Confusion reigned outside as the Syracusans fled, and the legionaries grabbed their weapons and followed. When the sound of men charging into the alley had died away, Hanno risked a look outside. All of the legionaries appeared to have gone, apart from one man, whose backside could be seen pumping up and down between a woman’s legs.
Sprinting forward, Hanno stabbed him in the back. Then, heaving the legionary off his sobbing victim, he cut his throat for good measure. The woman — girl — stared up at Hanno, mouth agape with terror, her face and breasts a mass of bruises. ‘Run,’ Hanno ordered, heaving the corpse to one side. ‘Find somewhere to hide.’
Aurelia made to help the woman up, but he pulled her back. ‘She’s only a child!’ Aurelia protested.
His grip on her arm tightened. ‘We can’t help. It’s asking enough of the gods that we should survive. What’s happening now is just the start, believe me. By nightfall, things will be infinitely worse.’
Her gaze dropped to the girl, who hadn’t stirred from where she lay. ‘Save yourself, please. Before they come back.’
The girl turned her face away.
Aurelia snatched up a bloodied gladius and thrust it, hilt first, at her. ‘Take this. You can use it on them, or yourself.’ As the girl took it, Aurelia regarded Hanno, her eyes full of tears. ‘I’m ready.’
Praying that their run of bad luck had ended, Hanno made for the small street opposite.
For a short time, they saw no soldiers — of either side. At a crossroads two hundred paces further on, Hanno dared to hope. There was a human hand painted on a wall, the forefinger pointing down one of the four streets. Underneath it, he read the Greek word ‘ACHRADINA’. Signs were rare in cities, so he had extra reason to feel grateful. ‘This way.’
They had gone perhaps fifty paces before a quartet of legionaries stepped out of a cheesemonger’s. Each man bore a round of cheese under one arm. They whooped at the sight of Hanno and Aurelia, and swaggered towards them.
‘Go back,’ whispered Hanno frantically, but his heart sank as he turned. Alerted by the noise of their fellows, another three Romans were clattering down the front steps of a house that they must have been ransacking. Their path to the crossroads was blocked, and there were no alleys in sight. He hammered on one door and then another, but they had been barred from within.
‘I’ll tell them I’m Roman,’ said Aurelia. ‘That you’re not to be harmed.’
‘They won’t listen to a word you say. Look at them, they’re like wild animals.’ Placing Aurelia behind him, Hanno moved to stand against the wall of a shop. At the last moment, he saw a Syracusan shield lying in the dirt nearby. Gripping that, he felt a little better. With luck, he could take a few of them before he was overwhelmed or slain.
‘Give me your dagger,’ Aurelia said. ‘I can fight too, when they get close enough.’
There was so much Hanno wanted to say. How glad he was that they had met, how much he had enjoyed their time together. How it had been his dream to take her to Carthage in peacetime, where they could have started a family together. Without a word, he tugged the blade from its sheath and passed it to her.
As the first leering legionaries closed in, Hanno saw two more appear further down the street. They paused, as if unsure whether to get involved, and then marched towards them with grim purpose. Hanno’s despair nearly overcame him. Seven to one had been bad odds, but it hadn’t been out of the realms of possibility that he and Aurelia could have escaped.
Against nine enemies they had no chance.
Chapter XXV
Quintus and Urceus wandered aimlessly through the streets, joining in on occasion with the brutal fights against the few Syracusan soldiers who were prepared to resist. For the most part, though, the grief-stricken pair kept searching for Pera. However unlikely it was that they would find him in the violence-riven city, neither man could give up, for they could not put Corax from their minds. For more than four years, he had been their leader, their guardian, their father-figure. To lose him was bad enough, but to lose him to murder — by Pera — made it an outrage of the most terrible kind.
There was no sign of their quarry, but they did not let up. Pera was somewhere in Syracuse. While the fighting went on, there was every chance of slaying him unnoticed, and if the word of the legionaries whom they encountered could be relied on, they were gradually nearing Achradina and Tyche. Pera was likelier to be there than elsewhere, they decided. Mollis and treacherous whoreson he might be, but he’d do his duty.
Their advance was halted by a set of burning houses. Thick smoke billowed into the sky and flames licked up the sides of the wooden buildings. From there, it spread on to their roofs, threatening the edifices to either side. Shrieks could be heard within. As they paused, a woman threw herself from a second-floor window, landing with a terrible crack on the cobbles below. She did not move again, but laughing legionaries gathered to watch as a man — her husband? — appeared in the window with a small child in his arms. By mutual, silent consent, Quintus and Urceus turned and headed the other way.
Neither spoke for some time. Surrounded by such horror, there was nothing to say.
‘Look,’ said Urceus.
Quintus looked. Fifty paces in front, two small groups of legionaries were closing in on a pair of figures with their backs against a shop front. ‘We can’t stop them,’ he said with a sigh.
‘We have to pass by, though, or go back past the burning houses.’
‘I can’t watch children jumping to their deaths,’ snapped Quintus, images from Enna filling his mind once more. ‘Keep going.’
They walked on. Within a few heartbeats, the fight had begun. Only two of the legionaries could attack their victims at a time. The others stood back and issued loud opinions on what to do. As Quintus and Urceus approached, one — a hastatus — fell screaming with a deep wound in his belly. Shouting oaths, another legionary took his place. His lack of caution was disastrous. The cornered man — a Syracusan officer from what Quintus could see — used his large shield to punch first at one legionary and then the other. As both men stepped back in reflex, the officer stabbed the cursing one in the throat. Blood sheeted the air as he ripped his blade free. The legionary dropped to the ground like a stone tossed in a well.
‘He’s not bad,’ said Urceus admiringly. ‘He’s fighting like that because he has a woman with him. See?’
Quintus didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see yet another woman’s face distorted by terror. All the same, his attention was locked on the deadly struggle being enacted before them. It was inevitable that his gaze would fall on the officer’s companion. What he saw didn’t register at first. He blinked and looked again. A band of iron closed around his heart. ‘Aurelia?’ he whispered. ‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’
Urceus caught the urgency in his tone. ‘What is it?’
Quintus drew nearer, his heart pounding out a disturbing, irregular rhythm. At twenty paces, he could see that it was his sister. Their years of separation had not changed her. What she was doing in Syracuse, and with an enemy officer, Quintus had no damn idea, but it was Aurelia. In his excitement, he paid her companion no heed. He grabbed Urceus’ shoulder. ‘Do you trust me?’
Urceus gave him a surprised look. ‘With my life, you know that.’
‘Believe me now, brother, when I tell you that that woman is my sister. I have no inkling why she’s here, but it’s her.’
Urceus’ jaw slowly hardened. ‘You’re certain?’
‘Certain enough that I’m going to wade in here against our own, and try to save her.’
Urceus swore long and hard. While he did, another legionary went down, his guts sliced apart. The rest had had enough. Bellowing like maddened bulls, they advanced together.
Quintus didn’t wait for Urceus’ response. He ran forward, sword and shield at the ready. ‘Leave her be! She’s Roman! Roman!’