Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

‘Why hasn’t someone replaced him? Tried to assassinate him?’

In the dark, Sal squeezed her hand, a sign she’d spotted something. Maddy had spotted it too: the momentary flicker of a glance from both Romans at Bob.

A support unit.

‘Have you seen someone like him?’ Maddy said, pointing at Bob. ‘Just like Bob? Is that it?’

‘No,’ Cato answered. Then he added, ‘Not of the same appearance… but if my friend Macro’s account of the fight this afternoon is not an exaggeration then…’

‘I saw him take a mortal wound, Cato. On his flank.’ Macro took a step towards Bob. ‘There… you can see the blood on his tunic!’

Bob turned away to hide the dark stain.

‘Why not show ’em?’ said Liam. ‘Let ’em see!’

Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah, good idea… Bob, let them see. Lift your tunic.’

He reached for the hem, lifted it slowly up, exposing the top of his britches, the ribbed muscles of his stomach and finally the flesh of his wound, like puckered lips, raw and red and crusted with dried blood. Slowly he turned to show his back, and an exit wound.

‘This man should be dead,’ said Macro. ‘Run completely through. He should be dead!’

Cato nodded. ‘He’s one of them.’

‘Them?’ Maddy cocked her head. ‘You said them?’

Cato’s eyes remained warily on Bob.

‘You’ve seen others like him?’ She addressed her question to them both. ‘You’ve seen others like Bob?’

Cato nodded. ‘Yes. We call them Stone Men. They guard Caligula night and day.’

AD 54, Rome

‘Who in the name of the gods are these people?’

Liam didn’t get the impression they were entirely welcome. The man was small and slim and wearing nothing more than a towel round his narrow waist. The parchment skin of an old man hung in wattles from his neck, wrinkled into slack bands over his knobbly knees.

‘Crassus, they’re not safe where they are!’ replied Cato, ushering them into the senator’s atrium.

‘So? This isn’t a public refuge for waifs and strays!’

‘They could help us, Crassus.’ Cato pointed at Bob. ‘Particularly this one.’

‘My gods…’ muttered Crassus, eyeing the support unit up and down. ‘He’s a giant!’

‘And fast, very fast,’ added Macro.

Crassus nodded. The old senator turned back to Cato. ‘But at this time of night! Caligula’s eyes are everywhere! You arrive at my home at this hour, you’re asking to attract attention!’ Crassus looked a little out of breath. ‘And can you not see I’m being washed? Whatever this is about, it can wait, can’t it?’

‘We need to talk, Crassus.’ Cato’s tone conveyed everything it needed to. ‘An important matter.’

Crassus nodded slowly. ‘All right.’ He wafted his hands at the slave lathering his legs and feet with oil. ‘Off you go, Tosca.’ He smiled. ‘I can finish here myself, thank you.’ He waited until his slave was gone and the atrium was empty but for himself and his unexpected visitors. He stepped out of the wash bowl on the floor and padded wet-footed across the cool granite floor to a seat.

‘Cato…’ he began cautiously, eyeing Bob and the others. ‘If this is “a matter” that might be best discussed in a dark corner, I suggest we — ’

‘This big one — ’ Cato pointed at Bob ‘- is a Stone Man.’

‘Oh please.’

‘He is.’ Macro nodded. ‘Seen him fight with my own eyes. He took a sword that would kill any man.’ He turned to look up at Bob. ‘Why don’t you show him?’

Bob looked at Liam, who nodded.

‘Go on,’ muttered Liam. ‘Might as well show him too.’

Bob lifted his tunic to expose the six-inch line of puckered flesh across his ribcage.

‘To the hilt and out the back,’ added Macro. ‘I’ve seen that wound too many times. If it doesn’t kill you outright… it’ll finish you within hours.’

Crassus shuffled over towards Bob, one hand holding the towel round his waist for modesty; he reached the other out and lightly ran his fingers along the seam of knitting flesh. ‘This must be an old wound.’

‘Actually it happened earlier this afternoon,’ said Cato.

Macro nodded. ‘Took down a dozen of Varelius’s collegia as if they were children.’

Crassus stared at the wound. Up at Bob. ‘Does this monster speak?’

Bob’s grey eyes panned down to him. ‘Of course I do.’ His deep voice made a nearby vase vibrate and ring like a tuning fork.

‘Are… are you a man of stone?’

Bob looked again at Liam and Maddy. ‘Go on,’ said Maddy, ‘you tell ’em what you are.’

‘I am a support unit. A genetically engineered life form with advanced adaptive artificial intelligence. I am capable of delivering a strength-to-weight ratio of seven hundred per cent.’

Crassus shook his head. ‘I don’t understand the words you are speaking.’

‘Which means,’ added Liam, ‘he’s seven times stronger than any human.’

Crassus, already round-eyed, found a way to open them even wider.

‘I have advanced damage limitation and healing systems. Blood with a thickening agent when exposed to air. High concentration of red blood cells delivering oxygen-rich — ’

‘Which means he’s almost impossible to kill.’

Crassus’s jaw suddenly sagged with horror. ‘You brought me one of Caligula’s…?’

‘No! He’s not one of the Palace Guard!’ said Cato. ‘He’s new. These people are new to Rome. They’ve just arrived.’

Crassus’s rheumy eyes, small like slits, narrowed even further. ‘Arrived? From where?’

Cato lowered his voice. ‘You were there, Crassus. The day the acolytes, the priests, talk about? You told me you were there in the amphitheatre, the Statilius Taurus, seventeen years ago. You were one of the few who saw!’

Crassus nodded. ‘Yes, I… I was one who bore witness.’ He was still studying Bob. ‘I have never been certain of what we all saw. You know, Cato, I do not believe in such things as gods or the emperor’s foolish notions.’

Cato smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘But I have no other explanation for the visitation… I…’

‘I do, Crassus,’ cut in Cato. ‘These people are like the Visitors. They come from the same place as them.’

The old man’s breath hitched. ‘The same place…?’

‘Not the heavens, Crassus, for sure. A strange place, though.’

Crassus reached out again and probed the healing wound. The old man looked up at Bob’s face, at the ridge of bone that shadowed his eyes, the jaw that jutted forward like the prow of a ship. Thick cheekbones that looked as if they’d been sculpted from stone.

Crassus’s lips were dry; his old eyes glinted. Widened. ‘And you?’ he said to Bob. ‘You are your own man? You serve no master?’

‘I take orders from Liam O’Connor, Madelaine Carter and Saleena Vikram,’ he replied. ‘They are my team.’

‘So, you… you are not one of Caligula’s Stone Men — not one of them?’

Bob shrugged. ‘I do not understand the question. Who is “them”?’

Crassus shared a conspiratorial meeting of eyes with Cato. A silent, barely noticeable nod of agreement.

‘The Visitors.’

They were given a couple of cubicula in the guest wing of Senator Crassus’s home, comfortable rooms. Through several small square, iron-grated windows the first pale blue light of approaching dawn seeped in. Rome was still fast asleep, the only sound the first twitter of sparrows, impatient for the day to start, and the rasp of some trader’s cart wheel across cobblestones.

In the blue-grey gloom of the receding night, the four of them sat together on a bed of silk and linen. Earlier Maddy and the others had listened as the old man, Crassus, and the Praetorian tribune, Cato, had talked for several hours. Men talking carelessly, impatiently, about their intention to end Caligula’s disastrous rule before it was too late.