Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

Cato studied them both silently for a moment. ‘You can make all of this happen?’

‘Yes!’ replied Maddy. ‘But only if we can get back home.’

Cato pinched his nose thoughtfully.

‘Can you get us out… somehow?’

‘I’m thinking.’

AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome

Macro finished threading the loops of leather through the fastenings and tightened up the lorica segmentata round his thick torso. It was snug, but he nodded with satisfaction that his portly gut could still be contained by the one-size-fits-all segmented armour.

‘All right, lads!’ he barked as he put on a helmet. ‘Those girls across the garden are probably more frightened of you than you are of them!’

A grim cackle of laughter rippled among the men.

‘Without their horses, they’re just a rabble of rank amateurs. So let’s not worry about ’em too much, eh?’

The red stain of twilight bathed the gardens with their stone pathways and small bushes, young olive trees and the decorative scattering of bodies. The evening was strangely quiet and still. After the last fifteen minutes of fighting, the clash of arms and the roar of raised voices, the silence seemed almost complete.

But Macro heard a low murmur of voices, from men still outside the imperial compound. A low murmur rolling forwards and spreading across the men inside like a wave riding up a shingle beach.

What’s going on out there?

Then he saw movement, over between the stone columns of the gateway, several men on horseback picking their way through the men filing in. All of them roaring support as they suddenly recognized the men on horseback.

Macro cursed as he realized who they were.

Caligula and the Praetorians’ prefect, Quintus.

‘Cato!’ He turned round and looked up the steps. ‘What are you up to?’ he muttered under his breath.

The equites on the far side of the gardens roared with glee at the sight of their emperor and praefectus. Macro watched as they dismounted and disappeared among the mass of men, only to appear a few moments later as the front rank of soldiers parted respectfully to let them through.

Caligula walked slowly towards them, flanked by two of his Stone Men. Quintus had dropped back a dutiful three steps behind.

A dozen yards away he stopped, raised his hands to quieten the equites behind him. An obedient hush swiftly settled across the gardens.

‘I wonder now… what are you lot doing in my home?’ He looked around at the grounds, littered with bodies, the shafts of javelins poking out of the dirt. Divots of displaced soil and trampled flowerbeds.

‘What an awful mess you’ve made!’ He sighed. ‘On any other day, I’d be quite annoyed. But today… today has been a very good day. Soon — very soon now — something truly wonderful is going to happen. I will transform from a man to a god! And Rome will be showered with riches once more. Today… I defeated the last few men who doubted me. Two legions of fools, commanded by their foolish general… wiped out.’

‘Praetorians!’ He took a step closer. ‘My good men,’ he said with hands spread. ‘I hear you have done your duty well, defended my home against those you thought had come to ransack it. For that I thank you all… and I forgive you.’

Macro took a step back from his line of men, climbed the half-dozen steps up to the portico entrance. He saw Cato deep in conversation with the others.

‘But I’m afraid you have been misled… tricked,’ continued Caligula. ‘Tricked by officers who were in league with General Lepidus. Conspirators, fellow disbelievers, traitor-’

Macro put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Cato looked up. Caligula paused and an expression of irritation at the rude interruption flashed across his face. The three ranks of sweating, grim-faced and blood-spattered soldiers on the steps swivelled their heads to look up at Macro.

An entire battlefield frozen in a moment, silent, and every pair of eyes on him.

Macro shrugged then grinned. ‘Load of bollocks!’ he roared loudly.

It sounded like a breeze rustling through the small orchard of baby olive trees. But in fact, it was a ripple of gasps spreading among the men on both sides.

‘You’re not going to be a god. You’re just an idiot!’

That rustling breeze again. Followed by a silence. He could see the ‘o’s of mouths open, aghast, in every direction.

Stuff this.

He spotted an unused javelin on the floor nearby. And in one swift movement bent down, picked it up and hurled it towards Caligula. It arced lazily through the air, every pair of eyes on the seemingly endless trajectory of the wobbling wooden shaft and glinting iron tip until it dug into the dirt between Caligula’s planted feet with a dull thud.

Caligula stared wide-eyed at the shaft as it wobbled in front of him. He reached out for the wooden shaft, pulled it free of the ground and then tossed the javelin to one side. His face split with a grin as he laughed with delight.

‘Do you see now? No one can kill a god.’

Fronto’s men began to stir and fidget unhappily.

Macro backed up across the entrance portico towards the others, nearly tripping over and losing his footing on the legs of one of the dying.

‘A full pardon for all you men!’ cried out Caligula. ‘And a thousand sestertii for the one who brings me that man’s head!’

‘I think we’d better run!’ rasped Macro.

Cato nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’

Together they turned and headed back into the dimly lit halls of the palace as some of the quicker-witted Praetorian Guards began to climb the steps in hungry pursuit of their bounty.

AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome

Cato led them all back down the palace’s main hallway. They passed by the secret passageway they’d emerged from five minutes earlier.

‘Where are we going?’ called out Maddy.

‘There’s a slaves and merchants’ entrance on the far side of the palace. If we’re lucky, that idiot, Quintus, won’t have thought to block it off yet.’

‘He’s not exactly the sharpest arrow in the quiver,’ said Macro, puffing as they jogged.

‘Which is the main reason Caligula appointed him,’ Cato added. ‘If we’re quick, the section of Fronto’s men I posted there won’t yet know there’s a bounty on our heads.’

The hallway ended at the grand atrium and, as they emerged into it, they saw on the far side a dozen soldiers emerging from the hallway opposite. Not men of Fronto’s century but equites.

‘On the emperor’s orders, you there!.. Stay where you are!’ echoed a voice.

Cato hissed a curse. ‘Too late!’

‘We’re going back!’ cried Rashim. ‘Back to my cage!’

‘Be quiet!’ grunted Macro as they reversed into the flickering, lamp-lit gloom of the main passageway again.

‘This isn’t good,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re going to be trapped!’

‘My cage!’ trilled Rashim. ‘Going back! Yes! My cage! My Stone — ’

‘I said be quiet,’ Macro snapped, raising a threatening fist.

‘The Stone Men!’ said Maddy. ‘He’s right! Rashim… he could reboot them!’

The word didn’t translate well for her and Macro offered her a puzzled glare. ‘Put some boots on them? What the — ?’

She tried again. ‘Reactivate them! Awaken them!’

Cato nodded. ‘Yes…’ He turned to Rashim. ‘Can you do this? Make them take your orders?’

‘Oh yes, yes… I can make magic work!’

Cato pointed his sword back the way they’d come. ‘Then back! Back there quickly!’

They turned. Cato grasped Rashim’s painfully thin wrist and dragged him along as he jogged ahead with Macro. Bob bounded after them, Liam bouncing and groaning on his huge back. The girls kept pace either side, looking anxiously back over their shoulders at the clatter and jangle of armour and harnesses and the slap of pursuing nailed army sandals on the stone floor.