The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 32

CW - violence.

VICTORIA FOUND A length of stained linen, thinly woven for straining grapes. She crouched at the door to the hallway and cut strips from the linen to quickly wrap her arms and most of her face in a single layer that hid her pale skin in the dim lighting. Just as she finished tucking the end tightly on her left arm, she heard a full laugh and then swords clattered onto tiles. She looked down the hall where one of the masked men came out of the room Alexandria and Verus had been in. Victoria threw her knife after him then pushed up to her feet and followed the knife as the blade was buried to the hilt between the shoulders of a second man. She focused on catching up to the first man, intent on reducing the count of who needed to be fought.

        Victoria accelerated past the room where Alexandria was and attacked the back of the man nearing the house entrance. She kicked him hard twice, dropping him against the door. She reached past him and unlatched the door, then threw him into the yard. She simply slammed the door closed and swung the hinged bar into the rests, locking him outside with Max. After quickly scanning for more enemies and finding none, Victoria raced down the separate hall to where the Lady Healer had been given rooms.

                                                                ***

        Sertor laughed loudly at Max being alive, as if he knew a joke the rest in the room had missed completely, and the two men who'd been standing over Verus – and closest to the door – threw down their swords and bolted. The second man fell, his momentum carrying him out of sight in the hall, but the audible thud of his body hitting the floor carried clearly back into the room. A darker shadow in the hallway swished past the doorway. Everyone heard the first man out of the room grunting and then fall, the main door to the yard open, and then the door slamming shut. Moments later, he started yelling to be let back in.

        "This is all tricks and shadows!" the man who'd yelled for Alex and Sertor to stop fighting yelled again, this time over fearful exclamations as Max quickly finished off the latest man in the yard. "If the horse is alive then he was alive when we passed him, and that means the girl was alive as well! Go and find out what happened!" the man in charge ordered.

        Alex grinned wickedly at the three men hesitantly shuffling toward the doorway to peer into the dark hall before going out. When she looked around at each masked man remaining, she made sure to pause in her stare until they fidgeted, leaving the man holding Mikey as the final place her gaze fell. Mikayla stood higher on her toes as his grip tightened. The three men came back, obviously shaken.

        "There's nothing in the hall but –" he cut off the whisper before saying the name of the body in the hallway. "The brute killed... the other one," he finished, lamely.

        "I've had enough of ghosts and fools," the man in charge snapped at the room in general. "Just –"

        A familiar whinny sounded nearby, interrupting the man, and Max's loud whinny answered. The room grew still as galloping hoof beats echoed up the street and skidded to a stop in the yard, the greeting between two familiar horses of grunts, snorts and nickers was accompanied by the purposeful tread of hobnail footsteps walking up the stairs to the front door. The knock that followed was clipped and polite.

        Alex saw the motion in the hallway out of the corner of her eye. The same shadow that had sped by was crouched low, hidden behind the wall, and a dull flash of dark metal shone in the light from the few burning lamps in the room. The shadow shifted and metal rasped over tile as the object slid across the floor into the room. The weapon delivered, Victoria spun away and ran back toward the main door. Sertor watched the slide across the room toward Alex, and then threw himself sideways to knock Ixillius to the floor.