(Rome: The Aventine Hill)
The townhouse of the noble Falerii stood heartbreakingly incomplete. It saddened Fronto to see the house in which he’d spent so much of his youth in such a condition, although it was a considerable improvement on the last time he’d seen it. Gone were the protruding charred timbers and the smoke blackened walls around the windows. New doors protected it from the street and the roof of one side was already covered with newly-fired red tiles. The other side was covered with temporary protective sheeting, while the side gate into the yard stood open, revealing a scene that looked more like a workmen’s store than the place where his father had taught him the rudiments of swordplay.
The house was quiet; no work going on. Likely they had finished for the day, and the partially used stacks of bricks in the yard suggested they had downed tools and left recently. For a moment, Fronto reached for the handle of the front door, his hand going to the purse at his belt, before he realised the locks had been changed and his key would be useless. Presumably the workmen kept the keys during rebuilding, as well as the keys to the locked store where all the furnishings, decorations and other goods of the house were contained until the work was complete.
Frowning for a moment, not happy with the thought of having to break down his own door, a thought struck him and he made his way into the yard, tethering his horse to the gate and sidling between stacks of bricks and tiles, saw-benches and sacks of lime and of sand brought from Puteoli; bagged mere miles from the family’s estate. The side door of the house stood as he remembered, though slightly charred and as yet unreplaced.
Some small irritated part of his soul complained silently about the slow progress of the workmen, but Faleria had been insistent on choosing the men who had the best reputation for completed work rather than the fastest.
Hurrying across the yard, he was grateful to find the small plant pot with the Ceres decoration, upending it and retrieving the key to the yard door. Taking a deep breath, unsure as to what to expect from the house’s interior, he scurried across and opened the door with a click, swinging it inwards. The corridor running off left and right seemed to be in a completely charred and ruinous state. Work had not yet reached this part of the house and the floor was covered with cement-stained boards, empty sacks and small piles of materials.
Resisting the urge to see what had become of the garden, he turned left. The atrium would be the first port of call for cash-gathering; then his mother’s room, and finally the oecus. Mother was old-fashioned and did not like even secretly buried money to be anywhere near the slave quarters.
Shaking his head at the stained walls and ruined frescos, the cracked and broken marble floor and the general smell of cement and damp, he moved through to the atrium. The monochrome floor mosaic of a hunting scene was a uniform grey of cement dust, though it seemed to have suffered no damage. At last, as Fronto glanced toward the front door, he realised he’d reached the current point of work, and he had to admit that the refurbishment of the hall to the front door and the walls of the atrium had put them in probably better condition than he’d ever seen them. New paint was being applied to one of the walls, a sheet hung over it to prevent the dust in the air from damaging it.
A chisel and hammer and a pile of white marble sat in a corner, where a craftsman was busy re-skirting the wall’s base with loving care.
It almost seemed a shame that he was about to start creating extra work for them.
Picking up the hammer and chisel, he moved across the mosaic to where an African man had speared a great cat and bore a look of amazement that had amused Fronto when he was a child. Carefully placing the chisel so as to damage the fewest tesserae possible, he tapped the top and began to deface the mosaic. The other two caches were sensibly buried beneath a single flag, but he remembered father being adamant that he wanted a hunting mosaic in the atrium because the fat and wealthy Scaurus had one. Mother had been unwilling to admit to having funds buried of which he was unaware and had watched with a straight face as the beautiful mosaic was laid over her first storage pot.
Tap. Scrape. Tap. Scrape.
A strange noise stopped him for a moment and he paused, the chisel held above the maimed African. Silence. After a moment he decided it was the sound of cats in the street outside somewhere. They were a menace in the neighbourhood.
Tap. Scrape…
There it was again. It was not cats. Definitely not cats; and it appeared to be coming from inside the building.
Suddenly alarmed, Fronto gently lowered the hammer and chisel to the floor and rose from his crouch, glancing at the kit bag that he’d dropped nearby. Crossing lightly on the balls of his feet, he bent down and withdrew his gladius from the bag, unsheathing it with a quiet hiss and dropping the scabbard back to the floor. Feeling a little more secure, he began to pad quietly into the corridor opposite the one from which he’d entered, glancing up briefly and noting the fading light in the sky. Evening was approaching and the shadows in the house were growing menacing.
There was the noise again!
Convinced now that it was coming from his mother’s room, Fronto crossed toward it tensely, sword gripped tight. His mother should still be safely at the villa in Puteoli with Posco and the slaves. This area of the house had apparently been completed, and a hanging sheet separated it from the current workspace, keeping the dust and mess from contaminating the finished work.
The walls had been painted in the modern style, updated from the old look according to Faleria’s designs, mimicking open arches with gardens and landscapes beyond. The work was truly excellent, if a little slow. Faleria the elder’s door had been replaced with what appeared to be ebony, inlaid with a lighter wood. Even in his tense and worried state, Fronto found himself frowning with irritation at the door, wondering just how much the damned thing had cost. More than a centurion’s yearly pay probably.
The strange, muffled noise was coming from behind the near-priceless ebony as he’d suspected – and he moved across, placing a hand on the bronze ring and gently pushing the door inwards. The portal swung on the hinge without a sound; no squeak or creak, oiled and balanced perfectly. His mother’s room, unfurnished, but completed and gloriously decorated, sat in deep shadow and Fronto peered into the gloom, trying to make out something other than the faint shape of the room itself.
A heap on the floor caught his attention and he felt his heart skip a beat. It was a person. A body? A corpse? No, for it moved slightly and shuddered.
A dreadful anticipation creeping across him, Fronto paced quietly across the room and crouched as he neared the heap. He felt a chest-freezing mix of joy and panic to realise that it was Faleria. Was she…?
Gingerly, he dropped the sword to the perfect marble floor and reached for his sister, gently grasping her upper arms and rolling her over. His heart lurched again as her face came into stark relief in the light from the door.
Her eye was swollen and discoloured and there was a huge black-purple patch on her left temple with dried trickles of blood down the side of her face. She had been hit hard enough to kill her, yet Faleria was made of sterner stuff.
She groaned, barely conscious, and one eye flickered, unable to open fully, the other sealed shut by the beating. Grimacing and worried, he began to gently probe around her neck and shoulders, down her arms, then felt gently across her ribs, down to her hips and then her thighs, knees and ankles and feet. Other than the wound to her temple, she appeared to be intact and unharmed, for which he was grateful. The head wound may have been intended as a killing blow anyway, of course.
If Clodius thought he was going to get away with this just by leaving her body for him to find, the scum had another thing coming. Presumably the weasel had received word that Fronto was on his way and had brought her here to unburden himself of her. There would be no direct proof of his involvement now, though Faleria could still accuse him. Undoubtedly that was why he’d had her brains smashed out – or so he thought.
Leaving her, Fronto stood slowly. There were sacks and sheets here and there in the work areas. He could make up a temporary pillow and covering for her until he could speak to Balbus and arrange for a physician. Despite his initial checks, he knew enough never to move someone in her condition until a professional had confirmed she was alright.
His thoughts running rapidly through everything he was going to do to Clodius, Fronto left the room, striding back to the atrium, where he crouched and collected two sheets and a sack of used rags. Grinding his teeth, fury vying with concern for control of his brain, Fronto rose and turned to go and make Faleria comfortable.
He froze to the spot as his eyes fell on the corridor to the peristyle whence he had originally entered the building. The diminishing light from the garden cast the shadow of a man on the wall: a man moving slowly and purposefully toward the atrium, the telltale shape of a gladius held in his hands.
Still gripping the sheets, knowing that if he dropped them, he might make too much noise, Fronto began to pad almost silently back to the room where Faleria lay, grateful for the first time all year that he’d never exchanged the soft, quiet leather boots Lucilia had bought him for a pair of loud, hobnailed ones.
Carefully, he lifted aside the hanging sheet that separated the completed part of the house and slipped past, lowering it gently so that it hardly moved with his passage. Past the sheet he could just make out the shape of a man with a sword silhouetted on the wall in the atrium, moving toward the impluvium pool at its centre.
Quickly, he moved back to his mother’s room and passed within, feeling the first twinges of pain in his knee and willing it to hold as long as he needed. With a fresh speed, he danced across the room, dropping the sack next to Faleria and covering her with the sheet, so that she resembled at first glance one of the piles of rubbish the workmen had left.
Her eye opened for a moment and, though he could not be sure she would see him or that she’d comprehend, he held a finger to his lips as he crouched and collected his sword.
He’d done all he could do now, other than what he’d trained for all his life.
Gripping his sword’s handle, he padded back out of the room, turned toward the atrium and strode purposefully forward, throwing the sheet dramatically aside.
Tribune Menenius stood almost ghostly in the pale light
* * * * *
There was no preamble. Fronto, surprised by the tribune’s presence when expecting Clodius’ thugs, had faltered for a moment and Menenius was on him instantly. In a flurry of blows, Fronto was driven back through the sheet, blocking as best he could and ducking and dancing out of the way of the flickering strikes that were coming so fast he could hardly credit it. Back in Germania Cantorix had described the tribune as ‘fast as a snake’, and now Fronto could see what the man had meant.
Menenius was no novice with a blade; indeed, he was quite clearly the finest swordsman Fronto had ever seen, his movements lithe and economical. Wherever Fronto moved, Menenius was already there, that shining blade lancing out, swiping, sweeping, descending, rising, lunging, never even needing to block; Fronto simply did not have time to try and strike back, spending every heartbeat desperately trying to prevent himself from being skewered.
His breath was coming in gasps already, while Menenius seemed to be hardly winded, a malicious grin plastered across his face.
Strangely, despite the desperate circumstances, Fronto could not help but notice the sword in the tribune’s hand. No legionary sword, this. Menenius’ gladius was a perfect blade. Noric steel with straight fuller running down the centre, the hilt formed of orichalcum and embossed with the images of deities. The handle, where he could see flashes of it moving, was of perfectly carved ivory. The sword was worth more than the damned ebony door. It was not the sort of sword carried by an ordinary soldier.
Who was this Menenius?
Back he moved again. Drawing his opponent past the open door to the room where his sister lay, Fronto kept his eyes on the man, desperately watching that dancing blade and barely reacting in time. His knee gave a warning wobble and he almost fell as he rounded the corner, heading toward the rooms where he, Priscus and Galronus had stayed the previous year.
‘You’re better than I thought, Fronto.’
Menenius’ voice was light, as Fronto remembered, but mature and steady, lacking all the frivolity and foppishness he’d heard before.
‘You too.’
‘I’ll end it quickly for you if you don’t make me work for it. A proper soldier’s death?’
Fronto sneered. ‘A proper soldier dies in battle, not submitting to a murderer. Is that the blade that killed Tetricus?’
‘Why yes, Fronto. It so happens it is.’
The tribune was suddenly under his reach, slashing with the razor edge of the beautiful blade. Fronto felt it skitter across his ribs and hissed with the pain as he danced to the side and almost fell on his weakened knee.
‘So that will be your end, Fronto. Your knee can’t hold you when you have to move sharply left. Best keep your guard to the right, then, eh?’
In a flash – a fraction of a heartbeat – the sword was withdrawn and then stabbed again, before Fronto could even bring his own gladius down in the way. The blade bounced off a rib again, only a finger-width below the previous cut, and he involuntarily moved away, his knee buckling and almost bringing him down. Panicked, he staggered a few steps away, realising with a sinking sensation that, not only was he hopelessly outclassed, he was backing into the corner, and when that happened it was all over.
‘Very good, you know?’ Menenius complemented him. ‘Despite your weakness, you’re still the best I’ve faced all year.’
‘Not difficult’ Fronto snapped, ‘given that the rest of them were sleeping or unawares.’
The tribune laughed and the sound chilled Fronto to the bone.
‘You have no idea, Fronto. If you only knew the scale of my year’s work.’
Fronto’s mind raced. Overconfidence? Perhaps he could trick Menenius into doing something foolish? The man was clearly supremely confident. No. He recognised instantly how dangerous such an attempt could be. The tribune was certainly confident, but also totally in control. Every move he made was calculated beforehand, faster than Fronto could credit. Menenius was not a man who would fall into the trap of overreaching himself.
Which left only the unexpected.
He saw the door to his room as he passed and realised he was almost at the corner and running out of time. The tribune’s blade lashed out again, this time higher, scarring a line across his bicep, though not enough to wound or incapacitate. Lurching left and wobbling on his knee, Fronto realised that Menenius was playing with him like a cat with a mouse. The bastard could have killed him ten moves ago or more. He was forcing him to put his weight on his weak knee and smiling maliciously every time that leg shook.
With a sudden flash of realisation, Fronto knew what he could do; the only thing he could do. But it relied on Menenius moving first.
The legate gave a pained hiss and his left leg trembled slightly.
The blow came, exactly as Fronto expected, to his right hand side and high, to score across his shoulder. He allowed it to connect. If he was seen to feint, the tribune would know and counteract instantly. The man was simply that fast. Instead he had to play into Menenius’ expectations.
As the blow drew blood, Fronto staggered on his bad left knee and fell. Even in the heartbeat it took, the tribune’s glorious sword came back for another blow, rising to drive down at his fallen opponent.
But Fronto was not falling. His leg screaming agony at him, he pushed on his bad knee and rose again, coming up unexpectedly at the tribune’s side, out of the reach of his weapon.
Swordplay forgotten, Fronto’s free fist lashed out and landed a skull-fracturing blow to the side of Menenius’ head. There was an audible crack and for a moment Fronto wondered whether he’d broken the man’s neck. But Menenius, stunned by the blow, simply folded up and fell to his knees, his broken jaw misshapen and hanging down at one side, blood gushing from his lips and his cheek where the Falerii signet ring had imprinted the Ursus symbol into his flesh.
The tribune’s sword skittered away across the marble from numb fingers as his knees cracked to the floor.
‘I’d love to take the time to go through your crimes with you one by one’ Fronto grunted as he stepped in front of the murdering tribune. Raising his sword, he reversed his grip and made ready to stab downwards. ‘I’m not playing your games though. Say hello to Hades for me.’
The bulk-issue military gladius, pitted with marks from battles long past, a blade that had been with Fronto for two decades, descended toward the point in Menenius’ neck where his collar bones met; a killing blow.
And suddenly Fronto’s world exploded in agony. He’d been so intent on the strike that he’d not heard the telltale whup… whup… whup… of the sling. The lead bullet struck his hand where he gripped the hilt and he felt three fingers break under the blow, the sword almost launched from his hand to clatter across the floor, coming to rest next to the tribune’s own beautiful blade, and almost parallel.
Fronto gasped with the astounding pain and stared down at his bloody, misshapen hand.
How had he not anticipated this?
Idiot!
Tribune Hortius strolled calmly from Fronto’s own room, the perfectly oiled and silent door now standing open.
‘What a fool. I said we should just have jumped you together from the start, but my poor, dear friend has always had such a flair for showmanship. And a total self-belief. He simply could not conceive of a way you could beat him. I argued, but what can you do? He’s a friend.’
The tribune had discarded the sling, allowing it to fall to the floor, drawing his sword as he moved into the room.
‘I would humbly say that I have a less inflated ego than dear Menenius. I may not be quite the swordsman he is, but I suspect you’d find that I’m still considerably better than average. And not quite so prone to showing off.’
Fronto glanced across the floor at the swords and made to rise, his knee screaming at him in pain. Energetically and with impressive speed, Hortius danced across the room, placing a foot heavily over the fallen sword.
‘Oh, no. I’m not so subject to my own ego that I have to let you re-arm first. Step away from Menenius.’
Fronto did so, slowly and quietly, backing shakily toward the side corridor and its guest rooms. The tribune gestured to his friend with his free hand. ‘Are you alright? Can you stand?’
Menenius nodded, wincing at the pain in his unhinged jaw, standing slowly. Hortius scooped up the fine sword with his foot and flicked it toward his fellow tribune. Menenius caught the hilt and changed to a comfortable grip, reaching up with his free hand and touching his jaw tenderly, almost crying out in pain.
‘I do believe my friend would like to carve you into slices for that.’
‘Why?’ Fronto said as he backed into the corner.
‘Because of his jaw, you fool.’
‘No… why all this? Why Tetricus? Why me? Why Pinarius or Pleuratus?’
‘Or any of the others? Are you blind, Fronto? For Caesar. All for Caesar.’
The bottom seemed to fall out of Fronto’s world.
‘Caesar?’ he croaked in shock.
‘Sometimes the general doesn’t even know what’s good for him. You yourself have said that. He needs protecting from himself. It’s only right to repay people for the good they’ve done you and Caesar’s looked after us.’
Fronto’s mind raced. If the pair were not removing those close to Caesar, what was going on? The realisation struck as his mind furnished him with the image of the general when he’d received the news about his nephew. A problem solved. And Pleuratus? He’d carried sensitive messages about Clodius and all but revealed that to Fronto. And he and Tetricus? Well it was quite possible to see Fronto as a problem for the general. And… ‘the others’? He wondered just how many corpses the tribunes had left across Gaul, Britannia, Germania and even Rome itself.
‘You made a mistake with Tetricus though. You just took a dislike to him, didn’t you? And if you hadn’t murdered him, I’d never have bothered looking into the matter as deeply.’
Menenius made a painful mumbling noise and Hortius leaned close to his friend, nodding.
‘He’s right: what difference does it make? I’m afraid the time’s come, but I will make it quick for you, since you were once one of Caesar’s closest. Perhaps we’ll even lie you next to your poor sister.’
Fronto realised with a shudder that whatever else he might have done, Clodius had delivered Faleria to her house unharmed, where she had come across the tribunes lurking in wait. The bastard tribunes had done this to her.
The two killers stepped forward, blades coming up.
‘Tsk, tsk’ came a voice from the corridor behind them.
Fronto blinked and peered off into the gloom. The shape of a heavy, squat man with a blade in his hand was silhouetted against the light from the atrium. As the tribunes turned to the new arrival, a taller, thinner man stepped out next to him. Fronto’s heart pounded.
Fabius and Furius?
* * * * *
Fronto watched in stunned disbelief as the two centurions stepped forward, raising their swords.
‘You two are a disgrace to the army of Rome’ Furius growled as he stepped to the side, flexing his arm ready for the coming fight.
‘Pompous fool’ Hortius snapped and leapt at them, Menenius right behind him despite the broken jaw paining him.
Fronto watched the opening flurry of moves in tense silence. Menenius was slower and more deliberate than before, his cocky speed absent as his face sent waves of pain through him with every pulse of his blood. And yet, Fronto had to admit, he was still very much a match for any ordinary swordsman. Fabius and Furius were quickly driven back to the corner. Fronto glanced around and saw his sword lying unattended. Scrabbling over to it, he picked it up in his left hand, the fingers of his right still pointing off at unpleasant angles.
He would not be able to wield the damn weapon. He had long ago learned that wielding a sword with his off-hand was more of a danger to him than to the enemy, and there was no hope of him gripping it with his right. With deep regret, he dropped the blade again. This fight would have to be up to the two veteran centurions.
The four combatants were now out of sight, back around the corner toward the atrium. His skin prickled again as he realised there was every possibility the fight might range into the room where Faleria lay under her sheet. He could ill afford to let that happen, when even a stray footfall might be the end of her, weakened as she was.
Rounding the corner, he could see the two centurions being pushed back into the atrium through the hanging sheet, which was now shredded with sword cuts. His eyes fell on the door to the right hand side and he scurried across to it.
His sister was on her knees, her head held in her hands.
‘Faleria!’
She looked up sharply, her one good eye wide and blood-tinted.
‘Marcus?’
His heart pounding in his chest, weak knee threatening to give way any moment, Fronto ran across the room and dropped to envelop his sister in an embrace.
‘Are you alright?’
‘I… headache!’ she said quietly.
‘Come on. It’s not safe here.’
Almost as if to confirm his words, the sounds of fighting increased in volume and he could see the shadows of fighting men on the corridor wall opposite the bedchamber’s door. As slowly as he dared, Fronto helped his sister to her wobbly feet and crossed the room.
‘Maybe we should lock ourselves in’ he mused, but decided against it. Better to find somewhere to hide her than trap themselves where the tribunes already knew to look.
‘The baths. Come on.’
Almost carrying her, tears running down his face at the pain in his broken fingers and from biting his lip against it, he hurried her from the room, past the ongoing fight at the edge of the atrium and back toward the house’s small bath complex. A quick glance told him that things were not going so well for his would-be saviours. Furius was already moving at a lean, his free hand clutching his side as he fought, and Fabius was limping and leaning against the wall. Worse still, the fight seemed to have spun around in the atrium and the centurions were now backing toward them, retreating into the bedchamber corridors again… and the bath complex.
Desperation beginning to hound him, Fronto grasped Faleria with his good hand, his bad one held away but the arm beneath her side for support, and guided her along the corridor to the bath house, horribly aware that there was no exit anywhere on this side of the house. If the tribunes killed their opponents, they would only have to search long enough and they would find the siblings.
He would make them work for it, though, and pay for every pace of ground. He would not let them get to Faleria if he could possibly prevent it.
The door swung open under their weight and he hurried Faleria into the changing room. The complex was completely refurbished and smelled of fresh paint and tiling cement. Positioned at the edge of the house, the only light that shone into the room was from a window that opened onto the peristyle. For a moment, Fronto wondered whether he and Faleria might fit through it, but decided against an attempt. It would be touch and go at best, and with Faleria barely conscious and his hand ruined, their chances were small.
His eyes ran to the corner of the room at the house’s outer wall, where the doorway led deeper into the baths toward the hot bath and the steam room. Pausing for a heartbeat, he listened. The sounds of desperate fighting were clearly getting closer. Damn it, the centurions were being driven back toward the baths.
Urgently, he made it to the doorway and looked down the dark vestibule lit only by a small aperture high in the wall. He held Faleria up and looked her in the eye.
‘Can you hear me? Do you understand me?’
‘Yes. I…’
‘Get in there. Go to the cold room at the far end and hide in the bath. The complex is not active, so there’s no water. Don’t come out until I shout you.’
‘What if you don’t’ she asked pointedly.
‘I will. Go hide.’
Faleria held his gaze for a moment and then nodded painfully and scurried off down the passageway. Fronto looked around the room, taking in his options as the fight drew ever nearer. The room was virtually empty. A mosaic covering the floor and displaying Thetis and Peleus coddling the infant Achilles was a new addition, as were the multitude of fascinating fish painted on the walls. Other than that there were three niches for clothes and a single labrum bowl on a stand at waist height. Unlike the great marble dishes of the public baths or the sizeable granite one in the steam room, this one was perhaps a foot and a half across and of carrara marble. Large enough for a single person to wash their hands in.
It would offer little protection, and as yet no water flowed into it.
What was it with these baths? Last year he and Priscus had fought two gladiators in the damned complex. Now, refurbished and looking like a different place entirely, here he was waiting for swordsmen again.
There was a thump against the bath complex door and instinctively Fronto ducked behind the labrum and tried to disappear in the shadow.
The door opened with a crash and Furius almost fell into the room, staggering backward all the way across the mosaic until his back hit the wall opposite. Hortius came limping in after him, dragging a leg down which a torrent of blood flowed. As the two met again at the wall, their blood-slicked blades clashed and rang, both fighting for their lives and both badly wounded. Fronto looked from the pair to the door and back, wondering whether he would have time to get Faleria out, when Menenius backed into the room, lurching left and right, awash with blood. Fabius staggered in after him, slashing wildly and clutching his bloodied face with his free hand.
What to do?
Slowly, Fronto stood, his weak knee giving slightly and causing him to grasp the labrum and put his weight onto it. The bowl wobbled where the cement had not quite taken properly. He steadied himself and straightened in time to see a killing blow.
Furius, backed against the wall, plunged his gladius through the tribune Hortius, straight into the sternum, pushing until the blade emerged from his back in a gout of blood. The tribune staggered, spasming, the blade falling from his twitching fingers, but Furius was in no condition to stand on his own and, all his weight thrown into the strike, the two men collapsed to the floor together, where the centurion let go of his sword and rolled away onto his back, breathing in shuddering, heavy gasps as blood trickled from a dozen wounds.
Fabius, meanwhile, was having less luck. Menenius, even with his broken jaw, was easily better than him, and was driving him back across the room, inflicting cut after small cut, gradually bleeding the strength out of the centurion.
The centurion staggered back, cursing noisily, wiping the blood from his face where it ran in torrents from a vicious cut that had ruined his left eye. Fabius was almost done, and he clearly knew it. Furius would be of little help, lying on the floor and trying to hold on to his consciousness without expiring. And Fronto would hardly be able to hold a sword in his right hand or swing it convincingly with his left.
His fingers gripped the edge of the labrum with seven good fingers and his knuckles whitened with frustration.
It took him only a moment to realise that he’d actually lifted the marble dish from the stem, jagged and cracked cement hanging from the bottom.
A slow grin spread across his face as he watched Fabius being driven across the room toward the far wall, Menenius intent on the kill. Almost silently in his soft leather shoes – thank you again, Lucilia – Fronto padded around the room’s edge, gripping the labrum as best he could. Once he was directly behind the tribune, he began to step slowly and silently forward, raising the bowl to strike.
His grin fell away as Menenius stabbed the centurion in the shoulder, causing him to yell and stagger away, and then turned to face Fronto and the raised labrum bowl.
The tribune tried to say something, but his jaw would not allow it, and instead he winced, his eyes flashing angrily as he readied his sword and stepped forward to lunge at Fronto.
The legate screwed his eyes tight, waiting for the blow he could do nothing about, but all that happened was a dull thud. After another heartbeat he opened his eyes to see Menenius toppling to the floor, Fabius standing behind him, sword raised and the ash pommel coated with matted hair and blood.
‘Sorry we’re late’ the centurion managed, grinning through the blood pouring out of his face before collapsing to his knees, breathing heavily.
Fronto stared down at the two men. The centurion was rocking slightly on his knees, reaching up to his lost eye gingerly with a blood-slicked hand. Menenius was groaning as he lay on the floor, blood running from the fresh wound on his scalp.
His own eyes narrowing, Fronto dropped painfully to a crouch, casting the bowl heavily to one side where it cracked several tesserae of Achilles’ shoulder, and wrapping the fingers of his left hand around the hilt of the tribune’s magnificent sword. His hand closed on the ivory grip and he lifted it slowly, feeling its reassuring weight. It really was a stunning piece of work. Much too good for a murderer, however uncommon he may be.
His mouth set in a firm, unyielding line, Fronto shuffled across to the fallen tribune and turned him over. The man had his eyes closed, groaning and probably concussed from the pommel-bashing.
‘Wake up, you vicious bastard!’
Menenius opened his eyes a crack, but they refused to focus.
‘Come on’ Fronto urged him. ‘Wake up!’
Less than gently, he gave the tribune a prod in the neck with the point of the gleaming, crimson blade, drawing a bead of blood. Menenius’ eyes shot open and his vision resolved itself.
‘Thank you. And fuck you.’
With every ounce of strength he could muster, Fronto drove the blade down through the tribune’s sternum, hearing it crack and then groan as the widening blade forced the split bone apart. He felt the blow ease as the tip found organs to tear through and then slow again at the spine – though it punched through without too much difficulty – creating a shudder-inducing sound as it screeched on the mosaic tesserae beneath.
Menenius gasped and almost bucked like a panicked horse, pinned to the floor with his own blade.
Fronto leaned over him and watched for almost a hundred heartbeats until the light went out in the tribune’s eyes and he passed away. He then reached down and found a coin from his belt purse with his good hand and carefully slid it into the man’s mouth.
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Fabius asked quietly. ‘He doesn’t deserve to pay the ferrymen.’
Fronto looked up at the centurion and grinned lopsidedly. ‘Well I don’t want his malevolent spirit knocking about this side of the Styx. Besides, if he passes to Elysium I’ll get the chance to gut the bastard again when I get there.’
Fabius laughed, a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth as he did so.
‘What in the name of Juno’s knockers are you two doing here?’
The centurion sighed and sagged.
‘Priscus thought you might need some looking after. He’s a bit busy, but he seemed to think we might be able to help.’
‘You were the ones on that liburna at Ostia?’
‘Mm-hmm’ the centurion confirmed.
‘Well I’m damn glad you came.’
Fabius struggled to get to his feet and Fronto leaned over to help. The two men aided each other to make it upright, swaying a little as they stood. As the centurion staggered over to the heaving form of Furius, Fronto bent and drew the blade from the tribune’s body with some difficulty, admiring it as it came free.
‘I don’t normally like to loot the dead, but… well, it’s not like he needs it.’
He grinned at the look on Fabius’ ruined features and hurried over to help him lift Furius. He was no medicus but he’d seen plenty of wounds in his time. Fabius would live, for all the loss of his eye, but it was touch and go whether Furius would survive his belly wound. The next day or two would tell.
‘Do you suppose you can make it out to the storehouse in the yard?’
‘I doubt it. Why?’
‘Because there should be a jar of wine out there and I’m in sore need of a drink.’
Fabius laughed painfully.
‘First, I think we need to retrieve your sister and try and send for a medicus of some kind.’
Fronto shrugged and almost fell as his knee wobbled.
‘I feel I might be about ready to give this knee that month or two’s rest now.’