The Leopard sword e-4

by Anthony Riches

  A voice echoed around the corner from the brothel’s entrance, swelling in volume as whoever it was left their position at the main door and headed to investigate the sound.

  Fumbling with fingers that felt like sausages he reached behind the tiny statue, slid the heavy key home and pulled it to the right, easing the massive iron bolt out of its stone slot just as he’d done before, then he put his shoulder to the door’s stone-clad wood and heaved it into the passage beyond. Diving through the narrow gap he turned to push the hidden entrance’s door closed, and slid its bolt home with a soft click of well-greased metal, breathing as shallowly as he could. After a moment muffled voices reached him through the tiny holes drilled in the shrine’s wall for the purpose.

  ‘Well, I know what I heard. And that candle I lit for Arduenna is on the ground. Someone’s been here all right, and not long ago; this wax is still warm. You’d better get inside and get some of the boys out here.’

  Another voice answered, unmistakably that of the man called Baldy.

  ‘If you want to disturb Slap while he’s busy giving the queen bitch a good fucking, you be my guest. Everybody thinks Stab’s the dangerous one, but I’ve seen Slap’s eyes when he goes after a man, and I know which one of them scares me the most…’

  Julius’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and he turned to pad silently up the pitch-black stairway that led to Annia’s room.

  ‘ Horsemen! ’

  Scaurus followed the Votadini scout’s pointing arm, squinting into the setting sun. He paused for a moment, shading his eyes with a hand and staring hard into the sun’s glare, his frown deepening. ‘Those are our horsemen. Shit! ’ He stared at the ground while Clodius stared at him in bemusement, then shook his head in barely controlled anger. ‘We’ve been fooled! Get your men turned around and ready to march back to the city, and pass the same order to the legion centuries.’

  He walked away from the leading century’s front rank, stopping after fifty paces to await the arrival of the riders. Decurion Silus reined in and jumped down from his horse with a weary salute.

  ‘Greetings, Tribune. I have to report that-’

  ‘I know. You rode all the way west until you ran headlong into the First Spear Frontinius’s command, and never saw any sign of Obduro’s men. We’ve been fooled, Decurion, and badly! I’ve thrown almost every man we had left in the city into what I thought was going to end with Obduro between the hammer and anvil, and now I find that I’ve left him a juicy prize for the taking. How far behind you is the first spear?’

  ‘A mile or so, no more, Tribune.’

  Scaurus’s face brightened a little.

  ‘He must have turned them around sooner than I would have. Thank Mithras that at least one of us is thinking with his head today. Decurion, take your men and scout forward towards the city as fast as you can. I want to know what’s happening there before it gets too dark to see.’ Silus saluted and remounted, leading his men away to the east. ‘Centurion!’

  Clodius ran to join him.

  ‘Tribune?’

  ‘Tell your men to be ready for a forced march back to the city. And tell them that anyone that falls out of the column can expect to be making his way alone, in the dark, and with a long spell on extra duty waiting for him at the end of the walk!’

  At the top of the hidden stairway Julius crept forward until he found the door, sheathing the knife and groping for the heavy iron bolt. Sliding it out of its keep, he eased the door away from its frame with slow patience, mindful that any movement in the wall hanging disguising its presence might alert whoever was in the room. A mewing squeal sounded in the room behind the curtain, an involuntary expression of pain as whatever was happening to Annia took a fresh turn, and a second later the sound of a flat palm slapping bare flesh rang out.

  ‘You’re loving this, aren’t you, bitch, loving having a real man up you rather than your army faggot? He couldn’t make you squeak like that, could he? He’s run away and left you to take the heat for him.’ He grunted again, and again, clearly going at the helpless woman with all the force he had. ‘I’ve wanted to do this to you for years now, but Petrus wanted to keep you for himself. Now that he’s got no more use for you I’m going to make up for all those years.’

  Recognising Slap’s voice, and tensed on the balls of his feet ready to sweep the heavy curtain aside and attack, Julius held onto his rage by a fingernail’s width, waiting to be sure of his bearings before striking, but then another voice spoke.

  ‘Fucking hurry up and lose your load. I’ve been watching you and nursing this bone for long enough. Let me have a go, and later you can take all the time over her you want.’

  He recognised Stab’s voice, close enough to the hidden door that if it weren’t for the wall hanging Julius knew he could have reached out and taken him by the throat. He swept the tapestry aside with a flick of his left hand, snapping the blade into the wiry man’s neck and leaving it buried there, smashing him aside with a flat palm. Taking two steps to the bed he grabbed Annia’s rapist by the hair just as Slap realised what was happening. Heaving the big man off the prostrate woman’s body, he put a hand on the struggling bodyguard’s chest and threw him bodily across the small room to smash against the far wall with a roar of anger, nodding down at Annia and gesturing for her to stay where she was. While Slap lay momentarily stunned on the room’s wooden floor, Julius stepped round the bed and slid home the three bolts that secured the door.

  ‘A nice big oak plank like that ought to keep your boys out for a few minutes, until they find an axe or two, and we’ll be long gone by then. With your head, of course.’

  The bodyguard groaned and climbed to his feet, rolling his head and clenching his fists.

  ‘You should have done me while you had the chance. No man’s bested me with bare fists in ten years and more. I’m going to break your fucking back and let you watch while I gut your woman in front of you.’

  He stamped forward, supremely confident in his physical prowess as Julius shook his empty hands and wrapped them into big, scarred fists. Pulling his head aside smartly to dodge the bodyguard’s opening shot he grabbed the other man’s extended left arm, pulled it down onto his raised knee by simple brute force and broke it at the elbow, drawing a shriek of pain and horror from his suddenly agonised opponent. Snapping his head forward into Slap’s nose he sent the other man reeling back, his face a bloodied mess, and watched him as he staggered back against the wall next to where Stab lay inert in a pool of his own blood, Julius’s knife still protruding from his throat.

  ‘It’s a pity for you that nobody with a bit more about them than your usual brainless muscle thought to educate you in the ways of real fighting. Unlike you, I’ve been fighting with real men ever since I left this place at fifteen, soldiers who’ll leave you bleeding at the slightest provocation, whether intended or not, and I rose to the rank of centurion by beating the living shit out of anyone that got in my way. All that deference I gave you before was just my way of avoiding a fight that could only end badly for you, and then for her.’

  The door to the corridor shook in its frame as whatever reinforcement had arrived in response to the bodyguard’s shout attacked it with their boots and shoulders, but the sturdy timber and heavy iron bolts seemed to be resisting their assault easily enough. Julius tipped his head to Annia, who had risen from the bed and was putting on a tunic. Slap nodded slowly, then reached down with his good arm to his dying comrade and pulled the knife free with an audible sucking noise, watching as Stab convulsed for a moment and then subsided back into the spreading crimson puddle of his lifeblood. Slap’s reply was tight with the pain of his injuries, but an angry light was burning in his eye.

  ‘Fair enough, hard man. Let’s see if you can do knife work as well as you can talk.’

  He came forward, crablike, his wrecked arm turned away from the Tungrian while the knife weaved a deadly pattern in front of him. Julius stepped forward cautiously to meet him, swaying back as the knife hand darte
d for his eyes, then wincing as the blade sliced across his gut, leaving a line of blood weeping through the slashed tunic.

  ‘Now you’ve done it. The soldier that lent me this tunic’s going to shit when he sees what a mess you’ve made of it.’

  He danced in fast, catching Slap’s good hand in his right fist as the bruiser made to repeat the cut, holding it steady in mid-air as the bodyguard grunted and strained in a fruitless effort to break the powerful grip on his hand. Julius tensed the bulging muscle in his right arm, physically forcing the other man’s hand down his body and turning the blade in towards him.

  ‘ No…’

  Realising his intention Slap redoubled his efforts, butting the Tungrian in the face only for Julius to ball his other hand into a fist and smash it into Slap’s face with a crack of bone. With a single, powerful, grunting shove Julius forced the knife’s blade into Slap’s crotch, sawing it to and fro while the bodyguard screamed hoarsely at the blindingly intense pain. Pulling the weapon free from the other man’s failing grasp, he pushed him away, and the bodyguard tottered backwards with his good hand gripping his ruined manhood, his wide eyes fixed on Julius as blood flowed down his legs and onto the floor in thick rivulets.

  ‘And that’s enough punishment, I’d say. Are you ready to leave?’

  He turned to find Annia lacing her shoes, her face turned away from the ruined bodyguard. She spoke without looking up.

  ‘Everything I thought I had here has turned to ashes… and it was all a lie in any case.’

  The Tungrian strode across to the door, now silent as the men outside realised the futility of their efforts to break it down with anything less than an axe.

  ‘You men outside! Tell Petrus that I’ll be back for him. And tell him that I’m planning to take more time over his death than I did with these two fools.’ He turned for the hidden door, taking Annia gently by the arm. ‘Let’s go, before they realise there’s another way out of here.’ He paused at the top of the stairs, shaking his head at Slap as the bodyguard stared at him through eyes slitted with the agony of his wound.

  ‘Remember when you called me an amateur, and how I smiled and ate shit for the sake of seeing her? There was only one amateur in the room that night, and it wasn’t me! Die slowly, amateur.’

  Escorted away from the basilica by the city guard after delivering the revelation of his master’s murder and the slaughter of the bandit hunters, Tornach had sunk gratefully onto a pallet bed in one of the jail’s empty cells and quickly fallen asleep, his equipment stacked against the wall next to the tiny stone room’s open door. He had swiftly been forgotten by the guards, consigned to the status of ‘that poor bastard’ and the subject of idle discussion as they went about their business as ordered by Scaurus, keeping the city secure against any potential attack. As the shadows had begun to lengthen in the street outside the cell’s barred window he had risen from the bed and strapped his belt and weapons about his waist, walking out to the jail’s front office with a sheepish wave of his hand to the officer in charge.

  ‘Slept like a baby.’

  The guard nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Understandable. What you saw…’

  He left the sentiment incomplete, but Tornach pursed his lips gratefully.

  ‘That’s done now, and it’s time to get on with life. I’ve nothing else to do, so I might as well help you boys. Where do you need another man?’

  The watch commander snorted a mirthless laugh.

  ‘Where don’t I need another man? There’s twenty-five of us to secure eight gates and keep the city calm.’ He looked at the bandit hunter with an appraising eye. ‘Why don’t you go out to one of the gates and send a man back here? That’ll let me put another body out on the streets.’

  He took a tablet from a stack perched tidily on his desk, wrote a brief statement of his orders into the wax and then embossed the soft surface with the engraved official ring on his right hand. He passed the tablet to the waiting Tornach, who nodded and tipped him a respectful salute and then strode out of the door with a purposeful look on his face, just as one of the officer’s men burst into the office.

  ‘There’s five hundred or so men coming up the west road, and we’re pretty sure they’re not the lads that went out this afternoon.’

  The watch commander frowned.

  ‘If it’s not the army coming back home, there’s only one other man with that sort of force to command, and the gods only know what he’ll do if he gets inside these walls.’ He stood, reaching for his helmet and sword. ‘If it is Obduro we’ll just have to pray he’s got no means of getting in. I’m going down to the south-west gate to see what he’s got to say for himself.’

  ‘ Centurion! Soldiers on the main road! ’

  Sergius mounted the grain store’s wall two steps at a time in response to his chosen man’s call, responding more to the urgency in the man’s voice than the words themselves. He stood alongside his deputy breathing heavily and staring out into the evening sun’s radiance, and at length shook his head in disgust.

  ‘I can’t see a bloody thing, what with the setting sun and the fact that my eyes are twenty years older than I’d like. Who spotted them?’

  The chosen man ushered a soldier forward, and as Sergius turned to speak with the legionary he realised that the boy was barely old enough to shave. He sprang to attention, saluting his centurion with a look of uncertainty.

  ‘No wonder you’ve got sharp eyes, man; you’ve not spent a lifetime straining them to stare at the horizon in fear of what might be waiting for you just over it.’ He pointed to the distant horizon. ‘Now then, in your own time, tell me what you can see, eh?’

  He turned back to face the western horizon, waiting as the soldier stared out into the evening’s long shadows, and watching as the sun’s orange ball sank to meet the land’s smooth black line.

  ‘Not as much as I could just now, Centurion. They’re soldiers, marching on the main road. I can see their shields.’

  Sergius blew out a long sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank Mithras for that. For a moment I thought they might be Obduro’s men, but if they’re carrying shields then they must be-’

  ‘No, Centurion, I don’t think they’re ours. They’re not in any sort of formation, for one thing, and they don’t look… well, tidy enough to be Roman soldiers.’

  Sergius stood on the wall in the dying sun’s light, and as the dimming orb met the horizon it silhouetted the oncoming men, now less than a mile away, throwing them into sharp relief. The chosen man shook his head, screwing his eyes up in an attempt to make sense of what he was seeing.

  ‘What in Hades? They’re waving something over their heads, something on their spears. They look like…’

  ‘Heads.’ Sergius’s voice was flat with disappointment. ‘So much for our chances of a quiet life, eh?’ He turned back to the men waiting below him in the grain store’s wide expanse. ‘ Stand to! Let’s have you up on the wall! ’

  The young legionaries watched as the bandit gang marched up the road towards Tungrorum in total silence, the distant rapping of their hobnailed boots on the hard surface the only sound to be heard. Sergius stared out at them, calculating the odds as he counted their heads for a third time and came up with the same depressing answer. Turning to his chosen man he muttered his assessment quietly, unwilling to scare his men any more than they already were.

  ‘At least five hundred of them. With that many men I don’t see how we’re going to-’

  A screamed warning from the man to his right snatched his attention away from the oncoming bandits, and he leaned out from the wall to follow the legionary’s pointing hand. A pair of figures had burst from the closest of the city’s gates and were making for the safety of the grain store’s walls. The larger of the two was propping himself up with a spear, his pace more of a stagger than a limp, a piece of bloodstained cloth torn from his tunic tied about his leg. The woman beside him was dragging him along by the arm and looking back fearfully
at the open gateway. As Sergius watched a small group of men came through the arch behind them, their murderous intent clear as they fanned out to either side of the fleeing couple, yelling challenges and imprecations. He turned and shouted down to the men guarding the store’s entrance. ‘It’s Julius! Open the gate!’

  He leapt down from the wall with more agility than grace and waited while his men pulled away the stout timber beams securing the store’s entrance, joined within seconds by Julius’s watch officer and a handful of his men. Drawing his sword as the gate started to open, Sergius dived through the gap at the head of the small group and ran towards the fleeing figures, still fifty paces distant, watching as Julius, clearly unable to go any further, turned to face his pursuers with only the spear on which he was leaning as armament. The woman ran a few more paces before she realised that she was alone, then she stopped and turned round, screaming in horror as their pursuers closed in on the Tungrian. Without hesitation the exhausted Tungrian obeyed his instincts and went on the offensive, lunging awkwardly forward to stab one man in the thigh with the spear and sending him reeling away clutching at his leg. Pivoting on his good leg, he punched the spear’s butt spike through the foot of another man, who had been sufficiently unwary in his approach, twisting the weapon’s shaft and tearing it free, flipping the spear over in his hand with practised skill and slashing the blade across the man’s throat, dropping him choking to the turf. The remaining attackers spread out, still not noticing the approaching soldiers in their fixation on the Tungrian, and as Julius stood panting, the spear’s blade weaving in the air as he struggled to keep it level, one of the gang members eased around behind him and raised his knife to strike. As the attacker stepped forward to deliver the death stroke the woman leapt onto him and buried her own knife deep into his back, bearing him to the ground and stabbing at him again and again in a frenzied spray of his blood, her screams clearly on the verge of hysteria. While the remaining attackers dithered in the face of Julius’s exhausted obduracy and the woman’s berserk attack, Sergius shouted a hoarse challenge that snatched their attention away from the fugitives and onto the oncoming soldiers. They turned as one man and ran, sprinting back towards the city’s gate as it closed in their faces with a dull thud.