“Could be, Laena,” Froggie said. “The men probably figure this is getting even for the way we handed them their heads when we landed; but to the women these foreigners took, we probably look better’n the swans from Venus’ chariot.”
The Romans hadn’t needed the warning, and the girl had been a damned fool to try and give it so openly, but it still gave Froggie a cold itch to think about. He twitched his swagger stick toward the line of troopers.
“Fall in, Laena,” he said. “We’ll pay them back pretty quick.”
He could smell smoke already and it hadn’t been any ten minutes. The temple was old, and when the little staves dried out they left gaps that sucked the smoke through.
The gaps sucked in the fire as well. The interior was already brighter than daylight with flames thin as snake tongues slipping in and out of the panelling. Froggie heard thumps as barbs flung bales of brushwood against the outer walls, but that was a waste of effort. Torches had already ignited the bare wood without need for additional fuel.
“Please, Froggie,” Slats whimpered. “What are we to do?”
“First get out of here,” Froggie said. “Then kick some ass.”
He put his arm around the bug’s thin shoulders and pointed the swagger stick in that hand toward the end of Third Squad, disappearing into the sanctum. The flames were beginning to heat the temple’s cavernous interior. Had any of the barbs objected to burning the place down this way? Not that an objection would’ve lasted longer than the time it took one of the foreigners to swing an axe. . . .
The stone spindle the barbs prayed to—or whatever they did; it wasn’t like there’d been any ceremonies since the Third of the Fourth arrived—had been shoved into a corner, wooden base and all. The troopers had taken up the rest of the floor and gone ten feet straight down before heading east with a tunnel so level that water wouldn’t flow along it.
Verruca’d wanted to slope the entrance so they wouldn’t have to turn part of the flooring into stairs, but Froggie insisted on a full five feet of dirt between every part of the tunnel roof and the street around the temple. Going up and down the stairs took a little more time, but the troopers had plenty of time—unless the barbs discovered the tunnel.
“Down ahead of me, Slats,” Froggie said. He stood, taking a last look over the temple’s interior; his left arm held his shield slightly out from his body instead of letting the neck strap support all its weight.
The barbs were probably staying well back, expecting the century to cut a hole through a sidewall and make a desperate sally. That’d be suicide, of course, when a dozen warriors would be waiting for each trooper who stumbled through the flames. Better to die on a spearpoint than be cooked alive, though.
Better still to send the other bastard to Dis with his skull split or trying to stuff guts back through the rip in his belly.
Froggie turned. Slats still stood at the top of the stairs. “Move!” Froggie said, barely a heartbeat from slamming the administrator forward with his shield.
Slats hopped twice, to the landing midway and then the floor of the tunnel. The motion reminded Froggie of a crane flying, graceless but seemingly without weight.
Froggie followed, thumping on stair treads already scarred by many hobnails. They’d stored the excavated dirt in the sanctum at first; then, when the inside squad met the tunnel being driven from the fort, they’d used the spoil to fill baskets and add to the strength of the fort’s walls. On this side the floors of upper-level rooms had provided the pit props; on the other, green timber like that of the fort’s barracks and gates kept the tunnel from collapsing.
It was a neat job with plenty of room for a fully-equipped legionary to pass along it. He’d have to hunch over, but that was just as true for most of the huts and tenements the troopers had lived in before they’d been recruited.
“This tunnel goes to your new fort?” Slats asked. His head turned but his translator was still on his chest, and the echo of boots muffled his words. “You will protect me there until help comes?”