A thought struck Fronto. ‘How many prisoners do you have?’
The guard frowned. ‘Just the two, sir.’
‘Vercingetorix and the Comum decurion?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Do you still have keys for the cells?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then get in there, let the decurion out and give him a club.’
‘I can’t do that, sir.’
‘You damn well can and you damn well will. We need all the help we can get and Marcellus notwithstanding, the decurion is a Roman. Get him out and arm him.’
‘But sir, he’s still badly torn and in agony, and all wrapped up in dressings.’
‘And yet he could still hold a club. Get him out.’
Reluctantly and with a shaking of the head, the guard scurried off, opening the door to the cells and disappearing within. Fronto turned to the rest. ‘Everyone prepared? Whatever we do, none of the attackers get to the cells and none of them get out alive. Even if we all have to die to stop it.’
Nods all round.
Across the room, the latch gave an ear-splitting shriek and then tore in two with a crack. The door jerked in a foot or so and the table butted up against it crept backwards.
‘This is it. Be prepared. No quarter.’
With a noise like a siege tower collapsing the door burst inwards, the table clattering across the floor. Fronto could hear the sound of keys and muffled conversation in the cell chamber, and the eleven men in this room levelled their weapons and planted firm feet. Fronto winced at the pain in his foot as he did so and gritted his teeth, bracing for the enemy.
A man two heads taller than him and twice as wide at the shoulder barrelled through the doorway. The big man hefted the longest, heaviest sword Fronto had ever seen, one that made the grand long Gallic blades he’d seen look like fruit knives. The Gaul’s face was oddly happy, a mix of release and exultation, as he leapt forwards, his first side-swipe taking one of the guards in the left arm, ripping it in two and slamming home deep into the man’s torso. He screamed and fell away, tripping one of his fellows and taking him down in the flurry. Procles was there in an instant, a decade’s experience fighting off pirates and raiders aboard triremes and merchant vessels lending him useful skills in dealing with restricted space. The big Greek former marine hammered down with his club at the giant’s hand, trying to disarm him of that great sword. His blow struck but glanced off the sword hilt, bruising the big man’s hand at best. As the marine reeled back, lifting his club for the next strike, his eyes widened in surprise. He’d not seen the huge Gaul’s other hand whip a knife from his belt. The force of the blow from that ham-sized hand was such that Procles felt his ribs and sternum crack and splinter, the knife driving the bone apart as though it were butter in its search for the heart.
Fronto saw the guards fall, saw Procles jerk back with a cry, dropping his club and clutching at his chest, but he had his own problems. The older woman had let her palla fall away now and had torn away the skirts of her stola to allow freedom of movement, and she advanced across the room with the grace of a dancer and the determination of a gladiator, a blade in each hand, whirling and stabbing. Her first blow had caught Cavarinos on the left arm and the Arvernian had cried out but found himself locked in a dance of death with the fake merchant. The woman, one hundred and twenty pounds of snarling, hate-filled death, was on Fronto like a whirlwind, slashing and hacking as she spat curses in her native tongue. Despite his general aversion to fighting women – even after that German cow had wounded his ankle so long ago – Fronto found himself fighting for his life with no qualms. This wasn’t a woman. This was one of the Furies given form. Swords slamming into one another, grating, sparking, they fought again and again, Fronto’s braced foot aching and throbbing with at least two broken bones. Others were having less luck. They may have closed the gap in numbers, but the Romans were mostly armed with sticks and a few eating knives while the Gauls, by way of their cart, had brought ample good blades with them. Even some of the slaves – sad, filthy, gaunt creatures – were armed with swords, slavering with hate as they leapt upon the Romans, who fought them off as best they could with clubs and knives.
He saw two of the Gallic slaves go down, Agesander managing to get inside the range of their weapons and smack their heads together with his big boxer’s hands. But at the same time, he saw Dyrakhes disappear, gurgling, blood bubbling up through both the mouth in his face and the second one in his neck. Chaos reigned as weapons struck and swung, the air filled with grunts, screams, cries and curses in two languages, all in a fairly dim constricted room, lit by two oil lamps and the open, splintered door.
The Gallic witch snarled.
One of Fronto’s desperate blows had taken a chunk out of the harridan’s shoulder, and a desperate punch had smashed her nose and front teeth, yet she fought on like some kind of Hades-born harpy and Fronto had felt the fiery pain of two hits from her blades, one on his forearm and one his leg, neither of which was deep enough to take his mind off the ongoing pain in his foot. Years of warfare had trained him to detach his mind from concerns over non-incapacitating wounds, leaving them to nag in the background, allowing him to concentrate on not dying.
He hadn’t even realised his mistake before it was too late. He’d overreached like a novice – like a young tiro in his first week with the legion – and as he tried in vain to recover, the woman was on him, the tip of her left blade slashing through the air at the side of his head even as the right blocked the club in his other hand.
In a blink of the eye he prepared to meet the final boatman, without even the time to apologise to Lucilia for leaving her so abruptly. A sword whispered through the air a hair’s breadth from his ear, blocking the witch’s blow, which should by rights have killed him. Instead, the force of the woman’s swing knocked the life-saving sword into his temple so that his mind spun unpleasantly. That same blade continued on into the face of the dreadful woman, smashing in through her cheek, into her brain and cracking the back of her skull from the inside, though Fronto only vaguely witnessed it in his fugged confusion.
As he attempted to recover his wits, Fronto blinked to see that the head guard had returned from the cells with the staggering, pained Comum noble swathed in bandages, and only his timely intervention had saved Fronto’s life. As the senior guard with the sword took his place, Fronto tried to stop his mind from lurching in his head in a vomit-inducing manner.
Things were going poorly. Half a dozen of the Gallic slaves lay dead, as well as the horrendous witch warrior, but Procles was gone, as were Dyrakhes and three of the six guards. Balbus was on the back-foot, fighting for his life against Molacos, whose cloak and mask seemed to hamper his fighting ability not at all. Biorix was struggling with the blond woman, and Agesander had, thankfully, managed to collect a fallen sword and was using it desperately to parry the massive hammer blows of the Gaulish giant again and again. Even as he watched, he saw another slave fall, and another of the carcer’s guards.
Agesander found a momentary opening and lunged out. Fronto felt a moment of elation as he saw the former boxer’s purloined blade sink deep into the giant’s belly, angled upwards, ramming up inside the ribcage, severing organs, but his relief was short-lived. Even in death the giant was dangerous and unstoppable. The knife in his offhand found the side of Agesander’s neck, ripping a great gauge in it. The two men collapsed together, the giant’s innards slithering out atop them both as the spray from Agesander’s neck drowned all nearby in crimson, his lifeblood leaving him so fast that he was greying with every heartbeat.
Fronto’s practised commander’s mind, clearing now of his thumping fuddlement, performed the calculation automatically. Seven slaves, Molacos, the blonde and the druid totalled ten of the enemy still fighting. Against eight of us…