The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  “I am, too,” Vorenus said. “Seems I was wrong to have been so worried that we would be seen.”

  “And it will be good to return home,” Khenti said.

  Vorenus nodded. “Yes, it will,” he said. It took coming back to Alexandria to help him realize the truth of what home was to him. Long ago, campaigning with Julius Caesar in Gaul, he’d thought of home as nothing more than the seven hills and gleaming columns of Rome. Despite his many years in Alexandria he’d still been that Roman at heart: what fondness he’d had of the Egyptian city had been for its reminders of what he’d left behind. But the war had changed all that. He was a man without a country now, a man hunted by his countrymen, a man haunted by the place of his birth. If Alexandria had remained a foreign place even after so many years there, the little island of Elephantine they had fled to—perched as it was amid the wide waters of the Nile at the very edge of the old kingdoms of Egypt—was far stranger. But it really was his home now. It wasn’t the ancient sandstone buildings clustered upon it that made it so, nor was it the strangely forgotten Jewish temple where they’d hidden the Ark. It was the people. It was Khenti. It was Caesarion and Hannah, the beautiful Jewish girl that the young man had come to love. And it was Pullo, too, since hardly a day passed that Vorenus didn’t reflect on how his old friend would have laughed at something that was said or seen.

  Vorenus let out a long breath in a sigh, turning to face his Egyptian companion. Khenti was sitting against a pile of packed cloths, but he still seemed more rigidly upright than Vorenus thought necessary since they’d escaped Alexandria. “Where are you from, Khenti?”

  The Egyptian had been peering out into the night, but he turned to answer the Roman’s direct address. “From? What does this mean?”

  Khenti’s native tongue was Egyptian, but he was thoroughly adept at the Greek that had been the standard tongue of Cleopatra’s court. It was this that they used to converse with each other, since his knowledge of Latin was sparse at best. But even with his excellent Greek, every now and then a word or phrase would cause him to stumble.

  “I’m wondering where were you born?” Vorenus clarified.

  Khenti shrugged, but there was something like the hint of a smile on his night-shadowed face. “I am an Egyptian, Roman.”

  “No. I know that. I mean … Where did your parents live? In Alexandria?”

  “Ah. Yes. I understand. I do not know the answer to that question, Lucius Vorenus, since I do not know the place of my birth.”

  Vorenus blinked at him in the dark. “You don’t know?”

  The Egyptian shook his head. “I do not.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I do not know why you would be so. My home is where I am.”

  Vorenus thought about that as the barge drifted forward. Ahead he could see the small, decrepit dock of an old farm, just visible in the growing dark. Khenti was right, he decided. It didn’t really matter where you were from. It really only mattered where you were. And perhaps, he thought as he watched the water push against the wooden feet of the dock, where you were going.

  “Home,” Vorenus said, and he felt the full satisfaction of the word.

  The sound of a bird whistled to their left. The reeds rustled as if something was about to take flight, but then, for a frozen instant, nothing stirred.

  Khenti half-turned in that direction, and Vorenus was aware of the Egyptian’s hand sliding toward the sword at his side.

  Vorenus opened his mouth to say something, but in that moment a ghost arose from higher on the embankment, where the path leading to the dock had worn a kind of trench through the rising earth. The dark red of the last rays of the sun splashed directly upon the man’s skin, making it appear to be bathed in fresh blood. It deepened the crossing scars that were scattered across the face Vorenus had known, and age or injury had stooped his once powerful neck, but the broad shoulders were the same. And the voice with which he shouted out was the same one that Vorenus heard in haunted dreams of the past.

  “Vorenus!” cried the ghost of Titus Pullo.

  There was time for a single heartbeat of shock and exhilaration. Then Vorenus heard the thrum of bowstrings loosed. And in the next instant, something hot and wet spat across his face as an arrow ripped across Khenti’s side and embedded itself in the cloth between them.

  Vorenus saw Khenti roll forward and down toward the top of the deck, making himself small, and then Vorenus’ own instincts thrust him in the opposite direction, away from the darkness of the embankment on which he had seen the ghost of Pullo. His legs kicked until his feet found purchase and he flung himself back and to the side, putting the pile of rugs between himself and whoever or whatever was hunting them in the growing dark.

  He hit the other side of the deck with a grunt, and all at once sound returned to the world. The young deckhand was screaming from the back end of the boat, and there was shouting from the shoreline, accompanied by the high clear ring of metal swung against metal. Closer, Vorenus heard the splash of a body moving through water.

  And closer still, the black shape of Khenti rose up in his vision, the curved blade of his Egyptian sword flashing moonlight in his hand as he ran toward the rear of the barge.

  Another bowstring loosed, just one this time, and Vorenus both heard and felt its whistle as it sang through the night air above the deck, narrowly missing Khenti, who did not falter in his run.

  Once more the familiar voice of his old friend bellowed from onshore, “Vorenus!”

  Vorenus blinked as if he were waking from a dream. The shout rocked something loose inside of him, and when he looked down at his hands he saw that they had already answered the call: his fingers were now tightening around the familiar grip of his unsheathed sword. He arose from the cover of the piled rugs.

  At a glance, he took it all in. The barge had turned. Something had happened with Petosiris back at the tiller. In seconds, the ship would run aground into the side of the canal, only feet from the old wooden dock that he’d seen. Beside the dock, the man who could not exist—the man who looked like Pullo—was knee-deep in the reed-filled marsh, swinging his sword before him like a scythe. Someone was before him, hidden in the reeds but still visible as he struggled to back away from the charging beast that Vorenus knew so well. A second man had slipped out of the marsh in Pullo’s wake. He was dropping a recurved Egyptian bow from his left hand, while his right was drawing a long dagger. He was looking at Pullo’s back.

  “Pullo!” Vorenus shouted. With sudden urgency, no longer thinking but simply reacting, he jumped around the intervening piles of rugs, took four sprinting steps to get up to speed, and then leapt from the deck of the barge just as it hit the shoreline and shuddered from beneath him. He cleared several feet of water and landed left leg first on the old dock.

  His foot slipped for an instant, and he felt his tendons groaning from the unfamiliar strain, but already his momentum was carrying him forward. His right leg came down on the wood ahead of him as if stretching across a great leap. It planted, and then the muscles of his thigh tightened and released, propelling him onward, out of control now, right at the man who had his blade out and ready to strike Pullo down.

  Vorenus had his own gladius held before him, hoping that in this initial assault he could push it through the man, but the action of bringing it forward had taken too long. Vorenus was hardly the young man he’d once been. The time he’d taken had given the man he attacked a chance to turn and bring his long dagger around to defend himself. The edges of their weapons clashed loudly, each ringing off the other and away. Vorenus felt the sting of the other man’s blade gashing across his forearm where his leather legionnaire armor once would have been.

  Vorenus’ sword point was turned away, but there was no stopping the weight of his body. An instant later, Vorenus had smashed into the man, shoulder-first, as if he were breaching a door. The mass of him lifted the would-be killer off his feet, and Vorenus tumbled over him and landed with a lung-clearing grunt agains
t the grassy foot of the embankment.

  The stars above him spun as Vorenus fought to get air in his lungs and ground beneath his feet. A part of him—the memory of a younger him—shouted in his mind, ordering him to move faster, to get up and engage first, to attack and kill before the enemy was prepared. But Vorenus was no longer that man. His shoulder and side pounded for attention in their present pain, and the muscles of his right thigh were screaming in distress.

  And his sword! Where was his sword?

  Vorenus had managed to gather himself up to his knees, but he got no further as his hands rifled through the grass in the darkness.

  “Looking for this?”

  Vorenus froze and then slowly looked up. The man he’d knocked to the ground was on his feet, standing above him with his long dagger in one hand and the Roman gladius in the other. He was smiling triumphantly. He started to raise the gladius back for a strike.

  “I’ll make it quick, old—”

  His words were cut off by a throttled gasp as the tip of a second gladius crunched through his chest. The dagger in the Egyptian’s hand dropped in front of Vorenus, who instinctively picked it up and then staggered to his feet and backed up a step as his friend who ought to be dead—big, beautiful Pullo—gave one half-turn to the embedded blade and then jerked it free from the man’s back with a wet and slopping sound that made Vorenus thankful for the night. The lifeless body sagged to the ground like a stringless puppet.

  “Vorenus!” The big man stepped over the corpse as if it were a log. In the moonlight Vorenus could see his friend’s concern on a face that was still recognizable despite the jagging of new scars that lent it the look of a weather-beaten tent, more patches than cloth. Dampness shone on those torn cheeks, though Vorenus couldn’t tell whether from blood, sweat, or tears. He saw, too, that his friend didn’t step with the same thunderous gait that had shaken the decks of Mark Antony’s flagship at Actium. He moved instead with an upright, almost straight-legged lumber, as if he walked on painful stilts.

  “I’m okay,” Vorenus managed. He wanted to reach out and touch him, to assure himself that this was real, that Pullo was really still alive. He wanted to shake his hand as they once did, he wanted to embrace him as they never really had, and—just in the back of his mind—he wanted to punch him square in the thick jaw for letting him think he was dead for so long. “Gods, Pullo, I thought you—”

  Pullo, too, had seemed abruptly paralyzed once they faced each other in the night. But as Vorenus started to speak, he cut him off. “There were three,” he said. “This is two.”

  Vorenus suddenly remembered the splash of water and the barge turning. He quickly reached down to roll over the dead Egyptian and retrieve his gladius. “The boat. Khenti is there.”

  Pullo was looking over toward where the path to the dock disappeared into the rising embankment. “Go on. I’m behind you,” the big man said. “I’ve got to do something first.”

  Vorenus nodded as his old friend started lumbering away. Then he, too, began to move, running up along the dock. From the darkness behind him he heard Pullo’s deep voice. “I’m always saving you,” his old friend grumbled.

  The chaos could only have lasted a minute or two, and by the time Vorenus reached the back of the barge there was nothing left but an eerie quiet over the canal, broken only by the soft sloshing of water and reed against the barge as it rocked back and forth against the shoreline. Khenti was standing there in the dark, his curved sword in his hand and the body of another Egyptian attacker at his feet. On the deck just ahead of him, below the free-hanging tiller, lay the deckhand, the side of his neck ripped out by a well-placed arrow. Petosiris was a few feet away, a short blade in his hand, collapsed against a stack of textiles. His eyes were open, but they saw no more.

  Khenti wasn’t looking at any of them. He was staring out into the night of the shoreline, unmoving but for the steady rise and fall of his chest. “I was too late,” he said.

  Vorenus nodded. From where they were positioned, Petosiris must have been letting the boy take a hand on the tiller when the first arrows struck. The young man had surely been killed instantly, but it looked like Petosiris had survived the arrow that had struck him in the chest. He must have tumbled backward, getting cover and drawing his blade. He’d tried to defend himself against the killer who’d quickly climbed aboard, but the wound had left him too weak and too shocked. By the time he’d arrived, Khenti could only avenge him. “Nothing you could do,” Vorenus said. Little comfort, but it was true.

  “That is Titus Pullo.” Khenti’s voice was so emotionless he could have been talking about a tree.

  Vorenus looked back into the dark and saw his old friend making his way up the dock. Pullo had sheathed his sword now, and he was instead carrying a small leather bag in his big hand. At the end of the dock he waited until the barge bobbed close enough for him to reach out with his free hand, pull it close, and clamber aboard.

  “Khenti.” The big man was smiling when he drew near. “It’s been too long.”

  The Egyptian gave him an approving nod, then looked back toward the night. “One man got away,” he said.

  Pullo sighed. “I’m not a runner. Never was before and I’m certainly not now.”

  “It sounded like a horse,” Khenti said.

  “It was,” Pullo agreed. “And like I said, I’m not a runner.”

  “Pullo,” Vorenus finally managed to say, his voice half exasperated with joy and his own roiling emotion. “Gods, we thought you were dead.”

  “I was.”

  “How? How did—?”

  “I went to work for a man named Seker.”

  “Who?”

  “The last man who’s dead back there. Stabbed in the back.”

  “You killed him?” Khenti asked as he finally sheathed his blade.

  “No,” Pullo said, frowning. “Sadly, I did not. The other man did. The one who got away.”

  Vorenus peered out into the night, too. “Who is he? Do we need to worry about him?”

  “I think he’s a scholar, if you can believe that.” Pullo chewed on his lip. “But a coward. And a frightened one at that. He hired all these men—and me—to ambush this ship, kill everyone, but take you for the reward. Please believe me, I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know who he was after. When I realized … I tried to stop them, Vorenus. I tried.”

  Before Vorenus could reply, Khenti turned away from the night to look at him. His hand came up to hold his side, as if he were scratching an itch. “So you were recognized at the Library,” he said.

  “You went to the Library?” Pullo asked. “Did you see Didymus?”

  “I did,” Vorenus said, smiling. “We spoke of you. We thought you were dead, Pullo.”

  “I knew you’d gotten away,” Pullo said. “And I didn’t want to endanger anyone by going to Didymus. So I found work where I could.” His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he shook his head and tossed the bag he was carrying to Vorenus. “Well, anyway, this belonged to the man I worked for. Meant to be payment for these bowmen.” He looked down at Petosiris and the deckhand. “I’m so sorry, Vorenus. Were they … friends of yours?”

  “Business associates,” Vorenus said, his voice quiet. “But they were good men.”

  Pullo frowned, his eyes unreadable despite the moonlight. “Too much death,” he said. “I’m sorry, Vorenus. I didn’t know. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “Nor I, you,” Vorenus said, and he was suddenly moved to reach out and embrace his old friend, clapping him on the back even as the bigger man squeezed him so firmly that he thought a rib might crack. “Gods, it’s good to see you, Titus Pullo.”

  “And you’ve no idea how glad I am to see you, too, Lucius Vorenus. And you, as well, Khenti—” Pullo’s voice broke off and his wide grin froze as he released Vorenus to look at the Egyptian warrior. “You’re bleeding.”

  Vorenus spun around. Khenti had reached over to place one hand on the tiller, while the other
gripped his side. His face looked pale in the moonlight. Even as Vorenus started to speak, the Egyptian teetered, and the two Romans rushed forward to catch him.

  As quickly as they could, they pulled him over to another pile of textiles and laid him back. As they did so, the moonlight finally landed on his chest and flashed on the thick dampness there. Vorenus could see the ragged line across the side of his shirt where an arrow had carved across his torso, and he suddenly remembered that first arrow strike, when he’d felt something wet hit his face. It had been blood. Khenti’s blood.

  He’d already lost so much. Vorenus could see it now where it had pooled on the deck. How had he not seen it before?

  The Egyptian’s face contorted as Vorenus pulled his hand away from his side and placed his own upon the wound. He felt it pumping weakly against his palm. “Oh, gods, Khenti—”

  “Leave the barge.” Khenti’s voice, always so strangely calm, was all the stranger for now being strained. “Canal is not safe anyway. Go north. Sea road.”

  Pullo loomed over them both. “Khenti, I’m sorry. Just … I’ll go get some help. They put me together. Maybe you—”

  Khenti smiled, and Vorenus was surprised that he had the kindest and warmest of smiles when he did so. “You’re Pullo and Vorenus,” he said. His voice grew quiet. “I do not think you can ever die.”

  The Egyptian’s eyes had a distant focus to them, as if he was looking somewhere far beyond them. Vorenus pressed his hand harder against the wound. “Stay with us, Khenti,” he said. “It’s not far to the city. Then we’ll get you home.”

  At the last word, Khenti blinked and turned his head slightly to look at Vorenus. He was still smiling. “This is my home, Roman. Remember?” Then he looked over at Pullo. “And you’ve just found yours.”