The Coming of the King

Chapter Thirteen

Keeping ahead of the growing riot, Kleitos walked swiftly north along the wide avenue that led from the palace to the Temple of Augustus and thence to the harbour. Mergus and Estaph followed him at a distance, keeping his bulk always in view in the growing dusk. Estaph held a double-headed throwing axe in either giant hand with an ease that left Mergus feeling uncommonly cheerful.

Kleitos turned east after a tall villa with a verdigrised roof and trotted easily down progressively narrower residential streets and across a small square, past a nine-pillared fountain, whose music sang in measured tones as the water landed, past a small temple to Jupiter Dolichenos and along a wall, blind for three storeys without a single window.

Kleitos turned the corner at the wall’s end. Mergus and Estaph stopped just short of it, and listened.

Inside, men spoke in Greek, with the true accent of Athens and Corinth. A torch had been lit, perhaps several torches; the air was alive with the light, peppery smoke of good pitch, thickened by heavier strands of burning straw.

‘A carpenter’s workshop is there,’ Estaph said, in Mergus’ ear. ‘They make furniture for half the city. The wood is aged for ten years in their sheds. Does your enemy like fire?’

‘Always.’

Already the orange glow of the fire had turned to lemon and the shadow play of the men was faster and easier to watch.

‘Six,’ Mergus said, after a moment’s counting. ‘Three each. Let’s go.’

Flames smothered him as he rounded the corner. Momentarily, he was lost in scorching heat and light and a dark, dense smoke that sucked the air from his lungs and brought tears to his eyes so that he faltered as he ran and the knife in his hand struck awry and the first of the arsonists did not die cleanly, but fell, choking, with blood jetting from a torn artery in his neck, and his hands scrabbling at his throat.

He heard the smack of iron on bone and a body toppled next to him, hard as a felled tree, then Estaph was at his side, tears streaming down his wide cheeks. Through smoke and fire, he croaked, ‘It’s a trap.’

A blurred shape moved beyond them. Mergus’ knife flashed out and back, wetly dripping. A man fell, yowling like a cat. ‘Three more,’ Mergus said, and held up his fingers in case the big man couldn’t hear clearly. ‘Kill them.’

Easy to say. Not easy to do when the three were warned and Estaph had breathed in too much of the poisonous black smoke and was blundering, bear-like, swiping at random with the two-headed axe that was as dangerous to the friend who might be standing too close behind him as it was to the enemy in front.

Mergus dodged one blow that came near to breaking his skull and ducked down, and found that the air was clearer below waist height. He could see a pair of legs and knew Kleitos by the shape of his knees, having spent a month in the desert sitting opposite him at the fires.

He had one knife and he didn’t need to see a whole man to know where his throat was, to feel in his bones that place just above the larynx, where a knife might pass through and the tip slide into the spinal column, bringing instant, silent death.

He crouched, pulling himself tight, ready to leap And rolled sideways, away from the spear that smashed the pavings where he had been. His knife clattered to the ground. He thrust down on his palms and came up into the sea of smoke, and peered forward through new tears and saw Estaph grappling the spear-bearer, holding the haft of the weapon, thrusting it back and back, keeping the point away from his own massive abdomen. Two others came at him from either side, as men at a bated bear. One of them held the Parthian’s own axe.

‘Estaph! Left!’ Mergus grabbed a burning plank and swung it, flat, and hit no one, but forced one of the three back, and gave Estaph time to spin away from the axe and reach out and grab it with his left hand, even as his right hand held the spear, so that he was drawn out tight and wide, with the haft of a weapon in each hand, unable to let go of either in case it killed him.

Mergus tucked his head down below the smoke, bunched his fists at his side, and ran. As a human ram, he battered the side of the spear-holder. Ribs broke on the crown of his skull. He felt the jerk and rip as Estaph wrenched the spear free of the hands that gripped it, and drew it back, and smashed the hilt into the face in front of him, breaking bones and teeth and the soft tissues of the mind.

Mergus was still moving, turning, swinging himself free of the spear-bearer’s corpse. He dropped down, pivoting all his weight on one palm, slid his legs out wide, and scissored them together to trap the ankles of the axe-holder. He spun on his own axis, and kept spinning away as the man fell. He rose at last, gasping, in time to see Estaph strike down into the smoke with his axe, and come up again, smiling.

‘Kleitos,’ said Mergus.

‘That way.’ Estaph doubled over, coughing, but his free hand pointed south, towards the theatre, from whence came the distant sounds of riot, like an evening’s thunder.