‘What with?’
Aurelius’ fingers wrapped feebly around the old man’s finger.
‘Nothing permanent, by the looks of it, and the wounds have all begun to clot. You’ll be alright until the medicus gets here. Unless there’s something I’m not seeing, you should be fine in time.’
The former legionary snorted and threw the two masks across the floor, where the broken one hit the leg of the table that held the model and shattered. ‘I’ll be fine. Them, less so.’
Fronto leaned close to him. ‘What happened?’
‘Let him rest, Marcus,’ murmured Balbus, but Aurelius shook his head.
‘I’m alright. The man in the cloak spotted me following him at the forum. I saw him slip into the metalworker’s market in the Subura. I guess he thought all the noise and clutter would save him. Problem is, my dad used to sell pots and pans there and I know the place well.’ He paused, wincing, as the effort of talking took its toll, and finally breathed slowly three times and despite Balbus’ protestations continued. ‘There are three other entrances to the place, but one comes out near where he went in and one is usually closed because the horse traders are across the road and the smell is appalling. So I just went round the outside to the Vicus Longus entrance and waited there until he emerged, thinking he’d lost me.’
‘Good man,’ Fronto nodded. ‘So what happened?’
‘There’s a house in the shadow of the temple of Salus on the Quirinal where they’re staying. The one I followed went in and I slipped into a doorway opposite. I saw another one appear at a window. It was a woman, without a mask on, and she closed the shutters as soon as they went in. I asked one of the locals about the house, wondering who rented it to the Gauls, but apparently the owner died a month back with a missing will and his twin sons are in litigation over the house’s ownership, so it’s been empty for weeks. Perfect hiding place for the Gauls.’
Fronto nodded. ‘No one up in that area is going to ask too many questions either. Proper gang territory round there.’
‘Precisely,’ Aurelius nodded. ‘Anyway, I was just moving around the other side of the house, trying to listen in at a window when the shutters opened and this young lad with blond hair saw me and yelled. Next thing I know I’m belting through streets and alleys on the Quirinal with three of the bastards chasing me. I lost one of them soon enough, and the other two caught me in the knife-workers’ street. Good luck for me, ‘cause as soon as I was armed, I stopped running. I had to empty my purse to a bunch of street kids to dispose of the bodies for me, so I might need a bonus this month, boss. That head’s weight in denarii you offered, maybe?’
Fronto snorted. ‘You took two of them down on your own? Impressive.’
Aurelius shrugged modestly then groaned with pain at the movement. ‘The tall one I took by surprise as he rounded the corner. I left him with a fork sticking out of his eye, so he didn’t get much chance to do anything, let alone unshoulder his bow. Imagine that! The pisspot had a bow and a sheaf of arrows within the pomerium, the brazen tossbag. Anyway, the other one was a bit tougher – the blond lad. He gave me a real run for my money. Took some putting down, I can tell you.’
He frowned and then smiled as he recalled something and fished in the pouch at his belt. With an exhale of breath, he slumped and held out a hand. Cavarinos took the scraps of wool from it.
‘From their cloaks,’ Aurelius muttered.
‘A tree beneath a haloed sun,’ Cavarinos noted, examining the designs marked into the wool. ‘That’s probably Abellio. And the other sun alone will be Belenos.’ He frowned as though hunting something among his memories. Slowly something surfaced as he tapped his lip. ‘Trying to remember who you’ve removed so far.’
Fronto crossed the room to his still mostly-packed kit bag and dug around in it until he removed a fabric pouch, which he tossed to the Arvernian. Cavarinos fished out the collected and saved scraps of material, laying them out on the couch. His brow furrowed as he worked, changing the order they were in again and again until he was satisfied. ‘Toutatis, Belenos, Maponos, Dis, Sucellos, Rudianos and Abellio. I thought it looked familiar. There was a nemeton at Gergovia where the first pact was made between my king and the druids. I remember it well. It was one of the most sacred sites outside Carnute lands, until after the war. The Romans in charge of resettlement pulled it down and used the stones in rebuilds. There were twelve menhir dedicated to the gods who had been heard to speak there. I’m trying to remember which five are missing.’
Balbus shook his head. ‘It’s very colourful and religiously significant I suppose, but does it have a bearing on the matter?’
‘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.
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 Molacos 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.