The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

  ‘Ho – no need for insults,’ Stercorinus said, which made everyone stop and stare. The Empress seized her chance to leap in.

  ‘It seems the gods have abandoned you, not me,’ she declared with a wry twist of grin. ‘You will be caught and killed and I will be free.’

  Dog leaned closer to her and she drew back a little, despite her best efforts; not many can stay firm under the stare of that face, Drust thought.

  ‘The only freedom you will find if the Persians get you is the one that takes you to face the walls of Rome and call out the secret name of the City at the head of an army. You will either find perfumes and riches or hot irons – either way, this Ardashir will get the flame he desires to put fire in his men. And Romans will revile you.’

  ‘It will be perfumes and riches,’ Praeclarum added. ‘Her nature already tells us what she is.’

  ‘Abomination,’ the woman spat back. ‘Everyone can see what your nature is. You call me a whore – does everyone else know you fuck the leader?’

  Drust felt himself burn and itch, but Kag grinned.

  ‘Of course we know, and we say Fortuna’s kiss to them.’

  Drust, however, watched Dog’s face and thought that there was something in his look that said he did not believe Drust was leader. They had had this grate between them before.

  ‘There are too many gods here,’ Quintus offered and Ugo agreed that with a grudging nod.

  ‘You were a fire worshipper back in Rome,’ he rumbled at the woman. ‘And then became a bigger one when you married the boy-emperor. Then you came here, to be concubine to a silly little city governor in a place of Persian fire worshippers.’

  He turned and stared round them all with his big, broad, ingenuous face. ‘Maybe those people who hunted us for the blue stone eyes are still chasing us.’

  Dog and the others had heard the tale and laughed at it, mostly – especially the bit where Drust and others had gone off the cliff. They were not laughing now, Drust saw.

  ‘It would not be strange,’ Mule noted bitterly, ‘for they did not seem to want to give up, according to what I heard. Perhaps, once they stuck their eyes back, they thought of continuing the chase.’

  ‘There are too many chasers,’ Drust offered. ‘And gods.’

  Mouse looked at the Empress’s bowl. ‘Will you be finishing that?’ he asked.

  ‘Leave the bowl at least,’ Kag growled drily.

  There is no point running in the harena, Drust thought, since you only arrive back where you started and get killed tired.

  ‘Maybe we should fight,’ he said, and Kag agreed to it almost at once with a loud ‘Ha!’ of approval.

  ‘We could get in this Iron Blade if it is unmanned. Defend it.’

  ‘We’d be trapped,’ Dog pointed out. ‘With little food and water. They need only wait.’

  There was enough hard truth in that to shut everyone down for a while, until the Empress started in about how it would be better for them all to surrender. Ugo squinted and scowled.

  ‘There is no old ma’s remedy for what is going to happen. So let it happen,’ he said, ‘and fight like brothers all the way out the Death Gate.’

  Drust did not know what was worse – the idea of them having to run on, or this resignation that they were all sixed already.

  He fell asleep aware of Praeclarum breathing beside him, of her body warmth. The memory of her held close made him stir inside and, at the same time, filled him with dread. He did not know what to do on this path or where it would lead.

  In the morning, as they moved off, Drust looked them over as they collected their gear and their camels, these people he had travelled and fought with, it seemed forever. Even Kisa and the new men, Mule and Mouse.

  Kag was solid as ever, ragged and stained and filthy, his hair and beard wild. Next to him, Quintus grinned and chaffered with the woman – we keep calling her Empress, Drust thought, and there must be something in that.

  Praeclarum fussed with her festoon of bags, full of herbs and foul-tasting potions and with bits of charcoal she had filched to give to Kisa when he fretted over not having something to write with. He still did, but had no one to give the results to.

  The eye-frets on her face were scored with dust like the ruts of a bad road and her smile was as toothless as ever when she opened her mouth. Her eyes still smiled when she looked at Drust, and now and then one or other would thrust a strip of wound-linen at her with the offhand gesture that said it meant nothing when, in fact, they had ripped it off the hem of their already tattered rags.

  Dog, silent as ever, stood hipshot, with a shield resting against his knees, stroking his face with a knife which had to be razor sharp because it took off beard stubble with only a lick of his wine ration to help. It was not vanity so much as a desire to keep his death-face a clean weapon to hurl at people when he needed to. He and Manius, Mule and Mouse are the best armed of us all, Drust realised.

  Manius was lean but the muscle was going stringy, Drust saw. Seven years in a gold mine would do that, even if you were a water engineer. He was squatting like a desert raider, knees up round his ears, peering up the way ahead as if something lurked there. Perhaps it does, Drust thought. Of us all, he can feel the enemy – perhaps he is the jnoun Sib thought after all.

  Mule mocked Mouse for his eating, the fingerbones woven into his beard clicking and rattling, every one from a supposed dead enemy; in his pack, Drust knew, was a box with at least one festering finger which he would boil the flesh off when he could.

  Mouse chewed bread as if his life depended on keeping his jaws moving. He was still a man-mountain, taller than Ugo – though Drust would never say it aloud – but soft in the belly, which grew no less.

  Kisa squatted, sullen and watchful, while Stercorinus fastened up the girth of a camel saddle ready for the Empress; his sword was stuck within arm’s reach and his face, it seemed to Drust, was grimmer and older than ever before.

  Everyone was, he thought. Hard and grey-grim these men, and he became aware suddenly of what he looked like, mirrored in their faces. A medium-sized man striding down the slope of his life, a face that had never been one to grace commemorative cups and with the harsh lines of life and age outlined in dust and the bruises and cuts still unhealed.

  Hunched under the grey-streaked tangle of unwashed, uncut hair, with Dis and Mars Ultor sitting on each shoulder crushing me groundward, he thought. He straightened almost at once, but knew he would fall into it again.

  The Empress looked at him, ice-chip eyes and her awning pulled round her like a robe, trying to look imperial and haughty. She was smiling but did not do it for any pleasant reasons.

  ‘We will get there, if that’s where we have to go,’ Dog said, glancing up at the brooding peaks.

  ‘Not if what you hold to be true is truth,’ the Empress interrupted blandly. ‘You are slaves and gladiators following a man with the face of Dis. More doomed would be hard to find.’

  ‘Dog does not lead here,’ Drust declared, looking steadily at the man. ‘He simply knows the way. And the one who is most doomed, lady, is the one who betrayed her vows, her family and her own heart.’

  She blinked and looked away, which made Drust savage with triumph at having inflicted a stroke. Then she recovered and turned, stone-faced.

  ‘Firstly,’ she answered, ‘you will have to deal with them.’

  They all followed her pointed finger, to where the distant dust bloomed like a foul flower.

  ‘Kick your camels,’ Kag bellowed, ‘if you want to avoid the pain of dying for a little longer.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the light that spilled wearily into their faces the land seemed red-brown and cracked, littered with scree and dusted lightly with green to show that water was here somewhere. There were trees too, all tortured and bent and rattling spindly limbs as if shivering in a sudden chill; the whole place was a bad memory of lush.

  They were stopped in the lee of a wall, another huddle of melted stone an
d old archways, but welcome because it was something that made the great roll of wind-sucked land seem less like the worst sea they had ever sailed on. They were heading uphill now and had been for some time, and the camels were suffering from no food, no water and the harshness under their pads.

  ‘How far have we come?’ demanded Ugo, in between sucking in air. Manius looked back down the long bleak trail of scarred scree.

  ‘Not far enough,’ he said and that was all the truth. The dust was still behind them and it seemed to Drust as if it was bigger than ever. Also, he had noted that they were going more east than north because of the slope.

  ‘There must be hundreds of them,’ Kisa said tremulously. ‘Look at the dust they are kicking up.’

  Manius looked at Kag, who looked at Drust and all knew, all the ones who had lived in the sands, ate it, slept in it, been scoured by it.

  ‘Storm,’ Quintus said.

  Manius nodded, then added sadly, ‘Sib would have spotted it earlier than this.’

  Drust wanted to believe him, but Kag exchanged a look that said he didn’t believe the sorrow in Manius’s voice. Not that it mattered, for Mule had leaped up on the back of his camel and perched there; Kag shook his head with disbelief and admiration.

  ‘There is still the dust of riders,’ he called out and then slid easily down onto the beast, which rumbled and moaned about it all.

  No one spoke much, simply shouldered into the whining wind and moved off again, covering faces against the whip of cold dust. After a long time of this, Drust was gasping and almost on his knees and no one else was much better – no one was riding.

  Then, like a death knell, one of the pack camels groaned, stumbled and fell to its knees. Quintus went to it and both Ugo and Mouse tried to haul it up, but it was blowing hard, the neck snaked; if it hadn’t been for the packs, it would have fallen sideways.

  ‘It will take some time to sort this out,’ Manius said to Drust. ‘I can take the fittest of the beasts we have left and back trail a little, see if I can spot anything.’

  Drust nodded and set Mouse and Ugo to unpacking the dying camel and seeing what could be rescued. Mouse wanted to butcher the beast and get a little meat from it, but that seemed a pointless waste of strength. In the end, they left it alone folded and forlorn and moaning about it.

  Dog had moved a little way upslope and came back grinning. ‘I am sure that tower is just up ahead,’ he said and Drust went with him to see. It seemed to him that it might have been as Dog said, or no more than a pinnacle of rock.

  ‘Well, we will find it before the day is out,’ Dog declared firmly.

  ‘We had better. A day is about all we have that won’t have blades and blood in it.’

  ‘Worried about your little gladiatrix?’ Dog asked lightly. He was grinning, and for a moment Drust hackled up, and Dog saw it, putting up placating hands.

  ‘This is why you should never have women in a School,’ he said. ‘It is the one thing Quintus and I agreed on.’

  ‘This is not a School,’ Drust answered sullenly, feeling ridiculous for saying so. Dog laughed and went off down to the others, speaking over his shoulder.

  ‘You were always soft for women. Love, like the poets have it. Had no place when we were all slaves, and no matter what copper plaques we have that say different, we are still the scum of Subura to anyone in the Empire.’

  ‘Fine words coming from you,’ Drust answered bitterly, catching up with him. ‘You loved that boy who became Emperor – and his ma. Dragged us all through the shit over that and here you are doing it again.’

  Dog stopped and turned. ‘I dragged that boy and his ma through a Praetorian camp by their heels to execution,’ he said. ‘Don’t confuse what I do for love, Drust.’

  * * *

  The wind was starting to moan and swirl, but the stink of blood wouldn’t be blown away. A figure wavered into view, hazed by rising dust, and they all squinted into the nag of wind, red-eyed and weeping, cracked lips bursting blood with snarls. Manius appeared, leading his plodding camel.

  ‘There are at least two hundred horses coming,’ he said. ‘Half of them are those fast little fuckers Bashto had, marmots with robes and trousers, but they can shoot you full of arrows.’

  ‘The rest?’

  Manius blew snot out of one nostril. ‘Horsed bows, with iron hats and ring-metal coats.’

  ‘Persians,’ Kag said and spat. ‘Bashto is bought and sold.’

  ‘We are bought and sold,’ Drust corrected, ‘but not yet delivered.’

  ‘Then we must find a place to make a stand,’ Kisa declared, looking round desperately.

  ‘You are doomed,’ the Empress said through a curling lip. ‘The gods have forsaken you, Drust. It seems a pity that everyone else had to be woven into that.’

  There was a sharp, flat sound and the woman staggered sideways, holding her cheek in disbelief. Praeclarum took her by her awning cloak and propelled her to a camel.

  ‘You are a woman of a certain type,’ she said, ‘whose heart is on a wheel, never settling for one matter when another will roll around to take its place.’

  Mouse laughed. He was sitting on a rock and looked, suddenly, more like the Boxer on the Quirinal than ever. They all saw it and wondered what it meant.

  ‘Move,’ Dog said. ‘The tower we needed to find is not far ahead. Besides – this storm will help us.’

  It did not seem so to anyone as they stumbled on, the wind tearing at what remained of their clothes, catching their legs, hurling grit in their faces. Mule lost his camel, which bucked and kicked and tore free; he took two or three steps after it, but it became a shadow in the moaning haze and then vanished.

  ‘Riders are coming.’

  They lumbered into a shambling run and stumbled into a new and strange landscape of buttress and wind-melted walls, only realising it when they were forced down a snake-knot of tracks.

  ‘Walls and houses,’ Quintus yelled to be heard above the wind. ‘Look – this was a town once.’

  Now they peered in wonder, seeing the remains of doorways, the collapsed litter of clay walls. There was nothing of it higher than waist height and most of that was choked and drifted with dust, beaten shapeless by the wind and shoved into huge, deep drifts of scree. Town was too big a name for it but it was undoubtedly a place where people had lived, laughed, loved and traded – and died.

  Kisa stopped by what seemed like a pillar, scoured to the shape of a rotting tooth. ‘Look,’ he yelled above the wind. ‘A statue.’

  ‘The sand eats everything,’ Ugo shouted, ‘this day or the next… keep moving.’

  ‘It has something,’ Kisa said, kneeling and peering. ‘Wait. Wait…’

  Ugo took the little man by the collar and dragged him until he kicked on to his feet. ‘That was important,’ he yelled. ‘I saw the word Roxana… that was the Great Alexander’s queen.’

  ‘They are important,’ Ugo growled, whirling him briefly to face back towards where the shadowy shapes, eldritch in the swirling haze, were getting closer and closer. Kisa yelped and hurried after Ugo without argument.

  Dog cursed and stopped. ‘I am running here,’ he said with disgust and, balked in the act of passing him, Drust knew what he meant. You never run in the harena…

  He stood, panting, then looked up the steepening slope at a looming shape. ‘If we both saw it true, then that is the Iron Blade,’ he gasped.

  ‘Fuck their mothers in the arse,’ Dog growled. ‘I am running from goat riders.’

  He turned, hauling out both his swords, savaging everyone with a grimace and a snarling cry. Drust went on a few steps, then stopped, panting, bent over with his hands on his knees. From somewhere came the hoarse cry, ‘Rome is mother to us all!’

  An answer swirled on the wind: ‘The harena is our country!’

  Drust took a step away from Dog, the wind dancing dust with a rising moan of glee, but could not take another and knew what he had to do. When Dog roared out ‘Pairs’, Drust howled b
ack and turned into the fetid breath of Dis. The wind shrieked happily through the funnel of old streets.

  The riders came out of the dust, which was now swirling in yellow clouds. They saw their enemy too late, checked and milled, horses dancing as they dragged out their little bows – one shot off a shaft, but the wind dragged it sideways and it vanished into the yellow fog.

  Dog gave a hoarse shout and rushed at them; with a curse, Kag followed. There was a brief flurry of clatter and grunt, then some huge shadow leered out of the dust and Drust slashed wildly, then smashed into it with his battered shield.

  The pony screamed at the cut, tossed its head away from the battering, rearing and lashing out; a hoof clattered off Drust’s shield and sent him spinning – by the time he got back to his feet, spitting dust, the horse was gone.

  A bundle of wind-whipped clothes lay nearby, moving weakly, and Drust shuffled to it; a pale face with eyes slitted in pain and a straggle of wisped moustache looked desperately up, but there was no mercy in Drust and he bladed it with a crucifixion of iron – one stroke down, a second across the eyes. The man’s face opened like a bloody flower.

  Another shape drifted out of the swirling dust, but it was Dog with his swords resting against his shoulders, limping back and as unconcerned as if he was off for a day’s fishing. He glanced at the dead man and grinned a bloody mile at Drust, who had to blink and focus – the wind was a thunder that had got inside his head.

  Then Dog scowled at the shapes who came staggering up – Quintus, Manius, Mouse and the others, all wild and matted with sweat and dust and blood.

  ‘Too late, you poor swords – Drust and I have done with them,’ Dog declared.

  ‘Bravely done,’ growled Ugo and pointed with his long axe. ‘Then those will be the harmless shades of the folk who once lived here.’

  They looked back and saw the smoked shadows of more horsemen.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Kag said wearily.