Sibyl roused to sounds of panic. Screams, crashes, running footsteps . . . Above those sounds was an awesome, earthshaking noise. Vesuvius. She tried to move, then groaned, instead. Nothing seemed to be working properly and she was mortally certain she did not want to try moving again.
Sibyl tried to move, anyway. She had to get out of the house before the real eruption started. The steam explosions had already begun. Which meant the main eruption couldn't be more than minutes away. Sibyl rolled over and tried to gain her knees. Pain stabbed through her belly, her groin, her back. She sobbed aloud. She wouldn't have to wait for the volcano to kill her. She felt as though she were bleeding to death where she lay.
She heard Bericus shouting orders to bring out the spare carriage and heavy wagon. Then he vanished from her awareness. She was alone in the peristyle garden under a hot, sunlit sky, with the ground shaking so violently she knew it might be only seconds before the walls started to go.
Sibyl tried again to gain her knees. She cast a frantic glance upward. The sky was still a flawless, burning blue. She twisted to peer at the volcano. Her eyes widened. Vesuvius steamed. Billowing clouds of white vapor, mixed with grey ash and rock, rose majestically from the crater. The sight brought a chill to her spine.
The mountain had barely begun to blow open, after so many years of somnolence. Some poor shepherd or two had probably just died a violent death, along with the flocks which had routinely been driven up there to graze in the old caldera. First to die. But not the last, by a long, long shot.
Judging from the position of the sun, there wasn't much time before the famous one-o'clock explosion tore the entire top of the mountain off. That explosion would send rock and poisonous gas belching twelve miles into the atmosphere.
Gotta get out of here, now. . . .
"Sibyl!"
The incongruous sound of her name startled her. She swung around, dazed and shaken. "Wha—"
Benigna. Clutching her child. Lucania wasn't crying. She clung to her mother's neck with a fierceness Sibyl had seen so often in Charlie.
"Please, sibyl, help us! You warned us, please, have pity—"
"Help me up . . ."
Benigna lifted Sibyl to her feet. Her clothing, torn in places, bloody in others, fell around her seminakedness. She hardly noticed, except to wince in pain at each step. Benigna put an arm around her, guiding her toward the nearest doorway.
"We have to get out of the house," Sibyl mumbled.
"There is no time! We must take shelter in the nearest gateway!"
Gateway?
Still dazed and uncertain, Sibyl stumbled across the garden toward the nearest doorway, guided by the trembling slave woman. The ground lurched sharply under their feet. Benigna screamed. Her daughter whimpered and clung more tightly to her neck. "Hurry, sibyl!"
Xanthus ran into the garden, making for the doorway that led to the front of the house, and literally ran them down. Sibyl sprawled, jarring her lower body painfully. The slave trader roared and kicked at her, then swore at Benigna, who had fallen at his feet.
"You!" He snatched Lucania from her mother's arms. "I'll just take what Bericus promised and cut my losses!"
"No!" Benigna tried to grapple him.
Xanthus slapped her to the shaking ground.
Lucania began to scream for her mother.
Sibyl searched for a weapon—any weapon—and found the broken remains of a fountain almost under her hand. She snatched up a heavy section of lead piping and lunged forward. Xanthus had already begun running for the far end of the garden again, with Lucania struggling over one shoulder.
Sibyl panted and ran after him, gaining ground fast.
"Stop!"
When he kept going, Sibyl swung the heavy water pipe in a vicious arc. It connected with the backs of his knees. Xanthus screamed and went down. Lucania was flung to the ground. The little girl wailed and rolled to a stop in a flower bed. Sibyl hit Xanthus again, across the small of the back, then felt the warning rumble in the ground.
Oh, God—
"Sibyl!"
Benigna's scream of terror distracted her. The woman was pointing to the mountain. Sibyl craned her neck around to see Vesuvius more clearly—
—and the whole sky exploded.
The top of the mountain blew apart. Vesuvius hurled itself toward the stratosphere. Almost simultaneously the sound smashed down across them. Benigna lost her footing and fell. Sibyl couldn't hear any screams, not even her own. The ground heaved like hurricane-maddened surf. Blackness the shape of an evil umbrella pine blotted out the sun, engulfing them in choking nightfall in an instant. Sibyl held her breath, terrified that hot ash and poisonous gas would envelop them. Rocks from what had been the top of the mountain smashed down within a few feet. Then the house wall above them cracked, began to go . . .
Someone shoved her violently forward, pushing the small of her back. Sibyl sprawled forward under a doorway. Little Lucania landed beside her, as though thrown by a supreme effort. Sibyl snatched the child close, looked back for Benigna—
The slave woman had fallen to all fours a few feet short of the doorway. Then masonry and wood crashed down. Benigna vanished under it. Sibyl screamed. Lucania clung to her, weeping hysterically now. Sibyl huddled over the toddler, trying to protect her with her own body. More masonry crashed down, burying them deeper. Something massive grazed her shoulder. Sibyl sobbed in pain. Lucania was screaming.
"Shh . . . Shh . . ." Oh, God, we're going to die. . . .
An eternity later, the house stopped falling on them.
The ground still shook and Vesuvius still roared, but they were alive. It took Sibyl a long, long time to stop shaking as violently as the ground. Even more slowly, she risked a look. All she saw was brick and splintered wood.
"Oh, my God . . ."
She touched debris with a trembling hand, just to confirm the worst. Solid as stone, it didn't budge. They were alive. But utterly trapped under rubble.
And no one—no one—was going to stop long enough to dig them out again.
"Nnnhh . . ."
With painful slowness, Charlie moved his head. He swallowed, tasted dirt, spat. Charlie licked his lips and spat again. Hey, I'm still alive. . . .
The ground lurched sickeningly. Then dropped three feet out from underneath him. He gave a startled yell and grabbed wildly at thin air, then landed heavily on his side.
"Nhh—"
Renewed pain from the broken rib sent a jolt through him. His arm felt bruised from wrist to shoulder. He couldn't hear his own groans. Couldn't hear anything, in fact, except a skull-splitting roar which smashed down from above and beat up through the very ground. There was nothing in his varied and colorful life with which he could even remotely compare this—"sound" seemed far too mild a word—this awesome noise.
He thought about rolling himself into a fetal ball and hugging both arms over his ears. Instead, Charlie dragged himself painfully to elbows and knees. Bit by bit, he hauled himself over to a section of ground that had remained at its old height and peered up over the lip of the fault. It was hard to see, as though night had fallen hours too early. Whistling impacts nearby raised the hair on the back of his neck. Charlie squinted. Red-hot stones, falling out of a black sky. . . . The oak tree to which he'd tied his horse was down, its shattered roots jutting obscenely toward the maddened sky.
Above the shoulder of Vesuvius, the heavens were black as hell for miles. Wild discharges of flame shot through that hellish darkness. Streaks and meteoric flashes marked the passage of rocky, half-molten missiles. Far too many were landing in his vicinity. Gotta get the hell outta here. Charlie groped across the trembling earth. He discovered his crutch lying miraculously near his hand. But relief was a bit premature. One step at a time.
He grabbed the crutch, got his bad leg under him, and hauled himself up over the edge of the thrust fault. Then Charlie rolled over to sit up. Through the volcanic murk, he caught a glimpse of motion and crawled closer to investigate. Silver was down, flat on his side, struggling to rise. The horse was covered with lather. Charlie found the reins, still tied securely to the fallen tree. Thank God the violent crack hadn't broken the animal's neck. At least, he didn't think it had. He'd better check for broken bones in Silver's legs, too.
Charlie couldn't make his shouts heard even to himself, so he just rubbed the animal's sweating neck and held on. The gelding surged once. Charlie felt, rather than heard, the rumble of a groan in the animal's throat beneath his hand. Then the poor horse lay back, eyes rolling white. Silver's whole body shivered. Charlie crawled around the fallen horse and ran exploratory hands across its legs. Nothing felt broken. Nor did Silver make any sudden protests.
Charlie crawled back to the horse's head. The animal whickered softly into his palm when he stroked the velvety nose. He groped for his crutch and, taking a calculated risk, tied it securely to the saddle. Then Charlie pulled himself awkwardly across Silver's side and positioned himself as best he could.
Then he cut the reins, close to the branch, and snatched them up. Charlie grabbed double handfuls of coarse mane hair, blessed whatever gods had prompted the Romans not to shave their horses' manes, and urged the animal up with legs, hands, and voice.
Silver rolled heavily, dragging Charlie with him, then heaved and got all four legs under him. Charlie slid precariously sideways. Pain stabbed through his chest. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself up until the muscles in neck, shoulders and arms strained nearly to breaking. He hooked his good leg over the animal's back just as the horse surged drunkenly. The momentum lifted Charlie into the saddle—and almost off the other side.
He slid facefirst toward the ground, bashed his chin on the horse's bony withers, and struggled madly for balance. He tried to grip with his hamstrung leg, his elbows, even his ribs. Charlie nearly blacked out, but he hung on. He pulled at mane hair until he was convinced entire tufts would come loose in his grasp. Silver stood stock still, head hung low and legs trembling. Without that tiny miracle, Charlie would never have halted his slide toward the ground or gotten himself back up into the saddle.
For long, shivering moments, Charlie sat as still as his horse and simply gulped air that stank of only God knew what. Then, trembling with haste, Charlie slid his feet into the homemade stirrups and thumped the horse's sides with his heels. Silver didn't need any further encouragement. The gelding put his head down and ran. Charlie tried to guide him, with almost no success.
His heart leaped into his throat every time the animal slipped or jumped across a nearly invisible fault in the earth. Finally Charlie gave up and let the horse have his head. If Silver stepped into a hole and broke a leg, there wasn't much Charlie could do about it. Not only was he too poor a horseman, Silver could probably see where he was going better than Charlie. What he wouldn't give for a lousy trail bike. . . .
Ash had begun to fall along with the heavy stones, and with it, lighter, stinging missiles of pumice. Charlie winced as he was pelted with showers of smoking debris. He was glad for the helmet and the metal armor. Just don't let any of that big, glowing stuff land on us. . . . By the time Charlie had worked through the worst of the fight-or-flight panic, he found it was nearly impossible to get Silver turned toward the villa, since that was marginally "toward" the erupting mountain.
He fought the horse's head and hauled desperately on the reins, kicking with his good leg as hard as he could. Silver screamed and fought the pressure, then bucked hard enough to send him sailing out of the saddle toward the horse's ears. He dropped the reins, grabbed the mane with both hands, and jarred himself hard when he slid back into the saddle.
"Unnhgh . . ."
If he hadn't had stirrups, he'd have been on the ground.
Charlie caught his breath, unable to hear his own cries in the black noise that surrounded them. Then he stubbornly tried again. He finally convinced the horse that he meant what he meant. Although the animal refused to move faster than a walk toward the mountain, he did at least walk in that general direction. Charlie just hoped he could find the villa in the thick ashfall.
Clear daylight had turned into a grotesque parody of a severe winter blizzard. He wrapped a corner of the cloak around his face to keep thick, hot ash out of his nose and mouth, then worried about Silver's respiratory system. Just about the time he was convinced he'd missed the villa in the thick, pelting debris, the walls loomed through the murk.
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 running, singly or in groups of two and three, toward the sea. One heavily laden wagon had already lurched on its way toward town, crammed mostly with people. Charlie pulled Silver to a sweating stop near the villa's main doors. A bear of a man with an armload of foodstuffs and a torch stopped as Charlie reined around to block his path.
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 pinned by debris. Blood snaked down the slave trader's face. He peered up at Charlie, lifted a trembling hand. "Please, help me . . ."
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 pinned, broken . . . Please, help me . . ."
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 Flynn and wept.
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.
Using Silver's superior strength to drag it over, Charlie wedged it into place and shored up the mass as best he could, then started digging again. When he uncovered a slim, shapely hand covered in blood and dust, he paused sharply. Her hand? He kept digging, cold and afraid now inside his sweat and pain. It was a woman. The face was beyond recognition. But that long, beautiful sweep of ash-blond hair wasn't.
Not Sibyl. Benigna.
His gorge rose. Frantic, sick, Charlie dug through the rubble, knowing at any moment he would find another, smaller body near her mother. Please, God, please . . . He found only rubble. Bricks and broken plaster and splintered wood. And then, finally, a dark hole low to the ground, where a fallen beam had wedged in at a forty-five-degree angle across a doorway.
Something moved inside that hole.
"Give me your hand!" Charlie shouted above the terrible noise from Vesuvius.
A trembling hand grasped his. He hauled her out, bent over and awkward, holding herself. She collapsed at his feet, shaking almost as violently as the ground. Torn Egyptian linen, a king's ransom in jewelry . . .
She looked up. Charlie's gut sucked in, almost as hard as his breath. Despite the makeup, the scrapes and the dirt—
"Sibyl!"
Her eyes widened. Then she was in his arms, just clinging to him, sobbing. He held her close, thanking God she was still alive, alive. . . .
"Charlie, I found her, she's all right, she was so lucky, oh, God, you don't know . . ."
Sibyl was pulling loose, reaching for something pale on the ground.
Then he had a child in his arms, a wide-eyed, white-faced little girl with red-gold hair and a smear of blood down her brow. Charlie touched his daughter's face with fingertips that shook, then he started to cry, silently, helplessly. His daughter wriggled and tried to reach Sibyl. "Mama!"
"Shh . . ." Sibyl stroked her hair. "This is your father, Lucania. Your father . . ."
Lucania, face smeared with tear trails and blood, stuffed an uncertain fist into her mouth. Then peered into Charlie's eyes. "Pater?"
"Yes," Charlie choked out, remembering to speak to her in Latin, "I'm your father. I've been looking and looking for you. Ever since you were born. . . ."
A tiny, chubby hand tugged at the cheek-piece of his battered helmet. "Miles!"
Soldier . . .
He let her believe the lie. She was too young to understand, anyway. Charlie felt the delicate little slave's collar at her throat and snarled something incoherent, then used his dagger to snap open the tiny lock. He hurled the collar away into volcanic darkness.
"Sibyl," Charlie said raggedly, "we have to get the hell out of here. Now, before the rest of the house comes down. Here . . . take her."
Handing his only child over to Sibyl so soon after holding Lucania for the first time was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Before she could protest, Charlie picked Sibyl up. He grunted in sudden, agonizing pain, then hoisted her to Silver's back.
When the world had more or less steadied under his feet, he wrapped Silver's reins several times around his arm and grabbed his crutch. Then he found the torch and led the horse back through the ruined garden. Charlie ducked under the broken doorway into the house proper, then steadied the gelding through and led him past the shattered atrium. Before he led them into the open again, Charlie yanked off his helmet.
"Put this on!"
Sibyl didn't argue with him. She jammed the helmet over her own head and bent more protectively over Lucania.
Like Joseph fleeing the wrath of Herod, Charlie led Silver out of the villa and fled on foot before the wrath of Vesuvius. Everything in the world he cared about followed mutely in the darkness, tethered to his arm by one slim leather band.