Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Fifty-One

Fire blossomed in the warehouse, the colour of marigolds. In the moment’s held breath before violence broke out, Pantera had toppled the nearest candlestick, sending fire across the floor. Shimon had hurled a broken bale of old, tired wool after it. A curtain of flame kept the mob back for a heartbeat, two, three…

‘Poros!’ Hannah saw him through the sudden brightness, blades like living flames in either hand. She remembered the courtyard, and the debris near the door.

She backed out. A rusted iron bar as thick as her wrist rested against the wall. In more prosperous times, it had been needed to bar the door. She grabbed it with both hands and prised it free of the mess around it.

Inside, Pantera had thrown at least one of his knives. A man lay dead across the band of fire, damping it down; one of the Blue team. Poros was at his side, screaming obscenities, trying to push through the gap in the flames.

Shimon stood in front of him swinging his oak staff in a complex arc, with such a look of wild glee on his face that Poros recoiled a step and then another. Shimon followed him up, shouting past him in Aramaic, naming men and listing Saulos’ crimes.

In those first moments, Hannah couldn’t see if he was having any impact; in the crowd, men were flinging water on the spreading fire, raising clouds of white smoke that snaked sideways and up, filling the warehouse from floor to rafters, obscuring the shouting, fighting mob.

Because now they were fighting amongst themselves; there was a battle going on in the body of the warehouse that kept more men from assaulting the small group at the front. They were three against Poros and the Blue team with Saulos somewhere in the smoke, invisible and dangerous. Pantera was nearby, but Hannah couldn’t see him, only heard him to her left, shouting in the mayhem.

Poros had found a sword and was swinging it, matching Shimon’s staff in a delicate, lethal dance. With her iron bar held near its end, Hannah slid in through the door and sideways with her back to the wall. The fire scorched her face. Smoke choked her. She fought against panic, against memories of Gaul. Poros loomed ahead, made bigger by the warping shadows. The iron bar spun in her sweat-wet hands as, ducking under Shimon’s cudgel, she put the full force of her back, her shoulders, her legs, into a swing aimed at his head.

She missed.

Poros saw her and ducked under the swing. Hannah was thrown off balance, spun further round and crashed into the dais. The iron bar flew from her hands, skittering across the oak boards. The second candlestick toppled over, spraying beeswax and fire into the dark space to her right.

‘ Hannah! Move! ’

She rolled sideways, out, down, away from the fire and the dais, into a flickering dark. A knife hissed past and stuck in the wall, shuddering. Shimon stepped over her, protectively, cudgel blurred in the bad light. Smoke crowned him. He was dancing with Poros, who was better armed. Pantera was there, fighting to Shimon’s left, protecting his shoulder as warriors did in battle. He had fought in Britain, where men died for the honour of saving each other. It was his voice that had shouted her name through the mayhem.

The knife sagged from the dry wood in the wall above her. Hannah grabbed the hilt and wrenched it out and this time she didn’t stand up where she could be seen, but kept to her belly beneath the wavering ceiling of smoke and crept forward along the edge of the dais until she could see Poros’ blunt, bearded silhouette.

Shimon was opposite him. Seeing her, he dropped his guard a fraction. Poros lunged forward, his blade a slice of vengeance, cutting straight for Shimon’s heart.

There was no time to think, to regret, to imagine the ending of a man’s life. Hannah thought of Math, made to race when he wasn’t ready. With his broken face in her mind’s eye, she thrust herself upwards, aiming for the broad back, midway down, just off centre to the left.

Her stolen knife grated on a rib, glancing out and up in another miss. Already Poros was turning away from it, wrenching round. His face loomed over hers, his teeth a slash of white in his beard. But the knife still had purchase.

Math loomed between them, bright blood clotting in his hair.

‘ No! ’ Hannah brought her other hand up and rammed her balled fist on top of the first and felt the blade slide forward with sickening ease into the sheath of flesh and lung and heart.

The end flipped like a landed fish, once, twice, with the steady beat of his heart, and then, even as he roared a name she did not know, the rhythm stuttered and sprang, wildly erratic.

Hannah still had hold of the handle, wet now with his blood. She dragged the tip sideways, to make the hole in his heart bigger, to let the blood out faster, to bring death with greater mercy; her only gift.

The twitching stopped and, moments later, Poros fell like a tree, stunning the ground at her feet. Over the smoke and sweat and fear, she smelled the sharp iron-sweetness of blood, and then urine. She had never killed before except in mercy: Ptolemy Asul, and, once, a child born with its legs fused together. Nobody had ever known. The parents had burned myrrh at the statue of Serapis in thanks that their child was born dead. And now ‘Hannah!’ A hand caught her wrist. ‘Back! Now!’ It was Pantera, a shape in the smoke. His face was shining with heat and sweat. ‘The fire’s gone wild. The roof’s coming down. It’s the inn at Gaul all over again. Shimon’s already in the courtyard. Will you come out? Come out with us now? Please?’

The courtyard was empty of men. To the right of the door stood a barrel, half full of spring rain. Hannah grabbed it, rolling it on its edge. ‘The door… block… the door.’ She was coughing now that they were in the clear air, as if her lungs preferred the smoke.

Pantera grabbed the barrel’s rim. Together they swung it across the door, holding it shut. Men hammered on it from the inside. The damaged hinge was breaking.

‘Come on,’ Shimon called from the courtyard gate. ‘That won’t hold them for long.’

‘Where’s Saulos?’ she asked, running.

Pantera was at her side, barely lame. They passed out of the courtyard together. ‘Escaped through the front door. A dozen with him.’

Hannah said, ‘He’ll go for the water towers. He’s the only one who knows how to turn the taps off. We have to-’

‘I set Mergus there. Twenty men are guarding each of the five closest towers. It’s the fire that matters. Where will they start the blaze?’

‘Everywhere. They have wool and pitch set at a dozen places nearby. Five men would be enough.’

‘Then a dozen will be a disaster.’

‘Maybe Mergus’ men will stop them?’

‘If they’re not betrayed by others of the Watch.’ Pantera ran on her left. To her right, the Tiber ran slick and slow under the evening sun. ‘Mergus was at the tower by the Claudian temple. We should reach him as soon as we can.’

‘It’s another quarter-mile up the hill,’ Hannah said. ‘Can you run that far?’ This last to Shimon, who was bent double with his hands on his knees, choking in the aftermath of the smoke.

‘Anywhere you can lead, I can run.’ His eyes streamed with smoke-born tears, but behind that they were ablaze with a fire of their own. ‘Just let us stop Saulos and I will ream out my lungs and spit blood for the rest of my life.’

The first rush of water met them at a crossroads below Claudius’ temple; a shining snake, slithering down the street, gathering dust and children and thirsty dogs.

Three men of the Watch came fast after it; an officer and two others skidding down on wet pavings. Pantera waved them to a stop. All three bled from new-made wounds. The officer was small, dark, wiry.

‘Mergus!’ Pantera gripped his arms. ‘The second or the sixth?’

‘The second. A century came at us. We were outnumbered four to one. We chose not to die protecting a cistern.’

‘Good. Is Libo alive?’

‘He should be. I left him in charge of the water engines at the forum.’

Hannah asked, ‘Did you see Saulos?’

‘How would I know him?’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Pantera said shortly. ‘That’s his strength. And you won’t-’ He stopped suddenly, looking west. ‘Damn,’ he said softly. ‘It’s begun.’

Hannah turned to look. A thread of black smoke angled straight as a drawn line from the foot of the hippodrome.

‘The wind’s heading inland from the river. It’ll spread faster than Ajax’s mad colts.’ Pantera bent to catch water from the flood about his ankles and dashed it over his hair and the shoulders of his tunic. ‘This may be Saulos’ fire, but if a portion of the Watch is supporting it, the Urban Guard may follow. Mergus — you know what to do?’

‘We do. We’ll meet in the forum still?’

Pantera eyed him, shaking his head. ‘I have to find Saulos. When that’s done, I’ll come to the forum. But first…’ He spun in a circle. ‘We need Nero. The emperor’s presence still counts for more than gold or promises. For that, we need someone with a horse who can ride thirty miles in the dark and be believed when he gets to Antium.’

‘Faustinos,’ Mergus said. ‘The water engineer. He’s Iberian. They’re born on horseback. He lives here somewhere. I don’t know exactly.’

‘I do.’ Hannah grabbed Pantera’s arm. He shot her a look of surprised appreciation. ‘He’s two streets from here,’ she said. ‘Saulos went there after I dressed his wound this morning.’ She was already running. ‘Come on.’