There was a general uncomfortable silence in the room. They were soldiers, and had faced war. No one liked to lose a friend, but they were all prepared for it.
‘Alright, Potens. We’re ready,’ the centurion said.
The engineer stepped to the side and nodded to the two men with the flagstone in their hands. They rocked it back and forth three times to get used to it, then stepped forward and swung it at the middle of the three hinges. They missed by almost a foot, cracking the stone into the wall, at which one of the legionaries swore badly and whimpered about his fingers. A moment later they moved back into position and tried again.
The huge stone hit the bone hinge and smashed it into dozens of pieces. Their momentum carried them into the door and, with only one cracked bone hinge attaching it to the wall at the bottom, the door burst open, slamming back against the wall, the chain rattling. The two legionaries with the rock, taken by surprise, stumbled forward a pace or two into the open and then fell on their fronts, dropping the rock beneath them.
After the pitch black of the room’s interior, even the moonlight was as blinding as midday, and Marcus blinked, not able to see what was happening outside. He was pushed aside by Gallo as he and the legionaries emerged into the open, roaring the battle cry of the Twenty Second Legion as they brandished their random assortment of weapons.
They were instantly in trouble, and Marcus could see that as he picked himself up and moved to the door. The two guards in the open space in front of the door were well armed. Both were clearly ex-gladiators from their helmets and steel-plated arm guards. They held short swords and had good round shields protecting them. The legionaries were armed with sticks. It was going to be horrible to watch. A creak drew Marcus’ attention and he looked left to see one of the archers pulling back his bow string, an arrow pointed at the centurion. The other archer was doing the same at the far side, preparing to shoot Florus, who was yelling as he brandished his stick.
They were all going to die. Marcus took a deep breath and glanced at Potens. They nodded and braced to run out into the disaster.
Chapter Ten
Callie crept across the roof, careful where she was placing her feet. In a few places the plaster ceiling had fallen in, the timbers beneath old and rotten. Gradually, she approached the far side. Senex and uncle Scriptor followed on close behind, having just climbed the staircase from the big courtyard at the palace’s centre. Dog skittered up the steps and mooched around the rooftop, looking for something to chew.
Senex and Callie between them had guided the small group through the palace, using their sharp minds and their understanding of the palace’s layout from what they had seen earlier higher up the hill. Sure enough, as they approached the edge of the roof, she could see the big building that had stood in the way earlier and blocked their view of what was happening, but now they could also see behind it, to a smaller, heavy building, which seemed to be guarded. And if it was guarded, then it almost certainly held the legionaries and her brother. She smiled in satisfaction as she crouched so as not to be easily seen.
It was about eight feet down from here to the next roof – the roof of the very building that held their friends. And then another eight to the ground. Scriptor and Senex dropped to a crouch as they came up next to her.
They could see two armoured men standing in the space in front of that building, and two archers to the sides, standing atop parts of the ruin so that they had a good view of the building’s door. Callie’s eyes flicked left and right. Somewhere to either side, Brutus and Maximus were making their way through the palace as carefully as they could. She didn’t like leaving the two men to approach on their own, but these roofs were delicate, and Brutus and Maximus were huge and weighed as much as a cart ox. There had been a very good chance that they would just have fallen through the roof somewhere, so they had stayed at ground level and moved around the edge. She prayed to Mercury of the winged sandals that they were quick and quiet.
‘Our friends must be in there,’ Scriptor whispered.
Senex peered up the hill and the others followed suit. The figures of the mercenaries with the captain were now entering the Minoan’s villa way up the slope, leaving a small group at the gate. There was a little activity there, presumably involving looking for the missing guards and securing the gate again. Very soon they would find the bodies of the unconscious men, the alarm would be raised and chaos would break loose. This had to happen fast.
They looked back at the ground ahead. There were four men.
‘We need to take all four out as fast as possible and not allow time for them to react or shout for help, and we need to do it before that lot at the gate call out for their friends,’ Scriptor muttered. ‘And I have no idea how we are going to do that.’
Callie reached out both hands and grabbed the men at her sides. ‘Did you hear that?’
The soldiers frowned. ‘Hear what?’ they said, all possible noises slightly obscured by the sound of Dog scratching furiously behind his ear.
‘Sounded like stone being moved down there in that building. Heavy stone.’
‘That has to be the work of Potens, then,’ Senex muttered, remembering the effort of lifting the stone lid over the labyrinth at Crocodilopolis back in Egypt.
‘Can you hear talking?’ Scriptor asked quietly. ‘Quite muffled, and I can’t quite make it out.’
Callie strained to hear over the gentle shushing of the breeze in the trees around the edge of the ruins. There was a muffled conversation going on and even as she listened one of the guards shouted through the door ‘What are you doing in there?’
‘It’s Egyptian,’ Callie said, grinning. ‘It’s our friends and they are speaking Egyptian so that the guards don’t understand them.’
‘Whatever we’re going to do we have to do it now, wherever Brutus and Maximus are. How’s your throwing, Senex? Could you hit one of those archers from here with a rock?’
The old man rolled his eyes. ‘From here I couldn’t hit you with a rock.’
There was a sudden muffled bang and cursing from the building below. Callie frowned as she saw the two armoured men drawing their swords and the two archers pull an arrow from their quiver and put them to their bows. A faint cloud of dust rose from where the door of the building would be, visible only because it caught in the moonlight as a puff of floating motes.
‘Whatever it was, it was Potens’ doing,’ grunted Senex.
‘They’re trying to escape!’ Callie hissed. ‘Somehow they are breaking down the door.’
‘Stay here,’ Scriptor said to her and Senex and, with surprising agility for a large man, he vaulted from the plaster platform, landing on the roof of the building below in a crouch. In a heartbeat, he was up and running again, his sword out and in his hand, bare feet slapping on the stone. As the century’s standard bearer, he rarely took part in actual fighting and often dipped out of sword practice But that did not mean he was no good with his weapon. In fact, even Centurion Gallo admitted that after himself Scriptor was the best swordsman in the unit.
Senex rolled his eyes at the foolhardiness of his friends but Callie was terrified, her heart pounding as she watched her uncle running towards those two armoured men. He was good, but so were they and there were two of them, and a pair of archers, too. Dog appeared as if from nowhere and leapt from the roof to the one below, his paws skittering along the next level of plaster.
There was another enormous bang and the hidden front of the building below exploded, the door bursting open and men spilling out into the night. The first two legionaries were carrying something big and fell face first to the floor, but other soldiers were running past them immediately. Uncle Scriptor reached the end of the lower roof and leapt, passing over the heads of the emerging soldiers and howling as he charged the two armoured men. Dog was only feet behind him.
The two armoured guards looked at one another nervously as this barefoot, unarmoured lunatic ran at them silently, a sword whirling around in his
hand, his teeth bared. Behind him came a flood of men, poorly armed, but all skilled, fit and determined, and a dog, growling and snarling. Still they stood their ground. The archers were ready, of course.
Callie’s heart was thumping in her ears as her eyes turned to the bowmen only to see Brutus and Maximus emerge from the shadows where they must have been lurking and waiting. One archer let off his arrow just as Maximus hit him at a full run. The man was knocked out of the way like a skittle, the arrow sailing off harmlessly up into the night sky towards the surrounding woods. As he hit the ground, Maximus landed on him like a pile of bricks, knocking him out completely. The other archer never got to let his arrow go as Brutus’ huge fist dropped onto the top of his head with the crushing weight of a small building landing on him. The archer crumpled like concertinaed paper, the arrow springing from the bow and thudding into the dust a few paces away.
Scriptor leapt at one of the two men at the centre, his sword a whirring blur of silvery-blue steel and the guard desperately stuck his own sword in the way as much as he could, knocking away Scriptor’s blade only to see it back and whirring again a second later. His shield came up to protect him and there was a repeated ding, clong, bang as the standard bearer’s sword hit that shield and put endless dents in it.
Gallo and Florus were on the other man, who was struggling, his sword jabbing out at the centurion, his shield moving to stop the legionary hitting him. Even as he just about managed to hold off the two men, dog bit the man’s toes hard. The guard howled and tried to shove the dog away with his savaged foot, but dog just sank his teeth into the leg instead. Then a third and a fourth legionary joined in, and soon the guard was being hit and poked with sticks again and again as dog stayed clamped painfully to his leg.
Both those two former gladiators backed away from their angry opponents until they suddenly found themselves trapped, with their backs against trees.
It was over almost as quickly as it had started. The archers were utterly unconscious and the two armed men dropped their weapons and raised their hands now that they were suddenly surrounded by a dozen armed and angry men and their archers had gone.
‘Come on,’ said Senex, and scurried back across the roof to the stairs. Callie watched him go and instead gently lowered herself over the edge and dropped to the roof below. Breathing heavily from the exertion, she moved on across the next roof and reached that edge just as Marcus and Potens emerged from the building, slowly, eyeing the men ahead. Callie’s heart soared at the sight of her brother safe and sound. She squealed as she jumped from the roof, hitting the ground and rolling in the dust before coming up and running at Marcus with her arms spread open.
She hit him like a bull at a gate, folding her arms around him and grinning, almost knocking him to the ground with the force of her hug.
‘I was so worried about you!’
Marcus blinked in shock, looking around him. Only now did he realise that the reason the men had run out of the building and won the day rather than all dying in the open space in front of the door was because of Maximus and Brutus, who had come from somewhere unseen and dropped both archers before they could let their arrows go. Even Uncle Scriptor was among the men at the centre disarming the two despondent enemy warriors.
‘Where did you come from?’ he asked, incredulous.
Callie laughed. ‘We found out who the Minoan was at the Gortyn records office, as well as what he was capable of doing. We had to come and warn you. Looks like we got here just in time, too.’
‘The Minoan?’ Marcus’ face hardened. ‘He owns the pirates in the Cretan Sea.’
‘I know,’ Callie replied, her excitement giving way to seriousness for a moment. ‘His pirates captured the Argo three years ago because it was carrying a priceless book. He had the ship’s owner killed. He took mum and dad’s ship, Marcus. He was the one who had it renamed at Lebena.’
‘And he sells his captives as slaves,’ Marcus said quietly. ‘In the east, in Cyprus and Judea. We need to find him and stop him and maybe he can tell us where they went.’
‘He lives in that villa at the top of the slope,’ Callie said. ‘And I think they just all went in there apart from a few at the gate.’
Centurion Gallo, along with Scriptor, strode across to them.
‘Well done, young Callie,’ the centurion said quietly. ‘Your uncle tells me it was you that pieced everything together in Gortyn. Your timing is excellent. You saved us at the very last moment.’
‘And now we need to go to the villa and take on the Minoan,’ Marcus said purposefully.
No,’ Gallo replied.
‘What, sir?’
‘You heard the same as the rest of us,’ the centurion said. ‘We only have our own testimony, a few small charges here and the warrant from our own prefect in Egypt. Much of what we know is not backed up by evidence. This Minoan – Furius Maleficus – was a friend of the old emperor Trajan and has friends in high places as well as low. We need to have clear proof when we arrest him, or he’ll get away with it. He can afford the best lawyers in the empire, and with a small army and a fleet of pirates he can seek dreadful revenge. We need him to be so clearly guilty that the local governor can arrest and sentence him and strip him of all his goods without fear that someone in Rome will come to the villain’s defence and overturn the governor’s decision.’
‘You mean we need to catch him red-handed,’ Callie said.
‘Precisely. We have to time it right. And here in Cnossus he has the whole town terrified and working for him. So we need to wait until he is at Gortyn.’
Callie frowned, and so Marcus explained. ‘The Minoan is going to Gortyn in the morning to get a ship for Rome where he expects to collect something from the old emperor’s will. If we can trap him in Gortyn and show everyone what he really is in the capital, right under the governor’s nose, there will be nothing he can do.’
‘So we need to come up with a plan, and we need to be in Gortyn in time to prepare it,’ she mused. ‘And you say the Minoan is going there in the morning?’
‘At first light.’
‘Then we need to slow him down while we race back to the city.’
The centurion shook his head. ‘Your uncle is exhausted, and so are you and Senex. You three haven’t slept for two days.’
‘I can sleep on the back of a horse,’ Callie countered. ‘And none of you have slept tonight, either.’
Scriptor sighed. ‘She’s right. And you know Callie, sir. She’ll just come anyway if you forbid her.’
‘Alright. Once we’re in the city we can probably rely on the governor’s men if we need manpower. The four of us, and Potens, will head back to Gortyn and work something out. We’ll leave Senex and the others here to delay the Minoan and buy us time.’
The oldest soldier in the legion was wandering across the ground towards them now, having found an easy way down.
‘I have a job for you, Senex.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m leaving you in Cnossus with ten men, including Brutus and Maximus. Scriptor, Potens, the children and I are going to Gortyn to set a trap for the Minoan. But he’s planning to leave for the city himself at first light. I need you to delay him. I don’t care how you do it, though try not to get anyone killed. The more time you can buy us, the better.’
Senex smiled. ‘I think I have an idea already, sir. These hills are beset with bandits, I expect. Or at least, they will be once I get the men armed up and ready.’ He gave a throaty chuckle.
‘Good man. Right now, though, we need to leave these ruins and deal with the group at the gate, preferably without word of it getting back to the villa, at least for now. I want to be well on the road back to Gortyn before the Minoan discovers that.’
‘Far too late for that, sir,’ said Scriptor, cupping a hand to his ear. They could now all hear the alarm being given up in the villa. ‘We need to move fast. Back to the inn where we can steal the fastest horses to get us to Gortyn.’
‘Commandeer,
Scriptor, not steal,’ Gallo said, pulling a face.
Scriptor grinned. ‘Either way, we need to move fast.’
‘Up the slope, lads,’ Gallo shouted to his men. ‘We need to take the gate and remove the guards there, then get back to the inn.’
By the time they rounded the larger building where Marcus had had his clandestine meeting, the legionaries were forming up and starting to jog. No military battle formation, this. Just an angry, determined crowd of very tough men running up the slope. Many were unarmed and unarmoured, some without even shoes. Four of the men, though, had taken the weapons and shields from the guards and the bows from the archers.
They crossed that theatre-like area with the stepped seats and ran up the slope towards the gate in the fence. Marcus and Callie, despite being shorter, were managing to keep up with the soldiers. Ahead, they could hear urgent action at the fence. Someone shouted an order to lock the gate and there was the jangling of key and lock there even as men ran around preparing to stop the prisoners escaping.
‘Would you do the honours?’ the centurion asked Maximus and Brutus as they neared the gate. The two big men grinned and saluted, beckoning to their friends to pass over the shields they had taken from the former gladiator guards. The rest slowed slightly, allowing the two mountains of muscle to pull out to the front.
Marcus and Callie watched with excitement as the two men reached the gate and did not slow down. In fact, they picked up speed until they pounded along, hunched behind those dented shields, roaring like some demented demon and moving like an avalanche going uphill.
They hit the gate.
The gateway was strong, and the lock powerful, five men on the other side holding it against an attack. Yet as Brutus and Maximus hit the gate together, all their weight behind the two borrowed shields, the whole thing sprang open as though it were made of sticks. In fact, as it smashed to one side, sending two men hurtling off across the grass on their backs, the hinges snapped and the gate creaked and hung off the post, broken. Those men who had been left to guard the gate and the fence stared wide-eyed in panic.
Pirate Legion Page 9
