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  "And what if he hasn't? Or what if he tried," she wailed, "and died trying to escape?"

  "That won't have happened," Domitian assured her. "The Sicambrii are heathen brutes, but unless I miss my mark, they will be ordered - under pain of torture and death - to bring Marcus to the Roman authorities alive."

  "Indeed," Vito said, breaking out of his apparent trance. "Julianus Vestatian will want him to suffer the indignity of a public execution for treason, no doubt."

  "And how is that better?" Alexandra cried.

  "It is better," Domitian said, "because it means that Marcus is still alive. As long as Marcus is still alive, we have the capacity to plan a rescue for him."

  "You must be mad," Monale said, staring at Domitian in shock. "Surely you don't mean to break into the city jail to rescue a traitor? That would be suicide."

  "Marcus is not a traitor," Domitian said. He made no attempt to disguise his incredulity at Monale's statement. "He is fighting on the side of the Gods, under the instruction of the Lord of Battle. Surely you know that."

  "I realize that Mars and the entire Olympian host hate the heathen barbarians with an all-consuming passion," Monale said. "But they also value honour, integrity, and loyalty to the Empire. I do not agree with, or even like, Governor Vestatian's rulership. The way he seized and maintains his power is inexcusible. However, the rumours I have heard are that Marcus is head of some sort of conspiracy to overthrow Governor Vestatian - who is, by the rightful order of the mighty Emperor Trajan, the lawful ruler of this province."

  "You know," Vito said with a grindingly insinuative tone, "I'm wondering how Vestatian's forces knew where Marcus' wedding was taking place. Domitian, you took very strict precautions to keep it a secret."

  "I've been wondering the same thing," Domitian said, staring at Monale. The Priest cast his eyes to the ground, shifting nervously from side to side in his seat. "Someone obviously leaked the information to the authorities. I know it was not myself. I also know it wasn't Alexandra, Vito, or Marcus. Surely no member of the clergy would divulge such information to the authorities, knowing that the sanctity of the Goddess of Love's Temple would be shattered as a result of that disclosure?"

  "I...I cannot speak for the other clergy," Monale said in a quivering voice. "But I would not approve of any action which might would desecrate a holy place."

  "That doesn't exactly sound like a denial to me," Vito said. "Tell us, Priest - did you or did you not leak information about the wedding ceremony to the authorities?"

  "I did nothing to betray the Empire," Monale said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.

  "Say yes," Vito growled, rising to his feet, "or no. Did you betray Marcus?"

  "I...I may have let some information slip to the commander of the city guard," Monale said with a cringe. "But I assure you, I would have done nothing to put Marcus in danger -"

  "Oh, I'm sure that will be of great comfort to him," Domitian said, glaring angrily at Monale. "You are a damned fool, Monale, and entirely unworthy of the divine office you bear. Do you have any idea what you have done?"

  "I've saved the province from civil war," Monale said without raising his gaze from the floor. His voice trembled, betraying the fact that even he doubted the veracity of his statements.

  "No," Vito said, placing his left hand on the back of Monale's neck. An almost threatening calm seemed to overtake him. "You've done far worse than that. You have betrayed everything that you are supposed to stand for, Monale. You betrayed Marcus' trust, sacrificing the sacrosanct confidentiality of your position as a priest to serve your own political goals. You have put us all in danger, including Marcus' bride - one of your own fellow servants of Mars. Perhaps worst of all, you have forsaken the Olympian Lords and virtually sworn your allegiance to the heathens."

  "I didn't -"

  "You did, and you must answer for that" Vito said, still utterly calm. Moving with incredible speed, Vito clamped his right hand onto Monale's jaw and twisted the priest's head to the side with a vicious jerking motion. A sickening crack resounded loudly as his head twisted around nearly one hundred and eighty degrees; Monale's body twitched twice, and then dropped lifelessly to the floor.

  "Vito," Domitian said breathlessly, "what in Hades do you think you're doing? Have you gone mad?"

  "He was a traitor," Vito said with a shrug. "His punishment fits his crime."

  "He was a member of the priesthood," Domitian said. "Do you wish to bring the wrath of the Gods themselves down upon us?"

  "No such wrath will ensue," Alexandra said. Her sobs had subsided for the moment, but her voice was still shaky. "Vito is correct; Monale had forsaken the priesthood the instant he betrayed Marcus to the authorities. Now, we have something far more important to worry about at the moment. We need to rescue Marcus."

  Domitian and Vito gathered around Alexandra, ignoring the fallen body of Monale for the time being. All three knew that freeing Marcus from the city prison would be a virtually impossible task, but they were firm in their resolve that they would stop at nothing until Marcus was returned to their midst.

  Chapter XII

  Two full days in the tiny, dark cell had left Marcus nearly delerious. The door to his cell had not opened since Julianus Vestatian had left - not even to deliver a meal. Marcus was beginning to suspect that his fate would be to starve to death in the prison long before he would have a chance to escape. He had, of course, continued his attempts to find some sort of weakness in the cell which could be exploited to his advantage, but to no avail. Finally, a combination of exhaustion, starvation, and sensory deprivation threw him into a fit of vertigo, knocking him to his back. He laid there for hours, staring at the darkness above him which obscured the ceiling.

  The door to his cell was so thick that he could hear only the faintest traces of noise in the corridor beyond; at any given time the conversations between the guards in the corridor echoed inside his cell as nothing more than distorted whispers. Time seemed to all but stop, suspending Marcus in an eternal cocoon of darkness and pain, his only company the voices which seemed to echo from every direction around him, muffled and distorted that they sounded more like the nonsensical rantings one might expect from the maddened spirits of the nether reaches of Hades than conversations between bored soldiers. In a vain effort to stave off the effects of his sensory deprivation, Marcus tried to focus his mind by tapping his fingers rhythmically on the floor.

  Tap, tap, tap,he thought. When I get my hands on that bastard Vestatian, I'll disembowel him with my bare hands and strangle him to death with his own intestines. When he's finally ceased breathing, I'll rip out that black heart of his, roast it over an open fire, and feast upon it. After that -

  After that,I'll do what? His head seemed to be spinning faster and faster. The thoughts slipped from Marcus' mind as soon as they were even formed. I'll eat the heart...no, I already went over that. Something about the kidneys, maybe. No, that wasn't it.

  Marcus' grasping at the elusive thought was interrupted by the clicking and clanking of the door locks opening. Now's my chance,he thought eagerly, it must be him! I'll eviscerate him with my bare kidneys, and strangle him to death with his...no. No, that wasn't it. Damn it!

  The aggravation Marcus felt about not being able to remember the proper order of his planned revenge on Julianus Vestatian was misplaced, however. The door to his cell swung wide open to reveal a figure that was most decidedly not the Governor. Instead of the largish man wearing opulent clothing, the door frame was filled - or rather, partially filled - by a small man whose head was totally bare. Simple black clothing hung from the man's gaunt frame, and a similarly simple black bag was held tightly in his right hand.

  "You must be Marcus," the man said, his voice surprisingly smooth and relaxing.

  "I am," Marcus said in a hoarse whisper.

  "My name is Luskilos Vaishallas," the man said. "I'm sure you were told that I would be coming. I'm here to have a bit of a talk with you. I know that your throat mu
st be absolutely parched by now, so let me assure you that I won't force you to speak more than absolutely necessary. In fact, I'll be more than content to do the vast majority of the talking myself. Who knows? By the time we're finished with our little chat, you may very well have learned how to better appreciate the simple sound of silence.

  "Guards, please bring our guest to the room down the hall. It's been specially prepared for us, but I doubt that my friend Marcus is quite capable of walking under his own power at the moment."

  Luskilos stepped aside and allowed three Roman soldiers to enter the prison cell. Two of them grabbed Marcus by the arms, hoisting him upright and holding him steady. The third looked Marcus square in the eye, obviously ashamed at his duty.

  "Please, General," the third guard said quietly, "do not struggle. We have no choice here, and none of us wants to harm you. Make it easy on all of us, I beg of you."

  The warning turned out to be unnecessary. Luskilos had been right; Marcus was not even capable of standing under his own power at that moment. The very thought of struggling against two soldiers would have been laughable, had Marcus the strength to even utter a laugh. The soldiers followed Luskilos, half-carrying and half-dragging Marcus down the corridor of the prison and into an awaiting room.

  The room was sparsely decorated; indeed, with the exception of a single large wooden table placed squarely in the centre of the room, the chamber was entirely devoid of any sort of furnishings. Four ominous-looking chains hung from the corners of the table, each with its very own steel manacle attached to the last link.

  "Remove his shackles," Luskilos directed the soldiers. "Come on, hurry it up. I haven't got all day to do this, you know. Good. Now place him on the table. Gently, now. Make sure that he's hooked into each of those restraints. We don't want him flailing about, do we?"

  Once Marcus was securely fastened to the table, the guards filed out of the room. Their trepidation and shame was obvious; they didn't know what was going to happen to Marcus in that empty room, but they knew it wasn't going to be good. I can hardly blame them, Marcus thought as he tried to tug at the restraints which held him spread-eagled on the table. They have little choice in serving Julianus Vestatian. They are just city guards, after all. If they refused to serve or tried to flee the city, they would be hunted down and killed. Not that my sympathy is going to keep me from hunting them down and killing them one by one once I have been released, of course; it may, however, influence me to give them a quick death.

  "I trust that you are comfortable," Luskilos said.

  "Pluto take you," Marcus muttered, still too weak to speak at a normal volume.

  "I have no doubt that he will," Luskilos said with a laugh. "Each in his own time, eh? This is not, however, my time, Marcus. This is your time.

  "I really regret that I must do this to you," he said, setting his black bag down beside Marcus and peering inside. "A chance to practice my art is, of course, always welcome, but I have always had a healthy measure of respect for you. It is a shame that your distinguished career has been reduced to this."

  Reaching inside the bag, Luskilos pulled out a device no larger than a dagger, but considerably more narrow. A pointed steel shaft lead up to a corkscrew-style twist, topped off with a simple wooden handle. He turned the device over in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship. When he showed the device to Marcus, his eyes seemed to glint with sadistic glee.

  "Do you recognize this device, Marcus? No, I suppose you wouldn't. It is of my own creation; a point of personal pride, really. You see, this needle pieces through skin and flesh, boring straight through to the bone below." Luskilos placed the sharpened tip of the device against Marcus' forearm. With an effortless twist of his wrist, the narrow shaft of the device burrowed through the muscles of Marcus' arm. Marcus cried out in agony, nearly drowning out the sickening grinding sound of the device first scratching, and then digging into the bone below. Luskilos continued to twist the device, forcing the twisting part of the shaft into Marcus' arm. With every twist, the shaft was driven deeper and deeper into the bone and muscle, eventually bursting out of the opposite side of Marcus' arm. Surprisingly, very little blood trickled out of either end of the skewer, but that curiosity was lost on Marcus. In truth, the entire world was lost on Marcus at that point; his perception had dissolved to little more than a haze of pain penetrated only by Luskilos' continued speech.

  "Interesting," Luskilos continued. "Most people have passed out by this point in the proceedings. That's good. I've never been able to keep someone conscious though the second phase of my little invention."

  Straining his eyes to peer down at his arm, Marcus saw Luskilos attaching a metal bar of some sort to the tip of the device's shaft. The bar slid up the metal shaft until it pressed flat against the bottom of Marcus' arm. With one sharp, vicious twist of the bar, Luskilos pinched Marcus' arm so tightly that Marcus thought the entire appendage was going to be torn in two. His suspicions were not entirely incorrect, either; Luskilos grabbed both bars and jerked them ninety degrees towards the ceiling.

  The entire world seemed to slow to a crawl as his forearm shattered in half; even as the agony exploded through his entire body, he was able to feel shattered shards of bone piercing through his skin. Marcus screamed and thrashed about, but to no avail. The chains which held him to the table were too strong for him to break, even if he had been able to focus on the effort rather than the pain. Luskilos' voice still drifted through the haze which seemed to have engulfed every one of Marcus' senses.

  "Amazing," he said. "Utterly amazing. I'd congratulate you, Marcus, if I thought you were in any condition to understand just what the congratulations are for. The kind of pain that I'm putting you through is beyond anything most people could ever imagine, and yet you're still conscious.

  "Your resilience, of course, means that I am going to have to see exactly how far I can push you. Are you ready for the next step in our little experiment?"

  Marcus sputtered incomprehensibly in reply.

  "You'll have to speak up," Luskilos said. "You mouth and throat are undoubtely filled with blood and bile, so it may take a bit of effort to spit that out."

  "I said," Marcus gurgled, barely managing to clear his throat, "that I'm goi...I am going to tear you limb from limb."

  "Please spare me the threats," Luskilos said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Consider yourself lucky. Julianus sent me here to interrogate you, but we both know that you're not going to part with any information no matter how much I torture you. Keeping that in mind, I am able to skip past all of the usual useless interchanges that would normally take place in this sort of situation. Believe me, this would be much more of an inconvenience to you if the torture was accompanied by the continual litanies of me asking you for information, and you refusing to give it. I'd like to think that my methods spare us both rather a lot of trouble and headaches.

  "Now that you've seen a device of my own creation," Luskilos continued, reaching into his black bag, "I think it's time for us to pay homage to the classic tools of my trade."

  As the pain in Marcus' body began to dull from a roaring agony to a dull throb, he was able to focus his vision sufficiently to watch Luskilos withdraw a small hook from his bag. Luskilos ran his fingers over Marcus' ribcage, delicately searching for a point directly below his solar plexus. Having found what he was looking for, Luskilos placed the tip of the wickedly curved hook against Marcus' skin. He gently pressed down on the implement, forcing the barbed tip to bite into Marcus' flesh without actually piercing through the skin. He rocked the hook back and forth, carefully watching Marcus' expression to see how much pain was being inflicted. Apparently unsatisfied with the look on Marcus' face, Luskilos drove the hook through skin and muscle with a well-practiced thrust. When the hook was buried deeply within Marcus' stomach, Luskilos twisted the hook from side to side, alternating between sharp yanks on the tool and slow rotations intended to inflict the most pain imaginable.

  Marcus screamed again
, the primal force of his cry startling even Luskilos. The white haze which clouded his eyes intensified, drowning out his entire field of vision until the world slipped away beneath him.

  ***

  The world slowly reappeared to Marcus as the blinding pain which had wracked his entire body faded into nothingness. As the solid white film which had enveloped his senses gradually parted, Marcus came to the dawning realization that his surroundings had changed dramatically over the last several seconds. Instead of a dingy, grimy room in the deepest bowels of Cologne's city prison, Marcus found himself standing in the centre of a structure of mind-boggling dimensions. The polished marble floor beneath his feet stretched out in every direction to the outermost limits of his range of vision - white granite walls and columns rose straight up from the floor hundreds of feet into the air. The massive room was topped in a brilliant white dome ceiling. The farthest end of the room contained a massive brazier which radiated enough heat to warm the entire room, the flickering glow of the brazier's flames casting dancing shadows across the gargantuan statues of the entire pantheonic host which stood behind it. The scent of incense hung in the air, and the faint sounds of revelry seemed to echo from every direction.

  This must be a Temple dedicated to all the Gods,Marcus thought as he gazed in awe at the almost unimaginably huge structure which surrounded him. But where could it be? Even Rome, in all its glory and strength, has no such temple as this. This architecture, this sort of scale, is far beyond anything that even the most brilliant architects in the Empire could conceive of. No nation in the civilized world is capable of creating something like this.

  Dare I even consider the possibility, Marcus thought as a bewildering suspicion overtook him, that these are the halls of the most hallowed Olympus? Could this be the domain of the architects of the very universe? He dismissed the possibility as an errant fancy. No, it cannot be. My body still lies on that damned slab under the watchful eye of that rat Luskilos. Even if this truly is Olympus, I would surely bear the wounds that have been inflicted on me. My body is whole and unbroken, ergo this can be nothing but a dream.