‘ THREE! ’
They all turned together and scrambled down the rat run, sandals slipping in the muck of animal faeces and night-water.
Liam heard the crash and clatter of the cart falling behind him as he vaulted over the flimsy inner barricade. Bob remained where he was, almost completely filling the width of the entrance to the rat run with his bulk and the arc of the short-handled blacksmith’s hammer he was swinging wildly.
Now the cart was torn down and Bob fully exposed, missiles began to rain down on him from the avenue outside: stones, several arrows, dislodged clay bricks. Liam could see thickening blood trickling like syrup from a dozen nicks and gashes on Bob already. The support unit had faced far worse barrages than this, but Becks had been the example — one lucky arrow on target, one arrow puncturing the bone of his cranium and damaging either his walnut-sized organic brain or the computer nestling next to it, and he could be brought down like any other man.
‘BOB! Get back here!’ Liam cried over the cacophony of noise bouncing off the walls either side of them.
‘Affirmative!’ he heard Bob rumble in reply. He retreated slowly under the barrage, still swinging his hammer and holding the crowd back until finally he was able to quickly turn round and leap over the barricade to join the others.
A moment later, the mob crashed into the fragile second barricade. It wobbled and collapsed easily into a tangle of chair legs and shards of fractured crates, and through that pressed a forest of legs and arms, swinging clubs and knives and short swords.
The air above them buzzed and flickered with stones and short sharpened stakes, slingshots and grabbed handfuls of muck from the street. A neighbourhood brawl the likes of which Liam had never seen before.
The first few men through the tangle were quickly dealt with and collapsed amid the confusion of broken furniture; the rest quickly pulled back under the shower of projectiles raining down from the balconies around the courtyard.
Between Bob’s swinging hammer and Macro’s foul-mouthed jabbing swordplay, it looked like the pair of them in this narrow bottleneck were going to be able to hold the jeering, angry mob at bay for a while yet.
‘Go on! Be off, the lot of you!’ Macro bayed at the men hovering several yards beyond the probing tip of his sword. The bud struggled to find modern English alternatives for half of the stream of invective spewing out of his mouth. Liam found himself laughing nervously at the ex-soldier’s coarse bravura.
‘Aye! Go on, get lost!’ he crowed defiantly as he ducked down and picked up a rock that had just landed at his feet and tossed it back into the crowd.
‘Watch out!’ Macro raised his shield, a battered and old curved rectangular shield that still sported the flecked paint insignia Legio II amid the forked lightning motif. He raised it over his and Liam’s head as a large chunk of flint pulled up from the avenue outside arced over the heads of the mob in front and descended towards them. It clattered and bounced heavily, knocking a jagged gash through the shield before rolling on to the ground at their feet.
Macro lowered the shield and grinned at Liam. ‘Just like the good ol’ days!’
Liam had the distinct impression, even before he got the translation a half-second later, that the old boy was getting a kick out of this. Or he would have been… had he not heard someone scream, ‘ INCENDIA, FLAMMA ’.
‘What?!’
Macro looked back into the courtyard, towards where the scream had come from.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Liam.
Above them they heard the unmistakable whusk of an arrow, accompanied by a fluttering hiss. Liam saw the faint trail of smoke it left in its wake.
Macro spat rage and a stream of abuse. ‘N-O-O-O-O!!!’
Several more flaming arrows zipped overhead, thudding into the wooden balconies, quickly setting fire to the dried wood, the woven-reed modesty screens and the hanging lines of laundry.
‘ NO! ’ Macro bellowed again. ‘That’s my bloodyproperty!!’
CHAPTER 60
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Cato stood and stared at them; they calmly returned his silent gaze.
‘This area is off-limits to you,’ said Stern. ‘You do not have authority to proceed any further. Please leave immediately.’
‘I’m checking the palace for any intruders, looters,’ said Cato.
‘I understood that,’ replied Stern calmly. ‘However, I repeat: you have no authority to enter this particular location. Please turn round and leave.’
These men — no, not men… things — used to unsettle Cato. However, unlike the superstitious men he commanded, he’d never thought of them as supernatural beings. Just that they were decidedly inhuman. Odd. Creepy. But now he felt he had some sort of understanding of what they were.
Contraptions. Devices.
‘You know who I am, don’t you?’
‘Affirmative. Tribune Cato.’
‘And you understand I have the emperor’s authority in his absence?’ said Cato. ‘I am in charge of palace security.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘So, what is behind those doors?’
Stern took a step forward. He cocked his head slightly as if listening to something only he could hear. ‘That information is strictly classified, Tribune Cato. You do not have the correct security clearance for that information.’
Cato studied the Stone Man. His eyes were blinking repeatedly. There was an air of distracted uncertainty, of confusion about him.
Security clearance. Such odd words.
‘You mean I don’t have the authority? But you see, I do. The emperor put me in charge of — ’
‘Negative. This is a… US military security zone… this is…’ Stern stopped. Cocked his head again awkwardly. ‘In this current operational mode, the user designated “Emperor” has complete diagnostic control.’ The confusion slowly cleared from his face as if another conflicting voice from within was coming through. ‘We are authorized to use lethal force if you do not leave immediately.’ Stern took a step forward, more certain of himself now. He reached for the hilt of the sword strapped to his side. ‘You should leave now.’
Cato raised both his hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right… I’m leaving.’ He stepped back into the main hallway and allowed the drape to flop back into place, once more concealing the small passageway.
Cato realized the young woman from the future was quite correct. That beyond those sturdy oak doors was quite probably everything she wanted to find: the technology of her time. Her way home, and a way to correct everything.
He found Fronto a few minutes later, outside watching the sky above Rome laced with ribbons of smoke from riots that were breaking out right across the city.
‘We should bring the others in now,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take a section of men with you and get our friends back here as quickly as you can.’
CHAPTER 61
AD 54, Subura District, Rome
Sal was struggling to breathe. A thick pall of smoke from the fires above them had descended to fill the courtyard.
She had Maddy. Or rather Maddy had found her and was even now leading her by the hand through the churning sea of bodies. Five minutes ago the fight had settled into a stalemate; the looters held at bay in the rat run by the constant barrage of projectiles from above.
But now things had descended into a confused, misty chaos. The smoke from a dozen fires on the first and second floors had become a choking blanket. Macro’s tenants were now no longer concerned with keeping their looting neighbours out of the apartment block, but instead were struggling with each other to escape the burning building.
Sal was jostled and bumped from all sides, nearly losing her grip on Maddy’s hand as they became funnelled into a press of thrashing bodies. The rat run: five minutes ago it was a bottleneck that was proving to be their saving grace; now it looked like becoming a death trap for them.