Marius' Mules VIII: Sons of Taranis

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘Listen, you lot. There are near a score of Gauls coming to free your prisoner and they’re all armed with swords…’

  Before he could get another word out, one of the guards had lunged at him, almost knocking the short staff from his hands. Fronto jabbed back in automatic response and as if that exchange were a trigger the room erupted into chaos, the guards and Fronto’s companions alike jabbing and blocking with their batons and staves.

  In the chaos, he heard a voice shout ‘Go tell Crispinus!’

  He turned, his broken foot agonising, but the man who was intent on stopping him smacked him painfully in the knee with his club. Fronto wheeled and shoved the man, sending him lurching back. Again, he turned to the entrance to see the man with the broken nose who he’d hurt on entry unlatching the door.

  ‘No!’

  But his attention was drawn again to the man facing him who’d recovered and was swiping again with the short length of ash.

  ‘For the love of Bacchus, will you lot stop this?’

  Again he shoved his attacker out of the way and glanced over his shoulder. The door stood open, the doorman gone, running to find the centurion. Even as he turned to run and close the door again, a knife thudded into the oak frame, thrown from somewhere in the street.

  ‘Shit!’ yelled the guard who’d sent his friend running – the man in charge now, Fronto presumed. The man leapt over to the door and peered out. Pressed in the struggle, Fronto couldn’t get a reasonable view outside, but he saw the guard’s eyes widen and could picture the scene in the street. ‘Shut the bloody door!’ he yelled.

  Nodding in shock, the guard did so, dropping the latch.

  ‘Carcer!’ the senior guard yelled above the din, ‘Ad Signum!’

  The call cut through the chaos and the effect was instant. Whatever trouble the guards were causing for them, Fronto found himself impressed with the way, even after years of retirement, the call to standard pulled the men immediately from what they were doing. A moment later all five were lined up to one side. Fronto’s men, panting, huddled together again. Miraculously everyone was upright and there appeared to be no broken bones or major wounds – just a few bruises and contusions.

  ‘Who are you?’ the speaker asked, addressing Fronto.

  ‘Marcus Falerius Fronto, legate of Caesar’s Tenth Equestris, retired.’

  The five men saluted automatically and Fronto had to brush aside the etiquette.

  ‘Who are they, then, sir?’ the man asked.

  ‘A bunch of Gaulish warriors and slaves. The five with the cart are all very dangerous. They’re coming to try and free Vercingetorix, and they won’t stop ‘til they’re all dead. Find the keys. Lock that door.’

  The legionary’s face folded into an expression of contrite embarrassment. ‘Afraid Paulinus had the door keys, sir.’

  ‘Let me guess: Paulinus is the one who just left to warn your centurion?’

  A nod.

  ‘Turds! The latch won’t hold them for long. Still, your commander might bring help. Where is he?’

  ‘He’ll be at barracks, sir, up on the Viminal, top end, near the walls.’

  Fronto made a quick mental calculation, assuming the barracks to be that house he’d found the records of which had formerly belonged to Pompey. A little over a mile from here to there, he reckoned, and all uphill. Paulinus was clearly fit – all these former soldiers were still in good shape – but still that would be more than a quarter of an hour. Plus the same back, or slightly less allowing for the downhill. Plus any time taken by Crispinus to gather and arm men in between.

  ‘No help coming for three quarters of an hour or more, then, so it’s down to us. There are twelve of us, and nineteen of them altogether. We can manage that, I figure. Most of them are half-starved slaves.’

  The door suddenly erupted in a din of thuds, thumps and bangs as the Gauls outside began to hammer at it. The latch immediately groaned and strained, and Cavarinos gestured to Procles. The two men grabbed the heavy table with the meal accoutrements on it and tipped it sideways, jamming it up against the exterior door.

  ‘Hang on, sir,’ the senior guard said, and ran over to the corner where two cupboards stood. Shoving one aside roughly, he scrabbled around in the grime behind and withdrew something, turning in a cloud of dust and holding something out. Fronto stared at the two gladii in the man’s hands. Both were very standard military issue and clearly unused for some time, from the thick coat of muck.

  ‘Left over by the previous occupants, sir,’ the man said. ‘We meant to get rid of them, but you know how it is.’

  Fronto grinned and grabbed one of the blades, tearing it from its scabbard. It was pitted with rust from lack of care, but well-edged and still eminently usable. He hefted it comfortably as the guard pulled the other and did the same.

  ‘When they get in, don’t mistake my men in the press for theirs, will you.’

  The guards nodded, peering intently at Fronto’s companions and committing their faces, shapes and clothes to memory.

  A thought struck Fronto. ‘How many prisoners do you have?’

  The guard frowned. ‘Just the two, sir.’

  ‘Vercingetorix and the Comum decurion?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Do you still have keys for the cells?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then get in there, let the decurion out and give him a club.’

  ‘I can’t do that, sir.’

  ‘You damn well can and you damn well will. We need all the help we can get and Marcellus notwithstanding, the decurion is a Roman. Get him out and arm him.’

  ‘But sir, he’s still badly torn and in agony, and all wrapped up in dressings.’

  ‘And yet he could still hold a club. Get him out.’

  Reluctantly and with a shaking of the head, the guard scurried off, opening the door to the cells and disappearing within. Fronto turned to the rest. ‘Everyone prepared? Whatever we do, none of the attackers get to the cells and none of them get out alive. Even if we all have to die to stop it.’

  Nods all round.

  Across the room, the latch gave an ear-splitting shriek and then tore in two with a crack. The door jerked in a foot or so and the table butted up against it crept backwards.

  ‘This is it. Be prepared. No quarter.’

  With a noise like a siege tower collapsing the door burst inwards, the table clattering across the floor. Fronto could hear the sound of keys and muffled conversation in the cell chamber, and the eleven men in this room levelled their weapons and planted firm feet. Fronto winced at the pain in his foot as he did so and gritted his teeth, bracing for the enemy.

  A man two heads taller than him and twice as wide at the shoulder barrelled through the doorway. The big man hefted the longest, heaviest sword Fronto had ever seen, one that made the grand long Gallic blades he’d seen look like fruit knives. The Gaul’s face was oddly happy, a mix of release and exultation, as he leapt forwards, his first side-swipe taking one of the guards in the left arm, ripping it in two and slamming home deep into the man’s torso. He screamed and fell away, tripping one of his fellows and taking him down in the flurry. Procles was there in an instant, a decade’s experience fighting off pirates and raiders aboard triremes and merchant vessels lending him useful skills in dealing with restricted space. The big Greek former marine hammered down with his club at the giant’s hand, trying to disarm him of that great sword. His blow struck but glanced off the sword hilt, bruising the big man’s hand at best. As the marine reeled back, lifting his club for the next strike, his eyes widened in surprise. He’d not seen the huge Gaul’s other hand whip a knife from his belt. The force of the blow from that ham-sized hand was such that Procles felt his ribs and sternum crack and splinter, the knife driving the bone apart as though it were butter in its search for the heart.

  Fronto saw the guards fall, saw Procles jerk back with a cry, dropping his club and clutching at his chest, but he had his own problems. The older woman had let her p
alla fall away now and had torn away the skirts of her stola to allow freedom of movement, and she advanced across the room with the grace of a dancer and the determination of a gladiator, a blade in each hand, whirling and stabbing. Her first blow had caught Cavarinos on the left arm and the Arvernian had cried out but found himself locked in a dance of death with the fake merchant. The woman, one hundred and twenty pounds of snarling, hate-filled death, was on Fronto like a whirlwind, slashing and hacking as she spat curses in her native tongue. Despite his general aversion to fighting women – even after that German cow had wounded his ankle so long ago – Fronto found himself fighting for his life with no qualms. This wasn’t a woman. This was one of the Furies given form. Swords slamming into one another, grating, sparking, they fought again and again, Fronto’s braced foot aching and throbbing with at least two broken bones. Others were having less luck. They may have closed the gap in numbers, but the Romans were mostly armed with sticks and a few eating knives while the Gauls, by way of their cart, had brought ample good blades with them. Even some of the slaves – sad, filthy, gaunt creatures – were armed with swords, slavering with hate as they leapt upon the Romans, who fought them off as best they could with clubs and knives.

  He saw two of the Gallic slaves go down, Agesander managing to get inside the range of their weapons and smack their heads together with his big boxer’s hands. But at the same time, he saw Dyrakhes disappear, gurgling, blood bubbling up through both the mouth in his face and the second one in his neck. Chaos reigned as weapons struck and swung, the air filled with grunts, screams, cries and curses in two languages, all in a fairly dim constricted room, lit by two oil lamps and the open, splintered door.

  The Gallic witch snarled.

  One of Fronto’s desperate blows had taken a chunk out of the harridan’s shoulder, and a desperate punch had smashed her nose and front teeth, yet she fought on like some kind of Hades-born harpy and Fronto had felt the fiery pain of two hits from her blades, one on his forearm and one his leg, neither of which was deep enough to take his mind off the ongoing pain in his foot. Years of warfare had trained him to detach his mind from concerns over non-incapacitating wounds, leaving them to nag in the background, allowing him to concentrate on not dying.

  He hadn’t even realised his mistake before it was too late. He’d overreached like a novice – like a young tiro in his first week with the legion – and as he tried in vain to recover, the woman was on him, the tip of her left blade slashing through the air at the side of his head even as the right blocked the club in his other hand.

  In a blink of the eye he prepared to meet the final boatman, without even the time to apologise to Lucilia for leaving her so abruptly. A sword whispered through the air a hair’s breadth from his ear, blocking the witch’s blow, which should by rights have killed him. Instead, the force of the woman’s swing knocked the life-saving sword into his temple so that his mind spun unpleasantly. That same blade continued on into the face of the dreadful woman, smashing in through her cheek, into her brain and cracking the back of her skull from the inside, though Fronto only vaguely witnessed it in his fugged confusion.

  As he attempted to recover his wits, Fronto blinked to see that the head guard had returned from the cells with the staggering, pained Comum noble swathed in bandages, and only his timely intervention had saved Fronto’s life. As the senior guard with the sword took his place, Fronto tried to stop his mind from lurching in his head in a vomit-inducing manner.

  Things were going poorly. Half a dozen of the Gallic slaves lay dead, as well as the horrendous witch warrior, but Procles was gone, as were Dyrakhes and three of the six guards. Balbus was on the back-foot, fighting for his life against Molacos, whose cloak and mask seemed to hamper his fighting ability not at all. Biorix was struggling with the blond woman, and Agesander had, thankfully, managed to collect a fallen sword and was using it desperately to parry the massive hammer blows of the Gaulish giant again and again. Even as he watched, he saw another slave fall, and another of the carcer’s guards.

  Agesander found a momentary opening and lunged out. Fronto felt a moment of elation as he saw the former boxer’s purloined blade sink deep into the giant’s belly, angled upwards, ramming up inside the ribcage, severing organs, but his relief was short-lived. Even in death the giant was dangerous and unstoppable. The knife in his offhand found the side of Agesander’s neck, ripping a great gauge in it. The two men collapsed together, the giant’s innards slithering out atop them both as the spray from Agesander’s neck drowned all nearby in crimson, his lifeblood leaving him so fast that he was greying with every heartbeat.

  Fronto’s practised commander’s mind, clearing now of his thumping fuddlement, performed the calculation automatically. Seven slaves, Molacos, the blonde and the druid totalled ten of the enemy still fighting. Against eight of us…

  Another of the guards collapsed screaming, clutching a stump.

  Seven, then.

  Balbus fell with a yelp and Molacos issued a cry of triumph even as he turned on Fronto.

  The Roman’s heart hollowed. His father-in-law! Fury filled him even as the leader of the Sons of Taranis fell upon him like a war god. Fronto lashed out with his blade, a blow the Cadurci hunter easily turned, but Fronto’s rage was threatening to take control, and his fist smashed into Molacos’ masked face. He felt a finger break, but also felt the mask crack. As the strange, impassive visage fell away leaving Fronto staring into the ruin of that awful face, the final barrier snapped in Fronto’s mind and for the first time in years he let battle claim him utterly, surrendering to the bloodthirsty beast that lived suppressed within all born warriors.

  Molacos was good, and perhaps given over to the same fury as he. Even in the mindless rage that had claimed Fronto, he registered the quality of his enemy as the two men battered at one another madly, each blow driven by blind fury and battle lust. The sword edges clashed and clanged and both men took cut after cut after cut, heedless of the blood and fiery pain in their wrath. And suddenly Fronto was moving. He had his free arm around another man’s throat and was squeezing with the sound of the more delicate bones in the neck snapping. Unaware of who it was, his blade was still slashing out at Molacos, but they were moving as they fought. Unnoticed, they had backed through the doorway towards the cells.

  There was no time now to pay attention to anyone else’s fight. He and Molacos were locked in a dance of death. He felt the agony as something penetrated his side, but the recognition of a real wound did nothing to stop him fighting. He heard a scream outside in the main room and recognised it vaguely for that of Biorix.

  ‘Legate!’

  Fronto’s head cleared. Somehow, in the same way as the ad signum command had brought the former legionaries instinctively to attention, so the use of his old title cut through the noise and the mess, the pain and the fury, and drew Fronto back from the abyss.

  Molacos was still fighting him, but Fronto had wounded the Sons’ leader in three or four places in his unrestrained anger. Warm, sticky liquid ran down Fronto’s side and leg and he knew that the wound in his side was serious from the quantity of blood alone.

  He blinked, his sword still desperately turning Molacos’ blade, and looked to both sides to determine the source of the call.

  The leader of the guards was in this room now, too, and in dire trouble. The druid, his face coated with a swathe of blood from some head wound, had pressed the guard back and back until the poor fellow had found himself pressed up against the bars of a cell, where its inmate had taken grisly advantage.

  It had been a year since Fronto had set eyes upon Vercingetorix of the Arverni, king of Gaul and rebel commander. The months had not been kind. The once tall, powerfully-built man with the dazzling eyes, proud face and flowing hair was now a stooped, thin, matted creature, coated in filth and with a beard to his midriff. But whatever strength he had left in his arms was now locked around the guard’s neck.

  Even as the man fought off the druid desperate
ly, the imprisoned king heaved, strangling the life from him. As the guard’s last breaths came in gasps and wheezes, someone was there beside Fronto, flicking a sword defiantly at the druid, taking the dying Roman’s place.

  Cavarinos.

  Fronto twisted out of the way of another of Molacos’ blows and staggered, his broken foot giving way at the most inopportune time. A strange silence fell in the cells, filled only by the muted groans and flailing of the wounded and dying out in the main room, along with the occasional clang and crunch of a fight still going on somewhere.

  The druid backed away and Cavarinos was suddenly standing in the centre of the room, just out of reach of the cells, a space around him. Even Molacos, while still fending off Fronto’s occasional blows and launching the odd half-hearted one of his own, was paying more attention to the eerie tableau than his own fight.

  There are moments when the great games of the gods are poised on a knife-point and the outcome could go either way. At such times, the world holds its breath and even death seems inconsequential next to the enormity of the moment. The gods’ dice teeter on their points, waiting for gravity to pull them down and declare a winner.

  Once again, Fronto felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as he stepped back towards the bars of the empty cell behind him, disengaging from Molacos.

  ‘What are you doing, brother?’ Vercingetorix whispered in a hoarse rattle from the cell.

  ‘This has to stop,’ said Cavarinos, and Fronto’s heart lurched at the hint of pleading in the tone.

  ‘All can be as we designed,’ the king hissed. ‘There is one Roman left. Kill him, Cavarinos, blood of my blood, and we will be away from here.’

  The Arverni noble in the room’s centre lowered his blade and Fronto felt a rush of cold panic as he saw Cavarinos’ sword swing down until the point rested on the floor.

  ‘I cannot kill him, my king, any more than I could kill you.’

  ‘Then you are my companion and countryman no longer. You are not Arverni…’