The Pillars of Hercules (34 page)

Those plants were of a kind that Lugorix had never seen. Huge fronded trees, tangled thickets, a wealth of flowers, all of it packed incredibly closely together. The air in here was hotter, too, and Lugorix could see a wooden roof stretching overhead. Steam drifted against that roof. Brightly-colored birds flitted here and there.

“What the hell is this?” whispered Lugorix.

“It’s called
jungle,
” said Eurydice. “Plants from regions south of the desert.”

“Oh,” said Matthias in a voice that made it clear he didn’t give a shit. Lugorix couldn’t believe how many insects were buzzing around the catwalk. If that’s what a jungle contained, he didn’t want any part of it. The catwalk continued through another stone wall, into a different garden. The plants here reminded Lugorix of those back home, the trees of Europe reaching up toward him. The smell of oak made him so homesick he wanted to jump down amidst them. But he restrained himself.

Which was just as well, given the men who were standing in the clearing below.

One looked to be a Carthaginian noble—he was fat, and wore robes almost as purple as his face. He was doing most of the talking, while a translator rendered his words into passable Greek. A barrel-chested Carthaginian officer stood at his side; he wore leopard skin over his armor, and carried a vicious-looking barbed spear in one hand. Several Carthaginian soldiers stood sentry duty at respectful distances so to give the Carthaginian leaders and the man they were talking to some semblance of privacy. And as for that man—

“You have
got
to be shitting me,” muttered Eurydice.

He wore the uniform of a Macedonian general and carried his helmet under his arm. He looked pale and exhausted, though his eyes burnt with a strange intensity. He nodded brusquely as the Carthaginian noble spoke, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Finally he gestured at the translator.

“I’ve heard enough,” he said in Greek. “Tell the Sufete Hasdrubal that we don’t have time for these speeches. I’ve got thirty thousand men encamped outside the city, and they’re getting tired of waiting.” The Sufete Hasdrubal and the officer who stood next to him listened as the translator turned this into Phoenician. Then the Sufete began talking in turn, the translator a few words behind.

“With all due respect, the Sufete Hasdrubal says you must be patient. We’ve only just succeeded in throwing off the yoke of the tyrants. Nor have we fully exorcised their baleful influence. Moloch must be placated before we can take any action.”

“Moloch shall be beyond placating if your delays cost him his victories,” snapped the Macedonian general. The translator began to speak, then stopped and glanced nervously back at the general, who merely looked impatient. “They’re my words, not yours,” he said. “So go ahead and tell your master what I just said.” The translator nodded, resumed—only to be slapped across the face by Hasdrubal, who began ranting angrily, the translator struggling to keep up.

“General Perdiccas, you may be favored in the eyes of the one they call Iskander, but do not presume to instruct us in the ways of pleasing Moloch. The Baal is a jealous god, and a hungry one. We must feed him flesh to give thanks to him for giving us our city back, and we must feed him in the way that he demands. If you crave a boon from our city, then you will wait until we have sought his counsel and then you will do as Moloch demands—”

But the general called Perdiccas was interrupting once more. “I’m already doing it,” he said. “Because Moloch and I are
on the same team.
Neither of us wants to see Carthage burnt to the ground and all your works put to the torch.”

Yet now the Carthaginian officer broke in angrily, his hand clenched around his barbed spear. The translator relayed his words: “That
already happened
,” he said. “We were already burnt. When Athens conquered us.” And then, his voice calmer: “Have you heard of the Garamantes?” Perdiccas shook his head. “You have surely encountered them, though. They dwell in the Atlas mountains and along the edge of the great desert. They are only three feet high and—”

“
Those
assholes,” muttered Perdiccas.

The officer kept talking. “Perhaps you have heard about the sleeping draught they brew. It makes a man seem as if he is in the grave. He breathes so faintly his chest no longer rises; his pulse beats so faintly you cannot hear it. They use it for sacred initiations, and it is as though the living die and then come back to life. Thus it was with the resurrection of our city. The world thought Carthage was dead, but she was only sleeping. As our ally, I would beg you not to make the same mistake.”

“I have no intention of doing so,” said Perdiccas diplomatically. “I’m just saying that I’d hate to see your city suffer still further as the result of indecision. I’d much rather see your enemies suffer instead.”

The officer stared at him. “Let me show you how we deal with our enemies,” he said.

Chapter Fourteen

T
he Carthaginians led Perdiccas from the room through a pair of double doors, the guards trailing in their wake. The three hidden in the rafters watched them go. No sooner had the doors closed then—

“That was Perdiccas,” said Eurydice.

“Who’s Perdiccas?”

“One of the top Macedonian generals. Alexander left him behind in Egypt. He reports to one of the marshals, Craterus.”

“So they must have gotten across the Sahara,” said Matthias.

“Isn’t that supposed to be impassable?” asked Lugorix.

“Well, they certainly didn’t swim,” said Eurydice. “They’ve got no navy to speak of. They must have marched.”

“But to have done all that and
not
attack Carthage—it doesn’t make any sense.” Eurydice looked puzzled. “Why would they come all this way to
negotiate?”

Lugorix had an answer for that. “It’s a trick. The Macks will launch a surprise assault.”

“Maybe,” said Eurydice. “But not while one of their generals is inside the city. And why send that general in the first place? Why not just send heralds? It’s as though Perdiccas doesn’t want his men to know he’s negotiating. That suggests that he really
is
serious about talking.”

“Sure,” said Matthias, “but what’s he talking
about?”

“Let’s keep moving,” said Lugorix. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

They skulked down the catwalk and left the garden-room—only to find themselves looking down at a similarly-sized room that had clearly once contained plants but that now contained something else altogether. All the shrubbery had been uprooted and ripped away. To make room for…

“Zeus almighty,” whispered Matthais.

“Now we know where the garrison went,” said Lugorix.

What was left of it, anyway. The room below them was filled with Athenian soldiers, wearing only tunics and packed together like cattle. Most of them were sitting on the floor, though a few were standing along the walls. All of them looked totally miserable. All the more so as they were being scrutinized through a barred door by the men who had just walked out of the garden-room. Perdiccas and Hasdrubal could be seen deep in conversation, but now they were too far away to hear.

But the result of their discussion was clear enough. Suddenly another door flew open and Carthaginian soldiers shoved their way into the room. Their shields were locked together and their spears were out, but none of the prisoners attempted anything. Instead the Athenians were doing their best to stay away: reeling backward with an alacrity that bordered on panic as they practically trampled each other to get away from the Carthaginians. But there was nowhere to run. The soldiers grabbed several of the prisoners and hauled them struggling from the room. The door slammed shut.

“That doesn’t look good,” said Mathias.

“This way,” said Eurydice.

She led them away from the room and into a honeycomb of torchlit passages—turning left, then right then right again. Then down a long flight of stairs—so far down that Lugorix knew they must be going deep into the bowels of the earth. The carvings on the walls became more and more disturbing. Gods and demons and monsters leered at each other and at them.

Finally Eurydice stopped at a bend in the passage. She gestured to Lugorix and Matthias, who peered round the corner to see two spear-wielding guards standing in front of a pair of heavy stone doors. A gong stood beside them.

Matthias drew his bow—was about to step around the corner when Eurydice shoved in front of him. “I’ll handle this,” she muttered as she turned the corner and walked toward the guards. They tensed as they saw her coming—then relaxed as they realized she was just an unarmed woman. She began started speaking to them in Phoenician. Whatever she was saying must have been funny because they were laughing now.

But the smiles were wiped from their faces when Eurydice suddenly whirled and spun in the air—her foot connecting with the head of one of the soldiers with a resounding crack that was followed by another as he hit the wall and slid onto the floor. As the second soldier drew his blade, Eurydice grabbed his wrist in a maneuver that Lugorix recognized as being a repeat of the one she’d discomfited Matthias with—only she went a step further this time, snapping the soldier’s wrist. His scream of pain was cut off when she shoved an elbow through his face—a blow calculated to drive his nose back into his brain. He dropped.

Lugorix and Matthias rounded the corner to join her, a little taken aback at what they’d just witnessed. Lugorix noticed that Matthias seemed particularly ill at ease—his face was a little green. There was nothing like the realization that the woman with whom you’d been cavorting in bed could snap your neck like a twig. Eurydice was standing over the bodies of the men she’d just killed, her face flushed, breathing heavily. She was enjoying this a little too much, Lugorix decided.

“Get this door open,” she said.

Lugorix was happy to oblige. While Matthias pulled a burning torch from the wall, he lifted away a series of heavy bars, then set Skullseeker to work. In short order the ornate door was a mass of broken wood. He tore it away to reveal—

“Welcome to the Library of Carthage,” said Eurydice.

Light flickered on a square room whose shelves were filled from top to bottom with scrolls. Each of the walls contained an arched doorway. Eurydice showed no interest in any of the scrolls—instead she simply pointed at the leftmost of the archways, whereupon they proceeded into an identical room: four more walls packed with scrolls, four more doorways. This time Eurydice pointed at the one to the right. The process went on for some time while they wended their way through rooms that were essentially indistinguishable from one another. Eventually Lugorix realized that was the point.

“It’s a maze,” he said.

“Very perceptive of you,” said Eurydice.

“It’s also a deathtrap,” said Matthias.

“Now what would make you go and say a thing like that?” asked the daughter of Aristotle.

“This library contains much of value,” said Matthias. “Right?”

“Indeed,” said Eurydice.

“Yet the locks to this library were from the
outside,
” said Matthias.

“Good point,” said Eurydice.

“And there aren’t even doors within this place.”

“From which you deduce?”

“That we’re not alone in here.”

“Astute reasoning,” said Eurydice, beaming as though she was a teacher pleased at a student’s insight. “Drawing on several different points to build up a broader theory—that’s what my father would have called
induction
.”

“I call it obvious,” said Lugorix, pointing at the center of the room they’d just entered. In the middle of the floor was a large chunk of animal dung.

And it was still steaming.

“Not human,” he added.

“Could be a big human,” said Matthias, looking nervously around. “Someone who was reading late and decided to take a—”

“Not human,” repeated Lugorix. He’d known something was strange about this place. Anything that contained items as valuable as Eurydice and Barsine seemed to think would have its guardians. And they were bound to be a damn sight more impressive than those sentries at the front door.

“There’s a reason why nobody’s allowed in the library late,” said Eurydice.

“You’re talking like you know what’s in here,” said Matthias.

“In point of fact I don’t,” she replied. “But I daresay we’re about to find out.”

“Did you hear that?” said Matthias.

“Hear what?” asked Lugorix.

“Shut up,” hissed Eurydice. Lugorix stepped in front of her torch, blocking off the light, for there was too much of it. As his eyes adjusted, he found himself staring straight ahead, through doorway after doorway, out into the middle distance. With a start, he realized that two eyes were looking back at him. He couldn’t tell what kind of animal they belonged to, but they were watching him with a predator’s intensity.

And then they were gone. Whatever it was had moved off to the side. And from the looks of the labyrinth they were in, it could be moving in toward them from one of several directions. Without taking his eyes from the darkness ahead of him, Lugorix relayed to the others what he had just seen. Matthias nocked an arrow, while Eurydice stepped into a corner. Matthias looked at her curiously.

“That’s
the plan? Wait for it to come to us?”

“A damn sight more sensible then going after it,” said Eurydice. “It’s an animal, and it’s probably hungry. It’ll be here soon enough.”

Lugorix nodded. That was the kind of thinking he understood. He hefted his axe and braced himself for whatever was out there. He knew what the feeling of being stalked was like. Everywhere you looked was nothing. Just a feeling. But he’d seen those eyes. He knew whatever owned them was coming closer. Closer…

Then it was on them. A shadow rushed from out of the darkness, straight at Lugorix, who stepped aside at the last moment as what looked to be a gigantic cat hurtled into the room. It had stripes and extremely sharp teeth and that was all Lugorix really saw before Matthias dropped his bow and pulled an entire shelf of scrolls down onto the creature. Papyri flew everywhere as the animal bellowed and hissed and began to wriggle out from under the shelf.