But Valeria’s fear for her animal friend was eclipsed by an even more personal terror as the dark wolves attacked the soldiers protecting her. One exploded through the shield wall, sending two soldiers flying and seizing a third in its jaws before Pelonius and Marcus fell upon it, swords rising and falling as they stabbed it in the head and neck. Two more leaped over the wall. One took a spear through the belly, but managed to kill the soldier who held the weapon, its jaws crushing his helmet-covered skull before other soldiers stabbed and hacked it to death. The second beast streaked right toward her, its jaws open wide. Resolving to die with honor, she clamped her mouth shut, drew the dagger her father had insisted she always carry from the scabbard on her right thigh, and looked Death in the eye.
But Pluto, the God of the Underworld, was not ready for her yet. Something gold flashed past her and the beast shrieked in agony as Paulus drove the head of the legion’s eagle into one of its eyes like a spear. As the animal went down in a writhing heap, he rammed his sword into its throat, putting his entire weight behind the thrust. The sword’s tip pierced the thing’s brain, and it went still.
Paulus withdrew his weapon from the dead beast, then reached down to grab a sword from one of the fallen soldiers. “You might want to try something a bit bigger than that,” he gasped with a fragile smile, nodding at her dagger.
Tossing the smaller weapon to the ground, she took the sword in hand. It was larger than her tailored weapon, but it would do.
Hercules let out a howl like she had never before heard, and the sound turned her heart to ice. She turned just in time to see him go down under the weight of a dozen dark wolves in a writhing, snapping mass.
“Hercules!” Valeria had no time for more than that one angst-filled scream before more beasts crashed into the soldiers’ crumbling defenses. She was thrown to the ground as a beast latched onto Paulus’s cloak and drove him into her. The two of them would have been dead had not Pelonius suddenly appeared, driving his sword into the thing’s left eye. Marcus and Septimus were there, too, the three older men surrounding her and Paulus, their swords slashing and stabbing, her last defense as the shield wall gave way. Despite herself she began to weep. All was lost.
She looked up as another dark wolf charged, its eyes fixed on her. Marcus, Septimus, and Pelonius were driving another beast away, Paulus was still struggling to get up, and her own sword had been knocked from her hands.
Such was her surprise when the beast fell in mid-stride, its snout coming to rest nearly in her lap, an arrow protruding from one of its eyes. Another beast leaped on Marcus’s back, and an arrow sprouted from the base of its skull as the thing drove the centurion to the ground. With a grunt and look of astonishment, Marcus rolled out from under its dead weight.
Then he was there, standing right in front of her. The Ghost. He wore a hooded cloak of mottled greens and browns, and had a scarf of similar colors drawn over the lower half of his face. Black leather armor with inlaid silver forming an intricate vine covered his chest, and on his legs he wore cloth trousers of dark brown. His feet bore leather sandals not unlike those worn by Roman soldiers. He slung his bow over one shoulder and drew a sword from a scabbard at his waist. It was unlike any weapon she had seen before, about half the width of the typical gladius carried by Roman soldiers and perhaps half again as long, with the shining blade bearing a slight curve and having a handle large enough to wield the weapon with two hands.
She stared into his green eyes for a long moment before another of the dark wolves charged toward her. The Ghost’s blade moved in a blinding flash and the animal’s head parted from its body in a spray of blood. Before it collapsed to the ground, he killed another beast that had toppled a pair of soldiers and would doubtless have killed Pelonius, who was desperately trying to fend off yet another beast.
Kneeling, the stranger extended his free hand toward her.
“Go with him!”
She looked up at Marcus, who was panting with exhaustion and pain. Both of his arms and his face bore deep bite and claw marks, and he was bleeding badly.
“He may be your only chance now, girl,” he went on in a rush. “In the name of your father, do as I command. Go!”
Then a trio of dark wolves burst through. Marcus flung himself at them, wrapping one of his bloody arms around the neck of one of the beasts and wrestling it to the ground. She could no longer even see Septimus or Pelonius in the swirling mass of snarling animals, and she could only assume they had fallen.
She started as she felt a hand on her arm. It was Paulus, who himself was wounded, a long gash ripped down his right arm. He clutched his sword awkwardly in his left. “Let’s go,” he said.
The Ghost took her hand and helped her to her feet with a gentle but remarkably strong grip, and she and Paulus took off behind him.
The stranger moved with the grace of a dancer, but the practiced lethality of a gladiator. He would twirl to one side as a beast came for him, dodging its attack before killing it with a single stroke or stab of his sword. More than once he had stopped and dodged behind her and Paulus, once even shoving them to the ground to remove them from danger, before killing one or more of the animals that pursued them.
At last, they were clear of the battle proper, and he led them down the steep, sandy bank of a stream, the same one near which the legion had encamped the night before. Without a word, he shoved her and Paulus into a cleft in the bank.
Just then, a dark wolf leapt down upon him with a ferocious growl. The Ghost neatly sidestepped the attack and opened the beast’s belly with a slash of his sword. The dark wolf screamed, then went silent as the Ghost shoved his blade through its heart. Looking about to make sure no more animals were nearby, he drew a dagger that was much like a smaller version of his sword. Kneeling down, he cut deeper into the animal’s guts, then extracted some blood covered glands that he carried toward her and Paulus.
As he slit the glands open with his knife, Valeria gagged at the unholy stink that filled her nostrils, and fought not to throw up as the Ghost splashed the thick liquid over her and Paulus before discarding the remains.
Unable to help herself, she cried out in disgust and found the Ghosts’s hand — the one that had a moment before been holding the glands — over her mouth. She clamped her lips shut and again fought not to vomit. He removed his hand and held a finger to his lips, then held out his hand, open palm, to her and Paulus.
“He wants us to stay here, I think,” Paulus gasped through the stench.
The Ghost backed up a pace, then another, still holding his hand toward them. Offering them a single nod, he leaped over the carcass and dashed back up the bank, returning to the raging battle.
“He’s real,” Paulus breathed into her ear as he held her tight, both of them shivering with fear. “By all the gods, you were right.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hercules had never truly experienced pain. Since the girl had found him as a cub, human hands had only ever touched him with kindness and love. Even the old one who had taught Hercules to understand the girl, after a fashion, had never been anything but gentle, if firm and insistent. He had never struck him nor done him harm. The only time Hercules had even seen or smelled his own blood was once during a hunt, when a buck had faced him with great courage and wounded him slightly with his antlers before Hercules brought him down. Beyond that, his life had been nothing but games with the girl and the men, the soldiers, who accompanied her, and the time he spent hunting in the preserve that was set aside for his own pleasure. He knew nothing of other predators, of anything or anyone who might want to harm him.
That had changed when they had come, the dark things whose scent was unknown to him, but provoked a violent, instinctive reaction that he did not understand. But it was not in his nature to question the ancient imperatives. His hackles rose, his pulse and breathing quickened, and he roared his challenge to the interlopers, warning them away.
They did not heed his warnings. Instead, they fell upon the humans, who defended th
emselves with worthy ferocity, but the attacking beasts were too many, and too quick.
Like water hitting an obstacle, the great pack of attacking animals began to flow around the soldiers. Passing by both the left and right ends of the human formation, they streamed toward him and the girl he thought of as his cub. Deeper imperatives awakened, and his mind filled with a red rage as the creatures, led by one larger than the others, the alpha, ran toward him.
Without thinking, he leaped over the puny shield wall the humans surrounding the girl had erected and came to face the attacking alpha. The beast came near to striking range before stopping as its companions surrounded both Hercules and the humans with the girl. Hercules roared a challenge to the beast. The alpha stared at him, issuing a deep, shuddering growl of its own.
The animals surrounding the girl attacked. Unable to help himself, drawn by worry for his human cub, Hercules snapped his head around in their direction.
It was a mistake. The enemy alpha darted forward, intent on clamping his jaws around Hercules’s throat. Hercules dodged just enough that the beast missed his intended target, and instead raked his teeth across Hercules’s shoulder. Hercules grunted in shock at the unaccustomed sensation of pain, but instead of pulling away, he lunged toward the alpha, his own jaws wide, his white incisors gleaming. The alpha let out a startled yip as Hercules snatched him by the neck.
As Hercules was about to savor his victory, the other beasts surrounding him attacked. They came at him as one, yipping and growling, jaws open wide. Some went low, attacking his legs, while others leaped high and sank their teeth into his shoulders and flanks. Hercules cried out in surprise and agony as the enemy drew blood, and their combined weight drove him to the ground where they began to savage him, seeking out the thin hide of his underbelly and throat.
He writhed like a prey animal, his mind shrouded in a fog of searing pain when the cry of a single human voice cut through the bedlam of the battlefield and the snarls of the beasts that sought to kill him.
“Hercules!”
The girl. She had been the center of his life for as long as he could remember. She had been his companion, his caregiver, and the one for whom he had cared. Sooner would he see the end of himself than see any harm come to her. The most powerful of the ancient imperatives came into play. Defend. Protect. The pain that had brought him low was overwhelmed by a fiery rage that he had never before felt.
He still held the struggling alpha in his teeth. With a savage growl he clamped shut his jaws, and the alpha let out a brief, tortured squeal as its bones snapped and blood gushed from severed arteries. Tossing the dead beast aside, Hercules rolled to his feet and shook his great body as if he had just come in from the rain, throwing several of the beasts clear. Ignoring the pain of the punctures and gashes they left in his hide, he whipped his body to and fro, freeing himself of the remaining beasts still clinging to him.
The predators had now become prey. In a frenzy of slashing claws and teeth, now using his tremendous size and power to its full advantage, he tore through his opponents. A swipe of one of his huge claws sent a pair of the dark wolves flying, the ribs of one shattered, the rear leg of the other breaking in three places as it slammed into the ground. Whipping his head around, his jaws found the head of a beast trying to attack his left flank. With a brief, brutal contraction of his jaw muscles, Hercules crushed its skull in a spray of blood before hurling it away, the body slamming into a trio of its companions. Spinning around, he seized another beast across its back, and it squealed in agony as he crushed its spine. One of the beasts had the temerity to bite his tail. Whirling in a raging fury, Hercules snatched the beast by its throat, and with a single brutal shake of his jaws ripped it away. With blood fountaining from the wound, the beast let go and fell to the ground to die.
With a roar of victory, Hercules charged into the mass of creatures that were attacking the one so dear to him.
***
In all his years serving in the Army, through all the battles he had fought and the horrors he had seen, above all the terrible things he himself had been called upon to do as part of his duty, Marcus Tullius now faced the hardest thing he had ever done: to command Valeria to leave him, to put her life in the hands of a complete stranger. The Ghost had appeared before them as if he had been summoned from thin air by the gods. And perhaps, Marcus thought, he had been, for only the gods could save her now. Grimacing from the pain of his wounds, he looked from the Ghost to Valeria. “He may be your only chance now, girl,” Marcus told her quickly. “In the name of your father, do as I command. Go!”
With one last gaze upon her terrified face, he turned away as three beasts crashed through what was left of the shield wall, knocking several men to the ground. One of the beasts leaped at a soldier and would have clamped its jaws on the poor man’s face had not Marcus wrapped his left arm about the thing’s neck. Forcing it to the ground, where it writhed and snapped at him, he rammed his sword through its ribs, piercing its heart.
But there was no time to savor the small victory. With a quick glance to make sure Valeria and young Paulus were away, trailing behind the enigmatic Ghost, he turned to the task of rescuing Septimus and Pelonius, who were both pinned by a huge dark wolf nearly the size of the alpha that Hercules had taken in his jaws before he himself had been dragged down. With sword in one hand and dagger in the other, Marcus stabbed the beast in the meat of its shoulder with the dagger. Growling more in rage than pain, it lifted its jaws to snap at him. He blocked the teeth by turning his sword sideways, and began to saw away at the hinge of the beast’s jaw. It squealed and tried to get away, but by that time Pelonius and Septimus had enough leverage to use their swords to good effect. The beast cried out, then toppled as the tips of their swords stabbed deep into its vitals.
“Back to back!” Marcus shouted, his voice hoarse, as he struggled to his feet. “Move!”
The surviving soldiers of the guard, no more than a handful now, did as he ordered, forming a small circle that faced outward.
“Valeria?” Pelonius asked. From his agonized tone, Marcus knew that he expected to hear the worst.
“Her Ghost came for her,” Marcus told him. “They are away. Safe, I hope.”
“He’s real?” Septimus asked.
Marcus nodded. “As much as any of us are.”
“May the gods protect her,” Pelonius whispered.
“May the gods protect us,” Septimus countered before spitting blood on the ground.
As if the deities had heard his words, Hercules arose from the tide of dark wolves that had dragged him under like Neptune rising from a tumultuous sea. The men could hear the bones of the alpha crunch in the hexatiger’s jaws before Hercules hurled the carcass away. Then, in a furious killing orgy that would have been a spectacle for all the ages, making the huge cat an undying hero of the mob had it taken place in the great Colosseum, Hercules laid waste to his tormentors.
But the attention of the men was drawn to the sound of more growls and yips as another group of dark wolves fell upon them.
Marcus was flattened to the ground, the wind knocked from his lungs, as a beast charged straight into him. Another soldier beside him went down and screamed as a beast grabbed one of his legs in its jaws and dragged him away, his hands making furrows in the blood soaked ground. Marcus reached for him, taking hold of one of his wrists, and the man screamed louder as the beast bit down on his leg. Then, with a single ferocious tug from the dark wolf, he was gone.
Cursing, Marcus got back to his feet in time to have another wolf leap at his face. He blocked the attack with his left arm, screaming in pain as the beast bit into the unprotected flesh. He screamed again, in fury, as he drove his sword upward through its throat, burying the tip in its brain. With a single, brief squeal, it collapsed to the ground, dead. Cursing, he tore his arm from the grip of its jaws before extracting his sword.
Two more men went down, then a third, and Marcus shouted at Pelonius, warning him of a pair of wolves atta
cking from behind him. Marcus was too far away to use his sword, so he stabbed it into the ground before snatching up a spear from a fallen soldier. He hurled the weapon, which took one of the wolves in the shoulder. In one of the many small ironies of battle, it darted toward him, yipping in pain. Yanking his sword from the ground, Marcus swung it down across the beast’s neck, severing its spine.
Pelonius turned at Marcus’s warning, but it was too late. The second dark wolf was already in the air, its jaws open, aimed at the old scribe’s neck.
Pelonius let out a shout of surprise as an arrow took the thing in the neck where the main artery pulsed. The dark wolf crashed to the ground, unconscious, as it quickly bled to death.
Another beast went down, victim to an arrow through the spine, and a third, with one through its heart. Then the Ghost was there, driving into the attacking beasts with a long flashing blade in his right hand, the bow still in his left. Marcus had never seen the like, even among gladiators. His men, too, were transfixed by the sight. “Get up, you fools!” Marcus shouted as he brandished his sword above his head. “We’re not done yet!”
The Ghost’s appearance had a rallying effect, and the men took up positions beside and behind him, blocking with their shields and stabbing and slashing with their swords. More men gathered around them, expanding and deepening their defense.
In the meantime, Hercules had smashed into the mass of beasts savaging the heart of the legion, or what was left of it, like a squadron of cavalry charging into defenseless barbarians. The wolves turned and fought, but Hercules’s fury would not be denied. Dozens of dark wolves were reduced to bloody meat and glistening bone before his teeth and claws as the big cat pressed home his attack.
Just as he had many times before on the field of battle against other men, Marcus saw the moment when the will of their enemy collapsed. Even though the wolves still outnumbered the hexatiger, probably by hundreds to one, Hercules had made a clear and bloody demonstration of his dominance, and the dark wolves no longer had their alpha to spur them on. As if a candle had been snuffed out, their will to fight vanished. They bolted from the field, retreating toward the trees.
Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands Page 9