The wind seemed to take a deep breath and then screamed like a burning cat – Drust felt his feet slide and fought for balance as the stinging scour of grit turned into a vicious rake of stones. He could not hide from it, could not walk in it, could not even crawl in it…
Something gripped his ankle and pulled. A voice bawled meaningless words, whipped away by the mad wind, then he felt his feet go out from under him and there was a moment of gibbering panic, when he thought the little hook-men of Dis Pater were hauling him down and down, to meet the hammer…
There was a moment of weightlessness, a strange sensation of floating – then he landed with a thump that drove the air from his lungs.
Gasping, he rolled over and crawled up, hearing the wind and seeing billowing dust like smoke, but as if it was far away. He bumped into something soft and recoiled from it, feeling a sticky wetness.
‘Horse,’ said a voice and then sparks flew. Dog blew life into the charcoal cloth, fed it to something on a stick – a torch – and light flared, turning the swirl of zephyred dust to a dance of gold. Drust looked up, stunned, at where the world howled; we are down in a hole in the ground, he thought dazedly…
‘Horse broke its neck falling,’ Dog declared with a wondrous regret. ‘That was Mars Ultor, right there. Crushed the breath out of the rider – that was Fortuna. I called on them and they answered.’
‘Where… are we?’
‘Cellar,’ Dog declared, and now Drust could see the long space, the trestle table, the ancient boxes and barrels and webbed sconces with old torches. The rotted stone floor of the courtyard had given way under the weight of those above – the horse and rider had finally broken it…
Dog walked to where other torches were sconced on walls, touching one after another into life. The light grew brilliant and danced flickering shadows in the wind, lighting up a table set with dishes and cups and bench seats. Above, the wind fingered the fallen-in roof and howled frustration and dust at not being able to do more.
Drust felt weak and trembling at what had happened to him; he had felt a lick of it once or twice before, but nothing like that, like being possessed by Hercules or even Mars Ultor himself. Something slithered from above and a body crashed down, followed by another, as one by one the others came down the hole. Last to arrive was Mule, who threw Kisa in and then dragged the Empress after him, like a cat on a string.
‘Just in time,’ he growled, looking up. ‘I have seen that stuff before and it is not pleasant – it is now taking the sand and using it to scour everything. It will flay anyone not in shelter. That’s how all the mud walls look as if they’ve been melted in a forge.’
Ugo made the horn sign against evil and Kisa, wiping blood from his lacerated face, whimpered unintelligible prayers. Mouse slipped on his way down the rubble heap and growled in disgust at landing in the dead horse’s last voidings.
‘Why me? Out of all of you, why is it me who falls in shite?’
‘Better luck in falling than him,’ Dog pointed out, nodding to the dead horseman trapped under the beast; his head was facing back over his own shoulders with an expression of agonised astonishment.
‘How long will it last?’
The voice was hoarse but still haughty, as the Empress tested the strength of a bench and risked it, perching like a bird.
‘An hour or two. A day – the gods above and below know,’ Mule replied. ‘Last time I was in one was up near Palmyra; it lasted a week.’
‘Then we will all be dead,’ she replied. ‘Of starvation and lack of water.’
Mouse looked amazed. ‘There is an entire horse here – and back there, unless I am mistaken, is a well. Maybe there is even wine – that lasts forever if the amphora is plugged sensibly with wax.’
‘Well – the horse will last you for a day,’ Quintus spat back, grinning. ‘The rest of us will wait – and then eat you.’
‘Here is your escape and reward,’ the Empress persisted with a sneer, though her voice shook. ‘No glory here.’
There was no answer to it, for it was so completely what everyone had been thinking that they were stunned to silence.
‘Well,’ Drust said. ‘It seems the bad cess of your life has trapped us all here.’
He walked two paces forward and she leaned back despite herself. Drust stopped, looking into the deep brown of her eyes; they were flecked with gold, he saw. She had never been a beauty but she was Julia Aquilia, daughter of a consul and once an Empress of Rome. He felt a crushing weariness.
‘I never meant you harm, lady.’
‘I will see you killed,’ she said softly, her eyes level and hard.
There was a loud crack and a crunch; they scattered away like water from a plunging stone. Another followed, and another. There was a pause while the dust swirled, and then a man yelled, staggering blindly.
‘Welcome to our hall,’ Ugo growled and struck him in the face so that he fell back; the iron stink of blood washed out, and suddenly everyone was moving.
There were only two enemy left and one of them went down under Mouse’s blows, the big man snarling like a rabid dog as he did it. The last backed up against the far wall, a curved sword in one hand and a sneer on his sweat-streaked, dust-grimed face.
Kag lurched at him and the man expertly blocked his strike; the counter almost took Kag’s arm off and the man grabbed the Empress by one arm, sheared through the tether and dragged her back, further down the dim room.
He was cased in splint armour but had lost his fancy helmet in the fall; Ugo leaned on his axe and picked it up and studied it with an expert gaze. It was silvered and bronzed and had a veil of metal rings, hinged metal lappets and a noseguard with a stylised Ahura-Mazda, the wings spreading out like eyebrows.
‘There’s fancy,’ he said and tossed it casually to one side with a clatter.
‘Come forward,’ Dog said softly. ‘There is no escape that way – we have looked and the stairway is blocked.’
‘I am Borzin,’ the man said defiantly. ‘Stor bezashk of the Aswaran. If you value this woman, throw down your weapons.’
‘No,’ Drust said. ‘I do not care for that plan, so here is another. We will wait and kill every one of your men who stumbles down that hole in the roof. There will not be many, for this is a storm I have heard of – you will know better what it does. It will last for days and anyone not down here is dead.’
‘Most of those down here are already dead,’ Borzin snarled back. ‘The rest will be when they come at me. I can last as long as you, Roman – and more men will come to find me. Messengers have been sent…’
Kag shook his head. ‘No one will find you. Your messengers will die.’
‘He sounds important,’ Mule argued. ‘Maybe they will come looking for him.’
‘He is a Stor bezashk of the Aswaran,’ Kisa offered. ‘Which is an animal doctor for the fancy horse units.’
‘A horse doctor?’ Quintus demanded and flung back his head to laugh. The Persian growled angrily, but did nothing rash, which Drust found disappointing; the man was backed up into a narrow place and he clutched the woman close to him like a shield. He was also between the well and everyone else.
‘It is a title, no more,’ Kisa explained. ‘He commands this unit.’
‘He commands fuck all,’ Dog said.
‘Wait,’ said the Empress, looking desperately from one to the other. ‘Think. It may need all of us to get out of here.’
That brought everyone up short and they looked at the hole in the roof, which Drust now had to admit was easier falling down than climbing up; even standing on Mouse’s shoulders, he thought, I could not reach the crumbled lip.
‘True,’ said Stercorinus. ‘The more you kill, the harder it gets.’
He was whey-faced and slumped, slathered still with blood and sand and cradling the blade; Praeclarum was tearing strips off her own tunic to bind one side of him with, but each new one flushed with scarlet eventually.
‘Have you a plan, woman?’ Dog demanded, looking at the Empress.
She nodded eagerly and pointed to the table.
‘Take that and lay it up as a ramp. Then we can get out whenever we like – though I would wait until the storm is over.’
‘Then do it.’
‘We could use your strength, Persian,’ Drust said, looking at the heft of the table. ‘Also, we will have to move the bales on it…’
‘You are treacherous,’ Borzin snarled, though everyone saw him wipe his dry mouth. ‘You have two of the biggest men I have seen.’
Drust shrugged; Dog laughed. Then Mouse and Ugo and Kag worked swiftly, lifting the mouldered bundles and bales while others watched Borzin carefully. A bale withered away in Mouse’s hand, spilling the blackened contents, and Manius pounced like a striking serpent, rubbed one of the objects on his filthy sleeve and then held it up, turning it this way and that.
‘Silver,’ he said and they all peered. It was a small bowl, beautifully chased with dancing figures.
‘A votive object,’ Kisa noted expertly.
‘Silver gilt,’ Kag declared with disgust, taking the chance to pick one up. ‘Cheap stuff.’
‘Tawdry,’ the Empress agreed. ‘Like all your dreams of riches.’
‘Enough on that,’ Quintus spat, and the Empress smiled a sneer at him, then turned to Drust.
‘This is all of your life and beyond,’ she went on. ‘Even the Elysian Fields will be a patch of waste ground in Pluto for you. Do as this Borzin says – throw down your weapons and surrender.’
‘You think that favours you, woman?’ Dog answered dryly. ‘What do you think the Persians will do with you? You are no better with them than the Empire.’
‘The Empire sold me,’ she spat back bitterly. ‘My husband’s mother – the one you dragged by the heels – sold me to prevent him living with me ever again. That’s how I ended up in the hands of Farnah-vant.’
‘You didn’t seem to mind those hands much,’ Praeclarum declared, straightening from Stercorinus. ‘You went to him with handmaidens, slaves like yourself. You tried to kill them all – one is buried in a shallow grave and one is poppy-mad in the clutch of Shayk Amjot. What did they do – get in the way? Remind you that you were a Roman and a Vestal, which would be inconvenient? You are the abomination here, lady. You defile the name of Empress and even of woman.’
‘Slave,’ she answered viciously. ‘A foul little slave, no matter what these others try to make you. All of you are slaves, born and bred, and nothing will ever change that. They want me back and sent you – think on that.’
‘You think on it,’ Dog said. ‘They don’t want you back to feed sweetcakes and good wine in the bosom of your loving family. They will pay to put you in a hole where you can explain to Vesta why you did what you did.’
She did not answer and they sweated in the wind-tossed dust to crack the front legs off the table and raise it up with everyone working at it. Slowly, slowly, it wavered up until, at last, the stumps of the broken-off legs hooked into the hole’s rim; dust sifted down like a waterfall and Drust wondered how solid the rim was. The table was now a steep and smooth incline; above it the wind mourned for the ones it could not reach.
After that, they stripped the bodies of anything useful, which was just about everything. Praeclarum caught Drust’s eye when he looked at Stercorinus, and they moved quietly away from the others, head to head.
‘His god lied,’ she said flatly, and Drust felt the weight of it; he hadn’t known the man long but they had already shared more than two lifetimes, it seemed. He thought of Sib and did not want to lose yet another.
‘Does he say so?’
She shook her head. ‘All he will say is that part of it was being watched by a powerful woman, a queen or greater. With eagles crying above. The spear took him by surprise.’
‘He is not dead yet,’ he said, but Praeclarum persisted.
‘If I fed him the soup,’ she whispered, ‘you would smell it in half-a-candle.’
There was nothing more to be said, but Kag knew as soon as Drust looked at him and nodded imperceptibly. Everyone shared out what they had taken from the dead, according to their needs, and Dog looked across at Borzin, still crouched in the half-dark with the woman held by one arm.
‘Come out and fight, horse doctor,’ he said. ‘I want the rest of that fancy armour.’
Borzin said nothing and everyone sank into themselves, listening to the wind rising to an eldritch howl, watching the dust and grit swirl into the hole and then get scooped out again.
Then suddenly Mouse gave a bellow, and they all turned in time to see the woman leap up onto the table-ramp, scrabbling for purchase – and getting it. Behind her, a bewildered Borzin leaped up, his blade ready – but he dared not come closer. She was almost at the lip when Mule grabbed the trailing edge of her tattered skirts and hauled her up short.
The others sprang to help; the Empress lashed out a foot and took Mule full in the face, so that he sprang blood and fell back with a yelp, thumping into the dead horse and rolling away; his loud howls drowned the final rat-scrabble of the Empress clawing out of the hole.
Then she was gone, leaving only curses. Mule staggered up, holding his bloody nose with one hand. Quintus roared out a curse, and Kag flung his new helmet down in frustration.
Then there was a sudden flurry that brought all heads round in time to see Borzin, curved sword drawn and a feral snarl on his lips. He had lost the protection of the woman and now there was only one option for him – fight his way out.
‘I’ll have that war hat back, slave,’ he said to Kag, who turned a cold, hard glare on him. His growl was deep in the back of his throat, but Dog laid a hand across his chest. Kisa was yelping and whimpering like a kicked pup until Praeclarum slapped him hard once or twice; eventually he shook himself, then fell on his knees and moaned.
‘Mine,’ Dog said.
Borzin came forward, his red-rimmed eyes narrow as an angry boar and the curved sword flicking this way and that, like the taunting tongue of a hunting snake. He had no way out other than up the same ramp and too many enemies to make that feasible, so Drust was struck by his courage. He is more than the title ‘horse doctor’ would suggest, he thought…
Borzin struck and Dog parried it, the blades rang like bells and sparks flew; there was hardly room for dancing and ducking, so it gave the advantage to the man with the armour. He crouched and came in like a boar, low and hard, with that single curved tooth slashing up. Dog blocked two more blows and then Borzin hooked the gladius out of his hand; everyone watched it spiral off.
No one had seen such a thing before and hands went to mouths, throats clogged. Dog was the only one unconcerned, his death-face grinning in savage triumph as if he had already won. He reached down and flicked out the knife from his boot as Borzin slashed, missing and hitting one of the mouldy bales, old dust flying. He did it again and again, slashing and howling while Dog grinned his skull-grin and did not seem to move much – but each sway, every lean made the curved sword cut air.
Once Kag started forward and Dog snarled at him, never taking his eyes off the Persian.
‘Stay back, or I will cut your heart out.’
Then he turned back to Borzin, who stood like a sacrifice bull, heaving in breath, the sword wavering in his grip and his head swinging from side to side.
‘This is the ring, horse doctor,’ he said, twisting his skull into a leering grin. ‘This is the harena, our place, the place of Dis and Mars Ultor. We and the gods live here and heathen fucks like you have no place in it other than to kneel and receive the iron.’
This is no more a fighting ring than I can fart gold, Drust wanted to shout, but the air was thick with strangeness, the shadows danced and grunted, the wind shrieked like a crowd demanding blood.
The end came swiftly, it seemed, after so long a fight. Borzin was big and armoured thickly, a weight that made him launch himself, feeling his strength wane. He snarled out a flurry of blows, and Dog made one shoulder dip, took one step and flicked out his arm.
Borzin felt it go in, under the armour, into the armpit. He was still staring disbelief when Dog plucked the curved sword from Stercorinus’s weak grasp and brought it down like a scythe of light.
It was a poor stroke. It should have taken Borzin in the forehead, splitting his head down through his face. Instead, it missed, carved his ear, smashed his shoulder blade and went on through the splinted metal and leather slantwise down his chest, where it stuck. His screaming fall bent it almost double and Dog let it go.
There was a moment of ragged breathing and moaning wind, then Dog moved unsteadily to sit. Drust felt as light as the corpses in the corner.
‘Good stroke,’ Stercorinus growled hoarsely, ‘but it is polite to ask before you borrow. Give me my sword back.’
Outside, the wind screeched laughter like the Fates gone mad.