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 palla 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 desperately, 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…’
‘Those words cannot cut me now, my king. I’ve known that truth for a year and more.’
The druid took a step forward, raising his blade, but the king waved a hand at him and he stopped in his tracks.
‘We have won, Cavarinos. Molacos, the most favoured hunter of our age stands proud before us, and Luguros, our own druid of Gergovia, the man who presented you and your brother to the gods at your first naming day, will free me. We have won here, and when we return to our native lands, the Romans will rue the day they let me live and curse the name of Alesia.’
Cavarinos had not yet turned from the druid to face his king, and as he did so, Fronto was filled with unexpected sympathy for his friend. The fight in the carcer was a paltry thing compared to the war going on behind the Arvernian noble’s eyes. The struggle there was overwhelming him. Fronto felt his pulse quicken and he cleared his throat. ‘Cavarinos…’
The Arvernian glanced at him, and the trouble in that glance was palpable. Then he turned back to the king in his cell. ‘I hate this, my king, truly I do. But if Molacos wins, you will drag on a futile war we cannot win and a million more men, women and children of the tribes will die. As it is, it will take generations for our lands to recover.’ He turned to the druid – Luguros. ‘When you were in Gergovia in all your glory and we children listened to your words as though they spilled from the mouths of the gods, you used to teach that sacrifices were made for the good of all the people. Well now the good of the people means peace, at any cost.
Any
cost. Don’t you see that?’ He turned back to the king. ‘And that sacrifice today is twofold. Your head, and my soul.’
The druid stepped forward again, and his sword tip came up to dance near Cavarinos’ throat threateningly. ‘If we cannot persuade you, then you will have to die along with your Roman friends. We win, with or without you.’
Fronto made to move but he was too slow, between his broken finger, broken foot and the strength-sapping blood loss from his side. Molacos was quicker, his own blade lancing out and blocking Fronto’s movement, knocking his sword away before coming to rest on his chest. One hard push on that sword and Fronto’s heart would be pierced. And yet still Molacos stood riveted to the scene before him. Fronto realised what the hideously disfigured hunter was waiting for – what the druid and the king were waiting for. Fronto was helpless now. So was the Arvernian. Cavarinos would either kill Fronto, or he himself would die on the druid’s blade.
Cavarinos turned to him, a horrible, riven, pleading look in his eyes. Fronto could almost read the words.
Kill me
, the look said.
Put an end to this
. The Arvernian’s blade came up, quivering towards Fronto’s face, the druid’s sword tip still held threateningly close to his neck. Cavarinos took a step. Then two more. His sword tip approached Fronto even as the druid followed him, keeping his blade close.
‘Don’t do this, Cavarinos. You’re stronger than this.’
The gleaming point of the Arvernian’s sword came to rest just under Fronto’s chin. The man swallowed. Fronto daren’t do the same despite the dryness in his mouth.