Besides, Xanthus wasn't the one ultimately responsible for the hell Charlie had been living. He was only a Roman doing what a Roman thought was proper and right; the real villain still lay far beyond Charlie's revenge. Charlie couldn't quite bring himself to end Xanthus' suffering with a quick dagger thrust—the risk of dismounting now from Silver's back might be never getting into the saddle again—but he couldn't hate Xanthus quite so deeply, either. He, at least, would pay for his crimes.
Too goddamn bad it wasn't Carreras lying there with his legs crushed... .
Charlie turned his back and left his "master" screaming for help. He had to find Sibyl and his daughter. If they were still alive.
Sibyl rocked Charlie's little girl in the cramped space of their prison, murmuring softly to her until hysterical sobs quieted. Chubby little fingers clutched at her neck, her hair. Soft arms and a trembling little body pressed close in the darkness.
"Shh... Shh... It's all right, Lucania, it's all right, shh, it's all right..."
Maybe if I say it often enough, it'll be true.
"Mama?"
"Shh, no, your mama isn't here, Lucania. Shh..."
How to explain to a toddler who could scarcely speak that her mother had just died?
Very faintly, Sibyl heard voices. She tried to hear above the noise from Vesuvius. "Hello!" she called, as loudly as she could. "HELP!" She tried pushing at the rubble and felt more than heard the ominous shift of weight. "HELP US!"
So faint, the voice might have been transmitted from orbit, "Where are you?"
Hope—so sudden and unexpected it hurt—stabbed through her. "Under the doorway! Please, there are two of us! We're not hurt, we're just trapped!"
Again, so faint she could barely hear it, the voice came to her. "I'm looking for someone. I'm sorry..."
"NO! PLEASE!" Sibyl shoved at rubble with her bare hands.
When she didn't hear anything further, Sibyl sagged back against the wall of rubble trapping them and hugged Lucania tight. Don't cry, don't break down and terrify her all over again....
But she couldn't stop the tears leaking silently down her face, any more than she could stop the murderous pillar of debris belching out of Vesuvius from collapsing a few hours hence into fiery avalanches that would burn them alive.
Out of hope, Sibyl huddled with her arms around Lucania Flynn and wept.
He was about to give up the search of the garden and start picking through the surviving rooms when he heard the faint, faint cry for help. Charlie almost left them.
Almost.
But the voice had sounded like a woman's.
He didn't dare hope, but he couldn't just walk away, either, and never know. Charlie slithered awkwardly to the ground and risked tying Silver's reins to a broken fountain. Water poured across the splintered garden from a dozen twisted pipes. The horse lipped at it eagerly. Charlie ignored Xanthus' screams, pleas, demands for help, and eyed the pile of rubble with deep misgiving, then thrust his torch into the wet earth and started clearing rubble away, brick by brick.
It was murderous work. Especially with a broken rib. But he kept doggedly at it, pausing now and again simply because his flagging body gave him no choice. Ashfall and debris rained down steadily, pelting his arms and back and zinging painfully off his helmet. He kept digging. The whole pile shifted ominously. Charlie looked for something to brace it and found a shattered beam.
Using Silver's superior strength to drag it over, Charlie wedged it into place and shored up the mass as best he could, then started digging again. When he uncovered a slim, shapely hand covered in blood and dust, he paused sharply. Her hand? He kept digging, cold and afraid now inside his sweat and pain. It was a woman. The face was beyond recognition. But that long, beautiful sweep of ash-blond hair wasn't.
Not Sibyl. Benigna.
His gorge rose. Frantic, sick, Charlie dug through the rubble, knowing at any moment he would find another, smaller body near her mother. Please, God, please... He found only rubble. Bricks and broken plaster and splintered wood. And then, finally, a dark hole low to the ground, where a fallen beam had wedged in at a forty-five-degree angle across a doorway.
Something moved inside that hole.
"Give me your hand!" Charlie shouted above the terrible noise from Vesuvius.
A trembling hand grasped his. He hauled her out, bent over and awkward, holding herself. She collapsed at his feet, shaking almost as violently as the ground. Torn Egyptian linen, a king's ransom in jewelry...
She looked up. Charlie's gut sucked in, almost as hard as his breath. Despite the makeup, the scrapes and the dirt—
"Sibyl!"
Her eyes widened. Then she was in his arms, just clinging to him, sobbing. He held her close, thanking God she was still alive, alive....
"Charlie, I found her, she's all right, she was so lucky, oh, God, you don't know..."
Sibyl was pulling loose, reaching for something pale on the ground.
Then he had a child in his arms, a wide-eyed, white-faced little girl with red-gold hair and a smear of blood down her brow. Charlie touched his daughter's face with fingertips that shook, then he started to cry, silently, helplessly. His daughter wriggled and tried to reach Sibyl. "Mama!"
"Shh..." Sibyl stroked her hair. "This is your father, Lucania. Your father..."
Lucania, face smeared with tear trails and blood, stuffed an uncertain fist into her mouth. Then peered into Charlie's eyes. "Pater?"
"Yes," Charlie choked out, remembering to speak to her in Latin, "I'm your father. I've been looking and looking for you. Ever since you were born... ."
A tiny, chubby hand tugged at the cheek-piece of his battered helmet. "Miles!"
Soldier...
He let her believe the lie. She was too young to understand, anyway. Charlie felt the delicate little slave's collar at her throat and snarled something incoherent, then used his dagger to snap open the tiny lock. He hurled the collar away into volcanic darkness.
"Sibyl," Charlie said raggedly, "we have to get the hell out of here. Now, before the rest of the house comes down. Here... take her."
Handing his only child over to Sibyl so soon after holding Lucania for the first time was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Before she could protest, Charlie picked Sibyl up. He grunted in sudden, agonizing pain, then hoisted her to Silver's back.
When the world had more or less steadied under his feet, he wrapped Silver's reins several times around his arm and grabbed his crutch. Then he found the torch and led the horse back through the ruined garden. Charlie ducked under the broken doorway into the house proper, then steadied the gelding through and led him past the shattered atrium. Before he led them into the open again, Charlie yanked off his helmet.
"Put this on!"
Sibyl didn't argue with him. She jammed the helmet over her own head and bent more protectively over Lucania.
Like Joseph fleeing the wrath of Herod, Charlie led Silver out of the villa and fled on foot before the wrath of Vesuvius. Everything in the world he cared about followed mutely in the darkness, tethered to his arm by one slim leather band.
Chapter Fourteen
Feeble light from the torch Charlie carried barely pierced the volcanic gloom. Sibyl could see hardly anything beyond Charlie's outstretched arm—not even the width of the road. Their slow-motion flight, with Charlie limping ahead, felt like waking nightmare. Scores of terrified slaves, small landowners, and rich men like Bericus fled hovels and rich country villas alike, passing them on the road.
A few, Charlie had to fight for their horse.