Chapter Thirty-Six
Heron wiped the dust from her face, leaning heavily on Sepharia and the cane. Blood ran down her leg in rivulets. Ash stained her tunic and skin. Her joints felt like mashed roots and any moment, the temple behind her would come crashing down.
"I'd be careful," she said to the soldiers. "All who touch me come to ruin."
The dust and blood half-blinded her, so she used a corner of Sepharia's toga to wipe her eyes. Her ears still rang with the sounds of falling stone.
The heavy guffaws began from a deep voice far to her right and caught quickly with the rest, until the whole group of soldiers was laughing.
With her eyes clear, Heron began to see that they were not Roman soldiers, though they carried their crossbows.
"Using that curse to your advantage?" said Agog.
Agog leaned against the controls of his steam chariot, arms crossed, face tinted with soot and split wide with laughter. The chariot he rode on had been fashioned into a mythical manticore, with her rapid arrow launcher as the spiked tail. A stocky bald Egyptian manned the tail.
The Northmen lowered their crossbows. Agog was attended by three steam chariots and a squad of twenty well-armed men. A horse pulled wagon with supplies waited behind the chariots ready to resupply fuel for her steam mechanics.
Heron could see by the Northmen's eyes they'd been fighting all night. Most had small wounds and their weapons were bloodied, but they appeared in good spirits.
"Looks like your Master Heron didn't need us after all," Agog said to his gunner.
Heron recognized Punt.
"What are you doing there?" she asked.
Punt shrunk, glancing sheepishly downward.
"Don't be shy, Punt," said Agog. "It was you that led us here."
Heron remembered the man in the shadows. She didn't think he'd actually try to find her.
"Did you pay him a talent?" she asked.
"Yes, Master Heron," said Punt, still staring at his feet.
"Don't be that way, Punt. You've saved me a long walk across the city," she said, grinning.
Punt glanced up, a hint of a smile on his face.
"Speaking of the city," she said. "How goes your war, Agog?"
A different Northman spoke to Agog. He had an angled nose that had been broken in the past and a leather bag hanging around his neck.
Agog glanced to Heron and laughed.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"Jarngard says he thought you'd be much larger," chuckled Agog.
Heron and Sepharia climbed down the steps. Chunks of stone were still falling. Heron caught the glances her niece garnered from the soldiers.
"We're just rooting out pockets of Roman soldiers," said Agog, answering her earlier question. "The city is ours."
Agog helped her up to the steam wagon. There was enough room for her and Sepharia to ride behind Agog.
"It was just that easy?" she asked.
"No," said Agog grimly. "We'll still have to deal with Flaccus' troops when he returns in two days time, but our superior technology will ensure a crushing victory."
Agog engaged a lever and the chariot moved forward. Sepharia made a concerned noise and knelt down to attend Heron's knee. She ripped cloth from her toga and began binding it to stop the blood loss.
"Don't you have other pressing duties than playing caravan to a tired and bloody engineer?" she asked.
Agog glanced back with an eyebrow raised. "Without you this conquest would have been laughable. You have not seen your steam chariots in action. The revered Roman soldiers broke and ran like fodder when we first charged them, spewing arrows from our tails like rain."
As they exited the street, a great clamor erupted behind them. They all turned to see the Temple of Nekhbet fall in upon itself, sending a plume of dust from the wreckage.
Agog motioned for them to continue. The soldiers jogged easily next to the chariots as they moved through the city.
"So I feel it a great honor to carry the architect of this war back to his workshop," he said. "And making sure he gets there in one piece. There are still bands of Roman soldiers causing havoc."
"But how did you come upon Punt?" she asked.
"It was my intention to send a band of soldiers to guard your workshop, but when the winds shifted last night and carried the fire past our breaks, we had to protect the buildings."
"Last night?" she asked, bewildered.
"Yes, it's morning," he said and with an outstretched arm indicated the orangish glow on the horizon.
"Plato have pity, I thought that was the fires still," she said, then after a pause, "so those fires were yours?"
Agog nodded. "We set them in the Juden Quarter to draw the soldiers out. Mostly they were for show, but the swirling winds created problems once the fighting broke out. The last thing we need is to be blamed for another fire at the Great Library."
Despite her exhaustion, Heron felt a great anger well up. It didn't help that Ghet had told her of the cult's intention to use the distraction to burn the Library again.
"Are you a complete imbecile? Risking the entire treasure of knowledge stored within the Great Library for your petty war? If the fire had gotten lose, we could have lost everything! You're just like Caesar!" she shouted.
Heron might have gotten up and pointed in his face, except that Sepharia was still tending her knee.
She could tell Agog wasn't used to being called an imbecile or being compared to Caesar. His eyes burned with fury for a moment and then he narrowed his gaze at her.
"The fires were small and mostly for show and that's why we started them in the Juden Quarter, so if they got loose, the harbor and canal would protect the rest of the city. Your precious Library was safe," he said.
They rode the rest of the way to the workshop in silence. Heron felt bad for yelling at him, but she was angry at his foolishness.
The Library was the only thing that helped keep the people like Ghet at bay. It was the only hope man had for the future. The knowledge contained within the Library was everything.
Agog left her at the workshop with a dozen Northmen and Jarngard, who he regarded as one of his lieutenants.
The first thing the broken-nosed northerner did when he reached her workshop was open the pouch around his neck and dump a few dice into the dirt and laugh at the results, glancing around the workshop with a maniacal grin.
Heron limped into the workshop without her cane which had been forgotten on the steam chariot. Plutarch welcomed her and immediately moved her to a comfortable location so he could tend her wounds.
Once her knee had been resewn and the events of the evening retold, Heron had Sepharia draw up a hot bath. While she waited she ate breads and cheese shoved into her hands by her foreman, claiming she might die from malnutrition.
Finally she sunk into her bath, with Sepharia guarding the door, since they now had Northmen patrolling around her workshop.
The dust and the blood from the night's events washed from her skin, but she knew their imprint never would.