Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (13 page)

A shiver ran up Fronto's spine at the sight of the building.

"Why in the name of Jove's balls are we going to the carcer?"

Pompey pursed his lips. "As I told you earlier, I seek your opinion on a personal matter."

Fronto frowned as they approached the door. The three visitors stood in the street as one of their accompanying guard knocked on the door and spoke to the single-minded public servant who maintained the security of the carcer's main doorway. As Pompey's hireling stood aside and motioned to the open door, the general strode inside without pause. Fronto took a deep breath and swallowed a last lungful of good air before entering. Galronus followed up with an air of inquisitive interest.

The half dozen Pompeian men waited outside the building, and Fronto found himself in the front chamber of the complex, where three guards sat sharpening swords. They were three of the very few people allowed to bear a weapon within the city's sacred bounds, given the nature of the chambers they watched over. Galronus looked around with interest and nodded a greeting at the guards, who pointedly ignored the odd foreigner, despite his Romanised dress sense.

"Let us through" Pompey demanded of the three men. "We need no escort and shall only be a quarter of an hour at most."

The guards looked for a moment as though they might argue, but one quickly crossed the room and unlocked the heavy door to the next room. "We cannot let you enter unescorted, general."

Pompey fixed him with a look. "Think hard to whom you speak."

The man actually held Pompey's eye for a moment, and then bowed and stepped back. The general waited for him to swing the door open and stepped through, Fronto and Galronus following on. Beyond the door a large trapezoidal chamber, some twenty feet across, sat in subdued gloom. Fronto was immediately chilled to the bone and deeper still - a chill that had nothing to do with cold. In fact, it was curiously warm and damp - sweaty even - inside. The room, constructed of heavy stone blocks, was faintly greened with age and mould, strange shadows flittering around the rough-hewn stones in a dim glow cast by the three oil lamps that lit the chamber. In the floor's centre, a circular opening gaped like the maw of Hades itself. Ahead, a passageway led off into the rock beneath the Capitoline hill.

"This" Pompey said to them, gesturing around the room like a tour guide, "is the carcer. Down the hole you can see there is the Tullianum, where the stranglings are carried out if the prisoner is not worthy of a good public death." Fronto tried not to look, but Galronus was peering around with interest and, as they approached the hole, peered down it. Fronto shied away, repulsed more by the smell of urine and (possibly imagined) dead sweat than by its actual physical presence.

"Down here" the general continued, now apparently speaking mainly to Galronus and gesturing to the tunnel ahead "is where we keep the prisoners awaiting their turn. These chambers were quarried out in time immemorial and the stone from them supports some of the great buildings in the forum. The Tullianum we passed back there was an antique cistern, dating from before the draining of the marsh and the construction of the aqueducts."

Galronus was nodding like a student filing away knowledge as they strode across and into the passageway, Pompey pausing at the entrance and collecting one of the three oil lamps from the main chamber. The passageway was more a series of doorways that connected three chambers at one end, creating a sort of gallery. Fronto remembered it well, despite all the years that had passed. Each chamber was barred off half way in with iron railings to create three separate cells connected by the gallery, each of which would hold one or two prisoners, though as often as not they would remain empty. Few people stayed here long.

Fronto blinked in surprise as they entered the first chamber and the flickering orange glow of the oil lamp picked out the half-dozen dirty, shit-smeared, naked figures lurking beyond the bars.

"What's going on, Pompey?"

"Fronto?"

"Why so many? Are the other rooms being repaired or something?"

"Hardly" Pompey replied quietly. "Each is as full. It's been a busy time for traitors to the republic and for unforgivable criminals."

Fronto stopped in his tracks. "This is inhuman. They should either be done away with or freed, not just left here."

Pompey shrugged. "They're awaiting their time, Fronto. It's the way of things."

"Oh come on! Look at
him
! He must have been here
months
. He's almost starving to death and that beard has too many weeks' growth for a man awaiting his execution."

Again: the shrug. "I don't make the rules, Fronto. I've put a few of them here, for sure, but I don't control their progress beyond arrival. That's down to the legal system."

Galronus cleared his throat. "Marcus is correct. This is not honourable."

"I say again, this is not my decision. But we are becoming side-tracked from my purpose. The next room, Marcus."

Unhappily, Fronto and Galronus shuffled into the second chamber behind Pompey. Again, half a dozen dirty, naked creatures backed away from the intrusive light. As Pompey stepped towards the bars, closer than Fronto would have advised, one figure moved out of the shadows and stepped towards them. He was enormous and clearly a northerner by his appearance. Fronto came to a halt where he knew he was still very much out of reach.

"You!" the big man spat the word at Pompey with thick Celtic overtones, his straw blond beard hiding much of his fierce expression.

"Yes, me. I have done some research on you, my big ox-like German."

The barbarian's eyes narrowed.

"Yes. Of the Suevi I believe" Pompey went on. "Your name is Berengarus. The records of the slave traders are duplicated into the city records of the Tabularium above us. It seems your former owner - Lucius Tiburtinus - disappeared last week after a big sale. You were not crossed off his list, so you should still be unsold in his pen. You are not, and he is missing, presumed dead. The evidence, I would say, does not look good for you."

"Piss off, Roman fat man."

Galronus folded his arms. His face had taken on a hard look. Fronto knew there was little love lost between the Germanic Suevi and Galronus' own Remi tribe. The two had fought each other uncounted times over the centuries. Pompey turned to Fronto.

"So tell me, with your unusual morality and sensibilities, Fronto, what I am to do with this thing" he gestured at Berengarus. "He almost certainly murdered his owner, definitely killed a number of plebs before my very eyes, and seems to be entirely unrepentant."

Fronto frowned. "What?"

"You have fought these people. You own slaves. It has been in my mind to simply have him killed, but Artorius, my chief enforcer, thinks I might be able to make use of him myself. My friend Policus thinks he should be given to a lanista to train for the arena. And my wife thinks I should wash my hands of the whole affair and let the state take over his case."

Fronto shrugged. "He'd certainly make a tough fighter, but maybe not a gladiator. To be honest, I've found the Germanic peoples to be too wild and crazed to be controlled. Not sure I'd trust him in my employ if I were you. Galronus?"

"Kill him now. He is an abomination."

Fronto looked closer at the huge barbarian and realised with a start that the man was staring at him with some sort of vicious hunger or deeply-ingrained malice. Not the look he had directed at Pompey, but something different. Nastier. It felt as though the man seemed to know him enough to hate him without reserve. Fronto shuddered involuntarily.

"I think I'm done here."

"Not yet, Fronto the killer of Gauls" hissed a reedy voice from the shadows. The sound was so unpleasant that even Galronus and Pompey took a step back, joining Fronto well out of reach.

Some sort of wraith appeared in the dim circle of lamplight, stalking forward towards the bars, where he came to stand next to the huge barbarian, whose malice-filled gaze was still locked on Fronto. What in the name of all the Gods was going on in this place? The new, terrifying figure gripped the bars, his parchment-thin skin barely concealing blue veins that throbbed rhythmically. His rheumy, pale - sightless? - eyes were locked on Fronto and a grey tongue flickered around the thin, desiccated lips as a wisp of his wild grey hair flopped down over one eye. Fronto shuddered again. It was like looking at the long-dead still standing unnaturally and speaking to you. Silently he uttered a prayer to Fortuna to get him out of this unpleasant place immediately.

"The killer of Gauls and Germans. Lapdog of the bald eagle of Rome. How is your master, Fronto?"

"Do I know you?" Fronto managed, his voice cracking slightly with nerves.

Pompey cut in to answer. "I doubt it. This is Tulchulchur, the monster of Vipsul. Don't let his apparent age and infirmity trick you, Fronto. It is said that he has killed more people than old age."

Tulchulchur grinned, revealing only ten teeth, though including all four canines which were curiously and worryingly prominent. "At your service, general pirate-killer. But I can hardly claim the record… there are men in these chambers who would seek the title themselves."

Fronto shook his head. "I've seen enough. Do what you want with the barbarian, but I wouldn't trust him as far as I could kick a ballista ball up a chimney. Come on. Let's get out of here."

Pompey gave him an indulgent smile and turned to follow as Fronto strode for the exit, Galronus at his heel. As they left there came a series of kissing noises, hisses, growls and shrieking laughs from the cells, and cutting through them all, a deep, Germanic voice. "I work for you, Pompey general! I work for you!"

Fronto paused for breath only when they had left the building entire, stooping to rub his sore knee. Galronus looked distinctly unimpressed.

"Thanks for that, Pompey." Fronto snapped angrily. "Was there a point to that unpleasantness?"

Pompey shrugged. "I was simply interested to see what you made of Berengarus. What else transpired in there was entirely unintentional. My apologies for subjecting you to it. I assumed you would not be perturbed by such a place - you who have stood knee-deep in the entrails of Gaul."

Fronto fixed him with a hard glance. "An open battlefield and an enemy with a sword is one thing. That place and the poor bastards wasting away in it is different. They should all be executed or freed." His mind furnished him with an image of the ancient spectre of the rheumy-eyed killer. "I'd plump for executed, to be honest. It's going to take a week and a lot of wine to shift the smell of decay and faeces from my nostrils."

Pompey put a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Truly, Fronto, you have my apologies. I had not intended such a show of unpleasantness. I needed to check on the German before I made my decision and I thought that perhaps your opinion might swing me."

"And has it?"

"Perhaps. Come. Let me make it up to you. A visit to the baths to wash away the stink and then you can rape my wine cellar to numb the memory."

Fronto nodded and followed on, though his mind would not stop throwing back snippets of the visit to the carcer: images of the cold-eyed barbarian and the thin, pale wraith next to him; the phrase 'killer of Gauls' and the creeping feeling that he must know this Berengarus from somewhere. Certainly Berengarus seemed to know him.

Not for the first time this year, Fronto wished he was standing on a field in Gaul with a shield and a sword, watching hairy lunatics running at him and screaming. War was so much more simple than this private life crap.

Chapter Four

"Soon as we stop, I want you two to take charge of that load of shitbags back there and get them in the stockade, all apart from Dumnorix - put him in solitary somehow with a double guard - and then get some rest before you meet me at my tent at sunset." Priscus took a weary breath. "I'll have to go and listen to the general rant about Aeolus once we've got the legion encamped."

Furius and Fabius gave a tired smile. The general's mood had been steadily declining as the army approached the coast and the newly established temporary camp at Itio. The calm harbour that Caesar had selected for embarkation had been freshly and grandly renamed Portus Itius, despite the local's tendency to ignore their settlement's enforced Latinisation. The winds had shifted round to the northerly a few days ago and had since refused to change, bringing a fresh cold gust that pushed any wind-powered vessel straight back into port and declared flatly 'no sailing the channel until I've moved again'. This further delay had deeply irritated Caesar, and the general had become waspish and difficult to such an extent that officers now flipped coins to decide who would face him over even the simplest query. Furius and Fabius heaved a sigh of relief that their tasks were simple military ones.

As the column approached the timber walls of the Portus Itius fort, half a day's march north of Gesoriacum, the fresh smell of cut pine emanated from the stockade and the two or three buildings that had been constructed within. The general and his small party of senior commanders led the van as usual, the forward scouts having arrived an hour or so ago. Behind them came the cavalry contingent and then the Tenth, followed by the other legions. However, between the rear ranks of the Tenth and the front of the Seventh, space had been made for the two hundred and nineteen prisoners they had taken in the forest of Arduenna, all roped at both wrist and neck, their ankles unfettered to allow for swift transport. The two dozen Treveri nobles - and one Aeduan - among them expressed outrage at being roped among the common warriors - a sign to Priscus that Gallic culture was considerably more 'civilised' and therefore uneven and debased than he had previously realised. Only an advanced culture could boast such smug, snobbish inequality. They might as well be Roman already, Priscus had smiled to himself.

It had, in fact, already become necessary to separate Dumnorix from the other nobles in the roped party, placing him towards the rear and among the more subdued lower warriors. He had by pure chance been overheard by a passing legionary trying to exhort the Treveri nobles to throw in their lot with him in an attempt to overcome their jailors and flee. How he had expected to escape a four-legion column with cavalry contingent and mounted scouts was unfathomable, but Priscus had kicked the Aeduan noble until he coughed blood and then moved him away from potential conspirators. After months of investigating and unravelling the threads of an apparent Gallic plot to rise up against Rome, he was not about to take any chances with a man who appeared to be at the centre of it all.