Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

There was more whispering. The nastier of the companions pointed at the three of us, his tongue darting from side to side of his revolting mouth. The mounted man looked at me again. His face twisted into a crooked smile. ‘If you really are a pimp,’ he said, ‘you won’t get much custom up here.’ He waved for support at the rocky waste that lay all about. ‘Why aren’t you down in the pass with everyone else?’

‘We come all the way from the great city of Tibion,’ I whined, twisting my face to make the coating of burnt twig run in nastier rivulets. ‘Yet who will buy my boys? Surely, we should have offered ourselves to the Greeks, for all the fortune I shall make among you worshippers of the female parts.’ I clapped my hands. After a shrill curse in Armenian, I kicked Eboric between his shoulder blades. He got slowly up and began an insultingly feeble rendition of one of his bathhouse dances. There wasn’t much he could do about his pretty face. But the slow, plodding movements in wet clothing might not have raised interest in a profligate high on hashish .

That, however, is what the companions showed various signs of being. Giggling and rolling his eyes, one of them sat on a low stone and began rubbing at his crotch. The other turned his attention back to the mounted man. There was more whispering and pointing. But the mounted man shook his head. He leaned forward. ‘How did you know we were coming?’ he demanded. ‘How could word go round, as far away as Armenia, of an invasion we still haven’t been officially told about?’ He sat upright again. ‘Did you see any Greeks on your way through the mountains? If you did, you’d better tell me. I’m on my way to the Great King himself,’ he finished with a toss of his head.

I stretched open hands towards him and simpered like a eunuch. ‘Would I be here had I found Emperor’s gold to be earned?’ I asked in return. My sword was out of sight. But I had a knife up my left sleeve that I could probably get straight in his throat. Still on the ground, Rado was no longer pretending to whimper but was looking steadily at the larger of the two footmen. We could take them out, I was sure. We should do it sooner rather than later — for how long would it be just the three of them? Ideally, though, we needed that man off his horse.

The mounted man sat back, his mouth turned down in disgust too severe to be genuine. He looked again at Eboric, who’d made sure to fail in his hopping pirouette and was struggling to get up again. He turned to the companion who wasn’t rubbing himself off and who now whispered harder from behind both hands. They spoke back and forth, with much sniggering and nudging at each other and endless gloating looks at the three of us. I knew what was coming but made sure to continue looking scared and uncertain.

I was right. The mounted man finished his whispered conversation. They had time, I’d heard him agree. Biting his lip, he stared at me. ‘How much?’ he asked.

I spread my arms wide and smiled in a manner that suggested my teeth weren’t up to viewing in daylight. ‘For you, My Lord, three silver dirhams — five if you want the boy to take off his clothing.’

The mounted man looked into my face. ‘I don’t care for boys,’ he said. ‘I want you !’ Both companions burst into a high whining snigger. They ended with more fluttering of tongues.

All very flattering, I suppose — though my flesh crawled at the thought of touching any of them. That poor diving boy in Constantinople might not have had worse teeth than this lot — and his face hadn’t been covered in sores that glistened red in the continuing drizzle. But I broadened my smile. I bowed and touched my forehead. ‘If it is hips or lips My Lord is desiring,’ I smarmed, ‘I shall not be found wanting. But I can also divert, if My Lord so commands, with the masculine office.’ I flexed my hips and tried to look wanton through burnt twig and a seventeen-day growth of stubble.

‘Lips only,’ he breathed in an ecstasy of lust long unsatisfied. He checked himself and looked once more at the horses. ‘I’ll pay you by letting you go.’ He pointed at a large boulder. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he groaned. ‘Do it to me naked.’ He closed his eyes and shuddered. He opened them again and looked at Eboric. ‘I want to watch the boy piss on you afterwards.’ He pointed at Rado. ‘Kill him if he moves,’ he said to his companions.

One of the footmen got his sword out and poked Rado in the chest. He made a cry of inarticulate triumph and got his free hand under his leather breastplate to scratch one of his nipples. Rado played along, dropping on all fours and starting a terrified plea in Slavic. Looking both suspicious and lustful for his own turn with me, the other companion squatted on his haunches and clutched hard on his spear. Their leader was too far gone to do other than retire out of sight and wait for me. With more sniggering, and clutching of weapons, these two watched me undress. Don’t ask how a man with my physique managed to look submissive out of his clothes. No doubt, the rain helped. I’d been wet through all day. Now, I was cold as well.

You can be sure I didn’t stay submissive. The foul-smelling pig was no sooner lying beneath me, gasping and running his hands up and down the muscles on my back, when I snapped his neck, and Eboric sat on his legs to stop them from kicking any stones loose. I didn’t even have to kiss those putrid lips. By the time I looked out, shivering in the rain, Rado was casually sitting on a rock with his feet raised in the air. One of the footmen was curled in a ball and dead. The other was choking his last with my steel knife in his throat.

‘Good lad!’ I said, slapping Rado on the back. He really had been wasted as a dancing boy. Eboric too. I kissed him on the cheek. What better sons could any man desire? I looked down the incline. There was no one coming. Rado shook his head and smiled happily. I stretched my arms and looked up at the sky. Now I was used to the cold, I felt deliciously sensual in the rain.

But I pulled myself back to the matter in hand. ‘We’d better get rid of the bodies,’ I said. I thought about the boulder. My own kill was already there. We could dump the other two on top. I thought again. I looked at Eboric. ‘If you can strip them, we’ll cover the bodies with stones.’ He nodded eagerly and vanished behind the boulder. The wolves would have them out soon enough. By then, though, there’d be no one about to make a fuss. Just in case, we’d hide the clothes separately.

I sat on a stone and reached for my trousers. I noticed an ingrowing hair on my right thigh and picked at it. Rado put his legs down and turned his head slightly. I’d heard it already. ‘I shouldn’t worry about the noise,’ I said.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked. The dying man had stopped twitching. He reached forward and recovered my knife.

‘Do keep the knife,’ I said. ‘You’ve earned it.’ He perked up at once. It was a lovely object. He’d been admiring the thing since Trebizond. He cleaned it on the dead man’s jacket and balanced it in his hand. More of the faint but massive roaring drifted up from the pass. ‘Singing eunuchs,’ I explained. ‘The Great King keeps a choir of a thousand. If memory serves me right, that’s one of the audience anthems they’re practising.’ I stretched both legs out and wiggled my toes. I suddenly realised that Rado had been copying me. I smiled. ‘Eunuchs have a tendency of melancholia that needs to be carefully managed,’ I explained further. It was one explanation — one among several. A gust of wind caught my upper back. I put my trousers down and reached for my undershirt. Everything was soaked through. I twisted the linen until water splashed over my knees.