III

Lazarus will never kiss his wife again, he will never feel her soft lips against his cheek in the morning telling him to awaken and nor will he ever see his son take his first steps.

Those memories, those things yet to come, had been taken from him in the most savage way possible. And it was the Romans that had taken them; his own countrymen, and knowing that made the pain he felt even worse.

He did not know how long he sat there for. In one sense it felt as if years had passed and in others only a few moments, though he did not care.

His limbs had become numb from the cold and where he was kneeling but he did not care. His throat felt as if a fire had set itself up inside of him but he did not care.

Against his wishes his senses were still working and he heard footsteps approaching in the mud. He heard the soft chatter of men as they searched the huts, knocking over tables and dishes.

They were drawing closer and common sense told him that they were romans and that they would kill him just as they had his wife and child, but still he did not care.

He welcomed their advances and prayed that they came quicker, perhaps then he would see his family again.

Laying Patroclus down next to his wife, Lazarus slowly got to his feet.

The footsteps were close now, they had just turned the corner when he heard them shout, "Oi, you!"

Lazarus took one last look at his family, lying dead on the ground, and turned to face the Romans solemnly. He would put up no resistance; he would welcome his death with open arms.

There were two of them, dressed in the uniform of infantry footmen and as they strode passed the hut Lazarus could see that they were idly chatting between themselves.

Their swords dangled uselessly by their sides. They appeared startled to find him there.

"What are you doing here?" The man on the left demanded with uncertainty.

Lazarus could not tell the two apart other than the fact that the man who spoke was a few inches taller than the man to the right.

"You should be with the others," The same man said.

Lazarus waved slightly on his feet as his eyes drooped close. This was it, they would kill him now and he would see Cardea and Patroclus again.

He heard the footsteps as they drew nearer, he heard their swords being drawn but he remained completely still, until their hands clasped around his wrists and they attempted to drag him from his family.

His eyes flew open in shock.

"Come on," The man growled in annoyance, his sword held at an awkward angle as he tried to hold onto Lazarus at the same time, "You should be with the others, slave."

"Others?" Lazarus realised then that they would not kill him, that he was to be taken with the other prisoners to be sold on as slaves.

His body numbly went where the soldiers pushed him, over the body of his wife and child, for a few moments as his mind tried to catch up.

As he was pushed on, Lazarus's head lolled forward slightly so that his gaze fell upon the ground and there, casted aside, was the wooden sword he had carried here.

The blood that flowed through the cobblestones had stained the underside of it red but as he stared at its jagged edges his thoughts turned to Krista.

He had told her to go home but what if there was no home to go? What if she'd gone home, like he had, and found it filled with the bodies of her loved ones?

What of Ibicus, Flora and Tiberius? Had they been taken as slaves too or were they already with Cardea and Patroclus in the afterlife?

He had a duty of care to them; they were his friends and if he could fight, then he would.

"No," Lazarus's body awakened from its numb slumber and, almost as a joke from the gods, life began to flow through his veins.

The guard to his left said something but Lazarus did not hear it as he yanked his hand out of his grasp and drove his elbow up hard into his face.

The guard stumbled back from the blow whilst his friend attempted to rein Lazarus back in.

Fuelled by anger and loss, Lazarus spun around and rammed his foot into the side of the man's knee. The guard screamed as his bone cracked and he crumpled to the ground, releasing Lazarus's other wrist as he did so.

Reaching out and taking the man's head between his large hands, Lazarus lifted his knee to strike the man down when pain flared across his left shoulder.

Groaning in annoyance, Lazarus turned and saw a blade stuck in the flesh of his shoulder. It was barely an inch deep and yet the guard who had struck the blow appeared to have placed all his strength behind it.

Looking from the blade, where his blood ran across its length, to the soldier, Lazarus watched the man's eyes widen in panic as he appeared unaffected by the wound.

Growling, Lazarus gripped the blade in his hand and peeled it from his skin. Holding it out to the side, Lazarus pushed the man back into the wall. Dropping the sword, Lazarus held him up by the cuff of his cloak and landed a solid punch into his jaw, the blade nestled neatly in the palm of his hand as he did so.

Blood squirted out from his lips as Lazarus hit him again. It felt good to enact pain upon someone else, to make them feel a fraction of what he was feeling.

Hearing the scuffle of metal upon stone, Lazarus knew that his comrade was slowly regaining his equilibrium and getting to his feet behind him.

Pulling the man off the wall, Lazarus spun him around and threw him at the other guard, knocking them both to the ground once more.

Striding across to them, Lazarus stopped when he saw Cardea and Patroclus's bodies beside him.

Seeing their lifeless forms only increased his anger. Swapping the dagger for the blade off the ground, Lazarus calmly strode over to the two roman guards.

On their backs, they held up their hands in surrender.

"Please, please," They begged, their eyes hollow and bottomless in the darkness.

"Did my wife beg for her life? And did you heed her pleas!?" Lazarus gripped the sword tighter, it was much heavier than the wooden sword but it was of no matter.

It could have been made of stone or weighed a thousand times more than it did in that moment but it would not stop Lazarus.

The men cowered and it enraged him further. These men thought they were strong enough to bring death to other people and yet when they are faced with their own, they simpered and ran away like children.

No, Lazarus thought, even children were braver than this.

"No," Lazarus answered them, breaching the last few feet between them, "You did not."

"No, please, no-" The man to his left screamed as Lazarus plunged the sword through his throat, tired of hearing his voice.

As he removed the blade slowly, watching the blood bubble up from the wound and oozing out over the sides, Lazarus saw that he was still trying to speak, trying to plead for his life, but it only aided in suffocating him further as it brought up yet more blood.

The second man tried to scurry away but the bodies of those he had killed surrounded him, blocking him in like guards, and Lazarus was his executioner.

Lazarus stalked across the few yards he had managed to put between them and drove the blade into his gut.

The man cried in agony as Lazarus twisted the blade inside of him, feeling his guts and muscle twist in excruciating pain.

Lazarus yanked the blade out, a length of intestine coming with it before it lay strewn across its owners lap like a pet. The guard screamed at his exposed stomach, his fingers pulling at his organs which attempted to escape his putrid body.

Lazarus turned away and knelt beside his wife and child. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to their foreheads, his stained fingers brushing the hair back from their faces.

"I know that we will see each other again in the Elysian Fields," Lazarus whispered in his wife's ear, pressing his forehead against hers, "And once I set eyes upon your faces once more I shall know that I am home."

Lazarus pulled back and looked at the chaotic scene behind him. Blood still pooled around the first guard as the second one wrapped his arms around his body in an attempt to keep his innards from falling out further.

Lazarus turned back to his wife, "But if I am wrong . . . If I am destined for some other place then I pray the gods give you and our son safe passage so that you may both know eternal peace."

Laying their hands across their chests, he rose to his feet, "Farewell my loves."

It took all his strength to turn around and walk away, when he would rather have lain down beside them and joined them upon Charon's boat, but he knew that Cardea would not wish that for him.

*

The streets were eerily silent as he headed across to the other side of town. He could almost trick his mind into thinking that he had decided to take a stroll in the early hours of the morning when everyone was asleep rather than believe what had really happened.

A large part of him still did not want to believe it. He was more than half convinced that he would awake the next morning and find out that all of this was a dream- a horrible nightmare.

He no longer checked the alleyways as he strolled past them for waiting soldiers. He did not listen for the sound of galloping hooves approaching at speed. He simply walked down the middle of the cobbled street, a sword in hand, awaiting his fate, whatever it may be.

The instinct which had driven him to escape capture and look for his family had evaporated with the discovery of their bodies and the death of two Roman soldiers at his hands. Both of their bloods now mingled upon his palms, each somehow tainting the other, and he knew that he would never be the same again.

His only thought now was of Krista and her family. He needed to reach them, but beyond that Lazarus's mind was a haze. He could not think clearly.

As he neared Ibicus's side of town, small things began to draw Lazarus out of his reverie. The fleeting image of a person darting across the street in front of him; a distant wailing; a scream of agony; the cry of a baby, all of these things informed Lazarus that the nightmare had not yet finished but for some it had.

Lying by the side of the road, discarded as if they were trash, lay the bodies of his townsfolk.

Trying not to look at them for too long, Lazarus hurried into Ibicus's street and paused. Fires seemed to have been burning here for a while as they spread from roof to roof until almost every hut was aflame.

It appeared almost like a field of flame beneath the black night sky.

A woman and a man ran past him, coughing up smoke from their chests. He watched them run off behind him but he had to keep going.

Hurrying quickly up the street his eyes scanned the area but he could not see any Romans yet, perhaps they had moved on.

The flames and smoke disorientated Lazarus for a few moments as he tried to locate Ibicus's hut but as he raised an arm to cover his eyes, his foot became caught underneath something and pitched Lazarus forward.

He landed upon something soft. As the smoke cleared, Lazarus looked down and saw exactly what had tripped him up; it was a body.

Breathing heavy, Lazarus stretched out a hand for the sword which lay awkwardly atop the uneven cobbles after he had dropped it in the fall.

As he looked at it he became aware of something resting just a few inches behind the blade, and as he squinted through the smoke that stung his eyes the object grew clearer.

Once Lazarus saw what it was, his stomach churned and he vomited onto the cobbles beside him.

The contents of his stomach mixed with the blood that already covered the floor making his throat heave even more.

Clenching his jaw, Lazarus looked back at the object hoping he had imagined it but the same image lay before him.

Flora's decapitated head was resting on its side, her doe-like eyes staring coldly outwards as her chopped hair blew softly in the wind. Her body lay just a few feet behind her head, where he could see the intricate anatomy of Flora's neck.

Reaching forward, Lazarus softly lowered her eyelids as if it would help block out the heinous views she had witnessed but he knew that it was too late for that.

Turning his head, Lazarus saw the front of their hut and it pained him to see that she was so close to home when it happened.

Home. Lazarus stilled as a terrible thought crossed his mind.

"Oh Jupiter," Lazarus whispered as he turned to look back at the body he had fallen over. His eyes wondered up the man's chest, past the grievous wound in his neck before coming to rest on his face and once he had Lazarus scrambled to his feet in a hurry.

He had tripped over the body of his best friend; Ibicus.

Holding the back of his head in his hands, Lazarus tried to keep himself together as he turned in a circle and saw his friends murdered around him. This could not be happening.

As he turned, he spotted the body of a small infant beside Flora's body.

"Oh no, please," Lazarus begged as he hurried over and fell to his knees before Tiberius's body, but he was forced to turn away when he saw the hole in the back of the young boy's skull and the blood that matted his dark hair.

Tears streamed down Lazarus's face as he thought of all the pain that had been caused this evening.

Krista.

Taking a deep breath, Lazarus gathered up his sword and got to his feet. He looked around but could not see Krista.

Perhaps she had managed to run away, Lazarus thought but before he could search for her his field of vision was obscured by a group of roman footmen making their way through the street, checking the corpses.

There was no time to hide before they spotted him and hurried over.

"What are you doing here?" One man asked.

"I thought everyone had been gathered up." Another one remarked but Lazarus couldn't tell who it was when the third man spotted the sword in his hand.

"Sword!" The man to his right screamed and raised his own at Lazarus, "Drop it."

Lazarus knew if he dropped the sword he would either be killed or taken prisoner, but that was not the only thing that swayed Lazarus's decision. He was surrounded by the bodies of his friends, killed heinously, and a child he had watched grow from a babe.

These people had to pay.

The anger that had been simmering beneath his skin began to grow until the only thing that would stop it was the bodies of these romans dead on the ground.

Lazarus gripped his sword tighter and attacked.

Stepping away from Ibicus and Flora's bodies, Lazarus aimed his blade wildly at the third man's neck but he ducked beneath the swipe and jutted his own blade towards Lazarus's stomach.

Lazarus jumped back out of his sword's reach but when he seeked to retaliate the men had formed a tight circle around him.

He swung his blade in an arc at their midsections, the tip of the sword grazing their tunics but inflicting no other harm.

One man, whose helmet covered his face almost entirely, stepped forward forcing Lazarus to spin and block his blade with his own.

As he was turned, the guard directly behind him rammed a boot inside the back of Lazarus's knee.

An exclamation of pain was torn from Lazarus's throat as his leg buckled. Grimacing as he forced himself to remain standing, Lazarus heard the strike of blade against blade as he blocked another guard's attack.

Turning on the spot, slightly bent at the knee, Lazarus could only see the swirl of crimson red and a flash of metal as he felt boots and fists strike his body.

He wasn't sure how it happened but he found himself on his hands and knees on the wet cobbles. His fingers still gripped the hilt of his blade but as he looked at it he saw a guard's boot press down on his hand.

He could feel the bones in his hand creak, threatening to break, and still the guard applied more pressure.

Lazarus reluctantly released his sword and gazed up at the man. All Lazarus could see was the blade resting by his side and the outline of his majestic helmet.

Resigned to his fate, Lazarus lowered his head expecting the swing of a blade to cut his head from his body.

He saw the blade move out of the corner of his eye and all the muscles in his body tensed when a different voice cut through the night.

"What are you men doing?" The clear cut voice asked.

"Stay out of this you little runt! He had a sword," One of the men replied, justifying their decision, "That's good enough for me."

"But Commander Niclaus said-"

"What the Commander does not know, cannot hurt him," The man laughed. Lazarus ducked his head down further, he truly would die now.

A horrifying moment passed when none of them seemed to breathe until finally the new man spoke.

Lazarus still couldn't see him but his tone of voice was different to the others.

"And what if I told the Commander of what you're doing here?" He warned the others, "What would the commander do if he learnt that you had robbed him of a perfectly good slave? By killing this man, you will cost the Commander money."

Lazarus risked a glance upwards and saw that they were looking to each other as they pondered the other man's words. They knew he was right.

"I do not think the joy you'll get out of killing this man will compare to the pain you will feel at the hand of the commander once he learns what you're doing here." The man's voice wobbled slightly at the beginning but he found his footing and remained adamant.

After a few moments, Lazarus heard a heavy sigh before he saw the men's sandals reluctantly stepping away from him. In the background, Lazarus saw Ibicus's body lying dead on the ground.

Slowly moving back onto his haunches, Lazarus watched two of the men saunter away whilst the last walked across to the other guard.

"Commander Niclaus will not hear a word about this, do you understand?" He pointed the tip of his blade close to the other man's face, "Or else it'll be you on your hands and knees. Understand?"

The other man did not say a single word and soon the other guard moved on, disgruntled and annoyed.

Lazarus looked towards the sword that still lay on the ground, not far away. If he could just somehow pick it up without being seen then he could . . .

"Please," A voice spoke from right beside him and Lazarus swallowed when he saw a blade resting casually in the man's hand, "Do not pick it up."

Lazarus looked at the sword but he slowly held up his hands.

"Gratitude," The man let out a small breath of relief.

Lazarus frowned in confusion.

"Now, on your feet."

Lazarus did as he was told and turned to see the face of the man that had intervened and was shocked to find that it was not a man at all, but a boy.

His uniform was much too big for him; the armour was loose around his torso and the tunic brushed across his shins. His helmet was tilted back to allow him to see out and Lazarus could see locks of golden hair shaping his young face.

He seemed barely old enough to hold up the sword and yet he had seen more years than Tiberius ever would, and that was enough to anger Lazarus further.

"You must know that I did not hurt your friends," The golden haired Roman informed him, seeing the emotion in Lazarus's eyes, "But you need to come with me."

"You- You could just let me go," Lazarus looked around them at the deserted street and glimpsed the other soldiers turning off down an alley, "No one would know."

"Yes, they would." The boy sounded wiser beyond his years in that moment, "I do not want to do this but if I do not take you back . . ."

Lazarus looked away. He shouldn't care what would happen to this kid, but he did. He knew he could overpower him but if this boy went back to his commander without him then they would kill him. They would make an example of him.

Lazarus could not have a child's death on his hands so he reluctantly gave a small nod.

"You first," He waved Lazarus in front of him with the sword.

Looking back at Ibicus, Flora and Tiberius, Lazarus apologised for his failings and turned away from them.