The Archimedes Stratagem

by Gavin Chappell

  Flaminius crawled away. The sound of footsteps reduced to a distant thudding. He sat in the corner, facing what he hoped was the direction of the iron door. When it opened, he would be ready for whatever came.

  Closer and closer the footsteps drew until it seemed that they were echoing inside Flaminius’ own skull. This wasn’t the first time he had been imprisoned down here, but in the past at least he had known that he would face the due process of law. Now Gabinius Camillus, eager to avenge a slight to his dignity, had cast away all law and custom, everything that had ever made Rome great, condemning Flaminius to die at the hands of a murderer. The world was descending into chaos but as far as Flaminius knew the emperor was still alive, sailing towards an uncertain future in Egypt. Had Crassus Piso’s signal reached him? Did he think Alexandria was safe? But he would die before he came ashore, if what Flaminius had learnt was true.

  The footsteps came to an end. A key was inserted into the lock. It turned slowly, then quicker. There was a click. The door rumbled slowly open. Flaminius could picture his new visitor heaving on the great metal construction. Sweat running down his face, pooling on his skin. The gaoler had been a muscular man but even he had found the door hard to shift.

  A shaft of light cut through the stale air. It opened wider; a bulky figure was silhouetted in its glow. The newcomer peered into the gloom of the cell. Torchlight glittered on the blade of a short sword.

  ‘Crassus Piso,’ said Flaminius. ‘Come right in.’

  ‘You weren’t surprised?’ The Praetorian shouldered the door open before stepping inside. The torchlight illuminated a gloomy scene. Flaminius could see a tempting vista of the passage leading away to freedom. But between him and it stood a sword bearing Praetorian.

  ‘Perhaps a little,’ said Flaminius. ‘You helped me escape at one point. I was never quite sure whose side you were on. Technically, we’re both on the same side. We both want to save the emperor—and the empire—from destruction. But somehow you got it into your head that I was the assassin.’

  Crassus Piso settled down in the doorway, cross legged like an Egyptian scribe, the sheathed sword across his knees. ‘You killed Rutilio Victorinus. Now I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Take your time.’ Flaminius couldn’t believe how calm he felt. This was it. There was no escape. If he tried, he would die. If he didn’t try, he would still die. ‘I’m going nowhere. And you don’t seem to be going anywhere either.’

  Crassus Piso shifted a little, leaning back against the door jamb. ‘I’ve got some important business at noon,’ he said, ‘but that’s still a while off. I can take my time about this job. There will be no mistakes.’

  ‘Was it a mistake when you killed the civic guard escorting me?’ Flaminius asked. ‘I escaped, thanks to you.’

  ‘That was indeed a mistake,’ said Crassus Piso. ‘It was also a mistake to let you fall under suspicion of murdering Apuleius Victor. He needed to go, he was working against us. It seemed a good idea to implicate you in his murder. But we couldn’t allow you to be questioned by the authorities. You knew too much. And you had information we needed. Vital information. That guard was difficult to kill, and you were fast. You got away from me before I could recover my wits.’ He shrugged. ‘But other agents brought it about that you were taken for interrogation under better circumstances.’

  ‘You mean the Mechanist?’ Flaminius said. A wild stab in the dark, not a happy thought under the circumstances, and yet it hit home.

  ‘You knew?’ Crassus Piso raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re good, I’ll give you that. Yes, it was the Mechanist who brought it all about. He’s been a great help. Even though he can be a liability.’

  ‘Arctos doesn’t like this wonder worker?’ Flaminius asked.

  Crassus Piso laughed. ‘Nobody likes him,’ he said. ‘But he has his uses. I should think his reward will be a slit throat when his usefulness is at an end, and I’ll be only too happy to be the man to do the slitting. But for the moment, yes, he’s vital to our plans.’

  ‘To kill the emperor,’ said Flaminius. Crassus Piso nodded as if that was obvious. ‘You’re not a Praetorian at all, are you?’

  ‘I brought a message sealed with the emperor’s seal ring,’ Crassus Piso laughed.

  ‘A cunning forgery,’ Flaminius suggested.

  Crassus Piso grinned. ‘Well done! You’ve never impressed me with your intelligence so much in the past.’

  Flaminius peered at him. In the torchlight from the doorway, Crassus Piso was indistinct, shadowed. ‘Have we met before?’ he asked. ‘I mean before the incident in the waystation?’

  Crassus Piso laughed again. ‘How pompous. How Roman. The incident in the waystation. Of course we’ve met before.’ He seemed piqued. ‘My disguise isn’t that good. I’m hardly in disguise at all. Neither Victorinus nor me were supposed to meet you face to face, for fear that you’d recognise us.’

  ‘You must be right,’ said Flaminius resignedly. ‘I can’t be all that clever. I don’t remember you. Where did we meet?’ He eyed the man’s physique. ‘Was it in the arena? You have the look of a gladiator…’

  ‘Light is beginning to dawn,’ said Crassus Piso, enjoying himself. ‘I was sent to the arena years ago. For what they considered to be crimes, although my master was a cruel, vile man. I killed him not because he beat me, but because he beat her. That young girl. Yes, she was a slave. Yes, it was his right. But he didn’t have to take such relish in it. I broke his neck. Then it was a choice between the arena or crucifixion.’

  ‘I see,’ said Flaminius drily. ‘I heard many such stories from gladiators, slave or free.’ He remembered Camilla’s own account, so similar in many ways. ‘It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Nothing?’ said Crassus Piso. ‘You never kept slaves? You never profited from the labour of slaves? All you Roman citizens do.’

  ‘Barbarians keep slaves as much as civilised people,’ said Flaminius. ‘The Caledonians do, the Egyptians do. I can understand that you might not like it if you are a slave—I’ve seen enough of that life while undercover to have an inkling of what it’s like, to be treated worse than a dog….’

  ‘You know nothing,’ said Crassus Piso bitterly. ‘You—you know nothing about what it’s like. What it does to a man. And then, to fight in the arena, to be the darling of the mob. All those free men and freedmen, hanging on your every deed…’

  ‘It must go to your head,’ said Flaminius with a shrug. ‘Now I’ve placed you. You and Victorinus, if those are real names, since you’re clearly not a citizen, and I assume your mate was the same. You were those hulking brutes of gladiators who went everywhere with Arctos. Has he promised you power when he finally gets control of the empire? The slave is as good as his master, is that it?’

  Crassus Piso’s eyes gleamed. ‘You’re not taking me seriously,’ he said, leaning forward menacingly. ‘Unwise. Very unwise. I’m the man with the sword. I’m the one in charge now. You’re my slave, not the other way around. You can keep a civil tongue in your head or I’ll kill you. I can. I have the power.’

  ‘I thought that was why you came here,’ said Flaminius. ‘I thought that was why Gabinius Camillus, that well-known respecter of slaves’ rights, dismissed the guard and gave you free run of the dungeons. To kill me. Or is there another option?’

  Crassus Piso sat back on his haunches again. ‘There’s no other option. Arctos got everything he wanted from you. Now you’re just a danger. My mission here is to kill you. Then I’ll be going on a short sea voyage.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Flaminius asked. ‘Or have you just been to an oracle? I know how mysterious these people can be…’

  ‘Don’t play the fool,’ said Crassus Piso. But Flaminius was still playing for time. A sea voyage. That fitted with the notion of Hadrian’s assassination taking place before he set foot on Egyptian soil. And fire was involved. The river pirates… And fire? That sounded like the trickery of Skimbix—the Mechanist, as these people called him.

  ‘So
it’s you who will kill the emperor,’ he said.

  Crassus Piso shook his head. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I won’t kill any emperor, I’ll leave that to Arctos’ favourites. But now I’ve got it into your dense Roman skull why you’re going to die, I won’t delay it any longer.’

  He rose to his knees, slipping the sword from its sheath as he did so. The sheath he flung to one side and it went skittering into the shadows on the other side of the small cell. The sword winked meaningfully in the twilight.

  It was a gladiator’s short sword, much the same kind of Iberian steel blade used by legionaries in battle. Flaminius much preferred the cavalry longsword of the kind he had grown accustomed to while a tribune of auxiliary horse with the Ninth Legion in Britain. While the short sword could be used both point and edge, the longsword gave more reach in the fight, particularly useful if used from horseback. But Flaminius had wielded the longsword while on foot to particular effect. Since he had been working as a gladiator, in the arena or on the run, he had seen little of the longsword.

  All this flashed through his mind in seconds, irrelevant detail sparked off by the glint of the blade. Even as his mind worked like a slave, his body tensed, the blood raced round, his teeth gritted and gnashed…

  Crassus Piso brought the sword down.

  Flaminius flung himself forward. Not away from the blade as it descended like a meteor betokening ill omen, but forwards, into Crassus Piso’s guard. His shoulder slammed against the gladiator’s muscular chest. While Crassus Piso’s backbone crashed into the door jamb his arms sprang wide as if anticipating crucifixion. A flailing arm caught the door and it shuddered shut. All light from the passage was cut off, and the cell fell into darkness.

  Brawny arms wrapped themselves round Flaminius’ neck. Blood sang in his ears. He plunged his bony fist into a well upholstered ribcage and the gladiator grunted. Stars exploded in the darkness as Crassus Piso’s skull connected with Flaminius’ with maximum force. In the process, he must have lost his grip on the imperial agent’s neck, and Flaminius fell to the ground at the gladiator’s sandaled feet.

  One of those feet stamped down on Flaminius’ shoulder. Bones grated against each other and pain flashed though his mind. He rolled over, seized hold of the gladiator’s foot, and heaved. The man hit the side wall with a bone crunching thud.

  No mob would have paid to see this fight. It was violent but hardly showy. At least no one could see it, unless they were watching at the crack in the door. The line of light cut the darkness like a thin knife.

  Flaminius rolled over and scrambled towards the half open door. Even as he did, a hand shot out of darkness and seized him by the hair. His eyes weeping as his roots tore against his scalp, he wheeled round again, sinking his elbow into where he judged the man’s ribs to be. As Crassus Piso staggered backwards they both heard a jingle of steel from the ground. The sword!

  Flaminius flung himself down, colliding with Crassus Piso as he did. His fingers closed round a sword hilt. Crassus Piso’s own digits clamped vice-like round his own.

  ‘Holding hands now, are we?’ Flaminius grunted. ‘That’s nice.’

  His left hook gouged into Crassus Piso’s nose and he heard the bone snap in the darkness. The fingers relaxed their hold. Flaminius stepped away, his back colliding with the cell wall.

  He heard a grinding rumble. Light flamed in his eyes. He rubbed at them with his left hand. The fallen gladiator had seized hold of the lower part of the door and was heaving it open with Herculean strength. Torchlight struck highlights from Crassus Piso’s oiled biceps. Flaminius attacked him with the sword.

  Crassus Piso rolled over, kicking upwards, catching Flaminius in the ribcage. Flaminius stumbled backwards, almost losing hold of the sword. Crassus Piso grabbed the doorjamb and levered himself out of the cell with a facility that would have warmed the cockles of Archimedes’ heart.

  Flaminius, head swimming, scalp blazing with pain, forced himself into motion. He staggered out of the cell into the light of the corridor, sword in hand, in time to see a burly figure vanishing up a staircase at the end of the passage. Coming down towards him, glancing back in puzzlement after the running man, were two people, a man and a girl.

  They turned to face him. Gasping, Flaminius levelled his stolen sword, ready to fight to the finish.

  —28—

  ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ he warned them, ‘but I will do if you try to stop me.’

  ‘Flaminius!’ said Ozymandias, hugging his sister closer. ‘What’s got into you? Was that the Praetorian you told me about?’ He indicated the now vanished Crassus Piso with his thumb.

  ‘He came to kill me,’ said Flaminius. ‘We fought: he ran. He left this memento.’ He brandished the sword meaningfully at them.

  Nitocris cried out, ‘Gaius! We’re here to help you!’

  Flaminius’ lip curled. ‘Help me? Like you helped me before? Get out of my way. I’ve got work to do. You might not care about the empire, but I do.’

  Ozymandias spread his hands. ‘Listen to me, Flaminius,’ he said, with an angry glance at his sister. ‘All that was a ruse.’

  ‘A ruse?’ Flaminius said. ‘Oh, of course it was. A ruse that gets me banged up down here where any fake Praetorian can come in and murder me.’

  ‘Fake?’ said Nitocris. ‘He’s not really a Praetorian?’

  Flaminius nodded. ‘One of Arctos’ gladiators. So was the other one, the one I killed. I should have recognised them both, but they looked somehow different.’ He pulled a face. ‘I didn’t recognise Arctos when I saw him, either.’ He lowered his sword. ‘If it was a ruse, what was the idea?’

  Ozymandias folded his arms and gazed at Nitocris. She looked down at the ground. ‘My brother is right,’ she admitted. ‘We had to tell the Romans we were against you or we’d have been in the same trouble. We met the customs man, Marcus Atilius, and it turned out that he had arrested my brother’—she made a face— ‘back when he was a thief. So that didn’t look good. So we said we were looking for you. We knew that when you were carried off you were taken down the canal. We hoped you’d come back that way…’

  ‘And so I did.’ Flaminius started walking up the passage. ‘And ran into a trap.’

  ‘Marcus Atilius agreed to help us,’ said Ozymandias, hurrying to keep up, ‘thinking we were truly hoping to trap you. The whole business with the temple and the ambush was his idea. We played along with it. There wasn’t much we could do without incriminating ourselves, and then we’d have been in no position to help you, wherever you had got to.’

  ‘So we went along with him,’ said Nitocris from Flaminius’ other elbow, ‘hoping that we would get the chance to set you free.’

  ‘And here we are,’ said Ozymandias, ‘setting you free. What happened to all the guards?’

  ‘I set myself free,’ Flaminius said as they reached the stairs to the ground floor, ‘with a little help from Crassus Piso and Gabinius Camillus. They both wanted me dead, for their own reasons. So the one colluded with the other. I couldn’t be legally executed without a trial, and all sorts of things might have come out during the proceedings. So they conspired to murder me.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Nitocris, as the sound of footsteps came from above. ‘If that Praetorian, fake or not, went up here, won’t he have warned the guards?’

  Ozymandias halted. ‘Get back,’ he said. ‘Get back into the cell.’

  ‘Are you out of your tiny Egyptian mind?’ Flaminius complained, but he allowed himself to be hustled back down the passage.

  ‘Get behind the door,’ Ozymandias asked, shoving Flaminius into the dark space. In lieu of a better plan, the Roman did as he said.

  Hobnailed boots trotted down the passage. ‘…always knew it was a bad idea,’ someone was muttering. It sounded like Marcus Atilius.

  ‘You’ve not been promoted yet, man.’ Gabinius Camillus’ voice echoed back ‘So don’t take that tone with me! It made perfect sense: legally, we couldn’t remove the assassin, and yet we
couldn’t let him live. I could hardly have known that he would have fought Crassus Piso off weaponless.’

  ‘And where’s our famous Praetorian now?’ Marcus Atilius muttered. ‘He made himself scarce quick enough… Hold! What are you doing down here?’

  Ozymandias’ voice came in reply. ‘We came to question the prisoner. Commander, what is the meaning of this? No guards on duty, and the prisoner has run off. Do you realise how this will look when there’s an enquiry?’

  ‘Run off?’ Gabinius Camillus’ voice shook with horror. ‘Where, where, where’s he gone?’ he stammered. ‘Is he not in the cell? Have you not tried looking in there?’

  Flaminius pressed himself back against the wall, as if by doing so he would vanish into the shadows. He listened closely.

  ‘Of course we tried looking in there,’ Ozymandias said. ‘Your security is a disaster, commander. You leave the cell door open and no one on guard. It’s almost as if you’re conspiring with the prisoner!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Gabinius Camillus gulped. ‘You’ve got it all wrong!’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong, sir,’ Ozymandias said. Flaminius could tell that the Egyptian was enjoying himself. ‘You’re talking to an imperial agent.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Gabinius Camillus abjectly. ‘If he’s not in the cell, he must have escaped. Sir.’

  ‘Obviously he’s escaped!’ Ozymandias shouted. ‘Well? Start searching for him! No, not in the cell. He’s not going to be anywhere near here. You leave cell doors open and no guards on duty, your prisoner won’t wait around!’

  ‘I think I saw him making for the street,’ Nitocris added.

  As a ploy it was threadbare, but Flaminius could heard the gratitude in Gabinius Camillus’ voice as he led his men back up the steps.

  Their hurrying footsteps receded into the distance. Ozymandias poked his head round the cell door.

  ‘Still here?’ he said cheerily. ‘Time we were going.’

  Flaminius detached himself from the shadows and joined them. ‘They’ve gone?’ he said gruffly.