Marius' Mules VIII: Sons of Taranis

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘I think so. Those we’ve killed correspond with their god. Toutatis, Rudianos and Dis were the ones you fought in the villa. There was one who looked thin and death-like, who would be Dis. One was a big, bull-necked man, who would be Rudianos the war god and taker of heads. Not sure about Toutatis. I wasn’t there for the fight, but I’d be willing to wager there is a connection. Abellio is a hunter and forest god, and Aurelius said the man had a bow. Belenos is the shining one. Blond. Young. You see what I mean? Perhaps knowing who the others are will give us an advantage?’

  Fronto nodded. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Well we can assume that Molacos is Taranis, the Thunderer, who you’d call Jupiter I guess.’ He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut and mouth working as he turned slowly in a circle, pointing at stones he could only see in his mind’s eye. ‘Belisama. Bright huntress, sister of Belenos.’

  ‘She’ll be spitting teeth now then, after Aurelius butchered her brother. Might be easy to bait into doing something stupid.’

  ‘That’s a fair assumption,’ Procles murmured. ‘When my brother died, I tore half a ship apart in revenge.’

  ‘Cernunnos,’ the Arvernian went on. ‘The forest lord. Beloved of the druids.’

  ‘Could he be a druid?’

  ‘Very possibly. They are not averse to taking action. They don’t usually get involved in battles, but they have no qualms about killing, and plenty of them are still around, bitter at having raised a rebellion that failed. Next would be… Mogont.’ He nodded. ‘I remember him. I saw him before I came to Massilia. Big man. Huge. Like an ox in a man suit.’

  ‘Wonderful. At least he should be easy to spot.’

  ‘And the last one is… Catubodua. The battle crow. She’ll be vile and tough to handle.’

  Fronto nodded as his friend straightened and opened his eyes. ‘Molacos, a druid, a vengeful sister, a giant and a vile woman. Lovely. The Cadurci breed them odd, don’t they?’

  ‘They won’t all be Cadurci,’ Cavarinos replied. ‘There’ll be Arverni in there, no doubt, and maybe Carnutes. All those mad and disaffected left over from Alesia have a stake in this.’

  ‘I remember you telling me you hated druids and didn’t believe in the gods and all that,’ Fronto mused. ‘You were quite scathing about the whole thing, if I recall. How come you know so much about them?’

  Cavarinos shrugged. ‘My brother was an obsessive on the subject, as well as a moron. I grew up around it. I’ll bet you know all about how your engineers build aqueducts even though you’ve never done it.’

  Fronto shook his head. ‘No one knows the mind of an engineer. Peculiar bunch.’ He straightened. ‘Alright, lads. Grab a staff and a knife and let’s go clear the rats out of this nest.’ Aurelius made to rise and Fronto placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. ‘Not you. You wait for Glyptus and the medic.’

  * * * * *

  Fronto kicked the sleeping mat irritably, watching it skitter across the floor and the cockroaches scatter from beneath it.

  ‘Should have guessed they’d have run for it as soon as they were located.’ He reached down to the wooden bowl filled with some miscellaneous stewed meat. ‘Still warm, so they’d only just gone when we got here. And now we’re back to square one.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Procles muttered. ‘Now there are seven of us and only five of them. The odds have changed.’

  ‘Not for the better, though,’ added Balbus, who had been excavating a pile of refuse in the corner and now rose with something in his hand, holding it out for Fronto, who took it. Dirty and scratched as it was, the inscribed bark chitty was clear enough.

  ‘It’s from the graecostadium,’ he sighed, rubbing his hair and sucking his teeth irritably.

  ‘The what?’ Procles asked.

  ‘The slave market behind the forum. Someone in this house bought fourteen Gauls yesterday for a bargain price. Paid in Massiliot drachma, too.’

  ‘So now instead of ten against seven, we’re seven against nineteen? Shit.’

  ‘The only bonus is that the slaves will have come in recently from Massilia, probably in the same bloody fleet we joined. They were probably being unloaded as we disembarked. You remember those slaves – they weren’t in top condition. They’d walked from Belgae lands to Massilia, then were loaded into ships for a shaky voyage. They’ll be wasted and weak for a long while yet.’

  ‘They’ll have fire in their hearts, though,’ Cavarinos noted.

  ‘True. Well here’s the situation as I see it. We don’t know where they are again. We’re outnumbered and they know we’re onto them, so there’s no chance of us making an attack on them or springing any kind of surprise anymore.’

  ‘So,’ Agasander asked, frowning, ‘if they aren’t here now, where are they?’

  ‘No idea. Lurking in an alley somewhere?’

  ‘Nineteen Gauls, some cloaked and masked, some clearly slaves with brands, all armed and one with a ruined face. There’s no alley in Rome dark enough to hide that lot at this time of day,’ Balbus said.

  ‘Might they have a second safe house?’

  ‘If they did, why keep this one?’ Fronto felt a cold stone settle in his belly. ‘They’re not hiding, are they?’

  Cavarinos caught his look and chewed his lip. ‘No. They’re making they’re move. We’re busy dithering here and they’re on their way to free the king. We’ve triggered it, too. Aurelius killed two of them, and they know their time’s up. They had to go now or they’d miss their chance altogether.’

  ‘They’re probably already at the carcer,’ Fronto breathed. ‘Shit.’

  A heartbeat later, the seven men were out of the house and running. ‘They can’t be far ahead of us,’ Procles huffed as he ran. ‘Quarter of an hour? Half at most.’

  ‘That’s long enough,’ Fronto said, breathing heavily and, as they turned into the Vicus Longus a few streets later, he turned to Cavarinos, running alongside him. ‘Are you comfortable with this?’

  The Arvernian turned a surprised look on him. ‘Comfortable? Of course not.’

  ‘Want to go home and stay out of it? Last chance.’

  Cavarinos simply shook his head and ran a little faster.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MOLACOS of the Cadurci stepped out of the side alley, his breath fogging his eyes, funnelled by the sweaty inside of the ceramic mask and kept locked in by the thick woollen hood of the cloak.

  ‘What in Hades are you supposed to be?’ the salesman snorted. ‘Something for the festival?’

  The tip of Molacos’ long, Gallic sword appeared between the folds of his cloak.

  ‘Listen,’ the man said, nerves now inflecting his voice, ‘tell Rubio that I know I’m late with the money, but I’ll have it by the kalends. Don’t do anything…’

  His words trailed off into a soft exhalation as the blade slammed home into his throat just above the notch where his collar bones met. Molacos instinctively stepped aside, maintaining his grip as the jet of crimson splashed through where he’d been standing. Blood on the cloak would attract far too much attention. Quickly he wrenched the blade out, unable to twist it from this angle, and so fighting the suction of the ravaged flesh. As the man fell away, shaking and gurgling, blood bubbling and spurting, surrounding him with a red lake, Molacos stepped back, wiped his blade on a rag and tossed the scrap onto the shaking body.

  ‘Who buys shit like this,’ big Mogont murmured, stepping out of the shadows and picking up a lamp in the shape of a phallus from the laden cart.

  ‘The Romans think they’re lucky,’ Molacos growled from within his mask.

  ‘He doesn’t think so,’ murmured Mogont, looking down at the body. The big man seemed to be far more relaxed and cheerful than Molacos, but then he always did when he didn’t have to wear the mask and cloak. In fact, he looked the most comfortable of all of them, since he had proved far too big to disguise. None of the endless clothes they had stolen from washing lines fitted the giant, and so Mola
cos had grudgingly let him stay in his Cadurci garb, grasping a baton and playing the part of a bodyguard. No one would glance twice at him in that respect, despite his size.

  The others looked less comfortable as they emerged into the small deserted space where three alleys met. Cernunnos was still smarting from shaving off his beard and moustaches and hacking his hair short. In his stolen tunic and belt with the light leather sandals it both impressed and disgusted Molacos how much his druid friend looked just like one of the hated Romans now. No one, even in the forum, would bat an eyelid at him. Better still the learned man, despite his convictions, spoke Latin like a native. He might just as well be a Roman now. The curl of his lip and hardness of his eyes alone gave away how much he truly hated every moment of this.

  Belisama had refused to dye her hair and still stood out among the crowd with her almost white-blonde hair down to her waist. However, she had taken little persuading to rub dirt and grease into it and, with the clearly peasant garb they had stolen, she looked like a street worker or a slave, unless one looked directly into her eye, where the fires of fury and vengeance burned, consuming her soul.

  But Catubodua was the least comfortable of all.

  Dressed respectably, like a Roman merchant’s wife, she was the picture of everyday plebeian womanhood. Apart from the sword scar that ran from her left eye across beneath her nose and down to the opposite side of her chin. And the raven feather in her hair, which she had flatly refused to remove. And, Taranis protect them, the arm-ring of a warrior that was only poorly hid by the palla draped over her shoulders. The arm-ring had belonged to her husband, Sedullos, king of the Lemovices, slain on the fields before Alesia. It had been passed to her as the only reminder of her husband who lay mouldering in a Roman-dug grave, though she had earned the warrior’s prize many times over since then. Still, the disguises did not have to be perfect. They just had to get them to the carcer.

  Mogont returned to the alley and collected their weapons, each one an offence against Rome’s laws. One by one, he slid them under the top of the cart full of lamps, bowls and trinkets. Mogont’s blade was too long by a hand, but Molacos simply draped the cloth that covered the stock on the lower shelf over the end, hiding it from view.

  ‘We should have held the swords tight in our hands and marched on the carcer,’ the widow snarled, fretting at her Roman clothes.

  ‘We would have got nowhere near the place.’

  ‘Rome has no guards or army here,’ Belisama put in. ‘There is no one to stop us doing so.’

  ‘You say that,’ Molacos replied with strained patience, ‘because you did not see what happened in the forum earlier. Two of the legate’s men armed with swords were mobbed by ordinary people. They take this law seriously. Nothing must be left to chance.’

  ‘And yet you cost us precious time in finding such a disguise. What if the soldier and his men manage to warn the carcer of our plans?’

  ‘What of it? Are you afeared of Fronto and his pets?’ He gestured to the alley behind him, where more than a dozen slaves who had once been free men of the Carnutes and Senones waited in Roman peasant clothes, sticks and knives in their belts. They would merge into the crowd, splitting up and following the small party with the cart. Individually they were sick, weak and broken. But their spirit was strong, and their desire for vengeance on Rome even stronger. They might be of no use in taking the carcer and freeing the king, but they could at least hold off any pursuit and buy the Sons time to get Vercingetorix away from this place, down to the river and freedom.

  Cernunnos took his place beside the cart, his spiteful ‘wife’ beside him and their dirt-stained ‘daughter’ behind. The Gaulish bodyguard took position nearby and Molacos, cloaked still, bent over the cart and lifted its rear legs, beginning to push.

  This was it: a moment they had dreamed of for half a year now. It would have been nicer to be more prepared and under less pressure, of course. Molacos had planned to strike after the Comum man had been taken from the carcer in a few days – when the soldiers there would let their guard down slightly with the reduced importance of the inmates – but the arrival of Fronto on the scene and the deaths of poor Belenos and Abellio had forced his hand.

  Nothing would stop them.

  For back to the north and west, far from this nest of vipers, his chieftain Lucterius and the army of the tribes waited on the border of Rome to sweep south and crush Narbo.

  Chapter Twenty

  DYRAKHES and Biorix lounged at a table in the open front of the Huntsman’s Head, their conversation ribald and varied, their drinks well-watered, their attention constantly on the carcer and its surroundings. Fronto ran up from the Argiletum, panting and sweating, the others behind him, and the two men watching from the tavern rose in surprise.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘No sign of them?’ Fronto panted.

  ‘Them? The Gauls? No.’

  The former legate turned his eyes to the sky and blew a kiss. ‘Thank you, Great Lady. I won’t forget this.’ He looked back at the pair in the tavern. ‘Go to the shed at the back and arm yourselves, and bring a few extra staves and knives out with you too.’

  Biorix’s frown was a question in itself and Fronto nodded. ‘They’re coming. Now.’

  ‘You’re sure, sir?’

  ‘As we can be. Time to try and secure this place.’

  As Biorix and Dyrakhes disappeared behind the tavern to retrieve the better makeshift weapons, Fronto peered across at the heavy door of the carcer. Behind him Cavarinos, Balbus, Agesander and Procles stood tense and ready.

  ‘How do we do this, then, Marcus?’ Balbus asked. ‘You’re the strategist.’

  ‘Perhaps if we secure all the approaches…?’

  ‘Do it fast, then,’ Biorix hissed, reappearing around the corner of the tavern and pointing down the street. This time in the early evening there were not so many people around as there had been at the height of the day, and towards the Porta Fontinalis a strange tableau was approaching. A Roman merchant and his family were moving along the street, drawing interested looks but little more. Fronto’s eyes were, however, first drawn to the hulking Gaulish giant accompanying them, then to the cloaked figure pushing their cart. His keen gaze quickly picked out a variety of what could only be gaunt and dirty Gallic slaves weaving their way through the crowd. Suddenly he was unsure about this. The numbers were extremely uneven.

  ‘We don’t want a war in the street,’ Balbus muttered.

  ‘And it would go badly for us,’ Cavarinos added. ‘We are outnumbered almost three men to one.’

  Fronto nodded absently. They couldn’t hold the street against that lot, and even if they did, civilian casualties would be unacceptable. They were out of time and out of options. Taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders, he ran across to the carcer door and hammered on it. The other six crowded behind him and as he hammered again, and then a third time, Fronto’s eyes kept being drawn to the approaching cart and its panoply of oddly-garbed Gauls. For a heartbeat he wondered at their dress, then the reason dawned on him and he peered at the cart, knowing what it contained even if he couldn’t see the iron itself. The ‘merchant’ was bellowing his offers and wares, and it would sound perfectly normal to anyone who hadn’t spent the last eight years in Gaul and couldn’t spot a Gallic accent even when faint.

  Finally, the door of the carcer creaked and opened inwards, emitting a waft of stale, fetid air. The face that appeared in the narrow gap was broken-nosed, lined with three distinct scars and bore the short hair that was the norm for a legionary.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No time to explain,’ Fronto barked. ‘You need to let us in.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  The door started to close and Fronto stepped forward, jamming his foot in it as he spoke. ‘Listen, you… ow!’ The muscular legionary had pushed the door with every nuance of strength in his large arms and though Fronto’s foot had definitely stopped it closing, there was a crunch and a flash of blinding pain s
hot up his leg as foot bones broke. The legionary frowned in surprise as the door failed to close and tried again with the same force. This time, Fronto’s foot was further in and he felt the heavy timber close on his ankle, scraping the flesh from it and almost breaking the vital joint.

  ‘Listen,’ he hissed through teeth gritted against the pain, ‘there are some well-armed and very determined men coming here to free one of your prisoners and they outnumber you three to one. Let us in.’

  ‘Only my centurion…’

  Fronto shoved hard and the door slammed inwards, smashing into the surprised legionary’s face and sending him reeling back. In a heartbeat, Fronto threw the door open and ushered the others in, taking a swift look back out along the street. Perhaps fifty paces away a bunch of street urchins had arrested the cart’s progress, ribbing the merchant and making lewd suggestions, comparing the phallic lamps to their owner.

  Thank you lady Fortuna, he smiled again, and turned to see a tense stand-off in the guard room. The last time he had been in this chamber he had been in the company of Pompey and it had been his men staffing the place. Pompey had ruled the carcer a ‘non-public’ place, and had allowed his men blades. It seemed Marcellus was sticking rigidly to his law-abiding persona beyond reason. Even the carcer’s guards now carried only wooden batons. All six of the place’s staff were here in this room, their bowls of food and game of dice forgotten in the face of this intrusion. With the discipline of legionaries – a level of which Fronto heartily approved – the half dozen men had armed themselves and stood even before all the arrivals were inside. Three of them had moved to block access to the heavy armoured door that led through to the cells.

  As Fronto’s men gathered in a small knot and moved into the place, Fronto dropped back the latch and peered at the keyhole. No key. Stepping away from the door, he approached the three most threatening men, the ones guarding the way to the cells. In the absence of the centurion, he didn’t know who might be in charge, and the leader was far from evident.