‘An empty cellar. Just rough rock walls and nothing else.’
Excingus sat back with a frown.
‘Why? Why go to all the trouble of building a cellar and then leaving it empty? I was sure there’d be weapons down there, but if it’s just a bare storeroom perhaps that’s all there is to it.’ He mused in silence for a moment. ‘Perhaps I’m reading too much into it after all. They are soldiers, and the army always likes to overdo anything it takes on …’
He shrugged.
‘No matter. And it’s time I was elsewhere.’ Taking his cup from the table, he downed its remaining contents and stood. ‘It’s time to go and meet your father, and encourage him to deliver young Aquila’s next victim. With a little luck Brutus’s thugs will catch the arrogant young bastard and carve his lungs out.’
Cotta led six of his men through the Viminal district’s darkened streets behind Excingus, with Marcus close at his heels, while the informant’s man Silus walked cautiously twenty paces ahead of the party to check each road junction for any presence of the city’s Watch before signalling that the path was clear. The veteran centurion had bluntly refused to consider Marcus’s attempts to leave him behind when they had set off from the barracks.
‘And besides, you’ll need some men at your back if you’re going to put this Brutus to the knife, or you’ll never get past his men. And you can’t take soldiers. Trailing Excingus around is one thing, but going up against a gang like the Silver Dagger will need men who know these streets, and how to fight in them, and that means my lads. And what about this Silus, eh? How likely is he to be trustworthy?’
The veteran soldier had predictably taken an instant dislike to their guide upon meeting him an hour or so before, when Excingus had beckoned him from the shadows of the Baths of Trajan to join their small, furtive party. To the veteran centurion’s experienced eye, the informer’s man had the look of a killer, the same dead look to his eyes that he saw in some of his own men.
‘But whereas I know my men well enough to trust them, this Silus is a stranger to me. He can be trusted not to lead us into a fucking great trap, I assume?’
He’d asked the question of Excingus bluntly, albeit having led the informant far enough from the group of soldiers for a degree of privacy.
‘No.’ The answer had been equally frank, in Excingus’s usual matter-of-fact tone. ‘I expect he would sell us out, given half a chance, but I have him by the balls, or at least I hope so. He knows that my sponsor in this matter is fully aware of his part in it, and where his family resides. I’d like to think that he’s tied to me by the fear of whatever retribution might be visited on him, and his enormous herd of children and blood relatives, but ultimately there’s no denying that we’re taking a risk in employing his services.’ His teeth had flashed in the moonlight, the familiar smile that made Cotta want to punch him with every ounce of his strength. ‘And if you have a better idea as to how we can make this happen, I am veritably all ears.’
The veteran centurion had simply shaken his head in the face of the smug smile and gestured for Excingus to carry on. Gathering the party around him, the informant’s briefing had been short and to the point.
‘Brutus and his men have moved into an insula not far from here. It has five floors. I can take you to it.’
Cotta had waited a moment, looking expectantly at Silus, then leaned forward to whisper a question with a disbelieving tone in his voice.
‘That’s it? That’s all we know? We’ve no idea how many of them there are? Or what defences they might have installed to fend off an attack by their rivals?’
The street thug had nodded dourly.
‘That’s all I know. I can tell you from experience that Brutus will have at least a dozen of his best men with him, although they won’t all be standing guard at the same time. And he usually puts a man on the roof to watch the surrounding streets, and another one or two at ground level to guard the entrance. After that?’ He shrugged disinterestedly. ‘After that it’s anyone’s guess. Perhaps half of them will be asleep … perhaps.’
Cotta had shaken his head in disgust.
‘And not your problem, eh? This is going to be bloody interesting …’
Now they were within a hundred paces or so of the building, and Silus’s progress had slowed to a cautious creep through the shadows of the insulae that towered over them on either side. The streets were quiet, and Cotta’s party were moving with the stealth of men who understood that their lives might well depend on remaining undiscovered until the very last moment. Without warning, Silus sank into the deeper shadows, raising a palm to warn them of approaching danger, and Cotta’s men followed his example and went to ground in the gloom.
A pair of men walked past at the street’s end, each of them carrying a heavy club.
‘City Watch?’
Excingus shrugged.
‘Impossible to say without asking them. And even if they are the Watch, they’ll be in Brutus’s pocket, most likely, so the end result would probably be much the same whether they were or not. If they catch sight of us creeping about in the darkness they’ll call for help, and that’ll be it.’
They waited until Silus got cautiously back to his feet, following in his footsteps as he peered around the corner in both directions and then slipped around it to the left. Twenty paces down the street he stopped, gesturing for Cotta to come forward.
‘The building you’re looking for is fifty paces down on your left. If we go any closer we’ll probably be spotted by the man on the roof … there, see?’ A smug tone crept into his voice. ‘Told you so …’
Squinting up at the line of buildings, Marcus saw a figure outlined against the stars, the watcher staring down into the street for a moment before stepping back from the building’s parapet. A framework of wooden poles had been erected around the building, the sort of scaffolding used by builders.
‘Once a man’s under that scaffolding he’ll be invisible from above.’
Cotta nodded at Excingus’s statement.
‘Exactly what I was thinking. I’ll just—’
Marcus interrupted.
‘No. This is my fight. I’ll make the approach and get the front door open, then you can bring your men up.’
He stepped around the crouching men and slid down the wall of the insula in whose shadow they had taken cover. Advancing gingerly towards the safe house, he heard a scrape of cloth on brick behind him, turning to find Cotta at his back. He pointed to where the rest of the veteran’s men waited.
‘Go back! I told you, this is my fight!’
The veteran centurion grinned fiercely at his savage whisper, shaking his head.
‘No one’s going to thank me if I come back without you. And you’re not the only one with a score to settle here.’
Marcus stared at him for a moment and then nodded, turning back to their target, then froze as he realised that the rooftop watcher had reappeared high above them, silhouetted once more against the blaze of stars. Cotta muttered quietly in his ear.
‘We’re close enough. When he moves again we go for the door.’
The younger man nodded, and when the lookout stepped back from the parapet once more they hurried forward, flattening themselves against the safe house’s wall under the cover of the scaffolding. The window shutters were closed, and so, to Marcus’s dismay, was the door itself. A hiss from the shadows made Marcus turn to look at where the rest of the party waited, to see Silus pointing back down the road. Cotta scowled at the realisation of what he was trying to tell them.
‘They must be coming back!’
He waved at his men, pointing to the right in an order for them to make their escape while they still could. They hesitated, clearly unwilling to leave their chief, but he repeated the gesture again with an angry emphasis. As the two men watched, their guide led Excingus and the rest of the party away down the side street and into the deeper shadows, leaving Marcus and Cotta alone.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Well we can’t stay here, can we? We need to get into that insula, and quickly! The only thing I can think of …’ He reached under his tunic. ‘Is this!’
He directed the steaming stream of fluid at the bottom of the door, squatting to get a better angle and directing the urine into the narrow gap between door and lintel. For a moment the only sound in the still of the night was the splashing of his urine against the hard surfaces, and then Marcus’s keen ears heard a sudden outburst from inside the building.
‘What the fuck! Some dirty bastard’s having a piss on the fucking door!’
The veteran centurion cupped his hand, filling his palm with what was left of his urination and whispered harshly to Marcus.
‘Ready!’
With a sudden clatter, the first of the door’s bolts were pulled back, and Marcus drew his patterned dagger, raising the blade and drawing back his hand. As the door swung open to reveal an angry-faced bruiser, Cotta hurled the handful of urine into his face. Before the doorman had the chance to override his instinctive disgust at the warm liquid’s pungent aroma and the sudden sting in his eyes, Marcus pounced forward with the blade, stabbing the sharp iron into the doorman’s neck. Cotta hurried forward, pushing the dying man back into the building and beckoning Marcus in behind him.
‘Shut the door!’
He lowered the shaking sentry to the hallway’s floor and squatted next to him, shaking his head as the guard’s lips twitched in an effort to speak.
‘I know. One minute you’re bored to tears, the next some bastard’s chucked piss in your face and opened your throat. Seems a little unfair, doesn’t it?’ He watched while Marcus shot the heavy door’s bolts as quietly as he could, whispering to the younger man with a look of disbelief on his shadowed face. ‘Well then, we’re in. Although given there’s only two of us, I think I’ve finally worked out what my old man meant when he told me to be careful what I wished for, just in case I actually got it. We can either wait for the Watch to bugger off and then try to find the lads, although the Lightbringer only knows where Excingus and Silus will have led them in their haste to get away, or we can go and see how many more of them we’ll have to kill to get to their boss. You choose …’
Marcus raised his knife, the blade still dark with the dead sentry’s blood.
‘You know my choice.’
His friend nodded and stood up, pulling out his own dagger and tip toeing down the hall to the first doorway with the younger man at his back. Taking a quick peep around the door frame he shook his head.
‘Nothing. Which makes sense, because if there was anyone else down here with him they’d have heard us killing him and come out to play. So where are they, I wonder?’
They climbed the stairs to the first floor, back to back, Cotta leading and Marcus staring into the ground floor’s gloom as he backed up the steps behind him. The first-floor landing was just as silent, and a cautious examination of the rooms to either side of the stairs revealed nothing but empty rooms. The two men repeated their cautious climb to the second-floor landing, but found the building’s next floor equally silent. Looking up the next flight of stairs, Cotta nudged Marcus with an elbow and pointed up into the gloom.
‘See that?’
The Tungrian stared hard, realising what it was that the veteran was showing him. A thick wooden door, criss-crossed with iron reinforcing bars, had been installed at the top of the stairs, and was hanging half open in the building’s silence.
‘There’ll be men on that floor for certain.’
Marcus nodded.
‘There’s no point to an obstacle unless you man it.’
His friend mounted the first step, placing his foot down with slow, delicate care.
‘We take our time from here, and get it right. If we wake them now we might as well slit our own throats.’
They went up the stairs in complete silence, stopping with each faint creak of the treads to listen for any sign that they might have been heard, both men steeled to charge up through the door with their knives ready to fight. Reaching the door, Cotta gently pushed at it, grimacing at the hinges’ thin squeal of protest as he overcame the weight of the iron-studded wood, opening it sufficiently to slip through. Standing on the landing beyond, he cocked his head to listen, grinning at Marcus as the sound of snoring reached them. Somewhere in the unlit gloom one of the sleepers broke wind and muttered something unintelligible, and the veteran soldier waved a hand under his nose with a grin, leaning over to whisper in his friend’s ear.
‘How’s that to make you feel alive, eh boy? One cough and these slumbering idiots will be up and all over us, but right now we’re walking through them like ghosts. Come on …’
As he turned towards the next flight of stairs a figure emerged from the half-lit gloom of the room to Marcus’s left with the stiff-legged half-steps of a man more asleep than awake. He mumbled an irritated question, peering owlishly at Marcus in the dim light.
‘What’re you noisy bastards—’
Cotta took a single quick step and wrapped his arm around the sleepy man’s mouth, driving his dagger into his back. His victim spasmed, his bare feet slapping lightly on the floorboards as he fought the dagger’s cold, agonising intrusion. Marcus put the point of his own knife against the man’s bare chest, looking into his imploring eyes for a moment before pushing the blade home with a single thrust. The gang member’s eyes widened at the sudden intense pain, then rolled upwards as his torn heart stopped beating, the body slumping back against Cotta who lowered it slowly to the floor.
‘Come on!’
His face and tunic were covered in blood, and the coppery stink filled the dank air as he beckoned Marcus on, making the Roman wonder how long it would take for the stench to awaken one of the dead man’s comrades. They crossed the landing with slow, careful steps and then mounted the stairs, Cotta leading with his former pupil once more at his back. On the floor above there was quiet, and the veteran centurion took a moment to lean against the wall and blow out a long, slow breath.
‘Fuck me but that was close!’
Marcus looked up at the floor above them, protected by a door like the one they had passed through a few moments before, this one closed and presumably bolted.
‘Brutus should be up there, if he’s here.’
His friend nodded grimly.
‘And no amount of sneaking around is going to open that door. I think it’s time for a more direct approach.’
He led the young centurion quickly up the stairs, ignoring the inevitable noise of their footsteps just as the gang leader’s men would have done, raising his dagger and tapping smartly at the door with its handle. The two men looked at each other as footsteps thudded down the hallway on the other side.
‘Who is it?’
Cotta raised a hand to Marcus, putting his mouth close to the wood and growling a response.
‘Secundus.’
He winked, and bent close to Marcus’s ear.
‘What are the odds on there being at least one second son in a dozen men, do you think?’
The voice on the other side of the door laughed tersely.
‘Hah! Only you would be stupid enough to forget to give the password.’
Marcus raised his eyebrows at Cotta, who shrugged, then deepened his voice again.
‘Forgotten the fuckin’ password too.’
The man on the other side of the door was silent for a moment, and in that brief space of time the veteran’s face creased with concern as he waited for the sentry’s next words.
‘Fuck me backwards, surely even you can’t be that—’
His words were lost in the clatter of iron as the guard drew first the topmost bolt, then its twin at floor level. The two men braced themselves to attack, only to hear a sudden shout of alarm from two floors below. Marcus could hear the uncertainty from the other side of the door as the noise reached the guard’s ears. His voice was suddenly clearer, presumably
as he flattened his ear against the door to hear better.
‘What’s that noise?’
Cotta nodded to himself and stamped at the spot where the door’s catch would be located. The thin iron catch snapped under the kick’s force, sending the door flying back into the sentry’s face with a solid thud of wood on bone. Marcus went through the opening first, flipping his knife to catch it by the blade before whipping his hand forward to send the sliver of metal flying the corridor’s length. The dagger buried itself in the throat of another gang member who was still struggling to draw the short sword from his waist, and he fell backwards, clawing at the wound as it spurted blood onto the floor at his feet. Without warning, a pair of men erupted from a room to their left, both armed with knives whose blades glinted in the dim lamplight. Cotta squared off with one of them, a vicious stab of his dagger making the other man recoil from the threat, while his companion snarled at the unarmed Marcus and drove his blade forward at the Roman with more enthusiasm than skill.
Sliding his body to one side the Roman took the extended knife arm, gripped it by the wrist and shoulder and snapped a knee up to break the elbow, plucking the blade free as his attacker’s face crumpled into a gasping shriek of agony. Cotta parried a knife thrust and punched his assailant hard in the face, sending him staggering backwards, shouting back over his shoulder as he followed up with his dagger raised.
‘The door!’
Marcus lunged for the door and slammed it closed, shooting the upper bolt as the first shouts echoed up from below, pushing its lower counterpart into place as footsteps hammered on the stairs. The sliding catch was broken, but the screaming bodyguard’s fallen knife slotted neatly into its keep and secured the door well enough to afford them a moment or two of respite from the men bellowing at them from the other side of its stout defence. He turned back to the fight to find Cotta locked in a death struggle with his opponent, the younger man’s greater strength slowly forcing his blade in towards the veteran’s throat. Seeing Marcus advancing on him, he grunted with renewed effort, forcing the knife down by sheer brute force against which Cotta was able to do no more than deflect its path to slice a deep gash into his arm. Before the gang member could raise the weapon to strike again, Marcus was upon him, punching a half-fist into his throat and dropping him choking to the floor.
The Emperor's Knives: Empire VII (Empire 7) Page 16