Ironroot (Tales of the Empire)

by S. J. A. Turney

  “What?” Catilina stared at him.

  “Your father.” Varro said, slapping his forehead.

  “What are you talking about, Varro?”

  “If the prefect’s guard are following me and killing farmers, then there’s a good chance the prefect himself is involved. And if that’s the case and your father’s investigating this, every day he stays in Crow Hill, surrounded by Cristus’ men, he’s in danger.”

  Catilina narrowed her eyes.

  “The men following you are Cristus’?”

  “One certainly was. I know his face well.” He crouched down and rolled the unconscious body over so she could see his face. “This man had lost money to me in dice games. He’s definitely one of them.”

  “And the others?” Catilina asked, staring into the peaceful face of the unconscious man.

  Salonius stepped into the centre of the room.

  “Excuse me, my lady, but you knew about them. And what do you mean ‘others’?”

  Catilina sat back and stretched.

  “I saw them leave the fort; four of them all cloaked up and secretive. I’ve been a mile or so behind them all the way. They’re not particularly observant.”

  “Shit!”

  Varro turned to Salonius.

  “There’s two more somewhere. They could already be at the way station up the valley.”

  The young man nodded and pointed at the body near the window.

  “I suspect our friend will know where they are.”

  Varro pushed his shoulders back and rubbed his side.

  “Well he’s not waking up in a hurry. Get him tethered and gagged. Make sure he’s absolutely secured and push him under the bed. I doubt he’ll wake til the morning anyway, but I don’t want to lose him.”

  He turned to Catilina.

  “I think we need to talk. Can I buy you a drink?”

  She flashed him a devastating smile.

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve said that, my little rabbit.”

  Varro smiled for a moment and then noticed Salonius grinning in the background.

  “And you can stop smirking and get to work on him. When he’s secure, come downstairs and join us. I’ll get you a drink in.”

  “With pleasure, sir.”

  Varro glared at Salonius and then turned to escort the lady in her travelling clothes down the stairs to the bar.

  Chapter Seven

  Adana awoke feeling unusually sore and disoriented. What had he been drinking last night? He tried to reach up to touch his sore head and realised something was dreadfully wrong with the world. His surroundings slowly swam into focus and it took a moment to realise he was upside down and swinging gently back and forth. He squinted at the figures in front of him. Ah, yes…

  Varro grasped the stick he’d been idly tapping his leg with and held it out to stop the man swinging.

  “I’m afraid you might be in a little trouble here, my friend.”

  Next to him, Salonius smiled nastily.

  “Care to tell us a little about yourself?” Varro asked in a friendly, sing-sing voice as though speaking to a difficult child.

  “Who are you people?” the dangling man asked innocently.

  Varro smiled happily and swung the stout, young, green stick he’d been holding at the man’s head. The impact made him yelp and left a long red line across his cheek and temple.

  “Some bad things have happened to me recently,” said Varro in his happy tone, “and this is really beginning to lighten my day. In fact, I daresay the longer you hold out, the happier I’ll get!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” The man hanging from the tree finally became aware that he was cold and struggled to lift his head enough to see his body. He was naked. “What are you doing with me?”

  “Oh, the naked part? That’s entirely unnecessary and gratuitous, I’m afraid” Varro laughed. “I just wanted to humiliate you a little. Now tell me who you are.”

  “My name’s Marco. I’m a smith from…”

  He was interrupted with another sharp thwack from Varro’s switch and yelped again. A sore red line crossed his chest. Varro leaned forward grinning.

  “You can skip the most blindingly obvious lies. I can’t remember your name but I think it starts with an ‘a’. I know you’re in the prefect’s guard and I know you have appalling luck at dice. How’s about you come clean, or do I get to have more fun?”

  The man coughed, shaking on his tether.

  “Ok, I’m one of Cristus’ guard. And yes, my name’s Adana. We were sent by the prefect to keep an eye on you. Rumours have reached him that you’re on to something important and he sent us to protect you.”

  “Indeed.” Varro grinned and gave a sharp flick of his switch, leaving a nasty line across the man’s hip. “Damn. I was aiming for somewhere delicate there but you moved.”

  “Hey!” the man shouted in pained panic.

  “Come on” cajoled Varro. “You haven’t even asked about your provost companion who you know damn well I left dead back in that barn. We’re not stupid, Adana. Just irritable and armed!”

  He gave another swipe, this time across the buttocks and much harder than before. The switch came back down by his side glistening and a drip of blood dropped from the end to the dirt. The man shrieked.

  “I’ve got so much more energy in my arm,” grinned Varro, “I could go on like this for hours.”

  Catilina stepped into view.

  “Varro, you may be having fun, but that’s all. He’s a professional soldier, like you. And a good one, if he made it to the prefect’s guard. You need to step this up.”

  Varro raised an eyebrow. Catilina cleared her throat.

  “Adana, tell us where the other two are.”

  The dangling man frowned. “Other two?”

  With a sigh, Catilina crouched down by the undergrowth at the side of the road and broke off a length of sharp, woody plant stem. With a look of concentration, she gritted her teeth and broke the foot-long stem into three pieces. Reaching down under the bemused gaze of Varro and Salonius, she retrieved Varro’s belt knife and used it to cut the ends of the three pieces at an angle. As she sheathed the knife again, she shrugged.

  “My father made it a rule at Vengen that all ladies needed to be taught how to defend themselves, given the fact that there are such a large number of off-duty soldiers there at any given time, and not all of them are gentlemen. I watched the first class and decided that being able to trip someone up and bite them wasn’t good enough. I asked my father’s adjutant, Captain Cialo, and he and Mercurias came up with a diagram of what they called pressure points. It’s quite fascinating, really.”

  Catilina held two of the sticks in her left hand and grasped the other tightly in her right. Slowly, she turned the hanging man so that he was facing away from then and crouched down. With one slender, immaculately manicured finger, she traced the line of muscle running from below his ear to his shoulder. Almost teasingly, she stopped half way along and drew a line inwards towards his spine with her nail. A couple of inches in, she stopped, and with a forceful thrust, pushed the sharpened end of stem into the man’s muscle. He screamed and jerked around on his rope like a fish on a line.

  Salonius’ eyes widened and Varro grinned, as the blood started to run in a slow stream down along his neck and into his hair, Catilina gave the end of the stem, sticking out of the flesh, a little tap and then turned him back to face them. The man’s eyes were scrunched up tight, tears streaming up his face.

  The elegant lady smiled at him.

  “Adana, I would very highly recommend you start answering Varro’s questions. There are more than a hundred pressure points. I can only remember thirty or so, and we’ll run out of points before we run out of sticks, but you really don’t want to get that far.”

  The man shook his head defiantly, his mouth clamped shut and his eyes closed tight.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, soldier.”

  She turned
to Varro. “Care to have a go?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he replied lightly. “Where next?”

  She spun the dangling figure round again and pointed to a spot on the back of the man’s leg, just above the knee. “That’s a good one.”

  Varro nodded, stepped forward and drove the stick in to that spot, point first. The man screamed again.

  As Varro turned him around once more and stepped back, he held out the third stick.

  “Salonius?”

  “Thank you, but I won’t. Fascinating to watch though.”

  Catilina grasped it.

  “Time to stop giving him time to breathe and recover. Salonius, cut some more sticks.”

  She stepped forward and used her fingers to locate a point next to the tendon above the man’s heel. Pausing only long enough to take a breath, she drove the stick in, accompanied by new shrieks of pain.

  As she returned to Varro’s side, she smiled at the weeping soldier.

  “Salonius: hurry up with those sticks, I’m getting bored.”

  Varro gave her a sidelong glance.

  “You can be a frightening woman, Catilina.”

  She shrugged. “No one stirs up trouble for my father. And no one hurts my friends.”

  She grasped the switch and ripped it out of his hand. Varro momentarily saw the tear trickle down her cheek before she stepped forward and began lashing the man repeatedly with the green rod, causing lines and welts and streams of blood to pour down the man’s chest and into his face. It took a few moments to realise that the man was babbling in a panicked voice, amid sobs and the repeated smacks of the rapidly-disintegrating cane.

  “Salonius!”

  The young man looked up at Varro and saw Catilina thrashing wildly at the man. As Varro stepped forward, grasped the switch and gently, but forcefully removed it from her hand, he turned and led her away, across the grass. Salonius walked over to the babbling man and, crouching down, began to talk to him, all the while grasping a few more sharpened sticks as incentive.

  Varro turned Catilina to face him and threw his arms around her shoulders. She buried her face in his chest and began to cry, clutching him so tight he tilted his face upwards and took a deep breath.

  “It’s alright Catilina. I sent two separate riders back to Crow Hill this morning telling your father he’s not safe and that he needs to head back to Vengen.”

  She shook her head without pulling away from him.

  “And I told him you were with me and safe,” he added.

  “No…” she said, muffled from within the folds of his tunic.

  “Don’t worry” he replied. “They were well paid and promised a lot more when they deliver. And there’s two of them. They’ll make it.”

  “But that won’t help you” she shouted, her voice thick with a mix of anger and despair, still muffled by his tunic.

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times, unable to find the words he felt he really needed, and finally closed his eyes and held her as tight as he could, as though he’d squeeze the hurt from her. Slowly her sobbing subsided and he loosened his arms. He smiled down at her; a strange smile.

  “That was most unlike you.”

  She gave him a weak smile in return.

  “Sometimes you just have to get it out of your system, Varro. Sometimes if you hold yourself together tight you crack like a new pot that cooled too quickly. Soldiers let their emotions out through violent behaviour and debauchery, both of which are frowned upon in a lady.”

  Varro laughed.

  “Whoever said that never saw you with a pointy stick!”

  He became aware that Salonius was standing patiently some distance from them, facing tactfully away and apparently studying some point on the horizon. Gently pushing Catilina away from him, he pointed at his young companion. Catilina nodded and, as she wiped he eyes and pinched her cheeks, the two of them wandered over to Salonius.

  “So what’d he have to say?” the captain asked casually.

  “Nothing too good,” the young man turned to face them. He looked troubled. “He says the four of them were sent after us by Cristus. Their orders were to observe us and report back until we reached the way station. After that their orders were to ‘deal with us’. The way he said it suggested to me that this is very much ‘off the books’. Kill us and dump the bodies somewhere they’d never be found; that kind of thing.”

  “And the other two?” Catilina queried.

  “Already ahead of us and waiting at the post, ma’am.”

  “That does it then” Varro snorted. “We can’t get too close to the place. If the two of them have orders to take us, then they’re going to have the garrison of the way station on their side.”

  “Why’s that?” Salonius frowned.

  The captain sighed.

  “We’re on personal business. I currently hold no active rank, you’re not officially on the cohort’s command guard lists, and the garrison won’t be able to identify Catilina. Those men, even if they’re perfectly innocent, have absolutely no need to take orders from us or even trust us. You can be pretty sure the two men waiting for us there have letters from Cristus giving them complete authority over the local garrisons. That’s what I would do if I were the prefect.”

  “Then we find another way around” stated Catilina.

  “I’m afraid not, my lady,” Salonius shook his head and Varro nodded his agreement. “The only reason for an outpost here is because it controls the only viable route.”

  The captain turned to his companion.

  “Unless, that is, you know of anything, being a local…”

  Salonius shook his head,

  “My home’s a good forty miles from here. I don’t know these valleys.”

  “Then there’s four choices,” Catilina held up her hand and counted off with her fingers as she spoke.

  “One: You attack the way station. I don’t know how many men they hold, but I presume you do. Very dangerous, but at least you have the initiative and surprise on your side.”

  She folded down her first finger.

  “Two: we ride like the Gods of the underworld are after us and try and just get through on pure speed.”

  Her second finger folded.

  “Three: We sneak up there and just try and get round. We could wait for nightfall for extra cover. The safest way, certainly, but also the slowest.”

  Folding down the third finger, she tapped the fourth.

  “Lastly: we ride up there as bold as iron and try and bluff our way through. If it fails then we either have to fight our way through or ride as fast as the winds will carry us. Either way, the chances aren’t good.”

  Salonius and Varro looked at each other for a long moment and the younger man shrugged. “That’s about the size of it, sir. Little or no chance any which way.”

  Varro’s brow furrowed in thought.

  “I have number five though.” He smiled and tapped her remaining finger. “I can’t put you at risk on some mad charge or crazy chase, but we can’t afford to waste an entire day here. I’m on a limited time frame. Catilina, I want you to stay here with the horses. Get them well away from the road, completely out of sight over by those trees and stay there until Salonius and I get back.”

  She frowned, but nodded her agreement. Salonius kicked at an errant pebble.

  “What will we be doing?”

  “Distracting. Come on.”

  Salonius followed him back to the dangling soldier, now silent, blessedly unconscious, though still breathing. Varro pointed at him.

  “Cut him down and bring him along.”

  With a look of uncertainty, Salonius drew his knife, cut the man down and threw him across a shoulder before turning and following the captain away. Varro stopped for a moment and smiled at Catilina.

  “We’ll be back in less than an hour. Stay out of sight.”

  “Be careful” she stated flatly.

  Answering with just a smile, the two soldiers with their prisoner strod
e across the grass and away from the secluded knoll. As they made their way to the road and the village came back into sight, Salonius stopped.

  “We’re going back to the village?”

  “Yes.”

  “With him?”

  “Yes.”

  “After all the trouble we had getting him out without being seen?”

  “Yes.”

  Salonius stared in amazement at the captain, continuing on ahead, and then hurried to catch up.

  “But why?”

  Varro smiled grimly.

  “He’s going to be useful. We need to give his friends a reason to leave the way station.”

  Salonius frowned. He had a horrible suspicion about what was about to happen but, try as he might, he just couldn’t think of a better alternative. He started to feel increasingly uncomfortable as they entered the village, passing the outlying houses at the opposite end to where they’d first arrived. But the discomfort he felt heightened as he noticed villagers staring at him lugging a body along the road. The fact that the two men were clearly well armed would deter most ordinary folk from questioning these frightening strangers, but whatever Varro was up to, he’d have to hurry or things could turn ugly very fast.