settled across the gardens.
‘I wonder now… what are you lot doing in my home?’ He looked around at the grounds, littered with bodies, the shafts of javelins poking out of the dirt. Divots of displaced soil and trampled flowerbeds.
‘What an awful mess you’ve made!’ He sighed. ‘On any other day, I’d be quite annoyed. But today… today has been a very good day. Soon — very soon now — something truly wonderful is going to happen. I will transform from a man to a god! And Rome will be showered with riches once more. Today… I defeated the last few men who doubted me. Two legions of fools, commanded by their foolish general… wiped out.’
‘Praetorians!’ He took a step closer. ‘My good men,’ he said with hands spread. ‘I hear you have done your duty well, defended my home against those you thought had come to ransack it. For that I thank you all… and I forgive you.’
Macro took a step back from his line of men, climbed the half-dozen steps up to the portico entrance. He saw Cato deep in conversation with the others.
‘But I’m afraid you have been misled… tricked,’ continued Caligula. ‘Tricked by officers who were in league with General Lepidus. Conspirators, fellow disbelievers, traitor-’
Macro put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Cato looked up. Caligula paused and an expression of irritation at the rude interruption flashed across his face. The three ranks of sweating, grim-faced and blood- spattered soldiers on the steps swivelled their heads to look up at Macro.
An entire battlefield frozen in a moment, silent, and every pair of eyes on him.
Macro shrugged then grinned. ‘Load of bollocks!’ he roared loudly.
It sounded like a breeze rustling through the small orchard of baby olive trees. But in fact, it was a ripple of gasps spreading among the men on both sides.
‘You’re not going to be a god. You’re just an idiot!’
That rustling breeze again. Followed by a silence. He could see the ‘o’s of mouths open, aghast, in every direction.
Stuff this.
He spotted an unused javelin on the floor nearby. And in one swift movement bent down, picked it up and hurled it towards Caligula. It arced lazily through the air, every pair of eyes on the seemingly endless trajectory of the wobbling wooden shaft and glinting iron tip until it dug into the dirt between Caligula’s planted feet with a dull thud.
Caligula stared wide-eyed at the shaft as it wobbled in front of him. He reached out for the wooden shaft, pulled it free of the ground and then tossed the javelin to one side. His face split with a grin as he laughed with delight.
‘Do you see now? No one can kill a god.’
Fronto’s men began to stir and fidget unhappily.
Macro backed up across the entrance portico towards the others, nearly tripping over and losing his footing on the legs of one of the dying.
‘A full pardon for all you men!’ cried out Caligula. ‘And a thousand sestertii for the one who brings me that man’s head!’
‘I think we’d better run!’ rasped Macro.
Cato nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’
Together they turned and headed back into the dimly lit halls of the palace as some of the quicker-witted Praetorian Guards began to climb the steps in hungry pursuit of their bounty.
CHAPTER 74
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Cato led them all back down the palace’s main hallway. They passed by the secret passageway they’d emerged from five minutes earlier.
‘Where are we going?’ called out Maddy.
‘There’s a slaves and merchants’ entrance on the far side of the palace. If we’re lucky, that idiot, Quintus, won’t have thought to block it off yet.’
‘He’s not exactly the sharpest arrow in the quiver,’ said Macro, puffing as they jogged.
‘Which is the main reason Caligula appointed him,’ Cato added. ‘If we’re quick, the section of Fronto’s men I posted there won’t yet know there’s a bounty on our heads.’
The hallway ended at the grand atrium and, as they emerged into it, they saw on the far side a dozen soldiers emerging from the hallway opposite. Not men of Fronto’s century but equites.
‘On the emperor’s orders, you there!.. Stay where you are!’ echoed a voice.
Cato hissed a curse. ‘Too late!’
‘We’re going back!’ cried Rashim. ‘Back to my cage!’
‘Be quiet!’ grunted Macro as they reversed into the flickering, lamp-lit gloom of the main passageway again.
‘This isn’t good,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re going to be trapped!’
‘My cage!’ trilled Rashim. ‘Going back! Yes! My cage! My Stone — ’
‘I said be quiet,’ Macro snapped, raising a threatening fist.
‘The Stone Men!’ said Maddy. ‘He’s right! Rashim… he could reboot them!’
The word didn’t translate well for her and Macro offered her a puzzled glare. ‘Put some boots on them? What the — ?’
She tried again. ‘Reactivate them! Awaken them!’
Cato nodded. ‘Yes…’ He turned to Rashim. ‘Can you do this? Make them take your orders?’
‘Oh yes, yes… I can make magic work!’
Cato pointed his sword back the way they’d come. ‘Then back! Back there quickly!’
They turned. Cato grasped Rashim’s painfully thin wrist and dragged him along as he jogged ahead with Macro. Bob bounded after them, Liam bouncing and groaning on his huge back. The girls kept pace either side, looking anxiously back over their shoulders at the clatter and jangle of armour and harnesses and the slap of pursuing nailed army sandals on the stone floor.
‘Here! It’s this one!’ shouted Sal suddenly. ‘This one!!’
She stepped towards the drape, pulled it aside to reveal the concealed passageway. They stepped in just as some more voices challenged them from further up the main hallway.
‘IN! IN! IN!’ screamed Rashim.
They stepped through the opened oak doors into the darkness inside. Bob placed Liam down on the floor, retrieved the locking bar from outside and brought it in. Then he quickly pushed the heavy doors to. He slid the locking bar across both sets of looped handles on the inside. The doors were secure for the moment.
A candle still flickered beside Rashim’s opened cage and by its light they saw the Stone Men, standing where they’d been left, calmly watching the commotion going on around them.
Rashim shuffled over to the nearest of them, out of breath and struggling to keep on his bow legs and arched feet. Sal hurried over and held an arm before he collapsed.
‘Thank you…’ he whispered. He turned to the Stone Man in front of him.
‘You are… you are in full diagnostic m-mode? Yes?’
‘Affirmative. All systems are nominal.’
Cato whispered to Macro in the dark. ‘I’ve only ever heard their leader talk,’ he said. ‘And only on one occasion.’
‘They sound like devils,’ Macro growled suspiciously.
‘I… I wish to talk to you.’ Rashim’s voice seemed to have settled. A lower, calmer timbre; a less manic delivery. ‘What is your current… mission status?’
‘I have no stated mission.’
‘That’s very good. And tell me, who was your last authorized user?’
‘Temporary-User Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Also known as Caligula.’
