Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate

by S. J. A. Turney

  After another twenty heartbeats he heard a curse in Latin and a sliding section of scree. He was being pursued - someone had been following him on his rounds, probably. He wondered momentarily about the others, but quickly his attention focused once more on his predicament. He did not have the leisure to worry about the others.

  More cursing and shouts and a name: Acrab? Not a name he knew, but a Syrian one, he believed. The directions made it clear that they had been following him, or at least had seen where he entered the steam. They were following the trail the same as he.

  With a malicious smile, he decided on another gamble. If others were coming down here after him, the chances were good that the archers and slingers would not loose their ammunition for fear of hitting their own.

  Swiftly, he rose and started to walk slowly forward, kicking the grey stones off to the right, changing the apparent course of the trail. After a few extra feet off track they would peter out, of course, but by then…

  He had almost emerged from the far side of the steam vents when he heard his nearest pursuer scream.

  * * * * *

  Acrab - 'The Scorpion' - had been left in charge of the main force by his employer and former cell-mate - the enormous, unhygienic Celt - due to his knowledge of tactics and his ability to deal with sudden turnabouts in enemy forces. In his native Syria, he had taken good gold from the Parthians for continual disruption and trouble-causing to the Romans. He had fought well and evilly until that bastard Pompey had finally captured and imprisoned him.

  He knew how to position his forces according to terrain and enemy numbers, and the information the Fronto woman had given them seemed to be holding up. She seemed to have known the terrain here like one born to the area, and had told them of the eight men who would be in the crater - four hirelings and four soldiers.

  Fifteen men split into three groups. Five had gone for the shed to deal with the two men hiding there; five had gone to disable the archers, and the other five were with him. He had not given the signal until they had watched the leader - this 'Balbus' - visit all his defensive positions. Then, when they knew exactly where the meagre defenders were and what to expect, he had set his two other groups to their work and led the third down to the steam vents to take down the commander before he could re-join the others at the centre.

  But then somehow things had gone wrong here. Through sheer ill luck, his three archers had missed the old man and lost him in the steam. In response, he had told them to train their weapons on the far edge of the roiling haze and watch for his reappearance. At the same time, he took the other two men - he in the safe, rear position - into the steam. It immediately leapt to mind that the old man might move the trails of stones and kept his eyes carefully on the ground, but that had apparently not occurred to the morons in front of him.

  The fumarole had boiled Quadratus before their very eyes, turning him bright pink and searing his flesh, raising blisters and pustules. The most horrifying thing - and little sickened Acrab these days - was watching the man's eyeballs soften, blister and then burst in the length of a single heartbeat.

  The second man in the line - Euphrillos - had panicked in that brief moment and instead of standing right where he was or carefully backing up the way he had come, he spun to flee, lost his footing on the rocky scree and vanished sideways with a shriek into the steam. At least Acrab hadn't had to watch that one!

  With deliberate, slow care, Acrab stepped back onto the original path and began to wend his way back to the entrance. There was no point in pursuing the man further and risking emerging from the far edge only to fall foul of his own archers. As he emerged from the steam, he gestured his intention to the missile troops and skirted the area of dangerous fumaroles, heading for the far edge where presumably the old man would emerge.

  * * * * *

  Galronus looked round at the sound of the scream and nudged Masgava.

  "Hope that wasn't Balbus."

  "It wasn't. But that means they're here. And since the signal wasn't given, they didn't come from the villa approach."

  "Do you think Fronto…?" Palmatus hissed the unfinished question.

  "Fronto can take care of himself" Galronus stated flatly. "We need to deal with our own problem right now. Do we stay here and wait or do we try to leave the mudpools and find them?"

  "We stay" Masgava replied. "If we leave, we might run straight in to them, and we certainly negate all the advantages we chose this place for."

  "Then Balbus is on his own" Palmatus sighed.

  "Balbus also can take care of himself" snapped Galronus.

  "Can you see something?"

  The three men peered into the haze of steam surrounding them, rising from the mudpools and reacting with the cold air. After a moment there was a distinct humanoid shape some twenty paces away in the mist.

  "He's close."

  "He's buggered" replied Palmatus, nodding in that direction.

  Almost as if to illustrate his point, the figure disappeared with a shriek and there was the muted sound of some sucking glutinous murk. A blood-curdling scream suddenly rent the air and wailed constantly, going from strength to strength as the man who had slipped into the boiling mud floundered, his legs coated with liquid fire. No matter how much he rolled around it was not putting out the burning in his flesh.

  More figures began to emerge from the mist, grey and ghost-like as they moved ever closer, inching slowly, horribly aware of the dangers. The very fact that they were so careful and attentive spoke volumes to the defenders. The newcomers had known about the place before their attack, and that meant they must have done for Fronto, as he was the only one who wasn't here and who knew all their plans. And, of course, he had not arrived with them on his tail.

  Despite all their pre-warning and care, two more men fell foul of the bubbling, boiling mud before they came close enough to do any real damage, and the screams of three men were now forming some sort of disharmonious chord through the steam cloud.

  "Seven. Three of us: seven of them" Palmatus whispered.

  "Yes. I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards" Galronus laughed, and a dazzling white grin split the ebony face of Masgava.

  Palmatus shook his head. "You lot are crazy."

  * * * * *

  More than half a mile away, Fronto skittered across the marble flooring of the summer dining room and out to the building's rear portico, ducking to the side of the door as he emerged into the arcaded walkway.

  It had felt almost cowardly running from the two men now that Lucilia was safe, but he was also shrewd enough to know that even with his fitness at an all-time high, taking on a giant and a murderer - both of whom were masters at the craft of death - in an open fight was nothing short of suicide. Divide and conquer. He had to split them up somehow.

  Now, leaning against the house's rear wall, he paused only long enough to remove his hobnailed boots and drop them over the arcade into the flower bed beneath. The initial run had relied on speed to put distance between them and also announce his direction of movement to the enemy, laying an audible trail. Now that the pair would be prowling through the rooms of the villa searching for him, he needed a little more stealth, and hob-nails on marble was less than stealthy.

  With bare feet, unencumbered by armour or heavy toga, he felt light and lithe.

  Strangely, despite everything he had done to bring this fight onto his own ground instead of ending up running through his house and fighting for his life as he had for two damn years now, he had ended up through ill fortune doing exactly that. The house was different, sure, but the situation was almost the same as when Clodius' thugs had attacked the house on the Aventine, or when the murderous tribunes Hortius and Menenius had hunted him through his own bath house.

  But not quite.

  Something was different this time.

  Fronto was smiling.

  Instead of being a put-upon physical wreck being assaulted on his own property and trying to stay ahead of the enemy, he was as p
repared as a man could be. He felt confident and strong. Perhaps for the first time in years, both Fortuna and Nemesis were watching him on his home ground and nodding their approval.

  He was no fugitive or panicked defender this time. For all that he had run from them outside, it was in truth a planned move to gain him enough distance to remove his boots and to undertake the next step. He was in control of this fight. Berengarus and the monstrous ghoul that accompanied him had picked the wrong man to mess with this time.

  With a quick rub of the Fortuna pendant he'd picked up on his return to Rome last year he took a deep breath and crouched, launching himself upwards. His hands grasped the lintel of the roof and with a dexterity he'd almost forgotten about, pulled himself up and onto the tiles of the portico roof, the sheath of his sword almost catching, forcing him to adjust mid-manoeuvre.

  He could, of course, have easily run up one of the two internal staircases to the upper level, but the stairs were of creaking, noisy wood and he would easily have been heard by his pursuers. Instead, they would have heard him run through the house in his nailed boots and know that he was still on the ground.

  More fool them. With a gentle slap of flesh on the wooden boards, he dropped through the upper floor windows and into one of the many unused rooms. Pausing, he could hear the pair clumping around on the ground floor in their heavy boots - well, he could hear the giant German thumping around and a strange dragging sound that denoted the movements of the wounded ghast with his damaged foot.

  The latter first.

  With a smile of personal satisfaction, Fronto moved through the room, mentally tracking the scraping of the broken foot. He nodded to himself as he heard the very slight change in tone when the ghoul stepped from the delicate patterned marble of the tablinum to the plain stone at the base of the staircase. Few would be able to discern the difference, but Fronto had played games reminiscent of this with his friends in his youth and had come to know every corner and crevice of this place and even the sounds of the floors.

  His brow creased as he moved to the landing above the wooden staircase and he almost sniggered. Moving around to the opposite end of the staircase from the top step, he reached out to the bust of his grandfather. It really was surprisingly ugly. He didn't remember the old man having a misshapen strawberry for a nose or such drooping baggy eyelids. The sculptor of this memorial bust should have been beaten senseless for crimes against art.

  Fronto cleared his throat - a sound more reminiscent of a laugh than anything else.

  Just as he'd predicted - just as Lollius had once done aged seven and received a cup of urine on his head for his efforts - Tulchulchur, the monster of Vispul appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his face turned upwards, leering as he brandished his curved blade.

  The marble head of Lucius Falerius Draco hit the killer at the hairline above his left eye, smashing his skull and driving fragments of bone into his brain.

  Fronto watched for a moment as the strange old wraith gently folded up like some wooden apparatus, brains and blood leaking from his head as the marble bust bounced off across the stone floor, covered in gore and clumps of hair.

  Tulchulchur lay on the ground, one foot shaking wildly as his system fought to control his body despite the fact that a sizeable portion of his brain had been mashed and invaded by bone shards. Incredibly, as Fronto peered down, he saw one hand reach out and grasp the step, using it to pull the twitching body up to a seated position.

  How could such a frail old thing still be alive after that?

  And yet the smashed, crimson head turned upwards, the rheumy eyes refocusing slowly on the face looking down over the banister.

  "Yeeee-ooooo-uuuuu. Dhhhhh-iiiiieeee" it hissed, spittle on its lips mingling with the blood running down its face. Fronto had a horrible feeling as the thing began to pull itself to its feet that the monster of Vipsul was more than a mere man. Was it one of the Lemures - shades of the wicked departed that wandered the world carrying only malice?

  The crushed foot shuffled forwards to the step and, ignoring the pain and the pulping of its own brain, the wraith began to climb, slowly and laboriously, parchment thin knuckle skin whitening with its grip on the wicked curved, razor sharp knife. The right eye was fixed on Fronto, while the left one, slightly dislodged from the blow, rolled a little in the socket, not quite able to follow.

  Fronto shuddered. He could see pink-grey brain matter through the crimson gloop on the thing's skull.

  "Beerrrrrengaaaarusssshhhhh" the thing called out to its companion. "Up sssstaaaaiiiirsssss!"

  Fronto felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach. He had expected that to end the wraith, but now it seemed to be coming for him still.

  * * * * *

  Balbus ducked from the far side of the vapour jets but stopped, crouched, at the edge. Another trail of dark stones led back in only a couple of paces away. Keeping low in order to remain obscured by the steam, he moved along to the next path and disappeared into the white fog once more. Just as he ducked back inside, he saw a figure emerge from the edge - someone had skirted the entire area to try and catch him and had missed his re-entry by a couple of heartbeats.

  Very carefully - making sure of the efficacy of his trail - the ageing commander moved along the path as fast as he dared. He had trod these tracks more than a dozen times each morning over the past few days and knew exactly where the trail emerged.

  He smiled.

  With a pop and a bubbling sound one of the jets near his right side suddenly died away and, sure enough, a moment later a new jet burst through the scree a few paces away.

  A shield. He could have done with a shield, but it was sitting at the last defence point in the centre of the mudpools with the other three. All he had here were his mail shirt that seemed to weigh more every day he donned it, his sword and his pugio dagger.

  It would have to be enough.

  Like all soldiers, Balbus did not have a nebulous and all-encompassing fluffy equal favour for all the Gods. He respected them all, of course, but a soldier's piety was a small and powerful thing - it had to be carried on his person into battle - so compact and tight it was a shining diamond of belief. Soldiers tended to devote their worship to one God in particular; often it was all they managed - who had time to invoke a pantheon facing a hail of arrows?

  Balbus had always reserved his prime prayers for Jupiter - he was 'Greatest and Best' after all - but prolonged contact with Fronto and the peculiar habit of devoting his piety to the less invoked Fortuna had rubbed off, and he found himself asking the divine lady to watch over him for the next few moments.

  The trail of darker stones ended a few paces ahead where the cloud thinned and Balbus squinted to see through the steam.

  Fortuna was with him after all. And perhaps Jupiter and Mars too.

  The three men with the missile weapons who had shot at him had come down to the lower levels and now sat by a low flat rock perhaps ten paces off to his left watching the far edge of the steam - entirely the wrong direction. Better still, the slinger had his leather weapon hanging loose in his hand and was facing away, speaking to the pair of archers whose weapons were primed but pointing away.

  Reaching down, Balbus drew both his blades. Momentarily he weighed up the chances of hitting one of them if he threw the pugio, but quickly dismissed the idea. The standard military blade was not well weighted for throwing and he would almost certainly miss. The result would simply be one weapon less with which to fight.

  He could feel his heart pounding away in his chest and felt a momentary worry that it was fighting too hard and that he might suffer the same illness he had fallen to against the Veneti two years ago. But no. It was excitement, pure and simple!

  With a grim smile, and acknowledging the fact that after two years of enforced retirement, he felt he was back where he should be, doing what he should be doing, he burst from the steam at a run.

  Should have had a shield.

  The first arrow whizzed past his ear and n
arrowly avoided ending him mid-run. The second smashed into his shoulder, hitting the doubled section of mail with the extra leather-backed layer. The protection was entirely adequate and the arrow slammed into him but then fell away. The blow knocked him back and to the side, and would bruise badly, but did nothing to stop him.

  Ten paces can pass quickly when running into battle. While the archers had only needed to turn towards him and release, their bows already primed, the slinger was still only just reacting with a turn of his head when Balbus hit him. Reserving his weapons for the archers, the older soldier simply used the slinger as a springboard, his nail-soled boot smashing into the back of the man's head and driving his face forward into the rock as the former legate leapt at the other two.

  Balbus saw the expressions in the archers' faces change in that single heartbeat where he - airborne - descended on them. Desperation turned to sheer panic and dread. He was aware that he was grinning like a child opening a gift - he must look peculiar.

  The archers had managed to discard their bows and reach down to their blade hilts but there had been no time to draw the weapons before Balbus hit them with unerring accuracy. His gladius slid into the notch at the base of a neck, through a windpipe and on, pausing briefly with the resistance of the spinal column before punching through and out the back of the man's neck. His spine severed, the archer's astonished, open-mouthed head lolled around loosely, the tendons fighting for control over it. Finally it flopped back almost facing to the rear, leaving a gaping second mouth of liquid crimson filled with steel.

  The dagger plunged into the other archer's eye socket. A pugio's blade was wide - wider than an eye socket, anyway - and the blade jammed gratingly against the bone with only a third of its length in. Balbus let go of the hilt and it stayed where it was. The archer began to issue a high-pitched keening noise as he reached up to grip the hilt of the blade jammed in his head, eye-humours and blood running down his face, his mouth opening into a tragic theatre mask.