Catilina nodded.
“We need to find a way to get my father there.”
“That’s a problem,” Salonius sighed. “Varro wants to send Cristus to the Gods personally. Your father wants it all done according to military law, with a trial and an execution, if necessary. He’s never going to let Varro have Cristus, and Varro’s never going to let your father have him.”
Catilina frowned.
“So what we need to do is to make sure we get Cristus to a specific place, then Varro a few minutes later, and father a few minutes after that. Tricky…”
Salonius laughed. “Tricky? Impossible, I’d say.”
The elegant lady, wrapped up against the night air, pulled her cloak tighter.
“Nothing is impossible, Salonius. It’s all in the timing. Father will know we’re gone by now. It’ll take him perhaps half a day to put everything in order and follow on, and I doubt he’ll set forth at sunset, so we’ve got the best part of a day on him.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Well…”
Catilina stopped, mid-sentence, as Varro came hurtling out of the darkness, crouched almost double.
“Wha..?”
Before she managed to voice her thoughts, Varro clasped his hand over her mouth and, turning to Salonius, raised his eyebrows. Salonius frowned and, very slowly and very quietly, began to draw his sword from its sheath. Catilina pushed the captain’s hand away and pointed out into the darkness. Varro nodded and held up three fingers.
Salonius frowned again and tugged out part of his black tunic, pointing at it? Varro shook his head and pointed at the lush, green grass by his feet. Even in the flickering light of the fire, Varro caught the curse his companion silently mouthed. As he slowly drew his own blade, Catilina drew a narrow and wicked-looking dagger from her belt.
Varro held up his hand to indicate that she should stay by the fire and the two soldiers moved off into the darkness at a crouch. Salonius paused for a moment and looked into the darkness. Varro glanced at him and then used his free hand to motion around the back of the villa ruins. The young man nodded and they both moved off once again.
The terrain within the walls was rough and difficult, consisting of the rubble of collapsed or demolished ancillary buildings long overgrown with grass and weeds, all interspaced between hidden rabbit holes that lay in wait for unwary feet and thick brambles and thorns. Some care was required to pick a clear way through the ‘open’ ground.
Salonius stumbled among the rocks for a moment, almost losing his footing as he felt his ankle wrench, when Varro suddenly grasped his shoulder and hauled him to the ground where he landed painfully among ruined brickwork. The captain pointed ahead and Salonius raised his head to look over a fallen lintel. In the pale moonlight, two men were stepping slowly and deliberately among the tangle in their direction.
Salonius swallowed and held up two fingers. Varro nodded and made indicated that the third figure had likely taken the other direction and was moving around the back of the ruined mansion. All to their advantage, since it gave them even odds; better than even, given that their prey were not expecting them.
At a gesture from Varro, Salonius shuffled as quietly as possible down the mound of rubble, being sure to remain out of the enemy’s sight behind the jumbled stonework. The enemy were still around twenty yards away from them and all sounds of movement were somewhat disguised by the twittering of the bats and the shuffling of the ruin’s resident wildlife. At the base of the rubble heap, the young man looked up. They were now at the outer wall of the crumbled residence itself; the wall along which the two men were creeping and closing on them.
Here, the residence’s outer wall had collapsed in the centre, leaving a ‘v’ shaped breech. The room beyond had once been magnificent, a grand hall of some kind, colonnaded along both sides and with a decorated facade at the far end, with friezes and carvings above a pair of now long-tarnished bronze doors. The roof had fallen in many years ago and the moonlight playing among the columns of the colonnades created interesting patches of starkly lit faded glory among the stygian gloom.
Varro pointed up to the breech in the wall, back at his own chest, and nodded. Salonius’ eyes followed his finger up to the crumbling masonry and went wide. He returned his gaze to the captain, who grinned at him. He mouthed the word ‘seriously?’
Varro nodded and slipped over to the fallen wall, grasping the stonework and climbing with care and held breath. Salonius watched nervously as small flecks of plaster and showers of dust dropped to the grass. What the hell was he doing? Swallowing, he shrank back behind the protection of a huge piece of fallen lintel. The two men were getting tremendously close now and both he and Varro were aware that they had to dispose of these soldiers silently and quickly. Sighing gently, he drove his sword point-first into the grass.
He raised his eyes once more and saw Varro about twelve feet from the ground, leaning around the crumbled edge of the wall. He was levering a large, loose stone from the wall. As the stone came away in a small shower of mortar, he grinned in triumph and hefted the heavy block. Moments passed as the two men came ever closer and finally, after what seemed like an age passing in slow motion, they drew level. Salonius glanced up once more and, at a nod from Varro, tensed and leapt.
The captain released his grip on the heavy stone he held and with deadly accuracy, the missile plummeted around ten feet and hit the front most soldier square on the top of the head. There was a quiet but audibly sickening noise and the man’s skull exploded under the weight, shattering his spine in multiple locations and killing him instantly. The remains of the body collapsed to the ground with a gently thud.
His companion did not have time to register the impact, let alone scream. As the stone his the first man, so, from his perch among the rocks, Salonius landed on the back of the second man, his left hand going round the man’s head and muffling any sounds he might try to issue. The hand was, in the event, unnecessary, as the impact drove the man to the floor and knocked all breath and sense from him. Before the soldier could recover, he placed his right hand on the back of the man’s skull and repositioned his left on the jaw. Heaving with all the tremendous strength in his powerful arms, he twisted the man’s head through one hundred and eighty degrees with a nasty cracking noise, staring in disgust at the strange sight of the glazed eyes now settled on him accusingly. He dropped the body and, retrieving his blade, stood and walked over to the wall. Varro descended the first few feet slowly and then dropped the last distance to the ground, landing with his knees bent.
“We’ve got to get that other one before he gets round to Catilina” the young man said quietly, pointing through the ruins of the building to the imagined figure of the third soldier creeping through the undergrowth. Varro nodded and gestured along the wall.
“You go round; I’ll go through” he whispered. “Hopefully we can catch him by surprise.”
Salonius frowned.
“Do we need surprise all that much now?”
Varro gestured for him to lower his voice.
“There’s more out there. If Cristus sent men out to find us, there’ll be at least a squad out there; probably more.”
Salonius nodded. Of course, he was completely correct. With a last glance and Varro, he began to pick his way quietly along the ruined wall in the direction from which they’d come. Varro watched him go and then turned into the darkness of the ruins.
“You’ve stayed up for twenty years,” he addressed the mouldy walls of the great vestibule quietly. “Try not to fall on me tonight.”
With a deep breath, he set off through the wide, colonnaded room. Fragments of masonry and broken roofing tiles lay scattered here and there among the dark grass and shrubs. Picking his way as carefully as he could, he thanked the Gods for the moonlight that made this a less than life-threatening trip. At the far end a set of wide, shallow steps led up to the great bronze doors. Trying to picture the palace as it had once been, he realised that this must have been the grand entry way into the villa itself. The various doorways that led from this room to either side, beneath the arches of the colonnade would open onto waiting rooms, cloakrooms and other public spaces. The facade before him at the top of the steps heralded the entrance to the private areas of the villa.
Climbing the five steps, he was impressed at the quality of the marble used in their creation. The porphyry alone would be worth a year’s wage for a merchant of even above-average means. Sadly, many steps were now
