The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

  ‘Let’s just wait until we reach Singara,’ Ugo said, loud enough to drown everyone for a moment. They subsided, giving Drust a chance.

  ‘This Narseh,’ he began, and Kisa, squatting by the coals, looked up.

  ‘Narseh-dux,’ he corrected and Drust waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘I am less interested in what he is called than in who he is and what he will do for us.’

  Kisa explained it. The Shayk would, as promised, rescue the group’s original camel train and the equipment they’d had to abandon in the amphitheatre – there were mutters about how that would be achieved, but Drust managed to silence them. Uranius had given them a dozen army camels, enough to get them to Singara, where this Narseh had been messaged to equip them with all they would need to get across the Red Serpent, meet with Manius and Dog and return with Hyrcanian tigers.

  At the end of it, he grinned widely and clasped his hands, as if it was a deal already done. No one spoke for a moment. Sib doled out coal-fried lamb and passed round a bowl of oenogarum sauce for it, so that a long, peaceful moment was spent chewing and savouring. Praeclarum half turned from the rest to eat, since she could only cut small pieces and suck them soft enough to swallow; Drust knew her ruined mouth hurt constantly.

  ‘You need cages,’ Kag said eventually.

  ‘Big ones,’ Ugo added.

  ‘Not something you can easily disguise,’ Quintus pointed out, ‘so that the guards on this Persian Wall can be fooled enough to let us pass.’

  ‘We might build the cages there,’ Kisa offered and Sib snorted his derision.

  ‘There is no hiding a brace or more of those tigers on the way back,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Do these Persian guards care?’ said Stercorinus. He was sitting half naked and cradling his sword, though one hand was feeding meat into the hole in his tangled beard where his mouth lurked. ‘They let this Dog and Manius through and I am betting sure they had some carts with them.’

  ‘The Persians on the Serpent care,’ Kisa answered miserably. ‘The land of Hyrcania smiles on the new Sasan dynasty. I would not be surprised if soon it came under the banner of these new Persians – but no matter what, the tigers are prized by all. I cannot see them allowing strangers – Romans among them – to walk away with a pair or more.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Stercorinus growled and he might have been grinning, but it was hard to tell. His voice did not sound overly concerned and Quintus squinted at him.

  ‘Are you not worried at how we are to cross this Wall?’ he demanded, and Stercorinus paused in licking his fingers.

  ‘Would it help?’ he asked.

  No one had a reply to that, so they sat and ate and then slept, taking turns on watch.

  In the morning, before it was fully light, they loaded up the groaning camels and moved on along the trail, east to Singara.

  They fell in with a long train filtering westwards, preceded by wary scouts and protected by leather-clad scowlers with shields and spears and bows. The owner of the caravan was a Persian, though he feared them as much as Romans and nomads.

  ‘They are all thieves,’ he growled. ‘It is good to know the road ahead is clear. The one in front of you is not – we saw horses and camels, from some desert goat-fuckers for sure, between here and Singara.’

  ‘What of Roman patrols?’ demanded Kisa and the caravan owner laughed.

  ‘There are too few Romans around here for that. We came across the remains of four wagons which had once carried grain. There were dead mules, but no men.’

  No one needed to be told what had happened – a supply train had been attacked and stripped. The men had probably been taken, to be sold on as slaves elsewhere, and the caravan owner clearly thought that this would be the fate of Drust and the others.

  They moved on, with Sib kicking a grumbling camel away from the others until he was out of sight. He was a good scout, but this was a strange desert for him and Kag said as much.

  ‘One sand-crawler is much like another,’ Quintus growled back.

  ‘I do not like the desert,’ Ugo pointed out and ducked, only just managing to avoid the yellow-toothed snap of his mount. ‘I hate this beast even more.’

  ‘It hates you,’ Kag said, grinning. ‘Look at the way it stares.’

  All camels stared the same way, Drust thought, a head tilted haughtily to look down the nose, but everyone seemed to think it was a revelation for that particular beast.

  Praeclarum came to him each time they stopped and he stumbled off the kneeling beast that grumbled and groaned when he did. The others smiled and nudged each other – all but Stercorinus, who was always stolid as a post, stern and blank-faced as any acolyte of Zeno.

  ‘You need a few days’ rest,’ she said to him. ‘If you don’t, the ribs may not heal properly.’

  ‘Listen to your ma,’ Kag said, grinning into Praeclarum’s scowl. Drust, however, knew the balm of her touch and the potions she used, so he laid one hand on her whipcord forearm and patted it, smiling. He was surprised to see her eyes drop and turn away, the flush that bloomed on her face.

  Sib rode in at the end of the day and everyone stopped when they saw him flogging the beast up in a welter of chewed foam. It came to a halt and stood, legs splayed, and the pelt on it spiked with sweat.

  ‘There are men at the caravanserai ahead,’ Sib said, accepting water gratefully; the camel moaned at the smell. ‘They are Romans, maybe what is left of that wagon train, and surrounded by a great many goat-fuckers.’

  ‘How great a many?’ Quintus demanded.

  ‘Enough for us to circle wide to the south,’ Sib replied, dragging one hand across his mouth.

  ‘There is water in that caravanserai,’ Kag pointed out and held up the skin he had offered Sib. It hung like a wrinkled, accusing bollock and no one missed the point – they hadn’t enough water to bypass here and reach Singara.

  Drust indicated to Sib to get a fresh camel and lead the way; the only thing to do was take a look, as Kag said. The three of them loped off, shuffling up grit, which was already hissing in a rising wind.

  It was no more than a long lurch away and they ground-reined the camels with stones in the lee of a dip, then crept almost to the lip, belly-crawling the last, which was an agony for Drust.

  The place was typical – a square of blocky buildings, blank walls to the outside, entrances leading off a central courtyard. Stables, sleeping places, stores, all mud-brick and solid.

  Drust saw the men inside and knew they were Army simply because they were out in the open; all the others, the herders and sometime-guards and owners, were cowering in cover against a spatter of fire arrows arcing over.

  There was smoke and two fires where a dry midden and a wagon had been set alight, but fire was no danger to a place made of solid mud brick.

  ‘Look there,’ Kag said, and they saw the muster of men, gathering in a dry wadi out of sight of the defenders. There were men waving their arms and gesticulating and these, Drust knew, were the leaders. It was the only way to tell them apart, for they wore the same stained robes, wraparound head-coverings, carried the same weapons as everyone else. Bows and spears and little round shields, he saw. Ladders, crudely made out of rope with wood hook-frames, for scaling the wall.

  Inside the caravanserai they were oblivious to this, though they had been attacked once already. Drust saw the harness draped carelessly over a heat-split, rickety fence, the smoke trickling from open fires, the chimneys in what was a kitchen. There was a man by the main gate, squatting with a sword across his knee, keffiyeh looped round his neck and his over-robe snowy, the wind snapping it open to reveal the ring mail beneath. He was eating flatbread from one hand and drinking from another; they had no fear of thirst or hunger here, but the attackers had, so they’d need to break in and swiftly, which was why they were massing.

  He wondered how old the place was, this oasis. Three hundred years? Older? Caravans of wanderers had come here with their camel trains, taking freely everything that was here
when it was no more than an oasis, because that was the way of the desert nomads. Then came the ones with stronger resolve and bigger ambitions, handsome men and women who built and grew and made children, stocked goats and camels and tough little horses.

  That time was dead now, buried under the weight of sagging poverty and dulled will. The life that was here now, Drust thought, was charged with the sound of failure – and now, with these people, with the taint of death.

  These were not the handsome men and women of old. They were the skin-and-bone people spreading mule meat to dry on canvas torn from some other hands, cooking on old fires, the women swaying gauds rather than the veiled flowers of the old Persians or the followers of Alexander.

  Now there were also Romans of the Army, dusty and desperate – and one who was neither, as Sib pointed out.

  ‘The size of him,’ he breathed. ‘He can give Ugo half a head.’

  Drust had to admit that the man was big. He was dressed no differently from the others, but somehow he seemed like a leader, had that aura about him, emanating like heat.

  ‘Well,’ said Kag grimly, ‘we need that water. We should wait until dark and sneak in.’

  ‘You think a man like that will hand it out to us?’ Sib sneered back. ‘Should we even make it over the wall without the sentries skewering us?’

  ‘We need to fight our way in,’ Kag declared, then tugged at his cloak and grinned. ‘We are Romans after all.’

  Back at the others, he made the same point and had a look from Quintus that would have stripped the gilt off a god’s statue.

  ‘And out? With water freely given by the Army?’

  ‘Quintus is right,’ Ugo rumbled, frowning. ‘We will have to attack these goat-botherers and drive them off.’

  Now everyone cackled. ‘With what legion do you suggest?’ demanded Kag.

  Drust held up one of the red cloaks, given the idea by Kag, who only now realised it. Quintus grinned and nodded.

  ‘If we hit those leaders,’ Kag added, stroking his beard, ‘that might work.’

  ‘There were at least a hundred of them,’ Sib offered anxiously.

  ‘Closer to fifty,’ Kag soothed.

  ‘Ah, that’s all right then,’ Stercorinus offered and Sib rounded on him.

  ‘You might at least show concern,’ he spat. ‘A little sensible fear. It will be a hard fight.’

  ‘Would it help?’ Stercorinus countered.

  They rode out, taking all their beasts and looking carefully at the sky, for they wanted it twilight, that time when the desert light goes flat as it heads down to a glorious blood-drop sun and then darkness. In that half-light they would look like what they were attempting and that bluff had to be all of this, the fake ankle turn that dropped you to one knee, the stumble, the bad strike that seemed to leave you open so your opponent would gloat and fall in the trap of it.

  Still, it was crazed, as Kag whispered softly to Drust. They sat and waited in the lee of a nearby wadi, tensed and sweating about being discovered by those already setting up the yip-yip fox screams to unnerve the defenders of the caravanserai.

  ‘Madness,’ Drust agreed and then managed a rictus grin at Kag. ‘Who’d have thought water could drive men mad?’

  It was an old joke from another time, but it comforted like a fire on a cold night. They sat under a bowl of sky and a rim of stars in a place littered with rocks – a metaphor for us and the world, Drust thought. Living in the now, with the hot sky and an immensity that frightened folk with its vastness, dependent on one another, with the complete absence of a common sense that should have stopped them being there.

  They were already shifting like a delicate mechanism, smoothing out back into the routine they had all perfected and would never be done with. They checked weapons with that old familiarity, felt the gritting rasp of dust in their mouths, bodies soaked with salted sweat under their red cloaks, camel-sticks held like javelins.

  Drust blew out his cheeks. ‘Everyone know the plan?’ he called softly.

  ‘Run in, kill everything, run out,’ Ugo growled back and that got a few laughs.

  ‘We stand ready,’ Quintus added and that got a few more; it was the standard army response to any order, however bad it looked. It looked, Drust had to admit, quite bad.

  There were a hundred – more – desert tribals crouched in a wadi not far from the wall of the mud-brick compound. They had ladders and bows, spears and blades, and for all that Drust had seen some big commander muster men in defence, they’d get over the wall and then numbers would do it.

  On a nearby hill were about a dozen, perhaps more – the leadership of the tribals, overseeing the business next to the rope tethers of their camels and horses.

  ‘Get in amongst them,’ Drust had told them. ‘Stercorinus – you have a blade long enough to be used from the back of a camel, so you slash free their mounts and scatter them. The rest of us will ride in like dromedarii, loud and proud and making it seem we are part of many.’

  The cloaks would do it, Drust hoped. That and the surprise. Cut the head off the snake, wreck their transport, and if that didn’t send all of them scattering, then run for the safety of the compound.

  They came up at a shambling lope, Drust trying to kick the camel into running hard. There was a moment when the heads turned, staring in disbelief, which is when Kag bawled out, ‘Roma invicta!’ and Quintus went past, roaring with laughter at it.

  Drust managed no more than a weary lollop, but saw Stercorinus come up alongside and pass him, heading for the tethered mounts. ‘Cut the ropes,’ he yelled, but had a mouthful of gritty dust and choked on anything else; he saw Stercorinus ignore the mounts and charge on past, heading for the huddle of men. They started to scatter and Stercorinus, both hands on the upraised sword, swept in, scything left, then right.

  Cursing, Drust fought the camel to a staggering halt and then had to slither off, pain bursting all the way through him. He headed for the tethered line and struck, but it wasn’t tight enough to be cut in one and he had to begin sawing; a horse tugged, making the affair bounce, while the camel on the other side eyed him bleakly and chewed sideways.

  A shadow flicked and he reflex-ducked – the blade that would have slashed his face hissed over his head and he yelped, spinning away and wincing at the shriek of bruised muscles. His enemy had a face with a scar along it, an old white wound that tugged the side of his mouth up in a permanent lopsided grin. He had a baggy robe a size too large for him, thrown over baggier Persian trousers, yet the stance, the way he handled the spatha told Drust he was no tribal.

  ‘You’re no fucking camel-botherer from the 20th,’ the man growled in Latin, and that confirmed it.

  ‘You’re no goat-fucker from the desert,’ Drust answered, backing up and looking sideways for help. The man laughed, a dust-harsh sound.

  ‘I knows who you is,’ the man said. ‘Dead man is who you is.’

  ‘Come ahead if you have the balls for it,’ Drust declared, then ducked under the tether rope and got among the mounts, which began to tug and mill. He slashed once at the rope and saw strands part; the scarred man scowled and sent a sweep of blade, easily dodged. It hit a camel in the face, which roared outrage and jerked away – the rope broke.

  Drust was bumped and jostled – one horse’s rear sent him spinning into the dust and the agony of the fall drove air and sense out of him; he was struggling to rise when he saw Scarface closing in, squinting and crouched as he came up, fending off the milling beasts.

  He saw Drust and snarled. Or smiled – it was hard for Drust to tell with that scar, but it didn’t matter. He bore in and slashed with the spatha blade; Drust had no time for finesse, did not use the flat of the gladius to catch it, but the edge and the force threw his arm out wide. Scarface launched a scythe that would have taken Drust in the face if he had not ducked. Then he stopped, grinning, which bewildered Drust.

  He was getting to his feet when another beast hit him – camel, Drust thought as the hairy moun
tain of it knocked him off balance. He flailed his arms wildly for balance and felt a jarring as the gladius bit something; when he turned, a man was looking down it, his mouth wide and blood-wet, his eyes staring madly at the steel length that led from his throat all the way to Drust’s fist.

  Coming up behind me, Drust thought – sneaky bastard. Then he realised why Scarface had stopped and half turned to see the man now boring in, his backstab plan a failure. Drust gave a shriek and wrenched the blade to free it, so hard that it hissed out and round, with no control at all.

  They both felt the tug of it and both fell over. Drust wrestled with the grit and shrouded air, scrambling back to his feet in time to hear a high, keening scream. By the time he was back on his feet and in a fighting crouch, one side of his body an answering shriek of agony, he saw the noise came from Scarface.

  He was clutching his belly to keep the pale, blue-white coils in, and the shock of it had rendered him to whimpering for his ma. Drust spat dust and managed a lurching turn as shadows flitted in the murk; somewhere, above the screaming, someone seemed to be babbling for forgiveness.

  ‘Not bad,’ said a voice and Quintus came up, his face a paste of sweat and dust. He casually struck out with his own sword, a serpent-tongue flicker that took Scarface in the side of the neck and rendered him instantly silent. ‘Shut up, you fuck. I have had horses die on me with less fuss.’

  His grin was bright and wide and admiring. ‘I saw that,’ he said, nodding at the two corpses. ‘A backhand in the throat, a slash to the belly – if I’d known you fought this well, I’d have paired you in the harena and we could have had some real fights.’

  Drust said nothing, not even how glad he was to see him. They lumbered out of the settling dust to see beasts galloping everywhere, some of them mounted. Men were down and the babbling came from Stercorinus, who was kneeling and praying to his sword, which was driven into the ground; Drust did not understand the language but he understood the blood that slathered the man to his waist, clotting in the dust.