Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate

by S. J. A. Turney

  And so she had settled for keeping herself as busy as she could. The sun - such as it was - a pale watery orb behind a bank of high cloud that constantly threatened drizzle, was at its apex as she descended the drive from the villa's main doorway towards the road into the centre of town. The house of the Tineii was actually only a short walk from the thriving heart of Cuma, but the walk was mostly through gardens and orchards belonging to the villa.

  At her belt was a purse of money that Posco had warned her to keep hidden against the possibility of thieves and criminals in the forum, and over her arm was the handle of a shopping basket. An hour or two at the forum and the two markets would distract her from her interminable incarceration in that luxurious prison. The eldest daughter of the Tineii had offered to make her a new dress if she chose the material and some accessories, and that had leant extra purpose to her shopping trip.

  "This is a foolish decision, if I may be so bold."

  Lucilia snapped her head round sharply at the voice. Elijah, the Jewish physician, stood on the path a few paces back, folding up a cloak and draping it over his shoulder in case the weather turned the way it threatened to.

  "Everyone knows where I'm going. No one complained."

  "They were labouring under the impression you would be taking some of the guards with you, young lady."

  "I'm only going to the forum and the markets, Elijah."

  "Even here it is not necessarily safe for a young lady on her own. This may not be Rome, but cities are cities and all forms of life are to be found here, including the lowest."

  "If I must have an escort, feel free to join me" she replied in a snippier fashion than she truly intended. The Jew had been nothing but accommodating to her and her family and friends over the few days she had known him, and - as far as she was aware - for no recompense. He seemed to be trying to help her sister out of the goodness of his heart. A rare thing - especially from a Jew, if all the tales the ladies of Rome told were true. His race's focus on one God alone was said to blind them to possibilities and make them insular and unfriendly to Romans. It was hard to see such a description fitting Elijah.

  "I was hoping to take Balbina for a wander in the gardens before the rains came, but I daresay she will manage another few hours. I hear the herb and spice stalls in the markets here are well stocked, so perhaps I can pick up some useful medicine components."

  Falling in alongside her, he smiled easily.

  "They will be fine, you know?"

  "Your God told you, did he?" Mean and unworthy, she knew, but the day was starting to annoy her again.

  Elijah simply nodded as though it were a straightforward enquiry. "Jehovah watches over even those who deny him. He is a forgiving God."

  "Fronto only believes in luck and vengeance - Fortuna and Nemesis. I've heard him tell the other Gods that they don't exist, even while he's pouring wine on their altars. Struck me as particularly funny, that. I do believe he thinks that if he denies them they won't affect his life. Strangely, it does seem to work for him."

  "Luck and Vengeance alone would make for an empty soul. I suspect that your husband is considerably deeper than he would like anyone to know."

  "He is a simple man and a complex one both at the same time" Lucilia agreed. "Every day I learn something new about him - and some of those discoveries make me grind my teeth - but he is a good man."

  "Of that I am in no doubt. Your father also is good, and Jehovah watches over the good with special favour."

  Lucilia felt herself begin to relax as the two strolled down the path and turned onto the main road with its uneven slabs worn and rutted through centuries of feet and hooves and cart wheels, the gravel periodically thrown over it to ease travel had simply settled into the gaps and all but disappeared. A few other folk strolled the street - more and more as they neared the centre of town.

  As they walked, she began to quiz Elijah about his homeland and his people, and was surprised to learn how ancient their culture was. He was able to name kings who had ruled Judea when the city of Rome was still a dream of future glory in the eyes of Romulus. It seemed that Pompey's conquest of their land had done nothing to dent their pride in their past or their sense of self-worth.

  The more the pair walked and talked, the more Lucilia came to appreciate the soft spoken physician and his gentle acceptance of everything around him, and by the time they passed into the busy forum and moved around the stalls set up at its edges, she had decided that she might like to visit his home one day.

  "What brought you from your land, Elijah?" she asked, the question having only just now occurred to her.

  The Jew smiled as he regarded the mass of people ahead, and there was something of an age-old sadness in it. Momentarily, Lucilia regretted the question but he began, undeterred.

  "Rome has had her sandaled foot on the throat of my people for almost a decade and nothing eases - the voices raised against her just increase with each passing season. Interference and control by Rome has raised a great deal of anti-foreign feeling among my people." He turned his sad smile to her. "I am - as you know - a physician, and my own work relies upon the knowledge and learning of other great thinkers, be they Greek, Roman or Egyptian. My house became a target for scrawled messages of xenophobic hate. In the end, God sent me a message in the form of a Roman merchant who bemoaned the lack of good medici in the capital. It seemed a fortuitous meeting, and within the week I had sold my home and carried a bag of money to Rome to sell my services. I had only been in the city less than a week before master Balbus found me with your mother's…" he paused and smiled weakly. "I am sorry. I should not have brought that up."

  "Don't worry" Lucilia replied quietly. "Your God seems to have sent you to us at just the right time. I wonder whether it is your God's work or ours that you are here."

  Elijah smiled.

  "Lucilia, you are a remarkable girl, and Fronto is a lucky man."

  The western end of the forum was busier than elsewhere and as they made their way between the stalls, the girl poring over the goods for sale, they found themselves jostled from all sides. Lucilia, mindful of Posco's words of warning, cast her eyes around the folk among the stalls, her hand dropping to her purse and clutching it tight. The forum of Cuma was filled with men and women of a dozen ethnicities, from Punic immigrants to Greek traders to Syrian slaves to huge blond Celts.

  A strangled gasp caught her ear and she turned just in time to see Elijah fall back into the crowd, the spray of crimson from his neck fountaining up into the air like a grisly monochrome rainbow. Lucilia's eyes widened in horror. The Jew grabbed for his throat and clamped his fingers over the ragged slash that had dug deep through windpipe, muscle and arteries. Before he hit the floor he was already going pale.

  Lucilia screamed something.

  She wasn't sure what it was, but it seemed to attract entirely the wrong sort of attention. A big, muscular ham of a hand clamped itself over her mouth as another arm went round her front, pinning her own limbs against her side and an enormous torso. The crowd were shouting a hundred different cries now, but no one seemed to be trying to help her. As her constricted airway choked the consciousness from her and her world slipped into a grey fog, she felt herself being hauled backwards through the crowd.

  * * * * *

  Tulchulchur stood in the deep shadow at the rear of the warehouse, his ghostly, pale, scrawny shape barely registering in the light that glinted off his favourite eye-spoon.

  "I am in two minds. On the one hand, Berengarus, I have to admit I would love to see Fronto's face while I peel her slowly in front of him. It would be something to savour. On the other hand, I can see Acrab's point. Just keeping her around complicates matters - perhaps we should just kill her now."

  Berengarus shook his head vehemently. He was starting to become seriously irritated with all the delays. They had resupplied in Rome before taking a ship south - and even then the ghoulish Tulchulchur had insisted they embark at Ostia, not Rome and sail to Cuma, not P
uteoli in case of a watch being set on the port. The crazed murderer was thorough to a tee, but now had to be the time to move.

  There had been a dozen of them by the time they left Rome, and the wraith had brought another six on board in Cumae, delaying a further two days to make enquiries as to the identities of the most vicious lowlifes for hire in the city. Certainly the new additions would add to Berengarus' small, brutal army, but that was enough now.

  Still, had they gone straight for Fronto and his friends at Puteoli, they would not have been passing through the forum when the Jew and the girl strolled past talking openly and loudly about Fronto and Balbus. Idiots. And even if the names were not enough, it had taken only a momentary glance for him to recognise that pretty little woman who had accompanied Fronto to Pompey's house on occasion.

  Whatever Tulchulhchur thought, Berengarus had no intention of killing the girl now - it would hurt Fronto, but not enough. Fronto had led a legion against his people by the river Rhenus. His men had severed Aenor's spine with a blade and driven young Gerulf into the river to drown while dragging him off in chains. Nothing was too painful for the Tenth's legate, including being held tight while watching his wife being peeled.

  "Acrab not in charge" Berengarus snapped. The way Tulchulchur raised an eyebrow suggested that he believed he was the commander of this little war band. The big German had deferred to the 'Monster of Vipsul' for planning and organisation, but he was in no way relinquishing his control of the group. The only reason these things - and to him they were little more than animals - were out of their incarceration and walking and breathing was because he might need them to put Fronto down. After that had happened, he might break Tulchulchur in half himself. It would feel good. It would be his leaving present to his Roman hosts when he headed north once more to his refreshingly cold and verdant homeland and the rest of the Roman bastards that had murdered his family and people. Caesar and the others would pay in time.

  "Acrab led an army against Pompey in his Syrian homeland" Tulchulchur replied, snapping Berengarus back to the present from his reverie. "He is a forward thinking man with a shrewd mind. It is foolish to brush aside his wisdom through sheer lust for blood."

  "Girl lives until Fronto watch her die."

  Tulchulchur shrugged. It would be fun to ruin that milky white skin and those pretty eyes. He twisted his favourite eye-spoon in the lamplight and grinned.

  "Very well, but we will not take her with us. We will find somewhere to keep her until we have Fronto. One of the others can stay with her."

  Berengarus narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but the wraithlike killer radiated an air of honesty in this matter. Finally, he nodded.

  "The first thing, though," the monster of Vipsul added "is to wake her and find out everything she knows about Fronto and the rest. Prior knowledge is half the battle."

  Berengarus continued nodding. He was hungry to begin, but to extract information about the size and disposition of Fronto's force was worth another small delay.

  They would all die soon enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Priscus tried for the third time in a row to tie the Hercules knot around his midriff and this time gave up and knotted it in a fashion that would likely have to be cut to be removed. As a symbol of command at a high level it was a necessity in order to display his rank but, no matter what he did, the ribbon always gradually slipped down his cuirass until by midmorning it rested on his hips, looking somewhat deflated and ridiculous.

  As legate of the Tenth, he'd only bothered to put it on when he was likely to be in the presence of the general, but he was damned if he was going to saunter around the camp of his beloved legion that now served under young Crassus without a reminder that he was still the senior man here.

  His fingers tensed and his knuckles whitened as he pulled the ribbon tight, his temper once again darkening at the thought of that young lunatic in charge of his legion.

  It was an unworthy thought and he knew it. His image of young Crassus had been heavily influenced by previous contact with his family: his elder brother, whose harsh and violent approach to military command had produced great results but had also caused almost as many problems as it had resolved. And of course his father, a notoriously avaricious and pompous man who had risen to become one of the most powerful men in the republic through his dubious amassing of wealth and a willingness to overlook the ethics of any action.

  The younger Crassus scion appeared to be nothing like his brother, though. Though there was only less than two years between the pair, Marcus Licinius Crassus appeared more than half a decade younger than his brother, fresh faced and with an almost childish enthusiasm.

  What irked Priscus most was the fact that, while this Crassus had enough personality and passion to inspire a legion - he was eminently likeable and easy to deal with - he clearly had not even a fragment of his brother's talent for military strategy. They were as unalike as could be. Publius could have crushed an army twice his size, despite bad terrain, though his legion would resent his rule and the after effects could be wicked. Marcus would never manage in the face of terrible odds, but the Tenth would look after him. They had already adopted him as one of their own, yet still looked to Priscus for their orders.

  That last, at least, suited him… but for how long? When would Caesar call him away and leave the Tenth under this pleasant and well-meaning young fool?

  The military knot slid down to rest on his waist and he sighed and hauled it back up to his diaphragm, reaching out for a piece of the honeyed bread on his table - a noon meal that had sat there untouched for a number of hours - and dabbling just enough honey on the sides of his cuirass to anchor the ribbon in place. The front drooped a little, but he straightened himself, satisfied.

  For a moment, he wondered whether to wear the helmet with the high black plume, but decided against it. He didn't need to stand out as an officer - they all knew him - he just needed the touches that placed him above Crassus.

  With a last look at himself in the small, undulating bronze mirror that made his face misshapen, he nodded and stepped outside his quarters.

  The sun was low, just brushing the tips of the trees and threatening to vanish in the next few moments, and legionaries went here and there with their fire-tools, lighting torches and lamps against the coming night.

  "Glorious evening, isn't it?"

  Priscus started and swung round to see young Crassus standing to one side of his quarters, his commander's armour and accoutrements impeccable. The bastard. Crassus sniffed the air deeply and stretched as though he'd just risen in the morning.

  "I don't know about glorious" grumbled Priscus. "Feels bloody chilly to me."

  "But the sun is shining and the grass is dry. There's a bite to the air, but just enough to make it refreshing."

  "If you say so. Probably the filter of youth. When you get to my age, you'll see it as far too bloody cold and threatening to snow. What are you doing loitering around outside?"

  Crassus grinned.

  "Preparing for manoeuvres, of course."

  Priscus pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache that had seen him retreat to his room for much of the afternoon was returning, and it was bringing with it a cohort of other pains and irritations.

  "I assumed you would be staying in charge of the camp, as their legate. I was only taking two cohorts out."

  Again, Crassus stretched, looking irritatingly supple, alert and enthusiastic.

  "I think that, as their commander, it would be a good idea to at least observe these night-time manoeuvres? If I didn't know better I would say you kept trying to shield me from the real action in the legion."

  'If only you knew' Priscus thought as he nodded in fake appreciation. Instead, his voice came clear and friendly and supportive. "Very well, legate. We shall leave your primus pilus in command and take the Fourth and Fifth cohorts out." A mean streak somewhere deep inside surfaced. "Perhaps you could take the Fourth ahead and set up the ambushes and I'll b
ring the Fifth into them?"

  Crassus' lively grin should have faltered at the immense pressure such an opportunity might put on an untried commander, but he simply grinned as though he'd been given a gift. Priscus sighed inwardly.

  "Just be careful and don't go more than four miles. We've only got a picket cordon in a five mile radius."

  * * * * *

  Crassus' attempt at an ambush was considerably better than Priscus had expected. Oh, he still saw the first scouts a long time before the Fifth cohort stood any chance of walking into it, but it was not a bad first effort. Likely the veteran centurions of the Fourth had given him a few pointers, but credit where it was due: it was a worthy first attempt.

  "Matrinius?"

  "I see 'em sir. Ambush ahead. Heavy to the right, so we need to watch out for missiles to the left."

  Priscus nodded. His men were good. Ought to be, really - between him, Velius and Atenos, they'd been trained by the very best the army had to offer.

  "Hello. What's this, sir?"

  Priscus followed Matrinius' gaze and frowned at the group of horsemen cantering along the forest road.

  "Part of some clever trap?" the centurion mused, his arm going up to stop the column without the need for orders, whistles or trumpets.

  "No" Priscus said quietly. "The Fourth cohort only had Crassus' horse with them."

  In instant response, Matrinius' arms made half a dozen silent gestures and the officers of the cohort behind him began to respond, forming a four-man wide column in the open trackway, shield-walls raised at all four sides, pila up for casting at the front.

  Priscus peered into the darkness. It was simply too gloomy to pick out any detail.