Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 76

AD 54, outside Rome

They emerged into the night. No shining light at the end of the tunnel, just the darkness of full night, the stars and moon lost behind clouds and a pall of smoke from the many fires across the city.

They took several steps down a delta of silt and sewage into the cool water of the River Tiber to wash the muck off. Rashim shuffled over, savoured the cool tickle of water on his skin, cupped it in his hands and drank and drank.

‘Eww… I wouldn’t drink from here,’ whispered Maddy, watching him.

‘Liam? You OK?’ asked Sal.

He was holding his side, wincing with pain. ‘I’ll hold together… I think.’

Maddy washed her hands clean and waded over to him. She pulled her glasses out from beneath her tunic. The arms were bent. She fiddled with them for a moment then put them on crookedly. ‘Let’s take a look.’

‘You won’t be able to see a thing in this light,’ replied Liam.

She reached out to his side. ‘Is it bleeding?’

‘It’s OK, I think.’ He touched the tight binding Macro had fastened round him. ‘It’s dry.’ It burned painfully — literally burned — but it seemed his exertions hadn’t opened the wound.

‘Macro did a good job,’ said Liam. He looked up at her, an expression on his face that told her what she already knew. He’d grown rather fond of the ex-soldier.

Maddy nodded. Me too. Between gasps back in the tunnel she’d explained that the pair of them had decided to stay behind and cover their escape.

‘We owe them,’ she said sombrely. She looked around at the city, dotted with the flickering light of fires. ‘We’ll fix this for them. I promised them that.’

‘Aye. Then we’ll make sure we do it.’

‘No time for this!’ said Rashim. ‘No time! We must leave Rome now! Aye, skippa! Yes, indeed!’

Sal nodded. ‘I’d really like to leave now.’

Maddy looked up and down the river. To their right a bridge running across stone arched supports. To their left, further along, a rickety-looking bridge made from wood.

‘Which bridge?’

‘Neither,’ said Rashim. ‘We follow… see?’ He pointed along the bank of silt to their left. ‘Takes us round the bottom of the city, then we go…’ He frowned as he thought, tapped his temple with his knuckles as if to shake loose a memory.

‘Are you sure you know where this portal’s opening?’

‘Yes! Yes!!.. We go north-east from Rome… for some hours.’

‘Can you be more precise than that?’

Rashim tapped away at his scabby temple. ‘In here… all in my head! Let me… let me get it out!’

‘Information.’ Bob lifted his head. ‘If we are within several miles of the correct location, I may be able to detect tachyon particles.’

‘As it opens… yes,’ said Maddy, ‘but if it opens for just a couple of minutes and we’re a mile or two away, we’ll miss it!’ She turned to Rashim. ‘We need the precise location. We need to be in exactly the right place!’

‘So long ago…’ Rashim muttered. He closed his eyes. ‘I… I remember coming along a road into the east of Rome.’

Bob’s eyelids flickered, accessing his database. ‘The Via Praenestina?’

‘Yes! Long road! A big archway! A… a market!’

‘Go back. Remember it backwards,’ said Maddy. ‘Before entering Rome…?’

‘Can we go now?’ said Sal, looking back at the sewage outlet they’d emerged from. ‘Can he remember and walk at the same time?’

Maddy followed Sal’s gaze. If Caligula’s soldiers had figured out they’d escaped through the sewage outlet, it surely wasn’t going to be long before they saw the faint flicker of torches emerging.

‘She’s right. Let’s get going.’