‘How can we…’ Gallo started, but fell silent at a sound from outside. The watchman?
The legionaries all shifted forward, weapons at the ready, and Gallo moved the boy aside and stepped to the doorway. He twitched the curtain aside a little.
‘Oh no.’
Marcus moved next to him and looked through the gap. The building was surrounded by armed and armoured men – maybe thirty or forty of them. Behind them, standing on the higher ruins, were a small group of archers, their bows already at full stretch, arrows ready to release.
‘I am Leontes, the captain of this force,’ called a gruff voice from the darkness. This land belongs to Lord Furius Maleficus and you are trespassing illegally on his property. Step out of there slowly, with your arms high, or I will happily give the order to my archers and they will fill you so full of arrows that you appear to be hedgehogs. Do you understand?’
Marcus felt the panic begin to return. The dagger had given him confidence against an unseen threat, but what use would it be against arrows? ‘What do we do?’ he whispered to the centurion. Gallo’s face was dark and angry.
‘There’s nothing we can do. We do as he says and surrender. He could easily kill us all. We’re trapped and he has archers. We surrender and hope we get the opportunity to escape.’
Marcus felt hope desert him. They were doomed and there was nothing they could do.
‘Stay here and hide,’ Gallo whispered. ‘See if you can get back to Maximus and Brutus.’ Then, holding up his sword, he left the building. Potens followed, doing the same, and so did the others, one at a time, until all the soldiers had left. Marcus turned to look for the African boy whose name he’d not even learned, but the boy was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the purse he had taken. Marcus tried to decide which alcove to hide in, as he heard the legionaries outside throwing down their swords and daggers onto the flagged stone floor.
‘And the boy,’ came that same gruff captain’s voice. Marcus’ spirits dived even lower. They knew he was in here. He heard both Potens and Gallo telling the guards that there was no boy, but the captain gave an unpleasant, chilling laugh.
‘Please don’t make me start shooting people, young Marcus. Come out, or I start with the centurion.’
Marcus was at the door in a heartbeat, holding up his dagger as he stepped out into the open air. They were caught. What the Minoan planned to do with them next was anyone’s guess, but slavery seemed to be the most likely course of action. He felt sick. For a moment, he cursed the African lad, but then realised that the boy hadn’t had time to tell the guards his name, so it couldn’t have been him. The lad was probably still cowering in the dark inside. Well, good luck to him. But that left only one culprit. If they knew Marcus by name, only Dion could have sold them out.
He made a silent vow to Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, to get the serving boy back for this. But first they had to find a way to escape.
Chapter Eight
Scriptor urged his tired horse on. They had ridden faster than they had ever done before, and none of them were particularly used to horses, being two foot-soldiers and a girl. Callie clung on tight behind her uncle as she had done all the way from Gortyn, too small to ride her own horse, though she remembered reading that some of the African tribes had their children riding as soon as they could stand up. The third horse, carrying their gear, pounded along behind on a rope.
Dog lolloped alongside, oddly sprightly despite his long run. He had stopped here and there to drink from streams or eat miscellaneous things, and on one notable occasion to chase a bony, scrawny cat. But even though Scriptor had refused to slow their ride to make things easy for Dog, the mutt had always managed to catch up.
Cnossus lay ahead and under normal circumstances Callie would have been fascinated by what she saw. But it was late at night after a long ride and with no sleep, and the grave danger the others might be in was too important for her mind to wander off in fun. Instead, she saw everything as they passed in a slightly menacing way. Senex had told them everything he knew about the place on the ride, which wasn’t much, but was enough to form a basic idea of the place. It did nothing to make it less menacing.
Firstly, the dry aqueduct. Why, if the town was a functioning Roman town, not repair that? Then the ruins. There was nothing untoward about the ruins, but why were they so heavily fenced off? The villa that rose nearby had lights blazing in most of its windows even now, after midnight when most country houses would have been asleep for hours. And why could she see silhouetted against the orange light the figures of guards around the perimeter wall? Yes, rich villas had guards, but what were they so concerned about late at night here to have so many men so alert? It was all very sinister.
And when they reached the edge of the town, Scriptor’s horse exhausted and close to collapse, things were no more comforting. Even though it was very late, Callie was surprised at how quiet the place was. In her life she had seen two great cities: Alexandria and Gortyn, and several Egyptian towns, as well as Lebena in the south of Crete. And one thing she expected from any Roman town at night – compared to the country houses that retired early – was life. No matter how dark it was, there were always men in taverns, beggars on the streets and the like. The poor, the wicked or the daft could always be found in a Roman town at any hour. Not here, though. The streets were empty, every door shut and every window dark.
Dog paused part way along the street to leave a small present on a house’s doorstep, then caught up again.
They reached the centre, the forum of Cnossus, and Scriptor scratched his head, wondering what to do. Somewhere here was a small unit of Roman soldiers, and they shouldn’t be that hard to find. Callie, along with the other two, scanned their surroundings, and she almost missed it. Almost, but not quite.
‘There,’ she said, pointing at a window. The other two followed her indicating finger and peered at the shutters of the inn. Though they were closed tight, a tiny crack of light was just visible underneath, and it kept changing shape as a shadow moved across it. Someone in this town was awake, at least.
‘Do we?’ asked Senex.
‘Of course we do. It’s an inn and we’re customers. Come on.’
Slipping from his saddle, Scriptor led the horse, with Callie still mounted, over to the inn door. Old Senex slid from his horse with a grunt and rubbed his legs, tottering unhappily after them. Scriptor knocked on the door and waited.
There was silence, but they were fooling no one, and Scriptor knocked again and again until the door opened and a short fat man with a very pink face answered, his expression extremely grumpy.
‘What?’
‘I am looking for a unit of thirteen soldiers who are in Cnossus. Would they be in your inn?’
The innkeeper snorted. ‘You think I have room for thirteen? Only place that’ll hold that many is the Minotaur down the hill towards the river. Now leave us alone. Decent people are all in bed at this time.’
Scriptor frowned as the man closed the door and the forum fell dark once more.
‘Friendly place, isn’t it?’
The two men led their horses with Callie, tired but attentive, still in the saddle. They crossed the forum to the street the man had pointed to, which ran down a slope towards the edge of town and the dark river valley. This street was silent and dark, too, and they soon found the Minotaur with its arch and doors and many outbuildings. At least this inn showed faint signs of life. Though the door was still shut and the windows dark, there were faint sounds from inside and cracks of light between the shutters.
Scriptor rapped on the door, and it open quickly to reveal a tired-looking man.
‘Yes?’
‘I believe my unit are staying here?’ Scriptor prompted.
The man rolled his eyes in irritation. ‘They certainly are, and they won’t go to bed like my respectable merchant customers. They insist on staying up and waiting for their friends. Well, if I’m serving wine for them, I might as well serve it for you, too. Take
your horses round the back into the stable and hand them to Dion, the weird lad. I’ll open the back door up for you.’
The three of them, along with their two tired horses, passed under the arch into a small courtyard, where they crossed to the stables. A young boy was sitting on a bale of hay just inside the doorway to the stable building, and Callie was surprised to see him counting coins. Not cheap brass or common silver, either, but rare, good golden coins. That seemed odd, for a servant or a slave. Callie was a free girl from a reasonably good military household and even she had only ever once held a gold coin. This lad had five.
Her suspicion grew as the boy swiftly and deftly hid the money as soon as he saw the new people arriving. The two grown-ups didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘Dion?’ asked Scriptor.
‘Yes master. I can take your horses and have your gear brought to your room? I assume from the clothes you are part of the army here and staying in the same rooms, sir?’
Scriptor nodded and handed over the reins as he lifted Callie from the saddle and lowered her to the courtyard. Callie only became more and more suspicious as Dion threw her a strange look when he left with the horses. Almost as if he were expecting her. Weird. Dog paused once more, stretched once, twice – a quick fart for good measure – then a third time, and then wandered over towards the open brightly lit door with a satisfied look. Scriptor, Senex and Callie followed.
The twin rooms of the inn were empty except for the innkeeper at the bar and two big, hulking figures at a table, playing with a pair of dice.
‘Maximus? Brutus?’ greeted her uncle as they approached the table.
A couple of moments passed as the fact that they had been spoken to filtered through the big men and sank into their brains, then they both turned at the same time and, seeing the standard bearer, shot to their feet with a salute.
‘Sir? We weren’t expecting you here.’
‘No,’ Senex replied as Scriptor guided Callie to the table and she took a seat wearily. ‘We found some things out that got us worrying about you lot. Obviously we were in good time. You’d best go and wake the others, though, so we can tell you everything.’
Maximus frowned. ‘The others?’
‘Yes,’ replied Scriptor. ‘The centurion and Potens, Marcus and the rest.’
‘But they’re not here,’ put in Brutus.
Callie, who had started to sag sleepily, was suddenly alert again. ‘What?’
‘They went to the ruins before midnight.’
Scriptor leaned on the table. ‘To the ruins?’
‘Yes, to meet with someone who knows about this Moaner fellow.’
‘Minoan,’ corrected Senex.
‘That’s the one. Moanerian.’
‘The Minoan’s real name is Furius Maleficus,’ said Callie. ‘He’s a very bad man and a very powerful one. He owns the pirates who sank my mum and dad’s ship.’
Brutus and Maximus both sat for a moment, their brows creasing in deep thought. ‘Everyone in Cnossus is frightened of him,’ Brutus said eventually.
‘That explains why everything is so quiet and no one wants to talk to us,’ Scriptor sighed. ‘Well the others are in a lot of danger. We need to go and warn them. This Furius Maleficus killed a merchant in Gortyn. He’s a proper villain.’
Brutus flexed the enormous muscles in his arms, which moved around each other like footballs in a rubber bag. The tattoos of Spanish bulls on his biceps leapt about with the movement. Maximus let out a rumbled curse in his native Gaulish language.
‘Best get down to those ruins, then.’
‘Or we could go to the villa and just sort him out?’ suggested Maximus.
‘The villa on the way into town?’ Scriptor asked. ‘That’s the Minoan’s?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No. Lots of men there so we leave that place for now. Let’s go to the ruins and find the others.’
They were distracted for a moment by a noise from the bar and turned to see the innkeeper with a plate of meat and bread turning this way and that trying to keep it away from Dog, who was leaping about excitedly.
‘Dog!’ Callie shouted. ‘Come on.’
The animal gave one last sad look at the plate, threw a reproving glance at the innkeeper, and then ran over to join the visitors as they rose, tired, and made for the rear exit.
‘Make sure you leave a door open,’ Scriptor shouted to the innkeeper as they left. Maximus and Brutus ran across to their bunk room and collected their swords, shields and helmets, and Scriptor and Senex did the same from the stables. Dion, Callie noted, was nowhere to be seen.
Moments later the five of them were together again and moving off through the edge of town. They passed the final house and could see the ruins ahead in the valley, the bulk of the Minoan’s villa in between.
‘We could do with getting to the ruins without being seen from the villa,’ Scriptor noted. ‘In case they decide to follow us.’
Senex nodded and pointed down towards the river, so the five of them angled away and hurried down the slope towards the valley bottom. When they reached the stream, they turned and moved along the bank, the bright silvery moonlight as easy to find their way by as any sun. Halfway to the ruins, Callie hissed and then stopped. The others came to a halt and hurried across while Dog went to drink from the stream.
‘What is it?’ Uncle Scriptor asked.
‘The others came this way,’ Callie said.
‘You must be some tracker for your age, girl,’ muttered Senex, looking at the footprints in the mud by the river.
‘It’s easy. Look. Lots of big footprints, but one smaller set. That has to be Marcus. And look. The pattern of the nail prints on these boots? That’s Potens. I know, because he put extra nails in to give him better grip and to properly distribute his weight and save on shoe leather.’
‘Then they came this way before midnight. I wonder what happened when they met this person they were going to find?’ Scriptor murmured as they started to move again. After a few moments they reached the great, heavy fence that surrounded the ruins, and Callie clucked in irritation. There were no footprints here in the grass to show what way the others had gone.
‘Where now?’ her uncle asked her. ‘Left or right?’
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed, but then Dog wandered over, peered this way and that, and then began to snuffle at the ground. Something the hound found made him shake and wag excitedly, and he padded off up the slope. Callie grinned. ‘He smells Marcus.’
‘Lucky animal,’ old Senex grunted. ‘All I can smell is Dog, and he smells like a bum.’
They clambered off up the slope, following the animal as he traced Marcus’ scent through the grass. Callie stopped at one point, perhaps half way up, and turned to say something, but her uncle quickly put a finger to his lips and shook his head. As she fell silent, he cupped a hand to his ear and pointed at the fence. Callie strained to listen. The sound was slightly muffled by the fence and masked by the gentle breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees dotted about the slope. She could just make out angry words in Greek, though she couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. One thing was certain: those accents were not the centurion or Potens or any of the others who would be there. And that meant trouble.
They moved on up the slope slowly now, treading carefully and trying to be as quiet and subtle as possible which, in the case of Maximus and Brutus, was like trying to hide a twitchy bull in a glass jar. Still, even the two great big soldiers moved as carefully as possible, keeping ducked, since they were large enough that their heads might be seen over the fence. As they neared the top of the slope where the fence moved off to the left, Scriptor waved at Callie and called her back quietly. ‘Stay with us and safe now,’ he whispered.
His concern was sensible, as Callie learned a moment later when a raspy Greek voice ahead said ‘Look… it’s a stray dog.’
Another added: ‘Get out of here, mutt,’ and a clod of earth flew out from the shadows beyond a tree
, almost hitting Dog, who yelped and danced away from it, circling back towards his friends.
As they reached the tree, where Dog seemed to be getting excited again, Scriptor waved the others to stop and then moved to the edge of the tree trunk. A few more steps and he dropped to his knees. After a moment, he hurried back to them.
‘Two mercenary guards at the gate,’ he whispered.
Maximus and Brutus looked at one another and shrugged. ‘You,’ hissed Maximus finally, and Brutus grinned.
‘Can you do it quietly?’ Scriptor asked. ‘We don’t want to alert those inside.’
Brutus shrugged. ‘Trust me.’
‘To be quiet? Hardly,’ hissed Scriptor, but relented with a sigh. He could take one of the guards out silently, but not two, and Callie and Senex would never manage, so he would need Brutus or Maximus one way or another anyway. ‘Go on, then.’
Brutus, grinning, lowered his shield to the grass and left it with Maximus. He also removed his helmet so that the only thing that might jingle was the fastening of his sword to his belt. Finally, he slipped off his hobnailed sandals and flexed his toes in the cool grass.
Then he was off.
Scriptor and the others moved up to the tree, watching him go. Callie, despite her uncle’s silent urging not to, dropped to the grass and scurried forward where she could observe the scene while lying down barely-visibly.
She watched Brutus walking towards the gate calmly, without a care in the world, as though he were popping to a bakery to buy bread. Callie actually smiled at the strangeness of it. They were in some of the worst danger she could imagine, the others had apparently vanished, and it looked like the bad men had taken control of the ruins, and yet Brutus was walking over to the guards calmly as though he were asking where the nearest baths were.
The two men at the gate spotted Brutus and both drew their swords, pointing them at him.
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