pressed into it. 'Remember your training,' said the officer. 'Don't let it go out!'
I moved forward, lowering my head and holding the taper as steadily as I could; my hand shook. I entered the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me I heard a clank and a grunt-the noise of Davus's helmet striking the lintel.
We proceeded at a steady pace. The tunnel was level at first, then began gradually to descend. A framework of timbers supported the walls and the roof. In most places the tunnel was barely wide enough for two men to pass each other. At a few points, where it threaded a course between two rock faces, it constricted even more. The roof was never quite high enough for me to stand fully upright. I had to walk slightly stooped. Poor Davus practically had to bend himself in two.
The tunnel stopped descending and became level again. The pace slackened. Occasionally we came to an abrupt standstill. Men bumped into each other. Tapers were dropped or blown out, then quickly relit from another. Without them the darkness would have been absolute.
We stopped, then shuffled forward; stopped again, then shuffled forward. The atmosphere was humid and stale. Smoke from the tapers burned my eyes. A cold clamminess settled over me. I breathed dank air into my lungs.
The tunnel began almost imperceptibly to ascend. We came to another standstill. Time passed. No one spoke.
At last, in the absence of orders or movement, some of the men began to whisper. The sound was like hissing heard though a trumpet. Occasionally, from the vaguely lit stretches before me or behind, I heard grim laughter. What sort of gruesome banter were the men passing back and forth? Meto's sense of humor had changed much in the years since he became a soldier; it had grown more vulgar and cruel, more mocking of god and man alike. Laughing in the face of Mars, he called it; whistling past Hades. Sometimes, Meto said, with certain death looming ahead-his own death or his enemy's-a man had no choice but to scream or laugh. What would happen if a single man in the tunnel began to scream and panic? I thought about that and was thankful for the release of an occasional burst of harsh laughter.
A chain of whispers came from the head of the line. The young soldier in front of me turned and said, 'This is where we wait while the sappers dig out the last bit of earth. Pass it on.' I relayed the message to Davus. When I turned back, the young soldier ahead was still looking at me. His voice had been familiar; I suddenly realized that he was the one who had been talking about me behind my back out in the hollow. By the flickering light of his taper, he looked hardly older than a child.
His scrutiny was intense, but not unfriendly. His eyes were unnaturally wide. He looked nervous.
I smiled. 'Since you were wondering, I happen to be sixty-one years old.'
'What?'
'I overheard you ask your friend before we entered the tunnel. `How old is that one?' you said.'
'Did I?' He looked chagrined. 'Well, you could be my grandfather. Or even my great-'
'Enough of that, young man!'
He grinned lopsidedly. 'Maybe Fortune put me next to you. Marcus said the gods must like you, if you've managed to grow-as old as you have-making your living with a sword. What do you think? Maybe a bit of your good luck will rub off on me today.'
I smiled. 'I'm not sure I have much luck left to spare right now.'
Suddenly a deep, muffled boom! ran through the tunnel, as if lightning had struck the earth nearby. I felt it in my ears and toes and teeth. Another boom! sounded, and another.
'What-what's that?' The young soldier's voice broke. He rolled his eyes up. 'Where's it coming from?'
'It's the battering-ram,' I said, trying to keep my voice steady. 'We must be directly under the wall.'
The soldier jerked his head. 'They warned us about that. But I didn't think… it would be so…'
Boom! A trickle of sand fell from the rafter overhead. The soldier clutched my forearm.
'It's far off,' I said. 'Hundreds of feet away. The vibration travels through the stones. It seems closer than it is.'
'Of course. It's far away.' He loosened his grip and released me. He had clutched my forearm hard enough to leave nail marks.
The booming stopped, then resumed; stopped, then resumed again, over and over. The tunnel roof just above my head seemed particularly affected. Trickles, then clods, then lumps of earth fell down on me. Occasionally the young soldier gripped my arm impulsively.
The air became more dank and foul and smoky. Our tapers burned to nothing; fresh ones were passed down to us from the tunnel entrance. Pails of earth and stones were passed back from the sappers at the head of the line. 'They said we wouldn't have to get our hands dirty,' joked the man behind Davus in mock-complaint. The young soldier giggled nervously. Hours seemed to pass.
Finally the sappers began to pass back shovels and other digging tools. Then the sappers themselves began to depart, heading back up the line toward the entrance. They squeezed past me easily enough, but getting past Davus proved to be a challenge. 'What in Hades is that giant doing in here?' muttered one of them.
Davus whispered in my ear. 'It'll be soon now, won't it, father-in-law?'
'I imagine so.'
I tried to gird myself for what lay ahead. I had never been a soldier, but years ago I had fought beside Meto in his first battle, at Pistoria, where Catilina met his end; and only months ago I had witnessed the final hours of the siege of Brundisium and had very nearly died there. I had some idea of the dangers and the terrors that might lie ahead. But like every soldier, I imagined another scenario. Perhaps all would go smoothly. We would catch the Massilians unaware, their attention diverted by the battering-ram, exactly according to Trebonius's strategy. We would encounter virtually no resistance and open the gates with hardly a struggle. Trebonius would make his triumphant entry without bloodshed. The Massilians would see the hopelessness of resistance; they would lay down their arms. Davus and I would shrug off our armor, slip away, and search the city until we found Meto, alive and well and very surprised to see us. With the city taken, Meto's secret mission would be at an end, and he would surrender himself to Trebonius, present proof of his loyalty to Caesar, and all would be well.
How many others in the tunnel at that moment were comforting themselves with equally optimistic scenarios of the hours to come?
Boom! Boom! Boom! A hard, heavy clump of earth fell on my head, knocking me forward against the young soldier. Davus gripped my shoulder to steady me.
Then, from ahead of us, there came another sound. It was nothing like the thunder of the battering-ram. It was a continuous, unending crescendo. A roar.
My ears tingled. I thought I heard screams, but they were drowned out by the incessant booming and swallowed by the sudden roar.
A burst of cool wind struck my face. The wind blew out the taper in my hand, and every taper ahead of me. We were plunged into darkness. The wind continued to blow, carrying the smell of water.
There was no mistaking the screams now, weirdly distorted by the tunnel so that they combined into a kind of monstrous groan, like the roar of spectators at the circus. I heard the explosive crack and crash of rafters being broken into splinters.
My skin turned hot. My heart pounded. By reflex I steeled myself. A part of me knew it would do no good.
The wall of water struck.
V
In an instant, faster than thought, the young soldier was thrown against me like a stone from a catapult, knocking the breath out of me.
Then all was a roar of chaos and confusion. It seemed to me that I stood on a trapdoor that had suddenly opened, but instead of falling down I fell up. From behind, something circled my chest and lifted me. Somehow I was lodged against the roof of the tunnel, in a cavity of some sort, above the rushing flood, facing down on it. The darkness was not quite absolute; a single flame still flickered from somewhere.
Just beneath me, I gazed into the dark, glittering eyes of the terrified young soldier. He clung to me as the
