Beasts From the Dark Read online

  ‘Fuck,’ Kag said and set Asellio back down gently, wiping his hands down his front and staring. They all did, with a sick sense of dread.

  ‘Get him up,’ Culleo said, his voice rising into panic.

  ‘Only Pluto will get him up now,’ Dog growled. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and they all stood and stared, frozen.

  This was Asellio, decanus of the Exploratores of Cohors nonae Batavorum. Thirty years’ service – when his first twenty-five years ended, he re-enlisted. He had fought the Alemanni all over Pannonia and Rhaetia, had come out of it with decorations and awards, wore his old lorica segmentata like a badge of honour, even though such armour was going out of style.

  He had sired more sons and cuckolded more husbands, lost and made more wealth than most men would ever see, and had been promoted and broken too many times to count – his legs bore the old whitened weals of past punishments.

  Dead from a fall down some worn steps.

  It took a while yet for them all to truly believe that such a little matter could have carried off the likes of Asellio, but were forced to admit it as they carried him up onto the rutted road. Hammer even looked up at the grey-blue sky, as if expecting the mourning wrath of Jupiter.

  The Brothers were less stunned by it. Dis Pater was practically one of them, and they had no fear of that deity or the deaths he had claimed of those closest to them, for they had lived with it daily for too long.

  Culleo and the others were not so hand-clasped to Dis and had been longer with the decanus, long enough to have him as their bedrock. Drust saw the shock eventually slide off them, leaving them all with the gaping void of it under their feet.

  They dragged him up and laid him down, then stared, then wiped their faces as if they could scrub the sight away. It stayed – an old man, head at an angle it should not be and blood drying round the grizzle of his beard.

  They said what had happened. Then said it again. And again, as if it would somehow change, not be true.

  ‘Fucken old bastard,’ said Sow finally, bitterly. ‘Just when we needed him.’

  Kag bent, examined, then looked up. ‘Anyone want his armour?’

  It seemed like a slap in the face to them, an insult, almost a sacrilege, and they refused. None of the Brothers wanted it – they did not like to fight in such an oven.

  ‘You’ll need to be light and fast,’ Praeclarum pointed out. ‘There’s some rough country if we are still headed west of here – and we are being hunted by those who run over it daily.’

  ‘Well,’ said Culleo slowly, hitching up his own tattered ring-coat. ‘I am now senior here, so…’

  ‘Shut up, you flap-sandalled gob of shite,’ Kag said amiably and then looked at Drust. ‘What now?’

  ‘Roll him into the river as he is,’ Drust answered. ‘Otherwise the howlers will get his weapons, his nice armour and his head all in one.’

  Hammer made a noise as if to protest, to argue for a decent burial, but Drust looked up at him and stopped the words in his mouth.

  ‘You want to take the time to dig a hole? Or get as much between us and those who want their stolen dragon standard back?’

  They hitched up their gear and got ready. Praeclarum moved up to Drust and kissed his cheek, taking the opportunity to put her soft lips against his ear, her breath stirring the hairs round it. He wanted endearment, at least an affirmation that he was working well on everyone’s behalf.

  ‘How the fuck did we get into this?’ she whispered.

  * * *

  The usual way – by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was Quintus’s wry take on it. Dog muttered vile threats at Cascus Minicius Audens, Beast Master of the Flavian, whose contract had taken them to the dark, wet woods of Rhaetia, and Kag shrugged and blamed Fortuna, fickle as ever.

  Kisa muttered prayers to his one god, Ugo just looked grim as old rock. Manius said nothing, just whetted a knife and looked for the way out, but Praeclarum spoke, briefly and darkly, about divine retribution for having let an Empress and a Vestal die in a hole in the ground.

  That was half a year ago – the day he and Praeclarum had been married, Drust recalled. The price for bringing the wayward former Vestal Empress of a dead Emperor from the dusty deserts of Syria back to her family so they could immure her, all right and proper, had let them pay for this enterprise. If it failed, they were broke as old pie crust. Again.

  Drust knew the truth of how they had ended up out in the Dark and it was another goddess entirely, one they had ignored and so made angry. Fama, who spread your name far and wide, who lives at the centre of the world, where earth, sea and sky meet; from there she can see and hear everything that goes on and her home, on a tall peak, has no doors but a thousand windows and is made entirely of bronze, so that the slightest noise or whisper echoes and reverberates throughout.

  He found this out from Legate Marcus Peperna Vento, in the principia of the fort at Biriciana, who had summoned them all.

  ‘I am told that, despite how you appear, you are the very ones for this task,’ he declared, stabbing a stubby finger at the painted scroll map on the desk in front of him. ‘Here is where decent tribals raise crops of children and grain, sheep and cattle under the protection of Rome.’. Another stab. ‘And here is where the only decent crop they raise is beards and hate for all of those on the other side.’

  No one laughed.

  They called him Legate, but Marcus Peperna Vento didn’t have a legion – no one did these days. He had detachments from all over the Empire, the bulk of them from the Third Italica, and those were spread along a single stone wall and the fortlets studding it – this was the frontier in the north.

  ‘This is the land of the tree worshippers, whose civilisation ended before the invention of the comb. They live in forests which the men call the blood woods, or just the Dark,’ Peperna went on. ‘Out there they curse Rome and get in more trouble than a dog eating a stolen pie. Like the dog, they end up beaten to death by the stick of the Army.’

  He looked round them all, grim and unsmiling, a stubby man who wanted to get back to Rome with honour and a decent heap of coin and would do anything to achieve it. ‘Now and then,’ he said, his voice deepening to a bitter, half ashamed growl, ‘they make enough of a fist of it to leap across the Wall and start pie-hunting on our side. Then we have to turn out and round them up.’

  Again no one spoke, for they all knew such a fist had been made and that the only safe place on either side of the limes this summer was where they stood; the Army had the men, but seemed to lack the will to turn out and round anyone up.

  Tribal raiders of Helvetii, Tigurini, Rhaeti and even Suebi, with their strange, knotted hair, were whooping and howling up and down the soft, rich south, looting, killing and raping. They weren’t in big enough numbers to be a threat to the passes south into Cisalpine, but if it looked like they would become so, Peperna would have to turn out and march to stop them. Meanwhile, the Army had dropped all the serious bridges, the ones that could take livestock or wheeled vehicles – the raiders might pillage, but they’d be limited to what they could carry.

  It was bad enough that all the roads from here south to Rome were now suicidally dangerous, Drust thought. The Brothers had carts and wagons waiting for a white bear and the feed for it but no safe way to get to the Beast Master of the Flavian.

  Peperna knew this. He looked round them all and smiled a nasty smile. ‘You have been brought to my attention. Fama has whispered in a high-placed ear on the Palatine and so the word has come down to me. You call yourselves Brothers of the Sand – even the woman. You have skills the Army can use.’

  ‘We are not in the Army,’ Ugo growled warningly, ‘and the “woman” is Drust’s wife.’

  Peperna’s grin had widened like a steel trap – even Quintus had to be envious of that one, Drust thought uneasily.

  ‘You are Army as of now,’ he answered. ‘You will shortly meet Decanus Scaevola. He is now your commander and you are now par
t of the numeroi of the Batavian Cohort. Exploratores of the Eighth Cohort – do you understand what that is?’

  Drust knew – they all knew, for it wasn’t the first time they had done such work, but never for the Batavian. Once this had been the German Guard of Emperors, until Galba had disbanded them, thinking they were too loyal to the deposed Nero. That had caused a major war with the outraged Batavii and, afterwards, some of the Germans had been reinstated.

  But the exploratores, the scouts and informers, were still the most reviled unit in the Army.

  ‘Of the Army, but not quite in the Army,’ Kag said blankly. ‘No uniforms, no drill, no parades – just a bit of scout and skulk.’

  Peperna didn’t grin back. ‘You will assist Decanus Scaevola with your local knowledge. You will escort him and his men north of the limes and question your contacts as to the whereabouts of a Roman officer and the cavalry he has in his possession.’

  The stun of that was a fist to all mouths and closed them.

  Peperna nodded as if he had expected no less; he had a sharp and disturbing twist of a smile.

  ‘You have had dealing with the limeheads north of here,’ he said. ‘The ones from that town by Bridge 41.’

  Drust knew Peperna had made enquiries and there was no point denying anything – but all Drust knew was that the name of the headman was Erco, that his name was local-speak for ‘Hercules’ and almost certainly wasn’t the name non-Romans knew him by. None of which made him a friend, let alone kin. He finally said so and pointed out that any of the detachment at the Bridge 41 watchtower would know as much.

  ‘Besides,’ he added desperately, ‘we came here to fetch back a prize for the Emperor – a white bear for the big Games. I only know this Erco as a contact to the ones who have such a creature, brought down from the far north.’

  Peperna rasped one hand on his stubble – when a man like that neglects his barbering, Kag pointed out later, you know there is trouble.

  ‘There are no detachments at the watchtower. There are engineers at Bridge 41 preparing it for demolition, so here is what you will do, you so-called Brothers of the Sand. You will join the rest of the numeroi of Scaevola. We will care for your carts and gear until it is clear you aren’t coming back. You should be very clear that the instructions regarding you come from the highest source – I have been told to mention the name Julius Yahya.’

  He saw the reaction and smiled thinly. ‘You can forget your white bear.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Quintus growled sullenly, but it was a poor spark, quickly extinguished.

  ‘At every order we stand ready,’ Dog declared sardonically, and Peperna managed to look him in the eye for long enough to show he wasn’t overawed by the face, but Drust knew it was a lie. He also knew Peperna was afraid; the atmosphere was reeking with it, a pervasive stink that you had to fight hard against to avoid infection.

  Julius Yahya would do that, Drust thought, remembering the man from years before, when he had sent them north of the Britannia frontier. That had not turned out well…

  ‘A slave,’ Kag said suddenly and laughed with venom. Then he spread apologetic hands as he looked at Peperna. ‘It always amuses me to see the likes of legates fawn over Julius Yahya.’

  ‘He is a freedman nowadays,’ Peperna said, seemingly unaffected by the barb. ‘Advisor to the Emperor’s mother. Does that give you a clue as to why legates fawn? As to how you will obey?’

  Julia Avita Mamaea, Mother of the Empress, whose head was on coins and whose fingers were everywhere, pulling strings on behalf of her son. A woman who had organised the death of his cousin so her son could put his skinny boy arse on the throne. A woman who had organised a good Roman marriage for him, then grown jealous of it, banished the wife and executed her father for treason. Drust felt the greasy grey hand of it squeeze him into a hopelessness that bowed his head; he felt Praeclarum’s fingers on his.

  ‘What cannot be overcome must be endured,’ she said.

  No one had an answer to that or anything else, and Peperna hitched his official toga up like a big-ruffed wolf.

  ‘Here’s what you will do…’

  He plucked a scroll from out of his sleeves and handed it to Kisa, a singular act that Drust did not miss. He knows us, he thought. He has made enquiries and he knows who can read best, who can write clearly, who does what.

  ‘That is the history of Marcus Antonius Antyllus,’ Peperna said, and the way he said it was like calling on a god for favours. ‘He is a descendant of the great Anthony and a tribune laticlavius, former legate of the Third – when such appointments were made to senators.’

  The last was said with bitterness and Drust knew that in recent times the senatorial rank had lost some power in Rome, emperors preferring to trust the Army to the lesser equites.

  ‘You will go north,’ Peperna said. ‘Seek news of Marcus Antonius among those you know there, find him and let Scaevola and his men return him to his castra.’

  ‘Is he lost then?’ Kag asked, dark-voiced and dark-eyed, because he already knew the truth.

  ‘Mislaid,’ Peperna answered flatly. ‘He always had radical ideas about taking the war to the enemy and now they are… unsound. You may have heard the name “The Dragon”. That is Marcus Antonius. He is out there fighting an enemy he created by stirring up the limeheads. Now they have leaped the Wall to pie-hunt on our side, and no one knows if General Antyllus is alive or dead. Find out, and if he is alive you will inform him of Rome’s displeasure and persuade him to return with the cavalry regiment and the draco standard he took with him. Rome does not want the blood priests of the Dark to have a noble head or a noble standard to stick it on.’

  Fama had already whispered of the Dragon, a rogue Roman general leading a band of renegades under the draco standard of the Second Flavia cavalry, charging up and down and attacking anyone and anything that moved north of the Wall. This Antyllus had once commanded detachments equalling a legion, but took the disaffected of the Ala Flavia and made them his own. The rumour was that he thought cavalry a waste of men and resources in country like this, and wanted them retrained as wood-crawlers and secret fighters. The rumour was that he and his band had eaten all their horses in some perverse ritual.

  They filed out of the principia, blinking in the light, standing in a whirl of movement as officers and clerks went back and forth clutching tablets and papyrus. Outside, men banged heels on hard ground and bawled ‘Roma Invicta!’. Everyone carried their fear like a pack they couldn’t wriggle out of.

  One man was stolid and unmoved, grizzled and staring at them from a face like a roofer’s nail pouch. ‘Scaevola,’ he announced flatly. ‘You’ll hear me called Asellio, but it doesn’t worry me one bit. Draw stores of what you need, within reason. Then follow me.’

  ‘We stand ready for any order,’ Quintus said, and Scaevola paused, then looked him up and down.

  ‘I have been told of you and what you need to do. You have been told of me. Don’t fuck with me or I will set you on fire and beat it out with a spade.’

  They fell silent with admiration, then Drust said: ‘We’ve been told of you. You know what we are here to do. What are you here to do?’

  Scaevola squinted at him, then nodded. ‘You’ll be Drust, the leader. Well, as long as you can take orders from me we will do well. Once you find this high-born arsehole, me and my lads will persuade him of his error.’

  ‘What if he does not want to be persuaded?’ Praeclarum asked, all wide-eyed and sweet – Drust saw Scaevola’s eyes flick to her and then back to Drust. Here it comes, he thought. But to a man nicknamed Asellio, Keeper of Donkeys, the inclusion of a woman gladiator in his command was just another infamis to add to the heap.

  ‘He must be removed from command, Peperna said. By any means.’

  ‘And then?’ Dog responded, flat and sharp as new steel. Asellio studied the skull-tattooed face blandly and Drust admired that. Here was a man who had seen worse than Dog’s face. He did not want to think on what that might
be, but a shrieking mass of armed, muscled men with their hair limed up into white spikes would probably top the list. He shivered.

  ‘You want us to murder the man,’ Quintus added.

  ‘I don’t want you to do a fucking thing I don’t tell you to do,’ Asellio answered. ‘Including murder.’

  ‘What will Rome think of that?’ Kisa demanded, his voice shrill with outraged astonishment. ‘The murder of a senator?’

  ‘You need not worry about that,’ Asellio answered levelly. ‘The biggest crime in Rome is to short-weight the grain dole.’

  Drust laughed aloud when he heard it and all the others fell silent and looked at him, frowning as if pursing their eyebrows together would force out the bit he had seen and they had not. Eventually he told them that if the murder of a senator, even one with a headful of squirming snakes, was of no account, then only one person could have authorised it – the Imperial Consort herself, Mother of the Empire. Asellio nodded grudging admiration.

  ‘You know not to eat fish with a spoon,’ he growled.

  ‘It is a beast hunt,’ Drust said flatly, ‘and most beast hunting is all spear and idiocy, which is why sensible people get others to do it.’

  Dog hawked and spat, a singular insult to the steps of the principia that should have got him the worst of punishment pain; the scurriers who saw it pretended they didn’t. Kag delivered his bitter verdict.

  ‘The easiest animal to find is always the scapegoat.’

  * * *

  They got caught an hour later, scrambling along the steep rocks of the river, heading west with the water dancing uncaringly at the bottom of the gorge and the grey rocks on the other side slowly, slowly sliding down to meet the narrowing path.

  Culleo had just said how this was a bad way, that it was too steep, that they should have gone back to the village called ‘made by wolves’ and then struck off into the forest. He had said it before and always in a whining grate of a voice, so no one paid him much heed.