On their trips the men had started making gaps in fences, and leaving crates as makeshift steps so that walls could be scaled easily. It meant that they could stay away from the open streets as much as possible, and slowly but surely they were making the city their own. At least that was what they told themselves while running like rats from the Risen that hunted them.
Secundus slipped himself through such a clearance and over a wall, using a stack of wood that had been left on a previous outing. As he dropped gently to the ground on the other side he heard a noise. His men must have heard it as well, because they stopped instantly. Nights of moving around the city had honed their instincts and senses to a fine edge.
He froze, waiting for whatever had made the sound to move again. After what seemed like and eternity, he heard the soft cry of a cat. He couldn’t see where the animal was, but the sound came from closer to the house. If any Risen were nearby, this might be enough to attract them and he waited with heart beating in his chest so loud that he was sure the undead must hear it.
At his feet he heard the cat move, its soft padded feet skittered down between the two houses and out onto the street. He let out a silent prayer of thanks to the gods, and signalled the rest of his men to follow.
As the animal reached the street, Secundus saw a blur cross its path and it let out a cry of fear and pain. He ducked back against the wall and lowered himself into the shadows. One of his men was halfway over the wall and seemed after a moment to realise he was completely vulnerable. He slowly lowered himself down to the ground.
Secundus motioned for him to remain quiet - a useless gesture but he did it anyway. Out on the street, the cat continued to cry out and was then silent. He cursed the animal. The area would be full of Risen in seconds unless the gods were looking down on them. He signalled for the man who had joined him to move back the way they had come, as this route home had suddenly become too dangerous.
Before the legionary could move, however, a Risen rounded the corner. His head was bent to one side. Secundus thought he looked like a man who was trying to listen for a small noise, but it was more likely that his neck was broken. He moved slowly, almost deliberately toward the back of the house and the two men in the shadows.
Secundus felt rather than heard the man next to him hold his breath, and he did likewise. The Risen kept twisting its broken neck, as if it kept hearing a faint noise and couldn’t place its origin.
Secundus felt his chest begin to burn and opened his mouth wide in order to take a slow breath. It was a trick he had learned from a group of legionaries that he had been drinking with one night in camp. They claimed it had saved their lives, more than once. If you opened your mouth wide and breathed slowly, it was silent. If he ever met those men again, he would be the one buying the drinks.
The Risen stopped in front of him, its hand no more than three inches from his face as he ducked in the shadows. It stopped, twisting its contorted neck once more, and Secundus could smell rotting flesh and old, stale shit. He tried not to gag from the smell but it was overwhelming. He readied himself to fight, after the Risen heard him choke on the smell but the undead suddenly moved away and back down the alley.
It did not shamble away, it ran as if it were hunting. He heard the man next to him take in a breath, and it hitched like he was trying not to cry. There was no judgement on Secundus’ part. He felt the man’s fear and understood it completely. It had been altogether too close.
As he crouched in the shadows a second Risen ran past the entrance to the passageway, then a third. These were followed by a tight group of five or six of the undead. They were all running, and all in the same direction.
Secundus watched for a moment, waiting to see how many Risen would follow these first few. After a full minute he decided there would be no more. He looked at the sack of food in his hand and passed it to the legionary next to him. The man’s name was Tuto, and he looked at Secundus with wide eyes that almost seemed to glow in the darkness.
“Get these back to base, I need to know what they are running to,” he whispered to Tuto. The legionary took the offered sack and crept back toward the wall and makeshift steps.
Secundus watched him disappear from sight and turned back toward the street. As he did a Risen ran past the alleyway, naked but dragging a long length of cloth behind it. The cloth looked grey in the moonlight but had once been a white toga, if Secundus was any judge.
He slipped along the shadows to the street and risked a glance around the corner. He was just in time to see the Risen disappearing to the right around another bend. It skittered and twisted as it ran, like it was constantly trying not to fall.
With a further glance back up the street, Secundus moved across to the shadows that hugged the far wall. He moved quickly, trusting to whatever was drawing the Risen to keep him from their attention. He had seen them come to life when faced with prey, but it had been back in the days of the battle for Rome when he had last seen them so active.
Secundus made it to the point where he had seen the Risen turn. He stopped, deep in the darkness and peered around the wall of the house. About halfway down the short side street were a group of almost two dozen Risen. They seemed to be trying to reach something that was hidden from view in the darkness.
He looked back at the door of the house that he now leaned against. It was closed but a twist of the handle opened it easily. He moved inside, knife gripped in a fist so tightly that his fingers began to ache. He stopped for a second and made himself relax. Being this tense would make him slow if anything jumped at him out of the darkness.
He stopped at the first door and slowly opened it. He tapped the surround with the blade of his knife but the sound elicited no movement from the room beyond. Secundus moved from the atrium into the small room and toward the window at the back of the room. He looked out onto a shared courtyard that would serve as a garden to most of the street, including the houses that would look out onto the group of Risen.
Secundus moved back into the atrium and toward the door at the back of the house. He opened it slowly and moved into the courtyard. The houses he needed were on the left and as he looked up to see which would suit his needs best something landed a few feet away from him to his right.
He twisted away just in time to avoid a grasping hand and, just as quickly, lashed out with his knife. He felt the blade slice deep into the flesh of a young female Risen. Her breast began to leak fluid onto the front of her tunic, turning it blacker than the night. The Risen did not stop, spilling her blood onto the stones of the courtyard and felt nothing for the loss.
Stepping back, he gave himself room to stab at her again. She came forward and before she could reach him, slipped on the dark fluid that he had drawn from her. She fell hard at his feet and he ended her with a drive of his blade into the base of her skull.
Moving quickly fearing the fight must have drawn attention, Secundus tried the door of the house he needed to enter. It was locked and he felt panic begin to grip him. He moved to the next house along and once more found his way barred. It was the third house he tried that had an unlocked door. He slipped inside, hoping the house was empty but willing to risk it through fear of further attack in the courtyard.
The house was dark and he moved up the stairs, feeling his heart beating like a hammer in his chest. The three doors that led off the landing were all open and Secundus tapped the blade of his dagger, lightly against the wall. Nothing moved and he slipped into the room at the front of the house.
There as a small bed, and a wardrobe made of rough wood. The door of the wardrobe was open and the clothes had been removed, hastily by the looks of it, a few stray garments lay like forgotten promises.
Over at the small window a shutter had been pulled, it was an old and warped thing that let in more of the outside than it kept out. Secundus lowered himself to one knee and pressed his eye to a gap in the wood that made a prefect spy-hole.
Below the house and across the road more Risen had joined
the crowd. Above them a shop sign, usually mounted on a pole by means of two lengths of chain, had come loose at one end. It was gently rocking back and forth in the late night breeze. The rusty chain was emitting a high-pitched keening noise that sounded to Secundus exactly like the cry of a new-born baby. It was this sign that had attracted so much attention from the undead creatures below him.
They jostled each other, competing for the chance to leap at the sign. So close was it to the sound of a human child that they seemed to be sure that there was food to be hunted. Secundus watched as they leaped for the sign, only to fall back into the crowd empty handed and ready to leap again.
Ideas started forming in his mind as he watched the group of undead in their fruitless hunt. This sign, so quiet that human ears had not detected it, had drawn the undead from streets away. He had made noises louder than the screeching of the chain since leaving the base tonight. He had been attacked but not in the same way that this hanging piece of wood had.
The answer must be tied up in the type of noise that was being made. The city was silent, this was the reason that the slightest sound was a danger to the men who hunted for food and useful items. This was something more than that, this noise had triggered a hunters instinct in the undead that the usual sounds did not provoke.
To break down a door, or drop a sword was enough to draw the Risen, that had been proven over and over. This was different, they had run to the sound what they thought was easy prey, as if they were helpless to do otherwise. They seemed to be driven into frenzy by the sound.
Prey was almost non-existent in the city now. The Risen would already have starved had they been normal people. Secundus didn’t know how long it would take before these creatures ceased to be able to live without food. Maybe it was this that had provoked such an extreme reaction or maybe it was just their nature being revealed to its fullest, it was impossible for him to tell.
He knew from reports that hordes of the Risen had moved across the empire in search of food. They had destroyed Mutina and then moved east and south, killing and eating as they went. It had been a topic of some debate at the base as to why the undead had not moved out of Rome after the food had run out.
Some suggested that the Risen somehow knew that there were no large cities left intact. That they knew, by instinct or some form of communication that there was no better source of food anywhere.
Secundus himself had seen that these creatures seemed to have ways of knowing what the others were doing. If one of a group of Risen saw prey, they all turned toward the victim at the same time. That might be a hunter's skill or something deeper, he could not guess.
Either way he did not think it was a conscious decision that kept the undead in Rome. He had an idea that it was nothing more than the size of the city. They had been drawn here by the thousands of victims and the abundance of food. Now, trapped in the maze of backstreets and alleyways, there was nothing to draw them back out.
Watching these creatures hunting this inanimate object with such intensity, he realised an important thing. Whatever kept the Risen in the city, they could be controlled. Not in any real sense, but with forethought and practice, they could be manipulated and drawn to parts of the city. It would take discussion and planning to work out how to use this knowledge but Secundus thought they might have struck a blow against the Risen. He thanked the gods for rusting the chain.
Backing away from the window he turned to leave the room. As a shadow moved out on the landing, he took a small piece of pottery from his pocket and threw it into the doorway opposite, ducking back into the darkness of the room as he did. He heard the feet of the Risen turn on the wooden floor, then watched from the darkness as the undead creature followed the sound into the other room.
Secundus stepped forward and quickly closed the door behind the Risen. He was down the stairs and out into the courtyard at the back of the house before the Risen realised it was trapped.
Secundus moved in the darkness, still weary, still scared of the spawn from Hades. These creatures that had destroyed the greatest empire in the world. Now, however, he wore a smile over his fear like a mask.
The city was silent, it was always silent. Maybe, finally, that was the weapon they needed.
Chapter Sixteen
“What do you think?” Numarius asked Julius as they looked down into the valley. The town lay spread before them and seemed to be untouched compared to many of those they had visited in the past few weeks. Some had been little more than husks, others had fared a little better, but not much. This was the first town that looked like it might actually be reasonably intact.
“I see defences, little sign of damage, and I can see people moving about,” Julius answered the legate.
As they spoke a small group of Risen appeared on the road, a short distance away.
The horse beneath Julius jittered from being so close to the undead. He watched as one of the centurions ordered eight men out of line to deal with the threat. The three creatures were despatched easily and Julius felt his mount relax.
The horse had been a gift from Emperor Otho, as had been his new appointment as aide to Legate Numarius. Julius thought back to the day weeks earlier when had had been called for an audience with the most powerful man in the world.
The battle was barely over and the bodies were still warm and bleeding onto the dry earth when Julius had been pulled to his feet and led in front of him. The emperor had been gracious and professed his gratitude for all the young man had done. What had that been, when the scales were balanced? He had asked people to give up their lives and they had done just that. He was not the one who would never laugh, sing or even breathe again. Those people lying dead on the ground, the life cooling out of them, were the ones who should be praised. Not him, the one who had done no more than ask them to do it.
His heart had been sick and he had not had the fight left in him to object, but Otho had thanked him. He had allowed himself to be paraded as a hero in front of the people of the city and the legions of Rome. When the emperor had presented him with the horse he now rode, he had bowed and taken the gift without a second thought.
He returned to the city where people were trying to piece together the remains of their lives. The dead were being collected, and the decision was made to hold a grand pyre. Julius found that his father had died along with so many others. He had already been so numb that he had been beyond tears, so instead he had held his mother and sister, trying to feed off their grief, to feel anything.
The legions had remained camped outside the city, like a constant reminder of everything the people had lost. The city had tried to start their lives over, but the losses were too great, and the pain too raw. When the legionaries had entered the city flanking the emperor, the people had gathered to listen. He had moved into the forum, a crowd following him and with more people joining them all the time. A small, wooden platform served as a rostrum and Otho made his way up onto it so that the people might see him in his polished armour that gleamed in the early autumn sun, the legionaries around him stern and forbidding.
“People of Narbo,” he had begun. “You have done the empire a great service. Your sacrifice was great but it was not in vain, and your loss will become the beginning of something extraordinary. Without your spirit and the price of those you have lost, we would all be dead now. You have saved the empire and you may even have saved the world.
“My men will be moving on at first light, and we wish for you to join us.” This had elicited a murmured response that had quickly grown into loud conversation among the people gathered to hear their emperor.
“The men and women of this city fought with the legions and now we wish to offer you our protection. If we leave you here, you will be vulnerable to further attack, and we will not be able to return to protect you. Our mission is to free Rome of the monstrous corruption that is the undead. Join us and help us rebuild Rome. Become the new Romans and start a new era in Roman history.”
“Will we
have to fight?” a man shouted from somewhere in the crowd. The emperor looked out across the sea of faces and turned toward Ursus. The Prefect stepped up onto the tribunal, taking Otho’s place. Their ruler would not be questioned.
“There are no easy lives anymore, the world has changed.” Ursus waited as the crowd realised what he was saying. They talked among themselves but not for long, and slowly heads turned back toward the prefect.
“If you come with us, you will be expected to fight, or forage for food or scout. There are a thousand jobs in the legions, each will be done. We will become a moving city, you will learn how to live as a legionary lives. “You will also be as safe as you can be in this new and dangerous world. You will be under the protection of the legions of Rome.”
“We will die for the legions, that’s what you are saying.” This time it was a different voice but it came from the same part of the crowd.
“I will not force you to come. If you would rather remain here and hope that the Risen do not return, then I wish you luck. Those that do want to join us in search of a better life than you can have in this ruined place, we leave at dawn.”
He had stepped down and was replaced by a junior officer who began reading out a list of things the people would need to know if they were to join the legions on their march. Things they would need to bring and other important information. The crowd had been restless and almost hostile as Otho and Ursus had left the city to return to camp and the officer found it harder and harder to make himself heard.
Julius had been standing to one side with his sister and mother, listening to all of this.
“We have to go with them,” he said to his mother but she was already shaking her head in denial. “What is left here, mother? Why should we stay?”
“You father’s memory and our lives, Julius.” She had been weeping since the day of the battle where his father had died, and now she wept again.
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