‘What do you want?’
Brutus simply walked on towards them. The two guards looked at each other, confused.
‘Isn’t he one of them?’ a guard said. ‘A Roman?’
Brutus’ uniform would be the same as the soldiers with Marcus and that comment more or less confirmed that the guards knew about Centurion Gallo and his men, which could hardly be good. If the Minoan’s men controlled the fence, then the Romans must have been captured. Brutus would never manage to reason through something that complicated. Indeed, the big man spoke no Greek, and even his native Latin was hardly good. Certainly, he would have absolutely no idea what the guards on the gate were saying. The two men looked more confused.
‘Stop there, Roman,’ one of them said.
Brutus kept walking, whistling an old lullaby very quietly. The two men at the gate were clearly dumbfounded that this great brute of a thick Roman was ignoring them, despite the fact that they were threatening him with swords, and kept on walking towards them. Finally, one of them jabbed out with his sword, warning Brutus.
The big man reacted with a speed that few would expect from such a bag of muscles as him. He knocked the sword aside with his thick wrist and stepped in right next to the two men.
‘Evening,’ he said in a friendly voice as his giant meaty plates of hands came up. The two men struggled, one trying to get his sword in the way, the other one opening his mouth to shout a warning, but neither succeeded. Brutus’ great paws wrapped themselves around the two heads and banged them together with a clonk. Instantly unconscious, the two men simply collapsed to the ground and Brutus picked up the sword he’d been threatened with. He showed it to the others who were watching from near the tree.
‘Look at this toothpick,’ he snorted quietly. ‘Blunt and far too short. I use something longer and sharper than this to clean my nails.’
Scriptor grinned and rose to his feet, beckoning to the others, and the four of them hurried down to join Brutus where he stood over the unconscious guards.
‘Quickly,’ the standard bearer said. ‘Hide them.’
Brutus and Maximus picked up one guard each and hauled them off into the deep grass, where they found a ditch that might once have been a drain and dumped both men in it, clonking their heads together once more for good luck. When they hurried back, Scriptor and Senex were examining the gate.
‘It’s not locked,’ Scriptor smiled. ‘Of course not, since they’re in there. Come on.’
As quietly as he could, Scriptor slid open the bar and pulled at the gate. It opened easily and must have been oiled recently as there was no squeak. The five of them slid inside, and Dog joined them, sniffing and beginning to move ahead towards a big open area with lots of steps. Callie called him back in barely a whisper.
Beyond those steps, past a large, rather intact building, they could see a group of men gathered, and they were standing around on the ruins, all looking at somewhere the five of them couldn’t quite see, ahead behind that building.
‘I’d be willing to bet that’s where our friends are,’ Scriptor whispered. Why else would they need all the archers looking at one place?’
Senex nodded. ‘Then we need to get there, but the five of us can hardly take on that lot.’
‘Then we’ll have to wait until they move to do anything,’ the standard bearer replied. ‘But we need to get down there anyway, and preferably without being noticed.’
‘Then we need to go to the other side of the ruins and creep across towards them,’ Callie said.
Scriptor smiled. ‘Absolutely right. Let’s go and save our friends. But leave your sandals behind and anything that might clank. Brutus was right to do that. It’s the only way we’ll get through the ruins quietly.’
Chapter Nine
Marcus was the last into the new room, shoved roughly inside by some Cretan mercenary with brown teeth, breath that smelled of rotten fish and a face that not even his mother could have loved. He staggered into the doorway and turned to hurl an insult at his jailor, but stopped, instead focussing on the figure at the back and logging every detail, should he need it at a later date.
The Minoan.
The man was about the same size as Marcus’ uncle Scriptor and with a similar light but wiry build. But that was where the similarity ended. The collector, whose name he now knew to be Furius Maleficus, was a creepy-looking man. His hair was silver-coloured and curly, longer than was fashionable, like an ancient Greek philosopher. He had a beard that was missing the moustache on the top lip, which made him look silly, like he’d slipped with a razor. His eyes were sunk deep in his face and under heavy, hooded eyelids. And his skin was marked with scars where some disease had hurt him in the past and left its mark on him. If it hadn’t been for those marks, he would have thought the man looked an awful lot like the statues of the new emperor, Hadrian. But Hadrian always managed to look wise and imperial in his statues. This man looked like he would kick puppies and eat people he didn’t like. A truly horrible man.
His clothes were rich silks from the east, and his boots fine calf-skin. Everything about him acted as a reminder of how rich and powerful he was.
Marcus would remember him. Would know him anywhere now, even if he shaved or dyed his hair.
The door shut and he was plunged into darkness with the rest of his friends. They had been led around to another building, not far from the one with the columns where they had met the boy. Unlike that other one, this had a good, solid, modern door with a strong iron lock on it and no windows or other exits. It was also smaller, so there was little room for them all to spread out.
As they had been led round the edge of the ruins to this place that would be used as a cell, Marcus had briefly caught sight of the African boy in the shadows beyond the Minoan’s men, running off into the ruins. Good. At least he might get away. Perhaps he would go back to the inn and even warn the others? No. Dion was at the inn, and the African would know just as well as Marcus that it had been Dion who had told the baddies and sprung the trap on them. In fact, the African lad would probably run away for good now. The Minoan would not be pleased with him, and he had lots of money. There would never be a better chance or a better reason.
‘Keep them there for the day, Leontes,’ he heard the Minoan say to his guard captain. ‘Then kill them any way you wish, as long as it leaves no trace and no one can follow it back to me. Tell the locals the soldiers moved on in the night. You can collect their things from the inn and bury them.’
‘Sir, why keep them alive at all?’ Leontes asked, his Latin not well-spoken and spoken with a heavy Greek accent. It seemed that the Minoan’s favoured language was Latin, and his men had to speak it too. Likely he had spent so long at court in Rome that he had become very used to the world’s most common and useful language.
There was an irritated hiss. ‘For several reasons, Leontes. Firstly, there may be more of them and I don’t want to remove my only leverage until we are sure. So we give anyone else a full day to turn up first, and when they do you add them to the prisoners. And secondly, if anything goes wrong, I wish to be on the other side of the island at the time, so that no one will suspect that I am involved. I am bound for Gortyn at first light. I want to be there tomorrow.’
‘Gortyn, sir?’
Marcus felt his pulse start to race. The Minoan was going to Gortyn, where Callie and their uncle were. That could never be good. He had to escape and warn Callie.
‘Yes,’ the Minoan said. ‘The late emperor Trajan said he would leave me some of his artworks in his will when he died. The will is being dealt with now, so I must head to Rome to collect what he has left me. This new emperor does not like me, and I think he might contest the will if I leave it too long, but Hadrian is in the east at the moment, so I need to hurry.’
Marcus felt his temper growing. How had they ended up like this? Captured and doomed. And now the villain who had done it would sail away for Rome and be far from their grasp. They would never catch him now.
He heard the Minoan leaving, walking off across the stones, followed by a few more men. Captain Leontes cleared his throat outside the door, addressing his men.
‘Alright, you lot. I want two men on this door and two archers to stay and keep their arrows on it. They can’t get out anyway, but I’m taking no chances. The boss will be leaving at first light, in about three hours, and most of you will either accompany him or stay at the villa with me. Those of us who stay will be coming back to the ruins at sunset to get rid of these Romans.’
Marcus listened at the door, hearing the majority of the mercenaries marching off as ordered. Only two remained outside the door, chatting to each other in Greek, which he couldn’t understand.
‘That’s it, then,’ he said. ‘We have until sunset, then they come for us. And soon after that, the Minoan will be on a ship for Rome and we’ll have missed our chance to get him.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ Centurion Gallo rumbled in the darkness.
Marcus sighed. He reached up for the door handle and grasped it, yanking hard this way and that, pushing it, throwing himself against it, shoulder-first. The door barely budged. ‘There is no way to get out, sir,’ Marcus said in defeat.
Outside, the two guards and the pair of archers nearby laughed loud.
‘No point in struggling,’ one of them said in poor Latin. ‘Save your strength for tonight.’
Marcus sighed and stepped back.
‘There are other ways, Marcus,’ the centurion said quietly. ‘Potens? Ideas?’
The engineer was silent and even though it was pitch black in here, Marcus was sure he was frowning in concentration.
‘Firstly,’ Potens said, switching to the local Egyptian language they all knew from Alexandria, ‘let’s try not to let them know what we’re planning.’
‘Good idea,’ Gallo replied in Egyptian.
‘What’s going on in there?’ demanded one of the guards. ‘What’s that rubbish you’re saying?’
Marcus grinned. Good old Potens. Engineers always thought things through. Every man in the room had at least some small command of Egyptian. They needed it to read local signs, buy things from the market and even to pray at the local temples if they felt that a god with the head of some bird with a big nose might be useful.
‘There are no exits,’ the engineer noted, ‘and this is a very old building, made of big, heavy stones fitted together without mortar, but perfectly aligned. Most of these buildings have a mud, wood and plaster roof, I noticed on the way in, but this is the lower storey of a building that used to have a floor above, so the roof is of huge stone slabs to support the next floor. That’s of no use. And the floor is big stones. If we lift those up, there will just be solid ground below. I don’t think there’s much chance of us lifting one and finding the labyrinth of King Minos, since people have been looking for it here for centuries. So the roof is out, and so is the floor. The walls would take hours to get through even with tools, and we have only our bare hands. Which leaves the door.’
‘The door is solid,’ sighed Marcus. ‘No way out there.’
‘That depends,’ Potens replied. ‘The door is not an ancient thing. It’s been added recently by the Minoan’s men. So it depends partially on how the lock works. Or on where the hinges are positioned and what they are made of. Or whether we can get any leverage against the stone door frame. Or whether there is anything here in the dark we might be able to use. While I look at the door, I want everyone else to search every inch of this place for anything that’s not one of us. And I know that Florus keeps an eating knife hidden in his socks that he thinks we don’t know about, so Florus? Get it out. We might need it. And anyone not occupied with all this, start feeling around the walls. I know I said it would take too long to dig out through them, but perhaps there is a place where the stones are weak or weathered, or badly fitted. Something like that might make all the difference.’
‘Don’t forget,’ Gallo added, ‘that there are two armed guards out there and two archers. Even if we can work out a way to get the door open we will have to beat them, and all we have is a small eating knife. So everyone start thinking on that, too.’
While everyone else went about the small room, following Potens’ orders, Marcus joined the engineer in looking at the door. It had not initially occurred to Marcus, but the few doorways he’d seen on his way past the ruins had been empty, and even the good solid building they’d met the African boy in had had an ancient door that was little more than a piece of worm-eaten rotten wood hanging off a hinge. So much time had passed that the ancient doors had rotted away. The fact that this door was so solid confirmed that it was a recent addition.
He tried to picture the lock as they entered. It had been fastened with a good solid chain, attached to the door and to a metal loop hammered into the wall, all sealed with a barrel-shaped padlock. He remembered seeing both the chain and the metal loops. Both would be far too thick for a human to break. He turned his attention to the hinges, but Potens was in the way now, examining them.
From back in the room, someone said ‘I’ve found a stick. A long stick. Any use?’
‘Perhaps,’ replied the engineer, still examining the hinges. ‘It is,’ he said conversationally to Marcus as he crouched to look at the lower of the three hinges, ‘a sad fact that people pay too little attention to hinges.’
Marcus frowned.
‘Not me, of course,’ Potens smiled. ‘And for us, that fact is lucky. The men who put on this door for the Minoan were not clever. They think they have done a good job, for their chain and loops and lock are secure. But because of where they have positioned the door within the frame, so that it can open both inward and outwards, they have had to hammer the hinges into the stone frame and that has damaged the hinges. See?’
The engineer pointed to the attachments, and Marcus crouched, leaning closer, examining the fitting by the meagre moonlight filtering through the crack. Nothing looked unusual to him.
‘I don’t see it.’
‘This is a fairly standard hinge of a Roman design,’ Potens explained. ‘Bone cylinders around a pin, some attached to the door and some to the frame, so that it can turn on the pin. All well and good. But they’ve attached the bone cylinder to a metal spike to drive into the ancient stone of the frame. When they hammered them in, they cracked the bone on several of those cylinders. A good clout would break two of these three hinges.’
Marcus grinned. ‘And then the door would just open from the other side, regardless of the lock and chain.’
‘Precisely. So long as we can open the third hinge at the top. That one is intact. But,’ he added triumphantly, ‘it is also damaged in another way. See the pin that fits in the cylinders?’
Marcus looked. The wooden pin was just visible, poking out of the top. ‘Yes?’
‘Well, you shouldn’t be able to. It should be hidden from sight inside the cylinders. That one has not been pushed down far enough. If only we had some pincers. Still, Florus’ eating knife should do it. Fetch it, would you?’
Marcus floundered around in the dark for a moment until he found Florus, who was feeling his way along a wall and grumbling about it. Retrieving the knife, he took it to Potens who reached up, stretching, and jabbed the knife as hard as he could, end-on into the wooden peg protruding from the top of the hinge. He then tried to lift the peg out with the knife point. It took four goes, tense and sweating, to get the peg out.
As it came free with a little squeak, the door groaned and tipped very slightly to the left. Potens and Marcus both fell silent and went very still, sharing a glance, waiting until they knew whether the guards outside had noticed. When nothing happened, they began to breathe properly again and straightened with a grin.
‘That’s one. Now we need a makeshift hammer. We only need to remove the middle one, and the bottom one should break with a push.’ Outside, a guard told them again not to talk in that ‘foreign rubbish’.
Potens turned to the others. Alright, fellows
. We’re going out through the door shortly. You all need to be armed ready. Anything you can find. Knives, sticks, anything. And while you’re getting ready, I want someone to find the smallest stone flag in the floor and lever it up.’
He and Marcus listened in the darkness as the men set about their work again. Someone said ‘There’s another stick, and I think part of an old shovel. It’s rusty and not very good, but I wouldn’t want to be hit on the head with it.’
There was the groaning sound of slowly moving stone, accompanied by the grunting of two men working hard. Marcus almost jumped out of his skin as the guard’s voice outside came from just the other side of the door, scarily close.
‘What are you lot doing in there?’
‘Escaping,’ replied Centurion Gallo in Egyptian, getting a chuckle from some of the others.
A moment later, two legionaries appeared in the dull light that filtered through the gap near the hinges. They were carrying a piece of stone more than a foot across. From the strain on their faces, Marcus guessed it probably weighed about the same as him.
‘Too big,’ Potens said. ‘I can’t swing that.’
‘We can,’ the men grunted. ‘Where do you want it swinging?’
Potens pointed at the middle hinge and the men slowly swung the great big stone backwards.
‘Wait! Not yet,’ the engineer said, waving his hands. ‘Not until everyone is ready.’
‘We are as ready as we will ever be,’ Centurion Gallo said in the dark. ‘Come on, boys.’
Marcus caught the odd sight of numerous legionaries wielding makeshift weapons, little more than vague shapes in the gloom, the only light being the fragment of moonlight peeking around the door.
‘As soon as that door opens,’ Gallo said quietly, ‘run for the nearest enemy and drop him as fast as you can. There are four of them and twelve of us…’ Marcus felt a flush rise to his cheeks as he realised that the centurion had not counted him among the soldiers. ‘We will beat them, because we outnumber them. But they are tough and armed, and two of them have bows, so not all of us will make it. You don’t have time to worry about your friends. If someone gets stuck with an arrow and falls, you have to ignore him and run on. We need to take the four men down fast so that we can save as many men as possible and get after the Minoan.’
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