The Red Serpent

by Robert Low

* * *

  They came on the great wheel of stone not long afterwards, wide as outstretched arms, thick as a handspan.

  ‘Just as the man said,’ Kisa said, wiping his streaming face. It was raining, a light mirr that at least helped wash the sweat and stinging insects away. He did not look at Dog when he said it, but everyone else did; Drust did not like it. The moment at the farmstead had stained them all, it seemed.

  It was just as Bahar had told them – great tumbles of stone like slices from a tree, all parts of tall pillars once. Now that they saw them they also saw the faint outlines of flagged floors under a nap of green and tangle.

  Half crouched and wary as kicked dogs, they went on, weapons unashamedly gripped in fists and their backbones curled with a sweat that had nothing to do with the fetid heat of this strange mountain.

  The fallen pillars had once been thick as a forest and were now scattered down like windblown trees, the last stumps forming an avenue leading up to the wall of rock they had been heading towards for some time. Grey-green and grim, it now towered over them, while the avenue of mossy stumps led to root-tangled steps and then up to a pillared portico, set right into the rock face.

  ‘Is this the place?’ whispered Mule and Kag snorted.

  ‘Does it look like a fitting place for ghosts?

  He spoke normally, unfazed by the hush that seemed to have fallen over everyone else, but it boomed loud and folk winced. Quintus put his uncaring foot on a tilted statue of a woman, right on the carved jut of her breasts, and squinted at the steps and the entrance. He grinned, bright as sunlight, and Praeclarum offered a toothless reply; it went some way to banishing the memory of Bahar’s ‘ghost’.

  ‘We will need torches,’ Drust said. ‘We can build a fire in the shelter of that pillared place.’

  They moved off, leaving Drust staring at the statue, this one holding a torch in either hand. She had three faces this time, two in profile and one staring, fixing him with a sightless glare; and, peculiarly, seemed to have one foot bare and the other with a lace-shoe which had once been bronze but was now green. Drust felt his flesh ruche to gooseskin; there was altogether too much of the gods around, and the Empress was now sitting and rocking, making baby sounds.

  Fires were lit and smoke shrouded the dim, though the talk was muted and folk looked to their ties and straps and edges as the day dimmed to blue twilight. They bound up torches with what rags they could scavenge from old serks and hems, and Drust moved among them, offering small comment and praise. Kisa did nothing but drink; they had found skins of a thin, vinegary wine and the little Jew had been pouring it down his throat since they had left the farm.

  By the time pots had been scoured of the last gruel, the fires were red blossoms in a bowl of night and Drust sat at the edge of matters, his head whirling like a mad chariot race. He was grateful when a shadow shifted out of the dark, became Praeclarum and hunkered beside him; someone laughed from the fire, a nasty sound, and Drust suspected it was Mule.

  ‘Do we go in?’ she asked, and Drust looked at the black maw of the entrance.

  ‘Wait until light.’

  ‘It will be dark inside anyway.’

  ‘Let us have this peace and sleep,’ he answered. ‘That was a bad business.’

  Praeclarum leaned against him and he hesitated a moment, then put an arm round her.

  Across the way Mule looked at the two-headed shadow and spat in the fire.

  ‘No sleep for them,’ he growled. Kag said nothing.

  Mouse, scraping his spoon raw on the inside of an empty pot, looked up bitterly.

  ‘Eat them or fuck them,’ he said and shook his head. ‘That was no way to speak.’

  Dog grinned across at him, his skull-face leaping with bloody firelight. ‘Which did you do?’ he demanded, but no one laughed and Mouse shot him a sorrowed glare.

  The night grew chill, tendrilled with witch-hair mist and threaded with screeches from owls. Or the mysterious ghost, Kisa slurred, which made Quintus tell him to fasten his teeth on that.

  The little Jew shifted up unsteadily and those who watched him could see he was not happy with matters. Not that that was any help to anyone. He stood up, bowed slightly, nearly fell and recovered himself.

  ‘I am sorry for your losses, in every way,’ he declared, speaking slow and solemn, so he would not fall over the words. ‘I would like to help, but I am not the sort to halt such terrible matters, as we all knew at the start of this enterprise. Now you are fucked and I am fucked for being part of it, and Uranius is fucked for having thought of it, and the Empress is fucked because people will not believe she has no power.’

  He pouted like a baby.

  ‘We are all fucked. This is what happens when you outrage God. Now I am going to get drunk.’

  He started to reach for the slack wineskin, stumbled and almost fell. ‘More drunk,’ he corrected.

  Kag and Dog laughed and watched the little man until he fell asleep, mumbling. They waited another suitably polite interval and then moved to where Drust and Praeclarum shared the same blanket.

  The frantic gasping and clutching had been done, the fever ebbed and, for Drust, the best part of the affair was now being shredded to mist by the pair’s arrival. Praeclarum shared that view, scowling while Kag held up his hands in placating apology; Dog said nothing, simply squatted and seared them with his face.

  ‘The other side,’ Dog said simply, and Drust got on one elbow, feeling the night chill his skin. ‘It may not be entirely free of threat.’

  ‘You said no one knew of this mousehole.’

  Dog made an ambivalent side-to-side head movement. ‘That Bahar did. And his ma.’

  ‘Possibly the boy,’ Praeclarum added, soft as bitter aloes, ‘but he is no threat now.’

  ‘None,’ Dog answered. ‘Might have been better if we had finished the business and left those who follow us in the dark.’

  ‘Are there still those who follow us?’ she demanded and Kag laughed.

  ‘You leave tracks…’ he said.

  ‘What of the other side?’ Drust interrupted and Dog nodded.

  ‘Just saying. If people here knew, perhaps people there do as well. And that is the side where the garrison of the Red Serpent – if there is such a thing now – might be more easily found.’

  ‘So,’ Drust concluded, ‘what you are saying is that your escape hole is no escape.’

  ‘What we are saying,’ Kag answered, ‘is that it is a long way back to Dura.’

  ‘Even there,’ Dog said simply, ‘we might not be safe. Shayk Amjot will know the truth by now, and even to get there we will have to avoid all the trouser-wearers this side of the Euphrates. We have no mounts and no supplies.’

  ‘So there is no hope?’ Praeclarum exploded. ‘Is that what you came to tell us?’

  ‘There is always hope,’ Kag answered smiling. ‘I came in the hope of seeing your tits – no offence.’

  ‘Now you know the true measure of hope,’ Praeclarum said, gathering the blanket round her, but she smiled all the same. Drust neither smiled nor spoke and the silence stretched. Finally he turned out one hand like a beggar and made an impatient glare.

  ‘Right,’ Kag said, looking at Dog, who grinned.

  ‘There is a camel trail a day down the other side of the mountain,’ he explained. ‘It is the one that comes from the Oxus down to Zadracarta, the Yellow City, and is well known for fat caravans. We can sell ourselves to a train as guards.’

  ‘If they don’t kill us on sight,’ Drust pointed out. ‘And Zadracarta is right behind the Wall,’ he added, remembering Kisa’s droning on the subject. ‘It is a base for the Persian soldiers.’

  Kag nodded, beaming. ‘They will not think to look for us there if they are not waiting outside the mousehole.’

  It was yet another tenuous plan, more a thread of hope than anything else, but it was all they had. As Praeclarum said when they had left, Kag had more chance of seeing her naked.

  Morning took an age to
drag itself over the horizon. Their battered pots were cleaned and stowed, fires kicked out, torches gripped in fists, and when Drust eventually moved to the middle of them, they shot sideways glares at him, like a pack of feral dogs.

  They looked like a long walk of bad road, he thought, scored by lines of weariness and bruise-eyed from lack of sleep; he would not look any different.

  He stretched out his hand, knuckles up, and one by one they added their own, broken-nailed and grimed. They said the words, looked in each other’s eyes and felt the burn of it, that glow that told them they were still Brothers of the Sand. Drust took a torch from Manius and led the way inside, gladius ready and the flame held high.

  The inside smelled of old stone dust and bad air – and taint, harsh as old piss. Everyone smelled it and Manius tasted it with flicks of his tongue, like an adder, then spat.

  ‘Not right,’ he said.

  ‘Now there is a surprise,’ Kag growled. ‘It smells like every bad camp I have ever been in where the shitter is anywhere you squat.’

  Which was true enough for folk to laugh a little and be eased. Yet Manius prowled, looking this way and that as they came into an open area where the floor was solid with old stones and the curve of the walls covered in faded paint. A solitary statue stood sentry, with what seemed an inscription on the base.

  Kisa, who had spent his time being whey-faced sick, was now prodded towards them, Kag holding a torch so he could see better. ‘Read it out, scholar,’ he growled.

  The writing, if that’s what it was, seemed a meaningless procession of figures to everyone but Kisa, who started to mumble until Mule called attention to the statue itself; the Empress, tethered to him, was on her knees before it, but whether that was because she was crazy or because she was worshipping was not clear. Either was an unnerving thought.

  What was clear was that the statue stood at the exact point where the floor stones crossed, leading to three identical dark ways.

  ‘Your three-headed wife, little Jew,’ Kag declared, and his echoing voice made folk wince. Kisa waved one hand and the noise of him being sick in the dark grated on everyone.

  It was the same statue as outside, only taller and with all three faces intact, stone stares as haughty as the Empress’s had once been; now she whimpered and mumbled and had to be jerked upright by Mule.

  The torches in the statue’s hands could be lit, Drust saw, save that they were withered, but a face stared blankly down each path; it was not hard to work out what was meant here, but no one cared for it, Kisa least of all.

  ‘The smell is wrong in here,’ he muttered.

  ‘Stop puking,’ Kag advised. ‘Anything useful to tell us?’

  The little Jew looked down the dark ways and frowned, swallowing bile. ‘I think this might be a labyrinth.’

  The moment hung on the shaky hook of this for a moment while everyone raked their head for what they knew of labyrinths. All knew of the Cretan one, simply because every other mosaic floor of a fashionable Roman atrium was based on the design of it. No one wanted to think of the monster which had lurked in it.

  Ugo knew more. ‘A Spiral Dance.’

  ‘A what?’ demanded Mule sourly.

  ‘A Spiral Dance,’ he repeated, ‘with Máni in the middle.’

  ‘The Moon Goddess,’ Kisa muttered and Ugo nodded sombrely.

  ‘You choose the right way, you get to the centre and the goddess will grant your request.’

  ‘That’s a dark way,’ Mouse declared in a harsh whisper, ‘no matter the path.’

  ‘The light at the end of it,’ Dog answered carelessly, echoingly loud, ‘is the shine of a way out.’

  ‘Or the eye of a giant fucking draco,’ Mule grunted.

  ‘There is no such beast,’ Quintus told him, grinning. ‘If there was, we’d have netted it for the Flavian long since.’

  ‘Attilius Regulus killed one,’ Kisa declared suddenly. ‘During the fight against Carthage at Bagrada River, a dragon attacked his army, or so he claimed. The battle took many soldiers to kill this dragon – many soldiers were taken by the dragon’s vicious mouth and many others were crushed by its tail. Its hide was too thick for their weapons to get through so they started using the siege weapons to crush it with heavy stones. When it was dead, they skinned the creature and sent it back to the Roman Senate. When the Senate measured the skin, it was one hundred and twenty feet in length. The hide was on display in Rome for a hundred years.’

  ‘I never heard of such,’ Quintus said, scowling suspiciously.

  ‘Is this the same Regulus who got his arse kicked by Carthaginians and was taken prisoner?’ Drust fired back drily. ‘If so, I fancy the dragon story was better than telling the Senate he had lost an army to bad generalship.’

  Mule laughed and Quintus joined in. No one else did and the feral stink of the place now began working on everyone’s worst fears.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In a while, everyone knew it was the wrong way, but they were lost by then.

  Worse than that, they were, as Kisa had known, in a labyrinth whose walls were narrow and lined with panels of Greek marble where they hadn’t fallen off to show the cut stone beneath. The floor might have been flagged, but was covered in marble dust, fine as flour and sparkling like a sun-kissed sea in the light of the torches.

  Which were failing. When they did, they would be in total darkness – in a wyrm circle as Ugo kept calling it. It did not help that he then explained how ‘wyrm’ was what they called a dragon in his land. It raised hackles on all necks, for each path was a tunnel and the tension – and air – was thick in the place.

  Round a corner, then another, with Drust ordering different people to take the lead, which was at least fair if not welcome. Manius had better eyes and ears and nose than any other – though the last, he claimed, was leading him closer to the smell he did not like.

  He edged around a corner, the others shuffling through the ice-stone dust like a breeze through fallen leaves. There was a sudden curse from him and he stopped.

  ‘Something moved under my foot,’ he said, and folk drew back, then crouched even closer and tighter as they heard a rasp and grind. Kag growled, was reaching out a hand to grip Manius by the shoulder when there was a last slap of sound and dust puffed from the roof.

  Then Dis opened and the dead fell on them.

  Manius gave a shriek and bolted, barging through the men behind, who were at once panicked and scuttled off, shoving those behind them into moving. Drust, cursing and bellowing at them, was slammed into one wall; an elbow drove air from him and someone crushed his instep. They bellowed like stampeding cattle and vanished around the corner they had come from.

  Drust, whooping in air, managed to haul out his sword and almost poke Dog, who returned with a disgusted scowl twisting the skull on his face – and a desiccated horror in a helmet held up in one hand.

  ‘The dead,’ he growled, holding it up for everyone to see. ‘For frightening children and the weak-minded.’

  It was a long-dead skull in a helmet so rotted the leather had fallen away and left only some of the metal bands and the rim. It was now set jauntily on the leering head so that it seemed like Dog’s face had come to life and been plucked off into his hand.

  He flung it at the feet of the others, who were crouched and panting like dogs. Mule was missing, and the Empress was huddled, but mercifully silent; Praeclarum gently raised her up, soothing her with pats.

  ‘This is your walking dead man,’ Dog declared scornfully, ‘who was not walking at all, but fixed to the roof by ties, only one of which was left. He once had a spear, but it had fallen off into the dust and the whole silly trap was set to frighten and no more.’

  ‘No matter how big the giant,’ Ugo declared, drawing himself up scornfully, ‘it always has to fit through the door.’

  ‘As if you were not leading the fleeing,’ Dog scathed.

  ‘I would not have run,’ Ugo declared, glaring at Praeclarum, ‘if she had not.’
>
  ‘I only ran because he did,’ she answered accusingly, pointing at Manius. ‘He came past me faster than Mouse looking for sausage.’

  ‘I was not looking for sausage,’ Mouse began angrily. ‘What is this matter of everyone speaking of my appetite? It is no more than an ordinary healthy man…’

  ‘Where is Mule?’ Drust demanded and they looked at each other.

  ‘He ran off,’ Kisa offered, and Drust scorched him with a look.

  ‘I can work that part out – did anyone see where?’

  ‘He must have taken that turn to the left,’ Praeclarum offered. ‘Just before this… thing… fell off the roof.’

  It made sense, but was no help. Wherever he was, Mule was lost and in the dark.

  ‘We should call for him,’ Ugo suggested, frowning, but Kisa whimpered at that.

  ‘And wake the dragon?’

  ‘There is no dragon,’ Drust spat and everyone looked at the floor or each other, shuffling.

  ‘So you say,’ Mouse muttered. ‘Perhaps we should go back.’

  ‘Back where? Do you know the way? And do what when we get there? Perhaps we can walk back to that farm and ask the man we shot and whose son we killed for shelter and food?’

  ‘No point,’ Manius answered and his black-smoked look told it all. Drust felt the icy shiver of him, heard the thunder in his head. He looked at Kag, who indicated he had not known, but when he looked at Dog, he knew who had whispered in Manius’s ear.

  Dog shrugged. ‘The dead do not speak,’ he said, and Drust felt the drum noise rising, moved forward a step so that Kag had to catch his arm. Those who watched Dog were amazed to see the man draw his skull-face back a little and take a single step backwards. They had never seen that look before on him and it took a while for them to work out that it was fear.

  Just then the last torch not in the hand of Drust went out. He shouldered to the front, and after a brief pause they followed him, clinging to the light. As he passed Dog, Kag stopped and squinted at him.

  ‘You will push our Drust too far one day,’ he said simply, and for once Dog had no answer, was still trying to work out what he had seen in Drust’s eyes, in his very face. To work out what it had done to him.