"General? Your administration? Your family?"
Something passed across Caesar's face and Priscus found himself leaning back away from the great man's suddenly frightening dark eyes.
"The administration of a province can be carried out without its governor, Priscus. Only those skimming a dangerous sum from the takings need to supervise it personally. And with my parents and children gone, I am freed of personal entanglements in Rome."
Priscus felt as though he'd been hit with a brick, such was the force of whatever passed between them in that simple, dead, shocking statement. He sat silent for eight heartbeats, not knowing what to say to his commander, and with a strange suddenness the cloud passed and Caesar stretched, his demeanour switching seamlessly back to the casual military officer
"Then if that it all, Priscus, I think we should call a general meeting and brief the others, yes?"
Priscus could only nod.
In a year that had brought Rome's control of Gaul to the brink and threatened their very existence, it seemed that crises and disasters were not limited to the army. With a second nod - this time to himself - he stood, wishing the army had not fragmented so much this past year.
"With respect, Caesar, I fear you need to look to the command system again and promote a few good men to senior positions."
The general gave him a strange, quirky smile.
"The matter is in hand, Priscus. Upon our return to Gesoriacum, I enlisted the aid of an old friend. Call the rest in and we will plan ahead for the winter."
Chapter Twenty
Fronto sat atop the courtyard wall in the early morning sun - watery and pale thing that it was. The drizzle had died away just before dawn, around an hour ago, when the rest of the villa's occupants had left for the great crater and their daily wait.
Despite wiping the wall dry and having laid out an old cloak from the servants' quarters to sit upon, the stone was still cold, damp and uncomfortable and he kept returning to the tales Posco had told him of how such activity was a major cause of piles. 'Bum-grapes' was the last thing he wanted right now, just when he had shaken off two years' weight and indolence and hit a physical peak he'd not have thought possible the previous year.
He sighed and kicked the wall with his heels, rearranging for the twentieth time the sheath that contained the decorative gladius he'd taken from the murderous tribune the year before.
This was now the fourth day he had spent sitting and waiting and he was starting to worry about being foolish. What if they weren't coming after all? What if they were waiting until some unspecified event? Would Fronto and his friends be forced to repeat the procedure every day for months?
Grinding his teeth, he shuffled his backside to try and find a better position. There wasn't a better position. He could wait anywhere, of course, but the main gate wall was the obvious spot. It would be where the enemy arrived, supplied the best view of the surrounding approaches, and was also the very best spot from which to run for the Forum Vulcani.
Squinting into the grey, hazy brightness, Fronto first saw the arrivals as a shapeless blob on the horizon where the road crested a low rise, and he had to strain his eyes to discern their numbers. He was expecting at least a dozen - probably more - and so it came as something of a surprise to spot only three figures.
His mind raced. Was this all that were coming? Had he seriously over-estimated their numbers? It seemed unlikely. They had the resources to drag in every killer from the carcer, and quite possibly others along the way. Three could not be the whole force.
And that begged the question: where were the rest?
His mind raced in the way his body should be doing. Did he run for the Forum Vulcani, or was it wasting an opportunity just to draw three men into the crater? Perhaps the rest were a few moments behind? If so, could he afford to wait? The longer he waited the less chance he had of staying ahead of them.
Irritated at his own lack of foresight and planning, failing to account for such changes and form contingencies, he smacked his fist down painfully on the cloak-covered stone and slid from the wall.
No. It was worth it. He had to run and lead them off, because the shapes were now resolving into more than simple figures: they had become identifiable. The left one his keen gaze easily picked out: Berengarus - huge and bulky, a long blade in his hand and a single-minded expression of malice. The figure at the right hand side was equally unmistakable: a wraith-like figure who drifted across the ground as though not quite touching the floor, its robes tattered and frayed, its wild hair floating and whipping about in what should not be a strong enough breeze for such activity.
His feet rooted to the spot as he recognised the figure between them.
Lucilia?
How in Hades had they got hold of Lucilia?
Panic flooded through him. What could he do? As the figures came closer, he could see that Lucilia's arms were bound behind her back with a leather thong, the other end of which was held tight in the wraith's left hand; in his right: a curved knife.
"Run!" his wife shouted at him, and was rewarded with a heavy cuff around the back of the head that send her staggering forward before being jerked back painfully by her tied wrists.
Fronto felt his knees begin to give in to the panic. How could he run now?
But what else could he do?
Setting his jaw firm, he took a few paces forward towards the two killers and their prisoner.
"Let her go and I'll give myself to you."
The giant's step faltered and Fronto realised that he was actually considering the offer. However, next to him, the wraith gave an unpleasant smile and yanked on the cord, pulling Lucilia in front of him. His curved knife came up to caress her throat.
"We will have both, young Falerius. I had hoped to tie you down and make you watch as I slowly dismembered and peeled this pretty young thing, but now that we have arrived at our destination, I am of a mind to simply end her now and concentrate on you instead.
Fronto's eyes widened as the wraith's left hand released the cord in order to grab Lucilia's brow and turn her head, raising the face so that her neck was presented clear to the blade. His right hand twisted to prick the gleaming point into her throat just enough to draw blood.
Fronto felt his world fall away.
He wanted to close his eyes and hope that all of this went away like some childish nightmare, for he knew the wraith's mind from his eyes and his stance. This was not a man who bluffed or procrastinated, and this was no threat to cause anguish. The wraith simply meant to kill her and to do it now.
He started forward to intervene as his eyes watched the blade move in for the final, slicing blow, and his heart skipped a beat as Lucilia's foot rose and then slammed down with a strength born of desperation on her captor's foot.
Fronto was too far away for such a small noise to carry, but he imagined well enough the sounds of most of the bones in the man's foot smashing. Lucilia's sandal was only light, yet her blow was anything but!
The wraith gave an unearthly howl, his sharp blade scoring a fine red line on Lucilia's throat. Fronto watched in panic as the pale flesh bloomed red and waited a single heartbeat for the arterial spray to begin.
It never came. Instead, as the wraith reacted too late, the throbbing agony in his foot clouding his senses and interrupting his reactions, Lucilia ducked and came up in front of the blade that had been at her throat.
"Run!" Fronto bellowed, realising that she was trying to grasp the man's knife in her bound hands. The killer was wounded, but not enough to relinquish that blade to her. If she did not run now, he would recover soon enough and then she would die.
Lucilia took to her feet.
He had not told her where to run - had not had the opportunity to think that far - but Lucilia knew Puteoli and the villa almost as well as he after two years of growing familiarity, and she would find somewhere to cut her bonds and hide.
Berengarus turned his head almost nonchalantly to watch the girl run. His expres
sion revealed his thoughts clearly enough: he would have liked her to die, but she was at best peripheral to his plan. With Fronto alone and only twenty paces away, he was hardly going to concentrate on a meaningless woman now.
The barbarian came on with a mean sneer, the wraith hobbling close by, looking over his shoulder regretfully towards the retreating shape of Lucilia, who disappeared down the grassy slope towards one of the sheds that gave access to the cave system below. She would be as safe there as anywhere until Fronto had dealt with the situation.
If he could.
Watching the two men close on him, Fronto waited until Lucilia had gone from sight and then turned and ran through the courtyard and into the house.
* * * * *
Diotimus sat beside a heavy, man-sized boulder of yellow-white rock and spat on his sling, rubbing the liquid into the leather to remove some of the interminable white dust that seemed to settle on everything here within a quarter of an hour. Next to him, Cadurcus was struggling to bend his shortbow tight enough to slip the fresh string over the end - the drizzle this morning had slackened the original. Habitually, he carried half a dozen spares in his pouch.
Balbus - Fronto's old army friend who seemed to be in command when their actual paymaster was absent - had visited them just now to make sure all was well, and had then moved on down towards the mudpools at the centre.
Both men were well positioned behind three large rocks on the south eastern ridge of the crater - just about the best place to watch the approach from the Falerii villa, maybe two hundred and fifty paces away. Nearby was a small pile of hot yellow stones that they had ferried up carefully in a leather bag that now lay scorched and burned nearby.
They had found three such good observation points and occasionally rotated to another for simple variety, but this was the best and their favourite.
Cadurcus said something in his native Gallic tongue and Diotimus grinned, watching the cursing Salluvi mercenary struggling with the string before returning his attention to the Puteoli approach.
The first thing he knew of the attack was when a hand clamped around his forehead while the blade was being drawn across his throat. He tried to scream out a warning, but his windpipe was severed along with his arteries, and even as he realised he was dying and all that was coming out was a bubbling hiss, the pain from the wound finally reached his brain.
Next to him, Cadurcus slumped forwards, a knife handle sticking out of the base of his neck. A pair of empty hands reached down and grasped the bow, easily looping the string over the end and testing it for strength.
* * * * *
Eurycles and Picentus fiddled absently with the vent control, bored beyond belief with their lot. They clearly had the easiest initial job of the crater's defenders - they had no task other than closing the vents and closing and bolting the door. Until that time they simply had to stay hidden and wait for the fly to drift into their web. After all, despite all the unpleasant features of this stinking place, the only actual structure was this building. What attacker would not send men in to check it out?
"When this is all over, I will have to bathe for a week to get this stench out of my skin. I smell like a bad fart."
"You always smell like a bad fart. If anything, I'd say this place has improved you."
"Piss off you inbred Greek."
The two mercenaries grinned at one another. Only moments ago Balbus had dropped by to make sure that everything was as it should be and had found them engaged in a farting competition. His reprimands had been half-hearted: it was not he who was paying them and they were mercenaries who could walk away any time they liked. Moreover, he knew how excruciatingly tedious it was waiting day in and day out, hiding behind a building and waiting for an attack that they were starting to think was never coming.
"You staying on after this if Fronto keeps the pay up?"
"Might do. Don't see why he'd need us then, but you know these patrician nobs. They never seem to plan ahead. I've heard there's good money to be made in the capital. Pompey's hiring again they say, and paying well."
"That old has-been? He must be ancient by now. 'Bout time he and his cronies moved aside and let someone younger and brighter have a go at bullying the senate."
Picentus grinned. He knew damn well Eurycles' views on the senate and Roman government. The Greek never passed up an opportunity to rise to that bait and argue the ineffectiveness and unfairness of Roman government compared with the ancient glory days of his native Athens.
Silence greeted his verbal jab. Picentus let go of the vent lever and turned, frowning.
Behind him, Eurycles fought desperately against the grip of the two men who had him by the arms and the hand stuffing a rag bundle into his mouth. The Greek's eyes were wide in terror, but Picentus only gave him a passing panicked glance. His gaze instead locked on the olive-skinned thug before him, wielding a heavy wooden practice sword, raised and ready to strike.
"'Ello" said the big killer with an unpleasant, nine-toothed smile just as the heavy, lead-cored wooden sword fell and cracked Picentus across the skull, dazing him and driving out his wits.
When he awoke, to the urgent shoving and desperate shouts of his Greek friend, he at first panicked that his captors had blinded him, so utterly black and featureless were their surroundings. Then he finally spotted the misty-hazed thin white crack in a square that marked out the position of the door.
Oh shit.
Already the air was almost unbreathably hot and sulphurous. He could feel the sweat literally running from him in torrents. His clothing was as soaked as if he'd thrown himself in a pool, though only a pool of almost scalding water.
"Help!" he bellowed.
"No use" wheezed Eurycles. "They've gone."
"Someone will hear" he replied desperately, struggling to his feet despite the flashing lights in his brain and the thumping of his battered skull. "Someone will come."
"No they won't" the Greek said quietly. "They're expecting someone to be in here and screaming, remember? Unless they're close enough to hear the words they won't even blink. We need to escape."
Picentus felt the icy fingers of fear grip him despite the unbearable heat. Eurycles knew as well as he that there was no way out. The two of them had been the ones who had checked each individual vent and the door lock and frame and hinges, Everything had been reinforced. The bastards had even propped something heavy against the door as was now obvious from the area of darkness blocking the feeble line of light at the base of the door.
They were going to boil to death. If they were lucky they would pass out from the heat and fumes first.
For the first time, Picentus cursed the pleasant Falerii family who had hired them and paid above the odds. Nice bunch, but no amount of nice would balance this.
Something somewhere deep in the earth shifted slightly and the billowing cloud of sulphurous steam burst into increased life, filling the room with a fresh wave of tortuous heat.
* * * * *
Balbus, finishing his bi-hourly tour of the crater to check its defensive status, nodded in satisfaction as he reached the fumaroles. The jets had moved, of course. Every time he came here the steaming columns of deadly heat were in different positions. But much to his satisfaction, the paths that they had marked with darker grey stones were still safe and clear. No matter how often he came here, every time he expected them to be obscured by a new jet.
With an unintentional indrawn and held breath, he stepped onto one of the four paths and took a dozen or so steps into the maze of steam jets, his eyes constantly shifting between the infernal environment around him and the path ahead.
With a skipped heartbeat he stopped dead in his tracks, realising that he had almost stepped away from the trail. Some new sliding of scree or shaking of the ground had dislodged a few of the grey pebbles and they had rolled off to the side.
Balbus stared at the errant rocks and weighed up the importance of them. There was a horrifying possibility that he would bend to move
the rocks back into place and a jet would open up beneath him and flash-boil his hand. He did not relish that possibility. But then, there was also the possibility that if he did not move them back, he or someone else in the heat of battle would do exactly what he'd just almost done and walk off the path and into an unpleasant death.
With another held breath, Balbus dropped sharply to a crouch to move the stones back into their correct position.
It was only the suddenness of the move that saved his life, as two arrows and a sling-propelled sulphur rock whizzed through the air where his head had been and clattered off among the rocks and steam vents.
The sounds were barely discernible over the pop and hiss and crackle of the fumaroles and the pounding of his own heart, but Quintus Lucilius Balbus had spent much of his adult life in command of a legion, and he knew the sound of arrows and sling stones as well as he knew the map of pronounced veins on the back of his own hand.
He knew before the missiles had skittered across the rocks that he had come within a hair's-breadth of death. He also knew that the missiles had come from his rear right quarter and at a raised angle, which put them on the crater's slope where no one should be.
His instinctive strategist's mind kicked in and he made himself as small as possible, little more than a ball of human being curled up on the ground. He was a reasonably tall man and, standing, he had been visible above the bulk of the steam, apart from the stronger jets. At ground level, hopefully the roiling whiteness would hide him from view. It was a gamble, but one worth taking, given his exposed position.
He counted ten heartbeats - certainly long enough for a halfway-competent archer to nock and release another arrow. No further missiles came.
He was invisible in the steam. There was the possibility he would be suddenly betrayed as the vents shifted, though, and so, crouched and in a tight, small shape, he began to shuffle as fast as he dared along the path.
Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate Page 48
