Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (49 page)

"You are?" Balbus snapped. "You're thinking of running away."

The two men glared at one another for a moment and the tension rose even with the return of the two warriors from the doorway into the garden.

A cough finally broke the silence. Both men looked around to see Elijah rise from the bench.

"What?" snapped Fronto, somewhat unfairly.

"May I interrupt?" When neither man argued, the swarthy medic reached up and scratched his chin.

"It seems you are being offered both a problem and an opportunity."

"Explain?" asked Balbus sharply.

"I have not been privy to all of your discussions, obviously, gentlemen, but I do believe that you, master Fronto, wish to see your family safe so that you can look to your future career. You, master Balbus, seek revenge for your lovely wife, and while I cannot condone such a course of action, I can entirely understand it and sympathise. Neither of you feel this is the correct time and place to fight them. You are, by your own admission, unprepared, and you worry about the family you have back at your villa in Puteoli."

"That's not an explanation."

"If these people are as bad as you say, staying here and fighting, master Balbus, would leave your families unprotected so many miles away, and these may be the sort of people who would enjoy causing you pain by bringing violence against those you love? Witness the death of Corvinia."

Balbus' face drained of colour.

"He's right, Fronto. They've been loose since yesterday. What if they're not coming for us? What if they're already half way to Puteoli?"

Fronto nodded, appearing calm, though his eyes had taken on a worried wideness.

"Precisely" the Jew replied calmly. "I am given to understand that you are familiar with the land there?"

Fronto nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing in comprehension. "I spent much of my life there."

"And while these unpleasant murderers may well be overly familiar with the streets of Rome…"

"They will be totally
un
-familiar with Puteoli" Fronto finished, turning to Balbus. "He's right. It doesn't matter whether they've gone or not and whether the girls are there or we send them somewhere secret,
we
should go there. Get the bastards into
my
world. I'm sick of spending all my time reacting to problems caused by others. I'm always either struggling to make Caesar's more impetuous plans work or stumbling around in the dark trying to avoid dying at the hands of some piece of shit like Clodius or Hortius and Menenius. It's time I started to take a bit more control."

Balbus sheathed his sword, suddenly all urgent business.

"Time is of the essence, though, Fronto."

"What of the funeral feast?" Palmatus asked quietly from the doorway.

"To Hades with tradition. The girls are more important."

"Of course."

"What's the fastest way to Puteoli?" Balbus asked Fronto, wiping his sweaty brow.

"About two and a half days by horseback riding every available hour. We can shave off maybe half a day by taking a change of horses with us."

"Not so, gentlemen" the Jewish physician smiled, twisting the half-eaten plum in his hand.

"How so?"

"A liburnian vessel with a good captain can cover the distance by sea in less than a day and a half if the weather is right and the ship unburdened."

Fronto turned to the man. "How do you know such things?"

"You think I walked here from Judea? I am a veritable fount of knowledge, good sir."

Balbus nodded. "It'll cost a fortune if we want the ship to ourselves without a cargo."

"We can pay it, Quintus. And even if those murderers are on their way already, we might be able to get there first. If not, we'll have time to prepare for them." He scowled. "Of course it'll take me half a day to stop bringing up my stomach contents when we get there, but it's still worth it."

He spun around and looked at the others.

"None of you owe us anything."

"You're still paying me" Masgava replied with a half-smile.

"Well, if you're paying?" added Palmatus with a grin.

"Thank you. But you, Elijah, I think we are parting ways."

The physician pursed his lips. "I will not take part in your fight, I'm afraid, no. Hippocrates himself bade those of the medical profession pledge to keep all from harm and, while I can see the need for a judicious bending of that rule, I will not break it to kill outright. But I have a duty to care for the young girl until such time as she sees fit to grace us with her light once more. I presume you are not amenable to leaving her in my care in the city?"

Balbus shook his head vehemently.

"Then I will have to join you on your journey, if only for her sake. I can keep her and the ladies company while you soldiers of Rome fight the good fight."

Fronto nodded, his face serious, reflecting that of his older friend. "In that case, Palmatus, consider yourself on a retainer. You do a good job and you can name your own damn wage… same for you Masgava. Medicus? I'll leave it to Balbus to make any arrangements with you, but I'm grateful for your help. And you Jews are supposed to have a direct line to some powerful God if I remember rightly. I'll take it kindly if you'll throw a word in with him for us, since mine seem to be suspiciously absent these days."

The physician smiled indulgently.

"Palmatus: take the good medicus here down to the emporium - he seems to know about the journey. Don't come back until you find a ship's master with a fast vessel who'll take us to Puteoli without cargo. Passage for seven people and seven horses plus personal belongings. Pay whatever you need to but try not to let him know that's the case! At least make an
effort
to look choosy."

The former legionary nodded and crossed to the Jewish physician.

"Galronus and Masgava? Start packing up everything we'll want to take with us. We don't need anything we can't fit on horseback. I want
both
my swords, though."

The two men, without bothering to acknowledge the order, moved across the garden towards the armoury.

"Balbus: I suggest you get yourself and Balbina ready for the journey. I'll deal with the beasts. Bucephalus is in Puteoli and we've only got a couple of nags in the stable here, so I'm going to go and see a man about a horse. Six horses, in fact."

* * * * *

"We go for Fronto. Break house. Kill men."

Berengarus' piercing green eyes almost boiled with the desire to cause harm as he glared at the man standing before him, the other's wisps of wild, white hair only reaching up to the big German's chest.

"You are impatient, my gargantuan friend. I understand, but impetuousness carries dangers. We cannot afford to be so impulsive that we leap into the pit without checking for wolves first. All things in good time. When I took your coin you agreed that I would do the thinking."

"Think faster."

The grey, flickering tongue licked the lips in the parchment-skinned face as Tulchulchur, the monster of Vipsul, smiled. "Vengeance is best appreciated slowly and laboriously, else it is over too fast my friend. And vengeance completed is a hollow victory. When Fronto lies skinned and broken before you, you will have no idea what to do next. Achieving such a goal robs a man of his ongoing purpose."

"What you know?"

Tulchulchur laughed - a sound like a hundred tomb gates creaking. "The first man I ever killed was my own father, for what he did to me. It took him nine days to die and he screamed for merciful death every moment of every hour of every day. I was quite distraught when he finally passed. I had such plans for each day of two weeks and missed out on the opportunity to test some theories as to the body's limits. Fortunately, though robbed of my young life's goal, I found my purpose in those nine days. I discovered the one thing that made me whole - the one thing at which I truly excelled. Those remaining dozen tests were carried out again and again as I found new meat worthy of my knives, and the astounding thing was that I discovered there is no limit to possibilities. Every month until I was incarcerated I discovered a new way to cause agony."

He grinned. "Fronto will die, but I fear that so will you when you no longer have him to focus upon."

"Hurry" was all the enormous German said, turning and stamping away into the next room.

The monster of Vispul watched his 'employer' leave the room and shrugged nonchalantly. Berengarus was still young. He would learn.

Tulchulchur - a Demonic appellation he had given himself upon abandoning his birth name - had heard some fantastic estimates of how many men he had killed during his decades-long spree up and down the lands of Etruria and Latium. Some said two thousand, even.

He knew better.

Though he had long ago lost count, he could still attempt a good estimate. Never more than one person a month - until now, but then he had some time to catch up on - and never within fifty miles of the previous victim. One a month was enough; sometimes he could make them last three weeks and more, anyway. To some extent it irked him that he had become infamous for sheer volume. It was the
quality
of the work that mattered, not the
quantity
, and he was a master. Quantity would always come if you had the time.

He turned back to the poor, broken thing on the table. He was rushing this, and that rankled as much as anything else. Berengarus' impatience was causing him to hurry when he should be savouring. But then this victim hardly fitted his usual profile. It felt strange to be carrying out his art on such a man, but then this was business - not pleasure.

The slave gave a whimper as his remaining eye noted the tormentor turn towards him again. The only other figure in the room stepped forward into the lamp light: a youngish man, scarred and worn. An ex-soldier, clearly, but with a leer and hungry eyes that send a shudder up the spine of all that beheld him, the young man gestured at the slave.

"You really believe he knows anything else? He would have sold out his mother and his children by now."

Tulchulchur tutted and waved his hook-pointed knife back and forth in an admonishing fashion. "He knows more yet. I can see it in his eye - that's why I left one. And when he has divulged his last secret, even that is not necessarily a reason to stop. Any skill requires regular practice or one becomes rusty. I have languished in captivity for some time. I have already made nine mistakes."

"Mistakes?"

"You are young; a novice - you do not recognise mistakes. I nicked a major blood vessel in one of my early cuts. I tied it together with the skill of a surgeon, you know? But something is not quite right with the repair. He will bleed to death into his own belly in less than half a day. Had I kept in practice that would never have happened. I missed my knives in the carcer. Had I still had them, Berengarus would have fewer recruits, but I would be in better practice."

He gave a chuckle like a cold wind blowing through a catacomb.

"Would you like to help, legionary Modestus?"

"Don't call me that."

Five feet away, strapped to the table at wrists, ankles and neck, Nestor - Balbus' Greek body slave and a close and respected member of his household for more than two decades - tried to speak. He wanted to say '
no
'. He wanted to say '
please, for the love of mercy, let me die
'. Unfortunately it had not taken long for the evil wraith to discover that he could write in four languages and that had been when his tongue had gone, and then his teeth one by one. Even that had been individual agonies - not the whole extraction he had once had for a rotten tooth, but each one broken carefully off at the gum line.

He had wanted to die now for two hours, but the wraith would not let him.

"Your eye tells me you know more. Let us recap and then we will discuss what else we should hear."

Nestor felt his mind reel with the possibilities of what might come next. He had tried to free his arms from the stone table in the kitchens of Balbus' town house, but the bastards had secured him so tightly he could hardly breathe, let alone move.

"Your master and Fronto, along with their pet Gaul and some others about whom you are realistically vague - including what appears to be a black-skinned gladiator - have left the city by ship and are bound for villas above Massilia - the ones I see the construction plans of in the office - with all the supplies they need to wait us out. Their remaining family members are there."

The creature wafted close, bringing with it the smell of stale sweat, halitosis and decay, and peered with pale, rheumy eyes down at the terrified slave's face.

"No, no, no, no, no. No, my Greek friend. I do wish you would cooperate."

The wraith sighed as the hook point of the knife caressed the cheek and hooded lid below Nestor's remaining eye.

"I don't kill
Greeks
! I am, despite my reputation, very particular, you know? I only ever killed Romans, the way any good Etruscan would if he be true to his heritage. You should, by rights, be standing as I, over the body of a putrefying Roman, exploring his innards and making him wail and shriek for every hour your land has been under his boot."

Tulchulchur heard the legionary behind him cough meaningfully and realised he had drifted into reverie.

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I do what I do for the love of doing it. If I had slit the last Roman from balls to brain, I would find a new culture upon which to prey, but I do like to add levels of meaning to my work. It gives it a sense of completeness."

Nestor scribbled something desperately on the slate by his left hand with the piece of chalk. The monster of Vipsul peered at the writing, somewhat messy due to the level of constriction of the hand.

"I don't think so. You see, you know your master as well as any man, and your lies might fool me, were I hunting Balbus. However, you do
not
know Fronto, and you have no idea how to lie convincingly about him. You'll have to do better than that. For that, I think I will have your nose."