Panting, he waved towards the cell gate.
‘We must hurry,’ he said over his shoulder while keeping his eyes on the door to the stairwell, just in case. But there was no reply, just a weak whimper. Gallus swung round to see her, sliding down the rough cell wall, fingers knitted together over her stomach. Despite her desperate grip, blood blossomed out across her dirty robe.
‘Evike!’ Gallus gasped, running to her as she slumped to sitting, falling to his knees beside her. She lifted her hands from her stomach and Gallus saw the vicious, deep wound Trogus’ wildly swinging spear had torn across her abdomen. The blood was running black now. He saw her skin was pale already. Her eyes were filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled.
Gallus’ lips moved wordlessly. What comfort could he offer her? She would die and die because of him. Just like Olivia and Marcus, a merciless voice whispered in his head. Just like so many others.
Tartarus or Elysium, Gallus? Every death draws you closer to the fiery pit.
‘No!’ he croaked. He clasped his hands over the wound in a vain effort to staunch the haemorrhaging lifeblood, then looked this way and that, intent on finding something to use as a bandage. Finally, he tore a strip from the hem of her robe and began looping it around her waist to tie it tightly over the gash in her belly. But the cloth was fraying and disintegrating as he did this. ‘You’ll be free of this place, I’ll see to it. By noon today we’ll be up there, up above. We’ll both be free and-’
She clutched his shaking hands as they fumbled to make a knot. Her strength was surprising and it halted Gallus in his thoughts and actions. ‘Stop, Gal-lus.’
‘I…I can’t let you die. I can’t!’
‘Yet you can’t save me,’ she replied, her words weak and her head lolling. Her grip on his hands faded too.
‘I couldn’t save them,’ he said. ‘I was supposed to protect them and I did not. I failed-’
‘The two you lost were taken from you, Gal-lus. You are a good man who does not deserve to carry the guilt that plagues you. Those who killed your loved ones should bear that burden.’
‘But you, this,’ he pressed the rag to her wound again, ‘this would not have happened were it not for me.’
‘This?’ she replied in a hoarse whisper, weakly raising her head and glancing down at her wound. ‘This is perhaps the only way I could escape this foul place. I am a Hun in a distant foreign land. I could never hope to escape and avoid recapture.’ Her head flopped back, her pupils began to dilate and a weak smile spread across her lips. ‘Now I feel the wind in my hair. It sighs through the tall grass around me… and the steppe stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. My family awaits me. Tengri… lifts me with his wings. I am almost free.’ She gave his hand a weak squeeze. ‘Find your freedom… Gal-lus.’
With that, she exhaled and the tension in her body was gone. Gallus stared at her, eyes darting, unwilling to accept. A long silence ensued, before he set her hand down, then leaned over and gently kissed her forehead. Thank you, Evike, he mouthed, before pulling Trogus’ cloak off and draping it across her body. He returned to the sentry and drew the blade from the man’s sheath – a falcata, curved at the end. When he stepped out of his cell, the torchlight by the stairwell door uplit his face in a dancing orange. His ice-blue eyes were fixed on the stairs and his knuckles were white, clasped around the hilt of the falcata.
The single sentry was dead. Now he just had to deal with Lurco…
Lurco carried a clay pot with a spout on the end, swinging his keys on the end of his finger, humming a tune as he trotted down the stairs into the lower chambers. The wine from last night was still in his blood, topped up with another cup this morning. He cast an eye down to the bottom of the stairs. No, Gallus can wait, he thought, then turned to the doorway on the small landing halfway down. The wooden door creaked open to reveal another chamber hewn out of the bedrock, furnished with just one filthy cell. He strolled over to the bars and smacked his lips together in satisfaction as he eyed the figure sitting in a chair within, bathed in gloom. The stench was horrific.
‘And how are we today?’ Lurco cooed.
The figure reacted, but in an odd way, as if it had not heard nor seen Lurco, but somehow sensed his presence. It shuffled in discomfort. Lurco lifted the torch from the sconce in the wall and held it up to the cell bars, illuminating the seated figure, head bowed: a withered bag of bones dressed in an ancient and threadbare tunic. The figure’s thin skin was devoid of colour and a nest of thin, tousled white hair sprouted from the scalp.
‘Come, Cantaber, look me in the eye,’ Lurco purred like a parent coaxing a shy child.
The figure raised its head, trembling with the effort, revealing eyelids and mouth puckered and drawn tight with thick black thread. Lurco barely flinched at the man’s mutilated face –– after all, it was he who had sewn Cantaber’s eyes and mouth shut, over twenty years ago, before chaining him to this chair. And there he had remained, bound, steeping in his own mess and fed only honeyed water through his nose using this spouted container. Lurco snorted in amusement, recalling when the old dog had been kept in a higher cell, and despite his bound eyes and mouth, had shown some signs of enjoying the muffled noises of the city that sometimes floated down to that chamber. Boiling water in the ears had robbed him of that pleasure, but Lurco had moved him down here as well, just to be sure.
When Lurco slid the bolt on the cell gate back, he did so sharply, to send a shudder through the dirt floor. Cantaber jolted in his chair. ‘You know I’m here, don’t you?’
A faint scuffing sounded outside the chamber, somewhere on the stairs, bringing Lurco swinging round with a start. ‘Kuno?’
Silence.
‘Bloody rats!’ he snorted, then turned back to Cantaber. ‘Anyway, I made a mistake with your boy. Your dog of a son who cut off my nose; I killed him way too quickly. I should have consigned him to these cells so he could share my isolation. You, however, have years left in you… years.’ He stepped forward, grasping a tuft of Cantaber’s hair and wrenching his head back, tilting the spout of the pot to the man’s nostril. But he stopped. This time he heard no sound, but, like Cantaber, sensed something. Something behind him. He swung round and was seized by terror at the blue-eyed wolf-like creature lunging for him.
‘You, how?’ he croaked, just as a silvery, curved blade swiped through the air for his neck.
Gallus snarled as the hideous torturer leapt back spryly, avoiding the falcata-tip. The man snatched out a short sword and moved nimbly, circling with Gallus in a tense, baleful dance.
‘You’re only making things worse for yourself,’ Lurco spat, genuinely sounding as if he was trying to offer advice.
Gallus said nothing, his eyes fixed on Lurco’s neck. As he passed Cantaber, he lashed out backwards with the falcata, the blade breaking the chains on the wretch’s right wrist.
Lurco laughed from the pit of his stomach. ‘You think you can free that one? His muscles wasted away long ago – he is but bone and skin. He cannot stand, let alone walk!’
Gallus’ top lip tremored, betraying the wolfish snarl once more. It was enough to quieten Lurco and they continued to circle. Then, as Gallus moved past the open door to the cell, he saw a flash of delight in the man’s eyes – flicking beyond his shoulder. A thousand voices in his head screamed danger and he sensed a sudden presence behind him, but before he could react, a thick, sweating arm wrapped around his neck in a death grip, denying breath in or out, the other meaty hand simultaneously turning his wrist so he dropped the falcata. He thrashed with his elbows, but the unseen giant was resolute and he could not struggle free.
‘Ah, Kuno, your timing is impeccable,’ Lurco laughed. ‘I’ll see to it that you get your leave for this.’
A grunt and stinking breath from Kuno was all Gallus heard by way of reply. Fiery fury pounded through Gallus’ veins, but he could feel it ebbing along with the beat of his heart as the air in his lungs grew stale.
Lurco crept
forward, picking up the falcata and coming nose-to-nose with Gallus. ‘Yes, his eyes are going. He’ll pass out in a moment. We’ll break his ankles before he wakes again.’ His bottom lip curled and he looked over his shoulder at Cantaber. ‘Perhaps we could even make him a nice chair?’
Gallus felt black curtains closing in on him, saw just Lurco’s vile face with the dark black hole for a nose and the wretch, Cantaber, beyond. He thought of Olivia and Marcus, of his precious brothers in the legion, and summoned the last flicker of strength to kick out at Lurco. His heel caught the torturer square in the belly, sending him flailing backwards across the cell, landing on Cantaber’s lap. As he went, he dropped the falcata, which Gallus shot out a hand to catch, then thrust it up and over his shoulder. It ground against flesh and tore through sinew, sending a gout of blood over Gallus neck. An instant later, Kuno’s death grip faded to nothing and the giant collapsed, blood fountaining from the cleft through his face. Panting, Gallus stepped over to Lurco, still winded and in Cantaber’s lap.
‘Oh you will pay for this,’ Lurco snarled. ‘You will pay dearly!’ He pressed a palm into the arm of Cantaber’s chair to rise, the short sword raised in the other hand. But Cantaber’s freed, corpse-like hand lashed up and round Lurco’s torso, pulling him back. Whatever strength the tortured wretch still had was seemingly enough to stop Lurco from rising. Gallus pounced on the moment, striding forward to swipe his blade out, cleaving Lurco’s hand and sword cleanly from the rest of his raised arm.
Lurco gawped for a moment at the stump, spouting blood, but only until Cantaber’s sinewy, trembling arm fumbled at Lurco’s belt, finding and drawing a knife, which he drew and plunged into Lurco’s windpipe. The torturer gagged and mouthed something, then slid to the ground like a sack of wet, rotten vegetables.
Panting, Gallus staggered over to Cantaber. ‘Thank you, old man,’ he said, clasping the prisoner’s free hand, but already it was limp. He felt for the man’s heartbeat, and caught only its last few pulses, before it beat no more. His awful ordeal was over.
Gallus backed away from the three bodies in the chamber, out onto the mid-level landing, then looked up the short stretch of stairs: there was the empty torture chamber… and the door to the world above.
The keys ground in the lock and the thick door inched open, a narrow shaft of morning sunlight blinding Gallus. For a moment, he could see nothing, hearing only the throbbing of blood in his ears and the rasp of his breath, as his eyes slowly acclimatised. He studied the sliver of the outside world he had revealed. Not a soul to be seen. He opened the door a fraction more then leant out a little to look both ways. No sentries? His soldier’s instinct instantly warned him to be wary.
He padded outside into the sweet, fresh air, pulling forward the hood of the blue robe he had found hanging on a hook by the table in the torture chamber, veiling his face in shade. He could see that he was somewhere in the western section of the palace grounds. A flagstoned path lay between him and some outer palace hall, and flourishing gardens lay to his left and right. Find Dexion and slay him! a voice in his mind rasped, drawing his eyes to the hall and the even grander structures further into the palace grounds. Flee, save yourself! a weak voice countered, trying to pull his gaze away to instead search for the palace walls and gates. ‘Never,’ he growled.
Just then, he heard a whinnying of horses from somewhere deeper in the grounds, then an urgent exchange of words. Suddenly, something moved in the corner of his eye. His head shot round: by a small wagon house, a bearded Herul legionary was hurriedly mustering a group of his comrades: eight of them – Romanised tribesmen with bushy beards and fiery locks – rushed to pull on their bronze helms and leather cuirasses, hoisting red and white ringed shields and spears before haring off into the palace grounds. Another pair of those same, gruff soldiers shot through the gardens to his right in the same direction. All had been summoned, it seemed.
What’s going on? he wondered again. What does it matter? I’m here for one thing only.
He noticed a door across the way – ajar – and caught the scent of roasting boar coming from the hall within. A culina, he guessed. And if it was the palace kitchen, then it would be connected to the rest of the manor, to Gratian’s offices… it might lead him to Dexion. He took a step towards the door, when a barking voice halted him in his tracks. ‘Stop!’
Gallus’ every muscle tensed. Under the cloak, he half-drew the falcata as he turned to face the palace worker running towards him. The man wore an odd smile on his face, and halted about ten strides away. ‘Your pay, Kuno,’ the man said, tossing a purse through the air. Gallus shot out a hand to catch it.
‘Don’t go spending it all on whores now,’ the fellow chuckled.
‘You know me – not a single coin will be wasted,’ Gallus replied. His voice was raspy and the inflection of nonchalance he had tried to lend to his words failed.
The sentry frowned, and Gallus was sure the man was scouring the hood and the shadowy veil that hid his face. But the man’s smile returned. ‘What’s with the sore throat – you’ve been at the whores already, haven’t you?’ he said, roaring with laughter at his own joke. ‘Anyway, enjoy your leave. You chose a fine day for it – seems like it’s going to be a busy one for the rest of us: a messenger’s just brought in some news and we’ve all been summoned,’ he said, turning then jogging off in the direction the Heruli had gone.
Gallus waited until the man was out of sight, then slipped into the nearby doorway and through the culina. There were only a few cooks there and most barely gave him a second glance. Deeper inside the palace complex, he came to a grand reception hall – a forest of porphyry columns, illuminated by shafts of brightly coloured light from the beautifully-stained leaded windows, and polished marble floors that seemed to amplify every careful footstep of the soft boots he had taken from Kuno. He edged round one column and saw Heruli legionaries posted everywhere: two at the foot of the grand marble staircase at the northern end of the hall and several more dotted around. Still, silent and watchful.
He trained his gaze on the narrow but tall doorway to the right of the staircase, where two more Heruli stood. That, he remembered all too well, was the entrance to the emperor’s throne room. It was the place where Dexion had shed his veil. He imagined what might be going on within that chamber right now: Dexion in discussion with Gratian? Just two Heruli stood between him and revenge. A madness settled upon him then. He felt his hand reach for the falcata hilt and his legs instinctively tensed as if ready to spring forward.
But the whinnying of a horse put paid to his ill-formed plan. He twisted to peer along the hall towards the southern end, where a huge, arched entrance led outside to a square. He saw the Heruli forming up out there – roughly a thousand of them. Before them was a slight man in a sleeveless tunic, soaked with sweat, on foot and fighting to control two agitated horses. A Cursus Publicus rider, Gallus realised, seeing the telltale bag of scrolls lashed behind the saddle. Whatever news this one had brought had stirred up all this activity. He leaned out a little more from behind the column to see if he could spot any clues as to what was going on, when a cluster of men climbed the few steps from outside and paced into the hall: a trio of Heruli guards, a pair of courtiers, another messenger rider and two unmistakeable figures. Two who had mocked Gallus in his nightmares throughout his months in the dungeons: Emperor Gratian… and Dexion. Gallus’ heart lurched and he ducked back behind the column so he could just see them and no more. Dexion was dressed all in black: black tunic and the flowing dark cloak. Black like your poisoned heart. And the pair were striding this way, across the hall and towards the throne room, and they would have to pass this very column. His blood raced and his fingers tightened around the falcata hilt once more.
‘It is a bleak situation, is it not?’ Gratian cooed.
Gallus, back pressed against the column, edged his head round and caught just a flash of the incongruous smirk on the Western Emperor’s face. They were but ten paces from this column.
He could see Dexion’s unprotected neck. Just a little closer, cur…
The messenger by their side seemed exasperated at Gratian but fearful of expressing this too much. ‘The Lentienses have gathered their tribesmen from the innumerable villages across the Rhenus. They have crossed the river near the fort at Argentoratum. More than twenty thousand men rove unchecked across our lands and plunder our towns and stores throughout Germania Superior,’ the man said, repeating his original message and clearly not for the first time.
‘Yes, yes. But just what am I to do?’ Gratian mused, he and Dexion almost level with the column.
‘Our emperor’s army is already marching east to aid Thracia, you see,’ one fat courtier explained to the messenger, ‘and he too will be setting off to join them with further forces soon, very soon.’
Gallus felt the fire in his sword arm gutter suddenly. Despite Gratian’s vile agents and dungeons, Gallus had taken solace in the fact that this young man’s armies were set to march east, ally with Emperor Valens’ forces and the XI Claudia and, together, save Thracia.
The entourage swept past the column, Dexion coming within a blade’s length of Gallus’ hiding place… then sweeping past. The moment was gone.
‘But I can’t possibly march east when my own realm is rife with invaders, can I?’ Gratian continued. ‘No, we will tackle these treacherous ingrates who seek to plunder my lands first.’
Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5) Page 10
