Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands

by Michael R. Hicks

  “If not, we all will greet you in the afterlife, Caesar,” Pelonius told him.

  As Sergius rode forward, a triumphant smirk on his face, Tiberius nodded to Marcus.

  “Legio Hercules,” Centurion Marcus Tullius, First Spear of the Roman Empire, ordered, his booming voice transforming Sergius’s expression to one of fearful surprise, “attack!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The men facing the soldiers of Legio Hercules were hardly prepared for what came next. Like the great, snarling beast for which the legion had been named, the men of Hercules stormed forward, attacking on three sides while their rear was guarded by the flames of the castrum’s burning wall and north gate. None of the men under command of Caesar were fool enough to think they would survive, but each knew that they would go to the afterlife with honor.

  As his men fought what he knew would be their last battle, Tiberius, his vision turning gray, slowly sank to his knees, Octavia beside him. Looking up, Tiberius saw that Pelonius, Marcus, and Karan still stood by. “Go,” he rasped. “Go…save our daughter…and yourselves…”

  “In all my years, I’ve never disobeyed an order,” Marcus said, kneeling beside Tiberius, “but I will not leave your side, Caesar.”

  Tiberius took his hand and squeezed hard. “The Empire…stands in peril.” He took a shuddering breath. “You swore an oath, centurion. Please, old friend.”

  “Do as he says, Marcus,” Octavia said as she held her husband to her breast.

  “Yes, Empress,” Marcus rasped. Squeezing Tiberius’s hand one final time, he got to his feet.

  “It shall be as you command, Caesar,” Pelonius said.

  Tiberius looked up and was sure he saw a faint wet gleam in Pelonius’s eyes before the man — who had been a slave, gladiator, soldier, scribe, teacher, and many other things, but above all a good friend — turned and dashed toward The Wall, Marcus at his side.

  Karan lingered for just a moment, then rendered a deep bow before he followed the older men.

  Tiberius stroked his wife’s cheek with his fingers. “I am glad…you are here.”

  “I would be nowhere else, my love,” she said quietly.

  Tiberius saw the glimmer of steel in her hand. He closed his eyes, an expression of peace on his face, then nodded.

  With a smooth motion, Octavia drew the wickedly sharp blade across her husband’s throat before plunging it into her own heart.

  ***

  “No!” Valeria screamed as she saw her mother’s body slowly slump to the ground atop her father’s lifeless form, a pool of blood spreading across the flagstones beneath them.

  Even above the furious roar of the battle, Sergius must have heard her. He looked up, and his eyes locked with hers.

  “There is nowhere you can run,” she shouted, her fingernails scraping the stone parapet, “nowhere you can hide that I will not eventually find you. And when I do…”

  “Revenge can wait,” Septimus interrupted, “and right now it’s not about you doing to him, it’s about him doing to you. Let’s see that doesn’t happen, shall we?”

  Paulus pointed at three familiar figures running across the expanse of the staging area in the eye of the storm of battling soldiers. “They’re heading to the center entrance.”

  “Girl, stay here,” Septimus told Valeria. After seeing the rebellious look on her face, he added, “It’s not because you don’t know your way around with a blade. It’s because the entrances were designed to be defended by only a few men at a time. Cram too many in there and we’ll just be tripping over one another. Just stay here with your big fuzz ball. We’ll be right back.” He paused, then briefly touched her arm. “I promise.”

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “Okay, then,” Septimus said with obvious relief. “Let’s let them in, shall we?”

  Haakon and Paulus followed him down the steps that led into the labyrinth inside The Wall. While the corridors were lit by torches in wall sconces, Septimus had been through here so many times he easily could have found his way in the dark. In fact, Pelonius had drilled the men of Hercules to move about the defensive works in total darkness.

  The center gate was wrought from thick iron that ran in deep slots set in the stone on either side. Far too heavy for men to lift directly, it was fitted with an ingenious system of counterweights that allowed as few as two men to raise it by turning a capstan, which in turn acted on a set of lift chains. When the gate was closed, the counterweights were disengaged and massive bolts were thrown which locked the iron gate to the surrounding stones.

  “Haakon, open the gate!” Septimus ordered. The huge barbarian was strong enough to manage the job himself. “Paulus, with me.”

  Side by side, the two men stood before the gate as Haakon, grunting with the effort, turned the capstan.

  When the gate had been raised knee high, Septimus called out, “Hold it there!”

  With no little difficulty, Haakon managed to engage the ratchet mechanism that could hold the gate in position anywhere along its travel.

  Three soldiers thrust themselves through the gap, but they weren’t the ones Septimus was looking for. With economical motions, he stabbed two in the neck while Paulus thrust his sword through the back of the third. More tried to come through, all of them with strips of cloth around one arm, marking them as the enemy. Haakon dashed over to help before Septimus and Paulus could be overwhelmed, gleefully hacking and slashing at the men who never made it up from their hands and knees before they lost their heads or were skewered like suckling pigs.

  “Hold!” Septimus blocked Haakon’s sword as an older soldier, covered in blood, rolled over the bodies that were piled up in the gap. It was Marcus.

  Behind him came Pelonius in a frantic dive to avoid a pair of spears that hit near the bottom of the gate with a clang.

  “Quickly!” Pelonius gasped. “Pull the bodies clear or the gate won’t close all the way!”

  As Septimus and Haakon fought to keep more of the enemy from coming through, Marcus, Pelonius, and Paulus frantically dragged away the dead.

  A cry of surprise and agony arose from outside just before half a dozen bodies crumpled to the ground, visible through the gap below the gate. Then Karan rolled through, his blade dripping with blood from hilt to tip.

  “Clear the gate!” Pelonius ordered, and the others sprang back.

  Lowering the gate didn’t require Haakon’s strength. Pelonius kicked the ratchet release, and with a deafening clanking and clattering the gate slammed down, crushing two men who had just begun to wriggle under it. While Pelonius had designed the gate to be enormously strong, it was made with a certain degree of imprecision on purpose. Even buoyed up slightly by the bodies, which had been crushed to bloody paste, the locking bolts slid home.

  “Thank the gods,” Paulus breathed. “We’re safe.”

  “For but a fleeting moment,” Pelonius said grimly. “We can’t stay here. We don’t have enough men to mount a proper defense to keep them from scaling the wall.”

  The others stared at him. “But what can we do?” Marcus asked.

  “I have an idea,” Pelonius told him. “Come, we need to get to the parapet. And quickly.”

  ***

  As furious as the battle had been, no one, least of all Sergius, could have any doubt as to the outcome. His men, which now included those of the legions commanded by his three fallen generals-in-arms, were crushing the surviving legionaries of Hercules against the burning walls of the castrum, leaving the apron before The Wall clear of any resistance. He had been irritated that his men had not been able to catch Caesar’s accomplices before they reached the safety of The Wall’s center gate, but the escapees’ respite would be brief enough. Already ropes with grappling hooks and scaling ladders were being brought forward. Hundreds of men would assault The Wall simultaneously. Those cowering within would no doubt kill a few, but their fate was all but sealed.

  And so, it would seem, was that of Caesar.

  Dismounting
from his horse, Sergius came to stand beside the bodies of Tiberius and Octavia, lovingly entwined in death just as they had been in life. He felt a moment of intense, almost painful envy, as if a great chasm had opened in his soul, revealing the bitter, secret truth that he had never experienced such love, neither given nor received, and that he probably never would. With a supreme act of will, he forced the chasm closed, stepping away from the pit of despair that he knew awaited him there.

  Kneeling down, he gently rolled Octavia over so he could see her face. Her expression matched that of Caesar himself: she had gone to the afterlife at peace. “Such a waste,” he whispered to himself as he ran the back of his fingers across her cheek. She had been an exquisitely beautiful woman. Just like her daughter.

  “What shall we do with the bodies, sir?” asked his senior centurion.

  Getting to his feet, Sergius answered, “Give her body to the fire. Take Tiberius’s head as a trophy for the Senate, then toss his body into the flames, as well.”

  The centurion bobbed his head. “Sir.”

  Sergius stood back as a pair of men hefted Octavia’s body. “Gently!” He felt a fool for feeling even a shred of compassion for the woman in death, but could not deny it.

  Drawing his sword, the centurion nodded to another pair of men who propped up Caesar’s body. With a well practiced swing, the centurion’s blade severed Tiberius’s head from his body in one swift stroke. A third soldier caught it before it hit the ground and stuffed it into a canvas sack while his companions bore the headless body to the flames. After two swings, they sent his body sailing into the fire. Octavia joined him moments later.

  “Sir, look.” His senior tribune was pointing to the top of The Wall. There, a group of figures had emerged from the bowels of the stone fortification onto the parapet to join Valeria, who stood beside her pet hexatiger. A flood of white hot anger surged through him. Sergius cupped his hands to his mouth to be heard over the final round of screams as his men finished their slaughter of Legio Hercules. “Pelonius! If you surrender yourselves now, I promise you and the other men a quick, merciful death, and no harm shall come to Valeria.”

  Even as he spoke, and before Pelonius could answer, the largest of the figures, Haakon the Barbarian, put one foot atop the parapet wall, drew his manhood from beneath his tunic, and let fly an impressive stream of piss, a shower of golden droplets that rained down on the dismayed soldiers below.

  “Marcus Sergius,” Pelonius answered, “you —”

  He broke off as Valeria touched his arm and spoke to him, too quiet to be heard by those below. After a moment, Pelonius nodded, and together with the other men, save Karan, who kept watch over the princess, his bow in hand with a nocked arrow, Pelonius moved back from the parapet wall and was lost from view. Hercules remained beside Valeria, his glowing eyes never leaving Sergius.

  The princess looked down upon him. “General Flavius Sergius.” The soldiers fell silent at the sound of her voice, the night punctuated only by the moans of their wounded and the crackling of the fire-swept castrum. “You, among all men of the Empire, of all the known world, stand cursed before all the gods.”

  That drew a round of snickers and a few catcalls from the soldiers, but their levity died as she continued to speak.

  “Laugh now, traitors and murderers, vermin of the Empire,” she told them. “You have taken the field of battle this night, anointing yourselves with the blood of your betters. Scoff at me as you will. But mark my words: the day shall come when I will repay you a thousandfold. The day shall come when you live in terror of the day I find you, for I will find you. From the lowest among you to the highest in the Senate who betrayed my father, know that you died this day, though you still walk. When your time of justice arrives, you will join your brothers in agony, crucified along the road from the steps of the Senate in Rome to this very place. And the last to die,” she leaned forward, her voice rising as she pointed an accusing finger, “will be you, Sergius. I could have Karan shoot an arrow through your heart right now, but that would be a kindness that I am not prepared to offer. Instead, I will march you, naked and dishonored, from the center of Rome to where you stand now upon the spilled blood of my father and mother. I will take up the hammer and nail your body to the cross with my own hands and watch every moment as you writhe in the agony of crucifixion.” Lowering her arm, she went on, softer now, her voice cold as the deep winter snows, addressing the other men below. “Not one among you will find mercy or forgiveness at the end of this life. When you die, you will never know the pleasures of the Elysian Fields, but will suffer in torment at the hands of the Furies in Tartarus until the stars fall from the sky.” She held up a dagger. “I, Princess Valeria, daughter of the rightful Caesar and Empress Octavia, murdered by your hands, swear this to you before Jupiter and all the gods.” After drawing the blade across one palm, she flicked her hand over the soldiers below, who recoiled as if her blood was liquid death. No longer were they laughing or joking at her expense. They were terrified, just as she had said they would be.

  In that moment Sergius truly saw both her inner strength and outer beauty, which made even more fierce his need to possess her.

  “Valeria,” he called, “come down to me. You have my solemn word that not only will you not be harmed, but I will provide for you. I will give you everything you could ever want, more than any other man could ever give you. Valeria…”

  His plea went unanswered, for she had disappeared into the darkness beyond the parapet wall.

  “What are your orders, sir?” asked the centurion.

  “Scale the wall,” Sergius said through clenched teeth. “Kill the men with her, kill the beast, but any man who so much as touches a hair on the princess’s head will die on the cross.”

  “Yes, sir. I will make sure they understand and obey.”

  Ignoring him and the shouted orders that prompted soldiers with grappling hooks and ladders to move forward into position, Sergius stared up at where Valeria had stood, seeing her image as if it had been burned into his eyes by the sun.

  ***

  As Valeria was holding Sergius’s attention, her companions were hard at work devising a means of escape.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Septimus asked in a voice that was more than a little skeptical.

  “There is no reason it shouldn’t,” Pelonius told him. He had led the other men, except for Karan, to one of the lifts he had built along the top of The Wall to bring up stones used in the construction of the upper levels, along with supplies, weapons, and oil. The lift comprised a mast with a yard arm that could swing out over either side of the wall, and a set of ropes fed through pulleys that led to a capstan. At the end of the ropes was a sturdy net that could easily hold the weight of a dozen men.

  Haakon shrugged. “Just toss the rope over the seaward side and slide down. Simple.”

  Septimus glared at him. “Thickheaded barbarian. Think of Valeria, would you?”

  “I was actually thinking more of Hercules,” Pelonius said as he directed them to spread out the net. “I suspect the princess could make it down the rope, but Hercules can’t, and she would rather die than leave him behind.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Paulus agreed, and the other men nodded, their bodies visible only as moon- and starlit shadows.

  “Get that rope, Paulus.” Pelonius pointed to a long coil of rope near one of the boxes along the parapet wall that contained bolts for the scorpions.

  Paulus quickly retrieved it and handed it to Pelonius. The older man secured it around the base of the lift in a few economical movements of his hands while Marcus tossed it over the seaward side of The Wall. “Marcus,” Pelonius said, “take Paulus and Septimus down to the pier and make sure it’s secure. The rest of us will winch Hercules down to you, then use the rope ourselves.”

  “He’s not going to like being wrapped up in that net,” Marcus warned.

  Pelonius scowled. “We don’t have a choice. This is the only way to get h
im off The Wall. Get going. Sergius isn’t going to waste any time before he attacks.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rubbing his hands rapidly together for a moment, Marcus mounted the parapet wall, took the rope in hand, and descended into the darkness. Septimus went right behind him. With one last, long look at Valeria, who was still speaking, Paulus followed.

  When the princess finished her oratory, she joined them. “What’s the plan?”

  “You need to convince Hercules to let us wrap him up in a net,” Pelonius told her, pointing to the net that was spread out beneath the lift’s yardarm.

  “Are you insane?” she blurted, then put her hand to her mouth, as if to stop the words from tumbling out. Too late.

  “It’s the only way to get him down,” Pelonius said. “And we don’t have time to waste.”

  “Oh, gods,” she whispered. Turning to the beast who stood beside her, she said, “Hercules, come.” She stepped forward, walking across the net, the huge animal following obediently behind her. His head dipped toward the ground, his nose drawn to the scent of the net, which had been used to lift everything from carefully carved blocks of stone to sacks of dried fish.

  Beckoning Haakon and Karan to the capstan, Pelonius took one of the spokes and began to push, raising the thick rope that was attached to smaller ropes that, in turn, connected to the six corners of the hexagon-shaped net.

  As soon as the net’s edges began to rise from the floor, Hercules crouched and began to growl.

  “Wait!” Valeria called. “This isn’t going to work. Not like this.” To Hercules, she said, “Lie down.” The beast gave her a petulant look before grudgingly obeying her command. She went around him, bunching the net up against him. “Look, silly thing, it won’t hurt you,” she soothed. Once she had finished going all the way around him, she nodded to Pelonius to continue.