The Red Serpent Read online

  Attalus paced behind an ornate desk which, apart from a chair and some other recliners, marked the only furniture.

  ‘It is so,’ he admitted. ‘Some disturbance around Fars has resulted in the death of the Parthian king Artaban at the hands of some rebel called Ardashir and his son, Shapur. That has not, as you have discovered, solved many problems. Lack of Parthian control has allowed the local tribes out – the ones you met, the Jabal Tayy, are but one. Why did you ask for Uranius?’

  ‘A name I had from back west,’ Drust lied. ‘I was told he was the man for camels in Dura-Europos.’

  ‘Your messenger seemed insistent on talking to him. Came up to the gates shouting his name.’

  It must have been a facer for the guards, Drust thought – a tall, rangy mavro with a huge curved sword and a loincloth looming out of the desert on the back of a scabby camel and yelling for a Roman by name. It would do nothing for Uranius’s social standing.

  ‘I can see why it would be upsetting,’ he added. ‘I simply told my messenger to convey a certain urgency in our situation – I thought using the name might help him get taken seriously.’

  ‘Did too,’ Kag added, smiling beatifically. ‘After all – Uranius sent his camel-warriors to the rescue.’

  ‘I sent the dromedarii,’ Attalus countered sourly. ‘Uranius was not among them – you do not know Decurio Uranius?’

  ‘Never met him,’ Drust said firmly, which was true enough and Attalus’s frown told Drust he had asked Uranius the same question. He wondered why all the interest and that nagged him. Dog and Manius, he thought bitterly – they have pissed off someone important, as usual.

  Then the man’s coiffed beard split in a smile. ‘Gladiators,’ he said and Drust was immediately wary.

  ‘We have a new amphitheatre here,’ Attalus went on, ‘built only last year for the garrison. In a few days it will be the Rose Festival of the Standards and I am sure the men would appreciate the sight of real gladiators in their amphitheatre.’

  Drust did not want it and Kag picked up on it as soon as Drust mentioned the cost, which would have choked a senator. Attalus frowned.

  ‘Let me consult,’ he said and Drust’s heart sank. He would go to the centurions and get them to use the legionary bank – which meant the soldiers would pay.

  ‘No deaths,’ he said, hoping that would kill it. Attalus merely smiled and indicated they could go.

  * * *

  The place teemed with Roman tunics, Greek cloaks, pointed Scythian hats, the baggy trousers of Persians, the long robes of Arabs and Jews, and the fat turbans of Pandyan silk traders from Tamilakam.

  Drust’s train had been trailed through the city to the 17th Tower, a compound that encompassed their caravan but which had a bathhouse attached, so that Drust could not work out if he had been snubbed by isolation from other caravanserai or favoured. The main lots for parking caravans from east or west lay outside the walls – only the truly favoured were permitted a billet inside. Drust did not like to dwell on why they were truly favoured.

  They took time off in the shade to braid themselves together and consider what was best, while Kisa Shem-Tov organised the caravan into some order; he was good at that, even if he stole a little.

  ‘I don’t care for a performance here,’ Kag muttered. ‘I heard the sum you mentioned and did not see Attalus blink. He’s the sort of well-born arse who will pay for deaths.’

  ‘Then we won’t do it,’ Drust soothed. ‘We are freedmen after all, not slaves dedicated to the old oath.’

  ‘We follow it anyway,’ Sib pointed out.

  Ugo sat with both hands on his tall axe and looked mournful.

  ‘I hate fighting without the axe,’ he said and Quintus snorted derision at him.

  ‘Not a weapon for the harena, is it? You need to be a decent hoplomachus, not some bull-fucker barbarian from the Germanies. Besides – you don’t even like that axe and have said so.’

  Ugo nodded sadly. ‘My best axe I left in the head of a great beast in the north,’ he admitted. ‘This one is not the same.’

  ‘So find another,’ Kag spat irritatedly. ‘Or, better yet, something more civilised.’

  ‘You did not find it uncivilised when I cut down those goat-fuckers at the oasis,’ Ugo pointed out bitterly and there was too much truth in that for anyone to argue.

  ‘I could fight with Stercorinus’s sword,’ Ugo added hopefully, but had no response from the man, who leaned against the wall like a windblown palm, cradling his great curved sword.

  ‘Where did you get such a weapon?’ Quintus prompted and Stercorinus turned his black, dreaming eyes.

  ‘From god,’ he said. ‘When he told me the manner of my death and that I am the bearer of this sword. It was carried by Simon, known as Cephas and the defender of the Christ. He cut the ear from a high priest when those people came to arrest his master.’

  ‘How did you come by it?’ Ugo asked.

  ‘I have a destiny. That is why I have this sword and why I have stayed – Drust and god will tell me my destiny.’

  They had heard it all before but hoped each time to find something new in it, but the sword and the god had no names, it appeared, and Stercorinus would not tell of the manner of his death.

  ‘You stay,’ Praeclarum pointed out, ‘because you were bought and freed and bound to a contract to pay off what you owe, which is as good as the slavery you had before. As I was.’

  Stercorinus merely looked, in such a way that said: believe what you like, the truth is different.

  ‘Anyway,’ Kag added morosely, seeing nothing new was coming, ‘that bent knife might be bigger than others we have seen, but it is still no weapon for the harena. Lacks dignitas. Like women fighters.’

  ‘If they let me,’ Praeclarum answered, unfazed by Kag’s scathe.

  ‘In Rome it’s forbidden as a perversion,’ Kag answered, ‘but here it is an acceptable one. That’s the East for you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sib added viciously, ‘if you can’t dance the steps and make a cow’s hole mess of it, they will howl and mark you down for a six just the same as any man.’

  It was the traditional way of registering a gladiator death, scrawling 6 against their name, and Drust was determined that wasn’t going to happen. He said so and no one spoke for a long time.

  Then Quintus said, ‘What about this Uranius?’

  Drust had no idea. It was clear they were being kept apart from everyone else and especially Uranius and he didn’t know why. It was what made this amphitheatre affair uneasy.

  ‘You think they will try and kill us all?’ Sib demanded, alarmed, and Quintus laughed his big, easy laugh, mouth as wide as an open drain.

  ‘That’s what they do out here,’ he answered. ‘Dog would know better.’

  People fell silent at the name. Dog had been one of them, a man with a face ink-marked to make it look as if it was inside out; he had gone with the Imperial Julias of the family who had clustered round the boy-emperor Elagabalus. Drust and the others took sensible and hidden exile far to the south of the Africas and no one had heard from Dog since Elagabalus and his mother Julia had been purged in favour of a cousin, the new boy-emperor Alexander. By both the matriarch of the family, yet another Julia and the mother of Alexander, yet one more Julia.

  Every female in the Severan dynasty was a Julia, it appeared – Elagabalus had married two Julias, the second a scandal because she had been a Vestal – and it was worth remembering that, Drust thought. They are the deadliest power in the Empire and Dog had practically worshipped at the feet of Elagabalus’s mother, dragged off in bloody chains with her son.

  They’d all thought Dog was dead and Manius with him – yet here they were, alive and asking for help from the only family they knew, the only people they could trust. Drust told the others that was why the message was short on detail – the lost pair did not want to let anyone know.

  ‘It will be women,’ Quintus said with his big grin.

  ‘A pile of gold
,’ Kag muttered moodily, ‘whose shine is all in his death’s head.’

  They gathered themselves together in this fortress city, which was a trembling nerve end that thrummed the whole body of Rome, perched like a raw wound at the edge of the Empire, facing an ancient enemy which seemed to be changing into something no one could recognise or understand.

  Kisa Shem-Tov knew the city, though, so that when he came back, every head turned to look. He was small, dark, fringe-bearded round the jaw of a broad face with an open smile which was mostly lie. He had overseen the parking of the caravan camels in two facing rows and the gurgle and grunt of them were now muffled with a muzzle of feedbags. All the cargo was laid out in neat piles on ground cloth, covered with oiled cloth and tied down as best as was possible on the hard-packed ground. He handed over the train bell, worn by the last camel in the line when they were on the move, and managed to make it look like an offering to a god.

  ‘What’s being said of us?’ Drust asked and the little Jew bobbed, looked sideways at Stercorinus, now folded on the ground like some huge spider with his great scimitar cradled like a beloved child, then at Sib. He did not like nor trust these desert-dwellers, but he had his task…

  ‘That you are fighters from Rome,’ he said. ‘The caravan guard commanders are wondering how good you are, since you are few and every caravan needs at least a hundred guards.’

  Quintus snorted. ‘I have seen these guards. You can dump all their arses in the dust with a small bladder on a large stick.’

  ‘The city is fretted,’ Kisa Shem-Tov continued. ‘The trade with the East is not yet broken, but it is being interrupted – these usurpers seem to have wrecked the old Empire and not yet replaced it with anything of their own. The desert sands are boiling.’

  Then he smiled. ‘Next year, who knows? It has always been thus in this part of the world. People fighting over it, from your honour’s glorious warriors to dogs from the sands.’

  It was worth fighting over too, Drust thought, for trade made it rich even if it did not look much. The whole city could be ridden across in twenty minutes if you could find a good horse and a straight street – yet those streets were golden with possibilities.

  ‘You might find the first,’ Kisa Shem-Tov answered when Drust voiced this, ‘but never the second.’

  He knew this, he told everyone who would listen, because this was like his birth-city as to be a sister and that was why sensible folk appointed him as guide in these lands. He knew this city and beyond and it would be good knowledge to have. He had said much the same at Antioch when he had brought the message that had dragged them all here.

  Drust listened with half an ear. The little Jewish man had made his presence felt the moment they had appeared in Antioch, and they had learned since that the Jew was an overfull cup when it came to lore, but not all of it was useful or made sense.

  Drust was wondering – not for the first time – if he was worth listening to. He did not trust Kisa Shem-Tov further than he could throw Ugo with an eyelash, but he did not say that, just listened and watched the festered huddle of flat-roofed mud-brick houses, the bloom of tents and the heat haze from a rumbled gurgling of contented camels.

  It felt good to be smelling woodsmoke and new-baked bread and hot onions, even if he had to filter them through the stink of camels and unwashed people; if he closed his eyes, he could imagine the roofs were taller and closer together, that the narrow streets were in Subura, Rome’s teeming heart. But this place was as far removed from that as the chances of avoiding a fight in the new amphitheatre.

  ‘There are many folk such as myself,’ Kisa was saying, ‘Jews, though we call ourselves Karaite and follow the teachings of our own since Hillel and Shammai argued. Some say we came from Chufut Kale, but no one likes to hear that, since the legend speaks of Karaites being slaves of the Grass Sea animals beyond the mountains.’

  ‘I hate this midden,’ Kag declared, scowling into Kisa’s broad smile. ‘I hate the heat and the strangeness and do not give the smell off my balls for your Karaite Jews. All I need to know is where the road is that will carry us from here. That and what brought us here in the first place.’

  ‘If your nethers smell,’ Kisa answered politely, his smile only a little wavering, ‘I can find a place for you to bathe. The people here bathe regularly, as do we Jews – except for new fathers, who are not allowed to wash or write for forty-nine days after the birth of their child. The Arabs also bathe, but not as often. The traders from the eastern deserts seldom bathe…’

  ‘Enough bathing,’ Ugo growled. ‘You sound like a stream in flood. I am washed clean in it.’

  ‘I am sure your honour has the correctness of it,’ Kisa said, inclining his head. Then he turned and moved closer to Drust, close enough for him to smell vinegar sweat, unwashed linen and the faint incongruous perfume of roses.

  ‘There was a man,’ he said softly, his breath brushing the hairs around Drust’s ears, ‘who whispered to this one, saying to seek the house of Shayk Amjot in the Street of Cheap Iron. There you will meet the Red Man.’

  ‘A man?’ Drust demanded. ‘What man? And why tell you? And why do you only tell me all this now?’

  He said it in a loud growl which made Kisa Shem-Tov draw back and look from side to side as if searching for an exit. Instead he found Kag.

  ‘Calm yourself, Jew. First law of the harena – take a deep breath and if you are going to piss yourself, squat and pretend to be rubbing sand into your palms.’

  ‘I am not of your profession,’ Kisa Shem-Tov replied with vehement relief. ‘I was told this suddenly – I did not solicit it. This man was a shadow who said these words and vanished. They mean little to me…’

  ‘Well – you have told me,’ Drust said and Kag looked briefly at him, seeing how he had let go of the neck of the rat but not why. He grinned, feral as a wet cat, and Kisa trembled.

  ‘Do you know this Street of Cheap Iron?’ Drust demanded and Kisa inclined his head obsequiously.

  ‘I believe I might find a way to it.’

  Drust said nothing more and, gradually, Kisa realised he was to go. He tried to move away with dignity but broke after a few steps and scuttled.

  ‘You are right not to trust him.’

  Praeclarum’s voice was soft yet it came as a startle from a shadow in the dark; Kag recovered first and managed a chuckle.

  ‘As if we need this advice – but you have our thanks.’

  ‘He smells of roses,’ she went on and Drust exchanged a look with Kag which confirmed it.

  ‘They are everywhere in the town up by the Palmyra Gate and beyond,’ she went on. ‘Every house seems to have a balcony or a roof growing roses.’

  ‘They garland the standards with them in memory of the dead,’ Drust said, ‘every year.’

  ‘Good earner for people,’ Kag pointed out, ‘so they will grow hundreds of them for this very moment.’

  ‘He did not meet anyone on the way here,’ Praeclarum added, squatting carelessly so that the dark mystery of her fork pointed accusingly at Kag, who tried not to look. ‘He must have gone back, which means…’

  ‘Which means he knew to meet someone,’ Drust finished. Kag stroked his beard and squinted.

  ‘Who? This Shayk? This Red Man?’

  ‘The Red Man will be Uranius,’ Quintus said, sliding in and grinning whitely at Praeclarum. ‘Remember Kag shouting that out at the oasis? Those camel-riding Romans are the Red Men, from the cloaks they wear.’

  ‘Not me who shouted,’ Kag said. ‘I thought it was you.’

  ‘It was Kisa Shem-Tov,’ Praeclarum said. ‘He clearly knows these dromedarii well.’

  ‘Take him with us to this Shayk,’ Kag said and Quintus nodded.

  ‘Take us all. Strange city, strange people.’

  ‘Let me think,’ Drust said and moved away, looking for air and space. He found Praeclarum smiling at him.

  ‘You have two wives there,’ she said and he looked sideways at her.

 
; ‘Don’t let any of them hear you calling them old women.’

  ‘Take me,’ she said.

  ‘Why? Do you want to be a third wife so much?’

  She didn’t answer and the silence lengthened until he stood and stretched, feeling the weariness; somewhere goat was frying and he wanted simply to eat and sleep.

  She looked at him and trembled a smile. ‘Slaves cannot marry.’

  ‘You are not a slave now,’ he answered and she acknowledged it with a slight neck bow.

  ‘I am whatever your contract-bond says I am,’ she answered, ‘until I run away and decide otherwise.’

  He knew she was joking – at least, he hoped she was joking – so he smiled. ‘What would keep you from that terrible fate?’ he asked lightly.

  She leaned forward a little, hands behind her back as slaves always did. ‘Take me with you.’

  He did not answer as he moved to the smell of food, but he felt her eyes on him.

  Chapter Two

  They ate goat and flatbread, dozed a little until the heat left the day, then Drust stirred Kag and Kisa – and Praeclarum. Kisa did not like a woman coming with them and said so.

  ‘It is not a good matter. These Persians and Arabs have a different way of thinking about women, which does not include them as warriors or in the conversations of men.’

  ‘Then tell them not to fight or talk to her,’ Kag said.

  Drust was surprised that Kag had no objections and seemed to be making a case for Praeclarum to come along. He did not say a word on it, just indicated for Kisa to lead the way. Praeclarum stayed silent too, but for all his attempts, Drust could not keep from at least one look and, when he did, he saw her smiling back.

  Dura-Europos, though it sat at the fat end of a rich trade trail, was firstly a soldier’s town, and the legionaries with permissions were out looking for drink or whores, or stuff from the bazaar that would make their lot a little better. They also promenaded, because the fact of them being out with only legionary tunics and boots and a cloak against the night chill meant they were favoured, not because they were best, but because they were cunning and tough, which is what the army wanted.