Ben Kane - Clouds of War

‘I don’t want to be taken alive.’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘I know how this might go, Hanno. Promise that you’ll kill me if you have to.’

He flinched before her steady gaze. He wanted to rant and rail at the gods, but instead offered up a silent prayer to Tanit, the mother goddess so revered by Carthaginians.

Protect us, please. Do not ask me to slay the woman I love.

She didn’t press him further, and they settled down to wait until it was safe either to retreat or to proceed. It felt like Hades on earth, with the screams of women and men’s laughter assaulting their ears from one side, and the din of soldiers killing each other doing the same from the other. There was no way to avoid hearing any of it: each of them had to keep watch on an end of the alley.

Hanno had hoped that things might grow a little better when the fighting to their rear died down. What he hadn’t gambled upon was for the Syracusans to have gained the upper hand and that the officer would remember where they’d gone. The first he knew of it was when three Syracusan soldiers entered the far end of the alley. They spotted him and Aurelia at once. With eager cries, they broke into a run.

Hanno’s stomach turned a neat loop. We are fucked. If he fought the men, the Romans in the street beyond would hear. If they exited the alley, they’d be seen. Which fate was worse?

‘I’ve been looking. There’s a shop around the corner,’ hissed Aurelia. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone inside.’

‘Go, then!’ replied Hanno. The trio of Syracusans were thirty paces away.

‘Wait. There’s a legionary facing our way.’ Aurelia’s calm stunned him, but he obeyed.

Six heartbeats later — it felt like six hundred — she tapped his arm. Crouched down, they sloped out into the open with Aurelia in the lead. Hanno didn’t look beyond the door of the shop, which was ajar. It would become obvious if they were seen. No shouts filled their ears, however, as they slipped inside and pushed the door to. It seemed to be an apothecary’s — the air was thick with the smell of aromatic herbs and more exotic substances. Two large mortars and pestles occupied a prominent space on the counter, and the shelves on the walls were lined with pots and small glass jars. Hanno scanned the room, but there was no locking bar visible for the door. Heart racing, he leaned against it and pressed his ear to the timbers. Aurelia watched him, her face taut with fear.

‘Where have they gone?’ shouted a man in Greek.

‘Shut your mouth,’ growled a second voice.

‘Why?’

‘Ho, Julius, you’d better finish quick!’ roared a man in Latin. ‘We’ve got company. It’s some Syracusan whoresons, come to save their womenfolk.’

‘Shit! Go back!’ cried the first Greek speaker, and Hanno exulted.

Confusion reigned outside as the Syracusans fled, and the legionaries grabbed their weapons and followed. When the sound of men charging into the alley had died away, Hanno risked a look outside. All of the legionaries appeared to have gone, apart from one man, whose backside could be seen pumping up and down between a woman’s legs.

Sprinting forward, Hanno stabbed him in the back. Then, heaving the legionary off his sobbing victim, he cut his throat for good measure. The woman — girl — stared up at Hanno, mouth agape with terror, her face and breasts a mass of bruises. ‘Run,’ Hanno ordered, heaving the corpse to one side. ‘Find somewhere to hide.’

Aurelia made to help the woman up, but he pulled her back. ‘She’s only a child!’ Aurelia protested.

His grip on her arm tightened. ‘We can’t help. It’s asking enough of the gods that we should survive. What’s happening now is just the start, believe me. By nightfall, things will be infinitely worse.’

Her gaze dropped to the girl, who hadn’t stirred from where she lay. ‘Save yourself, please. Before they come back.’

The girl turned her face away.

Aurelia snatched up a bloodied gladius and thrust it, hilt first, at her. ‘Take this. You can use it on them, or yourself.’ As the girl took it, Aurelia regarded Hanno, her eyes full of tears. ‘I’m ready.’

Praying that their run of bad luck had ended, Hanno made for the small street opposite.

For a short time, they saw no soldiers — of either side. At a crossroads two hundred paces further on, Hanno dared to hope. There was a human hand painted on a wall, the forefinger pointing down one of the four streets. Underneath it, he read the Greek word ‘ACHRADINA’. Signs were rare in cities, so he had extra reason to feel grateful. ‘This way.’

They had gone perhaps fifty paces before a quartet of legionaries stepped out of a cheesemonger’s. Each man bore a round of cheese under one arm. They whooped at the sight of Hanno and Aurelia, and swaggered towards them.

‘Go back,’ whispered Hanno frantically, but his heart sank as he turned. Alerted by the noise of their fellows, another three Romans were clattering down the front steps of a house that they must have been ransacking. Their path to the crossroads was blocked, and there were no alleys in sight. He hammered on one door and then another, but they had been barred from within.

‘I’ll tell them I’m Roman,’ said Aurelia. ‘That you’re not to be harmed.’

‘They won’t listen to a word you say. Look at them, they’re like wild animals.’ Placing Aurelia behind him, Hanno moved to stand against the wall of a shop. At the last moment, he saw a Syracusan shield lying in the dirt nearby. Gripping that, he felt a little better. With luck, he could take a few of them before he was overwhelmed or slain.

‘Give me your dagger,’ Aurelia said. ‘I can fight too, when they get close enough.’

There was so much Hanno wanted to say. How glad he was that they had met, how much he had enjoyed their time together. How it had been his dream to take her to Carthage in peacetime, where they could have started a family together. Without a word, he tugged the blade from its sheath and passed it to her.

As the first leering legionaries closed in, Hanno saw two more appear further down the street. They paused, as if unsure whether to get involved, and then marched towards them with grim purpose. Hanno’s despair nearly overcame him. Seven to one had been bad odds, but it hadn’t been out of the realms of possibility that he and Aurelia could have escaped.

Against nine enemies they had no chance.

Quintus and Urceus wandered aimlessly through the streets, joining in on occasion with the brutal fights against the few Syracusan soldiers who were prepared to resist. For the most part, though, the grief-stricken pair kept searching for Pera. However unlikely it was that they would find him in the violence-riven city, neither man could give up, for they could not put Corax from their minds. For more than four years, he had been their leader, their guardian, their father-figure. To lose him was bad enough, but to lose him to murder — by Pera — made it an outrage of the most terrible kind.

There was no sign of their quarry, but they did not let up. Pera was somewhere in Syracuse. While the fighting went on, there was every chance of slaying him unnoticed, and if the word of the legionaries whom they encountered could be relied on, they were gradually nearing Achradina and Tyche. Pera was likelier to be there than elsewhere, they decided. Mollis and treacherous whoreson he might be, but he’d do his duty.

Their advance was halted by a set of burning houses. Thick smoke billowed into the sky and flames licked up the sides of the wooden buildings. From there, it spread on to their roofs, threatening the edifices to either side. Shrieks could be heard within. As they paused, a woman threw herself from a second-floor window, landing with a terrible crack on the cobbles below. She did not move again, but laughing legionaries gathered to watch as a man — her husband? — appeared in the window with a small child in his arms. By mutual, silent consent, Quintus and Urceus turned and headed the other way.