He broke off and looked at Drust with his big white eyes. ‘I mean everything. Camels, dogs, women, children. Everything.’
He looked at the fire again. ‘Jnoun,’ he said. ‘There is one in that Manius.’
Drust had just thought they all trembled at old granny stories and he knew there was no one more hagged than a fighter, festooned with amulets and rigid rituals, but there had been times since when he had seen the smoky darkness in Manius’s eyes.
Drust had a fire lit and then Kag slid out one way and Manius the other, leaving the others to hug the welcome, almost forgotten joy of flame. It circled them like some evil miasma in the velvet night, tendrils of heat and smoke, Drust imagined, trailing out to where someone in thick clothing and good boots and a scutum lifted his nose from fat moustaches to sniff the traces.
Close, Drust tried to think, though he couldn’t be sure and he said nothing. No one did – if the watchers could see the fire, they could gather in whispers in the night.
The fire in the night would act as it did on all creatures; they would come to it. The foxes and owls would circle it and shun it, the insects would plunge, drunken and sizzling, into the fierce heart of it. The men would squat in the dark beyond it, see the bulked shapes hunched round against the night chill.
They were packs with hooded cloaks on and Drust was the only one who now sat at the fire; the others had slithered off to shiver in the shadows; he knew the watching men wouldn’t shoot until they knew where everyone was. If they were scavs, they would not want to put holes in value – mules, wineskins and the like. They would come up, slow and quiet and, by then, Drust hoped, they would be dying.
The others crouched in the pressing dark, as if in a hole, while Drust sat like a big fat foolishness by the fire, looking as if he dozed, but moving enough to give them something to focus on, a reassurance that every shape round the flames was real. The heat was a balm, all the same, and he felt himself soak it up, sat and sweated slow rolls of moisture like rain down a window, his mind whirling back and forth on Dog, the woman, the child. How was he surviving here, in the middle of enemies? Where was he laired – had he returned to his old tribe and somehow taken them over?
Nothing, Drust thought, was easily dismissed when it came to Dog.
The clack was loud in the night; the blood raced and sluiced Drust fully awake. A hoof on a stone, a falling needle of a noise that carried too far in still, damp air and a starless night that still gave too much substance to shadows.
Perfect. Drust raised his head and peered into the dark, trying to look suspicious but idiotic while the blood shushed in his ears.
‘Ho there. No evil, in the name of all gods,’ he said in a whisper that he did not have to try too hard to make hoarse. ‘Who are you, creeping round in the dark?’
He spoke in Local and the answer was thick with tribal gutturals and some scorn, spoken by a man who had a weapon ready and was with others doing the same.
‘Me? Who in the name of all the gods of this place are you?’
‘Drust. Didn’t Morcant say?’
‘Morcant who?’
‘I don’t know more. He gave us our orders and we came here.’
‘From where?’
‘South, where we were sent. Following them.’
‘In the name of all the gods – following who?’
‘Come on, you know who. Six of them, travelling north. We caught them at their stop, the rocks, and killed them all. Took their gear and Morcant said to come here. You know the rocks?’
‘How do I know every rock in this country?’
‘I’m trying to tell you, boss,’ Drust said, knowing that everyone else was half crouched and squinting, trying to make out how many and where. He fought for the right inflections, the proper deference, and sweated like raw fat in the sun over speaking so much Local all at once. It would be worse if he came to using his birth tongue, dinned into him by his mother, who had made him speak it as soon as he could speak at all. In secret, at night and when she could smuggle herself to him; he felt the sudden sharp pang of her loss, just when he was old enough to know that she and he were slaves of Servilius Structus and exactly what that meant.
‘We caught them at the rocks with the big cut in them and killed them all,’ he said. ‘Took all their mules, with all their riches, and Morcant said to come here with them, that you were the one to report to. Said you would find us.’
They had not expected this and confusion was sown and ripened.
‘Might be,’ the voice answered and now there was a shape to go with it. The voice had changed from suspicion to self-importance and Drust jigged the float a little.
‘You sure Morcant is not with you? He said to bring the riches here.’
‘He is not. What riches did you find on those mules?’
Now there was greed, honeyed but distinct.
‘Food. Water. Weapons. Silver. Wine – a lot of wine. Those greybacks were planning on a good time somewhere. I suppose it will go to all those at the camp.’
‘What camp?’
Drust finally allowed a little exasperation. ‘Where we are to take these mules, boss. The ones you are supposed to guide us to.’
There was a pause. Someone mumbled incoherently and the man snapped back an answer, then turned to Drust.
‘Wake your friends. I will decide what is to be done with those mules. You stay there, with your arms high.’
It was done. Drust moved forward, grumbling: ‘We had to treat those mules like they were our own children all through that storm and then we got lost, to tell the truth, and it was only the grace of Scathach, blessings be, that we got out of it…’
Now Drust saw shapes against the starlit sky, one directly ahead, another skylined slightly, a short spear resting on one shoulder. Keep talking, he thought, trying not to let the dryness clog his throat or the fierce thunder of his heart drown his wits; soon they would realise none of the sleeping bundles was getting up, despite the noise. Soon he would stumble trying to speak Local, the trade tongue that let one tribe speak with another with only a strangeness of accent. Soon he would say a Roman word…
The one nearest to Drust loomed up and he caught his breath – how close did it have to be before the blessings of grime and days of travel failed and he was exposed as a greyback?
‘Which mule pack has the wine?’
Two laughs came from the dark; Drust saw the skylined man jerk and there was a thump that was so soft it was lost in laughter.
‘The big one there carried it,’ Drust said, barely able to squeeze out the words between his teeth, hoping the man put that and his shaking down to having left the warmth. ‘I think he has been sampling it on the way, for he is the laziest mule ever.’
More laughter. The leader growled disparagingly about ‘mule drivers’ and went to where the packs lay. Then he stopped, looking at the supposedly sleeping bundles. He kicked one and it rolled over like the loose sack it was; there was more laughter but Drust heard two more thumps, just as the leader realised the ruse. He could not see anyone but Drust and licked some wet life back into his lips as he brought up his sword and started to shout.
There was a whirr and a thump and something sprouted from the man, a sapling. The blow of the arrow staggered him back and he stared at the horror sticking in him, uncomprehending and wild-eyed. Drust brought out his pugio, smooth and fast, stepped forward and banged the knife in, low and to one side, feeling the heat, smelling the rank dog sweat of him.
He gave a high whine and jerked, trying to get away, but Drust held him like a brother, tasting the sharpness of something spiced and familiar though he couldn’t place it. Spikenard, the hair oil legionaries loved, he suddenly remembered…
The man’s last breath was a gust of terror; his beard braids trembled, the ornaments clinking. He was dead already but didn’t know it, was still staggering and flailing so that Drust had to clutch him close, heard himself making soothing noises like you would with a hysterical child.
<
br /> Then a black shape appeared like some death-angel rising up. There was a cough, a choking gurgle and then only Manius stood there, a bloodied barbed arrow clutched in one hand and a mad, wide grin gleaming in the dim.
‘No time to dance with them,’ he said savagely and there was no answer to it; Drust sank against the mule pack, found himself looking at the sprawled form pillowed in a slowly spreading lake of blackness. A pony ambled in, whuffing with disgust at the blood smell; a battered scutum flapped gently on its back, like a broken wing.
Manius slapped the shield and the pony shied a little. ‘Well, he had poor use of that, your dancing partner,’ he said. He crouched by the body, looking like some perverted demon as he cut his arrowhead free.
They were all gone, neat as snicking ears of corn. Manius had circled round in a run, in complete silence, then put four arrows in four men as swiftly as Quintus could slit the throat of a solitary man lurking bemused at the rear. Sib, Ugo and Kag prowled among the dead, disgruntled at having had nothing to do and a lot of discomfort waiting.
Five men dead in as many minutes and with less sound than the cold wind. That was good, Drust thought, even for the likes of us. Everyone was humbled to a temple hush by it for a moment, then they backtracked to where the dead men had left their own packs.
‘Jupiter on a jack,’ Kag swore and needed no more to make his point – these were no scavs. They had stowed ring coats, good swords, bows, arrows. If they’d had a chance to unleash that it would have been a hard fight.
Drust said nothing and everyone collected what they thought might be useful, which was mainly food, ponies to replace lost mules and skins of harsh beer so thick it needed to be strained through teeth. The ring coats were attractive, but the added weight made them no prize. The weapons were no better than the ones they had, but later, as they moved out, Kag came close enough to be heard only by Drust’s ears.
‘They were hunting,’ he said, his breath sour with the beer, his eyes bright in the dawn. Drust nodded. If they were deliberately hunting us, he thought, it was either the tribes who were ‘out’ as everyone along the Northern Vallum thought. Or Dog’s own men.
If it was that, then Dog had watchers. Drust suspected that Dog had men around the Wall, hunkered like beasts to sniff out strangers; it chilled him, for it meant Dog lived in fear and knew that men would come for him sooner or later. It meant the woman was probably dead now – and they might be next. It meant that Dog had gone back to his own people and had, somehow, persuaded them that he was one of them and that they should fight to protect him.
The sick rose up in Drust as he watched the others move, purposed and knowing as old hounds who had been through the dark wolf wood and staggered out the far side.
The beasts beyond the Wall were hunting. From now on it would get bloodier in Thule.
Chapter Six
More shallow graves, but Kag and Drust took the corpses with them no matter how deep they were buried; like black wolves the dead padded at their heels, haunting them with questions all through the rest of that day’s journey.
Where was Dog? How many men did he have – and how were they to get the woman and child from him? In ones and pairs they had asked this at every stop, through mouthfuls of cold-soaked bread, and no one had come up with a way. Each time they failed they looked at Drust, who felt the weight of their eyes and the crushing knowledge that he had nothing to offer.
They slithered through the edges of dark woods, skipping from copse to rocks, down one bracken-strewn hill and up another as fast as they could. They came to a forest they had to pass through, creeping crouched in a dark like a temple, a dark that made them hushed as if in the presence of gods. The trees were thick with needles and the mulched ground crackled with the first frosts.
Beyond it was a land like a dragon’s back, a place of slabs of rock like an abandoned game of knucklebones and a killing cold broken only by miracles of sunlight from a baleful red eye. The country rolled like a sea, slashed by steep little run-offs that wanted to be ice. The grass was sere and yellow now and the mules hoofed it mournfully at each stop; the tribal ponies, shaggy and tough, showed them how it was done, tearing and chewing with big yellowed teeth that seemed to grin derision at the mules.
‘They must be your cousins,’ Ugo said to Quintus and laughed into the scowls he got back. No one else joined in, nor spoke much at all save to ask the endless question – how are we to do this?
Once they came across the litter of some fight or flight or both – a lost boot, a torn baldric, curved segments of armour, the stuff that gave the legionaries the scornful name ‘greybacks’ from the tribes; that was also the name they gave to lice.
They came up to each stop like bird-scarers that had learned to lurch off their poles and walk. They made a fire at once, because the cold was killing them – then turned away with iron will and refused to go to it until the packs were stacked and the pack beasts picketed. The mounts gasped and blew out with the relief of being unsaddled; Quintus fed them from nosebags of grain, holding up the limp bag of it to show his concern at what was left.
Manius and Sib took a hunk of damp bread, peeling the worst mould off, took a deep slug of water then went opposite ways up to the high ground. Ugo hunched his head into his shoulders and squatted, looking up. ‘I am sick of this sky,’ he said.
‘It’s all right,’ Quintus answered, smiling his big smile. ‘You have forgotten the one out in the desert. It was as wide and long.’
‘Don’t remind me’ Ugo muttered. ‘It was blue, with hardly a puff of cloud and Apollo galloped in it.’
‘You complained of the heat,’ Quintus reminded him. ‘And when you get in a dark wood your smile comes back.’
He carefully drew out two more of his little clay pots and Ugo and Drust eyed him. Quintus frowned a moment, then shrugged.
‘Seems fine so far. No problems yet.’
‘What problems?’ Drust demanded, suspicious and alarmed. Quintus carefully lowered the pots back into their straw nest.
‘Well, the cold freezes the water in its compartment. If you throw the pot, the quicklime will spill out, but without water it won’t work properly. The naphtha and sulphur might also be affected.’
No one liked to be reminded of the weapon and what it could do – they certainly didn’t want to know how Quintus had come by little pots of it; it was not something you found in the market.
They concentrated on getting warm and making a meal out of mouldy flatbread and dried meat strips soaked in water to make them chewable. Kag’s version had been marinaded in mule sweat under the pack saddles; one reason he mourned the death of the big one was that he swore its foul humours had given the tastiest flavour.
They sat in silence afterwards. They had travelled several score miles in eight days and the pace was telling – Quintus had an ugly blister under his right toe, which Sib lanced expertly. Ugo was starting to look stringy from lack of food and when Manius came in to eat, Drust saw the etched lines of strain and weariness; it affected him as deeply as noticing the bald spot on his crown the last time he’d had a barbered haircut.
Time mauls us all, he thought – but we have got this far. Kag laughed bitterly when he said this, hoping to put some cheer out.
‘So said the tiro fighter,’ he growled. ‘Look, he says – the altar to Jupiter Latista has been removed, the pompos parade has come and gone, with blaring trumpets and chariots pulled by tiger-horses. It’s all but over.’
‘Now comes the first of the main events,’ he went on, ‘the venation. The beast hunt. Guess who are the beasts?’
‘Aye, aye,’ Quintus said, clapping Kag on one shoulder, a friendly act that rocked Kag forward and made him frown. ‘You are like a priest I knew once – you remember him, lads? Used to come down to bless our weapons in the name of Mars Ultor. Always long-faced and making miserable observations.’
‘I remember Spiculus and Posta dragged him into the harena. My, how he screamed and beat at the door,’ K
ag said, brightening with the memory.
‘No way back through the Gate of Life that way, they told him,’ Quintus said, grinning. ‘But you’ll be OK – ask Dis Pater if you can pass through the other way. Mind the elephant…’
They laughed. The priest had been picked up and tossed almost out of the ring before the venationes had managed to hamstring and kill the great beast. Spiculus and Posta had survived unscathed, too, so the whole matter of the priest was a great joke, even when they were lashed for it.
‘Are we there yet?’ demanded Ugo like a sulky child on a long litter journey.
‘We should be sitting in the lap of this Brigus,’ Drust answered, ‘if we steered true. And somewhere close by is Dog himself and the woman and child we have come to get.’
No one spoke about the pair anymore because it would air the strong possibility that they were no longer alive. Manius refused the single pull of the unwatered wine they had left; when the moon got up he uncoiled, took up his bow and nodded as if he was going down to the taberna. They watched him vanish into the night.
Kag scratched his beard; he wanted to go into this full bellied, warmed by wine and clean shaven, hair and beard. But who knew whether they would still need to lurk in the undergrowth of their facial hair? It annoyed him, not being able to fight like a gladiator.
Drust watched Kag scratch and methodically check weapons, Quintus with his deadly pots. He thought of Manius, hunkered like a hunting owl, sweeping the night with his magic eyes. He thought of them all, and all the times he and they had been like this, felt like this, ruche-skinned and bowel-sick, waiting in the dim. Somewhere he thought he heard the faint sound of trumpets…
* * *
The undercroft dim shifted with shadows, was fetid with blood and viscera; somewhere there were screams and a surgeon moved purposefully through the throng, his assistants shouldering aside the careless and slow. They were oilers and armourers, water carriers, beast handlers, all the scurrying throng in the middle of a stillness of fighters.
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