The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

They turned and ran, heading for the huge dark shape that fingered into the hidden sky. The world was ochre and howling and Kisa screamed out that it was a tower, a real tower. In the lee of it, they stood at the splintered gates, which Dog said was a good sign that no one was home.

  They stumbled inside to find a courtyard and some surrounding buildings, all marked with the char of old fires and fallen roofs, long abandoned. Ugo and Mouse started to try and shift the doors, but they were canted and useless. Camels milled and groaned, then sought shelter from the scouring sand-wind inside the broken houses; there was a second floor on the largest one and perhaps there had been one after that, but some of the planks of it had fallen to the ground and the stone curve of staircase was choked with spilled timbers.

  ‘The entrance is narrow,’ Kag yelled, ‘and this wind will send arrows everywhere but a target. Fortuna smiles yet, brothers.’

  ‘There is water here too,’ Mouse roared out, spitting dust. ‘I know this because I have pissed myself.’

  They laughed like baying, and crouched down while Kisa and Mule unloaded the bales from their last pack beast and tethered the others to make sure they wouldn’t bolt.

  Voices shouted. Stercorinus raised his curved sword in both hands and spoke, a sing-song chant no one understood – but they knew prayers when they heard them. Drust slithered to where Kisa huddled, trembling.

  ‘Look after the Empress,’ he ordered and handed him a knife. ‘Make sure she does not run.’

  A horseman plunged under the door arch just as Drust turned back. Ugo banged hard into the rider with his shoulder, staggering the horse, then he slashed him from the saddle with a savage axe swipe and ploughed on, cutting and slashing so that the enemy horsemen scattered away from him. These are Bashto’s men, Drust thought. No armour or balls for a stand-up fight. They like to ride around in circles and turn you into a hedgepig.

  ‘No eagles can fly in this.’

  Stercorinus followed up his scream by leaping over the dead rider and the kicking horse, sped past Ugo at the gate and vanished into the wind and dust, swallowed from sight and then sound. There was a moment when only the wind moaned and the dust hissed across their bodies. Then more horsemen burst out of the murk, moving as if half blind, scarcely more than stepping over spilled bodies and stones the dust-wind hid. These were big men on big horses, all ring-coats and conical, studded helmets, shields and cased bows – and long, straight spathae, the slashing sword.

  It was a madness of half seen images, a panting whirl of confusion as the horsemen tried to force a way through the archway. Drust stabbed and ducked and once he fell and rolled. He crashed through a thicket of drunken stones that straggled along the top of the slope the tower stood on, his breath harsh in his ears, and only realised that he had left the shelter of the tower when he saw riders loom and vanish.

  On his left, Ugo and Quintus stood side by side, Ugo roaring out defiance each time he scythed that great axe. Kag and Dog flitted like dark shadows, the one half crouched and raking along the girths and bellies of horses with his gladius, the other stabbing the fallen with both swords, making sure. Manius had given up his bow and was working his arm like a launderer at a washboard as he pounced on the dazed fallen. There was blood all round his mouth and Drust, half dazed, felt an icy stab of fear that Sib might have been right all along.

  Ugo blasted the legs out from under a horse with a stroke, spilling the rider off it, so that he rolled towards Drust’s feet and moved weakly, groaning and flapping an arm. Drust moved towards him on legs like timber beams; by the time he reached him the man was on his back, struggling to rise, but weighed down by the long ring-coat and stunned so that his arms and legs waved like a tipped-over beetle. His helmet had a face-veil of brass rings that flew up like gold teeth when Drust’s gladius lanced into his neck, opening a bloody gape that made him scream. The next stroke was a blur in the haze and choked off screams to a gurgle as the apple was hacked from his throat. Drust kicked the body away with his boot, then fell over and sat.

  ‘Off your arse,’ shouted a voice, and Praeclarum sped out of the shrieking dust, her call enough of a warning for Drust to block the snake-tongue stab of a spear – the rider lunged past into the dust-mist. Praeclarum snarled after him and Drust wiped his burst, dry mouth with the back of one hand.

  ‘This is no good,’ Praeclarum yelled. ‘We must get back into the tower.’

  Stercorinus came running past gasping, hurdled a dead man and then a still-kicking, screaming horse; a rider followed and the long lance skewered Stercorinus with a thump that lifted him off his feet, shrieking. The rider shouted and then started to shake and jerk the lance, trying to free it, while Stercorinus flopped like a child’s straw doll.

  Drust struggled up, but Praeclarum was quicker and sprang forward just as the lance came loose. She knocked the spear point away with her scarred little shield, then bulled in, slashing sideways left and right, cutting at the horse’s eyes. It screamed and danced away; the rider dropped the lance to cling on, and suddenly the world slowed to a strange, flickering honeyed light. The inside of Drust’s head was colder than steel.

  Armour rattled – Drust heard it, knew that it was the rider who had fastened it badly, could even see the loose leather shoulder pieces as the man fell. It will be his ruin, he thought, seeing the gap such carelessness had made.

  The rider was off the horse and his movements seemed slow… so slow. Drust had time to pluck up the dropped lance, time to pick the spot as if he was lacing a helmet thong. The man jerked and screamed as the lance point went in, right under the badly fastened shoulder piece, though it made no sound to Drust, and the dying man looked like a cod opening and closing its mouth as if trying to breathe. Drust laughed with delight.

  There were others, and he moved steadily through whirling dust and dancing shadows, slapping away a man’s spear, chopping at his knee so that he reeled away, clinging desperately to the plunging horse.

  Another fallen rider scrambled up, tried to dodge and duck away from Drust as he strode forward on ground he owned. The fleeing man tripped, fell and took the lance so hard through his leather and rings that the shaft snapped. A high wailing scream burst from his mouth, then cut off abruptly as Drust beat the last life from him with the broken shaft, raising and thudding it down like a hammer on an anvil, until it was frayed and blood-clotted and the thunder of it drowned out even the mad wind…

  He found himself slumped against a stone, blinking back into his head while the wind shrieked and danced dust everywhere.

  ‘Form. Form.’

  It was a call with a long-ingrained response and Drust was up on legs like twisted trees before he even knew it, but he weaved and staggered and could not take a single step until, suddenly, Praeclarum was there, one hand under his elbow.

  ‘This way.’

  They moved to the sound of a hoarse voice – Kag bawling out so that people would come to him. Quintus was next to him, big Ugo with his axe all bloody, Mouse standing with his head bent, hands on thighs, puking; he stopped long enough to moan that he had lost his camel haunch. One by one the others came, crouched like bloodied dogs, fresh from a ruck. I should be doing that, Drust thought, but he was too gasping to do more.

  ‘Where is Stercorinus?’ demanded Kag, and Drust shook his head.

  ‘We saw him skewered,’ Praeclarum added.

  ‘Dog?’

  No one knew. They clustered, panting and squinting into the dust, then moved wearily back into the tower, stepping over bodies, pricking them to make sure. Ugo battered the life out of a horse, whose screams were high and thin and still drowned by the wind. They crouched like they’d been whipped and Drust tried to make sense of what had happened, that strange light, the feeling inside his head… what he had done.

  ‘I killed four,’ Kag said dully.

  ‘Three,’ Quintus declared. ‘And Mouse took two, I saw. Beat them to pulp with bare fists.’

  ‘We all killed,’ Drust managed to growl, slumpin
g down and feeling sick, ‘but it is like picking leaves from a tree – there are always more when you look.’

  ‘We need Mars Ultor or Fortuna,’ Kag declared with a snort of disgust as he inspected the bloody lips of a wound on Ugo’s arm. Mule came up with a bucket and a ladle; the water was brackish but tasted like Falernian. Drust saw there was not a mark on Mule and that he probably had not left the tower.

  Kisa came up, round-eyed and blinking; the Empress was with him, looking with horror at the bloody carnage.

  ‘Black you are,’ she hissed at Drust. ‘Black-browed, black-hearted and black with the blood of innocent slain…’

  Mule jerked her to silence with a tug and Drust suddenly realised he had tied her hands and tethered her to Kisa. When he saw Drust looking, he grinned like a feral cat.

  Manius was looking up and round, though what he hoped to see escaped Drust entirely, for the world was the colour of dirty honey and seemed to lurch and sway and spin if you looked too long upwards. The shriek of wind was rising.

  A figure walked in under the archway and everyone spun round, weapons up – but it was Stercorinus, slathered in blood so that only his eyes showed.

  ‘You were dead,’ Praeclarum stuttered hoarsely, and the man looked at her as if from a long, long way away.

  ‘That was a surprise,’ he said and offered a bloody grin. ‘No eagles, though.’ He walked on, cradling the sword until he found a place to sit. Someone gave him water and Praeclarum brought more and knelt, sponging him; he did not acknowledge it was happening.

  ‘Don’t waste that,’ growled a voice, and suddenly Dog was there, swords dangling loosely from either hand, his death-face dripping with mud and sweat and blood.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Praeclarum snapped back, ‘but he isn’t unhurt either. Needs cleaning – that lance went right through and probably had all sorts of shit on it.’

  Dog simply took up the pitcher she had brought and drank deeply, then handed it back.

  ‘They are coming again!’ bellowed Manius and had to burst his throat to be heard above the risen wind now; the sand stung and lashed. A rider lurched out of a haze which had turned sickly yellow like the eyes of a mad wolf. He came so fast that Ugo had no time to swing, was hit by the shoulder of the beast and flung sideways – the horseman plunged on towards Dog, who had just stuck his swords into the ground to drink. He stepped back and flung his arms out.

  ‘Come ahead,’ he roared.

  The wind caught his words with an exultant shriek, whirled them up and away into oblivion; the horseman clattered up, stabbing his lance at the disarmed Dog, and people yelled and scattered. There was a growling sound, a great puff of shrouding dust.

  When it cleared, Dog, horse and rider had all vanished.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The wind seemed to take a deep breath and then screamed like a burning cat – Drust felt his feet slide and fought for balance as the stinging scour of grit turned into a vicious rake of stones. He could not hide from it, could not walk in it, could not even crawl in it…

  Something gripped his ankle and pulled. A voice bawled meaningless words, whipped away by the mad wind, then he felt his feet go out from under him and there was a moment of gibbering panic, when he thought the little hook-men of Dis Pater were hauling him down and down, to meet the hammer…

  There was a moment of weightlessness, a strange sensation of floating – then he landed with a thump that drove the air from his lungs.

  Gasping, he rolled over and crawled up, hearing the wind and seeing billowing dust like smoke, but as if it was far away. He bumped into something soft and recoiled from it, feeling a sticky wetness.

  ‘Horse,’ said a voice and then sparks flew. Dog blew life into the charcoal cloth, fed it to something on a stick – a torch – and light flared, turning the swirl of zephyred dust to a dance of gold. Drust looked up, stunned, at where the world howled; we are down in a hole in the ground, he thought dazedly…

  ‘Horse broke its neck falling,’ Dog declared with a wondrous regret. ‘That was Mars Ultor, right there. Crushed the breath out of the rider – that was Fortuna. I called on them and they answered.’

  ‘Where… are we?’

  ‘Cellar,’ Dog declared, and now Drust could see the long space, the trestle table, the ancient boxes and barrels and webbed sconces with old torches. The rotted stone floor of the courtyard had given way under the weight of those above – the horse and rider had finally broken it…

  Dog walked to where other torches were sconced on walls, touching one after another into life. The light grew brilliant and danced flickering shadows in the wind, lighting up a table set with dishes and cups and bench seats. Above, the wind fingered the fallen-in roof and howled frustration and dust at not being able to do more.

  Drust felt weak and trembling at what had happened to him; he had felt a lick of it once or twice before, but nothing like that, like being possessed by Hercules or even Mars Ultor himself. Something slithered from above and a body crashed down, followed by another, as one by one the others came down the hole. Last to arrive was Mule, who threw Kisa in and then dragged the Empress after him, like a cat on a string.

  ‘Just in time,’ he growled, looking up. ‘I have seen that stuff before and it is not pleasant – it is now taking the sand and using it to scour everything. It will flay anyone not in shelter. That’s how all the mud walls look as if they’ve been melted in a forge.’

  Ugo made the horn sign against evil and Kisa, wiping blood from his lacerated face, whimpered unintelligible prayers. Mouse slipped on his way down the rubble heap and growled in disgust at landing in the dead horse’s last voidings.

  ‘Why me? Out of all of you, why is it me who falls in shite?’

  ‘Better luck in falling than him,’ Dog pointed out, nodding to the dead horseman trapped under the beast; his head was facing back over his own shoulders with an expression of agonised astonishment.

  ‘How long will it last?’

  The voice was hoarse but still haughty, as the Empress tested the strength of a bench and risked it, perching like a bird.

  ‘An hour or two. A day – the gods above and below know,’ Mule replied. ‘Last time I was in one was up near Palmyra; it lasted a week.’

  ‘Then we will all be dead,’ she replied. ‘Of starvation and lack of water.’

  Mouse looked amazed. ‘There is an entire horse here – and back there, unless I am mistaken, is a well. Maybe there is even wine – that lasts forever if the amphora is plugged sensibly with wax.’

  ‘Well – the horse will last you for a day,’ Quintus spat back, grinning. ‘The rest of us will wait – and then eat you.’

  ‘Here is your escape and reward,’ the Empress persisted with a sneer, though her voice shook. ‘No glory here.’

  There was no answer to it, for it was so completely what everyone had been thinking that they were stunned to silence.

  ‘Well,’ Drust said. ‘It seems the bad cess of your life has trapped us all here.’

  He walked two paces forward and she leaned back despite herself. Drust stopped, looking into the deep brown of her eyes; they were flecked with gold, he saw. She had never been a beauty but she was Julia Aquilia, daughter of a consul and once an Empress of Rome. He felt a crushing weariness.

  ‘I never meant you harm, lady.’

  ‘I will see you killed,’ she said softly, her eyes level and hard.

  There was a loud crack and a crunch; they scattered away like water from a plunging stone. Another followed, and another. There was a pause while the dust swirled, and then a man yelled, staggering blindly.

  ‘Welcome to our hall,’ Ugo growled and struck him in the face so that he fell back; the iron stink of blood washed out, and suddenly everyone was moving.

  There were only two enemy left and one of them went down under Mouse’s blows, the big man snarling like a rabid dog as he did it. The last backed up against the far wall, a curved sword in one hand and a sneer on his sweat-strea
ked, dust-grimed face.

  Kag lurched at him and the man expertly blocked his strike; the counter almost took Kag’s arm off and the man grabbed the Empress by one arm, sheared through the tether and dragged her back, further down the dim room.

  He was cased in splint armour but had lost his fancy helmet in the fall; Ugo leaned on his axe and picked it up and studied it with an expert gaze. It was silvered and bronzed and had a veil of metal rings, hinged metal lappets and a noseguard with a stylised Ahura-Mazda, the wings spreading out like eyebrows.

  ‘There’s fancy,’ he said and tossed it casually to one side with a clatter.

  ‘Come forward,’ Dog said softly. ‘There is no escape that way – we have looked and the stairway is blocked.’

  ‘I am Borzin,’ the man said defiantly. ‘Stor bezashk of the Aswaran. If you value this woman, throw down your weapons.’

  ‘No,’ Drust said. ‘I do not care for that plan, so here is another. We will wait and kill every one of your men who stumbles down that hole in the roof. There will not be many, for this is a storm I have heard of – you will know better what it does. It will last for days and anyone not down here is dead.’

  ‘Most of those down here are already dead,’ Borzin snarled back. ‘The rest will be when they come at me. I can last as long as you, Roman – and more men will come to find me. Messengers have been sent…’

  Kag shook his head. ‘No one will find you. Your messengers will die.’

  ‘He sounds important,’ Mule argued. ‘Maybe they will come looking for him.’

  ‘He is a Stor bezashk of the Aswaran,’ Kisa offered. ‘Which is an animal doctor for the fancy horse units.’

  ‘A horse doctor?’ Quintus demanded and flung back his head to laugh. The Persian growled angrily, but did nothing rash, which Drust found disappointing; the man was backed up into a narrow place and he clutched the woman close to him like a shield. He was also between the well and everyone else.

  ‘It is a title, no more,’ Kisa explained. ‘He commands this unit.’

  ‘He commands fuck all,’ Dog said.