Beasts Beyond the Wall Read online

  In the end, Drust thought, you started drawing back, which was the first sign. You drew back from everyone, as if putting some distance between you would make it easier, for them and you, when the time came. Even as freedmen. That was when you took the easier routes, the lesser cargoes where the only danger was likely to be kicking the arse of some frantic pilferer scrabbling away at a fast lick. Servilius Structus had known it as he knew everything about his properties. They were reaching the end, losing their edge.

  Drust didn’t want anything tougher than escorting carts and Julius Yahya saw it, like a good angler sensing the moment when he can tug the hook a little and snag a fish reluctant to take the bait. He held up that imperious hand again and a scroll was slipped into it. He unrolled it, turned it to face them and tipped it slightly so that it rolled at them, limping on the seal. It was white as a new lamb, the seal like a drop of fresh blood.

  ‘That is a letter with the sort of power a legate would envy,’ he said. ‘It will get you through any barrier officials of the Empire might otherwise put up.’

  Drust simply stared at it. Julius Yahya did the hand and scroll trick again, smiling.

  ‘All you Servilians – what a strange brotherhood – are about to be made richer than gods. This is a contract. You each will sign it or make your mark. Completion of it will make you wealthy for five years. Or ludicrous spendthrifts for one.’

  His smile grew stiff. ‘Of course, money is of no use if you cannot own anything you can sit on.’

  Drust caught his breath. Freedmen had power but there was more…

  ‘You offer us citizenship?’ he asked and Julius Yahya nodded, then Kag laughed and Yahya’s head jerked; for a moment, the mask fell and showed the feral.

  ‘You scorn citizenship?’

  Kag shrugged. ‘What does it profit me? Even a slave can sue in a court since the days of Nero – but those with money will bribe for their law. Make me a citizen and I can vote – if I can afford to travel all the way to the City, because it has to be done in person, on the day. I may become one of the honestories or one of the humilores – either way, it does not matter since whether I am elite or scum is no longer recognised in law. We are both the same – irrelevant, because we have no say in affairs of state. The emperor rules as he will.’

  Julius Yahya stared and Drust almost wanted to shout his delight aloud at Kag’s having struck him hard enough to render the man speechless. Drust didn’t shout, but he squirmed; it was a prize to some, but becoming a citizen of Rome was not what it had once been.

  ‘Better that than mere freedman,’ Julius Yahya managed to answer, and he had to fight to control the hoarse bitterness in his voice. ‘Or a slave.’

  ‘You sit there as a slave,’ Drust said, ‘so it may seem glittering to you. Being a freedman was once such to us, but being a citizen never was – the money in this contract is the most of it. If, as you say, it makes us richer than gods, then, as a freedman already, I might even be able to purchase you.’

  There was utter, compelling silence; the hate rolled off Julius Yahya like heat from a furnace.

  Drust leaned forward and held up both hands, backs towards Julius Yahya. ‘A slave is bought entire. Everything he is. Every waking moment and even his dreams if the owner wishes it. His every day of labour belongs to the owner and, for most, that life is harsh. When age claims strength, the slave is discarded and a new, younger one purchased.

  ‘No matter what happens now, this mark stays unless we lose our hands,’ he said. Julius Yahya looked at the knuckles and the ugly letters on each one – E.S.S.S. Drust saw him twitch slightly, a gesture of his right hand up to his left shoulder; there was where Julius Yahya had his own mark, discreet and easily hidden on a prized slave; Drust smiled.

  ‘Ego sum servus Servilius,’ he intoned. ‘Every gladiator has these stigmates or something like them. We get them on our hands where they cannot be hidden, for we are slaves of the harena and doubly cursed in any society.’

  He placed his hands on the table, palms down and looked at them. ‘This is how a slave is made – not birth, not breeding, not Clotho or any of her sisters of the Parcae. Egyptian pine wood bark, one pound; corroded bronze, two ounces; gall, two ounces; vitriol, one ounce. Add pain and shame as you will. Mix well and sift, wash knuckles with leek juice, prick in the design with pointed needles until blood is drawn. Then rub in the ink.’

  He locked eyes with the glitter of Julius Yahya’s stare. ‘But you know this. No matter how clever – like you, like Kag here – you can never truly hide what you are, can you? You just become valuable and more coin is invested in you than any middling merchant might spend on his children. Yet you are not free, though you can claim more of it than a fisherman throwing his nets at dawn, or a litter-bearer straining to carry the likes of Servilius Structus out of Subura. You can claim more of it than us freedmen, still marked with servility and sitting in front of you and having to follow the whim of that same Servilius Structus – and your patron if we make our mark on this document.’

  He leaned back. ‘A freedman makes his own way in the world. All that is required is to become valued, whether citizen or not. What need of citizenship when I still need to tuck my hands inside my tunic?’

  ‘The philosophy of the New Man,’ Julius Yahya growled.

  ‘No one sprang fully formed from Jupiter’s brow,’ Kag fired back. ‘We were all New Men once.’

  ‘What next?’ Julius Yahya said, outraged. ‘Legions led by generals from the Germanies, with hair to their shoulders?’

  ‘Rome ruled by a mavro African?’ Kag suggested softly and Julius Yahya’s head snapped up. He managed a smile, then pushed the scrolls towards them.

  ‘Either way, it is life-changing.’

  Drust stared and felt Kag look at him but did not dare look at him. Life-changing…

  ‘I might add that your patron, Servilius Structus, also earns reward for your endeavour,’ Julius Yahya went on.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Kag said, laconic and hoarse. No appeal from that quarter then, Drust thought. It was as Servilius had said when he had told them where to meet Julius Yahya – do as he says without quibble. Farewell. I do not expect we will meet again.

  He had hired them out, Drust had thought at the time. Like stud horses past their prime. Now, he thought, it is we who are about to get fucked – we haven’t been hired, we have been sold.

  Julius Yahya perhaps saw what Drust was thinking and smiled.

  ‘We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.’

  Kag shrugged diffidently at that. ‘If man’s life is ever worth the living, it is when he has attained this vision of the soul of beauty. And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, of dress, of comely boys, you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away.’

  ‘Aplaudo,’ Julius Yahya said with soft admiration and genuine delight. Drust was tired of them shooting some hairy philosopher at each other; it was always the innocent bystanders who got hit, he thought. Besides, he was being ignored, as if two lovers were in the room, and he did not care for that; there was too much at stake and too much unknown to play at that.

  ‘Well, we will all become good, rich little citizens,’ he said harshly. ‘I’m happy with it. I am afraid to be happy. Each time I get happy something bad happens. I saw that on a wall in the Forum once.’

  The noise was shocking and surprising in equal measure; even Julius Yahya was taken aback and everyone turned to look at where Verus, the silent, shadowed man, had laughed.

  ‘What do we have to do for all this happiness?’ demanded Drust into the silence that followed.

  Chapter One

  Britannia Inferior, six months later

  Simple enough. Fetch back a woman and child captured by bandits. ‘The Epidi,’ Julius Yahya had added, rolling the word
s round as if it was a fine wine. ‘They are all bandits. A certain woman must be returned; she has a child and will be made biddable by threat to it, so you should bring it too. A boy. Both are slaves – do not listen to anything to the contrary, for the mother will say anything, of course. You will bring them back to one Kalutis in Eboracum, which I believe is what passes for a city in Britannia Inferior – the whole Empire is now ruled from it until the Emperor is done with the skin-wearers. Verus will also be there and will take charge of the woman and child and pay you all. You are then advised to enjoy the sights of the Empire, anywhere but Rome.’

  Bandits. What a fine word that was, Drust thought, summoning up a rough romantic lot, all swagger and bravado. The Epidi were far from that. They did not exist, of course, save as a name Romans had given to the Blue River People, the Stone Clan, the True People of the Black Bear and all the others, far up to the northern forests. Drust’s people once, though they were worse than strangers now – he had been in his mother’s arms when taken. He did not think this was why he had been chosen.

  The Army was there already, suffering and tramping miserably round bogs and marshes and dark forests, trailing a snail slime of blood and bodies. Still, there were a lot of them and some brave and skilled men could surely be found for an enterprise like this, but it seemed the matter had to remain among as few people as possible.

  ‘Then pay the ransom,’ Kag had said. ‘There is always the chance these bandits will honour it and release this woman alive. Political, was she? A chief’s daughter held hostage to fortune?’

  ‘The man who took her has dared to say “no” to ransom,’ Julius Yahya had replied, which made Kag and Drust look at each other.

  Love or politics then, Drust thought. Or both, and involving the purple-born of the Palatine. Either way he did not want it, did not like it, was afraid of it, as if some shadows from Dis had lurched out of the Underworld and snagged him, dragging him straight to the very place he did not want to be. He had left the proximity of the Palatine Hill, fled south to evade the vengeance of an imperial brat with sore balls – and here he was being bribed to march back there. It was a trap. Nothing would make him walk into it…

  Julius Yahya had looked at him, the way you do when you have snagged your trout.

  ‘The man who took this woman and child was called Colm. I believe you know him.’

  Drust knew him. All the Brothers of the Sands knew him as Dog, but when Drust thought of him he saw a face twisted and raving, hands clawing at the air and held by chains. Begging Drust to come back to him, to come back and die for what he had condemned his woman to.

  Drust didn’t know his woman, but Dog had always had one somewhere, so it was no surprise. The surprise was what he had done for this one – joined Bulla, the bandit chief. Six hundred men ravaged up and down Italia while Severus was conquering new territories. It took the Senate two years to catch Bulla, but eventually offers of gold got the bandit chief betrayed and then the whole band fell apart. Dog, with his usual luck, had joined too late to profit and almost left it too late to escape.

  Was the child she had Dog’s, Drust wondered? If Dog had waited, Servilius Structus would have manumitted him, too. Instead, when he heard Dog was off with bandits he sent out his Procuratores.

  ‘I don’t want him dead,’ he said, ‘I just want him to wish he was.’

  They spent a long time hunting him after Bulla’s band fell apart and, in the end, had to trail back to the City, disgruntled and empty-handed. Yet Dog couldn’t stay away from Rome, and when he came back, it was inevitable he’d be found; mercifully, there was no woman or child with him, because Ugo beat him until his piss bled, then they left him chained up in the cellar of one of the slums he was hiding in.

  Dog begged and ranted about how they should just let him loose, that he had been punished enough; Drust heard later he was to meet this woman again and that she was depending on him, but he never would have made it anyway, since they broke his leg.

  Drust thought about this a long time – then scratched his name on the contract and looked at Kag, who blew out his cheeks and did the same.

  Neither of them could explain why, but all the others had made their marks when they learned that Dog was involved and yet none would admit that he was the prime reason; they pretended it was money, or the chance to be a citizen.

  Drust stuffed it in the back of his mind, along with everything else he didn’t want to think about, and filled the space with all the problems of shifting north as quietly as they could.

  * * *

  The boy saw them first, coming up west along the southern line of the Wall. Short Hairs, but they had the reek of Long Hairs and the same worn, nub-end look, save for their weapons. The boy had a corner of his cloak – a rough-weave affair, but still a cloak – up over his head against the rain and the bottom was shielding his find of sticks. Good sticks – straight and with no knots – make good mattock shafts, he thought.

  He moved slowly but determinedly to find his da. Strangers were always worth a warning, even now when there were a lot more of them than the boy had ever known.

  His da wasn’t listening at first, too busy working out the best way to bottom-haft a mattock. Top-hafting was easier but made a bad mattock – a couple of dozen pulls would slide the metal collar off and the annoyed owner would bring it back. Since half the owners were the Army, it didn’t do to sell them top-hafters.

  Bottom-hafters were harder, of course. The mattock blade collar was already forged and so the shaft had to fit in it, which meant shaving a bit here and there, working it up the shaft until it bit hard enough to dig up wood. You could cut the spare off the top but it was a skill, judging the length and thickness of a good stave so you had a fair shaft of mattock…

  ‘Strangers, da. New ones.’

  ‘No old ones, son. All strangers is new.’

  The boy was right, all the same. These were new strangers, for sure. There had been a few sights of late, now that the army was back – three emperors, too, if all the tales had it true. The north was in turmoil again and the rumour was that the three emperors – father and two sons – had moved beyond the Wall of Hadrianius back to the Northern Vallum. That had been built years before, then abandoned and unmanned for long enough for the Wall of Hadrianius to be refurbished – the boy’s da remembered that as a young man working for his own da. Mattocks and pickaxes in big demand – the north-facing gates had been taken out as not needed and the Army lads now had to scramble to put everything back, dig out the ditches, replace the stakes.

  Now it was all change again with the Emperor and his sons. The Wall of Hadrianius didn’t know where it was – the chief of the tower’s eight men had set them working to make it look like his part of the Wall was defended and ready but the Empire seemed to have washed on beyond it and he was scratching his head with confusion because he didn’t know if his tower would even be needed now. Didn’t know if he needed mattocks or hammers. Didn’t know if he was on his arse or his elbow.

  And there were strange sights. Men on little horses wearing the pelts of yellow, spotted beasts, carrying little throwing spears. They had hair like matted birds’ nests hung about with silver and bone, but the strangest sight about them was that they were burned black as the forge charcoal. They came riding along the Wall from the west and spoke no language anyone but themselves understood, yet they were Army. They’d laughed when he’d seen their unshod horses and offered to shoe them for a price; they’d made it clear none of their mounts wore iron shoes nor ever would. They let the boy touch their skin to see if it smudged on his fingers, watered their dog-sized horses and rode on.

  One of these latest strangers was burned the same way, which was what had reminded the forge-man. These latest weren’t quite as strange, the boy’s da thought, but more like to give you chills, way they looked at you. Cropped chins and cropped hair, Roman-style, but it was growing out while the flat, hard-eyed gaze was the same as those of the beasts beyond the Wall…
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  Drust led the way to the man and boy, knowing them for what they were. Scraping a living in the shadow of the Wall of Hadrianius, called Votadini or Brigantes by Romans who liked to label such things neatly even if they had no true idea of who these people were; if they still remembered it, the man and boy would know themselves as something different. The man worked a forge, made nails and tools, and the boy would follow him one day, living in the same round, thatched mud hut until he died on the same packed-earth floor.

  The man’s name was Ander, the boy Young Ander. Kag gave Drust a look and shook his head, smiling. Too poor to even afford names was what he didn’t say aloud. Which was rich, Drust thought, coming from a man who used only one and that as short as he could make it.

  ‘I need a shoe done,’ Drust said once the greetings were over. ‘Can you handle it?’

  He spoke Local, that mix of bad Latin, worse Gaul and whatever the tribes spoke here, and saw Ander’s eyes widen a little. The smith wiped his hands on a handful of wet leaves and nodded, looked at his staring son and half smiled apologetically.

  ‘Wants to touch your burned man there,’ he said in the same language. ‘Stop gawping, lad,’ he added to the boy.

  Sib came out from under his leather hood, his face gleaming with rain slick and his teeth startlingly white. He reached out one hand, fingers splayed, as if to wipe his stain down the boy, who backed off. The boy stared, fascinated, at the fat, brown-pink callous of his palms. Sib laughed.

  ‘You from around here?’ Ander asked, fetching his tools. He nudged the boy to start the bellows going; the forge growled.

  ‘North of here once,’ Drust replied. Quintus brought up the mule, smiling his big shit-eating smile; Anders merely glanced at him, then Sib, then the others. He can see we are not all from round here or anywhere close, Drust thought.