‘Yes, sir.’
‘How’s your arm?’ Eborius asked, inspecting a gash just below the sleeve of the veteran’s armour.
Cassius gazed enviously at the mail shirt. His was of far better quality but — as always seemed to happen — was tucked up in a bag somewhere, not over his tunic where it could actually do him some good.
‘Just a slice, sir. I’ll take care of it later.’
With that, the tension between Eborius and Noster seemed to dissipate.
Eborius spoke to the other legionary. ‘Did I see you limping?’
‘It’s nothing, sir.’
Cassius caught the soldier’s eye. ‘What’s the name?’
‘Adranos, sir.’
Like Lentellus, Adranos was short but sturdily built. They were two of Eborius’s younger men but both had a couple of years on Cassius.
‘I’m Officer Cassius Corbulo. That’s Indavara and the young lady is Miss Annia.’
Adranos pointed at the floor. ‘Your feet are bleeding, miss.’
‘Gods, so they are,’ said Cassius.
She was wearing a pair of light sandals and running across the hard ground had torn them — and Annia’s feet — to pieces. Her skin was latticed with scratches and the soles of the sandals were red with blood.
‘We’ll try and find you some other shoes,’ offered Indavara. ‘Or perhaps wrap them up.’
‘Are you in pain, miss?’ asked Cassius.
With a helping hand from Indavara, Annia stood. ‘I was trying not to think about it.’
‘She’ll live,’ said Eborius gruffly. He moved back to the door and took a long look at the road. ‘We’ll stay in cover as much as we can. And just because you’re not at the front or back, that doesn’t mean you don’t keep your eyes open. Let’s go.’
The Tadius property turned out to be a sprawling farm divided into dozens of fields and orchards. Their route took them right through the cluster of buildings in the middle of the plot. They had already filled up with water and, while the others waited inside a stable, Eborius and Noster checked the main house to see if they could forage some food. While they were gone, Cassius and Indavara used an old cotton sheet they found on a washing line to bind Annia’s feet. In normal circumstances such close contact with a young lady would have been unthinkable but necessity demanded it; aside from the pain, they couldn’t allow her to slow them down. With Annia sitting on the ground between them, they took a foot each, cutting the cloth with the javelin blade and securing the whole arrangement with knots around her ankles.
Eborius and Noster returned empty-handed; it seemed the Maseene or other opportunists had beaten them to it. But as the centurion led the group north again they passed through an orchard of fig trees. The few figs left were well past their best but everyone took a handful to eat — all except Annia, who shook her head when Indavara offered her the fruit.
As they pressed on, Cassius found he was struggling to follow Eborius’s request that they all stay alert. In fact he was struggling to do anything other than put one foot in front of the other and keep up. He reckoned it was now well over thirty hours since he’d last slept. His nose was still throbbing, his arms and legs felt leaden, and the light Maseene javelin now seemed as heavy as a cavalry lance. There was, however, one advantage to such utter exhaustion; it stopped him thinking about the horrors of the last few hours and the dangers yet to come.
The sound of horses on the Via Roma reached them before the riders came into view. Though he knew the Maseene might prove as deadly as the legionaries of the First Century, Cassius was relieved it wasn’t Carnifex and his men. Not one of the twenty or so tribesmen took their eyes off the road as they sped south.
Eborius waited for an all-clear signal from Noster then set off. They passed the line of date palms that bordered the southern edge of Darnis and through the gate of a small villa.
‘How long before sundown?’ Cassius asked Eborius, picking his way through a pile of broken roof tiles.
‘Perhaps an hour.’
The centurion, who was carrying his helmet, waited until everyone was inside the villa before speaking again.
‘It gets harder now. We must watch every alley and window and door. And we must move fast if we want to reach the harbour by nightfall.’
‘What if Asdribar has left?’ asked Indavara.
This was an eventuality Cassius had tried not to even entertain.
‘You three will have to make your own choices,’ replied Eborius. ‘But we can wait until dark, then slip away to the west. I have family in a village not ten miles from here. They’ll protect us.’
Eborius looked around at the glum expressions that greeted this prospect. ‘Hopefully it won’t come to that. Noster, you take your bow back. I might need you to clear the way ahead of us.’
The legionary glanced at Indavara. ‘Why not let him keep it, sir? Then I can stay at the rear. I reckon he’s a better shot than me anyhow.’
Indavara knew it would be impossible to move as quickly as he needed to with an arrow drawn, so he kept one alongside the bow in his left hand. Noster’s weaponry was in excellent condition and — apart from the thin twine around the bow’s middle to improve grip — not dissimilar to his own.
Even though it always took time to get used to a new bow, moments such as this made all the hours of practice worthwhile. There had been no real call for archery while he was a gladiator but he’d always been fascinated by the weapons. His long-distance shooting was still developing, but at short range he considered himself passable, and short range was all that would be needed now. The broken little finger wasn’t a problem.
Indavara found the streets of Darnis confusing, but Eborius seemed to know every last corner of the place. Considering his size, the centurion moved with great speed and agility as he led the group towards the Via Cyrenaica. He never covered more than twenty yards of ground in one burst, always found cover for the seven of them, and only ever stopped long enough to check the area immediately ahead.
Indavara’s view of the man had already changed. Whatever his past failures, he had saved them from certain death at that pit and was doing his best to help them reach the harbour. The past day and night had been a dizzying series of reversals and trials, but to Indavara they were already distant memories. He, Annia and Corbulo were alive and his thoughts had narrowed to a single aim: they just had to get to the Fortuna.
‘Now,’ said Eborius quietly.
They scuttled across a courtyard and inside another villa. Eborius stopped a couple of yards beyond the doorway. Indavara passed him so that the others could enter, then saw what had halted the centurion. Lying on the floor were a middle-aged man and woman surrounded by scattered clothes and other belongings. Close to the man was a small, empty iron box. He and the woman had been killed by multiple slashes to their necks.
Eborius — who couldn’t stand up straight in the low-ceilinged room — knelt between the dead pair and gently closed the woman’s eyelids.
‘Oh no,’ said Noster when he saw them. ‘Crotila and Helvia.’
He bent down and picked up a broken javelin-head. ‘This man worked alongside the Maseene for years. Gave jobs to scores of them. Helvia even made him arrange his harvest around their festival days.’
Indavara glanced at Annia and Corbulo, who were still staring down at the bodies.
‘There is no way back from this,’ said Eborius. ‘Not now.’
‘He has been a curse on this town,’ said Noster.
The legionary laid the man’s arms by his side and put a blanket over him and his wife.
‘There’s a little food here,’ said Adranos as he picked up a wicker basket.
‘Take it,’ Eborius told him. ‘Crotila was a generous man.’
The centurion walked into an adjacent room. ‘This way.’
Indavara followed him through to a narrow doorway and waited as Eborius checked the alley between this villa and the next. Over his shoulder, Indavara spied a small (and broken) glass window he recognised. They weren’t far from the mausoleum and Dio’s house, which meant the Via Cyrenaica was close.