Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (63 page)

The barbarian came on with a mean sneer, the wraith hobbling close by, looking over his shoulder regretfully towards the retreating shape of Lucilia, who disappeared down the grassy slope towards one of the sheds that gave access to the cave system below. She would be as safe there as anywhere until Fronto had dealt with the situation.

If he
could
.

Watching the two men close on him, Fronto waited until Lucilia had gone from sight and then turned and ran through the courtyard and into the house.

* * * * *

Diotimus sat beside a heavy, man-sized boulder of yellow-white rock and spat on his sling, rubbing the liquid into the leather to remove some of the interminable white dust that seemed to settle on everything here within a quarter of an hour. Next to him, Cadurcus was struggling to bend his shortbow tight enough to slip the fresh string over the end - the drizzle this morning had slackened the original. Habitually, he carried half a dozen spares in his pouch.

Balbus - Fronto's old army friend who seemed to be in command when their actual paymaster was absent - had visited them just now to make sure all was well, and had then moved on down towards the mudpools at the centre.

Both men were well positioned behind three large rocks on the south eastern ridge of the crater - just about the best place to watch the approach from the Falerii villa, maybe two hundred and fifty paces away. Nearby was a small pile of hot yellow stones that they had ferried up carefully in a leather bag that now lay scorched and burned nearby.

They had found three such good observation points and occasionally rotated to another for simple variety, but this was the best and their favourite.

Cadurcus said something in his native Gallic tongue and Diotimus grinned, watching the cursing Salluvi mercenary struggling with the string before returning his attention to the Puteoli approach.

The first thing he knew of the attack was when a hand clamped around his forehead while the blade was being drawn across his throat. He tried to scream out a warning, but his windpipe was severed along with his arteries, and even as he realised he was dying and all that was coming out was a bubbling hiss, the pain from the wound finally reached his brain.

Next to him, Cadurcus slumped forwards, a knife handle sticking out of the base of his neck. A pair of empty hands reached down and grasped the bow, easily looping the string over the end and testing it for strength.

* * * * *

Eurycles and Picentus fiddled absently with the vent control, bored beyond belief with their lot. They clearly had the easiest initial job of the crater's defenders - they had no task other than closing the vents and closing and bolting the door. Until that time they simply had to stay hidden and wait for the fly to drift into their web. After all, despite all the unpleasant features of this stinking place, the only actual structure was this building. What attacker would not send men in to check it out?

"When this is all over, I will have to bathe for a week to get this stench out of my skin. I smell like a bad fart."

"You
always
smell like a bad fart. If anything, I'd say this place has improved you."

"Piss off you inbred Greek."

The two mercenaries grinned at one another. Only moments ago Balbus had dropped by to make sure that everything was as it should be and had found them engaged in a farting competition. His reprimands had been half-hearted: it was not he who was paying them and they were mercenaries who could walk away any time they liked. Moreover, he knew how excruciatingly tedious it was waiting day in and day out, hiding behind a building and waiting for an attack that they were starting to think was never coming.

"You staying on after this if Fronto keeps the pay up?"

"Might do. Don't see why he'd need us then, but you know these patrician nobs. They never seem to plan ahead. I've heard there's good money to be made in the capital. Pompey's hiring again they say, and paying well."

"That old has-been? He must be ancient by now. 'Bout time he and his cronies moved aside and let someone younger and brighter have a go at bullying the senate."

Picentus grinned. He knew damn well Eurycles' views on the senate and Roman government. The Greek never passed up an opportunity to rise to that bait and argue the ineffectiveness and unfairness of Roman government compared with the ancient glory days of his native Athens.

Silence greeted his verbal jab. Picentus let go of the vent lever and turned, frowning.

Behind him, Eurycles fought desperately against the grip of the two men who had him by the arms and the hand stuffing a rag bundle into his mouth. The Greek's eyes were wide in terror, but Picentus only gave him a passing panicked glance. His gaze instead locked on the olive-skinned thug before him, wielding a heavy wooden practice sword, raised and ready to strike.

"'Ello" said the big killer with an unpleasant, nine-toothed smile just as the heavy, lead-cored wooden sword fell and cracked Picentus across the skull, dazing him and driving out his wits.

When he awoke, to the urgent shoving and desperate shouts of his Greek friend, he at first panicked that his captors had blinded him, so utterly black and featureless were their surroundings. Then he finally spotted the misty-hazed thin white crack in a square that marked out the position of the door.

Oh shit
.

Already the air was almost unbreathably hot and sulphurous. He could feel the sweat literally running from him in torrents. His clothing was as soaked as if he'd thrown himself in a pool, though only a pool of almost scalding water.

"Help!" he bellowed.

"No use" wheezed Eurycles. "They've gone."

"
Someone
will hear" he replied desperately, struggling to his feet despite the flashing lights in his brain and the thumping of his battered skull. "Someone will come."

"No they won't" the Greek said quietly. "They're expecting someone to be in here and screaming, remember? Unless they're close enough to hear the words they won't even blink. We need to escape."

Picentus felt the icy fingers of fear grip him despite the unbearable heat. Eurycles knew as well as he that there was no way out. The two of them had been the ones who had checked each individual vent and the door lock and frame and hinges, Everything had been reinforced. The bastards had even propped something heavy against the door as was now obvious from the area of darkness blocking the feeble line of light at the base of the door.

They were going to boil to death. If they were lucky they would pass out from the heat and fumes first.

For the first time, Picentus cursed the pleasant Falerii family who had hired them and paid above the odds. Nice bunch, but no amount of nice would balance this.

Something somewhere deep in the earth shifted slightly and the billowing cloud of sulphurous steam burst into increased life, filling the room with a fresh wave of tortuous heat.

* * * * *

Balbus, finishing his bi-hourly tour of the crater to check its defensive status, nodded in satisfaction as he reached the fumaroles. The jets had moved, of course. Every time he came here the steaming columns of deadly heat were in different positions. But much to his satisfaction, the paths that they had marked with darker grey stones were still safe and clear. No matter how often he came here, every time he expected them to be obscured by a new jet.

With an unintentional indrawn and held breath, he stepped onto one of the four paths and took a dozen or so steps into the maze of steam jets, his eyes constantly shifting between the infernal environment around him and the path ahead.

With a skipped heartbeat he stopped dead in his tracks, realising that he had almost stepped away from the trail. Some new sliding of scree or shaking of the ground had dislodged a few of the grey pebbles and they had rolled off to the side.

Balbus stared at the errant rocks and weighed up the importance of them. There was a horrifying possibility that he would bend to move the rocks back into place and a jet would open up beneath him and flash-boil his hand. He did
not
relish that possibility. But then, there was also the possibility that if he did not move them back, he or someone else in the heat of battle would do exactly what he'd just almost done and walk off the path and into an unpleasant death.

With another held breath, Balbus dropped sharply to a crouch to move the stones back into their correct position.

It was only the suddenness of the move that saved his life, as two arrows and a sling-propelled sulphur rock whizzed through the air where his head had been and clattered off among the rocks and steam vents.

The sounds were barely discernible over the pop and hiss and crackle of the fumaroles and the pounding of his own heart, but Quintus Lucilius Balbus had spent much of his adult life in command of a legion, and he knew the sound of arrows and sling stones as well as he knew the map of pronounced veins on the back of his own hand.

He knew before the missiles had skittered across the rocks that he had come within a hair's-breadth of death. He also knew that the missiles had come from his rear right quarter and at a raised angle, which put them on the crater's slope where no one should be.

His instinctive strategist's mind kicked in and he made himself as small as possible, little more than a ball of human being curled up on the ground. He was a reasonably tall man and, standing, he had been visible above the bulk of the steam, apart from the stronger jets. At ground level, hopefully the roiling whiteness would hide him from view. It was a gamble, but one worth taking, given his exposed position.

He counted ten heartbeats - certainly long enough for a halfway-competent archer to nock and release another arrow. No further missiles came.

He was invisible in the steam. There was the possibility he would be suddenly betrayed as the vents shifted, though, and so, crouched and in a tight, small shape, he began to shuffle as fast as he dared along the path.

After another twenty heartbeats he heard a curse in Latin and a sliding section of scree. He was being pursued - someone had been following him on his rounds, probably. He wondered momentarily about the others, but quickly his attention focused once more on his predicament. He did not have the leisure to worry about the others.

More cursing and shouts and a name: Acrab? Not a name he knew, but a Syrian one, he believed. The directions made it clear that they
had
been following him, or at least had seen where he entered the steam. They were following the trail the same as he.

With a malicious smile, he decided on another gamble. If others were coming down here after him, the chances were good that the archers and slingers would not loose their ammunition for fear of hitting their own.

Swiftly, he rose and started to walk slowly forward, kicking the grey stones off to the right, changing the apparent course of the trail. After a few extra feet off track they would peter out, of course, but by then…

He had almost emerged from the far side of the steam vents when he heard his nearest pursuer scream.

* * * * *

Acrab - 'The Scorpion' - had been left in charge of the main force by his employer and former cell-mate - the enormous, unhygienic Celt - due to his knowledge of tactics and his ability to deal with sudden turnabouts in enemy forces. In his native Syria, he had taken good gold from the Parthians for continual disruption and trouble-causing to the Romans. He had fought well and evilly until that bastard Pompey had finally captured and imprisoned him.

He knew how to position his forces according to terrain and enemy numbers, and the information the Fronto woman had given them seemed to be holding up. She seemed to have known the terrain here like one born to the area, and had told them of the eight men who would be in the crater - four hirelings and four soldiers.

Fifteen men split into three groups. Five had gone for the shed to deal with the two men hiding there; five had gone to disable the archers, and the other five were with him. He had not given the signal until they had watched the leader - this 'Balbus' - visit all his defensive positions. Then, when they knew exactly where the meagre defenders were and what to expect, he had set his two other groups to their work and led the third down to the steam vents to take down the commander before he could re-join the others at the centre.

But then somehow things had gone wrong here. Through sheer ill luck, his three archers had missed the old man and lost him in the steam. In response, he had told them to train their weapons on the far edge of the roiling haze and watch for his reappearance. At the same time, he took the other two men - he in the safe, rear position - into the steam. It immediately leapt to mind that the old man might move the trails of stones and kept his eyes carefully on the ground, but that had apparently not occurred to the morons in front of him.

The fumarole had boiled Quadratus before their very eyes, turning him bright pink and searing his flesh, raising blisters and pustules. The most horrifying thing - and little sickened Acrab these days - was watching the man's eyeballs soften, blister and then burst in the length of a single heartbeat.

The second man in the line - Euphrillos - had panicked in that brief moment and instead of standing right where he was or carefully backing up the way he had come, he spun to flee, lost his footing on the rocky scree and vanished sideways with a shriek into the steam. At least Acrab hadn't had to watch that one!

With deliberate, slow care, Acrab stepped back onto the original path and began to wend his way back to the entrance. There was no point in pursuing the man further and risking emerging from the far edge only to fall foul of his own archers. As he emerged from the steam, he gestured his intention to the missile troops and skirted the area of dangerous fumaroles, heading for the far edge where presumably the old man would emerge.

* * * * *

Galronus looked round at the sound of the scream and nudged Masgava.