Gaius ignored the technical discussion. “Not what it is, but look at it,” he said. “Here, at the break.”
The thigh had been worried by dogs or jackals, then nibbled by rodents who had hollowed out the narrow cavity completely. There was deeper scarring on the dense bone than either of those causes could account for. “Chisels,” the agent said with a frown. He rotated the bone. “Somebody cracked it with pointed chisels to get the marrow out.” At the broken end, among the jagged points left when the bone snapped, were cleanly-sheared surfaces reaching over an inch into the bone from either side.
Sabellia had noticed something which the men had not. As they talked, the Gallic woman picked up an object a foot or two from where the thigh-bone had lain. Perennius glanced over at her and saw what she held. He swore softly.
“Here,” she said, handing the object to the agent. “I think it’ll fit.”
The object was a triangular tooth three inches long. Both its cutting edges were lightly serrated. The tooth fit the “chisel marks” in the thigh bone perfectly. Perennius tossed the bone away. He handed the tooth back to Sabellia. “I think,” he said as he unhitched his donkey’s reins, “that I’d as soon be inside walls for a while – ” he nodded down toward the inn – “until we learn a little more about what in blazes is going on in these hills.”
Perennius clucked to his donkey. The animal obeyed without the usual struggle. The five of them kept close together on the fork leading from the main road to the inn three hundred feet from stream-crossing. They all, even Calvus, spent far more effort watching their general surroundings than they did in watching the road or the inn which spelled safety at the end of that road.
The inn was built around a courtyard. The gatehouse in one front corner doubled as accommodations for the manager and special guests. The common room across the rear was for drovers and others without the wealth or prestige needed for one of the private apartments in the gatehouse. Both sides of the courtyard were lined with stalls which could also be used to store merchandise. The corner tower in the back, and the arrow slits in all four walls, were not merely decoration. The building had been designed with an eye to more than the casual banditry.
As the party neared the inn, Gaius kicked up his donkey
to reach the gates before the others did. Still mounted, the courier pushed at the center of the double leaves. When they did not budge, he began to hammer on them while he shouted, “Gate! Gate, damn you, we want to get inside!”
Nothing happened before the others had joined him. “I don’t suppose they’re expecting guests, whoever they are,” Perennius said dryly. “One of us can go around to the back and try shouting into the common room, I suppose. It’d probably be simpler to shinny over the wall here, though, and – ”
The sound that broke over the agent’s comments came from back along the road the way they had come. It was not a bugling or a roar in any normal sense. The sound it most reminded Perennius of was that of a cat vomiting. It was a hollow, chugging noise, followed by a horrid rattling. The sound was so loud that, like a waterfall, it provided an ambiance rather than an individual noise.
The inn wall was eight feet high. Perennius’ face went blank. “Lucia,” he said to the tall woman, “give me a leg up like you did before.” It was the first time he had used the feminine form of her assumed name, as if she were a woman of his acquaintance.
As if he were acquainted with her as a woman.
Calvus cupped her hands in a stirrup. “Yes, Aulus,” she said. Her donkey brayed and turned in a tight circle when she dropped his reins. Sestius’ beast was restive also, though the other three donkeys seemed to be rather calmer than their human owners.
The centurion hammered on the gate with his spear-butt. “Hey!” he shouted. “Herakles! Open the fucking gate, will you?”