Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands (7 page)

“As my lady wishes.” With a bow, he departed.

She was not surprised when Marcus quickly assigned the men of her guard to every point of entry in the suite, except the massive and ornately furnished main bedroom. As in the palace in Rome, Hercules would serve as her guard in her personal chambers.

While Marcus, Septimus, and Paulus made sure all was secure, Valeria and Pelonius waited in the open courtyard of the peristylium that was part of her suite. The scribe appeared lost in thought, and she chose not to interrupt him.
 

When Marcus returned with Paulus and Septimus, Valeria asked, “Would one of you explain what really happened at dinner tonight?”

“You made an enemy,” Marcus told her bluntly after taking a quick look about to double check that none of the general’s men or slaves were present, having dismissed them all himself. “A very deadly one.”

She shook her head, bewildered. “What general worthy of the name would take such offense?”

“One who has his heart set upon becoming Caesar,” Marcus told her. “He’s rumored to have…accelerated his advancement by facilitating, shall we say, the demise of certain of his superiors to rise to his current rank, with promise of a seat in the Senate. That, so the story goes, is how he became a general at such an early age.”

“It certainly wasn’t for being a military genius,” Septimus spat.
 

“The Battle of Agrigentum,” Valeria said. “I could tell from your expressions when he mentioned it that something happened there.”

“Something happened, all right,” Septimus told her in a bitter voice. “The little shit had just taken over the legion before marching it into that battle, where he completely bungled everything. He got his men in a horrible spot, their backs against a deep river facing twice their number and enemy cavalry, to boot. It took four other legions to pull them out of that mess. It should have been an easy battle, as easy as any can be. But he turned it into a gods-be-damned nightmare.”

Valeria blinked, startled. That was more than Septimus typically spoke over the course of a week.

“Septimus’s brother was killed,” Marcus told her, “along with three thousand other men. Over half the legion commanded by Sergius was wiped out.”

“Septimus, I’m so sorry,” Valeria said. “I…I had no idea you had a brother. You never told me.”

“Thank you, princess,” Septimus told her, bowing his head before he went on. “It’s not a wound upon my soul that he died. He and I, we’ve always been soldiers. So was our father, and his father before him back as far as I know. The men of my family have been soldiers for generations. We don’t know anything else, and none of us ever expected to live forever, right? That’s just the way things are. But to die like that, to be wasted for nothing, and then for that bastard Sergius to return to a triumph in Rome, paraded around like a god…” As if realizing that he had said far too much, Septimus changed the subject. “Princess, I had best go check on those lazy sods in the baggage train. By your leave.”

“Of course,” she told him.

He came to stiff attention before turning and stalking off.

“He’ll be all right, won’t he?” Valeria asked as she watched him go. “He won’t do anything foolish?”
 

“He’s fine,” Marcus said. “He’s just not used to talking so much, is all.”

“But one thing I don’t understand about this battle: how could Sergius have received the honor of a triumph after such a disaster?”

“Because he’s a close friend of Senator Livius,” Marcus said. “Blame was directed elsewhere, at better and more honorable men who were dead and unable to defend their reputations.”

“And so General Sergius is likely an enemy of my father,” Valeria surmised.

“There’s no
likely
about it.” He leaned closer. “The other certainty is that we can’t protect you if you go galloping off like you did when we arrived. How hard do you think it would be for someone opposed to your father to engineer an unfortunate accident for you? And what do you think your father would do should that happen?” He shook his head slowly. “Princess, make no mistake: your death from anything other than old age will almost certainly start a civil war between the Emperor and his opponents in the Senate that would rip the Empire apart.”

She suppressed a shudder. Intrigue was an integral part of life for anyone of importance in Rome, but it wasn’t typically a life or death matter.
But you’re not in Rome anymore
, she told herself,
and Marcus only has a total of fifty men to protect you against an entire legion under the command of one of Father’s enemies
.
 

“Promise me that from now on,” Marcus said, “you’ll stay close and do as I or Septimus tell you. No more games. And for the sake of all the gods, don’t ever let Hercules stray from your side. I want him with you everywhere, even when you go to relieve yourself.”

She lowered her eyes. “I promise, Centurion Tullius.” Then she turned to Pelonius, who had remained uncharacteristically silent, staring off into some inner vista as he often did when he was deep in thought. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

He blinked, then focused on her, a disturbed expression on his face. “I hope that Sergius is all we have to worry about.”

Two words flashed through Valeria’s mind.
Dark Wolves
.

CHAPTER FIVE

The march to Camaracum went without incident until the afternoon of the second day, when the first bodies were found along the road. At the general’s invitation, the princess had ridden forward, escorted by Marcus, Septimus, Paulus, and Pelonius. Hercules came with her, stalking through the woods to one side, his tail twitching.

Sergius pointed at two bloody corpses on the side of the road. His men had taken up defensive positions farther up the road and to either side. “Take a look, if it please you, your highness.”

“You stay in your saddle,” Marcus told Valeria. After she nodded understanding, he dismounted from his horse and handed the reins to Paulus before kneeling down beside the nearest body. Septimus stayed where he was beside Valeria, his hand on the handle of his sword.
 

“Well, now we know the fate of your cavalrymen, general,” Marcus said grimly. Beside him, Atticus Cantius, his fellow centurion in Sergius’s legion, nodded in agreement. General Sergius looked on from horseback, wearing an expression of distaste.

The bodies had once been two soldiers, one of them the cavalry squadron’s signifier; the standard he had been carrying lay on the ground a few feet away. Both men had been torn limb from limb, the flesh stripped from the bones. The torsos were little more than empty cages of bones from pelvis to shoulder, the flesh, entrails, and organs all gone. Their chest armor had been bent back like the outer skin of a macabre fruit, and Marcus ran his fingers along the deep indentations in the metal from what he knew must have been made by teeth. Their helmets still held what was left of their skull caps, but the faces and lower parts of both skulls had been cracked open like eggs, the flesh, tongues, eyes, and brains eaten and the inside of the skulls licked clean. The carcass of a cavalry horse lay nearby. While most of its bones were still more or less attached, it, too, had been stripped of its flesh and innards, and a flock of vultures, having momentarily retreated before Sergius’s men, waited to finish picking it clean.
 

The soldiers looked around warily at the surrounding trees and the deep shadows that lurked beneath them.
 

Hercules hesitantly approached the remains of the horse. Taking a sniff, his great whiskers twitching, he growled.

“Who could have done this?” Valeria asked. “And why?”

“Not who, but
what
, princess.” Pelonius had dismounted and was squatting beside a large bone that was lying off to one side. Picking it up, he examined it closely as the two centurions joined him. “It’s an upper leg bone,” Pelonius said. “See these marks?” The bone sported a series of deep gouges. “Those were made by the teeth of a predator at least as big as a lion, and powerful enough to break the bone in two.” He held up the jagged, splintered end for everyone to see. The other half of the bone was missing. Standing up, he proceeded to move in a wide circle around the bodies, his eyes focused on the ground. “I think this may be as far as the cavalry detachment got.” He pointed at the northern side of the road. “The foliage there is trampled, branches and even small trees broken and knocked over, and the ground has been churned by what must have been dozens of animals, large ones by the look of it.” Turning to the opposite side, he went on, “And there you see where those animals went.” He knelt down to run his fingers over a spot in the dirt alongside the road. “Horses went this way.” He got to his feet and turned to face Sergius. “I believe your men were ambushed here, then pursued into the forest.”

Centurion Cantius, who had moved off to one side, called out as he pointed at the ground, “Look here. Lions did this, plain as day.”

The others, including Sergius, who still sat his horse, came closer and looked where the centurion was pointing.

“Tell me that’s no lion track,” Cantius said to Pelonius.

“All right, centurion,” Pelonius said, “that’s no lion track. It’s roughly the same size, but lions — and wolves, for that matter — leave prints with four toes ahead of the pad of the foot. This print, as you can see, clearly has five.”
 

Cantius laughed. “Well, it’s a bear, then. They put five toes on the ground.”

Pelonius shook his head. “Both the toes and the pad are longer in proportion to the width than you will see on any bear, front feet or rear.”

“Then what is it?” Sergius snapped.

Pelonius said nothing.

“Dark Wolves,” Valeria breathed. “You’re all afraid to say it.”

“I’m sorry, princess,” the general said through clenched teeth, “but I don’t have time for half-forgotten legends stirred up by a dying man in full delirium. Centurion!” he called to Cantius as he rode off toward the head of the column. “Resume the march. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

“But sir,” Marcus asked, glancing off into the forest where the horses fled, “aren’t you going to search for your other men?”

“We’ll mount a search once we secure the town,” Sergius growled.

As Sergius’s soldiers quickly moved back into formation for march, Marcus turned to the scribe. “What are you thinking, Pelonius?”

“Obviously more than one animal did this,” Pelonius said, a worried look creasing his face, “but I’m not sure how many.”

“And how do you know all this?” Paulus asked.

Pelonius smiled. “You would be surprised what you can learn from scrolls.”

Marcus snorted. “You didn’t learn any of this from scrolls, old man.” At the confused looks from Paulus and Valeria, he added, “Pelonius wasn’t always a scribe.” Valeria opened her mouth to speak, but Marcus held up his hand. “Later. We need to get moving.” With a quick glance at the sun, he added, “We should reach Camaracum in another two hours.”

With one last look at the bodies and the tracks on either side of the road, Pelonius muttered, “I hope we have enough men.”

***

The closer the legion came to the village, the more bodies (all of them civilians) the soldiers found. Most were on the blood-covered road, but some had either run or been dragged off into the trees. Just as with the first two victims, the flesh and organs had been stripped away. Countless vultures and crows were feasting on the corpses, with more circling above in a dense cloud of dark wings. Those on the road took to the air as the lead soldiers approached, squawking their indignation that their meal had been interrupted. The birds off to either side looked up to stare with cold, pitiless eyes at the procession of Romans before they returned their attention to their bounty.
 

And everywhere were more of the mysterious tracks. When Valeria asked Pelonius how many of the beasts might be on the prowl, he scowled and said, “Too many.”

The worst thing, Valeria thought as they rode steadily closer to the doomed village, was the pungent reek of rotting flesh. The battle hardened soldiers and Pelonius barely wrinkled their noses, for the stench of the dead was something with which they were intimately familiar. Valeria had experienced the smell before, particularly when Pelonius had taken her to see the slave pens, but it had been nothing like this. The odor was so strong it was making her sick to her stomach, but she bit back her bile. She would not embarrass herself before her companions, nor would she provide any impromptu entertainment for General Sergius, who primly held a cloth over his nose and mouth.

Hercules padded along beside her, his twitching tail held low, nearly brushing the ground. He was nervous, his head snapping around at every sound that reached them beyond the squabbling of the birds and the footsteps of the soldiers and horses, and the hackles on his neck stood high.
 

The soldiers marched on in grim silence, their normally neat formation deformed by the need to step over and around the bodies strewn upon the road.

Camaracum was protected by a stone wall that rose twelve feet high, but it had clearly not afforded any protection to the inhabitants. The slaughter within was plainly visible through the main gate, which stood wide open.

“Stay here, princess,” Marcus said after Sergius ordered the first century into the town. “I’m going forward to see what—”

“Don’t leave me here,” she said, reaching out to take his wrist. “I told you that I’d do whatever you ordered, Marcus, and I meant it. But please, whether we go in or remain here, let us all stay together.”

“She’s right,” Septimus muttered. “I don’t like this, not one bit.” He looked at Marcus. “Your place is beside her.”

Pelonius and Paulus both nodded in agreement as the other men of the guard arranged themselves in a defensive square around the princess.

“Very well,” Marcus said. “Do you want to go into the town or stay here?”

She bit her lip, then said, “I want to go in. We need to find out what sort of monsters did this…and stop them.”

With a nod, Marcus gave the necessary commands to her escort, which tightened up their formation so they could ride through the gate.