They came down the night-washed street hugging the shadows and sweating in dark hoods, even if they were only loops of faded red cloaks. Kisa led the way, while Drust brought up the rear, and in the moonlight and empty of people, the street seemed larger, Farnah-vant’s citadel bigger than ever.
Voices shrank them into the shadows, and Praeclarum slunk off a little way and peered round the corner. When she returned, she had a thoughtful look.
‘It is the entrance we saw. There are slaves moving off into the building. They have been unloading goods from a camel-string.’
Kisa raised his head slightly and sniffed like a dog finding a new arse. ‘Smell that? Achaemenis, which is added to wine to make it stronger.’
Kag sniffed, found nothing but camel shit and scowled when he reported it. ‘How do you know the smell of this… stuff?’
‘Achaemenis,’ Kisa repeated patiently and stared Kag in the eye. ‘We use it too, as frumentarii. You feed the right amount in a couple of cups of wine and a prisoner will tell you anything you want to know.’
‘Kag does that after a bowl or two of bad Kos,’ Ugo rumbled, but Kisa never took his eyes from Kag.
‘If you get the measure wrong, though, there is only death in it,’ he said.
‘No matter to us if these Persians like their wine strong. It means the doors are open for us,’ Quintus flung in. ‘Move, brothers.’
‘What will you do?’ Stercorinus asked drily. ‘Rush in and slaughter everyone?’
‘It would be a fine matter,’ Kisa said, white-faced with terror in the moonlight, ‘if this was achieved with no killing at all, which will raise alarm and we will never escape. Also, rushing in is likely to cause the same.’
‘Did you miss the part about cutting the head off the ruler here?’ Quintus pointed out and Kisa’s face flamed, visible even in the dim.
‘Apart from that one,’ he muttered.
‘Then we must be quick,’ Drust said and laid out a plan which left Kisa trying to work spit up into his dry mouth at what he had to do. Which was simple enough. Once the slaves had gone, dragging the grumbling beasts with them to where they could enter the compound and stables, Kisa walked up to the open door, kicked it hard, and tried to smile when the truculent face appeared.
‘We… ah… missed a camel,’ he said to it and Kag rolled his eyes. Drust could almost hear the squeak of the guard’s brows as he frowned.
‘We… ah, um… lost it,’ Kisa went on, his voice growing high with desperation, ‘… and found it again – but it fell. Snapped a… er… um… leg. The skins are leaking.’
‘Leaking?’
‘One is, like a poor dam,’ Kisa agreed, and the man licked his lips at the possibilities and stepped out into the street.
‘If it is not emptied, it will be lost – bring your helmet and we will fill that first. We might need help,’ Kisa suggested and the man grunted that there was only him, so that would have to do. And he stepped out, pulling off his helmet and eager with the anticipation of free drink.
Which is when Ugo slid out behind him and felled him with a single smashing blow to the back of the neck; the crack of it was like a branch breaking and loud enough for Kisa to crouch and whimper.
Kag clapped Kisa on one shoulder. ‘Not bad. Too many ums and ers and ahs, but not bad. We could get you in a Plautus, perhaps as the clever slave who wins his freedom.’
Kisa swallowed hard and said nothing as the others came up, but his expression made it clear what he thought. Kag simply grinned back.
‘Hurry,’ said Kisa, his shadow dancing in the flickering lantern light of the cellar. ‘Why do you wait?’
‘Kag is thinking whether it is best to leave this man alive behind us, or slit his throat.’ Praeclarum answered and Kisa looked alarmed.
‘No deaths would be preferable. If we kill anyone, they will not spare us if caught.’
‘Stupidus,’ Kag declared scornfully. ‘That is clearly the Atellan role for you. You can carry the head of Farnah-vant because you are bound to have an astounding excuse for having it.’
Drust bent by the guard, queasy about doing it but determined to take it on himself, as leader. Instead, he found no pulse; Ugo nodded and beamed.
‘Thought it was a good blow.’
The cellar was large and vaulted, lit only by the pale yellow of a horn-panel lantern where the solitary guard had made a nest for himself. The rest of the place was a series of alleys between bales, boxes, barrels of pungent spice and ranks of amphorae, stacked like the army on parade.
‘Wine, silk and…’ Kag said, stopping to sniff. ‘What is that smell?’
It was oil, but not the aromatic one from olives they knew so well; this was black, sticky and pungent.
‘The black pitch we were told of,’ Kisa said, looking round uneasily. ‘The stuff that burns in the eternal flames of these fire worshippers.’
Quintus had found stairs and they went up them like prowling cats, latched open the door at the top and moved into another vaulted room.
Cloth-wrapped meat hung from skewers, together with bunches of herbs; there was an extra warmth here that made more sweat break on them; most of it came from a large clay hump where embers glowed. That and the copper wink of pans and pots and cauldrons told where food was cooked, and Kag confirmed it with a snake hiss in Drust’s ear.
‘Kitchen,’ he said, ‘watch for the cook.’
‘Too hot,’ Kisa said. ‘He and his helpers will be on the roof, where it is cool.’
They moved out of it into a bigger room, full of trestles and benches they recognised at once from their own communal eating days. There were stairs in one corner and fat double doors at the far end, which Quintus whispered led to the courtyard beyond, for sure.
Where would they keep slaves? Drust did not want to go out into that courtyard – there will be sentries, he thought. He went up the stairs, hugging the shadows like a cloak, and found himself in a small square with a shuttered window on one side; passages led off to the left and ahead, with arched doorways blocked by no more than fringed silk and beaded hangings.
They heard snoring from one, balked at going in, and moved on, dripping sweat. They peered into another and saw nothing in the darkness, save some bulk that looked like barrels and moved towards them. The room was full of them and there was that same sharp, pungent smell which no one liked.
‘So much of this black oil,’ Kag hissed in Drust’s ear. ‘Some fire ceremony perhaps?’
‘You don’t waste this on the gods,’ Quintus muttered. ‘This is for selling to those who want to make naptha.’
If anyone knew that, it would be Quintus, who had used the stuff before.
Ugo came up, a great looming shadow who moved surprisingly lightly when he needed to. ‘There are rooms, lots of them,’ he growled and his bass rumble made everyone wince.
‘Important folk sleep here,’ Kisa said, so close to Drust’s ear that his breath scorched the lobe. ‘Rooms to themselves alone. Up higher is where the tally-places are – cool, so the scribblers can work in some comfort. That will tell us where the slaves are kept.’
They went higher, into another passageway, and saw more shuttered windows; here was where I would have come in if I had been able to climb, Drust thought.
He moved to an arched doorway – with a proper door in it this time – and opened it; the creak made him wince. His eyes were dark-visioned now and he saw the blue-dim clearly, saw the woman tied by outstretched arms to rings set in the wall, the rich carpet, the small table, the bed and the snoring man. It was the woman from the market, the one who had been whipped.
The woman saw Drust as he saw her, so he put one finger to his lips and slid forward, Kag at his heels. For a moment, as Drust looked down at the bearded figure – the rider whose bridle he had seized – he considered a simple blow behind the ear. Then he saw the shackled woman’s wound-stripes, her battered face, her bruised nakedness, the blood on her thighs. He raised the gladius and looked at her with silent question.
Her nod was a tremble of vehemence and Kag grinned and clapped one hand over the man’s mouth, holding it long enough for his bemused, horrified eyes to open. Drust let him see Kag’s wolf-savage smile, the dagger, the blazing gaze of the wall-shackled woman. Just at the point he started to struggle, Drust slit his throat, a simple gesture, a tug that parted the flesh like rind on cheese. He held him while the blood vomited and the man kicked and gug-gug-gugged, trying to tear away.
When he was silent and still, Drust moved to the woman and cut her down; she sagged against him for a moment, whimpering, then levered herself up, hawked and spat on the dead man in the bed.
‘You kill is good,’ she said in Latin. Her accent, Drust realised with a sudden pang of unease, was thick, making the Latin sound awkward. ‘I pull a deep inside not me. His eyes turned seeing me. I wanted to send him to the stone village – pah!’
She spat again. Kag looked at Drust, bewildered, but took her by the wrist and pulled her off the bed; like a camel train they left the room, desperate to find the others. They were in a smaller room, trying to spark up a lantern.
‘Is this her? The Empress?’ Kisa asked, and Kag laughed softly.
‘You tell us, scholar. She speaks Latin like she chews cloth.’
Kisa glanced at Drust, saw the bloody knife. Said ‘Aaaah,’ in a high, thin voice.
‘Who did you kill?’ Quintus wanted to know. ‘Are there any others?’
‘No, just the one in the marketplace who brought this one in.’
Kisa whined. ‘In the name of the true God, tell me it was not that one. He is called Zavan, right hand of Farnah-vant.’
‘Zavan? You found this out and said nothing?’ Kag demanded, making Kisa step back.
‘Zavan,’ the woman said and snarled out words in her strange way. ‘He is planted horseshoes – pig. Dog. Rough uncle. Fit to the Dis…’
‘She speaks like that all the time,’ Drust said to a bemused Quintus. ‘It is Latin, but makes no sense.’
‘She is Persian, at least in part,’ Kisa answered and then rattled off some long phrase in a tongue no one knew. The woman replied.
‘She is called Robab, though that is the name for a stringed instrument for playing music…’
‘Not interesting,’ Drust hissed and Kisa stopped, took a breath. He was trembling and nervous and spoke more when he was like that.
‘She is from the Oxus, some Bactrian tribe, because that tongue is native to her. That bit about “planted horseshoes” is how you say, “kicked his last”? “Stone village” is a cemetery. She calls him “rough uncle”, which is a bandit, I think. She is talking her own language, but in Latin.’
‘How does she know Latin?’ Drust demanded, and Kisa spat and popped out the words, had them fired back.
‘She was handmaiden to Farnah-vant’s woman – presumably one to replace the two who ran off. I am guessing that her mistress is the Empress we seek, but you have to wonder why all her handmaidens take to their heels.’
‘Where is she?’
Kisa asked, the woman answered, and he turned, squinting and frowning.
‘Up a level.’
Made sense, Drust thought, it being safer and cooler. Kisa wiped his streaming face.
‘They call the Empress “Anahita” here, which is the name of a Persian goddess, a virgin sometimes regarded as the consort of Mithra, god of light.’
Light flared and Praeclarum arrived, thrusting her torch into the proceedings.
‘Linguistically,’ she said drily, looking at the shivering woman, ‘I agree this one is an interest. But she is naked and it would be better for everyone if she was not.’
Quintus chuckled, took off his cloak and wrapped it round the woman’s shoulders; she clutched it to herself and stood, shaking. A thought came to Drust and made him icy sick.
‘Ask her if this Anahita is a slave, or free to come and go.’
Kisa rattled it off and everyone else exchanged glances. Then Kisa licked his lips.
‘She is mistress of the city,’ he answered miserably. ‘Consort to Farnah-vant and beloved by him. This girl was her handmaiden and broke a mirror, so was beaten and about to be sold back up the Silk Road to the Land of No Return. So she tried to run.’
He looked from one to the other. ‘You saw her fate.’
‘So – our once-Empress is no slave willing to be freed,’ Kag said bitterly. ‘Instead, we have a Sabine to be lifted.’
‘We cannot stand here all night,’ Praeclarum hissed, and that made everyone look left and right and realise they were standing in the middle of an enemy fortress, with guards likely to arrive at any minute.
‘Move,’ Drust said softly. ‘Look for more stairs, go up, kill this Farnah-vant, grab the Empress – and do it as quietly as we can.’
‘Good plan,’ Quintus began, then stopped, his mouth open; there was a sound like running mice that made Drust whirl in time to see the heels of the slave disappear down the tiled corridor. He ripped out a hissed curse and went after her.
There was the flicker of a figure and he went through the arch after it, skidding a little and losing a sandal. He hopped for a second or two and then he saw stairs up and down, just as Kag and the others galloped up.
‘She might be making for the cellar and out into the street,’ Quintus gasped out. ‘Hoping to escape…’
The shrieks let him know how wrong he was. It was wild and high Persian, loud as an alarm-iron from above and Kisa gave a little whimper.
‘She is calling for guards, screaming of murder.’
Treacherous little bitch-tick, Drust thought, but he could see the sense in it for her, even as he went up the stairs, having to elbow past Ugo to be first. Zavan had been murdered by men out to kill Farnah-vant and her former mistress and unlikely to escape or be spared afterwards. Better for her, Drust thought, to make it clear where her allegiance lay.
When he hit the top step he saw the pale, wild stare flung over one shoulder as she fought the tangle of a curtained arch; Drust thundered after her, ripped through the thin cotton, hit the polished planks beyond and felt his one sandal catch and tear, propelling him forward until it slithered his legs out from under him.
He gave a yelp as he thundered to the floor and skidded into a table, which careened madly off and hit another; the lamp on it flew off and smashed on a wall – and someone grunted a query, woke in a panicked flurry of movement.
Drust cursed himself back to his feet, saw the sudden mad flicker of running flame as the oil caught. Beyond it, red-dyed by the sudden soft whuff of blossoming fire, a figure rose sleepily into a growing horror he had only seconds to contemplate. Drust fumbled for the gladius, dropped when he fell – found nothing. The woman was screaming, turning this way and that, and then suddenly darted past and out the door. Drust let her go, busy scrabbling fiercely for the dropped sword.
Other shadows loomed – this was where the guards slept and Drust had another fierce moment of raking the floor for the gladius when a new, bigger shadow loomed over him and a blade snicked into the firelight.
Ugo stepped over Drust, beat the man he had stabbed to the ground with his left hand and then kicked him hard enough to shift him backwards; two more half awake men, wild with fear, fell over him.
A stumble of guards were heading out of the burning room and two more tackled Ugo, who had to wrestle with them. One careered past and came at Drust, who had managed to find his eating knife by the time the man flung himself like a panther.
They locked, sweating and reeling, fetid breath mingling and the flames scorching them both. Drust’s fingers clawed for the heart in the throat and then he drove the little blade in and ripped it across as if wiping a mouth, scattering little ruby red drops. A gout of blood splashed his eyes, blinding with its hot scour, and he spun away, trying to clear his sight and cursing roundly. The man was gasping sprays of blood, struggling to stay on his feet and finally collapsing at the door, where he tried to claw himself out.
Kag booted him in the head and then ran him through the back, just to be sure.
‘Get up and finish it. We have problems here.’
By the time Drust was on his knees, the place was running with oiled fire and it was dripping through the gaps in the floor; the man lying in the middle of it drummed his heels and waved his arms as if trying to swim to the surface of a deep pool and take a breath. Ugo grabbed Drust’s arm and hauled him all the way to his feet, thrusting his big face close.
‘Got sense? Good. Then move – my arse is burning.’
Drust ducked out of the room, looked down the corridor and saw the whole gods-rotted moment of it. Kisa was locked in a panting struggle with the dark figure of the slave, who had lost her cloak. Quintus lay on the floor groaning, and Praeclarum crouched and danced back and forth against two guards.
They had hard leather armour and metal helmets in the Persian style, covering almost all the head save for the face and with a ridged crest. They had shields and even spears – well, they were guarding the boss, after all, so they had to look the part.
Thing about spears is, Drust thought, smearing more blood out of his eyes, they are useless in a narrow place like a corridor unless you just stand and poke them. Praeclarum was showing them why that was a bad idea, but then the door behind them opened and a new figure appeared.
He was naked to the waist, which was that of a dancer and how it supported the broad chest above it was a mystery Drust had no time to worry about. He had a too-handsome face with a well-groomed beard and a fistful of curved sword like the one Stercorinus waved impotently behind all of them.
‘Kill them,’ this new man commanded, but he only had one guard left to listen – Praeclarum, with a wicked scream, had leaped into a forward roll and come up to stab the other in the groin. His shrieks drowned everything out, including the slave girl, but hers were cut short when the half-naked man sliced her jaw off.
It was meant, Drust supposed, to remove the head in a casual display of strength and skill, but it fell well wide of the mark. It was also a stroke on someone who might just as well have been a block of cheese or a piece of furniture; with only the briefest of moments to contemplate how her plan had failed, the slave girl from the Oxus crumpled in a bloody heap.
‘I will gut you like cod if you fight me,’ the man bellowed and Drust supposed this was Farnah-vant himself. Ugo shouldered forward, grabbed the spear a guard thrust at him and pulled hard, so that the owner stumbled forward. The guard should have let it go, but was stubborn and died in an instant of blood and agony that didn’t even give him time to realise what a fool he had been.
Farnah-vant crashed forward and blades sang like broken bells as Praeclarum and Ugo struggled to match him.
‘He’s good,’ said a voice in Drust’s ear and he turned to see Kag gazing admiringly.
‘Oh – perhaps we should give him the contest then? Move him up the rankings also?’
Kag scowled and shrugged – then was flung sideways as Stercorinus bludgeoned his way through. There was a moment when he hovered behind Ugo and Praeclarum, looking for an opening – then he took Praeclarum by the collar of her tunic and yanked her backwards, leaping into the hole she made.
There was a moment of blistering speed and high, sharp rings, then Ugo lurched backwards and stood, panting. He turned, bewildered, to the rest of them.
‘I can’t get into it – too fast for me. Need an axe and can’t swing one here even if I had it.’
Drust caught Praeclarum by the wrist when he saw her suck in a breath, as if about to dive into a pool.
‘Leave them – get into the room and fetch the Empress. Kag – go with her. Quintus, find us a way out of here – we don’t have long.’
The corridor was filling with smoke and the reek of blood, the stink of fear. There was another clashing ring of blades and then a grunt, no more. Drust shifted closer, stepping over the body of the slave girl, feeling the blood slick against his naked soles; something crunched under his instep and when he looked down he saw part of her jaw.
He could not see through the smoke now, but Praeclarum and Kag loomed, the latter dragging a woman by one wrist. She was shouting at them to let her go, calling for help – then she saw Stercorinus appear and she screamed, her free hand going up to her mouth.
He strolled out of the smoke, which swirled round him like a cloak. The curved sword was over one shoulder, dripping slow greasy pits and pats, and in the other hand was a bloody, raggle-necked head that had once been too-handsome with a beard. Now it was slack-mouthed and trailed blood and gleet. He looked at the woman who stared back, a tic starting under one eye.
‘Anyone hear eagles?’ he demanded. ‘I was listening for them all the time I fought this one. He is brave and skilled, so I thought this might be the time…’
‘Out,’ said Drust, and the woman struggled and fought and shrieked until Praeclarum turned and slapped her once forward, once back, rattling her head. She started to fall and Ugo snatched her up over one shoulder.
‘That will part pay for the handmaidens,’ Praeclarum scowled. Drust stared at the sprawled corpse of Farnah-vant, the raggled neck spilling a viscous pool. He had ruled here for a long time and ruled well if all they had heard was true. Fine and handsome and as unlike Bashto as shit to shining sun – and now he was nothing at all at the hands of a mad Palmyran with bad hair and a strange sword.
They went down through the smoke, cringing from the flames which spouted from the room and the one below it. There were shouts and the screams of maddened beasts, but they made it all the way to what they thought was the bottom, staggering out into clear air, where they wiped streaming eyes and coughed.
By the time they realised they had taken a wrong turn and come out into the central courtyard, it was too late to go back. For a moment they stood in confusion, surrounded by running people and horses and camels, too panicked to notice them. So far…
‘How do we get out?’ Kisa yelled, his voice rising with fear.
‘This way,’ Drust said, though he had no more of an idea than anyone else. Four or five steps convinced him of how wrong he was and, just as he was about to turn and tell everyone to run the other way, a dragon bellowed and Drust watched in fascination as the whole of the main fortress heaved, the plank floors splintering upward as if driven by a fearsome breath. Then light and heat and that same scorching breath slammed into them all like a fist.
There was a long moment, an era, of floating, of a whirl of strange images – wood and shattered mud-brick tumbling in mid-air, a rain of firefly embers, the woman with her mouth open and arms flailing as if she was trying to fly.
Something hit Drust like a horse-kick, drove all the air out and rolled him over and over. He saw flames and a dark shape – Dis, he thought dazedly, but the pain let him know he wasn’t dead.
He tried to look round, but the head on his shoulders didn’t seem to be his own and would not work. When he got it wobbling, he saw blurred, double images of folk running one way, camels another, and fires everywhere. Jupiter, he thought dully. Jupiter threw a firebolt…
Someone coughed and heaved up out of the rubble and dust next to him and it took him a long moment to realise it was the Empress, looking like something coming out of a tomb. In another second, Kisa unearthed himself nearby with a series of gasps like a breaching whale.
‘Others,’ he said, but Drust was lunging at the woman as she tried to run, grabbing her by a torn sleeve and clutching her like a lover.
Kisa looked up and began to stumble away from them both, while Kag turned at the little man’s yelling and stopped tugging Ugo to his feet.
‘Run,’ said a voice, and Drust realised it was Praeclarum, but he was trying to hold onto the woman, who struggled and cursed, though the sounds seemed to Drust to come from a long way off. He did not even recognise the fingers clutching the woman, nor the hand, nor the arm they were all attached to; he could not have willed them loose if he’d tried. They staggered together in rubble and ruin.
Then he saw her look of horror – upwards, at the sky – followed it and saw the entire remaining wall of Farnah-vant’s fortress seem to waver, to rock slightly, as if all the screams bounced it. That’s why Kisa was running, Drust realised.
It fell in one solid piece like a collapsing cliff. The Empress gave a great cry and tried to spring away, but he held her locked with both arms and saw her reach one beseeching hand as if to claw into the dark and be plucked to safety – then the shadow of the falling wall blotted out everything else.
Drust heard Praeclarum scream, but a great roaring rush of sound and dust beat it away, scattered all sound, all sense.
Drust was still standing – or at least he thought he was. No pain – perhaps that was the last gift of the gods. They drive the life from you instantly and you feel nothing, don’t even know you are lying flat and pulped. Perhaps this is my shade, he thought, perhaps this was how a shade felt, standing bewildered like the man he had once been and no more substantial than the clouding dust, waiting to fade finally from the world of men…
Then he felt every bruise and ache and cut. Felt her, clutched close, shaking and crying. She moved, her face lifted, a bewildered patina of sweat, dust and tears. The haze billowed and Drust was suddenly aware of Kag on one side, coughing and snotting, Ugo on another, slapping Quintus awake. Kisa crawled out from a pile of dust and rubble like a spider.
The Empress and Drust stood upright, perfectly framed by the arched window whose flimsy lattice had been splintered out. The rest of the massive wall lay in cracked lumps around them.
‘Jupiter,’ Drust managed to croak, and Praeclarum came up, blinking into his face. She elbowed the weeping Empress to one side, took his filthy face in both hands and kissed him with trembling, dirt-covered lips.
Kag staggered wearily upright, weaving. ‘You are the favoured cock of Fortuna,’ he said, looking at the perfect framing. Then he shook his head and stumbled on.
Drust could not deny it, but all of the moment was kissing Praeclarum.
That stopped when Stercorinus lurched up, pasted with sweat and dust, his sword in one hand and the head still in the other. His clothes – those that weren’t ripped off – were tattered and blackened.
‘This way,’ he said hoarsely and pointed with the sword. ‘There is a way out to the street.’
Ugo hauled up the Empress, who was lolling and mumbling, while Quintus paused, snatched up a swathe of cloth from the ground and slapped out the embers. ‘Wrap that head,’ he growled, and Stercorinus saw the sense in it.
They moved over the shattered compound, littered with mewling camels and mules, crawling, running people. The ground was pocked with broken bales, burning debris and shattered pieces of mud brick; no one bothered with them, one more stumbling group in a crowd of mayhem.
‘What happened?’ Kisa wanted to know, half falling and hauled up by Praeclarum.
‘Hubris,’ Kag declared savagely. ‘All that naptha pitch in one place…’
The burning oil from the fire I started, Drust remembered, dripping through the gaps in the floorboards…
They came out into streets where people ran in confusion and fought through them to the market. The traders had all taken their goods in for the night, but those with homes above the shops were out, shouting worriedly to each other.
The woman started to stir on Ugo’s shoulder and Drust looked at Kag, who stepped sideways and grabbed an awning – without missing a stride he tore it free from the lashings, ignoring the annoyed shouts of the owner.
Praeclarum walked with him and used her knife to cut strips off, using one to gag the Empress. Then, in a last flick of expertise, Ugo dropped the woman onto the spread awning and she was wrapped and trussed and back on his shoulder with only a few strides broken.
They got to the gates out of the city and leading to the caravanserai – only one guard was left, looking uneasy and gawping at the flame-dyed carnage. He waved his spear and said ‘curfew’ in Persian.
A deep coughing thump reverberated out and a blob of fire shot into the sky, trailing a fiery tail. The guard gawped.
‘Tell it to that,’ Kisa said and elbowed past him. Kag, beaming, followed and the guard stepped aside, bewildered and afraid. If he saw the awning bundle at all, he wisely fastened his lip on it.
Inside, they went to their quarters while people huddled and asked what was happening and whether it would be safer to pack up and leave – fire was something they did not like.
They ignored them and gathered what gear they had, realising now how tattered and bloody they looked. Quintus started for the camels, lugging a saddle, but Drust stopped him.
‘No time. Leave now and run.’
‘They will be occupied with that inferno for hours,’ Kisa argued, but Kag hefted a bundle and slapped him on one shoulder.
‘We have their ruler’s head and his concubine.’
That was enough; they ran.
They had made it to a place where the burning city was a red glow before they heard the shuffling thump of camel pads. The enemy made good time, Drust thought bitterly. Went straight to the caravanserai, asking about a handful of strange folk in tatters… and now here they are.
‘Form,’ he called out and they did so, in pairs as they would in the harena. The padding came closer; Ugo dropped the woman at his feet, where she wriggled and let out muffled curses – he ignored her and hefted his axe. They all waited.
‘Ho,’ said a voice and then a pale camel loomed out of the darkness, three more behind it. The rider unwound his face-veil and grinned his death grin.
‘Your faces,’ Dog said and laughed. Then Manius came up, leading more camels, with Mouse and Mule behind with yet more, some of them laden with packs. This is not where we were supposed to meet, Drust thought, feeling chilled.
‘Climb up and let us go,’ Dog said, ‘before those bitch-ticks of Bashto find us. He has only gone and sent word to the Red Serpent to send soldiers.’
‘Why?’ Drust wanted to know as the camel laboriously knelt. Dog laughed and looked at the red glow.
‘That,’ he said. ‘I am thinking he saw his prize vanish in smoke. Did you get the woman?’
Ugo unwrapped her and made the mistake of unfastening the gag; he bound her up again when the vitriol burst out.
‘Well,’ Dog said, ‘Bashto wanted the woman and the death of Farnah-vant – and an intact city with all that lovely Greek Fire ready to sell to the Persians of Ardashir.’
‘And we were not about to be considered in it,’ Drust added as the camel lurched upright.
‘Well, luckily for you, I foresaw this and have a plan.’
Kag cursed him and spat. Stercorinus lifted the bundle. ‘Is this not necessary now?’
‘It is not,’ Dog answered, and almost before he had finished, the wrapped head had been flicked away like an unwanted apple core; the woman listened to it bounce and made hoarse, incoherent noises.
‘What is this plan?’ Kisa wanted to know and at least three heads turned scornfully to him.
‘Run if you want to live.’