The young legionary nodded eagerly, but his face clouded with a question.
‘What if I miss?’
Sergius shook his head with a grim smile.
‘Not likely! I’ve not seen you miss a man-sized target at twenty paces in all the months we’ve been practising with the thrown spear, so once the enemy are inside that granary all you have to do is pick one of them and put your spear into him. Julius’s fire water will do the rest. Speaking of which, I think it’s time to ready the spear.’
Julius’s chosen man stepped forward with the jar of naphtha, liberally soaking the spear’s rag adornment with the pungent fluid. The young legionary held it away from his body, wiping a tear from his eyes as the naphtha’s acrid fumes evaporated into the night air. A shout from the men in the granary caught their attention, and a moment later the labouring legionaries erupted through the door, two of them dragging one of their fellow soldiers between them.
‘They’ve broken through the wall!’
Julius took the torch from the man next to him.
‘Hold out the spear!’
He waited for the legionary to level his weapon, then played the torch’s flame delicately at the rag’s trailing edge. In an instant the wool was burning fiercely, and the big legionary eyed it warily, his confidence draining away at the thought of actually throwing the fire weapon. Sergius slapped him on the shoulder and barked an order.
‘Ready spears!’
The ingrained routine of a thousand training sessions took over, and the spearman braced himself to throw, placing his left foot forward and pulling the weapon back until the blazing rag was within inches of his face.
‘Throw!’
He lunged forward one big pace, slinging the spear at the granary’s doorway just as a bandit appeared out of the thick dust to stand in the opening, his sword held ready to fight. The spear spitted him straight through, and the rag’s flame was extinguished in an instant as it plunged through the hapless man’s body. Screaming in agony at the pain of his wound he staggered back into the granary, leaving the defenders staring in horror at the failure of their plan. Behind the dying man the hole through which the bandits were pouring into the granary suddenly flared with light, as a man with a blazing torch stepped up to the breach, the brand’s fiery light turning the grain dust into a red fog. Ducking into the cover of his shield Sergius bellowed a command at his uncomprehending legionaries.
‘Shields! Get behind your shields!’
10
‘Well met, Procurator. I’ll wager you hadn’t expected to see me again.’ Wiping the dappled blade of his sword free of the blood of the lone city guard who had been set to ensure that the disgraced procurator didn’t attempt to escape, Obduro stepped into Albanus’s house with an appreciative whistle. ‘I have to say that you’re clearly a man who knows how to live, Albanus. Look at all this . . .’ He waved a hand at the furnishings. ‘Opulence, that’s the only word for it.’ He put a hand to the helmet’s face mask and lifted it away. ‘It’s a horrible thing to wear for any length of time, you know, but it does make such an excellent disguise. All that time we were doing business and you never had a clue how I was getting into the city past the guards and the prefect’s men. And now you know!’
He grinned at the look on the procurator’s face, and Albanus spluttered his amazement.
‘But you’re . . .’
Albanus stepped back against the wall, his face suddenly white with fear, and the bandit leader’s grin broadened.
‘Just worked it out, have you? That if I’ve shown you my face then I’m not likely to let you live? Clever boy, Albanus, even if you are somewhat late in reaching the conclusion. I know that Scaurus took your share of the profits from our little venture, although I expect that my man Petrus will have recovered it by now.’
Julius’s shouted command snapped the watching soldiers out of their momentary dismay, and Sergius crouched into the cover of the shield he’d borrowed from his chosen man, snatching one last glance into the granary as the torchbearer stepped through the roughly hewn hole and into the cloud of dust. With a roaring explosion that made the watching soldiers stagger back a pace, the burning dust tore the solidly built granary to pieces like the hand of a vengeful god, sending a fireball into the night air that lit up the grain store’s compound like a momentary flash of daylight. Something hit Sergius’s shield hard, cracking the layered wooden board, and the spear thrower crouching next to him was smashed aside by a flying brick. When the first spear turned round to look at the man he realised that his soldier was already dead, his head bashed in by the massive impact. For a moment the senior centurion was as stunned as the men around him, and he stared out at a scene of devastation that was hard to comprehend. Where the granary had stood there remained only a gaping wound in the otherwise uninterrupted run of brickwork, and the ground around him was littered with bricks, roof tiles and the corpses of several of his men who had been too slow in taking shelter. Shaking his head to clear it, Sergius drew his sword and pointed it at the gaping hole in the row of granaries, but the command for his men to storm the shattered granary died in his throat at the sight of a thirty-foot-high column of fire raging out of the ruin.
Albanus’s house trembled, and the sound of a powerful explosion reached the two men through the thick walls. The door opened and one of Obduro’s men put his head round it.
‘A mighty flash to the south, my lord, close to the walls!’
The bandit leader nodded, waving the man back to his post. He turned back to Albanus with a wry smile.
‘As I was saying, I expect that Petrus will have reclaimed your share of the fraud from the Tungrians by now, and my next stop will be the collection of that rather large sum of money, less the commission we agreed in advance. After that all that remains for me to do is to retrieve my own share from its hiding place, and the stage will be set for my disappearance into history. Once I’m across the Mosa and into the forest the entire Rhenus garrison won’t be able to find me. I’ll quietly re-emerge somewhere to the south with a few picked men and enough wealth to deal with any difficult questions. You did hide my money as instructed, I hope? Your family in Rome really are most horribly vulnerable to a man possessed of as few scruples as myself.’
Albanus nodded frantically, putting up his hands in a feeble gesture of self-defence.
‘It’s all there, just as you instructed!’
Obduro nodded his approval, drawing his sword with a loud rasp of metal in the silent house.
Good. Now, then, let’s get this over with. If you behave yourself I’ll make sure it’s as quick and painless as I can.’
The former procurator shrank away from him, babbling helplessly at the sight of the sword’s dappled steel.
‘There’s really no need for this. I can assure you that I won’t talk! There must be something I have that you want!’
Obduro lowered the face mask over his features, its emotionless face regarding the trembling Albanus with a pitiless gaze. He spoke again, his voice rendered flat and hollow behind the thick sheet of hammered metal.
‘But of course you have something I want. Something only you can give me.’
‘Anything, just name it! I’ll give you anything if you—’
Obduro stepped forward and rammed the point of his sword up into the gabbling procurator’s throat, twisting the blade as he withdrew it to release the stream of gore that flowed down his victim’s tunic. Choking on the blood running down his throat, the dying man sank to his knees, staring up mutely at his murderer.
‘And there it is. Your silence, Albanus. That’s all I came for.’
He turned away, calling to his men as he left the house.
‘That rather loud bang sounded like it might have been a problem, if it was what I suspect it was, so I’m advancing our schedule. You, run to the Blue Boar and tell Petrus that I’m coming for the late procurator’s money. Go!’
Marcus and Arabus looked up at the city’s wall from the banks
of the River Worm, and the Roman walked forward to the point where wall and river met. In the moon’s dim light he could see the stark lines of the heavy metal gate that filled the perfectly hemispherical arch through which the river flowed on into Tungrorum. He shook his head at the tracker, pointing at the impassable archway.
‘The guard must have closed it when the gates were closed on the tribune’s orders. I can’t see how—’
A loud clanking noise from the other side of the wall made them both start with surprise, and Marcus flattened himself against the wall, gesturing to the tracker to do the same. Slowly, an inch at a time, the heavy iron gate was being lifted out of the water by whatever mechanism was working on it, until a rattling of chains indicated that whoever had raised it was securing it in place. The two men waited in perfect silence, listening intently as a man’s footsteps padded softly along the footpath that ran alongside the river, halting for a moment as whoever it was stopped to duck under the gate’s iron frame. Marcus eased the eagle-pommelled gladius out of its scabbard in a slow slither of polished iron, careful not to make a sound as the unknown man’s steps drew closer. A figure appeared only a few paces from the crouching Roman, his dark silhouette obscuring the lowest stars in the cloudless night sky as he stepped out of the arch and stopped to look across the empty ground beyond the city’s wall, breathing out a soft, slow sigh of relief. Marcus struck before the exhalation of breath was finished, rising quickly and sweeping the man’s feet out from under him with a swift kick, then pouncing on him as he hit the ground with a painful grunt. For an instant his captive tensed to struggle, but the cold touch of Marcus’s sword at his throat froze him into immobility.
Arabus stepped out of the wall’s shadow, his face a mask of hatred in the moonlight, and Tornach gaped up at the two men with poorly disguised dismay. Marcus spoke quietly to the tracker, glancing through the river gate.
‘Arabus, check inside the gate to see if he brought any friends with him.’ While the tracker padded off reluctantly into the shadows, the Roman looked down at Prefect Caninus’s deputy and shook his head in disgust. ‘Yes, it is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? You send out a man with orders to kill an interfering outsider, and the next thing you know the pair of them have you at sword point. And you can be grateful that it’s me holding the blade to your throat and not your man there. I showed him your sacrificial altar in the fortress on the hill, and he was quick enough to spot his son’s belt hanging from it. If I leave you to his mercies you’ll last either no more than a few heartbeats or no less than a few thousand, depending on whether he wants to take his revenge quickly or slowly. Either way I’d say you’re not very likely to see the dawn.’ Arabus came out of the shadows, and shook his head. ‘You’re on your own, then, are you, with nobody to come to your aid? Although why you’d be opening such an out-of-the-way exit from the city is a little hard to understand . . .’ He paused, as if in thought, then nodded knowingly. ‘Unless of course you’re readying an exit for Obduro, a quiet and unwatched way out for a few men carrying heavy boxes, eh? Perhaps your master’s less interested in the grain than he’d have us believe, and more interested in a rather large sum of money that he’s got hidden in the city. The only thing I don’t know is exactly where it’s hidden.’
He waited in silence, holding the gladius to Tornach’s throat and watching as fear and uncertainty mounted in the other man’s eyes.
‘What do you want?’
He smiled down at his captive.
‘What do I want? From you? Nothing at all. I’ve got what I need. I can bring my soldiers here and wait for your master to blunder into our arms. I just thought we’d share a few moments together before I let this embittered man behind me loose on you. After all, you set him to kill me, so the least I can do is enjoy the irony of the fact that it’ll be his knife ending your life, don’t you think?’
Tornach looked over the Roman’s shoulder at his tracker, quailing at the look in Arabus’s eyes.
‘Let me live. Let me live and I’ll give you Obduro, and the gold.’
Marcus spoke without taking his eyes off the prostrate man.
‘How’s that, Arabus? You let Tornach here live, and in return you get a chance for revenge with his master?’
The tracker thought for a moment, then nodded and reached into his pack, which he’d left in the wall’s shadow. He stepped forward with a length of rope, and bent to wrap it around Tornach’s ankles before speaking gruffly to his former superior.
‘Wrists.’
The bandit shook his head.
‘I can’t stay here! Obduro will—’
A twitch of Marcus’s gladius silenced him.
‘Obduro will what? Kill me and then make his escape from the city via this convenient little hole as planned? Find you here, and kill you as the price for your treachery? Quite possibly. So you’d better hope I pull off the apparently impossible feat of defeating him man to man, hadn’t you? Hold up your wrists before I grow bored and save him the trouble of having to kill you!’ Tornach glowered up at him as Arabus tied his wrists together with the rope that was securing his ankles, rendering him utterly helpless. ‘That’s better, now there’s no risk of you overpowering Arabus here while the pair of you wait to see who comes through this arch when it’s all done with.’ He reached for the helmet bag and his heavy leather-covered round shield, hefting its weight and looking down at the helpless bandit. ‘And since your immediate safety from his revenge depends on my success, you might want to tell me where he is. The rest I can manage for myself.’
Tornach grimaced at him with a vindictive smile.
‘He was on his way to deal with the procurator, then to collect his share of Albanus’s grain take from Petrus. After that he had only one more stop to make: the place where his share of the fraud is hidden. I’ll tell you where it is, but you’d be better running now, while you have the chance. That shield won’t protect you from his blade.’
Marcus nodded back down at him, his attention already focused on the city waiting beyond the arch’s dark hole.
‘Possibly so. But I might have a thing or two to teach Obduro about deception.’
‘Open your door, Petrus, before I’m forced to open it for you!’
After a moment’s pause a window on the building’s third floor opened, and the gang leader leaned out, addressing the men in the street in almost conversational tones.
‘Obduro! I’d bow my respect to you if I were down there with you. I simply marvel at your audacity in walking into the city like a conquering general.’
The masked man looked up at him, beckoning him down with the fingers of his right hand.
‘So come down and make your bow, Petrus, and while you’re at it you can hand over the money I told you to take from the Tungrians.’
Petrus’s reply was heavy with irony, and he spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
‘Nothing could have made me happier, Obduro, if only it were possible. Unfortunately word has reached me that the centurion in charge of the gold seems to have decided that it would be safer in the grain store. Your men will very shortly be discovering it for themselves, unless that loud noise we heard just now was bad news for them. And you . . . So I think I’ll stay up here, if it’s all the same to you. I suspect that my reward for failure might well involve iron, rather than gold.’
Obduro stood in silence for a moment, absorbing the news Petrus had related, before replying in a voice that was harder than before.
‘I could burn you out, Petrus.’
The gang leader shrugged again.
‘Yes, you could. You could send your men to break in and set fire to my establishment, but I give you fair warning that it’s a solid old thing, this brothel, and I’ve added to its security since I bought it, in the event that I might need a bolt-hole if everything went wrong. Getting in might not be as simple as you imagine. And you might want to be aware that my men on the roof tell me they can see torches coming up the road from the west. A lot o
f torches. So you might want to be about the rest of your business and away, before a vengeful Roman tribune arrives and separates that helmet from the rest of you, with your head still in it. Just a thought.’
Obduro thought again, then turned away, calling back over his shoulder.
‘You’d best sleep with an eye open from now on, Petrus. A man with as much money as I’ll be taking with me can buy a lot of assassins!’
The gang leader watched him lead his men away, then called back softly into the room behind him to the leader of the heavily built and well-armed enforcers he had gathered to his side once the Tungrians had left the city.
‘Quickly, away down that bitch’s hidden staircase and follow him, but do it invisibly or it’ll be you paying the price of failure. We’ll wait until he’s opened the vault, then step in and take his profits. I’ll not be threatened with death in my own city and then let him get away with enough gold to buy a full century of hired killers.’
The leading Tungrian centuries deployed into line half a mile from the blazing grain store, the ground before them lit by the fire still burning on the store’s south-western side. As prefect and first spear waited in silence for the remainder of the cohort to complete their manoeuvre from column into line, another tongue of fire leapt skywards, further lightening the ground before them, followed a moment later by another huge explosion that slapped at the soldiers’ ears.
‘Whoever’s in command in there seems to be using his head well enough.’
Frontinius nodded dourly at the tribune’s comment, his seamed face ruddy in the light cast by the store’s blazing fires.
The Leopard Sword Page 37
