Страница 61 из 96
He found utter chaos. Several walls had fallen. Part of the roof had caved in. Most of the slaves had hauled makeshift packs onto their backs and were ru
Quintus.
The man scowled up at him. "Get out of the way!"
Charlie read his lips almost more than he heard the furious bellow. "Where is your master?" Charlie bellowed right back, breathing between his teeth through the pain.
"Gone, asshole!"
Son-of-a—
"Where is Aelia? The new slave woman?"
The man spat something vile and started to grab at the reins. Charlie moved instinctively, his hand shooting toward his hip for the holster... . His fingers closed over the sword hilt, instead. He had it free of the scabbard before he could even think about it, moving with the ease and speed of two years' deadly combat training in the arena. The horse screamed a warning and came off the ground, biting suddenly and savagely at the man's arm.
Charlie grabbed mane hair with his free hand and fought pain in his ribcage. Bloody war horse... . But Quintus' eyes had widened. Charlie shoved the tip of the gladius right up against his windpipe and drew a droplet of blood.
"Where is she?" Charlie snarled. "I don't give a damn about you! All I want is the woman, Aelia!"
"I don't know! In the house! Try the peristyle garden—"
Charlie urged Silver through sagging doors into the damaged house, snatching the slave's torch as he shouldered past. Silver's hooves clattered and slid on broken mosaic. The horse snorted and shied. Charlie stayed with him. "Easy... Come on, boy..."
The horse surged ahead again, fighting Charlie's grip on the reins and the urge to panic and run again. Charlie could literally feel that urge in the bunch and play of muscles under his legs. Heart in his throat, Charlie held him to a walk and urged him steadily forward. The gelding danced through the shattered villa, where nothing stirred but dust and volcanic ash.
He held the lighted torch aloft and tried to peer through the darkness. "Sibyl! Sibyl, where are you?"
Nothing...
The entrance to the peristyle garden had partially collapsed. Charlie hugged Silver's neck and urged the gelding through the tight opening. Silver snorted and tried to rear, then moved obediently forward. Fallen beams scraped armor along his back. Then they were through. The garden he recalled so cruelly was wrecked. The fountains were down, twisted into ruin. Part of the upper floor had collapsed into the side of the garden, burying half of it.
If Sibyl had been over there...
"SIBYL!"
"Help!" a faint voice cried out, from somewhere to Charlie's right, toward the collapsed rubble from the upper floor. "Help me!"
Charlie couldn't tell who it was, but they were calling out in Latin. He started to ignore the plea, then thought better. Whoever it was might know how he could find Sibyl. Or Lucania. Charlie eased Silver closer and held the torch down to light the face.
Xanthus.
Charlie's master lay at Silver's feet, his lower body pi
He thinks I'm a soldier come to rescue him... .
"Are there other survivors here?"
Xanthus blinked. "I—I don't know— Bericus ran when the walls began to fall. There was a slave woman—I don't know—"
"WHERE WAS SHE?"
Xanthus' hand shook. "Please, my legs are pi
Charlie stared down at the man who had tormented him, had tortured him for nearly two full years, and felt hatred turn to disgust somewhere down in the pit of his belly. Xanthus was a dead man, whatever Charlie did or didn't do to him. Or for him. And in just a few hours, he would be paid back a million-fold for every minute of Charlie's suffering. Lying there trapped while Vesuvius burned him to death... .
Charlie didn't feel very proud of himself for reaching that conclusion, but his own survival came first. He still had others to find, far more important in his world than Xanthus ever could be.
Besides, Xanthus wasn't the one ultimately responsible for the hell Charlie had been living. He was only a Roman doing what a Roman thought was proper and right; the real villain still lay far beyond Charlie's revenge. Charlie couldn't quite bring himself to end Xanthus' suffering with a quick dagger thrust—the risk of dismounting now from Silver's back might be never getting into the saddle again—but he couldn't hate Xanthus quite so deeply, either. He, at least, would pay for his crimes.
Too goddamn bad it wasn't Carreras lying there with his legs crushed... .
Charlie turned his back and left his "master" screaming for help. He had to find Sibyl and his daughter. If they were still alive.
Sibyl rocked Charlie's little girl in the cramped space of their prison, murmuring softly to her until hysterical sobs quieted. Chubby little fingers clutched at her neck, her hair. Soft arms and a trembling little body pressed close in the darkness.
"Shh... Shh... It's all right, Lucania, it's all right, shh, it's all right..."
Maybe if I say it often enough, it'll be true.
"Mama?"
"Shh, no, your mama isn't here, Lucania. Shh..."
How to explain to a toddler who could scarcely speak that her mother had just died?
Very faintly, Sibyl heard voices. She tried to hear above the noise from Vesuvius. "Hello!" she called, as loudly as she could. "HELP!" She tried pushing at the rubble and felt more than heard the ominous shift of weight. "HELP US!"
So faint, the voice might have been transmitted from orbit, "Where are you?"
Hope—so sudden and unexpected it hurt—stabbed through her. "Under the doorway! Please, there are two of us! We're not hurt, we're just trapped!"
Again, so faint she could barely hear it, the voice came to her. "I'm looking for someone. I'm sorry..."
"NO! PLEASE!" Sibyl shoved at rubble with her bare hands.
When she didn't hear anything further, Sibyl sagged back against the wall of rubble trapping them and hugged Lucania tight. Don't cry, don't break down and terrify her all over again....
But she couldn't stop the tears leaking silently down her face, any more than she could stop the murderous pillar of debris belching out of Vesuvius from collapsing a few hours hence into fiery avalanches that would burn them alive.
Out of hope, Sibyl huddled with her arms around Lucania Fly
He was about to give up the search of the garden and start picking through the surviving rooms when he heard the faint, faint cry for help. Charlie almost left them.
Almost.
But the voice had sounded like a woman's.
He didn't dare hope, but he couldn't just walk away, either, and never know. Charlie slithered awkwardly to the ground and risked tying Silver's reins to a broken fountain. Water poured across the splintered garden from a dozen twisted pipes. The horse lipped at it eagerly. Charlie ignored Xanthus' screams, pleas, demands for help, and eyed the pile of rubble with deep misgiving, then thrust his torch into the wet earth and started clearing rubble away, brick by brick.
It was murderous work. Especially with a broken rib. But he kept doggedly at it, pausing now and again simply because his flagging body gave him no choice. Ashfall and debris rained down steadily, pelting his arms and back and zinging painfully off his helmet. He kept digging. The whole pile shifted ominously. Charlie looked for something to brace it and found a shattered beam.