Beasts Beyond the Wall

by Beasts Beyond the Wall (retail) (epub)

  He shook her away now and dislodged snow onto his shoulders.

  ‘Dog’s plan will do,’ he said, looking round, ‘until someone comes up with a better one.’

  They moved on, dragging their weathered mules and the ponies of the warriors, making more noise than any Bull beast, as Sib said often and loudly. Eventually, they crashed a way to the edge of the forest and Ugo sucked in a deep breath of regret, looking out at the sere tussocks and copse-dotted waves of land ahead, where a tree was a lone sentinel, twisted and bitter with branches.

  Sib knelt, turning his head this way and that to use the edge of his eyes, which is where he saw most. The others waited; Conall made a throat grunt of sound and, when Drust looked at Dog, the man shrugged. Then he took out a long knife and cut a hawthorn sapling. Then another.

  He walked to Sib and stretched out his handful of whip branches – one-year saplings of hawthorn with little offshoot branches stripped of leaves now; Sib looked up, took them and nodded.

  ‘What is he doing?’ Quintus hissed. Drust didn’t know but the Wanderer did and he stopped worrying some dried meat from under the saddle of his pony, where it marinaded to a softness his remaining teeth could chew.

  ‘Conall is set to wait here for us returning. It is long and cold and he may decide Romans are the enemy and not the Bull People, even if Crixus bites them a little. They fear this Crixus – now he wants them to fear everyone else.’

  Sib stood up and walked a little way out into the clear, where the snow was thinner, blown like smoke by a ravaging wind. He waved one of the saplings, then the other, took out a knife and trimmed more of the offshoots and then dropped one of them. Feathered maidens, Drust thought dully. They are called feathered maidens…

  ‘You are a goat-fucking whoreson whose mother sucked Roman cock,’ he said, looking straight at Conall. ‘I can beat you with a stick.’

  Dog tilted his head expectantly at the Wanderer, who took the meat from his mouth and translated. Drust saw Conall blink with surprise, then his brows seemed to shutter down; the sword came out its sheath with a soft hiss.

  ‘Oh, Juno’s tits,’ Ugo said and started forward, only to have Dog’s arm across his chest like a log gate. He stopped uneasily.

  It wasn’t something they teach in a ludus, not used in the harena save in the lunchtime follies, but Sib wasn’t a sand warrior. He was a cart driver, as everyone kept reminding him. You cannot, as Drust remembered being told, control a four-horse chariot with just strength – the buggers will haul you with the reins as much as the traces – yet charioteers raced them round the bends, slowed them, sped them, day in, day out, using lithe agility, the balance of weight – and the whip.

  Conall looked at the men behind him, the feral pack urging him on with nods. Then he looked at Dog, who shrugged. Then he grinned and stepped forward.

  It wasn’t flat but a slight downward slope, layered with snow which hid the treachery of tussock and root, but Sib shrugged out of his cloak and fur wrap and danced a little. Conall saw that and thought about speed and agility – then he shrugged out of his own swallowing bearskins.

  ‘Omnes ad stercus,’ Kag muttered and then grinned. ‘He has just shed almost all protection from Sib.’

  Drust thought it more likely that Sib was dead; Conall showed some impressive wrist strength when he worked the sword back and forth to free up muscle. Then he gave a coughing grunt and stamped forward swinging.

  There was a flicker and a spray of snow as Conall bulled his way downslope a little, spun and faced back up to where Sib danced lightly. Conall raised his welted free hand to a place somewhere in his beard and sucked it, scowling.

  He came back up the slope more slowly, shifted sideways slightly and slashed – then he waited for the countermove. When it came, he didn’t try to block or dodge, he slashed, hoping to catch Sib’s stick and chop it in half.

  Somehow Sib changed the direction of his flick in mid-air – the whip end caught Conall across the knuckles and he howled. They went numb at once, welted with pain; the sword tumbled to the snow.

  Everyone laughed, even his own. Conall gave a pig grunt of annoyance, looked at Sib, then the sword. He knew what would happen – everyone knew what would happen – but he tried it anyway.

  As soon as his fingers touched the hilt, the whipping tip of the feathered maiden struck snow close enough for him to snatch them back. And again.

  Now people were shouting, urging him on, offering advice; Drust looked at Dog, not liking where this was going, but he had no eye contact. He wanted to get Sib to look at him, but Sib’s face, gleaming with sweat, was focused entirely on the fight, which is why he did not miss Conall snatching a fistful of snow and throwing it, trying to make Sib react.

  But whether sand or snow, that was an old trick and Sib knew it, as well as he knew the follow-up – when Conall blundered at him, trying to bull him down to the ground and beat him senseless, he slid sideways like a venator showing off with a bull. When Conall, off balance, stumbled past, Sib smacked him twice on his arse with the sapling.

  Conall had thick wool breeks so he hardly felt it – but all of the sting was in the act itself. Now Drust saw the naked hatred and blind anger.

  ‘Enough,’ he called out sharply. ‘Enough…’

  Sib stepped back, but Conall tore a knife free from somewhere inside his shirt and threw it, with not much skill and a deal of anger. It wasn’t even a good knife for that, tumbling over and over until the hilt smacked Sib in the breastbone, making him grunt with the pain of it.

  In a savage flicker of retaliation he lashed once, twice and Conall reeled back with a sharp cry. Now there was blood and, for a moment, Drust’s heart thundered – but the big warrior was on his knees, shaking his head and trying to dash the red wash from his eyes. Across his forehead was a welted cut that bled savagely.

  Dog moved to the man, grabbed him by both arms and looked him in the bloody face. Then he tore the rag from round his neck and wiped the blood to smears.

  ‘You are lucky,’ he growled in Conall’s tongue. ‘If he had wanted to, that little burned man might have blinded you. Remember that next time you speak to him.’

  Conall went off sullenly with the Wanderer, muttering and wiping his face; the crowd of warriors stayed silent, looking at Sib, who rubbed his chest where the knife had struck, then picked up the weapon. He tossed the sapling to one side and the knife to Conall’s feet, then grinned and swaggered off.

  ‘The point of this was?’ Drust demanded as he passed him; Sib shrugged. ‘Ask Crixus Servilius, the Dog that is. He said it would be a good thing.’

  Dog overheard it. ‘Talorc knew I was good because he has seen me fight. Now he knows there are more of the same. That should make him consider his treachery. And I am Colm Deathface.’

  ‘Treachery?’

  Dog shrugged. ‘Almost certainly. I would…’

  ‘If Sib had died?’ Ugo growled and Dog grinned.

  ‘He didn’t. No one did. Now Talorc will hear what happened.’

  ‘You play reckless dice.’ Kag growled. ‘And whatever name you choose it will always be Cunt.’

  Dog looked at him, cold and hard. ‘This is no game. It is no harena fight you are in here – stick a finger up to the ones who beat you to the floor here and they will bite it off before slitting your throat. There is no missio in the Land of Darkness.’

  They went on down the open slope, slipping, sliding and dragging mules and ponies behind them, scarring the otherwise featureless swathe of snow. Kag kept looking back at it and muttering and Drust knew he was reciting his maxim about leaving tracks and being followed.

  When Dog asked, Kag told him and had a bitter laugh in return.

  ‘No one will follow us,’ he said. ‘Not here.’

  The Wanderer loped off and Sib looked expectantly at Drust, who shook his head; the old warrior knew where he was going and if he planned some treachery then it was what it was. The whole affair was rotted and he said so.

 
‘The prize is still worth it,’ Quintus declared with his big wide grin.

  ‘The size of the purse is always outweighed by the likelihood of surviving to collect it,’ Kag responded. ‘That’s another to add to the one that says: a little trust goes a long way – the less you use, the further you go.’

  He was scowling at Dog when he said this and Dog grinned back at him, shaking his nightmare face with mock sorrow.

  ‘Do you love no one and nothing?’

  It was such a strange phrase coming from the likes of Dog that it stunned everyone to silence, none more so than Drust; the words hit him like a series of face slaps – back, forward, back again… and he blurted out a name before he could stop himself.

  ‘Cassia…’

  Dog grinned; they all did, and Drust felt himself flush; it had been an old folly, when he thought he could move back into the world and the real people in it. It had ended badly and the day after he had gone to Servilius Structus and become leader of the Procuratores and tried to forget. Dog hadn’t forgotten, and he looked and nodded while Drust fought for something to say, then was saved by Kag.

  ‘The Wanderer is waving,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust him.’

  When they came up, the Wanderer was squatted, calm and seemingly perfectly trustworthy, his furs wrapped close and up round his ears. His eyes peered from the seamed cave of his face, bright and sharp.

  ‘The loch is ahead and the village on its shores,’ he said simply, and now Drust nodded to Sib, who slid out and away.

  ‘Will they be friendly?’ Drust asked and Dog laughed.

  ‘Would you if you were about to steal the food from their mouths? Those boats are for fishing, and fish is about all they have. Without them they’ll starve.’

  ‘We only borrow them,’ Ugo growled. ‘We are coming back with them.’

  ‘They are Bull People,’ the Wanderer said and there was something in his voice, a sad, grim sort of tone, that made Drust stare.

  ‘How many?’

  The Wanderer shrugged. ‘A dozen, no more. Women, bairns, oldsters and about four grown men last time I was through here, a year since.’

  ‘Did they welcome you?’ Dog asked softly and the Wanderer grinned some gum in reply.

  ‘I did not go close enough to find out. It is best not to tempt the worst natures of suspicious people. Especially when outnumbered.’

  ‘You sound like Kag,’ Ugo grunted.

  They left Ugo with the animals and went out along a draw, a frozen, reed-crusted little rill that would, in summer, gurgle and plash down to the loch. Now it was misted, as was the black, rimed lake it ran into. Kag looked at the sky.

  ‘Getting dark,’ he said. ‘We should wait until morning to tackle this crossing.’

  ‘It’s barely midday,’ the old man said. ‘That’s not time, that’s weather. Good for crossing and not being seen.’

  He was right, flakes were drifting down and the light was fading to a dull, dark pewter; the wind hissed snow like spume off a sea, tearing the mist to skeins. At the edge of a bend in the stream bank, they all crouched and peered out at the village. It was mainly built on stilts out onto the lake, with a low, crouching huddle of hovels which Drust took for animal shelters. Sheep, he thought. Maybe pigs and a cow or two, but even here he could not be sure; these people were the worn-down nub of poor, even in a land of miserable poverty.

  ‘We don’t need to do this,’ Quintus said suddenly, and when Drust looked at him, the fabled grin was gone. No one spoke for a moment, but all of them knew what had to be done.

  ‘We signed a contract, Quintus,’ Drust said hollowly.

  ‘It didn’t include slaughter.’

  ‘It includes what needs to be done.’

  ‘We’ve done hard things, for sure. Bad things. But we always had some honour at the end of it. There is no honour in this.’

  ‘Honour,’ Kag said stiffly, ‘is hard to count these days. Coin is easier. Profit can be tallied.’

  ‘So, all the high ideals your philosophers mouth about existence are not worth a bent as?’ Sib said.

  ‘That is a world I would find hard to live in,’ Quintus muttered, and Dog hawked and spat.

  ‘And yet here we are. What would you rather, then? That someone with legs and tongue should run off as soon as we are rowing the boats we stole and tell the Bull People what we do? Or that no one is able to?’

  Quintus managed a grin back at him. ‘I should have broken your other leg. And slipped a dagger in your black heart while I was at it. Is this golden boy worth the death of a dozen?’

  Dog laughed. ‘You should have done something in Emesa besides drink and whoring,’ he said dreamily. ‘I went to the Temple of the Sun, just to see, to be diverted from… memories. There was a procession, the way strewn with flower petals. There was a pure white camel and on it a beautiful woman – older, but with a stunning look to her. There was a white horse and on it another beautiful woman, just as white, just as garlanded but younger. That was Julia Soaemias and the older woman was her mother, sister of the Empress. On an elephant sat the boy and the mahout. The boy wore a golden helmet and he… glowed. Like the sun.’

  He stopped, looked at Drust. ‘The whole of the East will follow that boy.’

  ‘Small wonder the Empire wants him dead, then,’ Kag growled.

  ‘Which is why such a fate must be avoided,’ Dog replied.

  ‘If he is beloved of a god let him fend for himself.’

  They crouched a little longer, watching the place, the slow spill of smoke from the stilt building, the quiet stillness of it. No one was out on a day like this, with the dark of a storm coming on.

  ‘It’s cold and snowing. Can we be done with this?’ demanded Sib.

  Drust levered himself up, stiff and wet from the cold. Nodded once. They moved out, dragging the cold fog that clung icily to them and, suddenly, he saw them as the villagers must see them – hunchback-crouched horrors with drawn swords, patched as mutton with cold, trailing bits and pieces of furs and wool and leather, and ploughing through the misted snow. We look as if we crawled out of one of their burial mounds, Drust thought. Beasts from beyond the Wall…

  The first villager died with an open-mouthed stare and a fistful of moss; he had come out to take a shit but found Sib instead, a black-faced undead with a sharp blade and a snarl. He died with no more than a whimper and the scarlet skein of his throat blood had scarcely stopped spattering before the rest of the killing began.

  It was as bad as Drust had imagined. Worse. They pounded onto the walkway of the stilt building, kicked in the door, delved into the smoking dim of it. Drust could not go in and lied to himself that he was guarding the door with Quintus; they looked at one another as the shrieks started, the crashes and grunts and wet chopping.

  Quintus eventually gobbed too much mouth spit into the water and muttered about going to find the boats. A baby cried, a sharp wail that ended abruptly. Quintus looked at Drust, his face grim as old reef. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no.’

  Dog shambled out of the longhouse entrance, his blade smoking where the cold met the still-hot blood. Quintus stared, his mouth working. Drust wanted to ask but didn’t want to know and Dog’s face told him everything.

  A second man was out and about – feeding kine, Drust thought when he saw him. Or fetching wood, for he had a wood axe and a desperate look. Tall, broad, bearded and long-haired – a savage from beyond the Wall who came pounding out of one of the other hovels, roaring his way up to the landing stage of the stilt longhouse.

  He had the look of someone who wished he had a spear and a shield and the wall of brothers that went with all of that, but all he had was furious desperation and a wood axe and the wail of a babe in his ears. Drust had an eye-blink to decide he wouldn’t attempt to block a slashing swing from an axe in the hands of a man like this, but the sheer speed and ferocity took him by surprise.

  The man leaped in the air at the last, axe over his head to bring it down with crashing power. Dr
ust barely managed to flick himself to one side and the axe came down to the wooden walkway where Mars Ultor should have buried it hard enough for it never to be freed easily.

  But Mars Ultor is a fuck, as Drust knew when the man shifted his wrists and scythed it sideways at the last moment – it hurled towards Drust’s shins and he screamed as he leaped, feeling the ugly wind of it on the soles of his feet.

  He landed off balance and staggered back, into a portico supported by poles, backing further into it so that it was a forest against slashing. Behind the man he saw Dog lean casually against the longhouse door, smiling and watching. ‘Kill him,’ Quintus yelled, starting forward and the man heard it and stopped, turned and howled his frustration and rage as he lunged at Dog.

  Dog took a calm step back into the longhouse as the axe whistled in and now Mars Ultor did his part; the bitt shunked into the jamb and stuck. Dog brought up his short sword and flicked it; the man screamed out and coughed blood out of the smile in his throat, then fell to his knees.

  ‘Kill me,’ he burbled through blood.

  Dog bent and pulled the man’s eating knife from its worn sheath, dropping it at his feet. ‘Kill yourself,’ he growled. ‘Am I put in this world to answer your every desire? Join your babe and be done with you.’

  There was a flurry that sent Dog crashing sideways out of the house to sprawl in the mess of the blood-spattered walkway. Kag poised his blade and then struck perfectly, giving the kneeling man the iron he would have done for any sand fighter. Then he looked at the glowering Dog, who sprang to his feet in a crouch.

  ‘Go to it,’ Kag said, viciously soft. ‘No babe or anguished father here, Dog.’

  ‘Enough,’ Drust called out, still weak from seeing the axe come at him. ‘Is there not blood enough?’

  Dog stretched slowly. ‘One day, Kag…’

  ‘Any day,’ Kag replied.

  ‘You killed a babe in a cot?’ Quintus demanded hotly and Dog stared coldly at him.

  ‘Necessary,’ he said, looking from Drust to Quintus and back again. ‘I do what you and he are too cowardly to look on.’