Gangsters and Necrofagi

For a season I did whatever was needed as a guard, or helped with the unloading of carts and waggons. Meanwhile Rocco worked a boat on the Tiber to support the family of an injured boatman, and the Friar worked as as scribe copying out affairs of business for Cola. And so our little band of brothers formed and survived.

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Giacomino Strozza

Then at last we were trusted enough to be given an action for Cola - to see off a new strongman threatening the best little whorehouse in Trevi. Our crew was joined by Pino, a young lad who knew the streets of Rome well and who was bursting with the ambition of youth. Good Luck, or Fate, or Providence added two more to our roster as we found Father Arturo and Astore, another soldier, at the whorehouse. They were also on hard times and looking for work, and had just rescued the doorman from the violence of vagabonds. It was indeed a splendid brothel, with a private courtyard and bar as well as six fine girls working for Donna Giulia. She explained that Strozza, the would-be-strongman, had given her an ultimatum to pay blackmail within three days or have her best girl taken - for a start. After some thought, we decided to lay in wait for these rascals and let them make their move. Strozza had put his words out, for all the local trade was scared away and the bar almost empty the evening his villians turned up. Three men armed for affray entered and demanded an answer from Donna Giulia, but they got their answer from us in steel instead, with a few roof tiles thrown in for good measure. They looked a sorry sight when we sent them home bleeding, wearing only their shifts, to report that the whorehouse already enjoyed sufficient protection from street thugs. They left a tidy pile of weapons and armour behind, which we put to good use. We stayed for three days - a terrible trial it was waiting in a grateful whorehouse with nothing to do - but Strozza did not have the bottle to take us on, and those in the streets nearby could see that right plainly.

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The Necrofagi

Soon Pino returned with another job from Cola, and we marched in haste across the city to another district with a problem to solve and no money to pay. The merchants of Piazza Navona had appealed to Cola for aid as people were being abducted on dark nights, never to be seen again, with no trace left behind - until a small piece of cloth was found in some underground tunnels of the ancients. So this was the first underground action for our crew : search and destroy...something...probably unhuman...possibly...demonic. No previous experience required, for fortune favours the brave, and who dares wins. At least that is what they say, in the warmth of an inn with some wine at hand. But our crew now had a holy man in roster, with a spare in case of accidents, so we were like undaunted virgins looking forward to the wedding feast. Like them, we found things that night we did not expect.

Pausing only to pick up three oil lamps and a flask of oil, we proceeded underground with our guide Arminio, and learned that the tunnels of the ancients are far more colossal and more absolutely dark than might be easily imagined. For the light of a house-lamp can hardly illuminate your feet in these places, and anything more than a yard or two away is unseen. After a few minutes underground, passing through six colossal chambers, we were shown a tiny hole which led down into the haunted underworld. At this point our guide left, quite rapidly, after wishing us well. We scrambled down a steeply sloping tunnel and followed a narrow passageway until we came to a larger chamber. Rocco led the way with only a lamp and his dagger, while I followed behind with my boar-spear. Pino and both priests followed behind, with Astore as rear-guard. Out of the darkness they came - pale blasphemies of human form, but with clawed hands and fangs in their bat-like faces. They were avid for our flesh and immediately attacked. These horrors flinched from even the feeble light of our lamps, but their claws carried a strange venom so that even a scratch could generate a numbing coldness which spread into all your limbs. After some hard fighting we pushed out of the tunnel as Rocco collapsed, poisoned and beaten unconcious by the spawn of Satan. In the chamber Astore wielded his blade while I thrust with my spear, and even little Pino stabbed with his dagger. Things became desperate as lamps were dropped and burning oil spilled - the darkness grew around us and I feared that we would need a miracle to return to the light and life far above us.

But the faith of our priests was indeed a light when all other lights go out, for with my own eyes I saw them bring forth a miraculous holy light into the void, which these demons could not bear. Now it was they who quailed and we who rallied, and one by one they were cut down, mewling and snarling. The last was skewered by Astore as it clawed at my camail and tried to bite my throat out as we wrestled on the floor of the chamber. Silence fell for a few moments before the dreadful father of these ambominations came forth from another chamber deeper within. He was much larger than a large man and far stronger than his children. Nonetheless, he burned and smoked in the holy light and shielded his eyes from its truth as Astore engaged him with cold steel. Meanwhile I caught my wind and garbbed up a flask of oil to refuel and relight our spilled lamp against the darkness, as the fight raged on. It was well I did, for our miracle passed just as night follows day, and by its last fading glow the demon was struck down. Now there was just the light I held, while another guttered feebly in the corner burning its last few drops of oil.

Out of the deeper darkness came moans and groans of pain, so we girded our courage once more and advanced into horror. The stench of carrion filled the air, and by our lamps we could just make out a charnel-heap of bones with some bloated sin-mother atop it, spawning forth another child of Satan. Her screams became unearthly, and filled your mind with pain and dispair. But Astore's mind is in his sword-arm, not his head, and his sharp blade ended the torment swiftly. As our scattered wits returned, we counted skulls and reckoned these foul darklings had eaten dozens of souls from the world above. In a corner we found a crawl-space down to yet another chamber, where we found four bodies lying cold and still, yet breathing faintly and slow. Now we had five bodies to recover and were exhausted by the battle. We sent Father Arturo and the boy for aid while we watched our last lamp burn low and gutter out. We waited long in the darkness before help came, imagining claws reaching for us all the while. But our nerve held, as Friar Giovanni prayed, and at last we saw lights and men from the living world again, and could carry our comrade back to the warmth of the sun and rescue those for whom all hope seemed lost. For they were all alive and could be roused in time from their dreadful sleep in the larder of the Necrophagi.

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