded like a slave. That’s a long way to fall from being a freedman and a citizen, he thought. What would Praeclarum say about it? He felt the amulet of her pearls under his hand and hung round his neck. I will see her soon enough… Then he said the oath.

  Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari – I will endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be slain. The words tumbled out of both of them like poor tin on a marbled floor.

  Kag gave a groan and looked at the sky. Quintus threw up his exasperated arms once more and Dog stood silent and still.

  ‘Go back to The Place and make arrangements to leave with everything of value you can carry,’ Drust said with a half-smile. ‘Just in case. You can come back later and watch us – I will get Curtius to leave you tokens – but if you see us fall, run fast and far.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Dog spat back bitterly. ‘Who are you to give orders now? You have made yourself a slave.’

  Kag took him away, and Quintus, after a moment, offered his wrist to them both. ‘You are mad-brained, the pair of you,’ he said. ‘Farewell until we meet in Hades.’

  * * *

  Drust slept in the familiar dark of a slave cell, but he only knew it was sleep when he woke from it. To him it was a grey, heaving sea whose swells swamped him then broached him to an ugly surface. Somewhere in it he recognised the truth of her loss, that she had gone with a last soft sigh and yet he was now losing her in pieces over a long time – the way she had warmed one side and now he could not feel it, the scent that seeped away from the little bag hanging round his neck like an amulet. Each one of them, those missing pieces, overwhelmed him with great greasy waves of realisation that she was gone forever, and they came more and more often in dreams.

  Dreams is what I am when I am too weary to be me…

  He woke when Curtius arrived with Ugo, blocking the light; the door had been left unlocked and open, a small sop to the idea that they weren’t truly slaves. Curtius also brought wine, bread, olives and a hard salt cheese which Ugo claimed was excellent.

  They ate and then Curtius went to the privy with his sponge-stick, leaving Ugo and Drust in an uneasy silence, which Drust eventually broke.

  ‘I am sorry to have dragged you into this,’ he said. ‘Fortuna alone knows if we win or die, but the odds are not good. If you want to stop this at any time, just say.’

  Ugo put down his wine and wiped his mouth. He sat for a moment, then took a breath.

  ‘All of you laugh at me for the times I seem to become more German than Roman. You were raised in a slave cell, you remind me. You know the harena better even than Subura.’

  He passed a hand over his head – freshly shaved, Drust saw with a lurch of old recognition; it was what he did when he fought in the ring.

  ‘I am the white crow,’ he said eventually. ‘I am neither Roman – even after all this time – and the Frisii would not know me. You know the same feelings – I saw you north of the Wall in Britannia. They were your people, but they did not know you nor you them. Same with Dog, same with us all.’

  He looked Drust steadily in the face. ‘When first I came here I was a boy, led into the atrium of Servillius Structus’s home inside The Place. The same one we wander around in now. It was raining and the impluvium was running with it, down into the pool. The only thing I could think of then was that this Roman had a hole in the roof – back home in Frisia, we’d all be out trying to patch it.’

  He stopped, took a breath. ‘I know better now – but every time I am there I look up at this square hole in the roof and realise that the only place I do not feel like a white crow is this family we have made. Is that not worth fighting for? Dying for?’

  They were silent for a time, then Ugo shifted, farted and smiled. ‘Besides – there is a plan. When do I get to hear of it?’

  ‘Time for the armamentarium,’ Curtius said, making a lot of noise coming through an open door. They followed him down into the sweating, fetid depths of the hypogeum, the underbelly of the Flavian. It was the fourth day of the fourteen that formed the Ludi Romani; tomorrow the Maximus would start the racing and the Flavian would unveil a harena where thirty-eight men would die.

  For now, it was lunchtime and the hypogeum heaved like a maggot nest, stank of blood and animals, shit, piss and sweat – the last dripped like rain from the vaulted roofs of tunnels and chambers, and the heat was as killing as anything in the sands above their heads.

  The armamentarium was close to the spoliarium, where they brought the dead and stripped them. It meant the armour and weapons didn’t have far to travel along a line of slaves who examined the pieces for serious damage and cleaned the worst of the blood and fi
nal shit off. Then the corpses were tipped down a blood-slicked chute to somewhere even deeper – Drust remembered it, walking it with the Sardinian medicus who had been set to teach him how best to kill a man – and the weapons and armour went back to the armamentarium.

  In the chamber of the armamentarium, Curtius elbowed through the throng until he stood beside a man wearing nothing more than a loincloth and a wrap of cloth round his head.

  ‘Ruga – still here then? Hoplomachus for the big one,’ he growled. ‘Murmillo for Drust.’

  Ruga looked them up and down, wiped sweat off his eyebrows and then nodded. ‘Titus – fetch the armour out of rack seven. Decius – rack twenty-eight.’

  Drust wasn’t sure about the murmillo, but Curtius had argued that it was his best chance of staying alive – the singular weapon of the murmillo was the gladius, which was practically part of Drust’s fist. When his hand didn’t shake.

  On his left leg Drust would wear an ocrea, and he would be hefting an Army shield, the curved rectangle of scutum which had helped win an Empire. He looked almost like a legionary, save for the lack of body armour, the single greave, the manica – a sleeve of ring mail and padding on his right arm – and the helmet, the cassis crista, a heavy bronze affair with a grill designed to stop anyone shoving sharpness into your face.

  It was battered and heavy, suspicious with old stains, but he collected all the metal and leather bits of it and grunted with the armful of weight, wilting while he waited for the others. He heard Curtius complaining about the state of the gear Ugo had been given.

  The hoplomachus typically fought with bare chest and dressed only in a loincloth, the subligaculum, held up by a broad belt. He had greaves on both legs, from the middle of his thighs to his feet. On his right arm was a metal arm guard, the manica, and he had a helmet made to look like the ones Greek hoplites had once worn, with a feather on each side and a crest with a falcon stamped on it.

  As if all that wasn’t enough, he had a small, round, bronze shield commonly known as an aspis, for no reason anyone could remember. It let him hold a spear in his right hand and a gladius in behind the shield.

  It was the spear which was annoying Curtius. It was supposed to be the dory, the famed weapon of the old Greek warriors of Sparta and the like, seven feet of shaft, a leaf-shaped blade with razor edges, and a spike at the butt end.

  This one was short by three feet and had no spike. It was clear that it had been chopped off at some point and the repair had been a simple smoothing of the cut end.

  ‘I want my spike,’ Curtius growled. ‘Bad enough that the shield has a frayed holding strap without you shorting my lad of three foot of reach.’

  Ugo took the weapon, hefted it for balance, then twirled it like a small stick. He grinned.

  ‘No, leave it. The long version is a waggling arse of a thing. I prefer this.’

  ‘If you lose the tip off it, you’ll have no back-up spike,’ Curtius warned, and Ugo nodded, still grinning.

  ‘I have a sword and a shield,’ he replied. ‘All you need.’

  ‘Your funeral,’ Curtius said morosely.

  ‘I like that hat, all the same,’ Ugo added, nodding to the affair in question. It was a glory of a secutor helmet but with the front made into a golden cat mask designed to leave the mouth and chin free. Between the ears, across the forehead, was a blue enamel shape with one of those Ptolemy signs called an ankh tricked out in black, the loop of it between the brows. The eyes were carefully slanted cut-outs.

  ‘Belongs to Tiridates,’ Curtius said brusquely. ‘Greek, but from Oxyrhynchus. He fights with a khepesh – you know what that is?’

  ‘Sickle-sword,’ Ugo answered. ‘A Ptolemy affair – I have seen it. Bit like the bastard offspring of an axe and a spatha. Well, Fortuna smile on him.’

  ‘He fights tomorrow paired with Alafai the retiarius. The pair of them are the Emperor’s favourites,’ Curtius said sternly. ‘I would not be so free with Fortuna’s blessings on them.’

  Ugo shrugged. ‘Mars Ultor is the lad for the harena. Women have no place in it – no offence, Drust.’

  ‘None taken, giant of the Germanies. Old Severus saw to that when he ended women fighting in the harena. I do not believe Praeclarum, may she sun herself in Elysium, was unhappy with the edict.’

  ‘You go on, before you fall down,’ Ugo answered, looking at Drust bowing under the weight of the equipment. ‘I will be here for a while, making sure this son of a diseased sow gives me a better hoplomachus shield or has the hold strap on this repaired.’

  ‘Fuck you with a three-tined fork,’ Ruga said amiably. ‘I know you by reputation – you both escaped from under the harena once – but if you are dancing in the ring tomorrow, then you are slave again. So watch your mouth.’

  ‘I’d rather watch yours suck cock. I hear you can take the gilding off Colossus Nero.’

  Drust listened to their fading exchange as he wobbled away through the throng, trying not to bang anyone too hard in case it jogged something loose and he had to find a way to pick it up again.

  The corridor was busy with beast handlers, sweating their way between levels to sort out the cages with lions, tigers and the rest. Somewhere an elephant squealed and Drust moved like an ungainly barge through the sea of movement.

  He saw the man come up the corridor. Saw him because he thought of Dog right away – the man had a hooded cloak, a real Army caracalla in waterproofed leather. In the next eyeblink he knew Dog would never walk with his head down and his hood up down here, any more than he would in the Tartarus that was Subura. He had no need to hide… but this man did; in a sweltering furnace of heat like the fetid breath of a dragon, this man hunched himself into a cloak.

  He knew it even before the man raised his head to check the way ahead, sliding sideways to avoid the rushing flow of other people, sinuous as a desert snake.

  Pale face, eyes that flicked endlessly, searching the corners. A bland face remembered only for the washed-out brows and lashes by any who caught only a glimpse of it passing on a dark street – but Drust knew Verus, had stared at him once in the shadows behind Julius Yahya and could never forget it.

  Their eyes met like a clash of steel – Verus made a lunge forward, slid round a hurrying slave, collided with another and shouldered him off-balance. People yelled their annoyance. One reached out a hand to grab the cloak and Verus half-whirled; there was a sharp cry and blood flew.

  There were roars of outrage and warning, but most of the people in the tunnel eddied away like water from a flung stone, leaving Drust standing, arms full of gladiator gear. He was appalled at how paralysed he was, watching Verus come at him like a rush of snow wind through the milling shadows. He heard voices shouting for the Urbans, the Vigiles – anybody.

  A few steps from Drust, Verus was balked by a reddened pig-face attached to a half-naked body composed of bulged muscle from working the haulage windlasses. The pig-face snarled angrily, then squealed when Verus, his face as blank as carved travertine, stepped sideways and slashed him a second smile under his chin.

  It seemed to Drust that he was kicked hard in the belly by the sight of spraying blood, a shock that struck him from crown to sole and back again. Me, he thought. That will be me…

  He flung the armful of gear at Verus, having the grace of the gods to hold onto the hilt of the gladius, so that only the sheath joined the spray of lumber which took the knife-man in the face.

  Verus reared up like a frightened horse, cursed, shook off a grasping hand and whirled in a circle, making the crowd shy away from him. He stumbled through greave and arm guard, kicked a helmet and hopped, cursing again, for Drust was a set of bare feet vanishing round a corner.

  Drust ran by instinct, by smell, taste and the knowledge garnered from too many years ploughing through these fetid spaces. He yelled and when that failed he used his elbows, but a man with a naked sword sprinting in a crowded space left him trailing shouts of anger. Good, he thought, let Verus deal with that – yet he k
new, by the increase in volume and the higher pitch, that Verus was close.

  He tasted the foul air and sprinted left, banged through some double doors and skidded on the stinking tiles, slick with fluids and blood and entrails. He hop-stepped over two sprawled bodies and slammed into the sweating mass of a fat Dis Pater, his death-mask helmet under one arm and his hammer parked in the belly cavity of a disembowelled dwarf.

  ‘Hoi – you shouldn’t be here. Get the fuck out.’

  Drust knew the spoliarium was a dark hole of bloody secrets that the people who moved in it liked to keep to themselves. The ‘mysteries’ they called it, as if there was some secret, magical, divine revelation that should not be divulged to the general public – but gladiators and lanistae and beast fighters sometimes arrived to claim the body of one of the fallen before it ended up down the Hole, and they knew the charnel-house truth.

  He watched slaves lever the lolling body of a dead lion down into the Hole, a square pit in the floor leading to even darker and more fetid depths, where it would be skinned for the pelt, the claws and fangs removed for sale as souvenirs, and the remnants dragged off to a pit of lime, reduced to slurry and washed out through the drains into the Tiber at the end of the day. All the bodies ended up down there, he knew; ‘never swim in the Tiber’ was a catechism dinned into every denizen of Rome from a young age.

  He knew the depth of the Hole well and considered it, but could not bring himself to leap in. The fat Dis was working up to a fury now, greasy face contorted; Drust waved the gladius and glared, which made him back off and let Drust duck round him and head for the door he knew was on the far side.

  It was the only other exit besides the Gate of Death, which opened into the ring and only when the sweating servants of Dis were dragging the dead by chains and a hook through the heels. He heard confrontation behind him which made him sprint the harder, skidding dangerously.

  He lost his footing completely just at the door, slammed into the jamb and tumbled out into the tunnel beyond, scattering more hurrying slaves, who shouted at him. He was getting to his feet when he felt something clamp on his ankle and looked down to see a fallen Verus, one hand gripping him like a crocodile out of a river.