The man sighed. ‘Up the stairs and at the end of the corridor. Last door. It’s my bunk room. Usually caters for the crews of small trade boats.’
‘Thank you,’ Fronto replied quietly. ‘I would heartily recommend that you forget this conversation ever happened.’
‘Gladly,’ the innkeeper grumbled and scurried off to the other end of the bar.
Fronto turned to the others. ‘Come on.’ With Cavarinos, Biorix and Aurelius following close behind, he approached the stairs and began to climb them. The wood creaked alarmingly beneath his soft boots and he automatically shifted to the edge of the stairs as he climbed, reducing the noise as best he could.
A moment later he emerged in the corridor above, with two doors to each side and one at the end. Taking a deep breath, Fronto stalked along the passage, coming to a halt outside the bunk room. As the others stopped behind him, he pressed an ear to the door. He could hear movement inside but no conversation, which suggested low occupancy. With relief, he crouched and looked through the keyhole, which was large to accommodate the bulky iron key that would keep the room secured against intruders.
His relief increased as his view turned out to be unobstructed. No key in the lock likely meant that it remained unlocked. Moreover he could see the young Gaul, now de-cloaked, standing by a window and looking down at the street. The light was fading outside, and no lamps had been lit, so the room was dim and monochrome. Swivelling his eye to get the best view he could, despite the restrictions, Fronto picked out the edges of double-tier bunk beds to either side of that window. And, interestingly, two long Gallic swords resting against the end of one of them, their tips downward. Rising again, he turned and used his fingers to explain that he could see only one man and that there were at least two swords to the right as they entered.
The other three nodded and stepped lightly forward, crowding him as he reached for the ringed handle. Given the creak of the stairs and the poor condition of the door’s ironwork, subtlety was no longer required. Even if the handle didn’t creak loudly, the hinges would. Fronto gripped the handle and, nodding a count of three in his head, turned and pushed in one move. He felt panic rise for a heartbeat as the door didn’t budge, but then it gave suddenly, the mechanism tight and badly-kept. As the portal swung inwards, he barrelled straight across the floor at the man in front of the window.
The young Maponos turned in surprise as Fronto burst into his room and powered towards him. The Roman officer sensed rather than saw Aurelius and Biorix split off to either side, making sure the rest of the room was empty and securing whatever blades they could find. Cavarinos was still following him and despite everything Fronto felt a tiny thrill of fear at the knowledge that the man right behind him had been every bit as much his enemy as the one in front only a year ago. What if Cavarinos had always harboured a flame of revenge?
But he had no time to ponder on his doubt, for the young Gaul before him had turned and, as Fronto hit him full on, thudded back against the windowsill with a gasp.
The Roman immediately reached up and grabbed the young Gaul by the throat, but was surprised as Maponos easily knocked his grasping hand aside and delivered a sharp punch to his ribs that almost felled him immediately.
Oddly, despite the danger and trouble of the sudden turnaround in the fight, what struck Fronto most of all was how embarrassed he was and how glad he was that Masgava wasn’t here to see what a monumental cock-up he’d made of such a simple attack.
As he reeled, he backed into Cavarinos and the Arverni was forced to stagger back to keep his footing. The young rebel was quick to act, grabbing a ceramic jug from the table by the window and, as Fronto made another lunge for him, slamming the thing into the Roman’s face. Fronto was blinded. Partially by the ceramic surface being squashed into his face and partially by the mix of sweat and blood trickling into his eyes from some cut the jug had delivered to his brow… but mostly by rage.
Ignoring the jug, the pain and the stinging blindness, he roared and grasped with both hands. He felt his left achieve a grip on a wide swathe of wavy hair. Satisfied with this, he yanked downwards and was rewarded with a yelp and a change of scenery as the jug vanished from in front of his eyes. Still gripping and pulling the hair, he used his other hand to wipe away the sweat and blood and focused on the Gaul.
His world exploded in pain again as Maponos stamped on his foot and then punched him in the gut. He reeled backwards again, halted by both the close presence of Cavarinos behind him and his grip on the Gaul’s hair. Finally, the long locks gave way and tore free with an unpleasant sound, accompanied by another scream.
As Fronto cast aside the hair and straightened, trying to breathe through winded lungs and ignore the pain in his midriff, the Maponos figure lurched back against the windowsill. For just a moment he tottered, his point of balance dangerously close to the level of the window. Then Fronto’s hand shot out and grabbed the man’s neck again, tightening instantly, given what had happened with his first attempt.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ he growled, squeezing until the young warrior gasped.
A sword hilt appeared next to him and he glanced aside to see Biorix proffering the blade to him. He took it with his free hand and stepped back, letting go of the man’s neck just as he brought the point of the blade up to tickle the Gaul’s throat apple. Maponos remained quite still, aware that even the tiniest move might well open his windpipe.
‘You and I are going to have a little talk.’
Fronto could feel the others close behind him. ‘You three could maybe have been a little more help.’
Cavarinos snorted. ‘I couldn’t get past you. You were too busy blocking the way getting beaten to a pulp.’
Fronto sighed, keeping his gaze locked on the young warrior in front of him. ‘He was alone?’
‘Yes,’ Aurelius replied. ‘But there’s twelve kit bags here, so the rest will be back at some point.’
Fronto nodded. ‘We might not want to be here when that happens. Four against eleven isn’t good odds.’ He turned back to the young warrior, applying just the slightest pressure to the sword in his hand. ‘Now, I would like you to tell my friend here everything about the Sons of Taranis.’
‘Fuck you, Roman.’
Fronto resisted the urge to just push the blade and counted to ten in his head.
‘Fronto…’ Cavarinos said quietly.
‘Fronto?’ snapped the young warrior at his sword’s point. ‘The commander of the Tenth?’
‘The same,’ grunted Fronto.
The warrior laughed, which caused several small lacerations at his neck. Blood trickled in three rivulets down into his tunic. ‘The Roman hero of Alesia playing the Greek merchant and hiding from his enemies in Massilia. You fool, Roman. No one could save you and your putrid master from the vengeance of Taranis!’
Fronto tried to hold back a sneer that threatened to cover his face, with only moderate success. ‘I have no fear of your god’s vengeance, young Aneunos, son of Lucterius.’ He was gratified by the widening of the young man’s eyes. ‘Yes, I know all about you. And your leader Molacos, too. So I know that it is not the vengeance of Taranis that I face, but the rather paltry retaliation of a failed warrior chief.’
‘You have no idea…’
Fronto drew another bead of blood with the tip of the sword. ‘Oh just stop babbling your threats. I don’t fear you or your people. And we will not let you go to Rome and free your king. Even Vercingetorix knows your cause is over. Your people are beaten, Aneunos. Gaul is Caesar’s now. And next year it will be Rome every bit as much as Narbo or Illyricum, with its own governor and tax system. And then it will get roads. And aqueducts, and temples and fora, and eventually maybe even citizenship. But it will never again be your tribes. And I can understand how that saddens you, but it’s the truth and what you are trying to do is only going to kill thousands more of your people. Caesar will put down your new army, and I will stop your own little mission.’
‘You will do nothing,’ sneered the Gaul.
‘Be quiet.’
‘You will be too busy mourning.’
Fronto frowned and, distracted for just a heartbeat, he was unable to stop the young warrior as he lunged forward, driving his own throat onto Fronto’s sword. The spray of crimson from the arteries washed across Fronto, as well as Cavarinos at his shoulder, and then soaked the windowsill and the table as he fell away, gurgling and shaking. Fronto leapt back, almost knocking Cavarinos to the floor again.
‘The idiot.’
‘He didn’t want to tell you anything,’ muttered Biorix, unhelpfully as he reached down to the table next to the window and brought up a Gallic ritual mask of terracotta, glazed with some darker tone and with a strangely expressionless straight mouth.
‘I can see that. But…’
Fronto stopped. ‘Mourning?’
‘Oh shit,’ said Aurelius quietly. ‘One of them here. Eleven absent.’
‘The villa!’
Seconds later, armed with blades from the room and two of them coated liberally with blood, the four men were pounding back along the corridor and down the stairs. As they burst into the bar, armed and bloodied, a clamour arose among the patrons, and the innkeeper, white-faced and apoplectic, screamed imprecations at them.
Then they were out in the street, turning uphill and racing for the villa outside the walls, high on the hills and overlooking the sea.
* * * * *
Fronto’s heart was hammering fit to burst and his breath coming in sore, rasping gasps as the four men emerged at the crest of the hill on the villa’s access road and raced towards the open gateway to the villa. The sun, threatened by an encroaching layer of cloud, had finally disappeared beneath the perfect horizon of the sea at the moment they had passed through the Eparchion Gate and the mile and a half from there had been a tiring slog in the gathering gloom, that cloud bank sliding over the world to lock in the heat and shut out the light.
The villa stood solid and stoic, issuing a welcoming golden glow from its windows and front doorway, and Fronto at first felt a massive wash of relief flood his senses as he’d half expected to arrive and find the house a burning mass. There were at least a dozen men at the villa, all trained and armed now, protecting the family. Masgava had chosen and trained the men well and his rota made sure that the villa was always protected since Cavarinos had brought his tidings of danger. And yet despite a parity of numbers against the eleven remaining enemies, Fronto had found himself reassessing as they ran.
The young Gaul they had fought had been
good
. He was maybe twenty summers at most, and that was being kind, and he had been lightly built and relatively inexperienced. Yet he had almost done for Fronto – a man more than two decades his senior and with a lifetime of combat experience – with sheer speed, strength and skill. And if he was the youngest and least trained of these ‘Sons of Taranis’, the gods only knew what the rest were like. Certainly they would be more than a match for the hired men of Masgava’s force.
Still, the villa seemed quiet.
Too quiet?
His heart began to race again. Why were there no patrols or guards outside to challenge them? Why was the front door wide open and issuing that welcome glow when the place was supposedly sealed against intruders?
His mouth suddenly felt unpleasantly dry. He had spent the winter tired beyond belief, plagued by nightmares of those dying Gauls – especially the young lads
. The children
. And this afternoon another such soul had joined that nightmare throng to await him in his dreams. But suddenly all of that seemed trivial and immaterial, for in his imagined nightmares he now pictured himself holding the butchered remains of Lucilia and the boys.
Ice filled his veins.
The open door called to him desperately and yet he dreaded passing through it.
The four men reached the gate in the outer wall – also open – and ran inside, crossing the lawn rather than the gravel path that might attract too much attention. Fronto in the lead, they bore down on the glowing rectangle of his home’s door and Fronto gripped the sword in his hand so tight that it almost shook.
His breathe held, fingers tight and face white with fear, Fronto edged towards the door.
‘What in the name of Baal Hamon’s ballsack happened to you?’
Fronto’s feet left the ground in panic at the soft spoken words close by, and if he’d thought his heart had already been pounding before, now was truly something else. His throat felt as though it were pulsing with each hammering, racing beat. A shadow detached itself from the darkness of the walls a few feet from the open door and Fronto felt a maelstrom of panic, anger and confusion as Masgava stepped into the light, his teeth and eyes shining bright in his dark features.
‘For the love of life itself don’t
do
that!’ Fronto gasped.
Masgava was merely studying Fronto and his gaze led the Roman to look down. In the golden glow of the doorway the swathe of drying blood across his chiton was rather prominent, and the sword in his grip was still oily red with spots of coagulation. He must look a sight.
‘I say again,’ the big man said quietly, ‘what happened to you?’