Tales of Ancient Rome (2 page)

“
Go get it open. Must be the relief!”

Grinning, Saturninus paused briefly to smash a climbing barbarian in the face with the pommel of his sword before running down the stairs and crossing the courtyard, leaping over the piles of his comrades until he reached the gate.

“
Who goes there?” he yelled, though he was already unlatching the heavy bar.

“
Volusianus, centurion of the Cohors Secundae Asturum at Aesica. Open up.”

With a relieved smile, Saturninus finished unbarring the gate and swung the heavy portal open. Without pause or acknowledgement, a rider trotted into the courtyard and reigned in at the centre, close to the piles of bodies, his horse prancing impatiently, four heavily-armoured men following him in and standing to attention behind him. Saturninus peered through the gate but, seeing nothing without, turned back to the visitor, frowning.

A brief glance over the wall’s edge told Forgais he had a few moments before the next push. Two bodies screamed and writhed at the wall’s foot, but nothing else stirred in the mist. Turning in to look down at the figure in the courtyard, he sighed with relief.

“
Sir?” he shouted, his heart lurching. He barely allowed himself to believe it. Relief! The relief was arriving at last. They had clearly dealt with the archers outside the south gate already from the earlier sounds of combat.

“
Who’s in command here?” the centurion called out, eyeing the dead before him.

“
I am, sir. Forgais: commander of the Numerus Gaesatorum Raetorum. We never thought you’d arrive, sir. We’ve held. Almost to the last man, but the wall’s held, sir.”

The man’s expression hardly changed.

“
You are under attack?”

Forgais squinted through the drifting mist.

“
Sir? Yes. The wall holds, but not for much longer. Where are the others?”

The officer frowned, waving the question aside with a sweep of his hand.

“
How many are left here?”

“
Four, sir. And they’re still coming.”

As if to add weight to his words more crashes and shouts arose and Finn, at end of the wall, lunged out across the battlements with his sword. Forgais nodded at his friend and then turned back to the visitor. It was hard to feel pride in Rome when she barely knew you existed these days, but pride in duty and a job well-done was hard to take away.

“
Sir?”

The centurion nodded, thoughtfully and tapped his lip.

“
Well, come down from there and gather your equipment quickly. Four men is better than none, I suppose, though I was expecting the full numerus.”

It was Forgais’ turn to frown.

“
Sir?” he repeated once more.

“
The general Magnus Maximus had ordered the withdrawal of our forces. The prefect at Aesica sent me to fetch your unit. Be proud, commander. We travel to Rome to make an Emperor.”

“
But the wall?” Forgais gestured to the small fort around him.

“
Leave it for the farmers; we have higher concerns now. I shall expect you at Aesica within the hour.”

Without a further glance, the officer turned and rode back out through the south gate, his guard of four men following obediently. Forgais stood silent, his eyes wide and angry, breath frosting in the air. His gaze took in the milecastle with its twin barrack blocks, stripped of bunks yesterday to provide the timber to reinforce and bolster the north gate. The bodies of the numerus, laying where they fell, mute witness to the proud defence of… what? A wall that some Spanish ponce in a fur hat had decided was no longer important if he had a chance at the purple?

He realised the others had paused and were watching him, waiting for orders. Even as they stood silently, regarding their commander, the hail of arrows began again, the very first one taking Saturninus through the eye and plunging him over the edge to the ever-increasing pile of their fallen companions.

“
What do we do?”

Forgais turned to Finn and shrugged.

“
I don’t know about you, but I don’t care what the commander at Aesica says, Gratianus is my Emperor, not Magnus Maximus or any other would-be usurper. I intend to follow the orders of my emperor: hold the wall.”

The hail of arrows slowed and ended.

“
Ready for the ladders, lads!”

Cries of rage, defiance and pride rang out, enveloped quickly by the shrouding mist.

Vigil

Gaius Postumus turned over in his bed, snorting and pulling the cover tight up to his throat. What a lovely dream. He knew it was a dream, for sure, but continued forcing himself to stay that little bit more sleepy, prolonging the night time images as long as possible. Half a sow turned on the spit, fat dripping down into the fire and sizzling with a delicious smell. Probably wine. Those goblets looked like wine goblets. He wondered who was holding the party, since he seemed to be the only guest. Why so many goblets and so much food just for him.

Finally, the messages from his frantic and overactive nostrils won through a passage into his gluttonous brain, and Postumus’ right eye flicked open with some difficult, the sticky sleep still trying to hold it shut.

Smoke?

His eye closed again and a satisfied smile crept across his face. Of course there would be smoke. You couldn’t roast a hog without there being some smoke. He would have to tell Safranius how delicious it was in the morning.

Safranius.

The morning.

Smoke.

The eye flicked open again.

In a fraction of a second, before even the left eye could join its fellow in wideness, Postumus was out of the bed and frantically panicking, spinning this way and that and waving his arms, achieving entirely nothing.

He stopped, trying to remember his training through the combined fug of sleep and panic. As one of the vigiles, the fire-fighters of Rome, Postumus had been trained well and trained hard for months in every aspect of his duties. It had been said, even by his mother, that his head was so thick that not even basic concepts could pass into it. Hurtful and untrue, but he had to sadly confirm that at this very point, standing in his room on the second floor of the insula that had been allocated as the headquarters of the Second century in the Fourth cohort of vigiles, he couldn’t even remember his name without concentrating really hard.

Safranius would kill him.

The heavy pall of roiling smoke was coming under the door to his room in puffs. That meant it must be coming up the stairwell.

Postumus slapped his hand over his face. Idiot. His had been the simplest duty of all, tonight. The rest of the century were absent. Half of them were asleep in their own homes, it being their week off-duty. Many of the others had been given special leave to go to the Lucaria festival. The rest would be out patrolling the streets, watching for signs of fire or for acts of criminal behaviour. Safranius would be leading the first patrol.

He would be less than happy to get back to the headquarters some time just before dawn to find it had been gutted by fire and all because the untrustworthy idiot he left in charge of the insula had started the stove in the kitchen to cook his fish supper and had come over ever so tired and gone to bed, leaving it burning.

Prat.

His days in the vigiles would almost certainly be numbered after this. Particularly given that debacle last week with the explosion at the emporium. His wages would be halved for the next thousand years to pay for the replacement pump.

Hurriedly throwing on a cloak and grateful that he’d gone to sleep wearing his tunic and breeches and not even unlacing his boots because he was so tired, he decided on his course of action. He would have to check the extent of the fire and get down to the yard. In the central courtyard that had previously been the light well for the insula, a series of large tablets on the walls bore the instructions and rules and regulations for all trainee vigiles. He would have to read them and remind himself of what to do next.

Reaching out, he grasped the door handle and pulled.

The words ‘back draft’ rose though the levels of denseness in his head a fraction of a second before the explosion of boiling fire blew the suddenly freed door into the room, knocking him flat, but miraculously protecting him from the worst of the heat.

Struggling out from under the battered portal, he peered fearfully around the room. The blast had calmed and the fire was starting to take hold on the walls and furniture in his room. Pulling himself upright, he wandered across to the large bronze mirror next to a small glowing oil lamp that seemed almost ridiculous in the circumstances.

His eyebrows had gone and his lush, curly black hair had disappeared as far back as his ears, leaving only tiny charred stumps. His face was covered in sooty grime, pink lines extending from his eyes where he had instinctively screwed them up.

He looked idiotic. But then people told him that under normal circumstances, too.

Leaning to the side, he peered out into the corridor. The formerly painted walls, white and red, with a decorative strip of something he couldn’t remember, were black, fire ripping its way along the wooden railing that surrounded the stair well. Leaning the other way, he could see the blanket of flame that filled the corridor, blocking off any chance of reaching the other stairs. Other than trying to jump down the fifteen foot drop into the light well, these stairs would have to do.

All the vigiles had practiced the jump, of course. They were supposed to be able to manage something as easy as that. It was often required in the course of duty. Postumus, with his somewhat portly figure and his apparently severed connection between mental function and the gangling muscle-free flesh he called limbs, had never managed anything but a temporarily-crippling belly-flop onto the hard floor. He had in the past year, broken one ankle, twisted another, cracked five ribs and broken his nose during training jumps. Two months ago Safranius had given up trying.

Honestly, if it weren’t for his illustrious lineage and the sizeable donations his long-suffering father made to help the vigiles, he would probably have been thrown out long ago.

Taking a deep breath and gagging on the smoke, he stepped closer to the stairs, muttering a quick and very fervent prayer to the lares and Penates of the building.

A flickering orange glow was visible through the cracks in the wooden staircase. Downstairs was already an inferno. But there was nothing else for it. He had to brave it.

Putting one foot delicately on the top step, he applied pressure and winced as it groaned and shifted underfoot. Biting his lip, he put all his weight on that leg and moved down a step. Another charred groan.

Postumus whimpered and hoped his bladder would hold under the panicked pressure.

He was just reaching out with his first leg again when a noise caught his attention.

‘
Meeee-owwwwwooooo?’

“
Mister Socks!”

The second step cracked as he turned hurriedly and ran back up into the corridor. Mister Socks was the station cat; a mangy, fat thing with an evil temper, one ruined eye, a perforated ear and a bad case of flatulence. Of the eighty periodical occupants of the building, the only one that treated Postumus as anything other than an unfortunate piece of furniture was Mister Socks. It wasn’t that he didn’t bite and scratch the overweight vigil; he did, and frequently, but less frequently than he bit and scratched the others.

Of course, it was Postumus that fed Mister Socks, which might go a long way to explaining it. Many of the others just kicked the station cat and would happily evict the menacing, evil creature. It was Postumus that had renamed ‘That Smelly Bastard Cat’ as Mister Socks. It was so much nicer.

Running along the corridor, he spotted the four legged terror of the station crouched in a doorway, hissing at the danger all around. Beyond, the inferno had gripped the corridor, making it impassable to man and beast alike. Through the doorway, the glow of violent orange spoke volumes. A rafter fell between the two of them, roaring with dancing flames and sealing off the cat. Even the wooden frame of the balcony above the light well on remaining wall was starting to char and fall away.

“
Don’t worry Mister Socks. I’m coming.”

Carefully, he edged toward the burning beam and jumped across it, just as another fell where he had been standing but a moment before. His heart lurched. A whole insula, just for the sake of a late night snack and forty winks!

Reaching out, his face turned away from the searing heat, he reached out for Mister Socks, muttering soothing noises.

The cat turned its one baleful eye on him and leapt away, momentarily touching the charring balcony to gain leverage, and dropped to the courtyard below, landing, as expected, on its feet. Postumus leaned close to the balcony and stared down to see Mister Socks give him a superior glance, turn, display its bottom in graphic detail, and then prance away to the safety of the street.