“Tie him up and hide him for a while.”
“Hide him; why?”
“If they come to rescue him, I don’t want him found.”
She grinned and started to untie him. The fight was gone from him, and he was weeping. I think the mental picture of the circus in Rome and the occasional lion was giving him a hard time.
I was almost back to where Gaius was when I heard the first shot.
Knowing instantly that someone had brought a gun to a knife fight, I was worried. Ducking low, I ran to where the wagons still stood with all the longbows stacked. I grabbed a bow and a handful of arrows in a quiver.
I could hear Iona shouting for the girls to keep in cover and use their bows. Two more loud shots came from close by.
I was in the darkness of some scrub and trees, inching forwards on my belly – marine fashion.
The longbow is not a weapon to be fired from the prone position, and so I needed to be upright and in some form of cover.
I glanced up. The conifer next to me was tall and had branches almost like a ladder. I slung the bow over my shoulder and made as rapid ascent as I could.
I could see the area below. Armes/Carpenter was still strung up. Gaius was crouched down behind a barrel with his sword drawn and Fabius was lying on his front with blood pooling around him. Two unknown men were lying on their sides with arrows in their bodies and what appeared to be handguns lay useless on the ground next to them.
The sentries had done their job.
Armes was shouting to let his friends know where he was, so I made a decision and notched my first arrow. I was not as good at this as I thought, and hit him in the throat.
My second hit him in the chest.
He died never knowing that we knew who he was.
I have no idea as to their retrieval system, but without the bracelets, I guess it was somewhat haphazard, but I suspect that I’ll see him again, sometime.
Now I could concentrate on the intruders.
They moved well, so unlike the others, these were trained. This time they did not wear silly cloaks, but plain black clothing. The weapons they carried were simple, locally-made black powder guns such as Armes had carried. One shot wonders, I called them.
Someone moved to my left. I notched and followed him. He was on his belly, inching forward to see into where they held the now dead Armes.
I shot him in the back. He slumped down, dropping his unfired gun onto the ground. A shot came, the bullet zinging past me, clipping the branches. They could see me, so I hightailed down the tree as rapidly as I ascended. Another shot slammed into the trunk by my hand. I was down. I rolled over the dead man, scooping up his gun.
I arrived next to Gaius, who regarded me with some alarm.
“What manner of weapon is this?”
“Don’t ask; they’re cheating.”
“You know of them?”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“Who are these men?”
“I honestly don’t know, but once they see he’s dead, they will leave.”
“What about the other man?”
“He’s safely hidden.”
“They will seek him out.”
“That will be unwise. I’ve got all the girls in the woods with bows. I don’t care how many guns they have, they are at a distinct disadvantage.”
Another shot came from the bushes to the left, followed by a very masculine scream of pain, or was it fear?
Possibly both.
I looked at Armes’ body. It was a pity, but I had no way of getting him back to my people. I wondered how he managed to escape from them after I had handed them to James in the eighteen hundreds.
“Come on, we’re sitting ducks here, let’s get into the dark!”
Clearly, the rescuers were determined to either take their own home, or ensure they didn’t talk by despatching them. I had done their job for them with Armes, albeit I’m sure they have preferred him to have been wearing the bracelet.
Now they sought the other man. An occasional shot rang out, signifying they were still trying.
“Iona, sweep forward in line abreast, shoot anything that moves!” I shouted in Brigante.
“Aye!”
“What?” asked Gaius.
“We wait here, they will drive the rest towards us.”
“You will kill them with that?” he asked, nodding toward the gun.
I looked down at it. It was a flintlock with a protective cover to the flash-pan. The cover was open and whatever powder that had been in the pan was now either gone or damp. This was useless without spare powder.
I smashed it against a convenient rock.
“Why do that?”
“Believe me; you guys aren’t ready for this stuff yet. Besides, you are efficient enough with what you have.”
We then heard the shrillness of a whistle being blown and one word being shouted – the word ‘Emperor’ in Arabic.
“What?” asked Gaius.
“The emperor, where is he?”
“In the town, not far from here.”
“They mean to kill him, we must stop them.”
Chapter Fifteen
How desperate must they be to flagrantly breach the laws of time? They must know the serious repercussions that such an act would initiate.
My people would know that their attempt to defeat Trajan’s army had failed, but would they know about this act of temporal terrorism? I had no way of knowing, so had to treat this as if I was on my own.
Giving Iona the task of rounding up and catching those who might be trapped in the forest, I made sure that she knew to check for devices and remove any bracelets.
“Collect any of their weapons and lock them safely away. They have to be destroyed – all of them!” I said, slinging the bow around my shoulders. I added several arrows to my quiver. I still had my sword, but I earnestly wished for a Colt .45.
To give her due credit, Iona simply nodded and did not ask me why. I felt she was becoming increasingly convinced that I was on a divine mission and was indeed a goddess.
I had, as far as she was concerned, correctly foretold the future on so many occasions that she had only one logical explanation open to her, and I did not have the time to argue.
Gaius and I rode like the wind. He had informed a centurion as to what we were doing, so relied on him to gather some cavalry to follow as soon as they could. It was pointless, for they would all be defenceless against firearms.
Trajan was now somewhere in the fallen city. Scores of captives were being led away, while other captives were digging mass graves for those who were less fortunate. Women and children were not spared the wrath of Rome, and many were now being marched into slavery.
The bodies of several women, who had obviously been raped, lay where they had been abused, and I felt an anger burn inside me. I did not have time to quibble or judge. War is war and atrocities had always been committed and always would, regardless which epoch we happened to be in. The problem with war is that the history is traditionally recorded by those who win, so they conveniently forget to record the atrocities committed by the winners.
Take WW2; the war crimes committed by the Nazis were publically paraded before the world at Nuremberg. However, the allies, in particularly the Russians, were spared such exposure. However, it became clear quite shortly after hostilities ceased that their excesses were as bad, if not worse than those committed by the Germans.
The Romans always made an example of those who they defeated as a policy to deter others from resisting or threatening the rule of Rome.
Such was the confusion that we had to leave our horses and continue on foot.
A centurion we asked informed us that the Emperor was in the building that had been Decebalus’ last headquarters. He pointed at the largest building around, so we headed that way.
“What can we do?” Gaius asked.
“What we can.”
“If these weapons penetrate armour what can we do against them?”
“Look, these weapons are not infallible. They are restricted more than they are not. The holder must be within twenty paces or less to be sure of a possible kill shot, and a moving target is harder to hit than a static one. They need good light and a dry environment otherwise they might as well throw the damn thing in the general direction.