From there it had been a hard fight, recalled Heraus, as the screaming horde of golems began to fill the catacomb corridors before him. The gladiators had left the ludus as a unit, doing their best to watch each other’s backs as they made their escape. One of the men, a tribesman named Prax, had been a stone hauler’s slave before he’d been a gladiator, and had himself carried many of the stones that built the essedari annex of the ludus before catching the eye of the lanista. Prax led the group through the streets and away from the core of the chaos, though it seemed that the golem plague had pulled ahead of them.
“Hesta must be heading for the center of the city,” muttered Agathias, “turning people as she goes. The woman shall be the death of us.”
“What about the catacombs?” asked Qais, a thracian who had once been a noxii, condemned to the pits, before fighting his way into favor with Lanista Lacea as one of the few men who survived a fight with Heraus the Boar, “There are entrances all over the city, I used to know them, and many exits as well.”
“I hear that people get lost down there, never to be seen again,” said Prax, “do you know your way once inside?”
“If there is a way he’ll find it,” grunted Heraus, “We must leave the open streets, soon the legionaries will respond to the golem riots, and we’ll have the eagle and the golem tearing at us.”
The men nodded their approval, and Prax and Qais led them deeper into the city. While the gladiators had made short work of the handful of golems that assaulted them at the ludus gate, more than twenty fully armed gladiators walking the streets of Rome was not unnoticed. The men moved as quietly as they could, letting the screams and sounds of the growing golem plague mask their movements. Though soon the golems began to appear and attack them in larger and larger groups, and soon the group was hard pressed to move freely in the streets.
Horns blew and alarm bells tolled as the city became a battlefield, the golem plague finally reaching its full momentum and washing across the city. The gladiators fought hard, gaining ground and moving through the streets as swiftly as they could without turning their backs to anything but a comrade. They were the finest golem fighters in the empire, and still they were pressed.
Finally, after a grueling and bloody march across a third of the city, they reached an entrance to the catacombs. Prax was dead, having been killed several blocks back, and he had not been the first. Of the twenty-six gladiators that escaped Ludus Laeca, only seventeen remained. The distance covered by the brotherhood of gladiators had been measured in the lives of nine men’s lives. Qais lifted a small metal grate, then without a word crawled into what to all appearances seemed to be a hole in the street.
The other gladiators followed suit, and soon they were moving through the darkness of the catacombs, searching for an exit. The group wandered through the catacombs for what seemed like hours, and for all accounts could have been. Sometimes they could hear the sounds of battle and chaos in the streets above, and if there had been any hope of the Romans throwing back the hungry tide it seemed lost. For the gladiators there was a grim sense of justice to it all, as the golems tore down the capitol of an empire that enslaved them.
As if the obstacles set against them were not enough, Qais was killed in a golem attack. The creature had emerged from the darkness and torn out his throat before he could react, and he collapsed in a bloody heap. Drust leapt forward and plunged his dagger through the golem’s eye socket, then side-stepped another as it rushed him, leaving another gladiator room to shield bash it to the ground. Drust drove the point of his dagger into the fallen golem, as Heraus and Agathias stepped around him to slay several more of the creatures.
A low moan began to fill the catacombs, and in the darkness the men began to panic. Drust stood and spoke, with an iron edge to his voice, “We cannot lose the initiative, it is we who are on the attack. Keep moving, and we’ll find a way out. And someone kill Qais.”
Heraus chuckled at the memory of that, the pragmatism of the blue man had always amused him. The golems were closing in now, and soon they would reach him. The gladiators had moved and fought and moved and fought, until when all seemed lost, they found an exit. It was a drainage tunnel that emptied into the river. The men would have to crawl down a small tunnel, no wider than a shield’s breadth, then emerge into open ground again. At least, that was the theory. They had no way of knowing for sure, though the general consensus was that it was worth a try.
By that time everyone in the group, which was now only six men, including Agathias, Drust, and Heraus, knew that Heraus had been bitten several times. Neither they nor he could be sure when he’d sustained his first injury, so accustomed they all were to Heraus being wounded and impervious to the pain. “I cannot go with you my brothers, nor shall I bend to a mercy killing. I’ll fight them here,” he said gravely as the men began to strip off their armor, taking only breeches and blades for their journey into the tunnel.
“A hard place to meet death my friend, surely you would see sky before you meet your gods?” asked Agathias as he paused at the tunnel’s entrance.
“A man must stand against them, here, long enough for the rest of us to make good our escape, else they would simply follow us. Eventually we would need rest, and they would be upon us,” Drust said as he tied a chord around his dagger so that it could hang from his neck while he climbed.
“The pict is right Agathias, and I am already a dead man. Go find freedom and make use of it,” said Heraus as he clapped his hand upon the hoplomachi’s shoulder, then he turned his back on his brothers, and they climbed.
Now he stood, alone in the tunnel, as the golems surged towards him. His vision had begun to blur, and his limbs felt weak with blood loss and fatigue. It felt as if sometimes the darkened tunnels of the catacombs were actually the snow-crusted forests of Germania. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog from his mind.
Lanista Felix said I once was shown mercy and made ill use of it, he thought, and I thought he was right. I sought to find my place in the pits of the noxii, wading in lakes of blood.
The first of the golems reached him, and he split its skull with a stroke from his axe. Then he pivoted on the balls of his feet and slammed the axe into the face of a Roman legionnaire, who fell to the ground, spurting blood across the snow.
My place is here, he thought, in the last true fight. His axe struck home again, and another golem collapsed to the ground. The gladiator felt a sting on his leg, and looked to see that a Roman legionnaire had sliced his leg open, so Heraus responded by caving in the Roman’s helmet with the butt of the axe. Heraus kept his momentum going, and stepped into a mighty stroke that cleaved another legionnaire in half at the waist, then with the back swing decapitated a golem as it rushed in.
The snow was falling, and the gladiator wiped the blood from his eyes as the Romans closed in. He felled another golem, then a spear punctured his side, and he dropped his axe. And my god is with me.
Heraus fell to his knees as he grasped for the axe, then disappeared under the weight of several golems as they leapt upon him from all directions. His last thought was, I am Heraus the Boar, and I do not need your mercy.
THE LEGACY
Centurion Cyprian Africanus died in his bed as an old man, survived by his son, Titus Africanus. Before the aged veteran breathed his last, a summons was sent to fetch his son. The young man, Titus, had followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the legion. So great was the honor that his father had won in the Servile War that the Legio VII had been re-formed. The legion was new yet, though had recently won its first honors during a punitive expedition against the Maedi tribes in northern Thrace.
When Legionnaire Titus received the summons, his centurion was happy to grant him furlough enough to make the journey home to attend his dying father. Included with the summons was a sealed scroll, with instructions for it to be broken and read by none other than Titus himself. It read as follows:
“My beloved son, long have I awaited news of your campa
ign, and some weeks past I received word that the Legio VII had won honor in far Thrace. I am confident that you served bravely and with distinction, and I trust in the gods Mars that you survived your conflict and in Mercury that this message reach you.
I must tell you now that I am dying. The same wasting disease that took your mother seems to have found purchase in my own flesh, and I fear that I do not have much time left in this world. For that I am grateful, it has been a long and bloody journey my son, and I shall welcome its end.
Do not think me macabre or possessed of an ill spirit, I am healthy in mind, if not in body. I am a man burdened by knowledge, there are certain truths that I must impart upon you my son, and because you are my son these are soon to be your burdens to bear.
The Empire is full of secrets Titus, and the men who keep them are as cunning as they are dangerous. I carry secrets, and sworn to protect them upon penalty of not only my death, but of my family as well. My sweet wife has perished from this world, and my only son has now grown to be a good man and a fine soldier. These keepers of secrets cannot harm me any longer, and now it falls to you to bear my secrets, and make your own choice as to what you do with this knowledge.
As you know, I was with the Legio VII in its final days in Judea. We were suppressing rebels throughout the region, and drove the last of the dissenters to a mountain fortress known as Masada. What you have been told, what everyone has been told, was that we met fierce resistance, and the legion sustained heavy losses taking the fortress. Then, the night of the siege, there was a massive rebel counter-attack, and though we emerged victorious nearly two thirds of the legion were dead.
The truth my son is that we angered the God of the Israelites, and he sent a doom to walk among us. I discovered the first of the golems, the golem primus. It was a man, made of clay and given life by the priest of the tribe. This golem bit the rebels, and they in turn attacked us, and soon we attacked each other. My fellow officers and myself worked hard to suppress knowledge of what happened to the legion, and our veterans were ordered to silence under the penalty of not only their deaths but that of their families.
Though no one knew of the golem primus. The two legionnaires who went into the temple with me that morning were killed in the night’s massacre. I was greedy son, I was taken with a lust for coin, as if wealth beyond my soldier’s pension would wash from my mind the horrors I’d witnessed.
I sold the golem primus to Lanista Atticus Laeca, whom you no doubt have heard of. By the gods but what great sport he gave in the Coliseum with his golems and his gladiators! Though terrible it was also glorious was it not? To his credit the lanista never revealed the golem primus, and not a soul knew the secret of his creatures. Nor did they care, for it was only in the arena that the golems were seen.
The scribes write of the Servile War, and as you know it was during that war that myself and other old soldiers were given chance to prove our worth once more in battle. They write that a slave revolt engulfed the city. It offends me in my old age to read that good hard Romans were massacred by slaves, as if the rabble could rise against us. There is even rumor that gladiators rose up, that good houses like that of Atticus Laeca were put to the sword by their own stock.
The truth of it is that Lanista Laeca was murdered. I do not know the details of his death, nor of the fall of his house, though I do know what I saw. We marched upon Rome, four legions swiftly mustered from the provinces, two of those mere recruits as yet untested in battle. For eight grueling days we fought the golems, street by street and house by house. For every one of us they killed, he would rise as one of them, so had to be fought and slain again.
Of the four legions we marched into the teeth of the battle there remained but one at the end of it. It was one of the greatest achievements of the Roman military ever to be won, and in my old age it sickens me to know that future generations will only ever read of this as a battle with slaves. Good men died, Roman men, defending the empire, and they deserve their place among the honored dead.
My greatest burden Titus, beyond the truths I have revealed, is the golem primus. I found it, there in the dark heart of the city. A golem woman, so badly mauled that I could not divine her age or nation, was at the head of a mighty host of the golems. Her eyes burned with the kind of hatred and hunger that I’d only seen in the eyes of one other golem, the rabbi himself who had created the golem primus. She screamed at us and attacked with a ferocity I’d still not thought possible, even after everything I’d seen.
As I was freeing my blade from her skull I noticed that hanging from her belt was the golem primus itself, and knew in an instant that she must have been a slave of House Laeca. Was she the reason the golem plague had spread so quickly? I cannot tell you with certainty, though I suspect it, for how else would she have the golem primus but to have wrested it from the hands of Atticus Laeca. He would not have parted with it willingly.
I have held the golem primus in secret, here in our family villa. Do you remember the old pagan cairn we found while hunting? You were just a boy then, but good with a bow as I recall. I hid a strongbox in the cairn, and inside it rests the golem primus. I have long studied its secrets, and have come to know the one way that the golem primus can be destroyed. The tattoo on its forehead is the Hebrew word for Life. To destroy it you must flay the skin of the first letter from its forehead, and thus changing the word to Death. I chose not to destroy the golem, perhaps if I were a stronger man, not grown so sentimental in my age, alas that is not so. Thus, this legacy shall pass to you.
I brought this doom upon Rome my son, for it was I who sold the golem primus to Lanista Atticus Laeca. Hence I go into my final days with peace in my heart, for a lifetime of horror and war is nearly over, and I shall be able to rest. For you Legionnaire Titus Africanus, so informed of the truth of many things, the shadows of life have grown darker. I know that you will make the right choice my son, to use the golem primus as the mightiest of weapons, or to destroy it forever. If I am dead and gone by the time you reach me, know that the choice is yours.”
As Titus neared his father’s home, he drew his steed to a halt, and looked in horror as smoke filled the sky. He spurred his horse onwards, and rode into a burning villa. Bodies were everywhere, some the house guards and slaves, others were the barbarians known as Visigoths.
Titus rode hard for the cairn, following the tracks of many warriors afoot. His worst fears were confirmed, as he neared the cairn, and saw that it had been torn apart and plundered.
He dismounted and looked into the cairn, his eyes resting on an open strongbox covered in blood. As he stared his hackles rose, and he spun around, his sword in his hand. Before him stood a barbarian warrior, pale as death, with ragged bite wounds in several places on his body.
Legionnaire Titus Africanus stepped boldly forward and swept the barbarian’s head from his shoulders. Then he mounted his horse and followed the obvious path the Visigoth raiding party had taken.
It was several hours before he reached their camp, only to find it savaged and empty. It had all the signs of a great battle being fought. There were discarded weapons, overturned wagons, and smoldering cook fires left unattended. Then he noticed the large number of tracks leading away from camp, sucking in his breath at the terrible realization of what horror was unfolding.
The tracks were all heading south, towards Rome.
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