The Fourth Rome (34 page)

“Hello, Flaccus,” Pauli said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“There’s a problem with your buddies coming,” the veteran said. “Somebody might remember that because they’d been your slaves,
they belonged to the state when you were condemned. Now me, I don’t belong to anybody but the emperor I swear an oath to at
the first of each year, so I said I’d come talk to you.”

Flaccus wore a tunic. Even without armor and his weapons belts, nobody could have doubted he was a soldier. His stance; the
long, darkened dent on his forehead where for years a helmet had ridden; the scars on his scalp and all four limbs.

The fresh gouge over Flaccus’ left eye was healing nicely. That could have been pure good luck, but Pauli suspected some of
the luck might have come from a phial of antibiotics in Beckie’s kit.

“Now, I don’t know who you lot are,” Flaccus continued judiciously, “but I know your buddies aren’t slaves just like I know
you didn’t help the Fritzes scrag the lot of us. Thing is, nobody’s going to listen to what a grunt knows; and anyhow, they
needed somebody to blame the mess on who’s still alive to execute.”

Pauli Weigand looked at the soldier and felt ashamed of himself. Marcus Flaccus was no saint: he’d killed and looted and probably
raped without the least concern. He was a soldier of an autarchical government bent on world canquest.

But he was also a simple man who knew Pauli was innocent of aiding in the massacre of Varus and all Flaccus’ tent mates.
Knew,
and was wrong; because the ARC Rider too was the agent of a power that condoned any imaginable brutality that gained its
ends.

“You know what’s really weird?” Flaccus said, playing with a dimple in his left forearm, a scar that must be more than a decade
old. “What I told your keeper about not hating the Fritzes because it’d all been too big. It’s true.”

His weathered face shifted from musing to a hardness that was more frightening than anger if you knew what you were seeing.
“Not that I don’t look forward to going sack across the river with a general who knows what he’s doing. We’ll teach the Fritzes
what a
real
massacre looks like.”

An ARC Rider couldn’t allow himself to become emotionally involved … but Pauli remembered watching the Germans torture their
prisoners and he couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to him and his teammates if they’d been captured alive.

Of course, Flaccus’ government was about to feed him to wild beasts in the arena.

“My friends are all right?” Pauli asked, in part to break the mood.

“Yeah, they sent this,” Flaccus said. He handed Pauli a headband. Now he could communicate directly with his teammates.

When Asprenas’ troops took Pauli prisoner they’d stripped him of everything but a single tunic and put a sack over his head.
The headband had gone with the rest of his gear, though nobody’d realized it was more than a strip of clotti.

“They say they’ve got a line on the people you’re looking for,” Flaccus said, prodding at another old scar. “The thing is,
they’re wondering—”

He looked up to meet Pauli’s eyes.

“—if it might not be better to get you out of here, seeing as Tiberius arrives tonight and you’re for the chop at the games
in his honor tomorrow. That’s what they wanted me to ask.”

“No,” Pauli said. “We’ll all be compromised if I break out. The instant Tiberius arrives there’s risk of events of the sort
we’re here to prevent. They’ve got to get on with the job first.”

Flaccus put his right leg up on the bars and pinched the half moon of scar tissue over his kneecap. He stared at the mark
morosely. “Thing is,” he said, head lowered, “there might be some people in this town who’d help them if they did bust you
out. Not everybody who came out of the ratfuck with you’s fit, but some of us are.”

“No,” Pauli said. “No, but thank you.”

Flaccus nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I don’t guess a magician like you needs a lot of help anyway. Well, anything you want to
say to your buddies?”

“Carry on with the mission so that we can all go home,” Pauli said. He’d repeat the orders over the headband communication
shortly, but he wanted no doubt about his decision. “Just tell them that. And Flaccus?”

The veteran raised an eyebrow.

“Even a magician needs friends,” said Pauli Weigand.

I
believe I’ve found one of them,” said Gerd Barhtuli. Then, “I’ve found one of them!”

The buildings of Vetera were timber with thatch roofs, but many of the streets had been graveled; proper stone paving was
for the future. Rebecca Carnes found it an unexpected pleasure to be able to walk at night without squelching.

“Any notion whether it’s Svetlanov or Kiknadze?” Rebecca asked. Gerd was facing a building on the other side of the street
with the sensor in his hand. Still at this hour Jie shutters of both stories were open, spilling lamplight. The lower level
was a tavern.

“I’ve located a submachine gun, Rebecca,” Gerd said mildly. “It’s only a probability that a revisionist is carrying trie weapon.”

The sensor pack duplicated a headband’s many functions (though not in as accessible a fashion), so it was Gerd’s headband
they’d sent to Pauli. Rebecca pulled her faceshield down to see if light amplification or thermal viewing showed her anything
her unaided eyes had missed. No; but the naked woman who leaned on a window ledge for a few moments of relaxation indicated
that the building’s upper story was a brothel.

“He’s down below,” Gerd added. “The gun is.”

Rebecca checked to be sure her pistol was in the cape lining. The plastic weapon was so light you wouldn’t notice the change
if it fell out of the loops. “Let’s take a look,” she said.

Vetera was a big camp capable of holding three legions in a pinch, though most of the troops had moved into Free Germany with
Varus. A very Permanent Change of Station, to use the phrasing of Rebecca’s own day.

The civil settlement served not only soldiers but the vast logistical tail that followed the troops up the Lippe River. It
had a population of ten thousand. Since the team arrived in the city, she and Gerd had been searching street by street for
a sign of the revisionists. Carefully metered drugs kept Rebecca alert, but they couldn’t do anything for sheer muscle fatigue.

There were a dozen men and two middle-aged women in the tavern’s lower room. The doorman was a hulking brute with a broken
nose and scars on his sloping forehead; the bartender could have passed for his brother.

Boris Kiknadze was going up the narrow staircase behind a whore younger than the other two. She wore a shift of thin wool
dyed rose and brass spirals around both forearms. The armlets had stained her skin a dingy green.

“We’ll have some wine and wait,” Rebecca murmured. Gerd nodded. As usual in a new environment, his expression was of sprightly
cheerfulness.

“We’ve got a room open if you’re looking for a place to spend a half hour,” the bartender said as the ARC Riders approached.
The other folk in the tavern were eyeing Rebecca speculatively; openly hostile speculation in the case of the women.

“Nothing like that,” she said. “We’ll each have a mug of whatever’s cheap and local.”

Gerd peered surreptitiously at the sensor pack in his palm. He shook his head minusculely when he caught Rebecca’s eye: he
still didn’t have a fix on the other revisionist.

At some point they’d have to retrieve the advanced gear taken from Pauli. Rebecca wondered whether that pair of submachine
guns would confuse their search for Svetlanov’s weapon.

“That’ll be three bronze,” the bartender said. He placed his hands flat on the stone slab, pointedly refusing to lift the
narrow wine-ladle until he’d seen the strangers’ money.

Rebecca reached for her purse. A woman screamed upstairs.

The doorman and bartender both grabbed clubs. Before they could get to the stairs, the whore took two steps down. She wore
the armlets but she’d lost her shift. There were toothmarks on her right breast.

Kiknadze appeared behind her and grabbed her by the hair. A switch of false hair pulled out in his hand with a few of the
woman’s own ringlets. Half bald, she screamed and pitched the rest of the way to the bracken-strewn floor.

The bartender started up. Kiknadze tried to kick him in the face. The local man had plenty of experience with both violent
patrons and this staircase. He grabbed Kiknadze by the ankle and pulled down. Kiknadze wrapped his left arm around the railing.

The rail pulled loose. Kiknadze’s right hand dipped under his cape and came out with the Skorpion. The bartender swung his
club at the weapon—uncertain of exactly what it was but in no doubt as to what Kiknadze’s general intentions were.

“Down!” Rebecca shouted to Gerd as she ducked beneath the stone bar.

The tavern’s only light was a pair of three-wick oil lamps. The submachine gun’s muzzle flashes were bright enough to cast
a flickering shadow. One wild round hit a drinker in a booth across the room. He collapsed and slid under his table. The bartender
grunted, then lost his grip on both the club and Kiknadze’s leg.

The bartender fell back, tangling with the doonnan. Kiknadze clubbed the latter twice with the Skorpion’s butt and pushed
past the two men. A regular patron stepped in front of the doorway, then jumped back when he saw Kiknadze’s murderous fury.

The revisionist ran out of the tavern, waving his submachine gun. The bartender stood on all fours, shaking his head groggily
and dripping blood on the floor. The doorman was upright again.

Rebecca waited for Kiknadze to clear the doorway, then followed him. Gerd was only a step behind her. She tugged her faceshield
down, brightening the night to apparent daylight levels. The scene had a certain flatness from the loss of the three-dimensional
modeling that shadows provide.

“That’s right, get the bastard!” the doorman cried. He and a half dozen of the tavern’s patrons spilled out after the ARC
Riders. “Let’s hang him by the dick!”

Kiknadze was twenty yards down the street. He glanced over his shoulder. Rebecca flattened against the side of the building.
Kiknadze waved his gun but didn’t shoot. Either he couldn’t see targets or he’d emptied the Skorpion inside the tavern. He
lurched around a corner.

Rebecca had the microwave pistol in her hand. If she knocked Kiknadze down the mob would beat him to death. She and Gerd needed
to interrogate the revisionist; that, or hope he led them to Svetlanov on his own. Best that Kiknadze run until the locals
had lost interest.

Adjacent buildings had common sidewalls. Kiknadze couldn’t flee down an alley between structures. There were no streetlights
and the partial moon was dim help without the ARC faceshield’s advanced technology.

Rebecca reached the corner, pointed the opposite way from the one Kiknadze had taken, and shouted, “There he goes! See him
there?”

The trick might have worked, but the revisionist tripped in the darkness and whanged his submachine gun against a stone doorstep.
It rang like a bell. The locals panting in the middle of the street spun to look for the source of the noise. Kiknadze stood
up in front of the only lighted window on the block.

“There he is!” the doorman cried. He and the twenty-odd locals with him crashed down the street after their quarry. The whore
whose cries had started the trouble was among them. She wore sequined sandals and a short cape that covered her to the waist.

Doors opened; still more people were joining the hunt. Rebecca felt her lips tighten as if she were sucking something sour.
All she could do for now was keep up with the mob and hope for the best.

Kiknadze ran into a public square, an irregular trapezoid where five streets met. He dodged around the stone coping of the
wall in the center. Residents aroused by the mob’s cries peered from windows or out half-opened doors. Patches of light spilled
past them, quivering on gravel and the opposite walls. Kiknadze’s head turned in all directions as he looked for a way clear.

At the opposite side of the square was a six-hole public toilet raised several steps off the ground. A plaque on the chest-high
stone screen commemorated the benefactor who’d built the convenience.

A handcart holding a large terra-cotta jar was parked in front of the structure. As Kiknadze paused, a slave holding a smaller
jar by the rim stepped out. The municipal sanitation detail was emptying the urinal—at a profit; the urine was sold to stiffen
woolen garments for cleaning.

“Get him! Get him!” the doorkeeper cried as he ran into the square. Rebecca was beside him. She was more afraid of losing
the revisionist than that he might shoot her if cornered.

Kiknadze saw the slave behind him and pointed the Skor-pion. The pot of waste shattered as the slave fell forward down the
steps. Kiknadze jumped his body and entered the structure. He dropped the submachine gun and reached into the satchel hanging
from his shoulder.

“Rebecca, he’s got a grenade!” Gerd shouted.

The revisionist’s arm drew back. He intended to shelter behind the stone screen as the blast cleared the squ;ire.

Rebecca shot Kiknadze from twenty feet away. The jolt of focused energy knocked him backward into the structure, still holding
the bomb.

Rebecca crouched. A man ran into her from behind and tripped. A white flash and ground shock were simultaneous. Light gleamed
through cracks in the screen. The echoing blast hurled chips of stone and burned flesh skyward. One of the stone panels fell
over.

The doorman picked himself up. The structure had channeled part of the shock wave out the entrance. “Lightning?” he said.
“Was that lightning?”

There was blood on his face. Grenade shrapnel had nicked him, not seriously.

Rebecca stepped into the open structure, fumbling for her medical kit. The revisionist didn’t have to be healthy or even conscious
for Gerd to comb his mind for the information they needed. There was a chance—