The Silver Branch [book II] (26 page)

Again the knot of barbarians charged forward, again came the crash of the tree-trunk against the door. The timbers could not stand long against such punishment; but surely any moment now help would come—help drumming up the road toward them, maybe already at the gates …

‘It can’t be long now,’ he said to himself as much as to Pandarus who was on guard at that end of the gallery.

‘
Na
, either way, it can’t be long now,’ said Pandarus; and looking quickly round at him, Justin saw that the old gladiator was happy—happy as he had not been since he won his wooden foil.

For himself, Justin was not at all happy. The fighting over the open downs had been one thing, this was quite another. Somehow the surroundings of polished marble and finely wrought bronze, the whole atmosphere of a place meant for dignity and order and good manners, made what was happening horrible and grotesque, and his old horror of being in any place from which he could not get out at will was jibbering most unpleasantly at his elbow. He made some sort of hurried jest to Pandarus—he was never sure what it was—and turned and plunged down the stairs again.

There was no need, no opportunity either, to tell Flavius what he had seen. The main door was going as he regained the hall; and above the splintering crash of the timbers and the sudden clash of blade on blade and the savage burst of shouting as attack and defence came together in the jagged and smoking breach, he heard the cry go up that the Saxons were breaking in from the rear into the main Court room.

And without any clear idea in his head save that Flavius was in command at one danger point, and therefore his place was at the other, he found himself heading at the run for the new menace, with a handful of the Lost Legion at his heels.

The outer door of the Court room had gone up in flames, and fiery smoke hung in a drifting haze above the heads of the fighters. And it came to his mind, even as he charged to the aid of the townsmen, that the basilica was now well on fire. Then a giant with bright hair streaming like the flames of the torches made for him, long-handled axe upswung for a mighty stroke; somehow he swerved from the path of the blow, and dived on, young Myron behind him and Evicatos at his shoulder with his great spear drinking deep.

It was a desperate and a bloody business, fought out among the splintered wreckage of the solid Court-room furniture, while ever the smoke thickened overhead and the red glare strengthened on winged helmet and upswung blade. Many of the defenders were down with the first onslaught, while for every Saxon who fell it seemed that two more sprang in through the gaping doorway or down from the torn-out window-holes. And to Justin, struggling desperately for every inch of ground that he was forced to yield, it had begun to seem that they could not hold the barbarians back much longer from the main hall, from the women and the children and the wounded, when above the tumult his ear caught the thin sweet mockery of bells; and Cullen the Fool dived almost under his elbow into the trampling press. And suddenly above them in the rolling murk, blazing red-gold in the light of Calleva burning, was the wingless Eagle.

The gods alone knew what had prompted little Cullen to bring them the Eagle, but the sense of increase was like wine, like fire, running not only through the band but through the townsmen who had not followed that battered standard before; and they steadied as though they had been reinforced by a Cohort of the Legions.

But the next thing Justin saw was Cullen struggling breast to breast with a yellow-haired barbarian for possession of the Eagle! And even as he sprang sideways to the little man’s aid, he disappeared completely in the press; and a howl of rage burst from the Saxon, and the white-ash spear-shaft swung aloft, with the cross-piece still intact, but of the Eagle—never a sign.

Something in Justin’s mind understood quite coolly that the age-corroded talons must have snapped under the strain upon them. And then, even as a roar of fury burst from his own men, there came a jingle of bells above the uproar, and a little figure sprang clear of the press, leaping for an overturned table, then up again—and Cullen was on the main house-beam above them, and in his hands the Eagle! He scrambled out along the beam on his knees, and crouched there, holding it high, the red light of the flames all about him, the Eagle burning in his hands like a bird of fire. And the cry of fury changed to shout on shout of fierce triumph, as the defenders once more closed their thinning ranks and drove forward.

Next instant a flung spear caught the little Fool in the shoulder. He swayed and seemed to crumple up, like some small gaudy bird hit by a stone, becoming a mere bundle of bright feathers; but by a miracle he clung to his vantage point just long enough to set the Eagle firmly on the flat top of the beam. Then he toppled down into the very midst of the fight.

Justin, with a fighting power he had not known he possessed until that moment, was crashing forward in one more desperate charge, sweeping the rest with him. ‘Cullen! Save Cullen!’ But it was Evicatos, the swan’s feathers of his great spear crimson now, who reached the spot first, ploughing forward into the very midst of the enemy to bestride the little crumpled body while the rest came battling on in his wake.

And in that instant, above the tumult of the conflict, far off and infinitely clear and sweet, they caught the sound of Roman trumpets!

The barbarians heard it too, and swayed back; and with a sound that was almost a sob, Justin drove in his charge; past Evicatos and on.

When all was over, Evicatos still stood astride the body of the little Fool, beneath the Eagle on the house-beam; a great and terrible figure, red with his wounds from head to heel, like some hero out of one of the wild legends of his own people, like a Conal of the Victories.

He steadied himself upright, and with one last superb effort, sent his beloved spear hurtling after the flying foe. But already the sure aim was gone from him, and the great spear missed its mark, and crashing into the stone column beyond the reeking doorway, shivered into fragments of iron and wood and blood-stained feathers on the pavement.

‘
Sa
. It is well,’ Evicatos said. He flung up his head, and there was a pealing triumph in his voice. ‘We go together, back to our own people, she and I.’

And so crashed down headlong among the slain.

Little Cullen had not a mark on him but the spear-gash in his shoulder and a cut over one eye, and was already whimpering back to life as they drew him out from under Evicatos’s body.

Justin lifted him—he was so small that he could handle him quite easily—and turned to the inner doorway. Vaguely he heard someone ask about the Eagle, and shook his head. ‘Leave it. It has served its hour and must go back to the dark.’ And he carried Cullen out into the hall.

The Nave of the basilica was full of smoke, and the rafters at the far end were well alight. Here also the fighting was over, and Flavius, with blood trickling from a gashed cheek, was struggling to call off his fighting men like a hunter calling off his hounds. ‘Leave them to the Cavalry!
Leave them
, lads; we’ve our work cut out here!’

Justin carried the little Fool across to the North Tribunal, and laid him down among the rest. Aunt Honoria was beside him as he did so; and just behind her the girl like a white flower still knelt beside the farmer from the Otter’s Ford, with his head in her lap.

The basilica was emptying swiftly, as the women and children were passed out into the wrecked Forum, but the roar of the fire was increasing every moment, and the tall man who had recognized Flavius was improvising a bucket chain from the well outside to keep the flames back from the Records Office and Treasury while the City’s gods were got out; it was hopeless to think of doing more—the fire had too big a hold. Justin, knotting off the bandage about Cullen’s shoulder, said to the physician, who, now that the fighting was over, had pulled himself together and come to his aid, ‘It is growing a bit warm. Time, I think, that we got this lot outside.’

There were many willing hands, and the task was soon accomplished, and Justin, who had remained inside himself until the last man was out, was about to follow, when something fell from the gallery above, from which the guards had by now been withdrawn, and landed with a plop beside him, and, glancing down, he saw that it was the crimson rose which Pandarus had picked in the temple garden only an hour or so ago. Instinctively he stooped to pick it up—and the crimson came off on his fingers.

Next instant he was pounding up the gallery stairs, calling the gladiator by name.

He thought he heard a groan, and then he burst out upon the narrow gallery. The western windows across the Nave were filled with a mingled glare of fire and sunset that streamed across, turning the smoke to a billowing, tawny fog. The nearest lattice on this side was broken in, and beneath it lay a dead Saxon, his short sword still in his hand, his hair outflung across the stained floor; and beside him Pandarus, who must have lingered behind the rest, leaned on one arm, while his life drained away from a red hole under his ribs.

He raised his head with a twisted smile as Justin reached him, and gasped, ‘Habet! It is thumbs down for me at last.’

One glance told Justin that the wound was mortal and the old gladiator could not last many moments. There was nothing he could do for Pandarus, nothing but stay with him through those few moments, and he crouched down and laid the other back against his knee. ‘Not thumbs down! That is for a beaten fighter,’ he said vehemently; then, as his gaze fell on the dead Saxon, ‘Euge! that was a fine stroke.’

The rush of the flames was very near, the heat growing every moment more intense. Smoke billowed across Justin’s face, choking, suffocating him; and as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that the floor of the gallery itself had caught, and the fire was writhing towards him. Below the windows, the roof of the Colonnade was crackling into flame; no going that way if the stairs caught … his heart was racing, and he was sweating with more than the heat. Here with a vengeance was the place from which he could not get out. Not while Pandarus lived.

He bent low over the dying gladiator, trying to shield him with his own body from the heat and the fiery cinders that were falling around them now from the burning roof, striving to fan back the smoke with a fold of his cloak. Above the furnace-roar of the flames he thought he heard something else. The beat of horses’ hooves.

Pandarus turned his head a little. ‘It grows dark. What is this great noise?’

‘It is the people shouting for you!’ Justin said. ‘All the people who have c-come to watch you win your greatest fight of all!’

There was a ghost of laughter in Pandarus’s face, a ghost of an old pride. He put up his hand in the gesture of a victorious gladiator acknowledging the cheers of the crowd; and with the gesture half made, fell back against Justin’s knee, with his greatest and his last fight fought indeed.

Justin laid him down, and finding that he was still holding the crimson rose, laid it in the hollow of the dead gladiator’s shoulder, with a confused feeling that it was fitting Pandarus should carry with him his rose for the Arena.

As he got to his feet, the first ranks of Asklepiodotus’s cavalry were swinging into the ruined Forum.

He thought he heard someone calling him. He called back, lurching toward the stair, his head beginning to swim. The narrow stairs were already alight as he plunged down them, one arm upflung to shield his face. The smoke was shot with little torn-off tongues of flame, sucked upward by the draught; the heat poured up the stair-shaft, lapping him round, searing his lungs as he stumbled downward, and near the foot blundered into Flavius with a wet rag over his mouth crashing up to find him.

He heard a gasp of relief, and was not sure whether it was Flavius’s or his own. ‘Who else is up there?’ Flavius croaked.

‘No one save Pandarus, and he’s dead.’ Justin caught a crowing, shuddering breath, and somehow they were at the stair foot, crouching to catch the current of clearer air along the floor. ‘Eagle’s in—the Court-room roof—all right?’

‘All right,’ Flavius choked.

The whole basilica was blotted out in rolling smoke, its far end veiled in a roaring curtain of flame; and a blazing beam came down with a crash not a spear’s length from them, scattering red-hot fragments in all directions. ‘Got to get out! Nothing more we can do,’ Flavius was croaking in his ear.

The side door close to the stair-foot was blocked by the blazing ruins of the garland-maker’s shop, and they headed at a stumbling run for the main entrance. It seemed a long way off, such a long way, at the end of a fiery tunnel …

And then suddenly Anthonius was there, and Kyndylan and others—and they were outside, and there was air to breathe; real air, not black smoke and red flame. Justin dragged it into his tortured lungs, stumbling forward, and finding a burst bale of some kind in his path, sat down on it. He was dimly aware of men and horses, of a great throng of people, of the Forum a blackened shambles, and the sounds of strife in the burning town, and the drum of horses’ hooves dying away into the distance as the Cavalry swept on after the Saxon wolves. He heard someone shouting that the traitor Allectus had been captured, but he didn’t care. He was aware with surprise that it was still sunset—and that somewhere the little bird in its cage was singing, most sweetly and shiningly, like a star singing. But the whole scene was dipping and swimming round him like a great wheel.

Myron’s rat-pointed, anxious face swam into his sight hovering over him, and Flavius had an arm round his shoulders and was holding a broken bowl to his mouth. There was water in the bowl, and he sucked it down to the last drop. A few moments later he was sick with all that he had in his stomach to be sick with, which was not much besides the water, because he had not eaten since before dawn; and the world began to steady.

He pulled himself together, and got up. ‘My wounded—must g-go and see to my wounded,’ he mumbled.