Linda Evans - Far Edge of Darkness

Herculaneum's master shipwrights were just finishing work for the day. She could hear shouts and laughter across the intervening stretch of water. It was something, Sibyl supposed, to have one's doctoral thesis borne out so graphically. She'd have traded that confirmation for twentieth-century uncertainty in an instant, despite the awe she felt as the reality of Herculaneum a.d. 79 stretched out before her.

The town was breathtaking, exquisite in every detail... and doomed.

Xanthus grasped her arm. Sibyl jumped nearly out of her skin. Oh, God, you idiot, stop gawking like a fool ... . Xanthus stared sharply at her. Sibyl gazed emptily at the sea and let her mouth hang open a little, trying to look doped to the gills. He grunted and dragged her across the deck. They'd run a wooden ramp down to the quay. Charlie, still naked so he'd be conspicuous—and thus more easily recaptured—if he tried to run, was already ashore. Xanthus thumped down the wooden ramp. Sibyl followed, trying desperately to look as though she'd been drugged. She trembled clear through, so badly her knees threatened to buckle. Xanthus' armed escort followed her down, along with most of the sailors. Only a handful of Xanthus' men remained on guard aboard the ship.

The wooden quay was solidly built, although far more utilitarian than the stone quays of the spa-town Stabiae, with their arches and decorative columns. The slap of water against wet wood reminded Sibyl fiercely of home, of summers spent at the beach. Even the smells were mostly the same: salt water, the tang of clean air overlain by the stench of freshly gutted fish... . She had to blink rapidly to keep tears from slipping loose.

At the far end of the quay, on terra firma , an open, low-slung, unsprung carriage waited on the beach sand, evidently for them. Its wheels were fastened directly to the carriage. Axle shafts hadn't yet been invented. A dull-eyed bay horse stood patiently, one rear leg slack as the animal rested. Leather straps around its throat comprised the harness.

How the poor beast could breathe and pull at the same time was beyond Sibyl. She wished, for the horse's sake anyway, that modern-style harness hadn't been invented so late in history. The driver was dressed as a slave, although more richly than any of Xanthus' men; he was too pretty for his own good. Doubtless that was the reason he'd ended in Bericus' possession. Good-looking as he was, the driver's expression mirrored the horse's.

The tone of his voice when he greeted Xanthus was somewhere between respectful and bored. "My master sent me to meet you, sir."

"Very good." Xanthus turned to his valuable secretary. "Achivus, I want four armed men as escort for the journey. Bericus says there have been bandits raiding north of Vesuvius. Then hire a wagon and bring the cripple in it, with four more guards. I have no intention of putting that bastard in the same carriage with me. We'll return to the ship late tomorrow or early the next day. Set a guard on the ship with the remaining men."

"Yes, Master."

Panic hit Sibyl squarely in the gut. Xanthus was separating them? They had to get out tonight. If they were separated and brought up the mountain several hours apart, could either of them get away from Vesuvius?

Charlie's face had lost its color, despite the deep red light of sunset. Clearly, the same thought had occurred to him. Charlie glanced at Sibyl, eyes darkened with fear. Sibyl tried to think what to do and drew only a grey, terrified blank. Xanthus couldn't separate them, not now... .

"Meanwhile," Xanthus said, fumbling at his belt for a small leather purse, "give me the papers on Aelia I'm holding for Caelerus. I'll have Bericus' secretary scribe me a copy. Here." He counted out coins. "Hire that wagon and follow us as soon as you can. I want that cripple off my hands tonight. Let Bericus worry about him."

Achivus took the coins and handed over the scroll case. "Yes, Master."

Xanthus hauled Sibyl into the carriage and shoved her into the corner, then settled beside her. His hand grazed her inner thigh. She managed to remain motionless, slumped against the side of the carriage and apparently drugged, but she had to fight to stay relaxed under the vulgar caress. The guards jumped in. From his perch at the front of the carriage, the driver lit a lantern with flint and pyrite, then shook out a long whip.

As the carriage lurched into motion, Charlie's voice, thin with distance and fright, reached her: "Hang on!" he called in English. "Just hang on!"

She managed to catch a last glimpse of him as Achivus ordered him put down. Done gently enough, Charlie still hit the ground hard and lay still, just watching her go.

Then they turned off the beach onto a long east–west road that ran from the center of town right out onto the beach itself, bypassing the higher terraces near the Suburban Baths. Once the carriage had rattled around the corner, she slumped down against the jolting side of the carriage and blinked back tears.

Charlie, don't do anything stupid, please or they'll kill you... .

Another part of her whispered, Please get me out of this, Charlie Flynn.

Despair blanked out awareness of the ancient city, even her ability to think rationally. She had perhaps thirty hours in which to rescue herself and two others from certain death and almost no likelihood of pulling it off. In the last, dying light of day, the black hulk of Vesuvius brooded silently above the town. The cold shadows it cast left Sibyl shivering.

The mountain wouldn't remain silent long. There was something hideously macabre about winding through sleepy, oblivious streets, knowing what she knew. As they rattled down narrow, stone-paved thoroughfares, shop vendors closed their windows and counters for the night. Poor men and slaves dressed in rags hurried on urgent errands, while fishermen trundled the remnants of the day's catch out of the city market. Wealthy Romans lingered in groups to finish an animated conversation or strolled home for dinner and bed.

None of them suspected how little time they had left.

Sibyl tried to put that out of her mind. She had to distract herself, get her mind focused on what was left of her future. What she needed was a plan . Sibyl studied the city with a scholar's intense scrutiny, hoping to learn something—anything—that might give them a slightly improved edge on survival.

She was aware, at some deep level of herself, that part of her would probably be studying the eruption and panicked behavior of the doomed residents with a certain professional curiosity, even as the fiery avalanche swept down across them. Of course, most of her would be screaming right along with the rest of the poor barbecue candidates... .

She shivered, overcome by a dreadful, reversed sense of déjà vu. There—she realized it with a shock of recognition—was the moderate, middle-class home known as the Trellis House. Sibyl knew what the interior looked like, what was painted on its frescoed walls. Sibyl knew many of these houses, knew how their garden fountains were shaped, perhaps had even cleaned volcanic mud out of the skulls of those patrician gentlemen engaged in a lively debate on the street corner they were passing... .

Quite abruptly, Sibyl realized how Cassandra must have felt on the walls of Troy. And to think she'd begun this twisted, insane adventure by wishing she could have lived up to her namesakes, the sibyls of Cumae... .

Sibyl blinked. Slowly, her thoughts moving at the speed of a gopher tortoise on a slow day, she grasped at the spark of an idea. Hardly daring to breathe, Sibyl risked a glance at Xanthus. He had settled down, all but oblivious to his surroundings. The guards were more interested in ogling the whores who had begun to show up on the streets than they were in watching her.