The Emperor's Knives (21 page)

‘Nothing. Which makes sense, because if there was anyone else down here with him they’d have heard us killing him and come out to play. So where are they, I wonder?’

They climbed the stairs to the first floor, back to back, Cotta leading and Marcus staring into the ground floor’s gloom as he backed up the steps behind him. The first-floor landing was just as silent, and a cautious examination of the rooms to either side of the stairs revealed nothing but empty rooms. The two men repeated their cautious climb to the second-floor landing, but found the building’s next floor equally silent. Looking up the next flight of stairs, Cotta nudged Marcus with an elbow and pointed up into the gloom.

‘See that?’

The Tungrian stared hard, realising what it was that the veteran was showing him. A thick wooden door, criss-crossed with iron reinforcing bars, had been installed at the top of the stairs, and was hanging half open in the building’s silence.

‘There’ll be men on that floor for certain.’

Marcus nodded.

‘There’s no point to an obstacle unless you man it.’

His friend mounted the first step, placing his foot down with slow, delicate care.

‘We take our time from here, and get it right. If we wake them now we might as well slit our own throats.’

They went up the stairs in complete silence, stopping with each faint creak of the treads to listen for any sign that they might have been heard, both men steeled to charge up through the door with their knives ready to fight. Reaching the door, Cotta gently pushed at it, grimacing at the hinges’ thin squeal of protest as he overcame the weight of the iron-studded wood, opening it sufficiently to slip through. Standing on the landing beyond, he cocked his head to listen, grinning at Marcus as the sound of snoring reached them. Somewhere in the unlit gloom one of the sleepers broke wind and muttered something unintelligible, and the veteran soldier waved a hand under his nose with a grin, leaning over to whisper in his friend’s ear.

‘How’s that to make you feel alive, eh boy? One cough and these slumbering idiots will be up and all over us, but right now we’re walking through them like ghosts. Come on …’

As he turned towards the next flight of stairs a figure emerged from the half-lit gloom of the room to Marcus’s left with the stiff-legged half-steps of a man more asleep than awake. He mumbled an irritated question, peering owlishly at Marcus in the dim light.

‘What’re you noisy bastards—’

Cotta took a single quick step and wrapped his arm around the sleepy man’s mouth, driving his dagger into his back. His victim spasmed, his bare feet slapping lightly on the floorboards as he fought the dagger’s cold, agonising intrusion. Marcus put the point of his own knife against the man’s bare chest, looking into his imploring eyes for a moment before pushing the blade home with a single thrust. The gang member’s eyes widened at the sudden intense pain, then rolled upwards as his torn heart stopped beating, the body slumping back against Cotta who lowered it slowly to the floor.

‘Come on!’

His face and tunic were covered in blood, and the coppery stink filled the dank air as he beckoned Marcus on, making the Roman wonder how long it would take for the stench to awaken one of the dead man’s comrades. They crossed the landing with slow, careful steps and then mounted the stairs, Cotta leading with his former pupil once more at his back. On the floor above there was quiet, and the veteran centurion took a moment to lean against the wall and blow out a long, slow breath.

‘Fuck me but that was close!’

Marcus looked up at the floor above them, protected by a door like the one they had passed through a few moments before, this one closed and presumably bolted.

‘Brutus should be up there, if he’s here.’

His friend nodded grimly.

‘And no amount of sneaking around is going to open that door. I think it’s time for a more direct approach.’

He led the young centurion quickly up the stairs, ignoring the inevitable noise of their footsteps just as the gang leader’s men would have done, raising his dagger and tapping smartly at the door with its handle. The two men looked at each other as footsteps thudded down the hallway on the other side.

‘Who is it?’

Cotta raised a hand to Marcus, putting his mouth close to the wood and growling a response.

‘Secundus.’

He winked, and bent close to Marcus’s ear.

‘What are the odds on there being at least one second son in a dozen men, do you think?’

The voice on the other side of the door laughed tersely.

‘Hah! Only
you
would be stupid enough to forget to give the password.’

Marcus raised his eyebrows at Cotta, who shrugged, then deepened his voice again.

‘Forgotten the fuckin’ password too.’

The man on the other side of the door was silent for a moment, and in that brief space of time the veteran’s face creased with concern as he waited for the sentry’s next words.

‘Fuck me backwards, surely even you can’t be that—’

His words were lost in the clatter of iron as the guard drew first the topmost bolt, then its twin at floor level. The two men braced themselves to attack, only to hear a sudden shout of alarm from two floors below. Marcus could hear the uncertainty from the other side of the door as the noise reached the guard’s ears. His voice was suddenly clearer, presumably as he flattened his ear against the door to hear better.

‘What’s that noise?’

Cotta nodded to himself and stamped at the spot where the door’s catch would be located. The thin iron catch snapped under the kick’s force, sending the door flying back into the sentry’s face with a solid thud of wood on bone. Marcus went through the opening first, flipping his knife to catch it by the blade before whipping his hand forward to send the sliver of metal flying the corridor’s length. The dagger buried itself in the throat of another gang member who was still struggling to draw the short sword from his waist, and he fell backwards, clawing at the wound as it spurted blood onto the floor at his feet. Without warning, a pair of men erupted from a room to their left, both armed with knives whose blades glinted in the dim lamplight. Cotta squared off with one of them, a vicious stab of his dagger making the other man recoil from the threat, while his companion snarled at the unarmed Marcus and drove his blade forward at the Roman with more enthusiasm than skill.

Sliding his body to one side the Roman took the extended knife arm, gripped it by the wrist and shoulder and snapped a knee up to break the elbow, plucking the blade free as his attacker’s face crumpled into a gasping shriek of agony. Cotta parried a knife thrust and punched his assailant hard in the face, sending him staggering backwards, shouting back over his shoulder as he followed up with his dagger raised.

‘
The door!
’

Marcus lunged for the door and slammed it closed, shooting the upper bolt as the first shouts echoed up from below, pushing its lower counterpart into place as footsteps hammered on the stairs. The sliding catch was broken, but the screaming bodyguard’s fallen knife slotted neatly into its keep and secured the door well enough to afford them a moment or two of respite from the men bellowing at them from the other side of its stout defence. He turned back to the fight to find Cotta locked in a death struggle with his opponent, the younger man’s greater strength slowly forcing his blade in towards the veteran’s throat. Seeing Marcus advancing on him, he grunted with renewed effort, forcing the knife down by sheer brute force against which Cotta was able to do no more than deflect its path to slice a deep gash into his arm. Before the gang member could raise the weapon to strike again, Marcus was upon him, punching a half-fist into his throat and dropping him choking to the floor.

‘
He’s yours!
’

Striding up the corridor he felt the familiar burn of rage wash through him with the knowledge that one of his family’s murderers was close at hand. Pulling his knife from the stricken swordsman’s throat he tugged the unused gladius from the scabbard at the dying man’s side and stood to face the last door in the corridor’s short run. It opened easily, revealing a pair of hard-faced bodyguards with a squat, muscular man standing behind them.

‘
Get him!
’

Both of the men were armed with swords, and at Brutus’s command they advanced with the blades raised, ready to strike. Marcus threw his knife at the closer man’s feet, the blade sticking into the floorboard between them and distracting his attention for an instant in which Marcus lunged forwards and stabbed the sword’s point deep into his thigh, wrenching the blade free in a gush of arterial blood. The bodyguard staggered backwards, his breath whooping with shock as his life spurted from the torn limb, and the other man hesitated momentarily in the face of their attacker’s bloodied blade. He turned to flee but the Roman was faster, raising his stolen gladius two-handed and ramming the long blade through the terrified guard’s neck, snapping his spine and dropping him flopping to the floor. Marcus looked up to see Brutus climbing through the window with a look of abject terror as he stared back at his nemesis, and went after him with narrow-eyed purpose, snatching his knife from the floorboards.

The wooden scaffolding swayed gently as he climbed through the window and stepped out onto it, looking to his right to see the gang leader’s head vanish as he climbed down through a hole in the boards with a frantic haste that shook the flimsy platform. Two big steps took his pursuer to the opening in the scaffold’s rough planks, and he slid down the ladder with his feet braced against its legs to land with a thump. Brutus was in the act of climbing onto the next ladder down, squealing in terror as he realised that Marcus was gaining on him, but he was no better than halfway down the rungs when his grip on the ladder’s sides was brutally broken by the impact of the younger man’s booted feet. Scrabbling up from the floor, he drew a knife, but Marcus slapped it from his hand with casual ease and punched him once, a swift jab between the eyes that sent him reeling back against the building’s side, momentarily helpless. When his senses returned he found himself standing with his back to the open air beyond the scaffold, held erect by a powerful hand in his hair.

‘I can pay you! Whatever they’ve promised you, I can double it! Name your price!’

Marcus dragged his head close until the two men were eye-to-eye, his lip curling in disgust.

‘This has nothing to do with the Dog Eaters, Brutus! This is
personal.
My name is Marcus Valerius Aquila!’

He held the terrified man out at arm’s length for a moment, waiting while the realisation of who it was that had hunted him down sank into the gang leader’s battered consciousness.

‘
Aquila?
The senator’s boy?’

Marcus smiled cruelly, jerking the hand that was holding Brutus upright.

‘The same. I swore to find and kill you all. And now it’s your turn.’

Brutus’s eyes widened as he realised what was about to happen.

‘No! I—’

Marcus released his hair, put the hand into his face and pushed, sending the gang leader staggering backwards until his back foot found only empty space. He toppled into thin air with a screech of terror, but only fell as far as the end of a broken scaffold pole that protruded invisibly up into the night air twenty feet below. With a horrible crunch of bone, the two-inch thick pole’s jagged wooden end punched through Brutus’s body, suspending him ten feet above the ground and protruding up through his back. Terribly wounded, he groaned in shocked agony as the depth of his predicament became clear, slipping down a foot as his blood lubricated the pole’s wooden shaft. Marcus turned back to the ladder without a backwards glance as Cotta came down it one-handed, his other arm black with blood.

‘We need to get that cut bandaged—’

‘There’s no time. They’re breaking the door down!’

The two men hurried down the remaining ladders while voices shouted and cursed distantly above them. When they reached the ground, Marcus took a moment to look up at Brutus’s body. As the two men stared upwards, he slid further down the pole’s length, dropping to their eye level with another deathly moan of terror and pain, his hand ineffectually gripping at the gore-slathered wood in a vain attempt to arrest his descent. Cotta looked at the long, blood-smeared shaft rising out of the gang leader’s back with a soldier’s expertise, pulling a face at the monstrous wound.

‘That thing’s clean through his liver. Leave him. If he’s not already dead, he’ll soon wish he was.’

The Roman shook his head, staring dispassionately at Brutus’s contorted and blood-flecked face.

‘We can’t risk him telling anyone else who killed him before he gives up his life.’

Cotta hefted his knife.

‘Is that all that’s worrying you? Here, I’ll just have his tongue out then.’

He took a firm grip of the dying man’s chin, but Brutus summoned his last reserve of strength and pulled his jaw from the veteran soldier’s grip. His voice was no more than a ragged, choking whisper, but the hatred in his voice was unmistakable.

‘
Death … Bringer … will … slaughter … you … all.
’

He coughed up a gout of blood, his entire body shaking with the horrendous pain, and Marcus took his chin in one hand, pulling the gang leader’s contorted face round to look at him.

‘When you reach the other side of the river, if you can fool the ferryman into taking you across, you’d best start running. Because if Mortiferum does kill me, I’ll be coming after you to do this all over again.’

Brutus stared at him glassy-eyed. The young Roman realised that the man had lost his grip on life, and released his hold on the corpse’s jaw, allowing its head to hang loosely. He stood and stared at the corpse for a moment, feeling the same numbness that had overtaken him when he’d realised that Dorso was dead. He shook his head slowly at the absence of the elation he’d still hoped to feel in his moment of triumph.

‘Come on, there’s no time for that!’ Cotta dragged him away from the macabre scene, shouting back up at the gang members clattering down the scaffold’s ladders above them.