Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands (8 page)

Hoping no one would notice, Valeria reached out and took Paulus’s hand.
 

“It’s okay to be frightened,” he whispered.

“Are you?”

“I’m terrified.”

She managed a momentary smile. “I’m glad I’m not the only one.”

He gave her hand a tight squeeze before letting go. “Come on,” he said, nudging his horse forward, following after Marcus and Septimus.

The town was an abattoir. The streets were strewn with maggot-riddled bodies, and the air was thick with flies. Carrion birds and rats still worried off the bits of rotting flesh that continued to cling to the bones. The soldiers even came upon a few wolves and a bear, all of which were quickly put to death by the archers, but even the lowliest soldier realized that such a motley collection of beasts could not have wrought such devastation.

Sergius ordered a house to house search, and the soldiers quickly and efficiently worked their way through every dwelling and public place, looking for any survivors or the killers. But, in the end, none of either were found.

With Marcus’s grudging permission, Valeria looked through a few of the homes, hoping to find some clue, but she only came away with more questions.
 

“Look at this,” she said as they entered a home of what must have been one of the more well-to-do citizens. The ingredients for a meal were arranged neatly in the kitchen, except for the tail of a fish that had been left behind on the floor after something had eaten the rest of it. In one of the bedrooms, clothes had been laid out, as if someone had been preparing to dress, and the adornments in the room were pristine, undisturbed. The study, by contrast, looked as if it had been struck by a whirlwind. Furniture was overturned, statues and urns lay shattered upon the marble floor, which itself was spattered with blood, as were the walls. Valeria picked up a piece of parchment from amidst the chaos. Whoever had lived here had been writing a letter to a business associate in Rome when whatever had happened…happened. The neat script trailed away in a black scrawl where the quill had ripped through the parchment. The ink well was on the floor halfway across the room, while the quill was embedded in the desk in a spatter of dried blood. “The people here must have had no idea they were in peril until the beasts were upon them.”

“This makes no sense,” Marcus growled as he stepped out on the balcony that overlooked the main street that ran through the town. “An entire pride of lions or a pack of wolves couldn’t do all this!”

“Nor would they,” Pelonius agreed. “The animals we are familiar with would never attack a village, especially one this large with a defensive wall. But there’s something else that I find odd, something I didn’t see where we found the first bodies.”

“And what would that be?” Marcus asked as he returned from the balcony.

“This.” Pelonius pointed to a pile of dried excrement on the floor near the entryway.
 

“What’s so special about a little pile of shit?” Septimus asked. “They’re all over the place.”

Pelonius looked at him. “And you don’t find that odd?”

“Well…” Septimus frowned. “I guess it wasn’t from all the people shitting themselves in fright.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Pelonius said. “This is baboon dung, and I have seen dung from monkeys, as well.”

“Baboons and monkeys?” Paulus asked, his face contorting in confusion.

“The forests in Aquitania are home to a great many of both,” Pelonius explained.
 

“I haven’t seen or even heard any monkeys since the day after we left Augusta Viromanduorum,” Valeria recalled.

“I know,” Pelonius said. “And that is more than passing strange.”

Marcus shook his head. “Baboons and monkeys might have left all this mess behind, but they didn’t kill these people.”

“No, they didn’t.” Pelonius frowned. “I think the predators followed them here.”

“What do you mean?” Valeria asked.

“Let me show you.” Pelonius gestured for her to follow, and he led her and the others back downstairs and out to the street where Hercules waited, crouched like the fabled Sphinx of Old Egypt near the door. “We’ve only been looking for, and at, people. But look here.” He drew the sword he had acquired before they set out on this journey and used it to lever aside some human bones to reveal the remains of a smaller body underneath.
 

“A gods-damned monkey,” Septimus whispered.

“What bits are left of it,” Marcus agreed.

“And here.” Moving to another pile of maggot-covered bodies, Pelonius pushed the human detritus aside to reveal a skull sporting an elongated snout and wickedly long incisors. “A baboon. I believe if we look more closely, we will find many more.” He turned to Valeria. “Princess, I believe we should go back out the main gate and search the approaches to the village. I think we’ll find—”

“Princess Valeria.” She and the others looked up as a junior officer on horseback rode up.
 

“What is it?” she asked.

“The general asked me to inform you that the legion is reforming for march. A trail of destruction leads away from the town’s rear gate and into the forest, and the general means to follow it.”

“You’re not going to look for the missing cavalrymen, then?” Marcus asked.

The officer shook his head. “The general believes them dead. We will search for their bodies when we return.”

“Thank the general for his kindness in informing me,” Valeria told him.
 

The soldier nodded, then turned and rode back to where the legion was assembling near the far end of the town.

Pelonius frowned. “Pursuing these beasts will place us all in very great peril.”

“We could return to Augusta Viromanduorum,” Paulus suggested.

“No, we can’t,” Pelonius said quietly. “The only safety we have is in numbers, so we must stay with General Sergius and his legion. The fifty men of the princess’s guard wouldn’t be able to protect her against the things that did this, should we be ambushed along the road back to the city. Remember what happened to Sergius’s cavalry detachment.”

“Much as I hate to say it,” Septimus grumbled, “he’s right.”

Marcus sighed. “Well, let’s be about it, then.”

***

The legion marched out the rear gate and continued into the forest to the southeast of the town. They followed a path of trampled grass and foliage, much of it stained with blood, and trees whose bark had been stripped up to thrice the height of a man, and from which limbs had been ripped and torn. The path, for lack of a better term, was as wide as forty or fifty men abreast, and it seemed to swallow the men of the legion row by row as they ventured forth.

Pelonius, his jaw tight, shook his head as he and the others closest to the princess took their horses into the gaping maw formed by the devastated trees.
 

“What’s wrong?” Valeria whispered. The forest around them was utterly silent.

“It’s late afternoon,” he told her in a quiet voice. “The good general would have his men, and you, in the middle of the forest when night falls, when we can hardly see what might be coming upon us during the day.”

“We’ll just have to pray that the gods protect us,” Paulus said.

“Bugger the gods,” Septimus said. “I wish Sergius had the sense to bring the entire legion with him.”

“It might not matter,” Pelonius concluded.

“Shut up, the lot of you,” Marcus hissed. “You’re scaring the princess. Keep your mouths closed and your eyes and ears open.”

“I’m not scared,” Valeria lied. Beside her, Hercules made an unhappy mewling sound.

Sergius kept his men on the move through most of the night. It wasn’t difficult to follow the path made by whatever they were hunting, but he finally called a halt after two horses and a score of men had fallen through a pile of deadfall over which the trail had led. One man had been killed, his head shattered on a rock, and both horses, their legs broken, had to be given mercy.

Half the soldiers faced outward and planted their shields, forming a defensive wall around the entire column, while the other half rested. Then the order had come down: no fires. The legion would wait in darkness for the coming of the dawn.

“You may as well get some sleep, princess,” Marcus told her after he had seen to the disposition of the men of her guard.

After a quiet, brittle laugh, she said, “Do you honestly think I could fall asleep out here?” The night was completely, utterly black. The large leaves of the trees that soared overhead blocked out even the tiniest bit of light from the moon and stars. She wasn’t sure how the soldiers could even find their manhood to relieve themselves. The thought made her giggle, and it was then that she realized how tired she really was.

“Lay down against that big cat of yours and you’ll fall asleep,” Marcus said. “You always do.”

“All right. I’ll try.” She knew where Hercules was as if by instinct, and curled up next to the hexatiger where he lay on the ground nearby. His fur was soft, his body was warm, and her nose filled with his comforting musky animal scent she had known most of her life. He began to rumble, the hexatiger equivalent of a cat purring. “Paulus?” she called softly.

“Here.” His voice was so close she thought he must have spoken directly into her ear.

Her hand found his, and she pulled him down beside her and snuggled herself up against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. “I wish you could take off your armor,” she whispered. “It doesn’t make a very good pillow, you know.”

“I don’t think our centurion would be very happy if I did,” he told her, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

Squirming until she was comfortable, she yawned once, twice, then fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER SIX

“Princess…”

The voice sounded to Valeria as if the speaker was somewhere far down a tunnel, and she was determined to ignore it. She had no desire to leave the warm darkness that enfolded her.

“
Princess, wake up!
”

The voice was accompanied by a good shake that brought her to full consciousness. Paulus was there, one hand on her shoulder, the other clasping the handle of his sword. The soft light that trickled through the trees above told her it was early morning, not long after dawn, and revealed the look of worry on Paulus’s face. The men of the legion were deathly quiet except for General Sergius, who was delivering a furious tongue lashing to someone.

“What’s happened?” she whispered.
 

“The legion’s
aquila
,” he said, referring to the sacred eagle standard that was carried by Roman legions. “It’s gone.”

She bolted upright. “What? How?” The eagle, she knew, was more than just a symbol to the men of the legion. It was, in a sense, the legion’s heart and soul. To be the aquilifer, the standard bearer who carried the eagle, was an immense honor, and for a legion to lose its eagle was beyond disgrace. In the many centuries that had passed since New Rome had been founded, four had been lost, all in battle. One had been recovered after a search that had lasted twenty years, another had been found after thirty-five, and the searches still continued for the remaining two, and would never stop until they were either found or Rome fell to dust. That was how sacred these gilded eagles were to the men of the Roman Army. And to have one somehow stolen right from under the nose of half a legion was unthinkable. Sergius could hardly suffer any greater humiliation, and his reputation and that of his family would be utterly destroyed. Unable to help herself, she looked at Septimus, who stood nearby. For once, his eyes were not darting everywhere. His gaze was fixed on the general, who continued to vent his fury at the mortified aquilifer.

Septimus turned to look at her, and she instantly felt ashamed. But instead of becoming angry, he shook his head and said, “Don’t look to me, girl. No matter how much I hate General Shit-For-Brains, I’d never touch the eagle.” He offered a lopsided smile. “It would have been worth nabbing it to get away from your snoring, though. Besides taking a piss, I’ve been right here the whole night, suffering your racket.”

Ignoring his barb, she asked, “Then what happened to it?” She got to her feet and shook out the stiffness in her body. These men were used to sleeping on the ground when they had to. She was not. Hercules, too, got to his feet, yawned, then stretched out his front paws and arched his back, as if in sympathy. Then he turned to face the commotion at the front of the column before sitting back on his rump.

“That is indeed the question,” said Pelonius, who came to stand beside her. “Marcus went to find out—”

Valeria was already striding past the soldiers around her, heading toward Sergius. Her protectors hurried to catch up. Hercules stared after her a moment, then got to his feet and followed after her, moving with languid strides through the soldiers, who stepped back to give the huge beast plenty of room.

By the time she reached the circle of men, the senior officers of the legion, who stood shamefaced before Sergius, the general had paused in his tirade, no doubt to recover his breath. The eagle’s standard bearer was on his knees, his head bowed low, tears glistening on his cheeks. Centurion Cantius stood beside him, his face a mask of stone and his sword in his hand.
 

As unobtrusively as she could, Valeria came to stand beside Marcus, who had been watching the drama play out.
 

“What happened?” she whispered.

“When the standard bearer took his turn to sleep, the eagle was here,” Marcus replied softly, nodding toward where the general and his aides had slept for the night, near the head of the column. “When he awoke, it was gone, as if it took flight in the dark. A dozen or more men, half of them awake at any given time, were nearly in arm’s reach of it.”

“And none of them could have taken it?”

He eyed her with a frown. “Even the lowliest, most foolish and idiotic soldier would never think about taking the eagle. And the men who were near it were anything but that.” With a sigh, he looked out at the forest beyond the shield wall formed by the soldiers, all of whom were staring outward, both in hopes of seeing some sign of who might have taken the eagle, and to avoid the shame evident in one another’s eyes. “And the gods wept,” Marcus murmured.