The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

  Stercorinus battered sword on shield, an invitation to fight and a small sound that bounced round the gorge. Now is when Bashto will feel unease, Drust thought. When he will wonder why one man stands there and yet no one he is buying time for is moving to escape, as it had seemed they were doing. The act which had launched men onto the bridge…

  The first of the enemy reached the horses and scrambled over them; someone ended the dying animal’s screams and Drust was almost sorry that man would die. They stumbled on the trailing hems of their long coats, slit for riding, and the first ones got close enough to start stabbing at Stercorinus, who fended them off with the shield and slashed wild ruin into their long shafts. One splintered and broke and Kag cheered.

  There were more and more enemy crowding forward like water in the neck of a corked bottle, and Stercorinus, staggering and slashing, was almost at the end of what little strength he’d had, having to step back pace by reluctant pace.

  Now, Drust thought, as Bashto imperiously waved his horsemen onto the bridge, walking casually up behind the mass of men on foot, all blocked by that one small figure.

  Now.

  Now.

  NOW.

  There was a crack and a lurch that stopped all breathing, that seemed to suck all sound. Into it, bright as triumph, came the single, high-pierced shriek of the circling bird; no one now doubted it was an eagle.

  Bashto got to it too late. Drust saw his mouth open with horror, trying to form words, orders, sense, when there was another crack, a slight hissing rumble. The half-axed supports collapsed under the weight, the bridge fell in a long tumble of timbers, a whirl of arms and legs and despairing shrieks.

  Dust swaddled where the bridge had been, drifting slowly away in a sift of grey to reveal a few timbers on either side, splintered white as new bone. Below, the river sucked up the blood of scattered dead; the dust settled on them like a shroud.

  On the far side, a knot of horsemen who had not been involved danced to control their frantic mounts.

  ‘Mark Stercorinus as six,’ said Drust wearily, turning away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘It will be Iskandr,’ Kag said with relish, studying the half-buried little statue. ‘Look – that’s an old Greek helm he has there. I bet he had a sword or a spear in the other hand, before it broke – or was stole away from him.’

  Kisa frowned at it and ran one hand through the wet of his hair.

  ‘Why is he holding a torch in his one hand?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Quintus, curdling his brow. ‘You would need such a light if you were going to a dark place. Like a temple.’

  ‘Small lad, Iskandr then?’ Mule asked pensively. ‘With three heads?’

  There was a movement off to one side and everyone tensed, weapons up; Manius slid out like a tendril of the mist and moved through the dripping ranks to Drust’s side, where he took a knee and wiped his face.

  ‘A dwelling, small, with smoke coming from it. No dog, one cart. Some chickens.’

  Drust thought and blinked rain from his eyelids. It had been a blessing, that rain, and they had revelled in it – Quintus and Ugo had stripped naked and danced in it like bacchae, to the cheers and laughing of the others. Even the Empress raised her bandaged, ruined face to it as if it was balm.

  That was good for a day, but it wasn’t a downpour, just a sifting, fine as baby hair, out of a mist that clung to everything and did not want to stop. In the end, they started to curse the drip and soak of it.

  They were higher in the mountains now, awed by the strange tints and colours – emerald green, grey, ochre, pink – heading up a valley green with juniper and thick with wild grapes, pears and hawthorns, which made the green part feel more like Apulia. Dog was beaming at the statue, for all that it was bird-slimed, pocked with age and might have been anything; beyond it would be more stones, he said, making it clear where the temple would be.

  ‘Who wants to live up here?’ demanded Kag, and Mule wiped rain from his face and spat.

  ‘People who skulk and hunt,’ he growled – he was aggrieved because Blessed was dead, killed by an arrow fired from the higher rocks. It had unnerved everyone and no one could be sure whether it had been aimed at the beast or just missed another target. Manius swore he had seen the shooter scampering off and that he had nicked him with a shot of his own; he went off to track the blood, but the rain had made that hope fade quickly.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Mule urged. ‘I want that bowman.’

  Privately, Drust thought the camel’s death the best blessing it would get; its pads were cutting up on the poor ground and there was altogether too much wet for it. All it meant to him and the others was that, yet again, they had to carry what they could and abandon the rest.

  Not to Mule, all the same. He was steaming with the heat of his revenge.

  Which is, at least, one way to keep a foot travelling in front of the other, Drust thought. The truth was in the weary stumbling, the savage glares folk gave Dog, the way Drust could not look Manius in the eye. All the old breed, he saw, are shackled by their Brotherhood, but the chains of it were straining. He remembered them after the failed assault on the fire temple, how they had snarled at each other like a frustrated dog pack for a day – then braided back together.

  ‘Well,’ Kag grunted, shaking drips off the noseguard of his helmet, ‘a place with a roof is surely better than sitting in the rain telling lies about this boy and his lost spear.’

  Manius uncoiled, glanced at the statue and grunted.

  ‘That boy has tits,’ he said casually. ‘You should read the scratchings under the vines at the feet, Jew. Might tell you who it is.’

  He went sliding off into the rain, leaving everyone squinting – the Greek tunic and hunting boots had thrown them and the misshapen head had been ravaged so that most of it was missing. Kisa went to work, grubbing in the muddy earth, scraping it out, pulling up clinging vines.

  ‘She Who Works Her Will,’ he read out in Greek. ‘Crone, Maiden and Mother.’

  The Empress gave a low moan, which made everyone else jerk. ‘She Who Works Her Will. Hekátē,’ she said in a voice like a broken file on a rough rock. ‘Diana Trivia…’

  Like nails on a slate… Drust felt the wind rush through his head. Crone, Maiden and Mother… He peered, wiping rainwater from his face, seeing now that there had once been three faces, not one.

  ‘She speaks,’ Kag said softly, pointedly.

  ‘Is this Hekátē not a guardian of the crossroads?’ Quintus asked lightly, and Dog agreed.

  ‘Huntress, Queen, Moon, that’s Diana…’

  ‘Goddess of the night, of ghosts and dangerous oracles,’ Kisa said. ‘Of divination from the dead – necromantia, as Origen of Alexandria has it…’

  Almost at each word the Empress moaned and growled and shook her head, which wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘Bind your mouth,’ Ugo growled at Kisa.

  ‘I preferred it when she was mute,’ Mouse added, but Kisa gave a half-smile and glanced from one to the other.

  ‘Not only can she speak, but her mind is not scraped clean after all.’

  ‘Which makes her worthwhile again,’ Dog flung in cheerfully and hefted his swords. ‘Onwards, brothers…’

  There were mutters about him and the Empress and the rain – and then the vicious insects which appeared when the rain stopped and heat came back,; the wet earth steamed with a feral breath, adding to their discontent and Drust felt their eyes, felt the dark looks they shot him. Gods-cursed, he fancied them saying, and all of us caught up in it.

  Suck it down, he snarled silently back at them. Swallow it like bitter wine, for you die if you do and die if you don’t…

  ‘Are you well?’ Praeclarum asked, falling in beside him. ‘You have a face like that dead camel.’

  He laughed despite himself and was lifted by it and her. They went on up the valley, following the others. They saw nothing save some little sheep, nub-horned like goats and thick with fleeces that made them loo
k like bracken haystacks that had learned to walk.

  The villa was a tumble of stones and timbers in the rough shape of four walls, the roof turfed and allowed to grow out as shaggy as the sheep. There was a sagging outbuilding or two, chickens and no dog, as Manius had said, but he had omitted the slow curve of the shallow stream – and what was in it.

  ‘Dead sheep,’ Mouse declared when Quintus cried out with delight and pointed. No one who had the stink in the back of their throat could disagree, but Quintus turned on him and spat with disgust.

  ‘You would miss riches in a treasure room,’ he growled back, and then everyone peered and saw the fleeces, just under the shallow run of the stream, pegged out. Everyone frowned at Quintus’s delight.

  ‘Not a dead sheep, then,’ Dog said wryly, ‘but a sodden skin.’

  ‘Gold,’ Kisa said, and Quintus clapped his hands together and pointed as if he had made a killing point in a Senate debate.

  ‘They do this across the ocean, where I come from,’ Kisa went on, as Quintus splashed into the water to wrench one free. ‘My people were famed for it, so much so that Apollonius Rhodius told of a band of Greeks led by King Jason who came to the land to steal the wealth they made.’

  Quintus dragged the dripping thing back and heaved it onto the bank where it leaked and smelled. Then they looked more closely at the sharp glints of light which caught the eye. It was gold – at least some of it – caught as grains in the fat-rich fleece as it washed down from the mountains above. Now they saw six or seven such fleeces pegged out and went splashing after them, shouting out.

  ‘These sheep farmers herd gold too,’ Quintus declared triumphantly. ‘Now you know why they live up here.’

  ‘Beware the dog,’ Drust called out and men cursed, spun round with their weapons ready and found only a hard stare. With a cold-water shock they realised they had let their guard down, and the thought of what might have come at them brought them back to sense.

  Dog toed the fleece soggily to one side. ‘Hardly riches,’ he pointed out, scattering droplets as he waved one hand at the villa. ‘If they harvest gold with fleeces here, then it is not enough to afford a decent door.’

  The others laughed shame-facedly. Then the sagging door moved back on its poor leather hinges and figures came out – a woman, a girl and a boy.

  The woman was in a patched and stained dress, the girl and boy held close to her. She had never been pretty, Drust thought, so age and care had less trouble to ravage her face and turn her hair to raggles of grey. Her eyes were rheumed, but defiant even in fear.

  ‘We have found the Crone,’ Mule grunted which raised a laugh. Quintus shouted out to search harder and uncover the Maiden, but Drust glared at them and they fell silent. Then he sent them right and left to search anyway, but for any menfolk that were hiding. The woman watched them, spilling out incomprehensible words to which Drust replied in Greek, but got no response and turned to find Kisa. The boy stared at him with naked hatred.

  There was a clatter and a crash and the woman yelped, one hand flying to her throat. Mule and Praeclarum appeared, dragging someone up to Drust; Mule pitched him to the ground. A man, bearded and exhausted, with a bloody cloth round his leg.

  ‘Hiding under fodder,’ Praeclarum declared and Mule kicked out at the fallen man. The woman flung herself forward, but Praeclarum caught and held her while she babbled. Drust knew pleading no matter the language and thought the man was her son, or her husband.

  ‘Or both,’ Kag added in Greek at the end of this, and others laughed.

  The man growled and spat. ‘She is my ma, rot you…’

  He saw Kag’s slow smile and clicked his teeth together at having given himself away, but it was too late for that, as Drust told him.

  ‘You shot at us, that is clear,’ he added, squinting at the cloth. ‘That’s the arrow you had in return.’

  ‘You killed Blessed,’ Mule roared out and lashed out with his foot, only to have Dog take him by the collar and haul him back, hard enough to pitch him on his back. Mule sprang up, face a mask of snarl, but Dog simply stood and looked at him; Mule muttered and folded his arms sullenly.

  Manius knelt by the man and unpeeled the cloth as gently as he could while the woman and girl whimpered; the boy, Drust thought, was pale, with lips like a thin wire and eyes trying to be hard and failing under wetness.

  ‘There you are,’ Manius said when the cloth was off and everyone saw the ragged hole and the clotted blood. ‘Went in only a little way, but it cracked the shin.’

  ‘I was running,’ the man said through grimaces ‘I thought you were raiders.’

  ‘You did well to get all the way home with that, then,’ Kag offered admiringly, and Mule flung up both arms in frustration.

  ‘Suck his cock, why don’t you?’

  Kag looked levelly at him. ‘I know you miss that beast and can only presume that you fucked it nightly while the rest of us were asleep. But if you speak like that to me again I will make you a second mouth.’

  Dog laughed, a nasty sound, but whether it was at Kag or Mule was hard to tell. Probably both, Drust thought.

  ‘There are more important matters,’ Mouse said seriously. ‘Is there food here?’

  Everyone else groaned; the man twisted a grin onto his pain-ravaged face.

  ‘Look at us closely. We are trying something different to eating.’

  Mouse scowled while Drust squatted by the man. ‘Name,’ he said and the man hesitated, then his shoulder slumped a little; his mother and sister were wailing now.

  ‘Bahar.’

  ‘A father? Brothers?’

  He shook his head, which was only to be expected, but if he had any male relatives around, Drust was sure they were nowhere helpful.

  ‘We seek a temple – you know of it? Where it can be found?’

  His mother had stopped wailing as soon as the word ‘temple’ was mentioned and Dog did not miss it either. Bahar’s head wobbled slightly as he hovered on the edge of losing all sense.

  ‘No one goes there,’ he managed. ‘The ghost…’

  He was gone into oblivion and the woman and children wailed, thinking he was dead, so Dog kicked him so that the pain brought him round with a scream.

  ‘Where?’ he demanded, looking at the woman this time. She stared defiantly back at him and made a warding sign.

  ‘Tie him by the ankles,’ Dog said, ‘and haul him up.’

  ‘Leave him,’ Drust snapped, and Dog turned. Perhaps he had a mild stare – it was hard to tell with that face – but his voice was flat and level.

  ‘We need to know.’

  It took time to find a bast line good enough for the task, and all the time Bahar’s mother and little sister pleaded and cried, while the boy clenched himself like a knot and made no sound. Until Bahar screamed. It was a heart-scrape that sound, which was only to be expected, Drust thought, when you are hauled up by a broken leg. He clenched his fists until the knuckles creaked and felt sick with the knowledge that he should never have allowed this.

  ‘This is not right,’ Praeclarum said, and Drust felt ripped open by it – he knew she was right and he knew Dog was right and he said so. Dog asked the question; the woman had subsided, melted into sobbing and clutching the little girl, who had exhausted all her own screams. The Empress seemed to catch what was flung out from all this and started to moan and make hoarse noises which might have been screams once.

  In the end, Bahar put them on the trail, but he had thrown up twice and passed out four times – he was tough, as Kag pointed out admiringly.

  ‘If you like him so much you can take him down,’ Drust harshed back, made bitter by it all and still slathered with the loss of Sib and what Manius had to do with it, the sickness of the rage that had taken him over, and the way Dog kept pushing him. ‘Get Mouse to help, since he is only poking about looking for coin or food.’

  Mouse started guiltily since that was exactly what he was doing, but Kag scowled, paused, then shook his head and loo
sened the rope so that the man fell badly, on his wounded leg. He shrieked at the pain and then went limp; that was when the boy broke.

  He made his first sound, a harsh growling scream, and ran for Dog, hauling out a little knife from his boot. He had courage but his timing was off; Dog sidestepped neatly and whicked out one banging stroke with the gladius, slamming the boy straight in the kidneys in midstep; the woman shrieked.

  ‘Fortuna’s arse,’ Kag said bitterly. ‘That was poorly done.’

  Praeclarum and Kisa sprang to the boy and began to help, while Mouse held the mother from doing something rash and adding to the bad cess of the moment. The others looked at the ground and shook their heads, but Dog simply wiped his blade on the grass.

  ‘Kits breed rats,’ he said coldly, and there was silence for a moment, broken only by the mewling woman.

  ‘In the back?’ Kisa said, scrambling up. ‘You could not kill a boy from the front, to his face? Truly, that face marks you.’

  Dog turned, and his look when it crashed on Kisa was a grue of ice.

  ‘Anyone who knows me will tell you I am tender to children,’ he answered levelly, ‘and do not like them to see their death. But I will stick this in your face, little Jew, should you give me more cause.’

  ‘Easy,’ Kag said warningly, and then Praeclarum rose up and said wearily that the boy was dead. She looked at Drust, who felt the weight of it all, felt the disappointment in her shoot through him from heel to crown.

  Kisa turned and walked away in silence. Kag drew in a breath and looked sorrowfully at Drust, who had had enough of being blamed for this.

  ‘Find a spade,’ he growled, ‘and bury the boy.’

  ‘What will we do with the woman?’ Mouse demanded loudly. ‘And the girl?’

  It was such a loaded question that Drust’s head thundered but he did not turn from looking at the dead boy when he spoke.

  ‘Eat them or fuck them, Mouse. I have no preference.’