The fighting had moved beyond the passageway Liuba selected. Corpses littered the floor, making footing uncertain as they again plunged into darkness. The swords of the legionaries were taking a heavy toll of the serpent-folk, judging from the dead.
They moved swiftly through the darkness. Whether or not Liuba really knew the way, Bran had no means of knowing. He had been unconscious when the serpent-folk dragged him to the cavern of the Black Stone, and in the unbroken darkness he might have walked through the great hall of Baal-dor without knowing where he was.
“Stand clear!” Liuba warned from ahead of them.
Bran heard a sudden angry hissing of reptilian voices, then the cleaner whisper of slashing steel. Bleats of pain, and the soft, grating smack of cleaving flesh and bone. Unseen bodies flopped across the stones of the passageway-then frighted voices receded into the blackness.
“Vermin!” Liuba spat. “There’s no fight to them, once they realize they can’t strike by stealth! Nero’s legionaries will massacre any who don’t flee fast enough!”
On they ran, relying on Liuba’s uncanny sight to give them warning of any other such ambushes. It galled Bran to be so dependent on the swordswoman, but there was no altemaive. Whether or not Liuba knew where she was leading them, at least she could see. Remembering how the serpent-folk had crept upon him in the dark, Bran smiled wolfishly at the terror these vermin must have known when Liuba’s deadly blade turned their intended ambush into a gory shambles.
“Torches coming!” Liuba warned.
Already Bran could see the flickering greyness moving toward them-then the bright flame of the torches as those who carried them entered the grotto from a side passage. Legionaries-no one else would carry torches-cutting them off from the direction Liuba was taking them.
“Tall odds,” Liuba murmured. “Twelve or more.”
“Can we let them pass?” Bran demanded.
But now there were shouts echoing from the passageway they had just quitted. Bran glanced back, saw the light of more torches. Many torches.
“That’ll be Claudius Nero,” Bran guessed. The legate had organized pursuit.
Liuba cursed. “We’ve got to get past! The burrow we crawled down from Kestrel Scaur leads off from the passage at the end of this cavern!”
Bran guessed that this small cavern must have been one of those along whose wall he had blindly groped his way when first he invaded this stygian labyrinth. “Nero will overtake us if we wait any longer,” he decided. “Well have to cut through these others-and quickly.”
“As you say,” Liuba agreed and started for the torches.
Ironically, Liubas night-piercing vision was keener than that of the legionaries with the torches and, when the inhuman warriors did see them, the motley array of Roman accoutrements made for momentary confusion.
Liuba’s blade sang a song that ended their confusion-and ended life for the first two of their number. An instant later Bran hit them from another quarter, and a third legionary died with a startled expression.
Shouting in their strangely distorted Latin, the others met their attack. Steel rang against steel, slammed against shield. In that first clash of steel, Bran was recognized. The legionaries’ excited shouts drew instant response from those who followed the three fugitives.
If the legionaries were concerned with taking the Picts alive, they failed to show it. Bran heard Claudius Nero’s voice shout in command. Behind them the legate’s soldiers came at a headlong rush. They were fast running out of time.
Morgain flung up her shield awkwardly, caught a slashing blade on the bronze rim. Confident of his kill, her assailant pressed on recklessly. Morgain stabbed her point full into his grinning face, felt the blade skid across bone and crunch through eye socket. The soldier crumpled, and Morgain found that killing was no difficult feat.
Bran fought frantically, trying to hold the soldiers away from Morgain. Steel rang against his scutum, slipped past his guard to slash through cuirass. The link-mail saved him time and again as he battled against several opponents at once. The Pict’s gladius ran red with half-human gore. Another legionary died howling, and another. Beside him Liubas long sword flickered like harnessed lightning, taking a scarlet toll of the soldiers.
A deadly whirlwind of ringing steeclass="underline" then the last legionary was down, and the three stood breathless and bloody over the dead.
Behind them, the first of Nero’s band were almost on them. Bran snatched up a fallen torch. They could run faster by its light, Morgain dropped her heavy scutum and caught up another brand.
“Hurry!” Liuba urged. “There’s barely time!”
Bran cursed, skidded to a halt. They had just run out of time-and out of luck.
The passage toward which they ran was filled with torches.
“Nero behind! A larger party ahead!” Bran swore. “We’re caught between a hundred soldiers!”
Liuba’s eyes flamed as she looked back at the pursuing soldiers. “Too close! Nothing for us but to make a stand!”
Turning, Liuba considered the scatter of torches that wavered toward them from their only avenue of escape. Incredibly, she laughed.
“Ho, Picts!” Liuba shouted. “To us quickly-if you’ll save your king!”
And the darkness ahead echoed with the war cries of the Men of the Heather. In seconds the cavern was filled with Pictish warriors, flaring torches, and the cry: “Mak Morn! Mak Morn! Mak Morn!”
“Grom!” Bran seized the grizzled warrior who led the rush. “You’re a welcome sight, old war-dog! How came you here?”
The gnarled warrior cracked Bran’s ribs in a jubilant hug. “Gonar said that you were lost in hell and would never return. So we came to bring you back! Gonar said there must be a Door at Kestrel Scaur-we found it, and a hundred of us crawled through to mass here. These vermin don’t trouble to guard their burrows.”
The fore of the two bands collided in the cavern center. Torches flared and fell spinning through the darkness. Steel and flesh strove in deafening clamour. Whether their enemies were true Romans or halfhuman demons meant nothing to the Picts. They had come to kill.
Bran whirled to join those who had swept past him. Already the fighting was all but over. Claudius Nero had pursued with thirty or forty legionaries-expecting to encounter nothing more than fleeing packs of the serpent-folk in overtaking the three fugitives. The sudden appearance of a superior force of Picts was more than the legate cared to take on.
The torches of Nero’s men hesitated, then retreated-leaving the cavern to the Picts.
“Shall we chase them down?” exulted Grom wolfishly.
“No!” Bran warned. “Call them back! Nero will lead us too long a chase-and he has a legion to bring against us once he has time to regroup. Let’s get out of here-before our luck changes!
“Morgain, let’s go find you something to wear!”
25
LEGION FROM HELL
“Hear it, milord? The sound comes from below.” Bran Mak Morn grunted, listening intently. “How long has this been going on?”
The squat sentry, who had summoned him to the wall, pressed his lips in thought. “I came on post before sunset,” he mused. “But it was about sunset when I first noticed it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but when it got louder I thought I’d better tell someone.”