The flame of that warmth has died to embers in this place, Drust thought miserably. Another mud-brick shithole beaten by a harsh sun on the shores of the Hyrcanian Ocean, it had a name, but no one could pronounce it and Kisa had given up trying to tell them. They needed a ship and some open water – even if they had to steal one, which statement filled Kisa with open dread.
This was, yet again, a place he knew well – he pointed vaguely to the west and declared that his mountain home lay there. In a day he had found a ship and announced it with as wide a grin as his battered face would allow.
‘It is a good one, carrying trade stuff across to the other shore, the Varkana shore. The trade place there is called…’ he broke off and considered it, then threw away the idea of trying to get them to say it. ‘No matter. It is not much famous, save for a holy tree of the unbelievers, but slavers take shiploads of goods across to save time and losses.’
He stopped because so many words pained him, and for a man who had nothing but his wit and his tongue, the binding of his speech caused him more agony than his bruises and swellings.
‘If it is a good one,’ Kag replied morosely, ‘then we almost certainly cannot pay for it.’
It was a truth that raked Drust, so he did not like to hear it. They had sold the camels and made no profit, stood in poor sandals and worse tunics and cloaks, armed with the remains of their old trade.
‘Manius and Dog may not recognise us,’ he admitted, and Quintus smiled.
‘As long as we are Brothers with blades, we are war in the hand and they will know us.’
Praeclarum laughed at his bombast and others joined in, but it was a brief spark in a dying fire as far as Drust was concerned. They were sleeping at the harbour, as close to a smith’s forge as decency would allow; it was as well, he thought, that the weather was dry and still warm save at night.
‘Did Dog and Manius leave from here?’ Ugo asked and Kag put him on the straight. Dog and Manius had probably gone across the Red Serpent if they had been daring and idiot or rich in bribes. Otherwise they had gone this way, but from some other shithole port.
Beyond the Red Serpent Wall. Across the Hyrcanian Ocean – Drust could scarcely believe he was about to do this. Once, a trader had come to them when they were in the City of Sharp-Nosed Fishes, south of Alexandria, bringing a single long blade which was not a spatha and not quite a Parthian sword. He wanted to sell it, without hilt or bindings, and asked such a ludicrous sum that Drust and the others had laughed aloud – but the smith who was brokering the deal had said it was the finest forged steel he had ever seen. The trader said it had been made from quality iron brought from a place called Stone Fort, all the way down the famed Silk Road.
We did not buy it, Drust recalled – yet I am about to sail across to a place a mere hawk and spit from Stone Fort, which the God Alexander knew as Marakanda.
‘These people call it Samar-Qand,’ Kisa confirmed when Drust brought up the memory.
‘Well, we might pick up some decent blades,’ Kag growled, squinting at the worn gladius and working at the loose hilt bindings. ‘This rattles like Praeclarum’s teeth.’
‘You lie,’ she fired back, grinning bare gums at him. ‘You took them all.’
Later, when everyone slept, Kag and Drust sat staring at the dying coals, listening to Ugo snore. He had the mightiest night-noises of any man Drust had heard; his snores resonated, right up to the point he seemed to stop breathing entirely – and just when you feared he had died, he began again and you fervently prayed that he would.
The night was warm so they needed no shelter, but the banked glow of the forge fire was a comfort against the dark, so they kept close to it and sweated as they talked, soft and low. The smith slept with his family nearby and was glad of the protection.
‘Darab was hunted down,’ Kag said eventually and it matched cogs with Drust’s own thinking.
‘Persians. They were after us all – but how did they know where to look? Who sent them and why?’
‘The Shayk,’ Kag decided after a hard think.
Drust wondered why the man who had paid for the entire train had then made sure it was destroyed and everyone killed. Kag shrugged.
‘He found out there were no Hyrcanian tigers at the end of it.’
That was possible, Drust thought, but since no one knew what was at the end of it, it still made little sense to destroy your own money in such a senseless act. The only certainty was that Dog and Manius were at the end of it – and that they had been sent in search of something other than big cats.
‘Something the Shayk does not want us to find,’ Kag mused. ‘Or keep if we do. That and hubris – he does not strike me as a man who takes well to being duped.’
He has uncovered the truth of this affair, Drust thought, and it is something that does not sit well with him. What it might be remained a mystery – but it was clear that the Shayk had informed the Parthians, these new ones of the House of Sasan.
‘It must be important,’ Kag agreed, ‘for him to reveal his true allegiance.’
‘Only to us. We were meant to be dead with Darab and the others.’
‘He will know no Romans were among those killed,’ Kag added, ‘so we are safe only for a little time.’
‘Long enough to get away from here. He will want to make sure no one can speak of it.’
Like Kisa, Drust thought, glancing to where the little man slept, whimpering like a pup now and then. He had suffered a great deal and Drust felt a flicker of sympathy. Yet there was the nag that the Persians who had hunted them knew where they were headed – someone had left a trail like breadcrumbs and Kisa was the favourite in that contest.
‘Everyone who hears of it marvels at us doing all this, travelling this far,’ Kag said softly after a while. ‘They cannot believe we would do this for Manius and Dog.’
‘Don’t you have a Greek with something to say on it?’ Drust asked lightly. ‘One of those philosophers you love so much?’
There was silence for a moment. ‘We are men of the hot sand and the cold steel. Ignorant, stubborn, more god-hagged than any priest but only half religious. Suspicious of change and life beyond the horizon we can see, unlettered – mostly – but magnificent with an intelligence of our own world.’
He shifted and smiled. ‘There is a philosopher – can’t remember his name, but Greek as you suspect – who says that folk grow sour if they stay in the same place, that they never amount to as much as if they had moved, gone elsewhere. That does not apply to us. We know our place. Our country is the sands and it is harsh and demanding so that only the best stay alive. We are the best and staying alive is a greater triumph than going away and winning riches.’
He stopped, shook his head as if half ashamed. ‘That is why we will go and rescue Dog and Manius.’
‘Heya,’ Drust echoed, soft and admiring.
He shifted his gaze to Praeclarum, swaddled in a cloak and sitting, head slumped forward. Her lips puffed out with every breath for her mouth was looser without teeth, but since they ate the fare they had always been used to she did not suffer hunger. A farro gruel of leeks and barley was no trouble to gums.
Her eyes flicked open suddenly and caught him staring. He dropped his own, pretending to be looking elsewhere, but he felt hers on his face like a heat.
He had bare arms on a big body with enough muscle left to show that, before age and good living, he had been as feared a sea-rover as he claimed. Well, for a Cadusian goat-kisser, Drust thought. He had silver rings on his arms and in his ears, and a fat, false smile plastered in the little clearing between all the red-gold hair where he hid his face.
He was called Atakan, which meant ‘having ancestor’s blood’, according to Kisa, and if it were true, the man would have a lot of ancestor blood, all of it different. His name was Cadusian, a people once great but who had been faded even in the time of Divine Aurelius Augustus, who had fought them in their last blaze of glory. His dress was Arab, yet he wore a Persian fire-worshipper amulet and had ink-marked designs spiralling up his arms like a Scythian.
‘That is the price,’ Atakan declared with fake apology in his eyes. ‘The Mazandaran Sea which you call the Hyrcanian Ocean is dangerous enough without having to give up cargo for people who take up more space and also eat and drink.’
He spoke bad Greek, which at least let Drust and the others understand him without having to go through Kisa, who frequently took the long road through a short speech.
‘Perhaps I should give this sister-humper a club,’ Ugo growled to Quintus in Greek. ‘Then he can hit me and it will be a proper robbery.’
‘Sister-humper?’
Kisa soothed the sea captain with pats on his arm.
‘It is the way they talk to each other,’ he explained hastily. ‘They mean no harm by it.’
Atakan growled and peered truculently, then shifted his arm away from the close attention of Stercorinus, who was trying to trace the ink-marked spirals with a grimy finger.
‘That is the price. Be it known that I do not haggle.’
‘This may be because he also cannot sail,’ Drust said in Greek to Kag, ignoring Atakan completely. ‘Besides – his ship is a fat-belly. He says he went raiding with it, which may be, but this is a little sea and there is not much sailing in it, so that is not saying much.’
Atakan looked wildly from one to the other, while Kisa tried to fix his smile and soothe with more pats. ‘Just the way they talk to each other,’ he said through his grin.
‘Raiding?’ Kag answered scornfully. ‘Only a dog’s arse of a sailor thinks such a log is a raiding ship – he should be paying us to step aboard it.’
‘Dog… dog’s arse…’
‘The way they talk,’ Kisa interrupted desperately, but Atakan was glowering now and elbowed both Kisa and Stercorinus away with a curse.
‘Little sea? You do not know it, that is clear,’ he bellowed. ‘Out there are raiders from the east and the west and elsewhere. Out there are monsters and worse…’
‘A ship would need good fighting men to travel it,’ Drust agreed blandly. ‘Brave men not afraid to stand up to sea raiders and monsters.’
‘Because such brave men are monsters, you hog’s arse,’ Ugo ended, grinning. ‘You think you can get such men here? You think you can get such men to pay you while they fight?’
Atakan scowled and made a dismissive grunt, but he had been caught fairly and knew it, so he came up with less false in his smile and halved the price. There was spitting and hand-slapping and everyone went off happy.
‘They look powerful,’ Stercorinus muttered as they walked. ‘Skin-marks of note.’
‘Spell-bound,’ Kag replied wryly, but Ugo shook his shaggy head, frowning.
‘There were those back in my village who knew the way of it. If you make a mistake with them, you can turn a charm for a hard pizzle into something unmanly. Easily fixed if scratched on an amulet, or marked on a stone – but inked forever into your skin? You’d have to flay it off, or have a man-root that looked at your toes all its life.’
Praeclarum laughed, seeing Stercorinus worrying at that idea and deciding that, if Atakan had it done, he was clearly unaffected…
‘How do you know he is unaffected? He looks like a bull, but under those fat breeks he wears…’
She broke off and wiggled her little finger suggestively; everyone laughed and moved away down the harbour, where slaves hauled bales of cloth and mysterious boxes and jars. A man with a red hat moved past them holding a basket of bread and calling for buyers; the woman with him had a baby wrapped in a shawl looped round to carry it in front of her. She smiled at Drust and held out her hand, pleading.
‘Just as well he halved the price,’ Quintus said, grinning at the baby, ‘else we would be begging as well.’
‘There may be work on the far shore – this Atakan will know, for he carries salt there and silk and spices back,’ Kisa said, then stopped as he felt the stares on him.
‘Hauling salt,’ Kag repeated blackly and Ugo’s smile was brief and twisted. Kisa shrank a little.
‘I do not trust this Atakan,’ Sib declared and Kisa nodded agreement.
‘Wise. Atakan is like all his breed – he will trade when he can and rob when he thinks he can escape with it.’
‘We are the skilled men in that,’ Quintus pointed out. ‘It may profit such a thief to know who he is dealing with before he makes a mistake.’
Kisa nodded and went off to spread that word to the sea captain. Drust heard excited voices and went to see what was causing such interest. The sun was dying in the sea, a harsh bloody glow spreading like a huge stain and rising higher and higher in the sky, spilling out left and right like wings.
‘Bel,’ Stercorinus declared, kneeling. ‘Send your blessings with Aglibol and Yarhibol.’
‘Ahura-Mazda,’ Sib said, falling into the kicked-dog crouch he always did when faced with mysteries. He had seen Atakan’s amulet, and Drust had to admit the effect looked much like it.
‘What does it mean?’ Quintus demanded and folk waited, knowing either Sib or Stercorinus would have an answer.
‘There is blood in it,’ Sib began, ‘which is not a good thing…’
He got no further because Kag slapped the back of his head, hard enough to smack his scarred leather war hat off. He whipped round scowling until he saw who it was.
‘Blood in it,’ Kag scoffed. ‘The sky is full of blood this time of evening – besides, if it is the fire-starer god who sends this sign, it isn’t blood, only fire. If it is that skinny wolf’s three gods, then, yes, there will be blood. Have you heard of a god who does not want such sacrifice?’
‘It is no good sign to see in the sky,’ Sib persisted and glared back at Kag. ‘From Jupiter Best and Greatest.’
‘You are after making me laugh,’ Kag said mildly, ‘for being worse than any old woman for bad signs you need to ward off. Yet you are clever to have seen it, you dog-bothering dirty sword – something dark is coming, brought by that sunset blood sign.’
He leaned forward, looking fearfully left and right and finally back into Sib’s wide-eyed stare.
‘It is called,’ he said and paused ominously. ‘Night.’
The laughter kept Sib growling sullenly for a long time, but eventually sleep took even him and they huddled where they were, wrapped in what tattered cloaks were left to them and, for all that the day had been hot, the night was chill enough to need them. Drust would not admit he was near to shivering and simply sat and waited, though he did not know what for.
He became aware of her slowly, like a warmth on one side, and when he turned she sat within reach, but looking straight out at the darkened, moon-glimmered sea. The firelight cat-licked her face, so that Drust could see the swelling had gone down.
‘Your mouth looks better,’ he said softly, and she turned to face him.
‘I will not smile, all the same.’
‘How many teeth are left to you?’
She shrugged. ‘I can feel some at the back on both sides – at least my face will not cave in like an old woman’s. The ones in front are mostly gone but so is the pain from them, so it’s all good.’
He sat silent for a time until she laughed softly. ‘Ask it.’
‘Ask what?’
‘How long it lasted. What happened in the end.’
He shifted towards her. ‘How long did it last? And what happened in the end?’
‘Too long. And when the owner saw my mouth and wanted to know why his goods were damaged, he had me sold before it got worse.’
‘And the man who did it?’ Drust asked. She hunched and stared at the ocean.
‘Flavius Milo. He was dismissed as lanista, or so I heard.’
‘I know of him. Good fighter in his day,’ Drust replied, ‘but vicious even then. His behaviour is no surprise.’
‘One day,’ she said, her swollen voice bitter with pain, ‘I will find him.’
Drust reached out a hand, meaning only to pat her soothingly, and encountered her own. For a moment there was unreasoning panic, but neither drew away, and they sat, fingers touching, breath stilled. Neither was ready for this, had never been.
You could leave life right now – let that determine what you do and say and think, Drust thought wildly.
The quayside had grown quiet. There were no friendly patrols to keep order, so night in this place was a hive of thieves and worse. In a while, Drust would kick someone to take his place and then sleep himself, but for now there was a night of moonlight and chill, save where they touched, which burned.
It was as well, Drust thought later, that she and I were the only ones awake, given the hag-fears of the others, to see the great red glow that spread on the night sky, raising the hackles on his neck. He felt her fingers tighten and turned to see her looking wide-eyed back – then they both stared. It was hard to see how close it was, though it was out to sea and made bloodier by the dark that lay that way.
It stayed that way for a long time as they watched, concerned and flesh-tightened by it – then in an eyeblink, there was a great, silent pillar of fire, shooting straight up to the sky, a bright flare that made the pair of them grunt. The darkness that followed was blacker still and their exchanged glances showed how pale it had made them. Yet they found they had to untangle their fingers when they started to speak.
‘A sea dragon?’ she asked after a pause to gather breath, but Drust did not know, could not speak and simply shook his head. He was blinking at the dark and wondering how far away it had been.
‘Sometimes you can see them for a distance of two or more days’ journey.’
The voice spun them round, Praeclarum’s dagger whipping out of her boot; she cursed when she saw Kisa and Atakan.
‘Such behaviour could lose you an eye,’ she spat. ‘Or worse.’
Atakan merely spread his hands in apology and squatted beside them, his eyes gleaming in the dark.
‘Not dragons,’ he declared, ‘but worse. That fire comes from under the sea and if you are ignorant or unlucky, it will torch your ship and everyone in it as fast as…’
He snapped his fingers and Praeclarum grunted and nodded, which made Atakan’s eyes narrow. He is disappointed, for he wanted us to think he was a great liar, then prove his point, he thought. He does not know we have seen worse things than fire that burns in the sea…
‘We came because Atakan has a proposition,’ Kisa interrupted, ‘which begins with him offering us a safer sleeping place aboard his ship.’
‘We have not agreed to pay the price to take his ship,’ Praeclarum scowled back and Kisa spread his hands.
‘As you say, honoured lady – but the price has diminished.’
‘I want no coin,’ Atakan put in, beaming. Now Drust looked at him calculatingly. A man who offers free what he haggled hard for at the start is one who is selling you nothing. One of Kag’s many rules of life that Drust had sucked up over the years. Atakan saw it.
‘There is a favour to be asked,’ he admitted. Drust said nothing and watched the smile waver and crumble.
‘A short sail from here,’ he went on, ‘is a small place called Bād-kube. It means…’
‘Place of Winds,’ Drust interrupted, just to let him know he knew enough Persian.
‘The Place of Pounding Winds,’ Kisa corrected, then withered under Drust’s gaze. Atakan brought his smile back.
‘A place of dirt and hovels, famous only for two matters. The first is, as you say, the winds that tear at the place and make sailing so bad few go there. I myself find it hard and I am the best sailor on this coast.’
He stopped as if waiting for applause and, when none came, cleared his throat and went on.
‘The second is that about one farsah from it – to you, the distance you can walk in the first part of a morning – is a place where the rocks are always ablaze. Always, since the world was made. It is not the only such place. It stinks worse than the worst fart, which is how you know you are close to it if you are blind. That stink is also the way you can tell if you are sailing over another such place – the sea bubbles and froths, as if someone had broken wind in a bath. You do well to avoid it – that fiery pillar you saw comes from these places.’
Praeclarum was not sure if Atakan had ever been in a bath, as she said with a stone face, but Atakan only shrugged.
‘It is a place of black pitch, the stuff the Great City of Rome pays a great deal to have sent to them,’ he went on and glanced slyly from face to face. ‘They use it to make their flowing flame, the Roman Fire.’
Now this Drust knew well enough, but the man who knew most about it was Quintus. Once, in the wilds of Britannia, he had shown them all what little clay balls filled with such Fire could do.
‘Black pitch is only one ingredient,’ Kisa Shem-Tov said, frowning. ‘The way to make it is a great secret – but the Persians know it too.’
‘They do,’ Atakan declared, touching a finger to his nose in a knowing way. ‘This is the eternal fire, the godfire, a sign from the Ahura-Mazda. This is the Persian god.’
‘You wear his sign,’ Drust answered, reaching to flick the winged amulet on Atakan’s chest. The man grinned; Drust was beginning to think he was related to Quintus for the way he liked to show his teeth.
‘I have many amulets. It helps when you trade with people if they believe you believe as they believe.’
Kisa growled something which might have been curse or prayer, then dragged matters back to the road.
‘What has this to do with us?’
Atakan nodded. ‘There is such a temple, on the eastern shore of this sea. It is said to be very old, very rich and very unguarded.’
Praeclarum squinted at Kisa, then at Atakan.
‘This is your favour?’ he scoffed. ‘A fire-starers’ temple which, if it is as old as you suggest and as unguarded as you say, has clearly been fired and emptied by raiders before now.’
‘Tscha,’ Atakan replied scornfully. ‘This shows how little you know of these waters and how you should be grateful to me to the sum of three-fifths of all we gain.’
‘Two-fifths of nothing,’ Drust pointed out drily, ‘is nothing.’
‘This temple,’ Atakan persisted, ‘is called Bhagavan, which means “field of the fire gods”. It is in a place called the Black Lake, a place fed by the Hyrcanian Ocean so that the water runs into it. It is separated from the main water by a narrow ridge of land and a shallow channel, through which the Hyrcanian flows. Too narrow for a boat – the temple lies on the far side of the lake, a half-day sail away. This is why no one has plundered it.’
‘Not by landing further up and taking it from the landward side,’ Praeclarum growled and Atakan shook his head excitedly.
‘No, no – it is protected by cliffs and the land around the Black Lake is so salty nothing grows there – I know, I have been. I sometimes fetch salt from the folk along that coast.’
‘So the only way in is to swim?’
Atakan laughed and slapped his fat-breeked thigh.
‘If you are a fish – no, the only way in is to take a ship across that ridge, and you can throw a stone across it, from one water to the other. I have a crew of six – but with your men we could haul my Emerald out of the water and across to the Black Lake. Kisa says you are well travelled and have done all sorts.’
Drust looked at Kisa, who nodded excitedly.
‘What have you told this dog-botherer?’
‘Dog-botherer?’ Atakan demanded.
Kisa patted him hurriedly and added, ‘A way of talking – they all do it…’
Praeclarum rubbed her head where the hair was growing out and itching with life that should not have been there. She looked at Drust then back at Atakan.
‘They have sailed in the great grain ships from Alexandria,’ she admitted, ‘but never had to get out and push. Yours is a heavy sow of a ship to be hauling over land.’
Atakan scowled at the description, but did not deny it. His was the biggest bellied of the trade ships and Drust could see that had always been the problem.
‘My Emerald may be big and round,’ Atakan declared, ‘but that means she can carry more in that belly. I have six men sailing with me. You have as many – that is enough to drag it across a little sliver of land.’
‘If nothing grows in this area, as you say,’ Kisa put in, ‘then we must carry logs with us, but they will be underneath when we haul, so the ship will be lighter. We also will be out, so it will be lighter still.’
‘And coming back?’ Drust pointed out laconically. ‘Laden with these legendary riches?’
‘Aha,’ Atakan said, slapping his hands together. ‘Your honour is a clever man. The riches are there and here is why they will be no burden.’
He paused and grinned, delighted with the squints and scowls he was getting. Then he laughed; Drust was starting to dislike him more and more.
‘The rich prize is lājavard,’ he declared and sat back, beaming.
‘Now I know this,’ Praeclarum answered curtly, ‘and I know even less than before.’
‘Lājavard,’ Kisa said, ‘is the Persian name. It is a stone, though that is like saying the sea is water, or a lion is a cat, for there never was such a stone. In Rome they call it Blue Stone, or the Stone of Venus. There are many types, but the best and most prized has flecks of gold in it. If powdered and sprinkled on fire, smoke of all different sorts appears, according to Apollonius of Tyana…’
‘We are to travel all this way, drag a boat like a litter-full bitch across land and raid a temple – for a blue stone that makes many-coloured smoke?’ Praeclarum interrupted, then put one finger to her nose and snorted derisively.
Put that way, Drust was thinking, it did not sound much and she had a point. Kisa, however, shook his head, eyes shining – Drust had never seen anyone so smeared with the fever of raiding. This is what happens to quiet folk when you let them off the leash – even a frumentarius spy for the Palatine. Perhaps that beating he’d had had forged something into him, or released something that had always been there.
‘This stone is highly prized,’ Kisa hissed, looking right and left as if to see ears sprout where none had been. ‘The men of Rome believe this lājavard has… powers. Women of a certain type, the expensive kind, wear it round their neck for the same reason.’
He made an age-old gesture, crooking his arm at the elbow and Praeclarum laughed aloud, then hushed herself as someone stirred.
‘It makes you hard?’
Atakan grinned. ‘Like bar iron, lady. I would not know, for I do not need it – but those who do will pay for a mere chip of it and pay a great deal.’
Praeclarum sat back, one eye shut, thinking and looking from one to the other.
‘Three-fifths to two?’ she queried. ‘When we do as much hauling and all the fighting?’
Drust almost clapped his hands with delight for her.
‘What fighting?’ Atakan answered scornfully. ‘There is no one to fight – but you folk look better waving swords. They will piss their robes and flee, then all you have to do is dig out the eyes and be gone.’
‘Eyes?’ Drust asked and Atakan nodded.
‘Did I not say? There is a likeness in this temple, a great head which may well be the face of Ahura-Mazda, who knows. It is hollowed out at the back – some say a priest stands in it and makes out that the head speaks, which may be true, but I have not seen it myself. The eyes of this statue are pieces of lājavard, big as your fist, the sort with gold flecks in it too, or so I have heard. There is an everlasting fire-flame behind it which makes the eyes glow as if it lived.’
Praeclarum looked at Drust, who stayed as grim as the stone head he had just heard about. He did not like it, did not like or trust this Atakan, but he knew the men needed something to hold in their palms, something that spoke of Fortuna’s smile. Free passage and possible riches? It could hardly be turned down, so he nodded slowly and spat on his palm.
‘I agree.’
Atakan slapped his hand and then rose up, cracking his knees and grinning. ‘Bring your men to the ship,’ he said as he went. ‘I want to sail on the tide and it turns in the dark.’
He went off and Praeclarum shifted slightly, staring at Drust.
‘If the others do not agree?’
‘Why would they not?’
‘It might seem foolish to some. And angering a god is never a good idea – ask Odysseus,’ Kisa pointed out.
‘I lead here. No one else.’
Kisa shrugged. ‘If you tell it right,’ he said pointedly, ‘they will not resist.’
They woke the others and Drust told it, then listened to them worry at it like a dog on a bare bone until he reminded them there was a ship waiting. So they went, mumbling and growling as they walked.
In the end it came down to whether Kag thought this was a good idea. Drust felt the weight of his eyes but resisted the temptation to pay him or any of them any heed.
‘We are not pirates,’ Kag said thoughtfully and Quintus snorted scorn, which got laughter. Kag shrugged.
‘My purse says it is a wonderful enterprise,’ he grunted, ‘though my bags say it is not.’
‘Your bags?’ Ugo demanded and Kag grabbed at the hem of his tunic and the baggy Persian trousers worn beneath.
‘They are shrinking, drawing tight and making themselves small, though it is a difficult matter for such large affairs. They are hiding, lads, because they know something is wrong.’
‘Jupiter’s hairy arse,’ Quintus declared with mock, grinning disgust, ‘I am passing up riches because of the state of your balls?’
‘Mine are bigger than his,’ Praeclarum muttered and folk laughed aloud.
‘What does Drust think?’ Sib asked, and there it was, the bit that had always mattered and taken so long to get to.
Drust thought that it was as mad as a helmet full of frogs. There were mouth-frothers who would not undertake this, for if it had only been a matter of dragging his ship across a narrow neck and shouting loudly at some robes, then Atakan would have tried it before now. There must be muscled men for hire round here.
It stank, he wanted to say, worse than a three-day fish or an unwanted guest, and he should never have agreed to it.
‘I have already made the deal,’ he said mildly, ‘so that’s why I am thinking on it.’
He stretched and yawned as if it was all no matter, then pointed to the great bulked shape and the ramp that led up into it.
‘There is the ship. Wake me when we get to this fire temple and when you run at these fire-starers I will be there. Right behind you.’
They laughed.
‘I will buy new trousers,’ Kag declared, ruefully examining the torn and stained remains of his once splendid Persian affairs. More laughter, and while the shadowed crew of the ship watched them warily they huddled together in the dark.
‘Once this temple affair is done with,’ Drust said, more confidently than he felt, ‘we will be dropped at the mouth of a river where it meets the sea. If we keep following it inland, we will come across Manius and Dog and find out what this is all about.’
He looked at the dim figure of Kisa, who nodded.
‘Said like that,’ Stercorinus declared, ‘it sounds easy.’
A little later they were woken by the slap of bare feet, the soft cries of the crew. Things rattled and flapped and the deck lurched; they were underway.
For a moment there was silence, then Kag thrust out his hand, palm down. One by one the knuckle-marked – and those who weren’t, but knew the significance – added a hand to the splayed wheel of it. Praeclarum, half embarrassed but all determined, added her own and exchanged grins with Drust.
‘Brothers of the sand, brothers of the ring,’ Drust declared and everyone growled assent – then Sib stood up and moved urgently to the freeboard, peering back at the flickering lights of the quayside.
‘Look there,’ he said, so they all did. Drust saw men and horses, the firelight glinting blood on metal helmets and blades – and faces. Silvered faces. He heard shouting.
‘That was proof Fortuna smiles anew,’ Kag declared. ‘I know those faces – I have one in my bundle.’
The Persians who had slaughtered Darab and the others, thinking we were in the mix, Drust thought, and the cold slid down him like iced rain at how narrow had been their escape. The others merely grinned; Ugo brought out a leather skin and poured wine into the sea, an offering to Fortuna and Neptune, for you can never have too many gods offering help.
But they didn’t think on it for longer than it took to feel pleased they had escaped in time. They started curling up back to sleep to dream of riches, while Drust sat long into the dark, brooding on what lay ahead and what they had hopefully managed to avoid.
Running in any direction was an awkward business of stumble and roll, for the dark and the arid, uneven sprawl of ground, cut about by crevice and knoll, made movement difficult even at a walk. Drust was running all the same, as fast as weary legs and borrowed leather war gear would let him, and he could hear Sib muttering out his fear on one side and Kag grunting on the other. Behind was baying and not all of it from dogs; Drust wondered if the others had got back down the cliff to the ship.
He wondered if the ship was still there and the one thing he did not marvel at was how rotted the affair now was. If it was a game of tali, he thought, feeling his lungs burn, he would have flung his bones away and given in long since, for he was throwing nothing good in this game. Should have done that as soon as I found that the temple was on top of the cliff, not at the foot, he thought. How was it, then, that such an egg of a place had not been robbed from the landward side before? How was it that Atakan had said that it could not be reached because of the cliffs?
That revelation had come after a long sail and a muscle-cracking haul over the little ridge of land, which had proved rockier and wider than they had been told; Atakan had shrugged and said it had looked narrower to him when last he had been there. There were the marks of old firepits and Atakan said folk came here now and then, in the hope of being able to run the inflow, which vomited like an open gullet not far away, spilling the Hyrcanian Ocean into this Black Lake.
The sail across the inner lake had proved strange, not only because the winds were swirling but because it did not feel right to those who had sailed the Middle Sea. Atakan said it was the salt in it, coming up through the tunnels from other seas that let Poseidon swim the world. None of which made anyone easier.
They arrived at the far shore, a vast expanse of salt pan which had glowed in the dusk like a winding sheet. Atakan had turned the bulky ship, fat belly painted red and black and with eyes in the prow that looked at the sea. He had followed the curve of white coast towards a distant line which slowly grew to be high cliffs and only then revealed a collection of leather war gear, mouldy old chest-pieces and helmets and round shields, Greek stuff the men of Great Alexander would have recognised at once. In the gathering dusk Atakan had proudly shown them the fire temple, as if he had built it himself for their pleasure; it was a faint smudge on top of the grey-blue cliffs which fell sheer to the sea.
The only way up was a winding, narrow stairway, and Atakan argued that Drust had been mistaken when he’d thought it at the foot of the cliff.
‘The land around it is barren and waterless,’ he declared blandly, ‘which is why you cannot approach it from that side. It has high walls and even if they are rank white-livers, a locked gate is a locked gate. Up the steps, however, there is no gate.’
‘You could defend those steps with a pizzle-rotted old man and a stick,’ Kag noted, but Atakan scoffed at them.
‘It is night and we are unseen. A swift gallop up those steps and all the riches are yours.’
They looked at one another and everyone thought the same – there was no swift galloping up that, not if you wanted to keep your footing and not plunge off. If someone with a bow positioned himself just right he’d have all of us, Drust had thought, and it was small comfort that Atakan’s men wanted to join in; Atakan was scowling at that but did not dare say anything about it, or the fact that Drust left Kisa and Stercorinus behind to make sure they had a ship to return to.
Drust led the way up the steps, a long, knee-ache of a climb, but no one opposed them even when they reached the top and passed under a crumbling brick archway.
Which was Fortuna’s smile and Mars Ultor’s hand, since everyone was sweating and bent, hands on knees, trying to suck in air. For all the night had been chill, the sweat was rolling from them and thigh muscles quivered like fly-bitten horses.
The temple had been a complex of structures big and small, and folk had fled, as Atakan had said they would. At the centre of a huge square of square buildings was another brick square, each wall an arch; it was easily found in the night because of the flame at the centre of it, a steady, strange flicker that went from red-gold to murex purple and back again.
Under one archway sat the head, just as Atakan had said, and it was true what he had told them of the light making the eyes glow – if you stood a certain way you could see it. The flame murmured softly out of an altar built round it, came right up out of a hole without so much as a single stick to feed it. That was as unsettling as the eyes.
Drust sent Sib and Ugo right and left to guard, while Kag and Quintus scrambled up the plinth to the bearded face, using their daggers to hook stones out.
‘I do not care for this,’ Praeclarum muttered. ‘It does no good to offend gods, no matter that they are not your own.’
Kag laughed, dug the second eye out of its socket and stuffed it in a bag, which he handed to Drust to fasten to his belt. With a series of hissing cries, everyone was brought back together and set off back to the steps and the long descent. Drust felt the head behind him and turned to see the eyes now blazing blood-red, which was as unsettling as the shouts in the dark. Going down those steps, Sib moaned, was going to be worse than coming up, for it seemed the fire-starers were making a fist and would swing it at them.
It was more like two to Drust – a sudden flurry of little arrows and stones which clattered round them, and a rush of men out of the dark which caused a dog-pack of fighting, all snarl and confusion. Drust batted a shadow away with his old shield, slashed at another and ran on, the bag of stones dangling like a sheep bollock from under the face of his shield.
They were nothing much as fighters, these men, but they had courage and ferocity, numbers – and dogs. It was not long after that, stumbling and staggering, sweat and dust choking him, that Drust realised only Sib and Kag were there and they were all separated from the others.
Worse than that, they had missed the steps entirely. Drust was still wondering where they were when the ground went out from under his feet and he rolled in a whirl of black and stars and black again. A hand gripped him under one arm and hauled him up.
‘Perhaps Praeclarum was right,’ Kag said hoarsely, ‘that stealing the eyes from a dead god’s head was not worthy of us.’
‘How is that working out for you?’ Drust spat back angrily, shaking him off. ‘The thinking? Hopefully it will get so good you will bring this up before we set off on such an enterprise.’
The baying was louder and now there were bobbing lights too.
‘They really want their eyes,’ Sib growled, and Kag spat dust and sweat.
‘So do we,’ Drust answered. ‘Run.’
They ran, but only for a short distance before Drust slammed into the back of Sib, who squealed and grabbed hold of him. Kag skidded to a halt and the dust puffed up blue-grey in the moonlight – ahead was blackness, part of it sparkling with stars and part of it dancing with moonlight. Night sky and sea…
‘Mars Ultor,’ Kag panted, and the baying rose up mournfully. Drust saw with a sick lurch that they stood at the edge of a precipice.
‘It is never good to run in the harena,’ Kag snarled and his grin was feral. ‘You only arrive back at the fighting.’
‘I saw that show,’ Sib responded, though he was round-eyed and darting glances right and left. ‘The Ludus, back when I was a tiro – Christians did not fare well in it.’
‘We are not Christians,’ Drust spat back and threw the bag at Kag.
‘I will stand guard while you get out of that leather and your boots. Do not let go of the bag when you jump.’
He stepped forward, ripped off his own helmet and gritted teeth at that too – Fortuna is a fickle cunt, he thought, who gives with one hand and steals with the other. It hadn’t been much, but it and the leather and the shield were more than they’d had and a sign the goddess had been favouring them at last.
More fool us for believing that, Drust thought, starting to heel off a boot while keeping crouched, shield up, sword ready; behind, he heard Kag grunt, wriggling out of leather.
Sib, who had no leather, had had time to think and wail, running this way and that like a hen pursued by a rooster with intentions. He dragged off his own helmet and flung it away.
‘Get over,’ Drust roared, not turning round; he could see the torches and vague shapes between them.
‘The sea might not be entirely beneath,’ Sib shouted back.
‘Jump far,’ Kag snarled, hauling off his own boots.
‘There may be rocks…’
‘Jump farther.’
‘I cannot swim.’
The last was a despairing whimper and Kag, sword in one hand and the bag in the other, whirled and booted Sib hard – his vanishing shriek was loud and pungent.
A dog burst out, howling, plunging forward to where Drust stood. It was a slew-hound, all nose and no fight, though it tried to bore in for the ankles, so he cracked the rim of his shield on its skull, then broke its back with the sword.
‘This is how to lose all fear,’ Kag bellowed, his voice high and crazed. ‘Jump off a cliff.’
Drust was watching the second dog, cursing Kag to the banks of the Styx to get jumping; Kag laughed and stuffed the bag inside his stained tunic.
‘I hope you can swim in leather,’ he shouted and his grin was wolf-savage now. ‘And I can hit water and not stone. If not, we will walk in Elysium.’
‘Stop talking and jump,’ Drust harshed back at him, and Kag flung back his head and bellowed for Mars Ultor to see this moment. His screaming was a descending note as he fell.
The second dog was a nasty lump of fur with a mouthful of blades which leaped on Drust, all froth and snarl. He took it on the shield, whirling it sideways, though the weight wrenched the shield away; the dog rolled over and over, only to get up and shake its head.
Drust heeled off his second boot and kicked it defiantly in the direction of the dog, which skittered sideways and then launched itself, baying in short, furious snarls; stones whicked past Drust’s head and he turned, took a deep breath, then leaped, feeling the dog snap at his heels.
There was a moment when he hung like a crucifixion. Long enough to see his ma and wonder at it, at whether she watched constantly from the Other and only now, with his death, could he see her. Then he felt the first sickening tug of falling, heard the descending, mournful baying of the hound, falling with him in a frantic flurry of uselessly paddling legs.
Then he plunged into the blackness.
We stood there, Kag and I, reaching out to touch the fingers, shined from so many other times. Theogenes was the greatest of the harena, though he never fought in it, for he was a Greek from the time before Socrates and Plato. He did the pankration and pygmachia served under the patronage of a cruel nobleman, a prince who took great delight in bloody spectacles. He had two victories at the games, won three times at the Pythian, once in the Isthmian and a thousand other times in lesser munera.
He sat at the head of the Old Footpath on the Quirinal, a road into Rome which was venerable when the twins were suckling wolf teats. He was bronzed by Apollonius. Or Lysippos, no one was sure. Next to him stood a proud and haughty ruler – and everyone thought this was Theogenes and his cruel patron, but Kag knew different.
‘Look,’ he would say. ‘Look where he sits. Look at his head.’
The pugilist sat on a stone, a man running hard into his middle years with a thick beard and a full head of curly hair. He had a broken nose and flattened gristle ears, the slanted, drooping brows that told of too many blows and a forehead furrowed with scars more than age.
He had big shoulders and Ugo pointed out the rest – his chest is thick and flat, without the bulging pectorals of those gymnasium lifters. His back and abdominal muscles are highly pronounced and he has, Ugo added admiringly, that greatest asset of all – good legs.
The man who sculpted it knew the subject well. The arms are large, particularly the forearms, which are reinforced with the leather wrappings of the caestus. He has the oxys, those bands criss-crossing his forearms to give support to heavy blows. At the top is a band of fleece for wiping sweat and blood from his eyes.
All lovingly rendered in bronze, save the blood, which is copper. He sits on a rock with his forearms balanced on his thighs and his head turned as if he were looking over his shoulder – as if someone had just whispered something to him.
Quintus knew better and pointed out the look on the bronze face – there is no trace of fear in the battered, broken-nosed, bloody stare. He looks ready to go, anxious not to cause a delay, to get on with it, even though he is weary to the bone and resigned to this time being the last. This time is the one he loses and gets beaten to bloody pulp.
This is no hero of the pankration. Would he want to be behind the ox-plough, an obscure, reeking peasant? A slave cleaning the latrines? Would that be better?
People come to meditate on the great, battered Theogenes – the ruler they ignore. Kag knows better. It is allegory, he declares, a work made by Greeks about Greeks. This is not Theogenes, it is one of the first boxers of them all, the ones great Theseus created to sit opposite one another on stones and fight with their fists until one fell off or died or both. His head is tilted because he hears his opponent arriving and the other statue, the unknown ruler, is brave Theseus of the supposedly civilised Greeks, who invented this bloody sport, and waits to watch.
We come here to polish his caestus-wrapped fingers, for we are him and he is us.
He launched from it, flailing. Hands found him, hauled him up. A dripping face like a wet mule shoved itself into his vision and grinned; the clap on his shoulder felt like being hit by a shield.
‘You got out of that – well, all’s good,’ said Ugo and then waved to where Sib sat, hunched and hugging himself, his face a long, wet misery. ‘So did he, though no one expected it.’
‘Why is he yelling about Theogenes?’
Praeclarum’s face was concerned, but she had no answer from those who saw no need to say.
‘Jupiter’s hairy balls, that was a moment,’ Kag went on, beaming. ‘I do not wish to go off a cliff ever again – but we have the riches and all are rescued. Well, save for one of the crew who clearly fucked off Fortuna. She tripped him on the steps down and he beat everyone to the foot. They found him at the bottom with his head cracked.’
Quintus grinned even more widely than usual. ‘So you see, it was safer jumping – that is a good trick.’
‘We have the stones,’ Atakan boomed, while Drust struggled up, still wavering in a strange dreamlike mist where the weary beaten face of the boxer drifted. He is us and we are him, Drust thought, and struggled up onto uneasy feet.
The pinprick lights on the cliff – men with torches, coming down those steps – slapped the mist from his head. Drust looked around at the faces, all busy doing nothing at all.
‘Why are we not sailing?’
‘No wind worth a fart,’ Stercorinus declared flatly. ‘If it comes round a notch or two and starts blowing us west we may shift this fat sow of a ship, but not before.’
‘Is this not a concern?’ Drust spat back into his mildness and Stercorinus lifted his eyebrows slightly.
‘Would it help?’
‘Ha,’ said Atakan, ‘it does not matter. These fire trolls are not inclined to swim to us, are they?’
That much was true and Kag had organised folk to keep watch, so Drust lay back and tried not to be sick for a time, tried to order the wildness in his head. Praeclarum came with a cool, soaked cloth which she laid on his forehead.
‘You knocked your wits about,’ she said and he agreed.
‘Who is Theogenes?’ she asked again, and Drust waved a dismissive hand, closing his eyes.
‘An old boxer,’ Kag said. ‘A Greek.’
It left her no wiser, but she dismissed all thought of it when one of Atakan’s crew yelled out in his own tongue, bringing heads up. Under the moonlight, the dark water danced and black shapes slid.
‘What is that there?’ demanded Sib and Ugo got to it first, hawked and spat bitterly.
‘The gods above and below are in a vicious mood this night. Those fire-staring little men have boats.’
There was a long moment of squint and point, then Atakan appeared, chivvying his own men back from the thwarts and into some work.
‘Ha – they only have small boats and not many of them. They are no threat.’
The stone whicked out of the shadows and bounced off the freeboard, making everyone duck; an arrow clattered over the side, spun off a timber and vanished into the darkness.
‘Shields up,’ Quintus roared and Atakan began bellowing at his men to scoop up bilge water and soak the sail in the hope of getting wind to stick to it.
Drust sat while the harena dance foamed around him, thinking about little boats and not many of them. He felt as if his old helmet was back on his head, could feel the rim of it all round and the battered bit on one side which had never quite fitted properly. Left in Dura with everything else and, like the boxer on the Quirinal, he sat with his head tilted to one side, waiting for yet another opponent.
A chill kissed him on the cheek as the wind changed; there were cheers when the clumsy sow of a ship shifted and started to slide forward. More stones and arrows showered down and a crewman yelped. Another, halfway up the mast to soak the sail, seemed to jerk and then fell to the deck with a sickening crack – in the end, they had to put him overboard, for his head was broken open like a dropped egg.
There were faint cheers when the enemy saw this, darting about like shoals of small fish in narrow boats that seemed to glow out of the dark, then vanish. No more than a handful of oars and eight or ten men in them, Kag reported eventually, but with slings and bows.
‘And we do not have Manius and his bow any longer,’ Sib mourned.
‘They will not dare come aboard to attack us,’ Atakan soothed. ‘And if we are careful, their stones and arrows will run out soon enough, together with their strength. They will give up and go away.’
‘You wish it,’ Drust said, staring at him. He blanched and Drust knew he had him on the mark.
‘You knew these fire-starers had boats,’ he went on and no one missed the tone of his voice. Kag looked warily at where the crew were and Quintus fell into a fighting crouch at his back, pairing as they did so often in the harena.
‘You knew they had no weapons to speak of and only little boats and believed they could do you no harm – yet still you were afraid, for your men were not fighters. You knew all this because you had seen these fire-watchers before – and they know you, Atakan Fat-Liar, rich farmer of the seas.’
Kag growled and others, seeing the way of it, added low rumbles of their own.
‘You traded for salt with them,’ Drust went on, patching the cloak of it as he spoke. ‘Always on the far side of that little ridge, coming ashore to make fires and leave… what? Food and drink, which they would need in a barren place like they have? Then you collect the cheap salt and everyone goes away content.’
Drust was prowling upright now and folk scattered away from Atakan, who began to swell up like a toad and opened his mouth to bluster. But the sight of all the other swords let it hiss out of him like air from a dead goat.
‘Not you, though,’ Drust said, stalking in a half-crouch like some beast. ‘Not you, who sailed away fretting about blue eyes of stone and wanting them – until you found us, the poor idiot men you thought would gain you the riches. What was our reward after this, you fat lump of dung? Were you to fall on us in the dark, tip us over into the Black Lake or the Hyrcanian Ocean?
‘No, no,’ Atakan began, waving his hands in frantic dismissal. ‘Two-fifths, as was said…’ He looked desperately round at his own crew for help; Drust saw it and snarled like a wolf.
‘No help from these,’ he said. ‘These are ship-handlers and haulers. Poor dogs who will not stand up to fire-starers, let alone fighting brothers like the ones at my back. Slit throats in the dark is their style – is that what you had planned? If you have not heard before how we are gladiators of Rome, fighters of beasts and men, then you have now.’
The men growled at that. Atakan scrambled back to the thwarts, felt the dig of them in the small of his back and wailed. For an eyeblink Drust thought he would find the courage of the trapped and launch himself – but there was a thump and a crack.
Atakan jerked forward, stumbled a few steps as if he charged at Drust – then he fell like a broken mast, crashing to the planks with blood spilling from the two arrows and the stone which had felled him. There was a moment of whirling-dog panic, but it did not last – there were no fighters in Atakan’s crew and they cowered away while Kag sprang to the steering-oar.
‘Work the ship,’ Drust snarled at Atakan’s men, ‘if you want to live.’
There was a pause, then Ugo bellowed, incoherent and loud enough to buzz heads; they sprang to obey.
Stercorinus and Praeclarum pitched Atakan overboard and Stercorinus moaned out of the dark about how he would now never discover who had done the marvellous skin-marks.
‘If they were for protection from his gods,’ Ugo roared ‘then you did not want them.’
All of Drust’s focus was on the sound of the unseen boat enemy, cheering.
He had thought they might give up when they found Atakan rolling dead in the dark water, but he was wrong – when the first light crawled up over the horizon, the little stick boats were there, still rowing like frantic water beetles.
‘They are tougher than those Greeks who fought in the Flavian,’ Sib pointed out admiringly. ‘Remember those? They stuck to their hoplite formation all day, like the Spartans at the Hot Gates. These Persians have rowed all night.’
They rowed most of that day too, while the wind held and drove the ship onward. They had, it seemed, run out of stones and arrows, but continued to keep pace. Still they wouldn’t come close enough to be struck, which was frustrating to everyone.
‘Water bugs,’ Ugo scorned and spat, then stuck his neck out and howled across the water at them. ‘Come ahead, you little dog-holes. I have an edge here for you.’
He waved his axe with frustration until Stercorinus, of all people, put a quietening hand on his massive forearm and brought him to silence. He seemed the only one not flustered by an enemy who did not want to fight but would not leave them alone. He should be mouth-frothing, Drust thought, or at least concerned, but he did not ask for he knew the answer he would get. Would it help?
‘Why don’t they shit or climb off the privy?’ Quintus demanded of no one in particular.
They would not do either, Drust was thinking, and Kag agreed. They kept sailing until the little streak of black on the horizon grew into the ridge, and the ship faltered a little under the current flowing towards it from the inrush of the Hyrcanian Ocean. This, they all knew, was what the fire temple warriors had waited for.
They turned, heading to the narrow part where they had left the rolling logs, but Drust knew what they would find when they got there, was made certain of it by the smudge of smoke.
‘They have made fires of our rolling logs,’ Kag muttered, and the ship’s crew began to argue and wail until snarled to silence. Drust plunged off the aft deck into the well of the hold, where there were bits of cargo that Atakan had found room for. No salt, but some hides and something Drust had spotted earlier when they were dragging out the body of the crewman who fell off the mast.
Hoes and mattocks, bound in bundles of ten. He grinned and told the others, who got the idea at once, though one of the crewmen stepped forward, scowling.
‘That is valuable cargo,’ he said in Greek. ‘What will we live on if you destroy it?’
Drust looked him up and down, from his bare, calloused feet to the thatch of unruly black hair and beard. His name was Kalistokos, Kisa declared, and he was the mate of the vessel – captain now that Atakan was dead, he supposed.
‘You will not live at all unless we escape,’ Drust pointed out. ‘Besides – two-fifths of this is ours, under the deal we made with Atakan. Be assured of three-fifths and work to earn it.’
Kalistokos spoke to the others – in some local form of Persian, Kisa reported later – and clearly did not know Kisa understood, since he used terms Kisa would not repeat regarding Drust and the others. But it seemed they would obey, though they did not like it.
The ship nudged up to the narrow part, sliding into the shingle until it ground to a halt, and robed men fled, leaving the smouldering remains of the timbers. Drust ordered them dirt-smothered, to see if any could be rescued. Then he put men on either side, shields up, while the others began the laborious task of pitching out the cargo to lighten the load and started hauling the vessel up and over to the sea on the far side.
At which point they all found out that the timber fires had not been lit just to burn the hauling logs. And that the fire-starers had not run out of arrows.
The boats slid in like skimming insects and a shower of fireflies, bright even in the morning sun, showered down like hot rain. One slapped the timbers of the ship and Kag, roaring annoyance, tried to pull it out, snapped it, and then found sense and smothered it with his ripped and stained red cloak.
‘Fuck you all,’ he roared, beating the sparks out of his cloak and glaring like a routed boar. Men laughed, but there was little humour in it, and Praeclarum was set to scoop water and watch for more such arrows.
The hauling took time. Arrows flew – two good shots landed in the flaked sail and Praeclarum had a hard task putting the flames out. ‘God-cursed little fire fucks,’ Sib rasped, the sweat rolling off him. ‘Don’t they ever give up?’
Drust eyed the man in the boat offshore, the one wearing some necklace that sparkled and flashed. That and the hand-waving, points and shouts marked him as leader, and if these fire-starers had been on land, he’d have been the one they rushed. Kill him and all is done, Drust thought, but no one’s god was Poseidon or Neptune or anything like it, so running on water was out. Neither did they have a bow, nor even a decent throwing javelin.
The leader sent men to pluck stones from the ridgeline and now the slingers got back to work – one of the ship’s crew went down like a felled ox when one hit him low on the back of the neck. When he came round, he could not use his right arm and Kalistokos cursed at the loss of one more crewman. Later, a burning arrow killed him.
Then the boat stuck on the downward path, sliding off the unwieldy rollers and burying its fat nose in rocks and crushed shells. Men groaned and cowered as arrows flew, for it would be a hard struggle to get it back on the wooden road to the sea, even without folk throwing fire and missiles at them.
‘Wait until night,’ Kag advised. ‘It will be cooler and they won’t be able to see.’
Drust looked at the high sun and then at the determined heat-wavering figures. They had hauled their own little boats across and were now on the far side, on the Ocean; he knew they were not about to give up, even after the ship had been put back in the water. They would chase us all the way to Hades, he growled to Kag, who hawked and spat and scrubbed his head furiously – but could only agree.
‘Give them back,’ Praeclarum said, and there was a moment when everyone wanted to roar at her. Instead they fell silent.
Drust thought about it for a moment, sighed, straightened and held out a fist to Kag, who knew what had to be done but scowled and growled as he handed over the bag.
Holding both hands high, one empty, one with the bag, Drust sucked in a scorch of breath and stepped out, away from the whale of a ship and his men, out onto the ridge towards the man with the glittering necklace, who sat offshore in his boat.
Drust stood for a long moment, arms out where they could be seen; the world held its breath and every part of him shrieked and cringed from what it expected to be struck with.
Then he tipped the bag up and the blue stones tumbled to the ground, sparkling and glowing in the noon sun. He turned and walked back, feeling his spine itch and crawl at the expected shower of unseen arrows.
There was a long moment, then a shout from the leader of the fire-starers; a boat scudded in and men scampered along the shore. They reached the eyes and gathered them up; there was a strange series of yipping cries and then the men scampered away again.
In less than an hour, there was not a boat to be seen, and eventually Quintus straightened and grunted as his knees cracked.
He glowered round at everyone. Then at Drust.
‘This has been a bad day for the Brothers of the Sands,’ he declared. ‘This is what happens when you defy the gods, even those of others. We have been beaten by a ragged-arse bunch of inbred goat-fuckers and no treasure is ours.’
He stuck out one hand, palm down. One by one the others came, Praeclarum and Stercorinus no longer embarrassed that they had no knuckle tattoos to show their old slavery; they had the marks on them, all the same. The ship’s crew watched, sullen and anxious at what would happen now with these strange Romans; they knew they were locked in a wooden cage with wolves.
Kag, with one last glare in the direction of the folk who had just forced riches from his fist, turned a baleful eye on the canted ship.
‘Fortuna, loveliest of ladies,’ he declared, spitting on his palms, ‘help us get this log in the water.’