They came to a darkened property that had once, according to a faded sign over the door, been a manufactory of jewellery. Now the frontage was scarred by fire, and the door had been broken down.
Gisco checked his bit of paper. ‘This is the one.’ He gestured to Suniatus. ‘No need to knock.’
Suni grinned, drew his sword, kicked the door in, and led the way inside.
If this had been a manufactory it had long been stripped bare, the contents looted. Now in two, three, four ground-floor rooms people huddled, whole families crammed into one corner or another, mothers clutching infants, cowering back from Gisco’s light. There was a complicated stink of milk, piss, shit, sweat, and deep ingrained dirt. Gisco, without a word, stalked through the rooms, blade in hand, holding his lantern so he could see faces. Eyes gleamed bright from heaps of rags. He still hadn’t told Suni or Nelo what he was looking for.
‘Not here,’ he said once they had gone through all the rooms. He saw that Suniatus had grabbed a bit of bread from some wretch, and was biting into the hard crust. ‘Oh, give that back, Suni.’ Suniatus cast the fragment over his shoulder, and the huddled forms scrambled for it. Gisco looked around. There was an upper floor, but the ceilings of the rooms were flimsy and cracked, and the dawn sky showed through, a reluctant grey.
‘Nothing up there, Sergeant,’ Suniatus offered. ‘I saw from outside. Top floor pulled down, for the wood to burn, I guess.’
‘All right.’ Gisco stalked through the rooms again, ignoring the people who had to shrink back out of his way. At length he found a hatch in the floor. ‘Aha! A cellar.’ He gestured at Suni, who found an iron ring fixed to the hatch, and hauled it up. Gisco held up his lantern over the hole. Nelo glimpsed a wooden ladder, a floor of packed earth beneath.
Gisco nodded to Suniatus, his finger to his lips. ‘You first, Suni. Quiet, now.’
Suni grinned, settled into the hatch, and let himself down the ladder one-handed. Gisco passed the lantern. Suni looked around, then headed off determinedly to one corner, moving out of sight.
Nelo waited with Gisco. Somewhere an infant murmured, and was hushed. Nelo wondered what happened to these people when it rained, under that roof. But then it rarely rained in Carthage nowadays.
There was a brief sound of a struggle, a surprised grunt. Then Suni called up, ‘You can come down, sir.’
Nelo led the way down the ladder.
The cellar, whatever it had once stored, was stripped as bare as the rest of the house. In one corner a man lay face down on a pile of blankets, with Suni grasping one twisted arm and kneeling on his back. There was a heap of clothes, a discarded mail coat, and weapons — a battleaxe leaning against one wall. And there was a woman, Nelo saw, cowering in the corner, grasping a blanket to her chest.
Gisco took in the scene at a glance. ‘Good work, Suni.’ He strode across to the man, got a handful of hair and pulled his head back, making the man grunt. Nelo saw the hair was bright red, and that the man was bearded. Gisco dropped the man’s head casually, as if dropping a sack of potatoes. ‘This is the one. Who’s she?’
The woman sat up straighter. ‘Sir. My name is Satilis. My husband owns this shop. Owned — I have not seen him for some time.’
Gisco leaned down and peered at her in the lantern light. ‘She’s older than I thought.’
Suni grinned. ‘Maybe this fellow likes ‘em wrinkly.’
‘Sir — are you acting under the orders of the suffetes? Of the Popular Assembly?’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘I demand my rights. We have always paid our taxes and tolls, officer. My husband’s father once served on the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four. It was bad enough that my shop, my home, was forced to open its doors to stinking farmers’ families from the country. Now this man has come, he just walked in here, he doesn’t even speak our tongue, but he had a letter demanding asylum, a letter from General Fabius, and, and-’
Suni guffawed. ‘General Fabius? Sure he did.’
Gisco stood straight. ‘Get out of here, madam.’
‘What?’
‘You won’t want to see what’s to come. Get out. Shoo, shoo.’ And he chased her as he would a reluctant dog.
The woman got up and scrambled for the ladder, which was hard to negotiate in her blanket. Both Gisco and Suniatus stared as she climbed, revealing thighs, buttocks, ample hips.
Gisco sighed. ‘That will keep me warm tonight.’
Suni laughed again. ‘Now what, sir? What do we do with this fellow? Haul him in?’
‘No time for that, Suni. He’s an obvious saboteur. Placed here to open the gates and let his brutish comrades into our city, along with their Hatti overlords. Finish him off.’
‘With pleasure. How?’
‘Behead him. Make it neat, would you?’
Suniatus lifted his blade, yanking the man’s head back; the man began to struggle, his teeth grating.
‘Oh, by the left bollock of mighty Teshub, kill the man first. Have some manners, Suniatus.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ Suniatus efficiently slit the man’s throat with a scrape of his blade, held him down while he bled out, and then sawed off the head, grunting and complaining as his blade got stuck in the vertebrae.
Meanwhile Gisco turned to Nelo. ‘You. Find a sack, a bag.’
‘Yes, sir. What for, sir?’
‘Our keepsake. This brute’s crimson head, boy. We’re on a mission to root out agents of the Hatti princes, like this one.’ He said this absently, while perusing his list by the light of the lantern. ‘You still here? Go, boy, go!’
So they proceeded through Megara. Nelo had to carry the sack, which dripped blood as they walked, and was surprisingly heavy. It got heavier yet as they visited a second house, and a third, each time finding a solitary Rus or Scand warrior living among fearful Carthaginians, each time coming upon him without warning, each time coming away with a head. The whole business, the stink of the heads, sickened Nelo.
Yet it puzzled him too. Even when the warriors saw them coming they made no attempt to resist, not until it was too late and they realised their fate at Suniatus’ hands. They did jabber out pleas in their own harsh tongues, but that was to be expected, and none of the killing party understood a word.
On the fourth killing Suniatus whistled as he sawed at the man’s neck. ‘This is the life for me, aurochs,’ he said to Nelo. ‘Killing these brutes is as easy as picking olives off a tree.’ He threw over the head for Nelo to catch.
They came upon the fifth man in an upper room of a small abandoned temple. By now the day was bright, the curfew lifted, and in the streets outside the wagons of the dead continued their mournful progress, amid the gathering noises of the city day. This time Suniatus struggled to get the Scand on his back before despatching him. Gisco was forced to help, sitting on the man’s legs while Suniatus pinned his chest.
And the man saw Nelo. His eyes widened. ‘Northlander.’
Nelo was startled. He had said the word in the tongue of Etxelur.
‘Northlander. You are a Northlander. I can tell, the hair, the eyes. I visit — I have visited-’ Suniatus punched him in the mouth, knocking his head to the side. But he stayed conscious, and spoke from a bloody mouth. ‘Please. Mistake. They make mistake. I am loyal, loyal to Fabius!’
Suniatus recognised the general’s name, and sat back, panting, pinning the man’s arms. ‘What did he say? Something about my general?’ And he slammed the back of his hand into the Scand’s face.
‘Get on with it, Suni,’ growled Gisco, pressing on the man’s legs.
‘Sir.’ Suniatus made a more determined effort to contain the man’s struggles.