The Goose Guards (3 page)
“Waiting to die,” he squeaked and vanished.
There was a great roar and the first Gauls burst through the northern gateway and ran down the street. When they reached the square, they stopped. Many of them were naked, as the Roman soldier had said. Their pale bodies were streaked with sweat and blood and dust. Each carried a sword and a shield.
The Gauls formed a line, facing the senators. The old Romans didn’t move. A breeze stirred their white beards, or they could have been statues.
The Gauls looked around. They seemed to fear a trap. At last a massive warrior in fine armour pushed his way forward and faced the senators. He shouted at them in some strange tongue. No one moved. Then he spoke in rough Latin, and I understood.
“I am Brennus, king of the Gauls. Rome is now in my power and you must kneel at my feet.”
The senators stared straight ahead and ignored him.
Brennus turned red in the face. “Bow, you beaten old fools,” he screamed, then he marched up to one of the senators, old Papirius, and shouted in his face. “What is it you Romans say?
Vae victis
, isn’t it? Woe to the defeated!”
Papirius did not move.
One of Brennus’s captains stepped forward. “You insult our king–that insults us all!” He reached forward, grasped the old man’s beard and pulled it.
What happened next was so quick, I could hardly take it in. Papirius raised his rod of power and smashed it on to the hand that tugged his beard. The captain gave a roar, raised his sword and brought it down on Papirius’s head. The old man fell, dead. Then the other Gauls leapt forward and butchered the senators in their seats.
I ran. At last my legs felt the winged sandals of Mercury again. I flew up the Capitol Hill.
“
Vae victis
!” I cried. “
Vae victis
… woe to the defeated!”
Three weeks passed after I fled from the dead senators. They were frightening times.
There was only one path to the Capitol Hill, so it was easy for our temple troops to defend it. The Gauls who rushed up the hill were chopped down, just as they had slaughtered the senators.
The Gauls who fled back down the hill started burning and robbing the city below us in revenge.
The temples stood on the edge of a cliff and no army could climb the cliff. Far below were sharp rocks–one day a priestess had been thrown on to the rocks to die–the priestess Tarpeia–so they were known as the Tarpeian Rocks.
As the sun set over the sea, I gazed down on the smoking ruins of the city and the Gauls camped in the streets. When I looked at those rocks, I dreamed that one day the foul Fabia would have a little accident and end up there.
Fabia slid alongside me. “What are you thinking, Brutus?” she asked.
“I was thinking about Tarpeia … and worried you might end up like her. You will be careful, won’t you?”
“I will,” she said quietly.
She believed that I was worried about her!
“Of course,” she went on, “Tarpeia was crushed to death between the enemy shields before they threw her off this cliff … she wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
Crushed to death first? No, I wouldn’t mind if that happened to Fabia, I decided.
“What will happen, Brutus?” she asked.
The cruel, sly girl was as tired and starving as the rest of us. Her spirit seemed as crushed as Tarpeia’s body.
“We’ll survive. Lord Furius has the army at Veii–he’ll rescue us,” I said.
The sun slid out of sight and shadows raced over the land. That’s when I saw a movement at the foot of the cliff. Someone was climbing the steep, secret path that only the Romans knew about.
“Hush!” I whispered to Fabia and ran to find the captain of the guard, Marcus Manlius. He was at the gates to the path–waiting for another attack there. No one thought the Gauls would try to climb the cliffs.
