Anthony Riches - The Leopard sword

He grinned at the look on the procurator’s face, and Albanus spluttered his amazement.

‘But you’re…’

Albanus stepped back against the wall, his face suddenly white with fear, and the bandit leader’s grin broadened.

‘Just worked it out, have you? That if I’ve shown you my face then I’m not likely to let you live? Clever boy, Albanus, even if you are somewhat late in reaching the conclusion. I know that Scaurus took your share of the profits from our little venture, although I expect that my man Petrus will have recovered it by now.’

Julius’s shouted command snapped the watching soldiers out of their momentary dismay, and Sergius crouched into the cover of the shield he’d borrowed from his chosen man, snatching one last glance into the granary as the torchbearer stepped through the roughly hewn hole and into the cloud of dust. With a roaring explosion that made the watching soldiers stagger back a pace, the burning dust tore the solidly built granary to pieces like the hand of a vengeful god, sending a fireball into the night air that lit up the grain store’s compound like a momentary flash of daylight. Something hit Sergius’s shield hard, cracking the layered wooden board, and the spear thrower crouching next to him was smashed aside by a flying brick. When the first spear turned round to look at the man he realised that his soldier was already dead, his head bashed in by the massive impact. For a moment the senior centurion was as stunned as the men around him, and he stared out at a scene of devastation that was hard to comprehend. Where the granary had stood there remained only a gaping wound in the otherwise uninterrupted run of brickwork, and the ground around him was littered with bricks, roof tiles and the corpses of several of his men who had been too slow in taking shelter. Shaking his head to clear it, Sergius drew his sword and pointed it at the gaping hole in the row of granaries, but the command for his men to storm the shattered granary died in his throat at the sight of a thirty-foot-high column of fire raging out of the ruin.

Albanus’s house trembled, and the sound of a powerful explosion reached the two men through the thick walls. The door opened and one of Obduro’s men put his head round it.

‘A mighty flash to the south, my lord, close to the walls!’

The bandit leader nodded, waving the man back to his post. He turned back to Albanus with a wry smile.

‘As I was saying, I expect that Petrus will have reclaimed your share of the fraud from the Tungrians by now, and my next stop will be the collection of that rather large sum of money, less the commission we agreed in advance. After that all that remains for me to do is to retrieve my own share from its hiding place, and the stage will be set for my disappearance into history. Once I’m across the Mosa and into the forest the entire Rhenus garrison won’t be able to find me. I’ll quietly re-emerge somewhere to the south with a few picked men and enough wealth to deal with any difficult questions. You did hide my money as instructed, I hope? Your family in Rome really are most horribly vulnerable to a man possessed of as few scruples as myself.’

Albanus nodded frantically, putting up his hands in a feeble gesture of self-defence.

‘It’s all there, just as you instructed!’

Obduro nodded his approval, drawing his sword with a loud rasp of metal in the silent house.

Good. Now, then, let’s get this over with. If you behave yourself I’ll make sure it’s as quick and painless as I can.’

The former procurator shrank away from him, babbling helplessly at the sight of the sword’s dappled steel.

‘There’s really no need for this. I can assure you that I won’t talk! There must be something I have that you want!’

Obduro lowered the face mask over his features, its emotionless face regarding the trembling Albanus with a pitiless gaze. He spoke again, his voice rendered flat and hollow behind the thick sheet of hammered metal.

‘But of course you have something I want. Something only you can give me.’

‘Anything, just name it! I’ll give you anything if you-’

Obduro stepped forward and rammed the point of his sword up into the gabbling procurator’s throat, twisting the blade as he withdrew it to release the stream of gore that flowed down his victim’s tunic. Choking on the blood running down his throat, the dying man sank to his knees, staring up mutely at his murderer.

‘And there it is. Your silence, Albanus. That’s all I came for.’

He turned away, calling to his men as he left the house.

‘That rather loud bang sounded like it might have been a problem, if it was what I suspect it was, so I’m advancing our schedule. You, run to the Blue Boar and tell Petrus that I’m coming for the late procurator’s money. Go!’

Marcus and Arabus looked up at the city’s wall from the banks of the River Worm, and the Roman walked forward to the point where wall and river met. In the moon’s dim light he could see the stark lines of the heavy metal gate that filled the perfectly hemispherical arch through which the river flowed on into Tungrorum. He shook his head at the tracker, pointing at the impassable archway.

‘The guard must have closed it when the gates were closed on the tribune’s orders. I can’t see how-’

A loud clanking noise from the other side of the wall made them both start with surprise, and Marcus flattened himself against the wall, gesturing to the tracker to do the same. Slowly, an inch at a time, the heavy iron gate was being lifted out of the water by whatever mechanism was working on it, until a rattling of chains indicated that whoever had raised it was securing it in place. The two men waited in perfect silence, listening intently as a man’s footsteps padded softly along the footpath that ran alongside the river, halting for a moment as whoever it was stopped to duck under the gate’s iron frame. Marcus eased the eagle-pommelled gladius out of its scabbard in a slow slither of polished iron, careful not to make a sound as the unknown man’s steps drew closer. A figure appeared only a few paces from the crouching Roman, his dark silhouette obscuring the lowest stars in the cloudless night sky as he stepped out of the arch and stopped to look across the empty ground beyond the city’s wall, breathing out a soft, slow sigh of relief. Marcus struck before the exhalation of breath was finished, rising quickly and sweeping the man’s feet out from under him with a swift kick, then pouncing on him as he hit the ground with a painful grunt. For an instant his captive tensed to struggle, but the cold touch of Marcus’s sword at his throat froze him into immobility.

Arabus stepped out of the wall’s shadow, his face a mask of hatred in the moonlight, and Tornach gaped up at the two men with poorly disguised dismay. Marcus spoke quietly to the tracker, glancing through the river gate.

‘Arabus, check inside the gate to see if he brought any friends with him.’ While the tracker padded off reluctantly into the shadows, the Roman looked down at Prefect Caninus’s deputy and shook his head in disgust. ‘Yes, it is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? You send out a man with orders to kill an interfering outsider, and the next thing you know the pair of them have you at sword point. And you can be grateful that it’s me holding the blade to your throat and not your man there. I showed him your sacrificial altar in the fortress on the hill, and he was quick enough to spot his son’s belt hanging from it. If I leave you to his mercies you’ll last either no more than a few heartbeats or no less than a few thousand, depending on whether he wants to take his revenge quickly or slowly. Either way I’d say you’re not very likely to see the dawn.’ Arabus came out of the shadows, and shook his head. ‘You’re on your own, then, are you, with nobody to come to your aid? Although why you’d be opening such an out-of-the-way exit from the city is a little hard to understand…’ He paused, as if in thought, then nodded knowingly. ‘Unless of course you’re readying an exit for Obduro, a quiet and unwatched way out for a few men carrying heavy boxes, eh? Perhaps your master’s less interested in the grain than he’d have us believe, and more interested in a rather large sum of money that he’s got hidden in the city. The only thing I don’t know is exactly where it’s hidden.’