TERRA (The Portal Series, Book 2)

by Bowker, Richard;

  "Now we enter Urbis," Feslund said. He carefully wrapped up the gant and put it away. Then he crawled through the hole in the inner door and landed in the mud. Palta and I followed him. Feslund didn't seem to mind the mud or the rain. He looked satisfied, for the moment.

  I was exhausted. My legs felt rubbery; my back ached. I couldn't imagine how Palta must have felt.

  The two of us sat down and leaned back against the wall. Feslund stood up, waiting impatiently for his men. "We cannot delay," he muttered. "How far to the armamentarium?"

  "An hour's walk," she said. "But we will need to circle around some castella. And the rain will slow us down."

  "We cannot delay," he muttered again, as if saying that would make everything happen faster.

  We waited. How long till dawn? I wondered. What if we made it this far, only to run out of time?

  Finally the soldiers arrived, crawling through the opening in the inner door one after the other.

  "Any problems?" Feslund asked Priscus.

  "No, my lord. Everyone is here and ready."

  "Good, good. We follow the girl now. Be vigilant—this is not the route we expected to take. We will be out in the open and easy to spot. Let's go."

  And so we set off behind Palta through outer Urbis. She set a fast pace; I could barely keep up. No one spoke, but still we made a lot of noise, as our swords jangled and our boots stomped; I hadn't noticed this when we had been outside the city. We walked mainly through woods and meadows, staying away from the main road, but occasionally we couldn't help passing close to a castellum or an outlying building of some sort. But we saw few lights and no people.

  And it continued to rain.

  Finally we were in inner Urbis. The temple of Via loomed above us. Now we had a harder time avoiding houses and buildings. Occasionally Feslund called a halt and discussed the route with Palta. The men looked tired and sullen. The journey had taken too long. It felt like it would never end.

  And then, finally, Palta pointed. "The armamentarium," she whispered.

  We crouched down to observe it.

  It sat by itself in the corner of a park, as if the priests didn't want to call attention to it. It was small, black, and windowless, and surrounded by a tall iron fence. We saw no movement, no sign of guards. Feslund sent a couple of men to circle around the fence. They came back a couple of minutes later; they hadn't seen anyone. There were two doors—a large main entrance, and a smaller side entrance.

  One of the men tried the gate in the middle of the fence; it was locked.

  So now what? With a fully powered gant we would have had no problem getting through the gate and into the building. But how many times could we risk using it?

  Feslund took Priscus and Escondo aside and discussed the situation.

  "We cannot make a mistake now," Siglind whispered to me.

  Finally Feslund and the others returned. He went up to the gate, took out the gant, shot the lock, and pushed the gate open. It happened so quickly that we didn't quite know what was happening. He came back to us. "Priscus will take five men and guard the front entrance," he said. "The rest of us will go in the side door, swords drawn—Escondo and I in front, the princess, the girl, and the boy in the rear. We don't know how many soldiers are guarding this place or where they are. We cannot let any of them leave the building alive. We are told that they don't have these weapons from the gods, but we can't be sure. We need to kill every one of them before they have a chance to use whatever weapons they have. When we're done on the first floor, Escondo will stay behind with three men to guard the side door, and I will lead the rest upstairs. Understood?"

  The soldiers nodded. I wasn't going to object to being in the rear, although I could tell that Siglind was annoyed. We took out our swords, crept through the gate, and assumed our positions. Feslund raised the gant, but the other soldiers were in front of me and I couldn't see what happened next. They stirred uncomfortably, though, and I knew that the gant hadn't done its job.

  There was a long pause. "Move back," Feslund said. "The lock is weakened. We will break the door down. And then the battle will be joined."

  We took a few steps back, and then Feslund and a burly soldier launched themselves at the door. It gave way with a loud crack, and we rushed into the armamentarium.

  We were in a large entrance hall decorated with the usual mosaics and statues, and lit by a single flickering oil lamp. A sleepy guard sitting at a table was struggling to get to his feet. Feslund reached him before he could draw his sword and plunged his own sword into the guard's chest. Somewhere a dog started barking. Our other soldiers fanned out across the hall and into the rooms off it. I followed Escondo's men. We entered a large cubiculum lit only by the lamp in the hall. In the dim light I saw four men rising from their cots and reaching for their swords.

  I had my short sword out and ready, but I knew I was no match for anyone in this room, so I hung back while Escondo's men did their job. Each picked out a target and attacked. Two Roman guards were run through before they could get to their swords. The other two were able to raise their swords and defend themselves, but they were outnumbered and quickly backed up in the face of the attack. One tripped over a bed, and Escondo buried his sword in the man's belly. The final guard fought furiously, but within a couple of minutes he too sank to the floor, his white robe soaked with blood.

  Escondo checked to make sure all the guards were dead, and then he left the room without a word. My heart was thumping; I noticed I had blood on the sleeve of my loose white shirt—how had that happened? I felt awful.

  "All dead," Escondo reported to Feslund, who was standing out in the hall with his men. The dog was still barking.

  "No one else on this floor," Feslund replied. "Send two men through that door—I think it goes down to the basement. You and another man guard the side door. No one gets out."

  Sulliger had found a lamp and lit it. Feslund took it from him and headed up a narrow staircase hidden behind the entrance hall. Palta and I followed, along with about ten soldiers.

  On the second floor we found the dog, large and black and chained to the wall. He wouldn't stop barking. "Someone kill the thing," Feslund ordered.

  Vetorix bend down and slit its throat. I felt sick when I saw the blood spurting out of the poor dog's throat. Palta gripped my arm.

  Beyond the dog was a short hallway and a large iron door. Feslund walked down the hall to the door and tried the knob; the door was locked. He took out the gant; it had lost all its blue glow. He tried it on the lock. Nothing happened; the gant, finally, was dead. "Not good," he muttered. He put the weapon away and led us up one more flight of stairs. We found nothing but a dusty storage area. No soldiers, no weapons.

  We went back down to the first floor. Feslund brought most of the men guarding the doors inside. "The weapons are in a locked room on the second floor," he informed everyone. "But the gant has no power left, and the door is too thick to break down. There must be a key here somewhere. Find it."

  The soldiers spread out. The most obvious place to find a key was with the dead guards. Vetorix searched the body of the guard still lying by the table in the hallway. Escondo and his men took a lamp and went back to the cubiculum where they had killed the other guards. I went with them, but I couldn't bring myself to go inside.

  The men rummaged around a bit, and then one of them shouted something in Gallic. He came back out holding a single key on a black iron ring. Feslund grabbed it from him and raced upstairs. He returned a few moments later, his face clouded with anger and frustration. "It doesn't fit," he said. "There must be another key."

  "Maybe it opens a strong box," Sulliger suggested, "and the real key is inside the box."

  "Then find the strong box," Feslund snapped.

  And what if the key wasn't even here? I thought. Wasn't that just as likely? What if Tirelius kept the key, or some general back at the soldiers' barracks?

  We were so close. One stupid door stood between us and the gants. Bet
ween me and the portal.

  I noticed Palta sitting on the floor.

  I sat down next to her. She had done everything we had asked of her—getting us into Urbis, finding the armamentarium. Now she was just staring ahead at a mosaic of the temple of Via on the opposite wall. The guard's corpse lay in front of it.

  "We're running out of time," she murmured.

  "I know." Surely it wouldn't be long now till dawn arrived. Till someone came upon us here, a handful of soldiers without the special weapons we thought would make us invincible. Was it too late to try to make it back out of Urbis? Didn't matter—Feslund would never allow it. He'd rather die here, and we would die with him.

  The soldiers continued to look for the key, and Feslund became more and more agitated as they failed to find anything. "It has to be here!" he shouted, although he must have known that it didn't have to be here. And then he shouted at me: "I should never have trusted you. A stupid little boy who can barely ride a horse or carry a sword."

  My face grew hot. Palta squeezed my hand.

  And then with her other hand she pointed at the mosaic and murmured, "There."

  She got to her feet and went over to the mosaic. At its bottom were tiles representing the rocks of the hill on which the portal had been found. One of the tiles was a slightly different color from the others. And in the center of the tile was a keyhole.

  She motioned to Feslund, who put the key into the keyhole; it fit. He turned the key, and the tile swung out, revealing an opening behind it. Inside the opening was another key.

  He took the second key and raced back upstairs. The rest of us raced up behind him.

  Feslund put the key in the lock; again, it fit. He opened the door and held up the lamp.

  Inside were row upon row of gants, all glowing with a bright blue light.

  Chapter 28

  No one spoke for a while. Everyone who could fit moved into the room and just stood there, staring at the weapons.

  Finally Feslund strode forward and picked up a gant. He aimed at an empty wall and fired. A huge hole opened in the wall, and the familiar bitter smell wafted over us. Some of the soldiers were from the Massalia garrison and hadn't seen what a gant could do. I could hear them gasp with astonishment and disbelief.

  Feslund nodded, satisfied.

  "Everyone take two of these things," he said. "Then go outside. The boy and I will show you how to use them. Then we divide up and conquer Urbis. Come, we must hurry!"

  The men scrambled to obey.

  I grabbed my gants off a shelf along with everyone else. They felt heavier than the one I had used before. Their blue glow was reassuring; these weapons would not run out of power anytime soon.

  Palta was waiting for me outside the room. "Aren't you going to take any?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "I suppose. But many people will die in the next hour. I don't want to be part of the killing."

  I nodded. "I'm sorry," I said. "I—"

  She put a finger on my lips to make me stop talking. "It's fine," she said. "Let's get you home."

  We went downstairs and out the main entrance of the armamentarium. The pouring rain had now turned into a drizzle. I showed a few soldiers how to use their gants; it wasn't hard. I was with Priscus when he fired his weapon for the first time, blowing away a tree outside the iron fence. He looked disappointed. "This is too easy," he said to me. "Where is the glory in fighting with such a thing?"

  "It's not about glory, I suppose," I replied. "It's about defeating your enemy."

  Priscus shrugged, as if he wasn't quite sure that this was how he viewed the matter. "We will win if the gods allow it," he said.

  "Well, they have allowed us to capture these weapons, haven't they? That's a good sign."

  He didn't respond.

  The training was over in a matter of minutes, and then it was time to head out. Feslund left four men behind to guard the armamentarium—there were plenty of weapons left over, and we didn't want Roman soldiers getting their hands on them. "Ten of us go to the soldiers' barracks," he went on. "The girl will show us the way. The rest go to the pontifex's palace to capture or kill Tirelius and the other leaders."

  "One more thing," I said.

  He looked at me, annoyed. "What?"

  "We need to take the temple."

  "Why?"

  Again, we had been over this with Feslund, but he seemed to have forgotten. "Because that's where Via is," I explained. "That's where the priests petition the gods. We don't know how that works." I did know how it worked, obviously, but I wasn't going to explain. "We don't want priests going there," I went on, "and somehow ending up with more weapons."

  He pondered this and then said, "Fine. Any volunteers?"

  Priscus volunteered, along with Sulliger and Vetorix. And Siglind.

  "That's enough for now," Feslund said. "Too many, perhaps. We shall meet at the statue of Hieron when we are done."

  Once the assignments were settled, it was time to leave. Feslund said a few final words. "What we do here today will be remembered forever," he said. "Let us make our fatherland proud of us."

  The soldiers reacted enthusiastically this time. At last they could see how close they were to victory.

  "Be safe," I whispered to Palta before she left with Feslund.

  "Don't worry about me," she replied. She paused for a moment, and then said, "And don't leave before we can say goodbye."

  "Of course I won't," I said. "Anyway, I'll need to find a viator to take me home. I hope I can find Gratius."

  "You'll find him."

  She squeezed my hand, and then she was gone.

  My group started out towards the temple, which loomed in the distance above us. I knew the way to get there—not across the forum, which might have people in it even though dawn hadn't yet arrived. And the temple's main doors would probably be guarded. Instead, I would take a route Palta had suggested—around the forum, through the grounds of the schola, then up a long set of steps cut into the hillside at the rear of the temple.

  We trudged through the darkness, holding our gants by our sides. We stopped once as we approached the main road and a wagon rattled by, a lamp swaying back and forth on a pole beside the driver. The driver didn't see us. Then we crossed the road, walking past a small castellum near the one where Hypatius had lived; it seemed so long ago now that he had brought Carmody and me to his house. Soon we had made our way to the soggy fields behind the schola.

  The schola—where the best of the best recruits to the priesthood ended up. Potential viators like Affron and Valleia. What would happen to those students when this was finished? What would happen to everyone here? I realized that I had no idea what Feslund was planning to do once he had defeated the priests. Probably he had no plans. At any rate, if things worked out for me, I would never know what happened to Urbis, or Terra, or any of these people. Whatever happened, it wouldn't be my fault, I told myself, not for the first time. I hadn't asked to be brought here. And once I came here I had just wanted to go home, and they wouldn't let me. And these were the consequences. Still, the soldiers and sailors who drowned in the great sea, the man peeing in the woods, the guards at the armamentarium, the poor dog... they hadn't asked for what had happened to them, either.

  But I couldn't stop to think about that.

  The schola was an impressive brick building with a row of marble columns along the front. The back was plainer, though. A few carts sat haphazardly around a large wooden door. Soggy cloths were spread on the grass. Lights glowed in a couple of windows.

  "People are rising," Priscus noted.

  I had to find the steps up the hill. I was tired and shivering from the endless rain. I had a blister on my heel. My back ached. My head was throbbing.

  I needed to get past all that and do my job.

  It was near dawn now, and we had lost the invisibility that night and rain had given us. Priscus laid a hand on my shoulder and pointed off to the right, to a couple of men in the distance standing next to a tre
e. I thought I spotted a rake and a shovel leaning against the tree. Were they gardeners? Had they noticed us? What would they make of four men and a woman striding across their grounds, carrying strangely glowing metal objects in their hands?

  "Shall we kill them?" Siglind asked.

  Priscus shook his head. "Faster," he whispered.

  We left the schola behind, and we reached a park—deserted, thank goodness—and then finally I spotted the worn granite steps, ascending at a steep grade up the hill to the temple towering above us.

  "Here," I said.

  "At last," Siglind murmured.

  Priscus went first, followed by Siglind. I was in the middle, and Sulliger and Vetorix took up the rear.

  Priscus strode up the steps as if he had just gotten out of bed after a great night's sleep. I had to practically sprint to keep up, and still I fell behind. He glanced back finally and slowed down a little, but he didn't look happy about it.

  When we reached the top, we stopped for a moment while we caught our breath. We were at the entrance to a small, beautifully maintained garden, filled with flowers I didn't recognize. A sign said that the garden was dedicated to viators who had not returned from their travels. Did the soldiers have any idea what that meant? Birds were starting to sing in the trees. I looked behind me, and the view across Urbis was spectacular, but we were at the wrong side of the temple to see what, if anything, was happening at the soldiers' barracks. At the other end of the garden was a small cottage, and beyond that was the temple. We walked up to the cottage. Priscus tried the door; it was unlocked. He went inside, and in a minute came back out. "Looked to be the gardener and his wife," he muttered. "They are gone now." I could smell the bitter odor of the gant from inside the cottage.

  We moved on to the temple. A narrow set of stairs off to the right led to an unobtrusive doorway. We went over to it. Priscus went down the stairs and tried the door. It was locked, so he shot it open, and we went inside.

  We were in a cool, dark hallway lined with life-sized marble statues of noble-looking men and women wearing the purple robes of viators. Were these the ones who hadn't returned from their travels? I didn't bother to find out. It was spooky, though, having all those faces staring at us as we walked along the hallway. Other corridors branched off to the left and right. At each one we paused, listening for movement. We heard nothing. We saw no one. We kept going.