Masgava knew better. The man thought he was playing with a legionary: an automaton of drills and manoeuvres whose rigid adherence to tactics and discipline would render him unimaginative and somewhat at a loss against such an unusual opponent. But Masgava was no legionary, and unusual opponents had been his daily fare for years.
As the man prepared for a fourth and fifth strike with the blades, Masgava kept his eyes locked on the killer’s hands, but his foot was moving unnoticed in the shadows beneath them, seemingly independent of his calm upper exterior.
He brought the hob-nailed sole down as hard as he could on the killer’s foot, aiming to avoid most of the man’s boot and concentrate all his weight and pressure on the toes alone. He heard the smashing and cracking of bone and saw the man’s eyes widen suddenly at the realisation of what Masgava had done. One of the knives, momentarily mishandled in his realisation, flew from his fingers and skittered across the floor. The man reacted quicker than Masgava expected, dropping all his weight onto his other leg and flicking out with the remaining knife, drawing an angry line up Masgava’s forearm. Even as the Eburone struck the blow, his eyes streaming from the pain in his mangled toes, he was reaching up with his spare hand and pulling something from a hiding place on his back. The light steel throwing axe glinted in the gloom as the man hefted it ready to strike.
But Masgava had anticipated each move. He’d crippled the man’s left foot and naturally the killer had shifted all his weight to his right. As the axe came up gleaming, Masgava’s kick took him in the right knee. There was an unpleasant crack and the killer screamed as his leg gave way, the knee bending in an unaccustomed direction.
The axe, like the blade before it, fell from his fingers and clanged across the floor.
One foot mangled and one knee snapped, the man collapsed, useless, to the ground. Masgava glanced left and right for a moment. Only for a moment, to take in the situation. And suddenly he was on the floor. The man, despite the agony in his legs, had managed to grab his foot and unbalance him. Even as Masgava tried to roll back, the crippled killer was on him, one hand closing on his windpipe while the other reached into the clasp of his cloak and withdrew a slender, short blade from a secret sheath. The blade glistened with something dark running down its length.
Poison!
Masgava’s hand flew up and grasped the killer’s wrist, halting the downward momentum of the poisoned knife a finger’s-breadth from his eye. As the two men remained locked in the deadly embrace, the battle in the hut raging around them, Masgava felt himself becoming light-headed as his oxygen flow failed. One hand round his throat and the other struggling to strike home with the knife, the killer grinned.
‘Garo never fails.’
Masgava, keeping the blade steadily away from his eye, reached up with his free hand.
‘Assassins, Garo,’ Masgava rasped through the restrictive grip, ‘never keep blades like that alone. There’s always a twin.’ His free hand fumbled for only a moment at the killer’s cloak clasp before it found the hilt of the other tiny knife. In a fluid motion, he whipped free the second poisoned blade and jammed it into Garo’s neck.
The killer stared, his eyes wide as blood began to gout from around the needle-knife. The pressure suddenly loosened on Masgava’s throat and the grip on the knife. Masgava casually turned the man’s wrist until the blade pointed at Garo’s own face and then pushed, driving the blade into his eye.
With a heave, he pushed the killer off him and stood, glancing only once at Garo as he shook spastically and coughed up a black froth from both mouth and nose, as well as from around the knife in his throat.
A quick glance to one side and he noted Celer busily cutting pieces off a warrior who desperately tried to defend himself with an axe in his remaining hand. Similarly at the far side, Aurelius seemed to be having a good time, bathed to the elbows in crimson and spattered with gore and brains as he repeatedly beat a man’s shattered head on the floor, yelling something about bats.
Stepping over to the far end of the hut, he found Palmatus busy, too.
The grizzled veteran’s left hand, now divested of its shield and wielding his pugio, was fending off the feeble attempts of the young unnamed king, while his right was busy dealing with the druid. The man’s white robe was already blossoming red in four places and a steady trickle of blood ran from beneath it down the man’s leg, where it pooled on the floor. Yet the druid fought on with only the severed two-foot remains of his staff, hoping to deliver a strong blow to Palmatus whenever his gaze had to flicker to the young king.
With a smile, Masgava stepped forward and reached past his friend. His hands grasped the feeble king’s sword arm and he snapped it hard, so that wrist hung at a right angle to the arm. The Segni king screamed and Palmatus glanced at his friend for a moment with irritation.
‘I didn’t need any help.’
‘Just kill him. Always the last to finish, you… even at dinner.’
‘The way you eat, that’s no surprise,’ Palmatus snapped as he turned both weapons on the druid, feinted once and then slammed the larger of the blades through his heart.
‘You took your time, anyway,’ he snorted as he ripped the gladius free. ‘Spot of trouble?’
‘I was held up for a moment. Come on.’
They turned to Fronto.
The hut was done. Celer and Aurelius had finished the rest, while Masgava had put down the assassin and Palmatus dispatched the druid. The Segni king was busy clutching his smashed arm and weeping like a young girl.
Fronto appeared to have had a hard fight. Three small wounds bloomed red on his arm and torso, but Ambiorix had come off the worst. The man was battered around the side of the face and slicked with blood, one eye closed and puffed up from repeated pummelling. Ambiorix was a mess. Palmatus almost laughed as he realised that the unpleasant wound in the man’s cheek faintly displayed a mirror image of the Caudine Forks battle embossed on the helmet, from where Fronto had hit him with it. Hard.
Ambiorix was done for, though Fronto was still venting some of his frustration on the king’s body.
‘Fronto, stop!’
‘Don’t worry. He’ll live. He’ll live to sing like a little bird and tell us all about his traitorous friends.’
‘Mflhr…’
Fronto grabbed the limp king by the shoulders and lifted him closer. ‘What?’
‘Vthgtras…’
‘A little clarity, if you please.’
Ambiorix took a deep breath and formed the word slowly and agonisingly through his ruined mouth and between his shattered teeth.
‘Vercingetorix.’
‘Never heard of him,’ Fronto replied with a raised eyebrow.
‘You will do,’ whimpered the other king, nursing his broken arm and flooded with tears.
‘’What?’
Fronto flinched as something whipped past his face, and he stared in surprise as the feeble Segni king slammed back against the wall, a knife standing proud from his chest. The man gurgled and coughed up a wad of blood which spouted down onto his decorative golden torc.
In shock, Fronto turned, along with his companions — barring Aurelius, who was busy smashing up what was left of the warrior who’d apparently offended him somehow, bellowing curses at Goddesses and bats.
Magurix stood in the doorway, almost blocking out the light.
‘You daft sod,’ Fronto snapped. ‘He might have been as useful as Ambiorix!’
‘Sadly, yes,’ sighed Magurix, and with a deft flick of the hand sent another thrown blade across the room, where it narrowly skimmed past Fronto’s nose and slammed into Ambiorix’ throat, hammering in so deep that only the hilt projected as the blood began to pump from the king’s throat. Ambiorix sighed, apparently with relief, as he began to fade.