The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  The silence that ensued was ended by one question from Strabo: “So how should we deal with it?”

  “Carefully.” Cato raised his cup and gazed into the wine before draining it and setting it down. “Never lose sight of that need for caution, in everything you do concerning Appius Endor.” He looked around the table again, meeting each man’s eye. “You might think I have exaggerated, but I have waded through blood collecting the severed limbs of people he chopped to pieces. You need to deal with this man with all-encompassing caution. All of you. Because none of you can imagine the depths of his depravity.”

  After a brief, uncomfortable silence, Valerius spoke up. “You mentioned his backers and the funding they supply to him. How much money is involved?”

  “We have no idea, but we do know the total is probably incalculable. The numbers, the amounts of goods and shipments, and the value in trade and bullion are far too big for people like us to comprehend. And that means the associated risks are equally immense, not only for us as syndexioi committed to stamping this thing out, but for the criminals. In plain language, it means that those most deeply concerned—the conspirators, our enemies—will not tolerate any threat to their activities. They will kill anyone—absolutely anyone, without hesitation—if they so much as suspect that he is aware of the existence of their organization. They demand complete secrecy and silence—deathly silence—in order to conduct their affairs.”

  He allowed them a few moments to dwell on that, then added, “And now we have no other option than to do the same, according to the same criteria. We have secrecy and silence on our side equal to theirs, protecting our existence and our identity. And we are about to go to war with them, toe to toe.”

  “You make it sound more frightening than field fighting,” Galban said.

  “It is,” Cato answered him. “One error here, one slip dealing with these people, one lapse of discretion will bring swift and certain exposure and death. So please, raise your cups and we’ll wish the Basilisk a well-earned death elsewhere, before any of us ever meet him.”

  FIVE

  Her foot landed painfully on the chipped edge of a badly seated cobblestone and she lurched sideways, too quickly to stop herself, and smashed her right shoulder into the sharp corner of a brick wall. The sudden, flaring pain of it made her gasp, but she was already staggering onwards, driven by terror. Her left hand instinctively grasped the injury as she pitched forward, leaning into her run again, her eyes swivelling, looking for a way out, and with her other hand she reached down to claw at the hem of her tunica interior, the tubelike underskirt that seemed to be growing ever tighter, constricting her legs and stopping her from running as fast as she wanted to. All around her people were going about their affairs, paying no attention to her, but Lydia forced herself to keep moving, willing herself to even greater efforts.

  Behind her, very close, she could hear the men cursing and shouting as they came after her, and she could tell by the sounds of colliding bodies and startled cries that they were knocking people aside as they fought to catch her, struggling uphill against the flow of the crowd that surged about them on its way down towards the market stalls along the riverbank. A sudden gap, barely wider than she was, came into view between two houses, and she threw herself into the tight space, bracing herself against the glancing impact with the wall ahead of her and then half spinning to run on along the narrow passageway, no time even to glance back, all the while bending forward, trying to pull the hem of her undergown up above her knees. Another solid tug, she thought, would set her free and she could quickly outstrip her pursuers.

  Behind her, amplified by the confined space, she heard pounding feet gaining on her, and then a heavy, grasping hand clutched at her shoulder. Frantically, gasping for breath, she wrenched herself away, dipping forward without slowing, aware even as she did so that the ancient walls on either side of her were bulging in towards her, pinching the space ahead and threatening to trap her. But with that thought came a ragged, dragging sound and a grunt as the man behind her came into contact with the rough sides of the passageway and wedged there, his fingers losing their grip on her shoulder. She kept going, not daring to try to look back, but she knew she could not go much farther before they caught her.

  She reached the end of the passage and burst into sunlight again. On her right, the street ended against a brick wall, high and blank with but a single, closed door, and she swung hard left, the sudden change of direction cutting off the oaths and curses from the passageway at her back, where the men were struggling to squeeze between the bulging walls. The warmth of the sunlight on her face felt like a blessing and gave her a surge of renewed strength, and she took a moment to stand still and pull the underskirt’s edges up her thighs, and then she ran again, hard and fast, holding her skirts wide in both hands until she reached another, wider lane that ran back towards the marketplace.

  Without thought, hearing again the running feet at her back, she took it and ran. There was safety there, she knew, among the crowds, if she could only make them aware of what was happening to her. Even as her stride lengthened, though, she saw the fourth and last of her hunters coming directly towards her, and she realized that he must have run past the passageway she had ducked into and continued to the next corner. He saw her just as she saw him, and she saw his sudden grin, could almost hear his grunt of triumph. A narrow archway loomed on her right and she dashed through it with a half sob of relief that turned into a moan of panic as she smelled the place and realized she had trapped herself.

  She was in what might once have been part of a house but was now a roofless, walled-in pen for animals. The space contained a few goats, and scattered piles of straw and hay, and the acrid stink of dung- and urine-fouled straw made her breath catch in her throat. The rear wall had long since collapsed, and the litter of broken bricks and masonry there offered her no hope of easy passage, dressed as she was in her long stola, with flimsy thin-soled shoes that were little more than slippers. The archway at her back was the sole entrance to the place, and she heard the rushing feet skidding to a halt behind her.

  Before she could even turn to face them, she was hit heavily from behind, thrown forward and pulled violently sideways at the same time. She spun around, off balance, as her fast-moving attacker barged past her and threw his arms around her from behind, pinning her arms and pulling her back against him, digging the fingers of one hand brutally into her breast. A second man, now facing her within arm’s reach and grinning with anticipation, was the demented-looking wretch who had leered at her in the market as he stepped towards her with a crazed, lust-filled look on his face that left her in no doubt about what he was thinking. Seeing him there between the market stalls, she had thought he was alone, and in spite of all the lessons she had been painstakingly taught throughout her life by her four brothers, she had turned to flee, believing she could outrun him. Too late, she had seen that he had three others with him, and suddenly they were all coming after her.

  Barking a sound that might have been a laugh, the lout dropped to his knees in front of her and clawed with both hands at her stola, grasping at it with clawing fingers and then jerking his arms apart, attempting to split the fabric. The material was stronger than he expected, though, and he grunted, gripped the cloth more firmly, and braced himself to pull again, his face dark with anger. Before he could do anything, though, Lydia let her whole weight drop into the arms of the man holding her, trusting that he would support her instinctively, too surprised to let her fall. He did, clutching her more tightly, and she snapped her left foot upwards, high, driving at the kneeling man’s shoulder. He shied away, releasing his grip to brush her kick aside with his arm, and immediately she brought her right knee up, almost to her shoulder, and drove her heel straight into his face, sending him flying backwards. The man holding her recovered his wits and heaved her around and away, throwing her to land on her side on the rubble of the fallen rear wall. She fell hard, biting her tongue painfully and feeling the
stones digging against her body.

  She pushed herself sideways, scrabbling and kicking against the loose masonry, fighting to find a purchase for her feet and thrusting herself up on her arms just in time to see both assailants coming for her again while the other two hung back to give them room. Forcing herself up, she was aware of the inner sheath of her clothing slipping down around her legs again just as two pairs of groping hands took hold of her. But they were not groping with any kind of sexual intent.

  The man who had thrown her down grasped her again, his fingers digging into her shoulder and his other hand clamping around her neck, and she shut her eyes and opened her mouth to scream and something hammered fiercely into the side of her face. A wave of blackness burst over her and she fell, sprawling, and then rough hands were pulling at her, trying to wrench her legs apart and being frustrated by the binding tightness of her underskirt. A hand thrust against her chest, pinning her, and then came a suddenly loosening tension, the sound of ripping fabric, the slightest touch of smooth iron against her inner thigh. As her belly spasmed in terror, she felt a thigh being thrust between her own as rasping, rancid breath gusted into her face. Her stomach heaving at the stench, she opened her eyes and saw a strange thing happening.

  It was the wild man with the crazed eyes who was tearing at her, but his eyes moved now sideways, as though distracted by something, and then they widened, and she saw a hand with widespread fingers reach for him. It grasped the hair that fell over his forehead and wrenched him violently away from her. He released her and clutched frantically at the hand. Through a sudden blur of movement a black-clad form filled her vision, and she saw a heavy blade sweep up briefly, then plunge down, its arc ending in a meaty-sounding chop.

  All movement stopped.

  The black-clad figure above her remained motionless, and she blinked, trying to understand. Then to her left, the man who had thrown her onto the stones leaned stiffly sideways, tilting over the ramshackle fence of the pen towards the animals. He, too, was staring wide-eyed, but his gaze was directionless, and his right hand fell limply from where it had been trying to hold his severed throat together. He toppled slowly sideways, smashing the fragile fence as he fell, and lay motionless, bleeding sluggishly into the straw.

  The silence was broken only by the chewing of one of the goats.

  “Are you badly hurt?”

  She stared up at him. Apart from a wide, deeply dimpled chin and the tip of his nose, she could see nothing of his face. It was lost in the depths of a large, hooded cowl of the kind worn by priests and wanderers. He must be a priest and a Christian, she thought. But he had just killed two men, so she knew that could not be right.

  She answered his question in a ragged whisper that hurt her throat. “No.”

  He pointed down, indicating her nether parts but staring steadily into her eyes, and she remembered the sound of ripping cloth and looked down to where her skirts had been torn apart across her hips, exposing her legs and belly to the navel. She reached down quickly, fumbling to pull the tattered edges together as she struggled to sit up.

  “Here,” he said, reaching a hand down to her.

  His voice was deep, but not rumbling-deep like her father’s, and he sounded young, she thought, with a strangely detached part of her mind that ignored the scandalous condition of her clothing. She gripped his hand and pulled herself to her feet, trying to hold her torn skirts together with her free hand, and as soon as she was standing she used both hands to cover herself, clutching the edges of the fabric tightly in her fist. There was blood everywhere; more blood than she had ever seen; more blood than she could ever have imagined. It covered the floor and lay pooled in the straw of the beasts’ pen; it even oozed in sluggish rivulets down the wall.

  Life blood, she thought, though she could not have said why. Blood was blood and all of it was life blood, until it was spilt. At her feet, the man who had held her arms sprawled awkwardly where he had toppled over the fence. Beyond him, closer to the door, the reeking man lay dead, too, twisted unnaturally, his head attached to the bloodied ruin of his neck by a mere hinge of flesh. He had fallen across the legs of the third man, who lay beneath him with his spine arched backwards and his face wedged into the corner of the wall by the entrance arch. And beyond the arch itself, flat on his back on the stones of the lane outside, lay the last of them: the fat one who had cut off her escape earlier. She knew he was dead, though she could see no signs of blood on him. He would have been the first to die, she knew, because he must have been standing at the doorway when the black-clad man arrived.

  She looked back at her supposed rescuer. Whoever he was, he stood motionless, watching her intently, and she sensed, even though she could see nothing in the depths of his cowl, that he held his head cocked to one side. The thought came to her that there was nothing menacing about a man who cocked his head out of curiosity.

  “Who are you?” she asked eventually. “Where did you come from?”

  “My name is Varrus,” he said, in a voice that was both quiet and deep. “Quintus Varrus. I followed you when I saw these scoundrels run after you from the marketplace.”

  “You were there?”

  She saw a movement inside the hood, as though he had nodded. “I was. I regret not having reached here sooner, in time to stop them.”

  “You did stop them. You killed them all.” She was surprised to hear how calm she sounded, her voice level and matter-of-fact, betraying none of the hysteria that had been roiling in her mind since she ran from the marketplace.

  “I know, but I meant in time to stop them before they caught you. As for killing them, I had no choice. They would certainly have killed me had I not…and you, too, when they were done. But don’t waste time fretting over them. They were animals and they deserved what happened to them.”

  She snorted derisively. “Fretting over them? I would have killed all four of them myself if I could have. And no animal, no matter how savage, would ever sink to that level of baseness, so don’t demean the beasts by naming those things animals.”

  The man raised one hand and tugged the hood of his cowl further forward over his brows, hiding his face more completely. “I know a few young men from the marketplace who would be most impressed to hear such words from you, Lady,” he said in a voice that, while not mocking, nevertheless contained a note of gentle raillery. “For none of them, awe-stricken by your beauty, would believe you capable of saying a thing like that.” He ignored the way her mouth had dropped open in outrage. “Mind you, I agree with you entirely, and I doubt if your father, or any of your brothers, would question the rightness of what you say, in light of what happened.”

  She opened her mouth again, but when her voice came back to her she sounded chastened, the outrage she had felt moments earlier now forgotten. “You know who I am?”

  “I know your name, but little more than that. I saw you in the market a week and more ago, and then again a few days ago, and I asked who you were. They told me your name is Lydia Mcuil.”

  “But you know my father and my brothers?”

  “No. I know who they are, and I have seen two of your brothers, pointed out to me in the marketplace, but I know no more than that.”

  She frowned at him. “But how would you know even that much about us?”

  “I asked, as I said, one day last week when you passed by in the marketplace. I am a partly trained student smith, and your family is well known among the smiths in Londinium. A father and four sons, all of them smiths from Hibernia, respected and renowned, with but a single female—the beautiful red-haired Lydia—in their tribe.”

  “Wait, stop! I need to think.” She looked around again at the bodies strewn about. There were already flies crawling on their dead faces and in their open wounds, and now that her anger and fear were subsiding, she found herself seeing things differently. Regret welled up inside her like a bitter brew, souring the back of her throat. She had known she was being foolish before she first set foot in the marketplace t
hat morning, that she should not have gone there alone and unprotected. Her father and her brothers had warned her a hundred times about the dangers involved in simply being an attractive young woman in such an open, lawless, unprotected public place. She had protested that the military fortress was a mere two-minute walk from the marketplace and that there were army patrols everywhere, upholding the law and protecting the public, but they had scoffed at her, telling her anyone with a brain knew how corrupt and incompetent the army was. She had known she was being wilful even as she set out from home, but she had been determined to prove them all wrong, clinging blindly to the pig-headed, arrogant belief that she knew what was good for her, knew it more clearly and far better than everyone else, and knew, too, that she, Lydia Mcuil, was invulnerable—old enough, clever enough, and bold enough to risk any danger and to escape unscathed. Now, looking at the four corpses, she knew how different was the raw truth; knew how fortunate she had been that this unknown, black-robed man had taken note of what was happening and had followed her in time enough to rescue her from certain death.

  Without warning, her stomach heaved, and she fell to her knees, then to all fours, and vomited. The stranger stood waiting patiently, looking away, until she had spat the last bitter traces from her mouth. Then, as she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist, he bent forward again and silently offered her his hand. She reached out and grasped it and pulled herself to her feet. Without another word being said, he took her by the wrist, tugging gently for her to follow him, and led her out of the goat pen and into the lane. There, he removed his black cloak and offered it to her, holding it out at arm’s length.

  She saw now that the cloak had concealed a heavy, sleeveless, ankle-length robe of the same hard-wearing black cloth, belted loosely at the waist; no more than a long strip of coarsely woven woollen cloth with buckle fasteners down both sides, at front and back, and a hole in the neck. The straps of a large, blackened leather bag crossed his chest from his shoulder to his waist, where they were secured by his belt, preventing the bag from moving too far. The large, deep cowl appeared to be separate from the rest of the garment, for its ends were tucked down inside the neck hole, and so it concealed his face still.