Regulus focused his mind against the reeling, mauling malevolence that attacked his mind. He erected mental barriers against the force but could not have explained how he did it.
“Helpless? How helpless can I be, if you were shocked that I was here at all? You betray yourself,” Regulus goaded.
Into the clearing came the legionaries Regulus had seen on his last visit. He did his best to ignore them, feeling somehow that they were only there to distract him. Their tragedy played out in front of him but he focused on his unseen opponent.
“I betray nothing!” shouted the voice in his head. “Watch them, boy. Watch them tear each other apart because I willed it. Your mighty army came to my land and I destroyed it.”
“You destroyed your own people, too,” pointed out Regulus. The centurion in the clearing was breaking into the hut and Regulus tried to move his feet to follow him. He directed his will toward making this happen and managed to take a few steps before the voice realized what was happening. He felt his feet stop, as if set in concrete.
“Stop where you are, Roman,” the voice commanded. ”I care no more for the tribes in this country than I do for your pathetic empire. They are nothing to me, only the Old Ones matter.”
“The Old Ones?” Regulus asked.
“Gods, child. The true Gods. So ancient that people had forgotten them before the Gods of Greece and Rome had even been conceived. So powerful that, even now, they have brought your pathetic dominion to its knees with the merest wish.”
Regulus concentrated his will, wanting to keep from thinking about the Romans tearing each other's flesh at his feet. ”If these Gods are so old and so long forgotten, how is it that you know of them? Why do they answer your prayers? You live in your hovel, deep in this forest, with nothing to offer them. Why do they pay you any mind at all?”
The laugh that emanated from the air around him almost split his mind in two. It dug fingers into his consciousness and pried at it until a split felt like it would rip him in two. Then the forest disappeared and for a second he was battered by a light so bright that he had to cover his eyes with his hands.
Slowly he uncovered his face and saw he was standing in a temple made of volcanic black rock. The walls were like rippled glass, as if blood flowed down their surface but never dried and never pooled. Pillars held up a ceiling so high that Regulus could have mistaken it for the night sky. The dark arch fading from his sight before his mind could rationalize it for what it was.
The pillars themselves were the worst of it. Each one held the vaguest shapes of faces, trapped inside the living rock. Each eye was conscious of its fate, as the mouths silently screamed in horror at its incarceration.
His eyes followed the floor on which he was standing. Markings etched the floor, grooves carved into the blackness that flowed with streams of blood. A vague light from beneath made the red lines glow. Not even to save his life would he step onto one of those lines. Not even to save Lucia’s life. The power he felt in this place came from those crossing streams and the shapes that they created. His eyes followed the shapes across the floor until he saw the man standing and watching him.
Despite the cowl that the man wore, Regulus could tell he was old. If the bow in his back and the hand holding the staff were anything to judge by, the man was ancient. He did not move as Regulus saw him and the boy realized that he couldn’t move his own feet, even if he wanted to.
“Where am I?” he asked. No longer did he ask with his mind but heard his voice sound out the words. They came back to him off every weeping surface and made his mind sway.
“Where you have always been, Roman. At home in that temple to man’s folly that you call a city. I take back my previous words. You are strong indeed to be able to see this, the holiest of places.” The man’s voice confirmed his years.
“Then what is this place?” Regulus asked.
“A place of worship to the Old Ones. A thin place, where the Gods and men can come close enough to hear each other.” He lifted his hood slightly and Regulus had to look away. The skin was stretched over his skull so tightly that it made his face almost transparent. His eyes were the reddened, black pits of the Risen but he was not undead. “It has always been in this place but hidden from the sight of the new people. This place is older than any civilization that man has ever created.”
“So if this place is so well hidden, why let those men find it? Why release the undead on us?” Regulus asked, looking up from his feet into the hideous face.
“I grew weary of your sacrilege. You came to my temple and desecrated it with your beliefs and superiority. The Gods you bend your knee to are nothing but false idols. Your temples are built of the ashes and dust of civilizations long forgotten. The Old Ones are ready to clean the world of your pestilence.” The ancient priest stood, unmoving, looking at Regulus. The boy raised his head in defiance of the face before him.
“I will not stand by and watch you destroy the world,” Regulus said. His voice felt small and weak in this temple of death.
“You cannot stand against this thing, child. You can only bend and break as the tide pours over you. Best to leave this place and find your loved ones. Be with them one last time and say goodbye.”
Regulus felt a surge of power pulling him away from the temple, it sucked at his soul as his body was carried only as an afterthought. He had time to say one more thing before he was ejected from the hellish place.
“I will return and I will tear this place to the ground.”
Laughter started once more but it was fading before it even began, robbed of its power. Regulus woke once more in his room, in the house of Domitius. He was alone and the sun still sat on the horizon. He walked to the window and looked out onto the city. He looked to the temples and knew he had answers to find.
Chapter Eleven
“Hold!” Sergius shouted to the men around him. “Hold steady!”
The Risen came at them at an alarming pace. Archers on the walls held strings taught against their cheeks but they would not be enough. There were fewer than twenty men with bows and more than ten times that number of enemies.
Sergius waited for the Risen to get well within bow range. He didn’t hold out much hope that the ranks could be thinned by the arrows but he had to give the men on the wall the best chance of hitting their targets. To take down a moving man was a hard enough task, especially for untrained farmers. To aim for the head while a man was moving was a tall order indeed. These targets didn’t even move in a straight line, they jerked and twitched as they moved. It would be more luck than skill that felled any of the undead today.
“Now!” he shouted and the whip of bow strings sounded in a ragged chorus. More than one Risen fell, to Sergius’ surprise and he urged the bow men on. “Good. Fire at will,” he ordered them, before turning to the men on the barricade below the archers.
“They will jump at you as they attack, be ready to strike at their heads as they do. Timing will save your lives as much as strength. Stay calm and watch out for each other.” He had his men around him but this speech was for the farmers and villagers that stood shoulder to shoulder with the legionaries.
A few more Risen fell to well-aimed arrows but the charge of the undead did not slow. Sergius could see individual creatures now. A dead legionary came at the barricade, chest torn open and ribs showing. Behind him was a small girl of no more than seven or eight summers. Her mouth was black with dried blood and a string of flesh dangled from a bracelet she wore on one wrist. A multitude of stories and lives brought to an end by the undead curse. Whole families and bloodlines destroyed in moments, to be replaced by savage, ravenous animals.
The first Risen leapt at the barrier and one of Sergius’ legionaries felled it with a blow that started above his head and crashed down, cleaving the skull of his attacker. That was the start and the men on the makeshift wall fought for the lives of every man, woman and child in the village. All across Italy, villages and towns like this one were now no more than
ghosts, Sergius swore this village would not suffer that fate.
He backhanded his sword across the face of a young woman who might have been beautiful before she met her grizzly end. She fell away from the barrier, only to be replaced by another dead creature.
Arrows poured into the ranks of the undead as they clambered to be next to face the legionaries and farmers. Tightly packed as they had become, a few fell, only to be held in place by the rest of the horde.
Sergius felt a hand wrench at his foot and for a second he was sure he would be dragged into the boiling mass of snarling creatures. He pulled hard and felt himself falling backward, toward the ground behind the barrier. A hand grasped his shoulder from one side and at almost the same instant, he felt the pressure on his ankle ease. He looked up to see one of his men holding onto his breast plate.
Sergius righted himself and turned to his left, a boy of about fifteen years was looking down at Sergius’ feet in horror. Still holding onto his ankle and pouring black, viscous sludge onto the floor of the barrier, was a grey-skinned hand. The boy had sliced it off, saving Sergius’ life.
There was no time for thanks as another Risen leapt at the boy and latched onto his neck. Before Sergius could act, the monster had torn out his savior's throat with its teeth. The boy tried to scream but floods of blood spilled out over the Risen’s face in place of sound. Sergius felt his face splashed with warm blood as he drove his sword into the boy’s skull. It was instinct that made him end the boy’s suffering instead of attacking the creature that ate his flesh.
The Risen and its prey fell backward off the barrier, into the mass of undead. Sergius heard a woman scream below him and knew it had to be the boy’s mother. Anger gripped his heart at the waste of it all. The young lives that were being torn apart as easily as the flesh in the Risen’s teeth.
He felt a fury take him and he began to hack at anything in front of him. Two Risen fell in as many swings of his sword and a third fell to a kick as he lashed out with a blow that finally dislodged the hand from his ankle.
“Sir, it’s time!” shouted the man next to Sergius, over the noise of the fight. Sergius’ fury broke with the words and he bellowed out an order.
“Archers climb down, now!” His voice rang out as loud as any field centurion and the men high on the makeshift wall began to lower themselves to the ground.
The legionaries fought on with trained efficiency but not without loss. An armoured man at the far end of the line fell, toppling into the sea of arms and teeth below them. His screams were louder than anything Sergius had heard that day. A second soldier was carried backward onto the ground behind the barricade, carrying an undead assailant with him. The women on the ground were quick to hack at the monster but the legionary was dead from the fall.
“Make sure he stays dead,” Sergius shouted down to the women. At first he didn’t think anyone would move but soon a matronly looking women took a small knife and drove it into the legionaries' temple. She didn’t flinch and Sergius thanked the Gods for sensible people.
The next stage could spell disaster or win the day. There was no telling if it would work but it had to be tried. The bales of hay had been laid far enough away from the barricade so that the fire could be set the moment the men jumped. It would be down to timing.
Everyone knew what was expected of them, plans had been made in haste as the village prepared for the attack. Each man was to turn and jump for the hay at the same time as his neighbour. Any man left on the barricade would be easy prey. At the same time the women were ready to throw pots of oil high onto the barrier. The archers were standing by to light the oil the moment it hit the wooden defences.
There was so much that could go wrong but Sergius sent up a prayer to the Gods and cried out the order. “On my mark, we jump. Three! Two! One! Now!”
Every man on the barricade turned and leapt for the piles of straw the women had provided. It was a good way down and a fair way out, Sergius landed hard, knocking the wind out of him. “Now! Throw!” He tried to shout but the order came out as a hoarse growl.
Over his head, dozens of jars of lamp oil smashed into the barrier. The men in the straw scrambled away from the potential inferno with haste. On top of the defences Risen were appearing, seemingly confused by the sudden absence of prey.
“Light it up!” Sergius shouted as the last man got clear of the straw pile. Over his head, more than a dozen burning arrows flitted into the oil soaked wood. There was an immediate conflagration as the oil lit. The Risen were engulfed in a roaring wave of flame and smoke that their undead minds could not rationalize. They made no attempt to escape the flames but thrashed and clawed at themselves and each other. For the first time, the undead seemed to be feeling pain but it might just have been an instinct or reaction to the boiling of their brains in the heat.
“Back up and form ranks,” he instructed the legionaries and farmers under his command. On the wall more Risen were actually joining their friends. They seemed to have no idea that there was danger in those flames. Driven by hunger, they mindlessly drove themselves to destruction.
Sergius watched the barrier burn. It would take at least a couple of buildings with it but it was a small price to pay for the lives they had saved. He made a quick count of his own men and saw they had lost four. He had no idea how many of the villagers had fallen.
“Get men onto those roofs over there," Sergius instructed Alba. The legionary’s scarred face had a fixed, hard grin and he turned to shout out instructions to three men. They ran off across the village to gain a vantage point.
Sergius watched the barrier. No more Risen were joining the inferno. It seemed they did learn, just very slowly. One burning body fell from the top of the pile and a legionary ran forward to finish the beast, but was beaten back by the heat of the flames. As it was, the undead lay still, charred and blackened beyond recognition.
“Sir, they’ve turned away!” one of the men on the rooftops shouted down to him.
“Are you certain? Which direction?” Sergius asked.
“Back the way they came, sir. They’re leaving together, like cattle,” the man confirmed.
There was a great cheer from the village, born of relief. Soon, Sergius thought, they would count their dead and the tears would begin. Until that time they celebrated being alive and that was right.
Sergius turned back to Alba. “Get men around the walls, make sure they have all gone. Also, make sure that fire doesn’t spread. The last thing we need is for the village to burn to the ground after we just saved it.” The legionary nodded and saluted before turning away to carry out his orders.
Sergius turned away to be confronted by the village elder. The grey haired man was holding out a hand. Sergius assumed the man wanted to shake hands in thanks but even more welcome was the glass of wine the man pressed at him.
“Many thanks, we could have been lost without you,” the old man said.
“Titus won’t leave the people to die, if he can help it,” Sergius said. He saw anger in the old man’s eyes as he heard Sergius’ words.
“We’ve seen precious little help so far, though,” he said.
“Give us a chance, Titus has only just landed back on these shores. He has to deal with Otho before he can turn his attention to the undead,” Sergius replied.
“It’s just the same powerful men, fighting between themselves, with no thought for the little man, though, isn’t it? How can we trust that Titus won’t just leave us to our fate?”
Sergius placed a reassuring hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Help us now and we will do everything we can to see that you are safe. Titus needs grain and supplies. He is asking towns like this one to feed his army in order that we can keep you all safe. Without that grain, there will be no-one to protect you. I will leave half of my company here to put out that fire and make your town safe. When the legions return for the grain, you will have the opportunity to speak to Emperor Titus, himself.” Sergius didn’t know if Titus would even deem it
necessary to set foot within twenty miles of this place but he had come too far to leave empty handed. Besides, he would need to leave half of his men in the village or by the time the legions returned, the grain stores would be half empty.
“I suppose that’s the same thing that Otho told the people of Ostia,” said a middle aged man with a large stomach and a full beard, as he walked up to the pair.
“Sorry, I don’t follow. What about Ostia?” asked Sergius.
“The legions came in and took everyone away,” said the newcomer.
“Everyone? Explain, please,” said Sergius. He looked at the town elder as he said this and the man nodded slightly, giving his confirmation that the bearded man was to be believed.
“I was living in Ostia and the guard moved in and started taking people out of their homes. Street by street, they moved them onto boats and up the river to Rome. We heard they were doing it to keep us safe from those things.” He said this as he pointed at the charred remains of a Risen on the ground. “The thing is, rumours started spreading that not everyone was being put on the boats. I went with a friend to see. They were separating some people off to the side. We followed them to these huge warehouses and they were putting people into cages. Hundreds of them. I managed to escape without being seen but my friend wasn’t so lucky. I guess he’s seeing those cages from the inside.” The man turned quiet as he said the last words, as if lost in the memory.
“And you think they are turning these people into the undead?” asked Sergius.
“Well they did it before, didn’t they? And everyone knows they didn’t send all the undead they had into Rome. I think they are building an army, to fight Titus with. It makes sense, it worked once, didn’t it?” the bearded man said.
“You’re sure of this? Could you take me back to where you saw the people being held?” Sergius asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. I could take you back but I’m not going to. No way am I going back there after I managed to escape.”
Rise and Fall Page 10
