They moved fast and hard for a long way until the tunnel opened up into yet another wide circle of vaulted barrel arches. Cautiously, they crept out, looking round in the bloody light of torches. No grilles or daylight-spewing holes here, Drust thought. Nothing but shadows and blocked-off entrances. Good…
They sank down to check one another over; Drust knew he bled and that there was a lot of it, but Kag took a look, soaked a neck cloth in some scummy water from a puddle and wiped hard enough to make Drust wince.
‘Notched an ear is all,’ he said. He had a slice along one arm, Dog had one on his forearm.
‘We will live, then,’ Quintus declared cheerfully. ‘I could do with a drink to celebrate.’
It was ironic; there was water and the threat of it but nothing anyone would swallow who had sense. Besides, as Sib declared fearfully, there were beasts living in it.
‘What beasts?’ demanded Ugo, and Sib glanced up round.
‘I heard splashings. And there are tales of monsters down here.’
‘Giant rats,’ Drust offered wryly, and those who remembered Plancus’s tale laughed.
‘No, no,’ Ugo said seriously. ‘I heard this. Sometimes they put beasts into the naumachae – river lizards from Aegyptus and those big sea cows. A few went missing when it was drained. Some say they are down here still.’
‘Living on what?’ Dog scorned. ‘Giant rats?’
He cocked his head, listening, then shook it. ‘We have to move.’
‘Why?’ Kag asked. ‘What are you hoping to hear?’
‘Hoping not to hear men coming up behind,’ Manius declared softly, but Dog shook his head.
‘Hoping not to hear the horns of the closing ceremony,’ he said. ‘When the Flavian is empty, they will open the sluices to scour the sewers free of the day’s shit. And the overspill goes here.’
‘Fuck me with Neptune’s sacred fork, Dog,’ Kag declared wearily. ‘You are too miserly with vital information.’
‘Would you not have come if you had known?’
There was no answer to it and Drust ended the squabble over it. ‘Move,’ he said. ‘Look for a marker to the Divine Trajan.’
They filtered on up the tunnel, following the swaying rat-eye of the torch Drust held up, with Kag in the rear, turning now and then to listen, then hurrying on to catch up with the bobbing, fading light. Shadows danced wildly on the walls.
They came to two more areas where the tunnel splayed out into an oval channel around a central block of stone with no seeming purpose, though everyone had a thought on it. In the end, it was simply attributed to the aquarii, those endless wandering gangs who patrolled, inspected and cleaned. Drust had no worries about meeting any here; this part, the outflow from the Flavian, had been closed off long since.
In the third area, Sib had taken the lead and came scuttling back, his torch waving wildly and dangerously as he spoke, and turned to look fearfully over his shoulder at the same time.
‘There’s someone up ahead,’ he hissed. ‘A woman.’
Quintus gave a soft laugh but everyone else looked to their weapons and Kag growled: ‘I would not unfetter your cock just yet – have you thought what sort of a woman inhabits the dark of a pit like this?’
Everyone had, and Quintus lost his grin. They crept forward, Drust taking the torch because Sib was trembling so much he risked setting hair on fire, not necessarily his own.
‘The mavro was right,’ Manius breathed, peering out, and Sib glared at him.
‘My eyes are as good as yours,’ he spat back. ‘Go speak to her – she is probably closer to your kin that anyone else here. Jnoun…’
‘You will call me demon once too often,’ Manius said flatly. ‘Then you may find the truth.’
‘Shut up,’ Drust said, and walked out into the oval area, torch held high. Everyone else crouched and held their breath, watching the clear figure of a small woman in a stola. She watched them, holding one hand high in the air, as if about to hurl some spell.
Drust walked casually up to her, right up, climbed the plinth and leaned casually against her, one elbow on her head.
‘Make your honours to Venus Cloacina,’ he said, loud enough to boom his voice round the space and make them wince. Shamefaced, they trooped out.
‘I knew all the time,’ Ugo lied, but everyone was prowling round to examine the object, a balustrade of rusted iron circling the statue. Up close, the statue was worn and the nose was missing, the upraised hand held something that might have been flowers and there was a thin stone pillar with a time-worn bird caught in flight on it.
‘Flowers and birds,’ Quintus noted, ‘all symbols of Venus. Never seen any shrine to Cloacina before, though.’
‘Not much worshipped these days,’ Kag admitted, ‘but she is the symbol of purity and filth, so where better to raise her up than here.’
‘Raised by the engineers,’ Dog said, signalling to Drust to bring the torch. He pointed to a plaque near a grille in the right-hand wall and they squinted at it. It was streaked with green stains and the inscription was mostly lost, save for the words Aqua Traiana. Even Dog could work that out.
‘This is us,’ Dog said, and studied the grille. Peering beyond it, he saw only the faint outline of more brick, another arched tunnel. The grille itself was buried deep in silt, but Dog pointed out the way the bars of it vanished into a slit at the top.
‘It raises up,’ he said. ‘Probably to allow the engineer gangs in and out. Ugo…’
Ugo tried. They all tried, but the grille stayed stubbornly shut and half buried. They struck it hard a few times and found the rust on it was only a veneer – underneath, the iron seemed solid. The noise of it, though, the great bell clangs that echoed up and down and around, made them all determined not to do it again.
‘We will summon them to us,’ Sib said, as if no one had worked that out.
‘We will have to dig it out,’ Ugo said, and everyone looked at one another. Drust handed the torch to Dog and hefted the pick.
‘Just as well I did not leave this behind, then,’ he said and handed it to Ugo. ‘You first, giant of the Germanies.’
Ugo spat on his hands and got down to it, the thunk of the tool and the odd accidental slam on the iron making everyone clench until the rhythm of it eased on the nerves.
‘Thank fuck for Trajan,’ Kag said, sitting on the plinth and wiping the sweat from his face with a rag. Quintus scratched his beard, dug out the itching culprit and cracked it between the broken nails of finger and thumb.
‘Hardly fair on the Divine Domitian,’ he said, leaning on the goddess. ‘I mean, it was him who started it so the Flavian would get finished. It was only blessed and official during the time of Trajan.’
‘Always someone trying to steal Jove’s thunder,’ Kag agreed. ‘And take your hand off the arse of Cloacina – it does not surprise me that you would feel up a goddess, even a stone one, but I don’t want your whoreson behaviour to get me sixed. If we get out of here at all, stay clear of me lest I get smacked by the thunderbolt meant for you.’
‘When,’ Quintus said, stressing the word, ‘we get out of here, I will take myself to a part of the City where the women are not stone and don’t object to being felt up.’
‘Then you will die soon after,’ Manius said, ‘since that means old haunts and they will find you, double quick.’
Quintus scrubbed his beard, not liking the truth of it and yet forced to throw his plans in a discarded heap.
‘Where will we go?’ Sib asked. ‘We have no coin – what happened to those manumissions, Dog?’
‘The copper? I rolled them up and sold them to a smith for melting.’
‘Fuck you,’ Kag declared miserably. ‘That was all we got out of this mess and now you have thrown it away for a sestertius.’
‘Several, as it happens,’ Dog admitted cheerfully. ‘Helped fund my way through Gaul and Apulia and everywhere else so I could get to you lot and free you. Thank me later.’
‘Besides,’ Drust offered, ‘those copper squares were just the ones you get for framing on the wall. The truth is registered on the Hill; we are citizens and freedmen.’
He hefted out the pouch Plancus had handed to him. ‘And our old boss hasn’t forgotten us.’
When he opened it, even he was surprised by the gleam of gold; everyone crowded to look, fixed by the shine of it.
‘Three apiece,’ Drust noted, ‘and from the time of the Divine Vespasianus, not those clunkers of old Severus.’
‘Unclipped,’ Ugo noted, with a practised eye. ‘The boss is generous, right enough. Lot of good drink in three gold pieces.’
‘Well, hand mine over, then,’ Quintus said, sticking out a hand and hopping down from Cloacina.
‘Not so fast,’ Drust said, picking out a stone among the golden eggs and holding it up. Everyone squinted at it, puzzled. It was a stamped pewter token.
‘It’s a token,’ Drust said, ‘one of those giving access to the boss’s grain stores.’
‘He only has one such,’ Sib pointed out. ‘In Lepcis Magna…’
His voice trailed off and everyone groaned. Kag spat sideways. Drust scooped the coins and token back into the pouch and the light seemed to dim a little.
‘Servilius Structus wants us to go to Lepcis Magna?’ Ugo asked. ‘Why?’
Drust did not know, nor care overly much. It was a direction and with the stipend for it, same as they had been handed before every enterprise, and he said as much.
‘We are the Procuratores,’ he added, looking round them all. ‘Did you have better places to go?’
‘Away from all this,’ Quintus muttered. ‘I plan to head for the Den. No one can get you in the Den.’
‘You think that?’ Drust declared, ‘If so, Fortuna walk with you.’
‘Fortuna will cut your balls off,’ Dog said. ‘Staying in Rome? You might as well hurl yourself into Father Tiber and drown. I favour Emesa and will go there – but Lepcis Magna is a fair stepping stone to the right part of the world, so I will take the bounty of Servilius Structus and be grateful for strength in numbers.’
‘Me also,’ Ugo declared, slapping his chest. Drust fixed him with a jaundiced eye.
‘Then why have you stopped digging us out?’
Ugo went back to it with even more frantic viciousness than before and Drust went with him, to provide the light. He was happier than he had been for a long time and all of it was from knowing that they would be together for a little longer. Dog saw it and laughed.
‘This is the only familia you have. All those years as a slave in the harena have left you with nothing else.’
‘You have a mother and brother, of course,’ Drust snapped back. ‘A wife waiting with something tasty in the kitchen and tastier in the bedroom. Friends who are not dead.’
He felt ashamed of it as soon as the words were out, but Dog shrugged.
‘I have a mother and a son,’ he said, and Drust did not need to ask who they were. He nodded. We are the same, he thought, Dog and me. Of all of us, though, he will be the first to leave…
‘This is the way of it,’ Dog said, squatting in the bloody pool of flickering light, drawing in the silt with the point of his gladius. ‘Through that grille and to the left a little way is a set of steps. It used to be the way the engineers came after inspecting the top of the aqueduct, but this part has been closed for some years. According to Plancus, the aqueduct comes into the City up on the Janiculum…’
‘Jupiter’s cock, that’s high,’ Kag noted. ‘Will we have to climb up that? And how do we get across the Father?’
‘The aqueduct leaps the river on four stone columns according to Plancus. High above the Tiber. Engineer gangs climb up and walk it all the time, looking for leaks,’ Dog said. ‘Once we are over the City walls on the Janiculum, we can come down, pretending to be one of the water gangs. Then we head out along the Portuensis to old Claudius’s port – we all knew it well enough, for we have sailed in and out many times.’
‘I know people there,’ Drust said. ‘We can get away from there.’
‘It’s not far,’ Kag said, seeing it. ‘We could make this yet…’
‘We may have to hurry a little,’ Manius said, loping back from where he had been watching and listening to the shadows. ‘They have caught up with us.’
Everyone froze at that and, in the silence, they heard the shouts and the rattle of armoured men. Drust turned and found Ugo, standing with his mouth open and the pick in one hand.
‘Dig,’ he yelled.
Dog ran to where the tunnel mouth gawped and Kag joined him, then Quintus and Sib and Manius. They would defend here, choking the Urbans in the tunnel – if they spilled out, then numbers will do for us, Drust thought.
He went to where Ugo flurried up silt with the pick, which he threw down with a sudden gesture, bent and gripped the exposed bottom of the grille; Drust saw the muscles on his shoulders bunch as if something struggled to be free.
He added his own strength, puny though it was in comparison. The grille creaked and cracked, flaking off rust, and Drust saw that the slit above was choked. He took his sword and raked it with the point, careless of what he did to the blade – more rust showered down.
Ugo heaved and strained and the grille started to creak upwards, while Drust risked a glance at the others.
They were dancing, it seemed to him, until he realised they were skipping out of the way of thrown javelins. When he saw the first spear points waver out of the tunnel entrance, his heart tried to hammer a way out of his ribcage.
Pilae and spears. This was not the Urban Cohorts, but the Praetorians and those, for all folk sneered at them as peacocks, were Danube legion veterans. Old Severus had replaced the previous Praetorians with these and they were loyal to him – and his sons.
They were also experts.
Drust gripped and hauled even harder, roaring it out while Ugo did the same until their ears buzzed. When he had to stop, gasping and tear-eyed, he saw Kag with blood all over his face, Dog batting spear points aside and trying to stab a soldier with quick strikes, Quintus laughing, smashing the metal rim of a stolen shield into someone unseen.
He heard it, too, the crunch and smash of it. The die-you-fucker of it. He saw Manius reeling out the pack, cursing and flinging one hand up, trailing blood from the cut.
Ugo bent and growled and heaved. The grille cracked and screeched up while Drust gawped at the sight, then sprang to help. It rose two thirds of the way, then there was a loud, thin crack of sound and Ugo grunted as the grille sank.
Something had broken. A counterweight, Drust thought, which made lifting the great heavy thing easy, but now that was gone and the grille hung in Ugo’s massive fists, with just enough room for a man to squeeze under.
‘Back,’ he yelled, then saw Quintus throw the stolen shield to one side in favour of a dropped spear. He ran to where the sweat and screeches and grunts seemed to swamp him, snatched up the shield and ran back.
He rammed it sideways and Ugo gratefully let the grille sink until it ground onto the metal rim. The shield bowed a little, then held while Ugo ground himself under it and slid down a few feet into water.
‘Back,’ Drust yelled, and watched Quintus and Kag turn and spring back, launching into a sliding skid that took them under the grille and out to the passage beyond, a drop that made them yelp as they splashed into unseen water.
‘Sib,’ Drust yelled. He saw Sib start to move and the errant spear that flew through the entrance, missing him with the point and smacking him in the face with the shaft as he ran into it. He went down in a flurry of waving arms like an upturned beetle, then crawled weakly to his hands and knees.
Manius turned, dragged him up and threw him at the grille. Then he and Dog stood shoulder to shoulder and backed off slowly, while men with big shields and spears spilled out.
Drust slid under and stood uneasily balanced, trying to reach up and snag some part of Sib’s clothing; he heard Ugo and the others splashing away.
‘Go, Dog,’ he heard Manius say as Sib started to crawl weakly under the grille. Drust grabbed him and hauled him through, throwing him into the water beyond, where he splashed and yelled.
Dog gave a final, fearful snarl at the men and spun away, sprinting and sliding as he went, showering Drust with damp grit and sand. Manius danced. He seemed like smoke and oil and Drust heard a voice yelling for him to be brought down.
‘He will not make it,’ Dog declared and, as if he had heard him, Manius turned once and Drust’s breath stopped, for he swore the eyes that stared at them were black. He nodded at them, stepping sideways to avoid a thrust he could not even see.
Dog kicked the shield once, twice and it grated sideways, then collapsed. The grille slammed down like a knell.
‘Move,’ Dog said, clapping Drust on one shoulder.
Drust dropped into water that seemed slick, but it was ankle deep and he sloshed after Dog, hearing the ring of steel on steel, the shouts. He felt sick all the way up what seemed a long tunnel of dark, for he had no torch.
Then they were shapes and looming faces. ‘Here. Over here. Anyone got a torch?’
And then – ‘Where’s Manius?’
‘Sixed,’ Dog said tersely, and looked up the steps, testing the rusting balustrade; it swung and creaked.
‘Manius? Gone?’ Kag said.
‘For sure?’ Ugo growled mournfully.
‘Possibly,’ Sib declared darkly. ‘You do not kill jnoun so easily.’
The words fell on Drust like searing brands.
‘Fuck you, you goat-fucking sand louse,’ he spat back. ‘He saved you. He saved you and you still think he is some demon from Dis…’
Kag laid one gentling hand on Drust’s forearm as people milled and waited at the foot of the steps.
‘Ease,’ he said. ‘You always knew you would not get us all away.’
It was exactly what chewed Drust and he did not want to be soothed – but Quintus slammed a door on it by announcing he could hear the grille screeching. When they fell silent to listen, they all heard it; the Praetorians were opening it.
‘Juno’s tits,’ Kag growled. ‘Just leave us alone…’
‘There’s a door here.’
Dog’s voice was a faint echo from what seemed a long way up. ‘It’s closed. Ugo, I need you…’
‘In the name of all the gods above and below,’ Kag spat. ‘Fuck their mothers. Are we never to get out of this place?’
‘I hear a monster ahead,’ Sib yelped fearfully. ‘I hear it splashing…’
‘Palace rats behind, giant rats in front… well, I will take the giant rats,’ Quintus said, his grin wide and mad.
‘You can’t go that way,’ Drust said dully. ‘It’s the outflow. It gets too narrow, Dog says. You’d have to not be a giant rat to get out.’
‘If one of them sea cows can get up,’ Quintus argued, ‘then I can.’
‘There isn’t a sea cow,’ Drust spat back, exasperated.
‘Listen, lads,’ Kag said, ‘can we start thinking about the bastards coming up the tunnel? They will get to us before any sea cow.’
‘Splashing is getting louder,’ Sib exclaimed. ‘It’s coming down on us…’
There was a sudden blast of cold air, a chill that blew away the sweat and all the veiled mists in Drust’s head. His stomach lurched.
‘Get up the steps. Up the steps. That’s no sea cow. The games are done for the day…’
They scrabbled for the steps, throwing themselves up just as men with shields and spears came sloshing up. Drust, the last man, turned to see the one in the lead, a big man in full armour, his torch dyeing his face with bloody light as he pointed a sword and yelled for his men to go on.
Then Macrinus saw the wall of water thrashing down the tunnel, spilled from the sluice and galloping like mad, white-maned horses to relieve the pressure on the too-small pipes of the Flavian sewers.
He gave a bellow and lost the shield, springing for the steps and the rusted balustrade. The wall of water hit him and his men. They vanished into the spray with brief shrieks, but Drust turned as he reached the pack above, struggling with the door.
Macrinus hung on grimly with one hand; he would not let go of the sword in the other.
Ugo and Dog were slamming the door in rhythm with their shoulders. Kag turned and looked at Drust.
‘What was that?’ he demanded. ‘Sib says sea monsters came down the tunnel.’
‘Just washing some turds out,’ Drust said as cheerfully as he could manage. ‘Can we hurry?’
The door burst open with a shattering bang and Ugo fell through. There was a blast of rain-wet air, cold and sweet, and then, suddenly, they were out onto a walkway, looking at rat eyes in the darkness.
‘Ho,’ said Kag, crouching. Then everyone realised, as the wind soughed clouds from the moon, that they were on the aqueduct above the Tiber and the rat eyes were the distant pinprick waver of lights from the torches and fires of Rome.
‘Fuck,’ Ugo said sombrely. ‘We have made it.’
‘That way,’ Dog said, pointing to the gleam of ribbon-black water and the walkways on either side, ‘leads to the Janiculum. And freedom…’
‘Halt.’
The voice shattered the night, the reverent silence and their dreams, making them all spin to face it.
Macrinus hauled himself out of the door, soaked and panting, sword in one fist.
‘Come quietly, in the name of all the gods. Or I will set my men on you.’
‘Move,’ Drust said over his shoulder. Dog laughed, soft and admiring, then trotted off. Sib followed and Ugo, reluctantly, lumbered after. Quintus paused for a moment, but Kag slapped his arm and he went off.
‘You too, Kag,’ Drust said. Kag grunted and moved.
Macrinus stepped out. ‘You’re an annoying little sod,’ he said, shaking water off him like a hound from a river. ‘You really think you can stand against the Praetorian.’
‘I am not. There is you – all the rest of your men are drowned or almost so. No one is coming up those steps behind you. I sent the others away because you will die here if you try and fight us all.’
‘And now you believe you can do this on your own?’
‘I am pointing out that you can live,’ Drust said, feeling his bowels slide queasily. He hoped his voice sounded less trembled to Macrinus than it did to him. ‘You can turn and go back down those steps and, when the surge stops, find your way back.’
‘I was sent to take you. You in particular if I could get no one else. I have one and soon I will have the rest of you. The Hood will suffer nothing less.’
Drust shook his head. ‘It will not happen. Take what is offered. Turn and go.’
‘You arrogant fuck,’ Macrinus spat. ‘You were never any good in the harena – you think you can stand against me? I have fought more than you have eaten. My first baby shit was harder than you.’
Drust waggled his head from side to side. Each moment bought the others time and his heart was thundering with the news that Manius was not dead. It made him smile; Macrinus saw it as a sneer and his anger tipped over the brim.
Drust should have been thinking about what he would do when that happened. About feint and thrust and footwork on this high, awkward, narrow place – but all he could think about was his mother’s face. Kag had always said he was a sentimental arse-brain and that had no place in the harena; it seemed now he was right.
Macrinus darted forward, lashing out with an underhand stroke designed to take the point of the gladius at Drust’s throat. He was so surprised by it that he barely managed to lurch back a pace, found himself with a heel over the walkway and took a short drop into the water.
He floundered, found his footing in the waist-deep flow and backed off while Macrinus prowled, unable to reach Drust; he could only watch impotently as Drust clawed himself up the far side and stood, shivering and dripping.
Macrinus pointed his sword. ‘You think that was clever? You think you have escaped?’
Honestly, yes, Drust thought. He almost said it, then saw Macrinus take several short quick steps along the walkway and hurl himself into the air. He watched with sick admiration and fear as the man landed lightly on the other walkway – lightly, by all the gods, and he wore polished body armour with the outline of muscles which were probably no lie to what lay beneath.
Macrinus advanced on him and Drust parried, blocked, backed off and wished, prayed, dreamed of an opening he could use to strike back. The bell rings were whipped away in the night wind on top of the aqueduct; all Rome seemed to be waiting for the inevitable outcome.
Macrinus stamped and flicked with flourishes – left himself open, just for a moment, an eye-blink of arrogant warrior. Drust poised for it, started to strike, and then saw it was a feint and couldn’t stop himself.
He felt the sword spin out of his hand as if something had wrenched it. Heard it tinkle and splash into the water of the canal, then tried to spring back as Macrinus rushed close. He saw the bearded snarl, the dark, raging eyes and, too late, the sword pommel that smacked him in the breastbone, driving all the air out.
He collapsed, gasping and wheezing, while Macrinus took two steps back, flourishing the sword in easy circles.
‘Well, I hope you play dice better than you fight,’ he said, ‘because this gamble has failed. Get up.’
Why? Drust would have asked it aloud if he had breath, but he had even less when Macrinus slammed a boot into him and skittered him almost off the walkway; he scrabbled frantically to stop hitting the small lip that was all the barrier between him and a long drop to the Tiber.
‘I was told to bring you alive,’ Macrinus went on bitterly. ‘Pained, but alive. I was told I could do one particular thing to you and I will do it now. Then I will drag you back down those steps by your ankle.’
He stepped forward and Drust tried to rise up but each limb felt it weighed far too much.
‘I shall cut your balls off,’ Macrinus said, ‘and drag you away from here to find a torch to cauterise the wound. I would not want you to die before The Hood has his full measure.’
He kicked Drust’s numbed legs apart, splaying them like a spatchcocked chicken and poised the sword. Even in the dark, Drust thought numbly, this bastard will not miss…
‘You threw for the dog,’ Macrinus said, raising the blade, ‘and failed at the last.’
‘You always have to throw the dog to win,’ said a voice, and Macrinus jerked, too late, as the whirling gladius came out of the dark.
It wasn’t balanced for throwing and smacked Macrinus flatly on his armour, the pommel striking his face, making him curse and reel back. Drust looked weakly up, in time to see Dog step over him, but his hands were empty. Macrinus shook blood from his nose and snarled.
‘Well, well – now I get two…’
‘Three,’ said Kag.
‘Four,’ echoed Ugo.
‘I am Five,’ said Quintus, grinning wide as the Tiber. ‘Which is apt, don’t you think?’
Macrinus backed off a little, but no one seemed to have a weapon and he started to grin. ‘Come to your senses, eh.’
‘Six,’ said a spluttering voice at his feet and he looked down, in time to see the wet black glisten of Sib’s face emerging from where he had swum, underwater and silently, to come up at Macrinus’s ankles.
Which he grabbed and pulled.
Macrinus gave a hoarse cry and clattered to the walkway and suddenly everyone was moving, it seemed to Drust. There were shouts and clangs and then Macrinus was up on his feet, held in the bear grip of Ugo, struggling and red faced. Kag had his sword and tickled his throat with it.
Drust wanted to tell them that the man was a senior centurion of the Praetorian, an aedile who wore a toga with narrow russet-red stripes on it. A man of substance…
But he knew Kag would probably cut Macrinus’s throat – so he was surprised when Dog thrust his death face up close and stared Macrinus in the eye.
‘Can you swim?’ he asked.
If there was answer, it vanished in a descending rush of scream as Ugo heaved the man over the aqueduct lip to spiral in a whirl of arms and legs down into the river.
‘Father Tiber take you,’ he intoned piously.
‘Bet the bastard can swim,’ Kag answered bitterly. There was a dull, distant splash, then hands hauled Drust up and held him while he wobbled. Kag grinned. Dog added his terrible parody to it.
‘Leave you to fight like a gladiator?’ he said wryly. ‘Didn’t think we were actually going to go along with that, did you? Then he thrust out his hand, palm down, fingers splayed. One by one the others closed in and formed the circle, with one space left.
Drust filled it with his own hand and spoke hoarsely, while the wind beckoned them to freedom.
‘Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari.’