his throat froze him into immobility.
Arabus stepped out of the wall’s shadow, his face a mask of hatred in the moonlight, and Tornach gaped up at the two men with poorly disguised dismay. Marcus spoke quietly to the tracker, glancing through the river gate.
‘Arabus, check inside the gate to see if he brought any friends with him.’ While the tracker padded off reluctantly into the shadows, the Roman looked down at Prefect Caninus’s deputy and shook his head in disgust. ‘Yes, it is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? You send out a man with orders to kill an interfering outsider, and the next thing you know the pair of them have you at sword point. And you can be grateful that it’s me holding the blade to your throat and not your man there. I showed him your sacrificial altar in the fortress on the hill, and he was quick enough to spot his son’s belt hanging from it. If I leave you to his mercies you’ll last either no more than a few heartbeats or no less than a few thousand, depending on whether he wants to take his revenge quickly or slowly. Either way I’d say you’re not very likely to see the dawn.’ Arabus came out of the shadows, and shook his head. ‘You’re on your own, then, are you, with nobody to come to your aid? Although why you’d be opening such an out- of-the-way exit from the city is a little hard to understand…’ He paused, as if in thought, then nodded knowingly. ‘Unless of course you’re readying an exit for Obduro, a quiet and unwatched way out for a few men carrying heavy boxes, eh? Perhaps your master’s less interested in the grain than he’d have us believe, and more interested in a rather large sum of money that he’s got hidden in the city. The only thing I don’t know is exactly where it’s hidden.’
He waited in silence, holding the gladius to Tornach’s throat and watching as fear and uncertainty mounted in the other man’s eyes.
‘What do you want?’
He smiled down at his captive.
‘What do I want? From you? Nothing at all. I’ve got what I need. I can bring my soldiers here and wait for your master to blunder into our arms. I just thought we’d share a few moments together before I let this embittered man behind me loose on you. After all, you set him to kill me, so the least I can do is enjoy the irony of the fact that it’ll be his knife ending your life, don’t you think?’
Tornach looked over the Roman’s shoulder at his tracker, quailing at the look in Arabus’s eyes.
‘Let me live. Let me live and I’ll give you Obduro, and the gold.’
Marcus spoke without taking his eyes off the prostrate man.
‘How’s that, Arabus? You let Tornach here live, and in return you get a chance for revenge with his master?’
The tracker thought for a moment, then nodded and reached into his pack, which he’d left in the wall’s shadow. He stepped forward with a length of rope, and bent to wrap it around Tornach’s ankles before speaking gruffly to his former superior.
‘Wrists.’
The bandit shook his head.
‘I can’t stay here! Obduro will-’
A twitch of Marcus’s gladius silenced him.
‘Obduro will what? Kill me and then make his escape from the city via this convenient little hole as planned? Find you here, and kill you as the price for your treachery? Quite possibly. So you’d better hope I pull off the apparently impossible feat of defeating him man to man, hadn’t you? Hold up your wrists before I grow bored and save him the trouble of having to kill you!’ Tornach glowered up at him as Arabus tied his wrists together with the rope that was securing his ankles, rendering him utterly helpless. ‘That’s better, now there’s no risk of you overpowering Arabus here while the pair of you wait to see who comes through this arch when it’s all done with.’ He reached for the helmet bag and his heavy leather-covered round shield, hefting its weight and looking down at the helpless bandit. ‘And since your immediate safety from his revenge depends on my success, you might want to tell me where he is. The rest I can manage for myself.’
Tornach grimaced at him with a vindictive smile.
‘He was on his way to deal with the procurator, then to collect his share of Albanus’s grain take from Petrus. After that he had only one more stop to make: the place where his share of the fraud is hidden. I’ll tell you where it is, but you’d be better running now, while you have the chance. That shield won’t protect you from his blade.’
Marcus nodded back down at him, his attention already focused on the city waiting beyond the arch’s dark hole.
‘Possibly so. But I might have a thing or two to teach Obduro about deception.’
‘Open your door, Petrus, before I’m forced to open it for you!’
After a moment’s pause a window on the building’s third floor opened, and the gang leader leaned out, addressing the men in the street in almost conversational tones.
‘Obduro! I’d bow my respect to you if I were down there with you. I simply marvel at your audacity in walking into the city like a conquering general.’
The masked man looked up at him, beckoning him down with the fingers of his right hand.
‘So come down and make your bow, Petrus, and while you’re at it you can hand over the money I told you to take from the Tungrians.’
Petrus’s reply was heavy with irony, and he spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
‘Nothing could have made me happier, Obduro, if only it were possible. Unfortunately word has reached me that the centurion in charge of the gold seems to have decided that it would be safer in the grain store. Your men will very shortly be discovering it for themselves, unless that loud noise we heard just now was bad news for them. And you… So I think I’ll stay up here, if it’s all the same to you. I suspect that my reward for failure might well involve iron, rather than gold.’
Obduro stood in silence for a moment, absorbing the news Petrus had related, before replying in a voice that was harder than before.
‘I could burn you out, Petrus.’
The gang leader shrugged again.
‘Yes, you could. You could send your men to break in and set fire to my establishment, but I give you fair warning that it’s a solid old thing, this brothel, and I’ve added to its security since I bought it, in the event that I might need a bolt-hole if everything went wrong. Getting in might not be as simple as you imagine. And you might want to be aware that my men on the roof tell me they can see torches coming up the road from the west. A lot of torches. So you might want to be about the rest of your business and away, before a vengeful Roman tribune arrives and separates that helmet from the rest of you, with your head still in it. Just a thought.’
Obduro thought again, then turned away, calling back over his shoulder.
‘You’d best sleep with an eye open from now on, Petrus. A man with as much money as I’ll be taking with me can buy a lot of assassins!’
The gang leader watched him lead his men away, then called back softly into the room behind him to the leader of the heavily built and well-armed enforcers he had gathered to his side once the Tungrians had left the city.
‘Quickly, away down that bitch’s hidden staircase and follow him, but do it invisibly or it’ll be you paying the price of failure. We’ll wait until he’s opened the vault, then step in and take his profits. I’ll not be threatened with death in my own city and then let him get away with enough gold to buy a full century of hired killers.’
The leading Tungrian centuries deployed into line half a mile from the blazing grain store, the ground before them lit by the fire still burning on the store’s south-western side. As prefect and first spear waited in silence for the remainder of the cohort to complete their manoeuvre from column into line, another tongue of fire leapt skywards, further lightening the ground before them, followed a moment later by another huge explosion that slapped at the soldiers’ ears.
‘Whoever’s in command in there seems to be using his head well enough.’
Frontinius nodded dourly at the tribune’s comment, his seamed face ruddy in the light cast by the store’s blazing fires.
‘Indeed, if it’s still attached to his shoulders. And anyone within a hundred paces of that explosion won’t be hearing anything for a while.’ He looked about him, searching for the raised century standards that indicated that his centuries were in line and ready to advance. ‘The First Cohort’s ready, Tribune. I was going to wait for the second and third lines to be formed, but given what’s happening over there I suggest we get moving before
