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It was a foul night. A witch night, as the saying has it, the sort of night where all honest men stay inside, the dark is darker than usual, and strange and furtive deeds are done beneath the starless sky.
Wind-driven rain hurled itself through the waving pines, splattering itself on the windows, obscuring the world. In the distance, I could hear the occasional rumble of thunder, preceded by an instant of harsh, white light; the trees suddenly standing out like bleached bones against a black cloth. It had been raining for hours, an endless, gray curtain of rain. Sometimes a thin, miserable drizzle, other times fat drops cascading from the clouds, beating a hard tattoo on the metal and glass.
No one else was on the road, although that did not altogether surprise me. Most traffic goes down the massive Via Khronstahl, a razor straight tarmac scar through the landscape, bypassing the small hamlets and farms of the area entirely. In the distance, I occasionally caught sight of some artificial light - either another late night traveler, I guessed, or perhaps a glimpse of some building, obscured by trees. But then, Antonia Minor has always been a quiet, rural backwater; consisting mostly of forests and hills, interspersed with fields and remote, struggling farms.
Personally, I grew up in Africa, and I disliked these endless, close, rustling forests, endlessly dripping with damp and cold. Give me well-ordered cropland, stretching as far as the eye can see, under a bright sun any day.
I saw the sign I had been told to watch out for. Not a official sign - any regular driver would likely have ignored the faded, half decayed hoarding on the side, promising CHEAP TIMBER. But I knew better. I glanced in the mirror, checking no one was behind me, and then turned down a side trail, almost invisible amidst the greenery.
Beside me, the car's radio burbled away. The evening bulletin; The Voice of Rome. There were the familiar trumpets and then the smooth tones of the announcer. Old Theodoric, who has reported triumph and tragedy, defeats and victories, murders and marriages and scandals and elections and crimes and discoveries for longer than many have been alive, always in that same calm, dispassionate tone. In the thirty years I've been alive, I haven't noticed his voice change at all.
"The Vigilium has announced that the reward for the capture of the fugitive slave and murderer known as Thurso has now risen to one hundred thousand Denali, five days after he committed his atrocities and three days after an all-Republic alert was issued. However, authorities remain confident he will be captured, and are actively pursuing multiple leads in an effort to locate the renegade servile. Prefect Justinian of the Vigilium, who is leading the manhunt, said that it was only a matter of time before the runaway is caught and, in his words, 'be made such an example of that every slave in the Republic will know the true price of betrayal" The Prefect went on to warn that anyone, slave or free who knowingly aids Thurso, or any other renegade slave, will face the full fury and force of the State".
I sniffed. I was confident Prefect Justinian would never find Thurso. He was an ex-military man, of the old school. He'd served in Subrek, where, to give him his due, he'd pacified his territory; albeit for a given value of 'pacify' - but he'd never quite worked out that the tactics that he'd learned in Subrek was not applicable in the People's Republic. That what passed for law enforcement in the deserts of Subrek - targeted atrocities, the torture of suspects, the salutary shooting of a hostage or ten, the occasional burning and enslavement of a more than usually recalcitrant village - didn't work back in the civilized world.
From what I understood, he'd manage to kill two out of Thurso's six fellow slaves during questioning. Two others - both young women, and both obviously smart enough to realize what was in store for them at the hands of the Directorate of Servile Affairs - had managed to hang themselves before Justinian could start on their interrogation.
I gulped, at that memory. Part of me was sad - but a larger part was pleased that at least they'd had the courage and luck to make a relatively clean end of it - far cleaner, at any rate, than they'd have met either in the interrogation room or at a People's Justice Demonstration. Andromeda and Thylla were no great thinkers - nor, truth be told, were they especially pretty. But they'd been kind women, devoted to their owner's family, and it was obvious to even the most pig-headed individual that no other slave had known what Thurso had planned.
Not that Justinian would have cared. His orders were to find the murderer of Senator Hastic's father, and, when all was said and done, brutality and fear was what he knew. So brutality and fear was what he used - no matter how wasteful, no matter how pointless. And, no doubt, when all this was over, he'd point to the pile of dead slaves in that interrogation room and exclaim that, surely, that showed his dedication.
The track was stony, rutted, muddy, and the car jolted as I moved down it. It twisted and turned through the trees; almost invisible in the darkness. I wrestled with the steering wheel, willing the car not to get stuck, lose the track, end up wedged in the forest.
The last thing I wanted was for Justinian to hear that's how I'd been found. I do have a certain pride.
The track split, again and again, and had I not memorised the pattern I was to take - left, right, right, straight, left, right, straight - I would doubtless have become horribly lost in the forest. But then, I guess that was the idea. Like the Labyrinth, there was only one true path to safety.
"There have been angry demonstrations outside the Volkish Embassy in Rome, as a small crowd chanted slogans demanding that the Volkish Government hand Thurso over to face the People's justified anger. In a statement, the Volkish Foreign Ministry denied harbouring Thurso, but, in their typical incendiary manner, said that they would be pleased to welcome any slave fleeing Rome's tyranny." The announcer paused, and I could imagine him smirking slightly as he editorialized, as Theodoric is wont to do. "How many slaves will be foolish enough to put their trust in Volkish lies remains to be seen, but it would indeed be fitting for such a nation as Friedrich to welcome a frenzied killer to their shores"
Frenzied killer, I felt, was overdoing it - although, in fairness, few details had been released to the media.
It hadn't been premeditated - at least, not the killing. What Thurso hadn't done was let murder stand between him and freedom. His master had spotted him as he came down the stairs, his bag already backed - and stuffed with money and valuables he'd stolen from the house. Foolish old man that he was, his do minus had tried to tackle the larger, younger man, armed with a carving knife, with the predictable result.
Hearing her husband gurgle away his lifeblood, his wife had rushed from the living area, where she had been watching television - and in a display of truly inspiring marital loyalty had tried to intercept her husband's killer.
He hadn't even needed to use the knife for her. He'd taken her head and smashed it against the plaster. Running towards the front door, Sythax, one of the slaves and, it seemed, a loyal friend of his owner, had barred his away. Darting back into the house, Thurso had come across little Antonia - six years old.
"The leader of the Romulist Party, Marcus Cato Julius, today paid tribute to Horthanius Hastic, saying that he hoped his death would serve as a reminder that our servile population must be kept in fear of their betters. Saying that trusting to their loyalty or love was foolish, he went on to call for the execution of not only every slave in the Hastic household, but every slave the family owned, and accused Senator Hastic of unwarranted sentimentality in publicly refusing to offer his slaves to the Victors."
I sniffed. Trust the Romulists to take this rare, unusual tragedy and make it into one of their usual, reactionary warnings; of doom and damnation for the entire Republic if we didn't immediately return to the austere, hard and likely fictional values of Romulus Himself.
I saw the track widen up ahead, gravel blending with mud, and I pulled up, beside a hedge. I looked around - and, as my informant had told me, there was the blue light. I reached down, picked up my torch, and flashes three long, three short, and then three long flashes towards the light. I watched intently. Nothing happened for perhaps a minute - so I repeated the signal. Three long, three short, three long flashes. This time, the blue light blinked. Three times.
Thurso hadn't been stupid, of course - he realised the leverage a niece of a Senator could give him. He'd picked up the six-year old, who by this point had seen the mortal remains of her father and mother and was howling in terror and confusion, and then doubled back on himself, holding a knife to the child's throat as he approached old Sythax. This time, the elderly doorman had let him pass as Thurso ran outside, opening the car door, and thrusting Amelia inside it. Sythax had followed, and, as Thurso got into the car himself, stood his ground in front of it. Pleading with him, begging for him to spare the child - and to think of his fellow slaves. At the very least, he begged him, leave Antonia behind. At least then they might have a witness that they had at least tried to stop him; testimony that might save them from the hands of the Victors.
Thurso had pushed down hard on the accelerator, and a ton of metal met Sythax, sending him flying into the road as Thurso sped off, into the night. He hadn't got that far, though; in fact he did not know how to drive. Speeding down roads, unaware of where he was aiming for, he sped across a junction without looking - straight into the path of an oncoming truck.
When Thurso next took an interest in things, a burly man was standing outside his car; now just a mangled wreck of metal, leaking oil and fuel onto the tarmac - and poor little Amelia - the six-year-old niece of a Senator - was dead; her head hanging from a snapped neck, eyes glazed. Two passers-by ran over, and saw the truck driver struggle with the door, trying to wrench open the metal, trying to free Thurso. He managed to twist it open, just far enough to let Thurso sliver out, just as the other two reached the wreckage.
"I'll get help" said one of them, running towards the nearest home, as the other tried to clamber inside, trying to rescue the girl.
The driver was sobbing, pleading with Thurso he hadn't know, hadn't seen him - and then he frowned.
"You're a slave, right?" he asked, his voice cracking, but a tone of suspicion entering it - a tone which made the other man, wincing as broken glass dug into his biceps as he tried to open a door from the inside via a shattered window - look up.
Thurso paused - and then, before anyone could react, he drew his knife, and plunged it straight into the driver's stomach - before sprinting off, into some nearby undergrowth.
Perhaps Thurso realised that the driver was becoming suspicious. Perhaps he figured that the Vigilium was arriving soon, and couldn't imagine an excuse to leave before they did. Perhaps he wasn't thinking straight, still dazed after the crash. Perhaps, at that point, he no longer really cared, and simply wanted to add another Roman to his tally.
Whatever the reason, in the end it made no difference. Marcus Turtio was fifty-three years old, overweight, divorced - and left behind a sister and three children.
The Vigilium arrived ten minutes later.
I got out of the car, standing in the pouring rain, stretching. It had been a long, long drive, and the coffee I brought at a roadside stop some hours ago hadn't helped. I glanced at myself in the car mirror, and smiled ruefully. Even in the darkness, even obscured by fat droplets of water, I could see I was unshaven, with bags under my eyes. I shivered slightly, as the rain plastered my thin, cheap tunic to my body, running through the numerous tears in my grubby, plastic overcoat.
Ideally, I'd have stayed in a hotel, but instead I'd driven, for hours on end - keeping, so far as I could, away from towns, only pulling onto the highways rarely. Should the Vigilium pull over a man, dressed in shabby clothes, driving a beaten up car that, if checked, properly belonged to a rental company in Gaul, they might have questions. Delaying questions, with ultimately fatal answers.
I saw a torch, bobbing through the trees, and then I saw her - a short, plump, middle-aged woman, in a heavy waterproof coat. She looked at me, one hand holding the torch, the other buried in her pocket. I wondered if she had a pistol there, or a knife - or whether her hand was just cold.
"You're a bit lost, stranger" she said.
I paused, making sure I had the reply exact. "I took the wrong turning. I went left when I should have gone right, and can't find the right route."
"Where are you trying to get to, stranger?"
"Anywhere but from where I came."
She smiled; some of the tenseness leaving her.
"Welcome, friend" she said. She glanced at the car. "Is that-"
I shook my head. "A friend in Gaul lent it me."
She nodded, understanding. "I'll get it driven back and returned to him tomorrow."
The Ratline - according to the Vigilium, officially doesn't exist; but then, officially Hallarticus died of a fall. After all, if a large, underground organisation dedicated to helping slaves escape did exist, it might imply that the Vigilium cannot do its job.
The truth is, it does exist - although maybe not in the shape you're imagining. It is not a single organisation, run from one central point - but rather a nebulous, diffuse network. Abolitionists who provide money and directions, corrupt officials who sometimes unaccountably fail to perform the necessary checks, hauliers and sailors who don't ask too many questions about who travels in the back of their vehicles or in their holds, border guards who turn a blind eye to strange shipments, men who know other men willing to do favors, priests who believe that their temples should shelter men as well as Gods - not to mention sharks in human form. Traffickers who prey on the desperate and vulnerable, Volkish agents and terrorist agitators who seek recruits, criminals looking for muscle, bounty hunters stalking runaways. A vortex of organised crime and corrupt officials and soft-hearted altruists, vicious fanatics and coldhearted predators and thrill seekers and genuine idealists.
In my case, I had met a man in a bar, a man who enjoyed helping people - for a consideration. I explained my situation to him, and after some convincing he had agreed to help. He had directed me to a certain address.. The address led me to an unremarkable house, where I was questioned, rather intently, by two large men. I had a feeling that, had they not been satisfied by what they said, I would not have left - but leave I did, dropped off near to a car rental company. Inside, I met another man. After a brief discussion with him, I found myself with a car, another address, and some rather specific instructions.
We walked down the muddy path.
"It's a foul night" she said. A chatterbox, I could tell. "I bet you must be starving. Don't worry, there's stew in the kitchen - and some space in the barn." She paused. "We have several other...guests there, already. I'm waiting for Dvina to give the all clear."
I nodded. "I'm tired, more than anything." I paused. "I didn't want to stop."
"I can understand that. You don't want to stop, anyhow. Stop and the rat-catchers find you. Its how they pick most of them up. That or when someone...turns traitor."
I gulped. "D-does that often happen?" I asked. In return, I got a shrug, which was not altogether reassuring.
"Sometimes. We're...not all idealists. Some men do it for money, or for the thrill - or for darker reasons altogether. But the ones doing it for the money are worse. When the Vigilium comes calling, they're the first ones to fold." She paused. "There's deniability between each stage, which helps a little. And we try to limit hosting."
"Hosting?" I asked.
The woman smiled. "What I'm doing. Keeping runaways under one's own roof, rather than in an unlocked warehouse or whatever. But sometimes, its unavoidable. Normally we wouldn't keep so many of you here at once, but what with this Thurso business, the rat-catchers are being more efficient than usual. Normally, Dvina would do the run to the next stage this week, but we'll leave it for a bit." She looked at me, and grinned. "Sorry you'll be cooped up in a barn for two weeks, but...better than where you came from, right?"
I nodded, with feeling. "Definitely."
The house was small, build of gray stone, with a few fields around it and a large barn, perhaps three hundred yards further down the track. She opened a squeaking iron gate - a clever precaution, I reckoned, although a last-ditch one. By the time you heard it squeal open, you might - might - just have enough time to warn the slaves in the barn.
What they'd do with the warning, I don't know. But then, you don't need much time to slice your wrists, or swallow pills, or break the necks of those closest to you.
"How many do you have normally?"
"Perhaps a dozen" she said. "We're a major way station, if I'm honest. Though don't ask me where you go from here."
I looked at her, and she must have seen the question in my face. She smiled again - I had the feeling she smiled a lot - but this time it was reassuring, almost motherly. "No, I trust them. They're good people, Dvina and her crew. But generally, the less we know about each stage, the better." She left the reason unsaid, although any fool could figure it out. True, the Vigilium cannot torture information out of citizens - but they can still squeeze information out of you fast - and there's no law preventing a slave from being questioned until they expire, or the Vigilium promising to ask the Praetor to go easy on you if you give them the information you require. A crippling fine, say, rather than a public flogging - or a quiet execution, rather than being enslaved and shipped off to some forced labor camp.
I marvelled, slightly, at her bravery. True, it takes courage to escape - but then, there's usually a good reason too. Bravery in the face of danger or great need or a threat to your loved ones is one thing, but bravery when one has the option to be a comfortable, well off coward, with one's own family and friends already safe, is quite another. And her fear must have been constant, never knowing when someone, somewhere says something they shouldn't, or when a random Vigilium officer gets lucky, or when a friend gets suspicious.
"I can understand that" I said. She opened the door, ushering me inside.
Inside it was plain - the house was old, I reckoned - but warm, with an air of cosiness. There was the smell of chicken stock in the air; a warm, reassuring smell. The place, I noticed, was immaculately clean. A sensible precaution, that. Less chance of something that shouldn't be seen left out on view, that way.
"I'm guessing Dvina isn't her real name?" I asked, and she smiled. "Of course not."
I glanced at one of the walls. There was, grotesquely, a cross on the wall, depicting a near-naked man on agony on it. He was wearing, I saw, a crown of thorns. I frowned, for a moment, and then it clicked. Most worshipers of the nailed Jew prefer to use the fish, or the Tau-Rho sign, to signify their faith. It is only the most devout who choose to dwell on the fact that their God was put to death as a common criminal.
"So, stranger" she said "might I ask where you hail from?" She paused. "Please, do not feel obliged to answer, or to be too accurate. But" she glanced out at the weather. "The night is long, and cold." She smiled, faintly. "And I know you must have been through Hades to get here. All that worry, all that planning, until you wind up...here."
"Well, the car came courtesy of Granicus" I said, and she nodded. "Yes. A good man. He pretends to be greedy, and grasping...but the Gods know he could ask for more."
"And before that, I was near Narbonne" I said. "I met, briefly, two men, who gave me money. And advised me to keep my mouth shut."
"I know of them" she said, tightly. "They, I am afraid, are grasping. But they work well, and have honor, in their own way. Few of us work entirely for free."
"Save for you" I said, smiling. She blushed - rather prettily, I thought.
"Well, my Lord has promised me eternity at His right hand" she said. "That is a reward greater than any hoard in this world. But forgive me, I do not mean to talk about my faith. They take the money of the desperate, true, but the keep trust, keep them moving on, handing them over to us."
I nodded. I had reasoned that. They were in a sense middlemen, filters, trying to prevent all but the truly needy from entering the system. I wondered, for a moment, if they were funded by some abolitionist as well, for their services. It wouldn't surprise me. I had trouble imagining many of the idealists willing to live amongst the semi-criminals, doing the dirty work of actually finding - and screening - runaway slaves.
"And before that" I said, casually, "I was in Tolosa".
She frowned, and then "Tolosa?". She looked at me, a strange look on her face. Not fear, not anger, but a sort of worried confusion; as though the world didn't make sense, it wasn't as it should be, but perhaps there was all just an odd misunderstanding...
I nodded. "Tolosa" I repeated. "Specifically, from the house of the father of Senator Hastic."
And there it was. Anxiety and confusion and semi-recognition were gone, and in its place was an expression of surprised horror.
Her mouth dropped open, her eyes widened. She staggered backwards, for a moment, the blood draining from her face, as with a single, practiced movement I drew my pistol with my right hand from its concealed holster, and with the left produced my badge from a pocket. The skull, within a large 'V'; above the words 'From Mystery, Truth".
Though doubtless, the word VIGILIUM, embossed atop the crest, was what really drew her eye. I watched her gasp as she beheld it, a slight shake of her head.
"B-b-but-" she managed.
"Senior Tribune Marcus Valerius Valentian" I said. "Directorate of Special Investigation".