Tag caught sight of a long, bright-red shield leaning against the wall. As quickly as he could, he grabbed hold of Castor and pushed the boy to safety under the eaves, shoved the torch into the rocks, and grabbed the top of the long scutum, pulling hard with both hands against the accumulation. The shield came free with such force, he almost toppled backward.
From the corner of his eye, Tag caught sight of Castor crouching under the crumbling eaves. “Go to the men!” he repeated to the boy. “You will be safe there.”
“No, I am not leaving you!”
Titurius lunged at Tag with the sword. Tag blocked the blow with the shield, which sent him deeper into the bed of ash and rock. He had barely heard the thud of metal on wood over the roaring of the mountain, but he felt the hit vibrate through his arm up to his shoulder. It was as if they moved in a strange dream, where everything was slow and muffled.
Tag concentrated on not losing his balance on the shifting ground as his owner came at him again and again. The master had experience and rage on his side, and pride: Titurius would rather die than allow Tag to live. But Tag had youth and strength; he could outlast Titurius if needed. He kept backing up to draw the master farther away from the room with the light. The man clearly did not like being led into the darkness, and the floating ash seemed to unsettle him.
Suddenly, Lucia’s father charged at him like a bull, and Tag barely blocked the swipe at his neck. Titurius bared his teeth in a growl. “Fight, you lily-livered son of a sow!” he roared.
“How can I fight with no weapon?” Tag yelled back. “You have no honor attacking an unarmed man!”
“You are not a man, you are a slave! A thing I own!”
They continued circling each other, catching their breaths. Tag’s lungs burned as he sucked in the hot, ashy air.
“Leave him be, Dominus!” yelled Pontius from the open door. “He will die in the elements soon enough.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill him yet,” Titurius said with an ugly grin. “But my fool daughter will come back if she knows he is here, and then I will finish him off in front of her. Call out to her. She can’t have gotten far!”
Pontius shook his head but complied. “Lucia! Domina!” he yelled. “The medicus is here! Come back!”
Lucia was that close? Tag whipped his head around looking for her.
Titurius attacked.
Lucia huddled in the dark under the eaves right outside the barracks. She heard her father’s angry voice mixed with the mountain’s roaring, and wondered whom he was yelling at this time. Was he sending someone after her? She had to go, but where? Think. Think. Could Tag have left with the groups of slaves fleeing to the countryside? Or perhaps he’d gone wherever the laundress was heading. He could be anywhere! Despair hovered with every ashy breath.
“Lucia!”
She raised her head. Who was calling her?
“The medicus is here! Come back!” someone yelled. It didn’t sound like her father. Pontius? She trusted Pontius.
She moved toward the sound. “Tag is there?” she shouted back.
“Yes, yes. He has come,” bellowed the trainer. “In the cells with us. Come!”
She pushed through the accumulation toward the barracks. As she neared the lit room, she caught sight of shadows moving near a torch set in the ground.
“What is happening?” she called out to Pontius. “Where is Tag?”
“It’s a trap!” Tag’s hoarse voice emerged from the blackness. “Run!”
She did run, but toward him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a bobbing light moving closer. It had to be Lucia, but he couldn’t let himself be distracted. Titurius attacked again, using overhead blows that forced Tag to hold the shield high. After carrying Castor for what seemed like hours, his already-exhausted arms trembled with the effort.
“Stop, Father, stop!” Lucia cried out. “Please! I’m coming.”
Titurius turned toward her, and in that moment, Tag remembered Sigdag telling him to go low when someone consistently attacked high. So with every ounce of power and rage Tag had left, he slammed the edge of the shield into the back of Titurius’s knees.
The master screamed as both of his legs buckled, but he held on to his sword. Tag smashed the shield down on Titurius’s chest and heard the breath go out of him as he sank deep into the bed of tiny rocks. Tag dropped the shield and used two hands to twist Titurius’s wrist until he loosened his grip on the sword. With a growl of satisfaction, Tag took it and held it over the man’s neck.
“Tag, don’t!” Lucia yelled.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” he roared.
“Because he’s my father. Because … because you’re not a murderer.” She moved closer to him, lowering her voice as if gentling a horse. “You are a healer, Tag. Not a killer.”
Lucia was really here? Tag’s rage began to dissipate. “He would kill me without a moment’s hesitation.”
“Let’s just leave, Tag. Right now. Take the sword and we’ll disappear —”
“Give me the sword, boy,” Pontius yelled, coming up behind them.
Tag groaned, still holding the sword to the master’s neck. There was no way he could physically overcome the big Samnite. But even as he fought with himself about what to do, Pontius lunged at him and wrestled the sword out of his hand, all in what seemed like a blink.
Lucia moaned. Tag backed up, trying not to lose his balance in the ever-growing accumulation of rock beneath his feet.
“Kill him for me now!” her father yelled.
“No!” Lucia begged.
Tag put his arms up in an appeasing gesture. Pontius had always seemed to like him, but that wouldn’t make any difference now — not when the master gave him a direct command. He stopped backing up, dropped his arms, and straightened his spine. It was over. He looked Pontius directly in the eye. Die with dignity, he remembered from the gladiator code. He could at least do that.
But instead of striking him, the old overseer announced, “If yer going to run, boy, do it now. This is yer only chance.”
Tag released a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.
“WHAT??!” roared Titurius. “You betray me too?”
“Ye will let him go, and ye will unshackle all my fighters,” Pontius said, turning to Titurius with the sword. “I will not have them die like penned animals.”
“They are my property,” the master shouted. “I will do with them what I want!”
As the two men argued, Tag ran to Lucia and took her in his arms. “You came back,” he whispered, his throat tight.
She squeezed him hard and said, “We need to go now.”
He nodded. “But I won’t leave Castor,” he said, turning to look for the boy. “He has to come with us.”
A burst of strange thunder rolled over their heads and they all cringed. Flashes of red lightning flickered across the blackness. Castor came running from under one of the eaves. “Why did the master want to hurt you?” he wailed.
Tag looked over at Pontius and Titurius. The overseer had the sword pointed at her father’s chest. “Unshackle ’em,” Pontius commanded again. Tag sent the old trainer a silent prayer of thanks.
Lucia squeezed his hand to get his attention. “Let’s go,” she urged.
“We’re going to need the torch,” Tag said. He scrabbled through the rocks as fast as he could, grabbed the torch, picked up the shield, and ran back toward Lucia and the boy. Castor had his head buried against Lucia’s waist, and despite the odds against them, Tag felt his heart lift. They were going to do this. They were finally going to leave. Together.
Tag lifted the scutum, Castor reclaimed their discarded pillows and blankets, and the three of them huddled under the rectangular shield for protection as they set off. They moved as a unit, Lucia holding the torch in front of them, but it only gave them inches of light in the inky, hot blackness. The constant pinging of rocks on the shield, combined with the mountain’s endless roaring, created an unear
thly cacophony straight out of Pluto’s realm.
Like a slow-moving beetle with six legs, they shuffled out of the compound toward the Nucerian Gate, past the eerily quiet palaestra and amphitheater in the center of the city. By now, the streets were mostly empty, though they spied the occasional bobbing light from a torch or lamp.
“Where are we going?” Castor asked several times.
“To safety,” Tag always answered.
“Is the world ending?” he asked.
“No,” Lucia said. But did she know, really? It certainly seemed possible.
The little boy began to cry. “It is ending, I can tell.”
Lucia took his hand and squeezed. “As long as we are together, the world will not end. I promise. We are going to stick together and make it out.”
As they neared the gate, she stepped up on an unusually high crossing stone. To her surprise, it gave beneath her foot, as if she’d trod on an overly filled wineskin. She yelped in shock and fell backward. Tag caught her just in time, though he had to release the torch, and Castor snatched it up from the ground before the fire was snuffed out.
“Did you hurt your ankle again?” he asked.
She shook her head, staring. The thing she had thought a stone was slowly turning into a monster. The ash-coated creature rose on four spindly legs and squealed in outrage.
“It’s a pig,” Lucia said in wonderment.
The animal grunted and squealed again and worked its trotters in the ash and rock, scattering small stones in its wake as it set off in a panic.
“Why was the pig there?” the boy asked.
“It must have fallen asleep,” Tag said to Lucia. “You saved it.”
But she didn’t see how she helped it at all. When the poor beast tired out and lay down again, it would be covered up just as quickly as before. If she hadn’t stepped on it when she did, it probably would have died sooner, more mercifully. She wondered about the other odd shapes she’d seen covered in the layers of tiny rocks. Were they also animals, slowly asphyxiating?
“Oh, gods,” she cried out. “Minos! We have to go back for Minos — he’s still tied up!”
“No, Lucia, it’s all right,” Tag soothed her. “I freed him hours ago. He took off. I’m sure he is well away and safe by now.”
“He ran off? You freed him?”
“Yes, and we must keep moving, so that we will be free too.”
Still, Lucia hesitated. What about Cornelia? Was she all right? Could she really run without ever seeing her again? Without ever saying good-bye?
“What is the matter?” Tag asked.
“What if — what if Cornelia is hurt? What if she needs my help?” Guilt edged her concern as she realized this was the first time since the mountain exploded that she had even thought about her friend.
Tag tugged at her arm. “Cornelia has Antyllus and an army of slaves to take care of her,” he reminded Lucia. “She will be fine. Unlike us, if we are caught. We must keep going.”
With a pit of worry tightening in her stomach, Lucia knew Tag was right. “Good-bye, my friend,” she whispered through a tight throat, and they resumed their slow but persistent plodding. I will find some way to see you again soon.
Tag’s muscles trembled with relief, fear, and exhilaration all at once. The world around them had turned into a nightmare, yet it was also giving him the chance to make his greatest dream come true: To escape and live as a free man with Lucia by his side.
He wanted to move faster, to run, but knew it was better to keep their measured pace. Still, he worried about Lucia and the boy. Castor wasn’t going to be able to keep walking for long. One of them would have to hold him soon, which would slow them down even more. He wondered if he could create a kind of sling for the child so he could carry him on his back without using his arms.
He was still thinking about how to tie the sling as they neared the Nucerian Gate. He spotted a fresh torch that had been discarded on the rocks, and grabbed it. They would need the additional light once their current torch began to sputter.
“Carry this,” he told Castor. “We must all do our part.”
The boy nodded solemnly and held the unlit torch with both hands.
At the gate, they were surprised to find a small crowd huddled under the tall concrete arches. Some had lamps, and their faces flickered gray with a coating of ash.
“Have you seen my son?” an old man asked them, eyes wide and confused. “His name is Gaius Sabinus.”
“No, grandfather. Are you injured?” Tag asked.
“No, no. I … I …” He looked around as if trying to place where he was. “I am waiting for my son. My son told me to wait for him here. He is fetching a cart for me to ride in. He told me to wait here.”
Lucia squeezed Tag’s hand. Something wasn’t right. He squeezed back as if he sensed it too.
“Perhaps you would be better off on the road. He will find you,” she said.
“No. No. No,” the man repeated. “He told me to wait at the gate.”
“We can’t just leave him,” she whispered to Tag.
“But we can’t take him with us either!” He wanted to help the man, who reminded him of his own dead apa, but how could they? And how awful would it be for the son if he actually arrived and his father had disappeared? “We can’t help him, Lucia,” Tag said. “We must focus on getting out.”
She nodded, though he could see it pained her to leave the old man. For a moment, Tag felt a surge of exasperation and frustration. They couldn’t save everybody! As much as his instincts as a healer told him to do something, he knew that he could not. “His son will come for him,” he said aloud, as much for himself as for her. “We must keep moving.”
Once through the gate, he breathed deeply. The air still swirled with ash and stank of sulfur, but they were out. Out of Pompeii!
Many of the tombs of the necropolis outside the gate were almost completely covered with mounds of ash and rock. Only the tops of small obelisk-like monuments poked through. The road cutting through the necropolis was only identifiable by the depression in the rocks made by countless Pompeians on the run.
Once past all the graves, Lucia insisted they move off the road.
“Nobody will recognize us in this darkness,” Tag said. “We will be fine on the road.”
“But we don’t know how far this dark cloud extends,” Lucia said. “What if someone recognizes me when it clears? They will want to know where my father is, and insist on escorting me to the ‘safety’ of his friends in Nuceria. And if they don’t recognize us,” she added more quietly, “Castor is bound to accidentally give us away.”
This was true. The boy wouldn’t mean to, but he would say something that would let any listeners know who they were — and if Lucius Titurius should decide to follow them, they couldn’t take any risks. Tag led them off the main path to the edge of the woods.
“Where are we going?” Castor asked.
“A secret way,” Tag answered. This was their original plan — to stay parallel with the main road, but not on it. Only, they had never imagined traveling in such strange and dark circumstances. He looked up at the thin but steady stream of traffic on the road to Nuceria. As long as they kept the flickering torchlights to their left, they would not run into any difficulty.
“It’s scary out here!” the boy cried.
“We’ll be fine,” Tag assured him. “I promise.”
It didn’t take long after they moved away from the road before Castor began whining. “I’m tired. I’m thirsty.”
“We all are, mellite,” she said. “We just have to bear it until we get to Nuceria.”
Tag shook his head. “I should have thought to grab some food and water as we left.”
“How could you?” she said. “And from where? We had to leave when we did, Tag. Do not blame yourself.”
He slowed. “All the same, maybe we should go back on the main road. People are bound to have something to drink with them. We can trade for some —”
She stubbornly shook her head.
“Lucia, we are covered in ash. None of us is recognizable. Maybe staying on the main road is safe enough under the circumstances.”
She pointedly looked at Castor and then back at Tag. They simply couldn’t risk it, not when they were so close to freedom. Tag sighed, and something about his expression reminded her of Damocles.
“Tag,” she said, pausing and looking up at him. “I’m sorry about your apa. I saw him….”
He swallowed hard and nodded. After a moment, he said, “Come, we must push on.”
Fatigue filled her bones, and she wished she’d slept some the night before. Time seemed to shrink and expand. They could have been walking in the nightmarish world of thick black air for moments or hours. Was it possible to sleep while walking and holding a torch? How else could she explain not noticing that Tag now carried the boy on his back, even as he held up the shield? When had Castor climbed up?
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Get Castor on your back?”
Tag furrowed his brow at her. “We stopped and shifted because he was fussing so much….”
She remembered none of this. They trudged on. Slowly, she became aware that Tag was breathing heavily.
“We need to stop and rest,” she said. He was clearly exhausted.
He shook his head.
“Let’s just go to the edge of the woods and let the shield down for a few minutes,” she said. “The trees will give us some protection from the falling pumice.”
“But I don’t like it in the woods,” Castor whined. “I’m scared.”
“It’s all right,” Tag said as he led them to the trees. He put Castor and the shield down and shook his arms out, then jammed the end of the torch into the ever-deepening carpet of rocks, ash, and stone.
Castor plopped down on the carpet of small stones. “Ouch,” he mumbled.
Curses and Smoke Page 22
