Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby
***
Robur was still alive. Another loose end to be tied up. A price that had to be paid. Servius remembered the Vipienas' deaths. Was there where it had all started? He longed for the cleanness of war, the open battlefield under heaven; now he was alone in the darkness, here under the Capitol, in the prison Ancus Marcius had made.
He trod carefully. Do it in the dark, he'd decided, where there were no eyes to see, not even his own. A thin crack under the door he'd locked behind him, at the top of the stairs, let in all the light there was to the first great vaulted chamber; a hundred shades of darkness, from furry grey to velvet black, in which it would be easy to misstep, not to see the single round opening that gave on to the second, more cramped, prison. Only a hole, and a rope; to this prison there were no stairs, and once the rope was drawn up, there was no way out, nor, for Robur, would there ever be.
He felt the damp in his bones. He felt the weight of Rome over his head. He felt the hard cold stone under his bare feet. A hard decision he'd made; but he'd always said, "If you want a thing doing, do it yourself," and he wouldn't push this act on to someone else, he'd take responsibility for it personally.
There was no one in the upper chamber. He'd made sure of that; no prisoner, no warder. There had been a prisoner last week, Mamarke had told him, but he'd been freed, in the end; an old cobbler who had said Servius wanted to conquer the moon, once he'd taken over the world, and blamed him for melting Romans down to make tallow.
("What happened to him?" Servius had asked.
"His son's looking after him. He's clearly insane."
"Clearly," Servius had said, and smiled.)
As for Robur, he was secure enough without a guard; no one got out of the lower prison alive. One way or another, they died, by violence or starvation, or the cold, or the damp.
Careful, he thought. Go slowly. He saw a patch of more intense darkness in front. That would be the opening, he thought, and relaxed his watchfulness a little to take another step forward without feeling the ground first.
His foot found nothing under it. Only the heel caught the edge of the hole, and held, and it was all he could do to stop himself crying out with the fear and shock. Whatever that deeper darkness held, it was not the entrance to the depths.
He felt around with his hands. There was a rope up there somewhere, slung over a hook in the roof above. He thought how stupid he would look, if someone could see; groping and waving sightlessly, moving only from the waist, afraid to move his feet other than to shuffle along the edge of the gap, feeling with his toes for the rim. At last he found the end of the rope, and followed its length with his hands down to the floor, where it lay coiled and dusty.
Grit scratched at his palms as he paid out the coils. This prison didn't get much use; a payment or a sacrifice covered most crimes. What couldn't be paid for? Parricide, incest, treason; even treason was more often punished by exile than by death. Parricide, incest, treason; and a more nebulous crime, the crime of being dangerous.
He'd paid out all the rope and still he hadn't heard, in the silence, the slap of the rope's end on the floor below. Was it not long enough? He should have measured the rope as he'd let it down, hand over hand. How many times had he moved his right hand past his left? He couldn't remember. If it was ten, let's say, that would be thirty, maybe thirty-five feet of rope; how deep was the pit? No, the rope had to be long enough; it wouldn't be there if it wasn't.
He held tightly to the rope, lifted his feet from the ground, and grabbed for the rope with his legs. It swung wildly for a moment as he clung to it; as its movement slowed, he began to climb down, moving hand over hand, foot over foot, embracing the rope like a lover, letting himself slowly down into the dark. He heard only the creak of the rope on the hook above. If it should break, if it should break... it wouldn't, of course, someone must be maintaining the place, someone must have checked.
He felt the end of the rope slip between his feet, so that for a moment his hands took his entire weight before he brought his feet up and his legs together and managed to trap the rope again between them. And still he wasn't on the ground. Again the calculations flickered through his mind; ten pays out, maybe some more, thirty feet, it had to be, maybe more than that.
Below him only blackness. If he jumped, how far would he fall? Chances were he was a few inches from the floor. Chances. He'd trusted his luck so far, and it had carried him. About to jump, he suddenly thought of what he'd forgotten; even if he made the bottom without hurt, would he be able to find the rope again? Would the end hang too far above him to climb back? He felt the rope trembling between his hands like a live thing.
He let himself fall.
He felt the breath go out of him as he hit hard. He staggered, threw out an arm for balance, felt the end of the rope whip against his outflung hand. Good; he could still reach it. The noise he made was alarmingly loud.
"Who's there?"
Of course he'd been heard. Robur's voice sounded weak. He tried to fix where the voice had come from, but was baffled by echoes. Only when Robur coughed, a small, dry sound, did Servius feel sure enough of his direction to start, silently, moving across the floor.
He was sure he could kill Robur easily enough; an unarmed man, weak with hunger and illness. If he'd been another man he would have shouted: "It's Servius, come to kill you," or "I am your death"; he wouldn't have crept silently towards him. But he'd decided to do it in the dark; no lamp, nothing to obscure his purpose or occupy his hands. Robur's last sight would be of blackness, blackness and nothing. He would never see the man who killed him.
And he'd do it in silence. He didn't want to hear Robur's voice; didn't want to hear a last defence, a whining plea, defiance. But he could hear Robur's breathing now, a rough edge to it, rasping in a dry throat.
Robur must know his death was coming. He was Roman; he would know. No one ever descended into this darkness and came out alive. But he wouldn't know when, or how; having been in the darkness so long, he might wonder, now, if he'd ever heard that noise, or if he'd imagined it.
Servius crept another few paces across the floor. He kept his breath even, his stride short, silent as a cat on its padded feet. He tracked that rough breath he'd heard. It was closer. He could smell Robur's sweat on the air, sour and sharp. He felt suddenly weak, not wanting to continue; but someone had to do it, and better him than another, he told himself.
He could have just left Robur here. Someone would forget to leave food and water, a chill would carry him off. There was a small risk, there was always a risk; he didn't know whether Robur was fettered, didn't know how fit he was, how much three days of darkness and starvation might have taken out of him. There was really no need to kill him. Yet without doing it himself, he could never be sure; and he needed to be sure.
He took one more step, and as he did so was startled to hear, directly in front of him, Robur's voice. "Is there anyone..."
He knew he had Robur then, and bent, rushing the prisoner, pushing his shoulder forward, feeling a body slump under him, between himself and the floor. The fall should have knocked most of the fight out of Robur, but the dark was full of squirming body and thrashing limbs; Servius felt something that might have been a hip, or a knee or an elbow, thrust at him, and arched his back and flung himself sideways to avoid it, feeling all the time with his hands for what he needed, riding his prisoner the same way he used to bareback the unbroken horses. He found an arm and twisted it, feeling which way the elbow moved, pulling the arm up behind Robur to immobilise him; and now he knew, without seeing, exactly the position of the man he was to kill - his back to Servius, his right arm held in a lock behind him, his hips under Servius. He kept the armlock onehanded, moved his right hand up to the soft hollow of the shoulderblade and the neck, and quickly across, hooking his arm round Robur's neck, pulling back to choke him. Robur struggled, pushing up on the one arm he had free, but it was no use; Servius leant into him, lying on him with his full weight, feeling him toss and wriggle,
A clever man might sham unconsciousness, hoping for a moment of inattention to give him a last chance. Servius kept the pressure up, counting his own heartbeats, the roaring of his blood in his ears, till he was certain Robur must be dead.
It was done. Servius exhaled, breathed deeply in again, wondered why he had been holding his breath.
He must have let his hold slacken, for suddenly, Robur bucked and twisted, strong as a pig when it sees the knife. He got his shoulder under Servius', and tried to throw him off, and nearly succeeded; he'd managed to turn himself around, and now he'd got a hand free and was going for Servius' eyes, since there wasn't enough room between them to get a swing for a good punch.
Only one thing to do; disengage quickly, then attack again. Servius sat back, relaxing his hold, pulling his arms roughly free; and just as quickly threw himself forwards, both hands finding Robur's throat, his whole weight thrust on to his wrists. He felt, under his thumbs, Robur's blood surging, the artery hard as a cable. Neither man had uttered a word; he heard only Robur's feet kicking against the floor, the roaring of his own blood.
Stop the breath, stop the blood; he pressed deeper, harder, felt the pulse waver and die. To have a man's life in one's hands, people said, and never knew the meaning of it; now he felt through his own fingertips the moment of death, as he never had when he'd thrust a sword or spear into a man's guts, or slashed at an enemy's throat. It was intimate, and horrifying, and he realised, as he felt Robur slacken under his hands, enjoyable.
This time he kept his hands on Robur's throat. You didn't get to play the same trick twice, he thought. Sitting there in the dark, pressing down, his whole weight was on his hands; his wrists began to ache, but he kept pushing, till he knew what lay under him was meat, and nothing more.