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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3852567" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 280THE HUNGERWhen Gnaeus Sorio woke, he was greeted with the most intense feeling of hunger he had ever experienced.  It felt as though there was a chasm inside of his belly, yawning empty, fiercely demanding. He tried to move, but could not immediately do so.  A foul stench filled his nostrils, equal parts filth and excrement and rot.  Somehow the smell only intensified his hunger.  The need clawing at him finally gave him the strength to move, at least to roll over.  The source of the stink was identified; he lay in a ditch that was thick with filth.  It covered his body, and a part of him recoiled at the sudden urge to lick the noisome gunk off of his arms.  He was weak, so very weak, but as the hunger continued to build it was giving him strength. It was night, yet somehow he could clearly distinguish his surroundings.  Realization set in; he was in one of the trash middens set outside the outer edge of the camp.  He tried to remember how he had gotten here, but the hunger made it difficult to concentrate.  He‘d been in his tent... no, he’d been on punishment duty... hadn’t he?  His memories swam together and apart, indistinct, vague thoughts that fled as soon as he tried to fix on them.  The hunger was overpowering.  Something stirred in the midden nearby.  His hand shot out, and seized a fat mound of fur.  It squeaked as he grasped it, and it bit his hand, but he felt only a faint dull pressure that faded against the force of the yawning need.  The next thing he knew, he was looking down at the bloody remains of the rat, not much more than scraps of fur and a few bones.  His hands were covered with blood and filth.  There was some small part of him that felt sick, but that was overridden by the brief, fleeting feeling that was already fading as the hunger returned.  The rat had given him some strength.  Sorio crawled forward, to the edge of the ditch.  He did not notice that his hands were like claws, which found easy purchase on the steep lip.  Within a few seconds, he had pulled himself up.  The night was dark, very dark, but he could clearly make out the details of the stockade wall a few dozen paces away.  The camp was dark, but he could smell the familiar stink of unwashed human bodies.  The hunger leapt and roared at the taste of it in his nostrils, and he quivered at the power of it. The confused jumble of memories were quickly dying, but there was one that had grown clearer, a beacon that survived the surging hunger, accompanied by a name.  Lucan.  Yes.  Lucan.The name was one that was known throughout the Second Legion.  Sergeant Lucan was a man in the same sense that a wolf was a dog.  In the winter camp outside Dalemar he’d created a nice little fiefdom for himself.  As the weather had grown increasingly harsh the fact of the siege had become little more than a technicality, and the men had turned to the more immediate question of survival.  In that situation, there were advantages to be had for a man with special skills and few scruples.  Lucan’s empire had begun with food.  In the winter camp, with rations tight, everyone in the legion had become a scrounger.  The choicest prizes had made their way up to the officers, enough to keep their eyes turned away.  As the siege had lengthened Lucan had diversified into gambling, fights between animals and men, and whores.  The sergeant had built a small corps of toughs around himself, hard veterans who had monitored his operations and kept rivals in check.   Sorio hadn’t thought of himself as a rival, but on one of his patrols he and three others had come upon a farmhouse that somehow hadn’t yet been plundered.  The farmer had protested, but that was nothing a sword thrust couldn’t fix, and suddenly Sorio found himself an entrepreneur.  For a week he and his companions had found themselves suffused with wealth.  Until Lucan’s men had paid him a visit.  The beating had been fearsome, but his assailants had been experts, and while he had not suffered permanent debilitation, neither had he ever fully returned to what he had been before.  He hadn’t realized until later that his companions had sold him out; not until he saw them in Lucan’s hut on another occasion.  He had borne a grudge.  Shortly after they’d returned to the camp here at Trajaran, he’d gotten his chance.  Lucan had had a favorite, a camp follower named Helena.  In the chaos of settling into the new quarters at the old legion camp, Sorio had watched and waited for an opportunity.  He had finally caught her alone as she fetched water from one of the nearby streams.  It had only taken a moment.  He had doubted anyone would catch him; Lucan had a lot of enemies, and no one had seen him leave the camp.  He had been wrong, about a great many things. The stockade wall was in ill repair, but even so it formed an impressive barrier, fully twenty feet high around the perimeter of the camp.  But it barely slowed Sorio, as he sprang up and clambered over with surprising quickness.  He landed softly on his feet, inside the camp.  The smell of flesh was almost overpowering, and he had taken several involuntary steps toward the nearest of the long, low barracks buildings before he stopped himself.  But his hatred retained enough of an edge to guide him, and he crept through the darkness toward the far end of the camp, set upon his goal.  As he passed by barracks buildings men inside stirred in their sleep, moaning as dark things invaded their dreams.  But the camp of the Second Legion remained unaware, as death stole silently through their midst.</blockquote>

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