By Anthony Riches

Empire Series

Wounds of Honour

Arrows of Fury

Fortress of Spears

The Leopard Sword

The Wolf’s Gold

The Eagle’s Vengeance

The Emperor’s Knives

Thunder of the Gods

Altar of Blood

The Centurions Series

Betrayal

About the Author

Anthony Riches hold a degree in Military Studies from Manchester University. He began writing the story that would become the first novel in the Empire series, Wounds of Honour, after visiting Housesteads Roman Fort in 1996. He lives in Suffolk with his wife and three children.

Find out more about his books at www.anthonyriches.com.

THE EMPIRE COLLECTION: VOLUME III

Books VII–IX

The Emperor’s Knives – Thunder of the Gods – Altar of Blood

Anthony Riches

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The Empire Collection Volume III copyright © 2017 by Anthony Riches

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

The Emperor’s Knives, Thunder of the Gods, Altar of Blood first published separately in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton

Copyright © Anthony Riches 2014, 2015, 2016

The right of Anthony Riches to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 473 66457 9

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

THE EMPEROR’S KNIVES

Anthony Riches

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For Jennifer and David

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Maps

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Afterword

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I first began to contemplate actually writing the story that has become The Emperor’s Knives – as opposed to the previous musing on how fascinating it would be to get Marcus back on his home turf and turn him lose to seek bloody revenge – it quickly became very clear to me that I had a major disadvantage in any attempt to set a novel on the streets of Rome. I had no real knowledge of the streets of Rome. I knew the Forum, the Colosseum and the Palatine, at least as much as is possible from their remains, and I still get goosebumps from my memory of first touching the stone on which Julius Caesar was cremated, but the ancient city beyond that tiny portion was a mystery to me. Finding the internet less helpful than is usually the case, I was fortunate to enjoy one of those serendipitous moments of discovery that we tend to put down to luck, and perhaps ought to credit to the power of a focused mind instead. Seeing a review of Dans La Rome Des Cesars (translation: In The Rome Of The Caesars) I made a swift purchase, waited impatiently for its arrival, then settled down to pore over the most amazing book on the city I’ve ever read. I can’t understand much of its text, being far from fluent in written French (there is no translation), but I can assure you that the pictures and maps are enough to make up for that lack of fluency.

Gilles Chaillet has written a labour of love, a gorgeously illustrated map book of the fourth-century city apparently based on the plaster model built by his countryman Paul Bigot – Le Plan De Rome – which now resides in the University of Caen. The French Amazon blurb calls the author ‘Stakhanovite’ (a 1930’s Soviet Russian term for overachievement), and I can see their point, given the 5,000 hours of work that went into writing it (and the 3,000 hours of artwork by his collaborators Chantal Defachelle and Isabelle Brune). Trust me, if you have one iota of interest in the eternal city, you owe it to yourself to purchase this magnificent book. And if you can read French, so much the better!

With Rome’s street map at my fingertips, the second subject I needed to understand better was the brutal, ignoble, but occasionally dazzling spectacle of gladiatorial combat that was a staple of Roman entertainment for a good five hundred years. While it would be fair to say that I have consulted at least a dozen works on the subject, from the mildly sensationalist to the deeply academic, the book that I found to be of the most value was Philip Matyszak’s marvellous Gladiator – The Roman Fighter’s Unofficial Manual. As with his other short, pithy but detailed packed works, Philip has excelled in bringing crisp understanding to a sprawling subject, a book both learned and yet wearing its erudition lightly enough for the reader who just wants to be informed. If there’s a fact worth knowing about the arena’s bloody trade, some of it amusing, some of it truly horrifying, then it’s in this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. As usual, should you find any factual errors you can rest assured that they are all my own work. Oh, and there’s a signed first edition waiting for the diligent reader who can find the quip I’ve reproduced from Maty’s book in connection with entry to the gladiatorial life – but only one. The first person to contact me on Facebook gets the prize if they have the right answer.

With those two recommendations made, it only remains for me to say my thank you’s. To my wife Helen, my agent Robin, and to my editor Carolyn and her assistant Francine go my gratitude for your continued support, tolerance and gentle chivvying. To my beta readers, David, John and Viv, thanks for pointing out plot errors and inconsistencies. And to you, reader, goes the biggest thank you, simply for getting Marcus and the Tungrians this far. This is the book I had in mind when my young protagonist was following Dubnus up the road to the north from York, long before Wounds of Honour was complete, so thanks for helping me to realise that ambition. And stay with it, if you’re of a mind for more – we’ve a long way to go, you, me and the Tungrians.

Prologue

Rome, September AD 184

‘Excuse me for bothering you sir. Do I have the honour of addressing Sextus Dexter Bassus?’

The man in the doorway nodded, playing a forbidding look over the two men standing before him in the small but neat front garden of his house, rendered private from the main road that climbed the Aventine Hill by a substantial wall that ran all the way around the property’s modest grounds. His look of irritation was due in no small part to the fact that the unexpected callers had summarily dismissed the slave who had opened the door to them, peremptorily telling him to fetch his master on the apparent grounds of the matter at hand’s ‘sensitivity’.

‘You do. And you are?’

The taller of the two men, who seemed to be doing the talking for them both, smiled in a self-deprecating manner.

‘Me? A man of no great importance, although this may help to establish my bona fides in the matter I am desirous of discussing with you.’ The caller lifted the end of his belt to display a stylised tri-form spearhead decoration in polished silver. ‘This, Dexter Bassus, is the badge of a beneficiarius, a man chosen to give trusted service to one of his military superiors. In my own humble case I am just such a man, in the service of an extremely high-ranking military officer. His absolute need to stay nameless in this matter means that I am in turn required to nurture a similar desire for anonymity. I’m afraid that all I can tell you here, on your doorstep, is that my visit concerns events that occurred in the province of Britannia a little over two years ago.’

Bassus leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.

‘If this is about my brother—’

A raised hand stopped him in mid-sentence, the self-assured nature of the unnamed messenger’s gesture making him start backwards a fraction despite himself.

‘There’s nothing more to be said out here, I’m afraid, Dexter Bassus. If I might just come inside for a moment, I’m sure that everything will become clear …’

Bassus looked past the beneficiarius at the man waiting patiently behind him who was, if not completely ragged in his state of dress, demonstrating a robust attitude towards the requirements of both fashion and the regard of his fellow citizens. His eyes were roaming the modest garden with a faraway look, as if he’d never seen such a thing in all of his life.

‘And who’s this? Another one of your “high-ranking officer’s” men?’

The other man laughed, evidently amused with the idea.

‘Silus? Not likely! Silus is a man of the streets, and not accustomed to the workings of the Palatine, if you take my meaning?’

Bassus’s eyebrows raised at the mention of the hill upon which the imperial palaces and the throne’s sprawling bureaucracy had taken root.

‘The Palatine?’

The caller smiled thinly.

‘I can say no more. As to my companion here, I keep him handy whenever I travel through the city alone, especially at this time of the evening. And there are risks connected with my visit to your house that go well beyond the simple danger of robbery with violence. I can make it no plainer for you, I’m afraid – either we discuss this matter in a more private place, such as your study, or both Silus and I will simply vanish from your door, never to trouble you again. I will tell my sponsor that you chose to be uncooperative, and he in turn will resign himself to your never knowing the truth about what happened in Britannia. It really is very much up to you.’

Bassus thought for a moment, clearly torn between caution and curiosity.

‘You can come in, but that man has a look to him that I don’t care for. He can wait in the garden.’

Silus smiled, a disquieting vision given the state of his teeth, and his employer mirrored his expression with a nod of agreement that was almost a bow.

‘How delightful for him! Silus is enormously fond of gardens, given his rather plain accommodation in the Subura district. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to enjoy the fruits of your gardener’s labour in this pleasant evening’s warmth, while you and I discuss our business with a little more privacy than can be achieved on your doorstep.’

Bassus waited until the bodyguard had strolled away to sit on one of his stone benches before ushering the mystery visitor through the doorway and into the cool of the house. The man took two steps and stopped, looking about him with evident approval.

‘Very nice, Dexter Bassus, very nice indeed! Someone in your household clearly has the most exquisite taste in interior decoration … The lady of the house, perhaps, or possibly a particularly talented slave? Whoever it is, you’re a lucky man!’

Bassus grunted a perfunctory agreement and ushered the visitor into his private office, scowling at the room’s door as it creaked loudly on its hinges. He indicated a chair facing his desk, behind which he installed himself while the other man lowered himself into a sitting position with a slight grimace.

‘My back isn’t all that it used to be, I’m afraid. All those years on horseback criss-crossing the empire at the emperor’s behest have quite taken the spring out of me, as you can see …’

He waited a moment, as if inviting Bassus into his conversation, but the other man only stared at him in bemusement.

‘I know, not the subject you invited me in to discuss, and I apologise. A man who has previously enjoyed robust good health does have the irritating habit of sharing the smallest aches and pains with all and sundry when they eventually catch up with him.’ He smiled into his host’s darkening frown. ‘Yes indeed, to business! You are, Sextus Dexter Bassus, the brother of one Quintus Dexter Bassus, are you not?’

Bassus shook his head, his voice laced with irritation.

‘We’ve already established that!’

The visitor leaned back in his chair with a smile, steepling his fingers.

‘Forgive my unavoidable disagreement, but in point of fact, Dexter Bassus, we have not. When I mentioned Britannia out there on your doorstep, you promptly asked if your brother was involved, but you didn’t ever actually mention his name. Precision is a quality for which I am known, and I cannot afford to allow that reputation to be sullied by a moment’s inattention. So—’

‘Yes!’ Bassus sat forward, slapping the desk and fixing his guest with a hard stare, his patience clearly at its limits. ‘I am the youngest brother of Quintus Dexter Bassus, who was, before you spend another lifetime working your way around to the question, the tribune and commanding officer of the Second Tungrian Cohort in northern Britannia. He died two years ago in the uprising that overran the frontier wall built by the Emperor Hadrian, and he left me, his only surviving sibling, as the owner of this house. Does that cover all of your questions?’

‘Not quite.’

Bassus sat back again with an expression of dismay that was bordering on something more than irritation.

‘I think I should have you thrown—’

The messenger spoke over him without any change in his expression.

‘Yes, I think you probably should, Dexter Bassus, but you’re not going to show me the door, not yet. For one thing, you don’t know to which of the empire’s esteemed military men, a well-regarded senator by the way, you might be giving offence, and for another …’ He smiled faintly at the big man. ‘The circumstances of your brother’s death were never made clear to you, were they? Or, indeed what happened to his wife, your sister-in-law. You’ll remember her quite well, I’d imagine, given that this was her house?’

Bassus looked at him with a different expression, his anger of a moment before replaced by something approaching horror.

‘No …’

The visitor pursed his lips and shrugged without any discernible sympathy for the man sitting opposite as his bad news sank in.

‘Well, as it happens, very much yes, I’m afraid. The lady in question survived the barbarian attack quite neatly, and as you would expect, eventually remarried. Her new husband is an officer in the First Tungrian Cohort, a nice young man, indeed in point of fact, more of a gentleman really, the son of a senator. He’s almost supernaturally skilled with just about any weapon you can name; the result, I am reliably informed, of his having trained with both a soldier and a gladiator throughout his youth. Recently, however, he’s fallen on hard times …’ The beneficiarius leaned forward to confide in his host, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. ‘His father was unfortunate enough to get himself executed for treason, you see. You might recall the excitement in the city at the time, when Appius Valerius Aquila was accused of plotting against the emperor? There was no truth in it, but since when did that ever stop an emperor like Commodus when he takes a fancy to a man’s estate? I believe the Aquila villa was even possessed of a small private arena, which I would imagine made it impossible for the young emperor to resist, given his known predilection for a gladiator.’

He sat back again with a smile that was bordering on the beatific.

‘So, to sum up, your brother dies, by his own men’s swords I should add – he seems to have been a little too keen on the stricter aspects of military discipline from the sound of it – and leaves his young wife, the legal owner of this house, a widow. She then marries a rather dangerous young man who seems to go through anyone and anything that gets in his way, like a spearpoint through tunic wool, and they manage to survive the rest of the war with the tribes. Not to mention at least one attempt by the imperial authorities to bring him to justice. And now they’re here.’

Bassus jerked bolt upright in his chair.

‘Here?’

‘Well not here, as such, but they are less than a mile away, living in the military transit barracks on the Ostian road. And yes, I can only imagine what must be going through your mind …’

A loud crash echoed through the house followed by the sound of a woman’s voice raised in protest from the room above them. The beneficiarius raised his eyebrows, tipping his head to the study door.

‘Trouble in the kitchen, from the sound of it! Mind you, I expect your wife will be on top of the problem. Probably better if we leave her to it?’

The sound of footsteps sounded on the floorboards above them, and then down the stairs as the woman of the house evidently came from whatever she had been doing to investigate. Silence fell, and the beneficiarius leaned forwards again with his eyebrows raised in question.

‘So, Sextus Dexter Bassus, the question is this: what do you think we should do about this change in your circumstances? After all, it probably isn’t going to be very long before this rather excitable young man appears at your door with his wife and demands that you vacate her property …’

Bassus looked down at his hands for a moment.

‘I’m not like my brother … he was always the forceful one. Do you think …’

‘Do I think what, Dexter Bassus? Do I think I could help? Possibly. You want this whole problem to go away, I presume? It wouldn’t be cheap.’

The answer was instant.

‘I have money! Not enough to buy a house like this, but enough to reward you generously for any help that you could provide in … relieving me of this problem. Would five … no, ten thousand sestertii be enough?’

The beneficiarius shook his head with a hint of sadness.

‘More than enough to employ a man like Silus, much more, but then a man like Silus isn’t going to be capable of dealing with this problem. This will require a team of men, and one in particular with the cunning to lure this young man into a carefully designed trap. A man like me, to be precise.’ He inspected his fingernails for a moment. ‘And I have a sum more of the order of twenty-five thousand in mind.’

The room was silent for a moment while Bassus digested the offer, and silence hung over the house beyond the study’s stout wooden door. When he answered his voice was edged with incredulity.

‘Twenty-five thousand sestertii? But that’s—’

‘Everything you have? Not quite. At this point in time, you have this lovely town house, and your good health to boot. There might well come a time not far in the future when you have neither, unless this young man is stopped from carrying through his plans to dispossess you of his wife’s property.’

Bassus nodded disconsolately.

‘Very well, half now and half when the job is complete and proven to my satisfaction.’

He stood, shaking his head and muttering under his breath, going round the desk and stooping to prise a floor tile up from its place, reaching into the gap beneath it to pull out a good-sized purse. To his surprise the visitor stood up, stretched with a grimace and then called out in a loud voice.

‘Very well, Silus, we’re in here!’

With the same slow creak of hinges in need of oil, the study’s door opened, revealing the bodyguard standing stock-still in the frame. His face and tunic were spattered with blood, and a long dagger dangled from his right hand in an almost nonchalant manner. Bassus gaped at him, finding his voice after a long pause.

‘You …’

Words failed him, and the nameless messenger nodded helpfully.

‘Killed your cook, her husband the butler, their daughter the kitchen servant and lastly your wife? That does seem to be the inescapable conclusion. And yes, obviously you’re next, now that you’ve paid to have young Marcus Valerius Aquila murdered. Your desire for the problem to go away will be honoured in full, but just not for your benefit. More for mine, really.’

Bassus shrank back against the wall behind him, his face twisted in terror as Silus advanced into the room, looking to his master for the signal to make the last kill.

‘You … you were just waiting for me to show you where the money was!’

The anonymous visitor smiled again, shaking his head with a sad smile.

‘Not really. Did you not wonder how my price just happened to coincide precisely with the amount of money you have left from that which you inherited when your brother died? There actually was enough there to buy you a nice place, wasn’t there? Not quite this pleasant, but good enough and in a respectable area. Greed got the better of you, I’d imagine. Why buy a house when you already had one, since your brother’s wife showed no sign of returning home, eh? I’ve known what you’re worth down to the last sestertius for a while now, and where you hide the money, but robbery was never my aim. I didn’t want to steal your money, I wanted you to pay me to deal with the Aquila boy, a job which I can assure you I’ll carry through to the full extent of your rather heavy purse and beyond, if need be.’

Bassus shook his head in disbelief.

‘So why …?’

He waved a hand at the bloody knife, his mouth opening and closing silently.

‘Why kill you all? Because I need this house as part of the plan to fulfil your last orders, that’s why, and you and the rest of your household would at best have been inconvenient loose ends.’

A waved hand set Silus in motion, walking slowly around the desk with his dagger held ready. He raised the knife, speaking to Bassus in a matter-of-fact tone that was clearly calculated to soothe the panicking victim in his last moments.

‘Keep nice and still mate. It’ll be a lot quicker and less painful if you do.’

Bassus looked about him frantically for a way out of his predicament, but before he could make any move the knife man stepped forward quickly, whipping his dagger up and thrusting it deeply into the point where his cowering victim’s neck and shoulder met in the classic street executioner’s stroke.

‘Ah! You bast …’

Clutching reflexively at the wound with blood squirting between his fingers, he tottered, stepped forward one seemingly drunken pace, and then stopped, swaying on the spot. Eyes rolling upwards as consciousness failed, he slumped to the floor and lay still, a puddle of blood spreading from the wound with one small rivulet trickling down into the underground hiding place from which he had taken the purse. The beneficiarius looked down at him with an expression of pity.

‘How disappointingly stupid. He fell for the beneficiarius story the moment he saw this meaningless piece of silver.’ He lifted the belt end, smiling down at the faked symbol of patronage. ‘Even when whatever it was that broke during your struggle out there hit the floor, he still wasn’t bright enough to realise what was happening until you came through the door.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. Clearly we perform a service to the gods on days like these, ridding this world of the more credulous of our fellow citizens and leaving more room for clever fellows like you and I, eh Silus?’ He slapped the blood-spattered murderer on a relatively clean section of his arm. ‘And well done for a neatly concluded job! Let’s get all that blood washed off the floor and walls shall we, and decide what to do with the bodies?’

The gory bodyguard stood and looked at him for a moment before speaking.

‘Doesn’t it worry you to be alone with a murderer and more gold than I’ve ever seen in my life, with no one else to hand or even knowing that we’re here?’

His employer raised a sardonic eyebrow, half his face shadowed in the dim evening light filtering through the study’s high window.

‘You only ask from curiosity, of course?’

Silus looked down at his bloody knife.

‘That’s right, only my curiosity.’

‘Well in that case I shall enlighten you as to the source of my boundless confidence with regard to your continued flawless execution of my orders. And it really is very simple. Once a day, every day, I report to a very, very important man. I provide him with the information I glean as I go about my job, information which is particularly important to him. He expects results from me, Silus, and I expect that he would be more than vexed if the admittedly small matter of my death were to get in the way of my achieving those results. Be assured that he knows all about you, and indeed all about the seemingly immeasurable number of family members whose main breadwinner you would appear to be – how many children is it that you have?’

‘Seven.’

His employer clapped his hands together softly.

‘Seven indeed, and they all survived the plague the last time it stalked the city? That really is quite astonishing good luck! I know of whole families that were wiped out in less than a week. You’re a lucky man, Silus, but it might just be that you’ve used up all that luck. Were I to go missing, even for a day, this man is the type to assume the worst and set investigators on my trail. A trail which I have ensured will lead straight to your door. So, were you to make this simple and entirely understandable mistake, you would soon enough find yourself and every one of your seven children, and that fat wife of yours and her brother, and his wife and children too, all enjoying a brief unscheduled trip to dark rooms buried far beyond any thought of rescue. There are men who ply their trade in those badly lit places, Silus, who make a simple schemer like me and a murdering thug like you appear to be men of the highest virtue. Your family, once in their power, would be abused, degraded and tortured in ways that even a man with your broad experience of the world cannot begin to imagine, since these men’s depravity is limited only by the bounds of their particularly savage imaginations.’

He stared at the killer for a moment, opening his arms wide.

‘So if you’d like to play through that possible future for your family, you go right ahead and put the knife into me.’

Silus shook his head.

‘No, my curiosity is quite satisfied. Funny though …’

His employer raised an eyebrow.

‘What is?’

‘I was just thinking that you’re not quite right in the head, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

The other man smiled at him broadly.

‘Many men have tried to offend me Silus, it’s in the nature of my business to attract insults, but very few of them have ever succeeded. After all, none of this is personal, it’s simply business. And trust me, there is a method in my apparent madness. I have a plan that will bring this man Aquila to justice at last, and in doing so more than likely perform the other task that my rather impatient sponsor wishes to see completed. So, let’s be about it shall we? These bodies aren’t going to bury themselves.’

1

Rome, September AD 184

‘Close your mouth, Dubnus, or something will fly into it.’

The heavily built and bearded soldier walking alongside Julius, senior centurion of the First Tungrian Cohort, gave his superior officer a disparaging look before resuming his perusal of the inhabitants of the Aventine district through which they were progressing. When he spoke his voice was awestruck, as if he could barely believe the scene before him.

‘But they’re bloody everywhere, Julius! Bar girls, shop girls, girls on the street, girls on the corner, girls writing graffiti on the wall about how their clients made them scream with pleasure!’ He pointed to a prostitute leaning against the door of a house, her pitch marked out by several lewd and enticing statements as to her abilities and offerings scrawled on the wall behind her. ‘That one will even …’

He swallowed, and shook his head in amazement at the debauched act that was apparently on offer for the price of a decent meal.

‘Yes, the city can be rather overpowering for the first-time visitor, but then you would insist on accompanying us. Perhaps you should concentrate on the architecture instead?’

Julius turned and nodded to his tribune who was walking a few paces behind the two centurions, resplendent in a pristine toga and with his hair cut and combed to glossy perfection, even if his clean-shaven face was in defiance of the latest fashion. Dubnus drew breath to speak again, managing with some reluctance to drag his attention away from the prostitute who was so enticingly crooking her finger at him while lasciviously teasing the digit’s end with her tongue, but was rudely interrupted by Julius before he could open his mouth.

‘That’s a good idea, Tribune. That way he won’t embarrass the rest of us by walking round with a damp spot in the front of his tunic. You’re not wearing armour now Dubnus, look to your decency man!’

The big Briton gave his friend a hard look before gazing up at the buildings on either side of the road along which they were walking, craning his neck to stare up at the five- and six-storey insulae towering over them.

‘You’re the funny man today, are you Julius? As it happens, I was just thinking that I still can’t get used to the idea that people actually live in those things. Imagine having to climb all the way up there and then discover that you’ve forgotten something. And what happens if there’s a fire on the ground floor, and you’re all the way up there?’

Tribune Scaurus laughed grimly.

‘In that case, Centurion, you would at least have the gratification of knowing that you would be the last to burn, unless of course the screams of the better-off tenants in the lower floors gave you the time to ponder the choice of a slow death by fire or a quick one by impact with the ground. In the event of fire, I believe the rule of thumb is that the lowest tenant usually gets out with at least some of his possessions, the next highest occupant usually escapes with his life, and the next highest, if they’re blessed by Fortuna’s smile. After that it seems to be a simple question of either burning to death or jumping.’

The man walking beside Scaurus followed up on the tribune’s comments in a more serious tone of voice. Equally formally attired and groomed, he was tall and limber in appearance, muscular in an athletic way rather than any tendency to the hulking power of the centurions walking before him. His skin, darker by contrast than that of his fellow officers, advertised the fact that he had not been born in Dubnus’s native Britannia.

‘Of course these days, now that they’re mainly built with brick rather than timber, the main risk isn’t fire, it’s collapse. People lie in bed at night in those things listening to the building creaking around them, and wondering if they’ll be crushed to death if someone sneezes too loudly and brings the whole thing down. The bases aren’t broad enough for the height they build them up to, you see, since no one bothers to obey the height regulations.’

Scaurus raised an eyebrow at the younger man, and his reply carried an undisguised sardonic undertone.

‘Crushed under several tons of bricks? Much what anyone seeking to bother me this afternoon might feel like, I expect, given the number of escorts we managed to collect between my quarter and the transit barracks’ main gate.

One of the three obviously barbarian men bringing up the rear shook his head in disgust.

‘It’s a good thing I heard you discussing this little afternoon stroll with Centurion Corvus, before you had the chance to sneak off into this cesspit on your own.’

Scaurus shook his head in irritation without looking back.

‘Indeed, Prince Martos, what was I thinking? Why in Jupiter’s name would we have wanted to make our way to our meeting with one of Rome’s most influential senators in a discreet and, dare I say it, sober manner, when instead we could be preceded by a pair of swaggering centurions with obvious hard-ons for anything female under the age of sixty …’ He shook his head at Julius’s wounded expression. ‘I saw you eying up that little blonde, First Spear, so stop pretending you’re immune to the attractions of the opposite sex now that your woman has your balls firmly clamped between her thighs. Now, where was I …? Ah yes, preceded by a pair of priapic officers and trailed by a trio of barbarians, at least one of whom is equally intent on impressing every working girl we pass with the glory of his manhood.’

He shook his head with amused irritation.

‘If I’ve told you once Arminius, I must have told you a hundred times in the last ten years, they simply will not have sex with you without payment, no matter how muscular you are or, for that matter, how much you attempt to demonstrate that you have a penis that would make a donkey feel inadequate.’ He paused for a moment, listening for any retort, before continuing. ‘As for the need to protect us, Centurion Corvus here and I both walked these streets for years without ever attracting anything worse than an unkind glance, and that was when we weren’t in the company of the five biggest and ugliest men under my command. But no matter, you have at least provided us with some measure of entertainment during our walk. And here we are – this is our destination.’

He waved a hand at a sizeable domus, a rich man’s house set in enough ground for the construction of half a dozen of the towering insulae, each side of the large detached property shielded from casual view by mature trees that had grown almost as high as the neighbouring apartment buildings.

‘Perhaps you’ll all be a little less bumptious now that we’re no longer at such imminent risk of being robbed and murdered? And remember, we’re here to provide the senator with some consolation for the death of his son, so just mind your manners or you’ll have the pleasure of a long wait on his doorstep.’

An apparently imperturbable butler greeted them with an impressive lack of any reaction in the face of so large a party of men, most of whom were clearly disreputable types to judge from their scars, tattoos and in one case the absence of an eye, even if the barbarians among them were all dressed in clean tunics and had well-polished boots. Bidding them to remain in the house’s entrance hall, he withdrew to inform his master of their arrival, leaving the party to consider the murals that adorned the room’s walls. Dubnus leaned closer, admiring the detail in a representation of a goddess frolicking in a woodland glade seen through a window painted onto the plaster.

‘Nice work.’

Julius raised an eyebrow at his friend, shaking his head in apparent bafflement.

‘Nice work? Since when, oh Prince of the Axe Men, have you had any ability to recognise the difference between good painting and that done by a Greek pot painter using a brush poking out of his arse to slap the colours on? All you’re doing is admiring her tits, you dirty bastard …’ He leaned closer, pursing his lips in approval. ‘Although on closer inspection I’m forced to agree with you that they are a most lifelike representation, what with—’

Dubnus interrupted him, pointing at the view through another ‘window’.

‘I know. And look at what this satyr’s doing to the maiden he’s captured! I swear he’s got it up her—’

A voice from behind them had the two men start.

‘Greetings, esteemed visitors. I sometimes have to leave my clients waiting here for hours, given the number of visitors I routinely receive, men seeking either my favour or assistance, and these murals provide them with some small measure of distraction. Given long enough, I’m told, it is possible for the diligent hunter to discover over two hundred such visions of loveliness around the room, although I must confess I’ve never found the time …’

Scaurus stepped forward with a solemn expression, bowing deeply to the toga-clad man who stood in the doorway that linked the hall to the rest of the house.

‘Greetings, Senator Sigilis. Please accept our humble gratitude for your kindness in agreeing to meet with us.’

Their host returned the bow, albeit in the more cursory manner due to a member of the equestrian class from a senator, the taut smile of greeting on his face the expression of a man who had not shown genuine pleasure for a long time. He was as tall as either of the Tungrian centurions, although his body was whip thin by comparison to their muscular bulk, and his hair was silver-grey over a lean and heavily lined face.

‘The gratitude is mine, Tribune, for your kindness in expressing the desire to speak with me of my son’s last few weeks of life. I would imagine that most soldiers would prefer to forget the men they have left on the battlefield, much less actually come face-to-face with a grieving parent. Please come this way, and do bring your, ah … familia … with you.’

They followed the senator through the archway into a large garden in which a pair of slaves were tending the already immaculately manicured plants and flowers.

‘Over here.’

He led them to a seating area at the garden’s far end, stone benches arrayed around a flat gravelled area large enough to act as a small stage, or for a group of musicians to play their instruments, and protected from the sun’s heat by a circle of carefully planted cedar trees. At the butler’s command, the gardeners went into the domus and carried out a padded chair, into which the senator lowered himself with a grimace, then vanished back into the house leaving only the butler, who, satisfied that his master was comfortable, retired out of earshot.

‘Forgive my ostentation. A decade ago good honest marble would have sufficed for my backside, but these days I find the stiffness in my joints eased a little by a touch of luxury. I thought we might best speak out here in the garden, given that walls frequently hear more than would appear possible, even, I suspect, in my house.’ Sigilis played his bleak stare over each of them, his eyes assessing every man in turn before moving on. ‘You bring a large party with you, Tribune, larger than I expected, and yet you provide me with some small distraction by doing so. If I might speculate as to the origins of your people …?’

Scaurus smiled back at him.

‘By all means, Senator. We must present something of a mixed bag.’

‘Indeed you do, although some of you are easier to read than others.’ He looked at the tribune. ‘You, of course, are already known to me, Rutilius Scaurus. I remember your father well, and the disappointment we all felt when he was obliged to take his own life after being landed with the blame for that shabby little affair on the other side of the Rhenus. I am, of course, on excellent terms with your sponsor …’ He smiled thinly. ‘I find it ironic that his fortunes should be recovering so strongly with the praetorian prefect’s death, while my own seem to be in a terminal decline, but I can’t hold it against the man. He tells me that you’ve grown no less headstrong for your years of service. He also tells me that you’ve been dabbling in politics of late?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Not me, Senator, I’ll leave that to men with more ability and stronger stomachs than mine.’

Sigilis raised an eyebrow.

‘So it wasn’t you that marched ten boxes of gold into the palace and got the praetorian prefect murdered by the emperor a few nights ago?’

The younger man shrugged, his face commendably impassive.

‘I was no more than a small part of that night’s events, Senator. Most of the hard work was done by your colleague Clodius Albinus, in league with the emperor’s freedman Cleander.’

Sigilis chuckled mirthlessly.

‘How very self-effacing of you. You carried a cargo of gold, proving the praetorian prefect’s ambitions to take the throne all the way from the northern frontier … Where was it again?’

‘Britannia, Senator.’

‘Yes, all the way from Britannia, along, I’m reliably informed, with the lost eagle of the Sixth Legion, which you then used to tip Commodus over the edge to murder his own praetorian guard commander. Somewhat to the amazement of the hapless Clodius Albinus, I would imagine, and much to the delight of that conniving snake Cleander.’

Scaurus returned his level gaze in silence, until the senator nodded slowly.

‘Just as your sponsor intimated to me. You’re shot through with granite, aren’t you Tribune, and a dangerous man to cross for all of your modesty and self-effacement?’

He turned his stare to the younger man sitting next to Scaurus.

‘And what have we here? Early twenties, Roman in appearance, and muscled like a man used to carrying the weight of weapons and armour on a routine basis. I did my time in the service, and, believe it or not, I once had much the same build. You’re fresh from battle too, if appearances are any indication, unless of course you did that shaving …’ He raised a hand to point at the scar across the bridge of Marcus’s nose. ‘It looks too light to have been a sword. A spear, perhaps?’

Marcus tipped his head in recognition.

‘Yes, Senator. I didn’t get my head out the way fast enough.’

Sigilis pursed his lips.

‘You were still lucky, that’s a scratch compared with some of the facial wounds I saw serving as a tribune with the Thirtieth Legion in Caesarea. Well, scar or no scar, you remind me in your manner of a man I used to know, a highly respected fellow senator who was clearly too well thought of to survive under this regime. He died a good three years ago, and his entire family with him, dragged from their beds at night and carried away to a fate the thought of which makes me shudder. Only the older son remained unaccounted for, or so the informed gossip from the palace had it. He had been serving with the praetorian guard as a centurion, but vanished only days before his father was arrested and was last seen heading for Ostia with orders to take ship on a courier mission – or at least that was the story that got him out of the praetorian fortress.’

He locked gazes with the centurion.

‘Your name, young man?’

The Roman rose from his seat and bowed.

‘I am known as Marcus Tribulus Corvus, Senator, Centurion, First Tungrian Cohort, but I am indeed the fugitive son of your friend Appius Valerius Aquila. You now hold my life, and that of my family, in your hands.’

Sigilis smiled back at him with apparent genuine pleasure.

‘Rest assured that your secret is safe with me. It is indeed an honour to make your acquaintance, Marcus Valerius Aquila. The letters my son wrote before he died in Dacia made generous mention of you, although he was clever enough to do so in veiled terms that he knew only I would understand. And now you have returned to Rome with the fire of revenge bright in your eyes, even though you have no idea where to find the men upon whom you would visit your violence?’

The young Roman’s tone hardened, no longer deferring to the status of the man to whom his words were directed.

‘I will find them, Senator, with or without the help your son told me you would be able to offer. And when I find them, I fully intend to subject them to the same indignities my father, my mother, my brother and my sisters suffered before they died.’

Sigilis sat back and stared at him with grim amusement.

‘That’s more like the way I’d expect a man of your class to express himself, under the circumstances. So, a tribune with a propensity for righting old wrongs, and a centurion set on vengeance for his dead family. That would be a combination to strike fear into the men responsible for the destruction of your family, I’d say, if they were to find out that they were being hunted. And what sort of supporting cast do we have for this pair of furies?’

He looked across the remaining members of the party with an expression turned bleak again, locking gazes with each man briefly before speaking.

‘Two more soldiers, officers to judge from their apparent confidence, both scarred and both with the look of killers.’ He smiled grimly at Julius and Dubnus. ‘Some men find themselves unable to kill, even when their lives are at risk in battle, and others kill but are for the most part unchanged by the experience, apart from the inevitable nightmares and regrets that will trouble them until they come to terms with the fact. And there is a third type of man, gentlemen, men whose eyes lose just a hint of what they were before once they have stood toe to toe with other men and taken their lives, while also gaining something else that’s impossible to define. I saw battle more than once with the Thirtieth, and I saw sleepy farm boys become executioners in the space of one swift engagement, once they’d undergone their blood initiation. Their eyes were just as yours are now, windows on souls with some small part torn away and replaced with something else, no more evil than they were before, just with a fraction of their humanity excised. They scared me more than the enemy we were fighting, if I’m honest with you …’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Which was the point at which I realised I probably wasn’t fitted to military service.’

The senator laughed grimly, shaking his head and turning his attention to the remainder of the party.

‘And a trio of barbarians, each of you bigger and uglier than the last. Now that isn’t something a man sees every day, not without chains and collars at any rate. You, with your hair worn in a topknot, you are a German I presume?’

The slave nodded.

‘I am Arminus, Senator. I was taken prisoner by the tribune in battle, and he saw fit to spare my life and bind me to his service. Now I guard his back when he is foolish enough to leave it uncovered … which is often.’

Sigilis snorted a laugh.

‘A slave with a sharp tongue in his head, and yet unmarked by any sign of the lash. Either your master is a gentler man than I’d imagined, or your service to him has value that outweighs such minor irritations. And beside you, a one-eyed man with more scars than I’ve ever seen on a warrior, looking back at me as if I am the subordinate in our brief relationship. Royalty?’

His question was directed at Scaurus, but Martos answered the question directly, gesturing to the tribune.

‘I was a prince, before I was betrayed to this man by a mutual enemy who took my throne and abused my people. The tribune spared me from the execution that was my fate by rights, and now I am an ally of Rome.’

‘And the eye?’

‘I ran amok among my enemies when we recaptured my tribe’s capital, and I lost my reason to an unthinking rage for their blood. When I regained the ability to think clearly I was painted from toe to hair with the blood of a score of dead and mutilated men. My eye was the price that my god exacted for that revenge, it seems …’ He paused for a moment, shaking his head sadly. ‘I would have traded every life I took to have found my son alive, but my betrayers had already thrown him from the highest rock to feed the crows, and caused my woman to take my daughter’s life to spare her the indignity of their abuse. She killed herself …’

‘And you felt unable to remain in the place where your family was destroyed as a consequence of your having trusted this betrayer?’

Martos nodded.

‘I have entrusted my future to these men.’

The senator nodded, turning his attention to the last of them, taller than either of the other two barbarians by a head and whose body was almost a parody of the human frame, such was its size and musculature.

‘And you, the giant. Who are you?’

The big man’s voice rumbled a one-word reply.

‘Lugos.’

He pondered Scaurus’s turned head and raised eyebrow for a moment before speaking again.

‘My pardon. Lugos, Lord.’

Sigilis chuckled, the flesh around his eyes crinkling with the pleasure.

‘There’s no need to call me “Lord”, barbarian, I do not expect you to obey the formalities of our society since you are so clearly a newcomer to our city, although a simple “Senator” would suffice if you feel such a need.’

Sigilis returned his attention to Scaurus.

‘And now, with our introductions made, perhaps you will indulge the wishes of a grieving father and tell me how it was that my son came to die in Dacia? I received the official communication, of course, and my senatorial colleague Clodius Albinus was able to fill in a few of the gaps given that he was in command of the Thirteenth Legion in Dacia, but you are the first men I’ve met who were actually present when he died. Tell me all about that day, if you will, and provide me with some feel for the way in which my Lucius went to meet our ancestors?’

The second of the audience chamber’s two doors opened, on the other side of the wide airy room from which its four occupants had entered. They had been ushered one at a time into lamp-lit opulence by the stony-faced praetorians who had escorted them through the palace, then left to their own devices with the politely delivered, but nonetheless firm instruction to wait for their host. A single man dressed in a formal toga stepped inside, glancing around the table at which they were sitting waiting for him. All four stirred in their seats at his entrance, even the gladiator who prided himself on his self-proclaimed imperturbability shifted his position minutely, and the newcomer smiled at their reaction, opening his hands in greeting.

‘Gentlemen, my apologies for keeping you waiting. Affairs of state, you know how these things are …’

The squat, ugly man sitting at the table’s far end cracked a slow, lazy smile.

‘We know, Cleander. There’s not one of us that hasn’t kept a man waiting for one reason or another, to make him nervous or to piss him off.’ He gestured to the man beside him. ‘Even our gladiator here has been known to toy with a man for a while before taking him down with a single sword blow. The old tricks are the best, eh?’

The imperial chamberlain smiled back at him.

‘Indeed, although I’m not exactly here to have one of your fingers cut off for refusing to pay your protection money, am I Brutus?’

The other man shrugged, but before he could answer another of them spoke, his voice crisp with authority, clearly used to issuing commands and having them obeyed without question. He had removed his armour when he received the summons to attend the gathering of the Knives, but his red praetorian tunic and the vine stick lying on the table before him told their own story as to his role in the palace.

‘He’s right though, isn’t he, Chamberlain? My tribune, the praetorian prefect above him, you, you’re all in the game of imposing your will on other men. We used to work for the praetorian prefect, but now that the Emperor’s stuck the blunt end of a spear through him and left him to bleed to death in the dark, we work for you. That’s the point you’re making, I assume?’

Cleander dipped his head in a sardonic acceptance of the truth in the centurion’s statement.

‘You assume correctly, Fabius Dorso, since I will certainly be the man keeping your new prefect waiting from now on, when I feel the need to impress him with my authority, since I shall be his master in all but name.’

The praetorian dipped his head in return and kept his mouth shut, wisely deciding to let his fellow conspirators mount any further challenge to the chamberlain’s apparently unquenchable ambition. Unsurprisingly, it was the man sitting opposite him, resplendent in a spotless toga of the very finest quality wool, who took up the unspoken challenge. His voice was acidly sardonic, a weapon perfected over years of debate.

‘However will you find the time to manage the detail of such a large and important role, Aurelius Cleander?’

‘Ah, well you know how it is as well as I do, don’t you, Senator?’ The chamberlain smiled back at him with a shrug. ‘Some men, Asinius Pilinius, have a talent of making a life’s work out of something that needs nothing more than a swift decision and the right delegation. There’s always someone with the right skills and motivation to carry out your orders, if you look hard enough for him, and I seem to have the skill of finding that man and putting him to work. I’ll answer the big questions and leave the people that I select to enact them to work out how best to achieve my desires. A bit like the way we’ll be working from now on, in fact. I’ll decide which men are deemed to have committed treason, and you four can deal with them in the usual fashion, take your share of the spoils, have your fun and make sure that the throne receives the condemned man’s assets. Speaking of which …’

He unrolled a scroll, stretching out the silence as he read down the items listed. At length he looked up again, gazing around the table at each man in turn, his stare level and direct.

‘Gentlemen, I think it’s important that we have a clear understanding at the start of this new relationship. It seems to me that you may have become used to taking a little more than your agreed share under Prefect Perennis, to judge from this inventory of the proceeds of his estate.’ He raised the scroll. ‘There’s nothing really valuable missing of course, all of the major assets are accounted for, but there seems to be a disappointing amount of portable wealth that has, for want of a better term, gone for a walk.’ He looked up at the four men around the table, pursing his lips in amusement at his own joke, although not one of them had showed any sign of reaction. He shrugged. ‘Here’s an example. There seems to be a suspiciously small number of slaves available to sell, and none of them, it appears, the prefect’s family members. Which is disappointing since, as we all know, the children of the rich and famous command such high prices from the men who appreciate that sort of thing.’

The praetorian’s eyes flicked momentarily to look at the senator, and Cleander smiled inwardly at the realisation of one of his suspicions.

‘Yes, there are a great many valuable items that we expected to recover which seem to have gone missing, which has piqued the emperor more than a little. A rather splendid collection of antique swords which apparently dated back to the time of Alexander, for one thing. He had his eye on those, as you can imagine. There were some rather splendid marbles that seem to have vanished too, rather pornographic in nature and, while not all that valuable they were, it seems, on the list of things that the emperor expected to receive as his compensation for the former prefect’s treason. Their absence has left him somewhat piqued, and a piqued Commodus is not a safe man for any of us, you can be assured of that. So, given that the safe delivery of the Perennis estate to the throne was your collective responsibility, I think the fairest solution to this problem is for you all to waive your fees and percentages for the job on this occasion, as a means of reassuring the emperor that you remain his loyal and attentive servants and that you intend to protect his property somewhat better next time. I’m sure that you can see the sense in that, or would anyone like to argue the point? You would like there to be a next time, I presume?’

The gladiator Mortiferum stirred indolently in his chair and brushed a crease from his perfectly tailored tunic before speaking, casting a sidelong glance at Pilinius, and the chamberlain shuddered at the lack of life in the younger man’s eyes.

‘You want me to accept the loss of my share because our senatorial colleague here and his cronies like to play their games with the wives and children of our victims?’

He hooked a thumb at the subject of his words, who stared down at the table’s highly polished surface without any sign of emotion. Cleander shrugged, affecting disinterest in the swordsman’s statement.

‘No, I expect you to accept the loss of your share because you failed to ensure that your side of the bargain was honoured.’

The gladiator’s head turned slowly until his eyes were boring into the chamberlain’s, and while Cleander knew that the deliberate movement was all part of a well-practised persona, he was unable to suppress a shiver of fear at the malevolence that radiated from the man’s expression.

‘You know that I could be over this table and breaking your neck before you could summon your guards?’

Forcing a smile onto his face, Cleander shook his head.

‘I think not. I gave very explicit instructions before entering this room with exactly such an act of foolishness in mind. If any of you offer me violence, then you will all be physically restrained, at whatever the cost in guardsmen since they are a commodity of which I am blessed with a fairly inexhaustible supply. Not killed, gentlemen, but rather deliberately kept alive and imprisoned, after which all of your families will be gathered here to watch you being crucified in a private arena. And then, while each of you twists and writhes on his cross, your loved ones will be violated in the most appalling ways you can imagine in front of you, before being ripped to pieces by savage animals which will literally eat them alive. Not the usual lions and tigers though, I have something far more entertaining in mind for that eventuality.’

He paused, enjoying the silence that had fallen across the room.

‘The dog, while far less effective as an instrument of execution than a lion, is a far more terrifying prospect when employed in numbers. All one needs to do for a really good show is to paint the most sensitive parts of the victim’s anatomy with a nice thick paste of blood and set half a dozen ravenously hungry animals loose upon them. Need I describe the unendurable agony that your family members will undergo while their helpless writhing bodies are being torn apart under such loathsome circumstances? I would have thought that you in particular might enjoy the irony involved in that image, Senator Pilinius.’

The praetorian, the senator and the gang leader were all in his pocket, that much was evident from their stunned expressions, although the gladiator merely sat back, his malevolent stare steady on the chamberlain. Cleander grinned back at him.

‘And there it is, eh Death Bringer? To have control of brutal men it is simply necessary to promise the application of even greater brutality to those they cherish. And nobody does brutality quite like the Roman state, which makes the whole thing rather simple. But that’s not enough for you, is it? You have no family other than your brother, do you, nobody for me to threaten with the most degrading of deaths? You think you’re immune from this leverage. So for you, great champion of the arena, I have a different fate planned. You and your brother will both be crucified, but you’ll be cut down from your crosses before you choke yourselves to death, to ensure that you’ll be compos mentis for what will follow. You will be cut to pieces very, very slowly, one thin slice every hour over a period of months. Imagine, first your fingers, one coin-thin piece at a time, then your toes, and then, one cut after another, your limbs, with each wound promptly cauterised to prevent you bleeding to death. I’d imagine that it might take the best part of a year for you to die, and all the while you’ll be cursing yourself for succumbing to a moment of anger. When you’re not screaming in agony and then babbling out your insanity, that is.’

He raised an eyebrow and waited, keeping his face utterly immobile as the gladiator stared back for a moment before nodding slowly.

‘Good. I’m glad we understand each other. Be clear, gentlemen, that should any mysterious fate befall me, no matter how innocent you may all seem in the matter, the punishments that I’ve described will be delivered with swift and brutal efficiency. Call it my last wishes.’

He stood, rolling the scroll up.

‘And let’s have no recriminations, eh? The missing items are more than enough to cover your respective shares, so sort it out between you and prepare yourselves for the next time the emperor calls upon your services. After all, I think I can state with some assurance that you don’t really do the things you do for the money, do you?’

‘So, Centurion, my son died an honourable death?’

Sigilis had waited until the story of the battle on the ice had been fully recounted before swiftly turning to Marcus, knowing that Scaurus would be more inclined to protect him from any unpalatable facts. Well aware that he would be likely to face the question at some point, Marcus had long since rehearsed the answer that would disguise the fact that the senator’s son had died with a spear in his back.

‘He died in combat with overwhelming numbers of the enemy, Senator, beset on all sides. Your ancestors will have been proud to receive him into their company.’

Sigilis stared hard at him, and the young Roman fished inside his toga, pulling out a heavy gold pendant which he held out to the older man.

‘When I was able to recover his body, this was still around his neck. I expect he would have wanted it to be returned to you.’

The senator looked down at the yellow disc lying on his palm, the finely detailed representation of the god Mars standing on a field of vanquished foes. He swallowed, shaking his head slowly.

‘That pendant has been in my family for generations, all the way back to the conquest of the Dacians, when Trajan decided to bring that accursed land into the empire. My grandfather had it made with gold he took from a nobleman he killed on the battlefield, and passed it on to my father when he served. I wore it in Caesarea, and Lucius took it in his turn when he joined his legion. He was my only surviving son, after the plague from the east took both of his brothers from me, so there are no members of my family left to bring it further honour. Wear it for me, and every time you remember my son you will perpetuate his memory.’

Marcus nodded, folding his fingers around the heavy metal disc.

‘Your son wrote something on the ice before he died, using his own blood. Something he wanted me to remember …’

Sigilis raised an incredulous eyebrow.

‘With his blood?’

Marcus nodded soberly.

‘As I said, Senator, he was a strong-willed man. He was dying, he knew that much, but he was determined that I should act upon something he had told me a few days before. It was—’

The senator’s voice was suddenly cold.

‘Did this by any chance involve a group of imperial assassins who call themselves “The Emperor’s Knives”?’

‘Yes sir.’

Sigilis pursed his lips.

‘I didn’t intend for him to overhear my discussions on the subject of the revival of that most despicable of imperial habits: the murder of wealthy men under the pretext of their having betrayed Rome, followed by the confiscation of their assets.’ His lip curled. ‘Confiscatory justice. I feared – and I still fear – that my estates would eventually attract the attention of the men behind the throne, and I wanted to spare him from having to live under the shadow of that threat. But, with all the persuasive power of an only son, he somehow managed to convince me that he should hear what it was that my informant had to say—’

Scaurus interrupted.

‘Your informant? I believed that you had employed an investigator?’

The senator shook his head slowly.

‘You’ve evidently been away from Rome too long, Tribune, and paid too little attention to your history lessons as a younger man, I suspect. There is a ruinous state of affairs that is forever waiting its time to flourish under the absolute power of imperial rule. It happened under the emperor Tiberius, when Sejanus came to dominate the city, it happened twice more, under Nero and Domitian, and now we see the same bloody horror rear its head once more under this dissolute fool Commodus. It is rule by the informant, gentlemen, a rule that terrorises the worthy man of good character who commits no other crime than to be wealthy, when the empire is as near to bankruptcy as it can be without actually collapsing. We invaded Dacia back in Trajan’s day, and the failed attempts before that, simply because it had enough gold to sustain the empire for a century or more, enough to allow five emperors to rule equitably because they had the riches of the Dacian mines to support their rule, and therefore had no need to indulge in underhanded methods to support their budgets.’

He sighed, shaking his head.

‘And now? Now the empire has fallen prey to the eastern plague, and the population is reduced in size so drastically that tax revenues are falling too fast for the mines’ output to compensate. Add to that an emperor who spends gold on his own pleasure like water, and the recipe was almost complete. All that was needed then was for someone in a position of high power to realise that the only thing standing between the emperor and anything he wanted were the limits of that man’s conscience.’

His gaze flicked up to Marcus, an apologetic grimace playing across his face.

‘Your father was a man of such impeccable character as to have earned his passage to Elysium several times over, and yet he was one of the first victims of that unrestrained absolute power, as Perennis started down the path of blood that has led us to where we are now. His wealth was well known, and besides that Commodus openly coveted his villa on the Appian Way. After all, it had its own baths, water supply by aqueduct, even a hippodrome. What more could any emperor want from a country residence!’

His laugh was bitter.

‘And now we members of the senatorial class live in fear that we will be the next to face false accusations, to find ourselves blinking in the torchlight in the middle of the night when Commodus’s hired killers come for us and our families. Yes …’ He nodded at the look on Marcus’s face. ‘The Knives. So you pull a face when I say the word “informer”, Tribune, and yet that is what Rome has become once more, a city in the merciless grip of the informers. There are more than enough men of this craven nature within the Senate itself for me to be utterly confident in predicting that this emperor has sowed the seeds of his own downfall, creating a monster that must eventually eat itself. And so I have suborned one such man, a well-placed individual who spends most of his time listening for the tiny whispers of dissent that can be used to accuse an innocent citizen of treason for a crime no greater than discussing the days of the republic, before that misguided genius Octavian declared himself Caesar Augustus because he saw no other way to liberate Rome from its apparently endless cycle of civil wars than by concentrating absolute power in the hands of a single man. I pay my informant well, and in return he ensures that I know exactly where the Knives will make their next visit.’

He signalled to the butler, who in turn made his way back to the house and opened a door behind which a hooded figure had been waiting. As the informer made his way across the garden, Sigilis turned back to the Tungrians with an apologetic grimace.

‘I didn’t want to introduce you to him until we had the rest of our business out of the way. He tells me that you parted on less than ideal terms when you last met.’

Marcus’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as the informer stopped before them, his face almost invisible in the shadow beneath the hood.

‘You?’

Arminius started as he realised who the senator’s man was, surging off the bench with a snarl only to find himself face-to-face with Scaurus.

‘You are a guest in this man’s house, Arminius, and still my slave to command! You will respect his hospitality!’

The hooded man laughed softly.

‘How very decent of you, Tribune Scaurus. It seems that the senator’s trust in your sense of Roman manners was justified …’

The voice was unmistakable in its lazy drawl, and Marcus was shocked to find his thoughts snapped back to a woodland clearing two years before, in the wake of a victory over the fearsome Venicone tribe. He looked at the informer in disbelief as the man reached up and pulled back the hood to reveal a face that Marcus had never expected to see again.

‘Well now, centurion, are you Tribulus Corvus or Valerius Aquila today?’

The young centurion spat out the man’s name through bared teeth, seething at the sight of the man.

‘Excingus!’

‘Let’s make one thing clear, shall we?’

The gladiator put a finger firmly on Brutus’s chest, prodding him hard enough to put a scowl on the other man’s face.

‘Keep your bloody hands off me! You want to be a bit more careful who you—’

‘No, I really don’t.’ Mortiferum leaned in closer, his voice pitched low so that his words were only barely audible, and the praetorian took the senator by the arm and drew him away until they were well out of earshot. ‘Don’t imagine that just because your thugs have scared a few shopkeepers and pimps into submission I wouldn’t go through you and your muscle like a hot poker though a week-old corpse.’ He prodded the gang leader’s chest again, the smaller man’s body jerking with the force of his gesture. ‘Try me, and find out just how many of your men are willing to stand against me and my followers. The people of this city worship me and my brother, and I reckon that they’d tear a man to pieces just for raising a blade against us outside of the arena. I might be wrong, of course, but that’s a calculation for you to make. You two, come here!’

The guard centurion strolled up with the senator following slowly behind him, and the gladiator looked about him at the three of them.

‘I’ve been denied my fee from the other night because you three couldn’t keep your sticky fingers to yourselves. Dorso!’

He pointed at the praetorian, who returned his stare levelly.

‘You’re probably the least of it, but even you had your share. You and those two guardsmen who follow you round, you carried away enough of Perennis’s antiques to more than cover your fee, if you were to sell them on.’

The soldier nodded.

‘That’s true enough.’

The accusing finger turned to point at the senator, who pouted back at him with an expression of haughty disinterest.

‘And you, Pilinius. I counted thirty or more slaves being led away by your men, not to mention the prefect’s wife and children. I don’t care what perverted games you get up to with them, but that many bodies represent a lot of gold. More than your share, in fact.’

The patrician shrugged.

‘I think you’ll find that possession is the guiding principle here, my friend.’

The gladiator grinned savagely, reaching out and taking a handful of the other man’s toga to pull him close.

‘And I think you’ll find that the guiding principle is in fact a foot of sharp iron, if you’re not careful, Senator. Think on it.’

He pushed the suddenly white-faced Pilinius away from him with a grimace of disgust, spinning back to push his finger into Brutus’s face.

‘But you, fool, are the stupidest bastard of the three of you. Only you could have taken the simple task we’ve been given and turned it into an act of wholesale robbery!’

‘What—’

The gladiator poked him again, harder, looking round the three of them with a snarl of anger.

‘Do you think I’m truly stupid, just because I choose to live in a ludus cell, rather than buying out my contract and splashing my money on a big house and a dozen slaves? I’m the smartest of all of us, you pricks, because I keep my head down and don’t attract attention to myself, something you might do well to consider. You …’ He poked the guardsman. ‘With your antiques collection hidden in that private museum no one’s supposed to know about. You …’ He turned to the senator. ‘Slaughtering the families of the nobility for the fun of your gang of upper-class perverts! And you!’ He snapped down on the gang leader, his expression so fierce that the other man was unable to avoid recoiling. ‘You, you stupid bastard, slinking back once we’d all left and bribing the guards who’d been set to keep the Perennis house intact to look the other way. Since when were you interested in art?’

He looked around him in disgust.

‘Which is why, gentlemen, you’re all going to dig in your purses and come up with my share, or you’ll all live to regret it. Work it out any way you like between you, but make sure that gold’s in my hands before sunset tomorrow or there’ll be excitement. And trust me, you’d much rather life remained dull.’

He turned and stalked away, leaving the other three staring at each other with a combination of calculation and bemusement.

The informer smiled and bowed, opening his hands in welcome.

‘Tiberius Varius Excingus, to remind you of my full name, former centurion in that exalted corps of spies, blackmailers and murderers that masquerade under the title of “Grain Officers” – and now, given my rather abrupt and vigorously enforced resignation from my former employment as a result of failing to bring you to justice, Centurion, present-day informer. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?’

Scaurus stared at him for a moment before turning to their host with a look of polite disbelief.

‘I’m not sure you understand quite how dangerous this man is, Senator. The last time we crossed paths with him, he was in the company of a praetorian centurion, a remorseless murderer, and they were tracking down my centurion here on orders from Prefect Perennis. They abducted his wife with the intention of using her both as bait to ensure his compliance and distraction to make his murder easier. This man Excingus threatened my family here in Rome, and if he had not made his escape in the confusion of the resulting fight, one of us would undoubtedly have put a sword in his guts and left him to choke out his last breath in a puddle of his own blood.’

The former frumentari shrugged, nodding equably as Sigilis replied.

‘That’s more or less as he’s already related to me, as it happens.’ The senator fixed Scaurus with a penetrating stare. ‘I won’t make any excuses for his previous behaviour, Tribune, but neither will I apologise for using him to my own ends. Varius Excingus is without any shred of doubt quite the most amoral man I’ve ever met, but that complete lack of any decency provides me with information that has already saved lives.’

Marcus shook his head in incredulous disbelief.

‘And you trust him?’

The senator laughed, and pointed a finger at Excingus.

‘Trust? Him? Do you take me for a madman?’

The informer shrugged again and pursed his lips, nodding sagely.

‘I’ll answer that one, if you’ll allow me the liberty, Senator?’

Sigilis gestured for him to continue, and Excingus smiled at Marcus as broadly as if their previous encounter had ended in vows to meet again someday, rather than with a bloodbath of the men sent to find the younger man and kill him, with the grain officer only managing to escape with his life by the narrowest of margins.

‘No, Centurion, the senator would indeed be most unwise to repose any trust in a man with my singular lack of principles. But I’ll remind you of a discussion we had the last time we met, when you asked me how it was that I could live with the things I do. You may not recall my answer, since I’d imagine that you had bigger matters on your mind, but I know what my response was because it’s the same one I give every time I’m asked the question. My only guiding principle, Valerius Aquila, is to make the best of this life in any way that I can. And if that eventually means that my informal provision of information to Senator Sigilis comes to an end, then so be it. For now, however, the senator’s generous rates of payment are more than sufficient to ensure my complete discretion.’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘I wouldn’t trust you any further than I could see you, and even then I’d be keeping my sword to hand. But if the senator has chosen to employ your services I’ll go this far and no further: while you’re under his protection I will not seek to harm you in any way …’ He turned and played a hard stare across the men behind him. ‘And neither will any of my men. However …’ He stepped closer to the informer, until their noses were almost touching. ‘If I so much as suspect that you’re planning to sell us out, then I’ll personally see to it that you vanish without trace.’ He turned away to retake his seat with a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘I doubt you’d be missed.’

Excingus nodded equably.

‘Exactly as I would have expected. And perhaps I can lighten the moment a little?’ He fished in a pouch attached to his belt and held out an iron key to Marcus. ‘Here.’

The young centurion stared at it for a moment without making any move to accept the offering.

‘A key? To what?’

The informer smiled back at him, reaching for his hand and pressing the key into the palm.

‘Ask your wife. And now gentlemen, if you’ve come in search of information, perhaps we can get past the initial awkwardness and get down to business. Senator?’

He held out a hand, and the older man nodded, signalling to his butler once more. The slave reached down into a wooden box that had been concealed in the shrubbery, taking out what appeared to be a purse. Crossing the garden with the same impassivity he had displayed before, he placed it in his master’s hand with a bow. Sigilis acknowledged him with a grave inclination of his head.

‘Thank you. I expect you have pressing duties to attend to in the house? Please don’t allow this inconsequential matter to impede you in their completion.’

The butler bowed again, and to Marcus’s eye it seemed that a look of relief crossed his face as he turned to make his way back through the garden and into the domus. Excingus held out a hand.

‘Poor man. He’s more than intelligent enough to understand the heat of the fire you’re playing with by employing my rather dubious services, isn’t he?’

The senator dropped the purse onto his level palm with a resigned expression.

‘I suspect he looks askance at having to pay you to provide information to these men for which you’ve already received a substantial sum.’

Julius frowned at the informer, still far from happy with such an unexpected turn of events.

‘You make him pay simply to talk to us?’

‘I do. And so would you, in my place. Every additional person I share my knowledge with presents an additional risk of my being betrayed …’

The first spear barked out a laugh.

‘And wouldn’t that be ironic!’

Excingus simply continued speaking, ignoring the barb.

‘… tortured for as long as I could stand the pain without descending into insanity, no matter what truth and lies I babbled in extremis, then summarily executed and dropped into a deep pit to rot, unmourned and most certainly unlamented.’

Sigilis coughed as if clearing his throat.

‘And so, having been paid …?’

The informer nodded.

‘Apologies, Senator, I was on the verge of becoming maudlin. As you say, to business.’ He turned to address the Tungrians. ‘I suggest that you abandon your prejudices, gentlemen, and pay especially close attention to what I am about to tell you, for I doubt that anyone else in Rome has either sufficient knowledge or courage to provide you with this information. There are four men who form the heart of the emperor’s policy of propping his treasury up through “confiscatory justice” …’

He paused, waiting for any of them to comment, but none of the men sitting around him responded.

‘These four men bring a particular combination of skills and experience to the services they perform, not to mention their shared disregard for the humanity of their victims. They are, in different ways, intelligent, driven and successful men in their own fields, positively charming in one case, and none of them displays any overt signs of mania, and yet they are all, in their own ways, just about the most dangerous men in the entire city. Perennis gathered them to him when it became clear that the throne would not survive without financial assistance, reasoning that his own praetorian guard might be likely to draw the line at being ordered to slaughter a man and then either kill or enslave his entire familia. He gave them whatever it was that he believed would motivate them, but we can simplify that down to two things. Firstly he offered them money. A lot of money, for a relatively small amount of effort. And secondly, he extended to them the opportunity to do exactly as they pleased with some of the most respected families in Rome. Think about that for a moment, and then ask yourself how many men in the city would jump at the chance to have free licence with the women of a household like this one. Never mind the novelty of taking the mistress of the house by force while her husband’s corpse is still cooling on floor, think of the possibilities for a man with that inclination. Daughters, female slaves … more than enough helpless female flesh for everyone, eh?’

He met Marcus’s stare of hatred with an equally frank gaze.

‘I won’t ask for your forgiveness for pointing out the obvious, Centurion, since I know that your own family was one of the first to suffer such a catastrophic end, but I will point out that I’m simply explaining these men’s motivation. Hate me for doing so if you like, but at least recognise the realities of what you’re dealing with. You might find that understanding of some value, once you’ve mastered your repugnance at the knowledge.’

He shrugged in the face of the young centurion’s obdurate stare.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, there are four of them. So, where shall we start?’ He mused for a moment. ‘Perhaps with the most dangerous of them, a gladiator who fights under the name of Mortiferum …’

The Tungrian party left the senator’s house in the late afternoon, Excingus having departed via a well-disguised and heavily built door in the garden wall that opened into the storeroom of a shop on the other side of the wall. Senator Sigilis had stared at the departing informer’s back with the expression of a man who urgently needed to wash his hands.

‘I rent the shopkeeper his premises for next to nothing, on the condition that the occasional person comes and goes in a rather more discreet manner than knocking at my front door. Of course, using it to admit a man like that means that I can’t rely on it for a discreet exit myself, should the need arise, but then it’s not the only secret way out of the property, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

The Tungrians had taken their leave of him with much to consider, and even Dubnus was uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way back towards the Ostian Gate. Less than a hundred paces from the gate’s massive archway, a pair of men stepped out onto the cobbles before them, one of them instantly recognisable as Senator Albinus, Scaurus’s former commander in Dacia and, since the confrontation in the emperor’s throne room that had ended in the praetorian prefect’s death, his sworn enemy. The other was Cotta, a muscular man with a weather-beaten face and the leader of Albinus’s personal bodyguard. A former legion centurion, he had established a small but effective team of bodyguards composed of the pick of the soldiers retiring from his legion and had been bankrolled by Albinus, to whom he therefore owed a considerable debt in both money and gratitude. The tribune stepped forward to meet them, holding up a hand to halt his men.

‘Senator Albinus. Centurion. To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’

The big man stared back at him in silence for a moment before waving a hand and calling out a command that rang out down the suddenly empty street.

‘Bring them.’

As he strode off down a side street, ten or so men emerged from the shops to either side and behind the Tungrians, another half-dozen strolling out into the street behind Cotta and blocking the road to the gate. Each of them was carrying a tight role of cloth, and Julius raised a hand waist-high, waving it downwards in a clear signal to his men to refrain from reaching for their knives. Cotta smiled easily at Scaurus, gesturing to the side street.

‘Best if you come with us, Tribune. The senator wants a word with you, and it’s probably best not to have the plebs gawping at us while he’s doing it, eh?’

He shot Marcus a knowing glance and then raised a questioning eyebrow at Scaurus, who looked appraisingly at the men encircling his command.

‘Your men are armed, I presume, Centurion Cotta?’

The retired soldier snapped out a terse order.

‘Swords!’

Each of his men pushed a hand into their roll of cloth, pulling a short infantry gladius from the fabric. Scaurus shrugged, his glance at Marcus eloquent, then turned to follow Albinus up the street. Thirty paces brought them out into the shade of a small square surrounded on all sides by insulae, and the burly senator waited silently in its middle until his hired swordsmen had herded the Tungrians into the enclosed space, grinning as Julius and Dubnus looked about them with expressions promising swift violence, clearly restrained only by the weapons that hemmed them in on all sides.

‘Perfect, isn’t it? I own the buildings around us, of course, which is why there aren’t idlers dangling out of every window!’

Scaurus looked about him with thinly disguised amusement.

‘Always one for the theatrical, aren’t you Senator?’

The big man smiled broadly back at him, revelling in his domination of the situation he had so clearly engineered.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t call this theatrical, Rutilius Scaurus, I’d be using the term gladiatorial.’

The tribune shook his head in bemusement.

‘Gladiatorial? What, do you intend to turn your men loose on us in some sort of pitched battle? What do you think the urban cohorts will make of that? I’m sure they’ll be along soon enough, given the spectacle you made back there with so much illegal iron on the street.’

Albinus shook his head, his smile widening.

‘Oh, I doubt it. The local tribune has managed to get himself rather deeper into debt than might have been sensible, so once I’d purchased that debt it was relatively easy to persuade him to keep his men clear of the area for rather more time than I need for this carefully constructed scenario to play out. Centurion?’

Cotta stepped forward, dropping a sword at Marcus’s feet with a clang of iron on stone, and shot him another pointed glance that narrowed Julius’s eyes with a sudden suspicion. The senator pointed to the weapon, his voice taking on a triumphant tone as he barked out an order.

‘Pick up the sword, Valerius Aquila! Pick up the sword, and prepare to fight for your life!’

Scaurus stepped forward, his expression hardening, and a pair of Albinus’s ex-legion bodyguards moved swiftly to block any attempt to approach their master.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Decimus?’

Albinus grinned back at him from behind his protectors.

‘Nice try, Rutilius Scaurus, but no amount of impudence is going to distract me from delivering this lesson to you. Perhaps the death of your pet centurion will teach you to exercise a little more humility with your betters. Now, pick up the sword, boy, or I’ll have my man here kill you anyway, defenceless or not.’

Marcus smiled tolerantly in the face of the insult, bending to take the sword by its hilt.

‘Be warned, Roman …’ Martos stepped forward to stand beside Scaurus and raised a finger to the senator, his expression murderous. ‘If this man is harmed here while you hide behind those swords, I will find you and tear your heart from your body with my bare hands!’

Albinus raised his eyebrows in mock terror.

‘And how will you make that happen, when a word from me will see you dead on the cobbles beside him? Would anybody else like to consider volunteering for a place in the closest refuse pit? No? Let’s be about it then! Centurion!’

Cotta stepped forward, reaching forward to tap Marcus’s blade with his own with an evil grin.

‘You ready to fight, youngster?’

Marcus looked at Scaurus with a helpless shrug, discarding his toga on the square’s cobbles for one of the senator’s bodyguards to remove.

‘This has been coming ever since this man and I laid eyes on each other that night on the Palatine Hill, Tribune.’

Scaurus nodded in reply, and the two men dropped into fighting crouches, each of them watching the other as they circled slowly. Cotta looked his opponent up and down, nodding reluctant approval at the younger man’s muscular frame.

‘You’re a fighting soldier, from the look of you. Britannia, was it?’ Marcus nodded, focusing intently on the other man’s eyes as Cotta shook his head in apparent disgust. ‘Full of tunic lifters and arse pokers, Britannia. It’s a shame your old man didn’t send you somewhere character-forming before they murdered him.’

The younger man feinted forward with the point of his gladius, watching in cold amusement as his opponent stepped back and parried easily.

‘What, somewhere like Dacia?’

Cotta snorted his ridicule.

‘Dacia? Land of cock suckers. And don’t bother telling me about Germania either, the whole province is riddled with queers. No boy, if you want to be a real soldier then you need to get sand in your crack!’

He advanced swiftly, testing Marcus’s defence with half a dozen swift strokes, grinning as the Tungrian retreated closer and closer to the men guarding the exit from the square. As his seventh cut sliced in low, aimed at Marcus’s left thigh, the younger man tossed his sword into his left hand and parried it wide, stepping quickly forward and twisting to punch a half-fist into Cotta’s right bicep and then straightened his body, using the momentum to swing a vicious back fist at the grimacing centurion’s face. Cotta barely managed to duck out of the blow’s path, giving the younger man all the time he needed to swivel to his right and hook the veteran’s leg with his extended left boot. The older man fell back onto the cobbles with a grunt of expelled breath, the sword falling from his nerveless fingers.

‘Get at him! Kill him while he’s down!’

Ignoring Dubnus’s bellowed encouragement, Marcus bent to pick up the fallen weapon, watching as Cotta recovered his footing and took a sword from each of the two nearest men. The veteran stood out of sword’s reach for a moment, breathing hard and appraising his opponent with a new respect.

‘I heard you were taught to fight by a soldier and a gladiator. Which one of them taught you that little move?’

Marcus closed the distance between them, scraping the soles of his boots across the cobbles.

‘The soldier, as I recall. He wasn’t up to much when it came to swordplay, but he knew more than enough dirty tricks.’

Cotta raised his blades.

‘Sounds like my kind of man. The gladiator must have been a faggot if he taught you to fight with two swords.’

Marcus shrugged again, his eyes locked on the points of Cotta’s blades, stepping closer still until the tips of their swords were touching.

‘He made a start. I perfected the style in a few battles that you might have heard of while you were lazing around Rome protecting fat-arsed politicians from their own stupidity.’

Both men lunged forward at the same time, their swords meeting each other and pushing wide as the soldier snapped his head forward to butt Marcus in the face, but the younger man was ready for the attack, ducking his head and then wrenching it back up to deliver a heavy blow to Cotta’s chin. The former soldier staggered backwards, spitting blood from his bleeding tongue and spluttering with laughter.

‘You cheeky young bastard!’

Marcus held his swords out ostentatiously wide of his body, then dropped them onto the ground with a clatter of iron on stone.

‘Shall we go to bare knuckles then, Cotta, or have you had enough?’

The older man shook his head, tossing his own weapons aside and feeling his jaw.

‘Fuck that, I think you’ve already broken one of my teeth.’

Albinus bridled, pointing at Marcus with a face contorted with rage.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Cotta?! Kill him!’

The ex-centurion wiped the blood from his mouth, shaking his head with a tight smile of warning.

‘If you want him dead so badly, Senator, you feel free to try to kill him.’

The senator put his face inches from the veteran’s, his features twisted by a snarl of rage.

‘I paid well for you to set up this cosy little business, Centurion, which means that I own you. Either you do as I tell you, and leave this traitor’s spawn bleeding here in the street, or I’ll have you …’

Something within Cotta snapped, abruptly and without warning, and Scaurus pursed his lips as the ex-soldier took a handful of his sponsor’s toga.

‘Paid me well, did you?’ He reached into his belt purse and dropped a handful of gold coins onto the cobbles. ‘There’s your money, Senator!’ He pulled the toga down until Albinus’s head was level with his chest, bending to snarl into the terrified man’s ear, grinding his words out through gritted teeth. ‘And you’ll have me what? Killed?’ He laughed down into the senator’s face. ‘Hah! I’ll disembowel any man you send after me, and then I’ll strangle you with the bastard’s guts!’

Scaurus strolled forwards, patting Cotta on the arm.

‘I think your point is made, Centurion.’

Albinus staggered back, propelled by a push from Cotta’s broad hand, pointing a trembling finger at the former soldier.

‘If I can’t buy you, I’ll buy your men! Ten gold aurei for the man that puts his iron through that treacherous bastard’s guts!’

There was a moment of silence as the former soldier stared at him with naked disgust, until at length he spat bloody phlegm across the coins scattered at his feet. When he spoke his voice was cold, as if his anger had burned out and been replaced by something harder and more implacable.

‘You could offer them fifty apiece and I doubt you’d have any takers. We’ve something in common, these men and I, which is that we’ve all faced the empire’s enemies together, and bled, and lost our mates, while all you’ve ever done is sit on the back of a horse and come up with a succession of good ways for us to risk our lives to bring you glory. So I’ll give you two choices, Senator. You can leave now, with an escort of my men to protect you from the kind of scum who’ll take your purse and slap you about if you’re lucky, and drag you away never to be seen again if you’re not. Or you can open your mouth to say any words other than “thank you, Cotta” and then you’ll find out what it’s like to walk home alone with me following ten paces behind you, making sure every pimp, thug and murderer on the street knows just how vulnerable you are.’

He stood and stared at the white-faced Albinus, his expression still taut with anger.

‘Just three little words. Any fucking time you like, Senator …’

As the silence stretched out, Dubnus turned to a grinning Julius with a look of confusion, shaking his massive head in puzzlement.

‘Am I missing something here?’

2

‘Was it the dream again, my love?’

When Felicia awoke the next morning she found Marcus sitting by their quarter’s window, his eyes fixed on the lights burning on the walls of the city, the impending dawn still no more than a smudge of grey on the eastern horizon. She had lived with him for long enough to know what would have awoken him early, and the answer to her whispered question was already clear in her mind even as she asked it. He nodded, smiling across the room at her in the light of the single lamp burning in the corner, although his expression was more haunted than happy. She beckoned him with a crooked finger.

‘Come back to bed then, before Appius wakes up.’

He padded softly across the room and slid in behind his wife, warming his feet on her calves despite her quiet protests, pulling her to him and cupping her breasts in one hand.

‘Our meeting with Lucius Carius Sigilis’s father yesterday seems to have inspired the ghosts of my family to greater efforts. Twice last night and again this morning they came to me in my dreams, showing me their injuries and entreating me to take revenge for our family’s slaughter.’

She snuggled back against him, reaching a hand up to stroke his face.

‘My darling, you know that this is just—’

‘Just my sleeping mind, working on the events of the day and tortured by my guilt at having survived such horror?’ Felicia turned to face him, her expression growing more troubled as she realised that he was staring at the wall behind her. ‘That may well be the case, but I cannot live the rest of my life haunted by these dreams, whether they be my family’s ghosts or simply my mind’s way of coping with the reality of their horrific murders while I escaped from their killers. And now that I have the names of the four men who murdered my father, my brother, my sisters, and probably sold the rest of our household into slavery, I am bound to act against them.’ He paused before speaking again, knowing that his wife had to know the news he had kept to himself the previous evening. ‘A gang leader, a praetorian, a senator and a gladiator: Brutus, Dorso, Pilinius and Mortiferum. We got their names from an unlikely source though.’

Felicia frowned at something in her husband’s voice and sat up in bed, turning to look down at him in the light of the lamp burning by their son’s cot.

‘Unlikely?’

Marcus looked up at her, clearly trying to gauge her possible reaction before he spoke again.

‘Excingus.’

Her eyes opened wide with shock.

‘Excingus?! The grain officer who kidnapped me and tried to murder us both?’

‘The same.’

‘And you didn’t …?’

‘Kill him? He was under Senator Sigilis’s protection. And taking my knife to him wouldn’t have changed anything, although it would have prevented me from learning the identities of the men who killed my father.’

Felicia looked back at him with a grave expression.

‘And if he hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t be planning to kill them all, would you? This can only end badly Marcus …’

He smiled back at her.

‘I understand your fears, but I really don’t have any choice in the matter. And besides, I have Cotta and his men behind me now.’

‘Yes …’

Her tone was dubious.

Marcus laughed softly. He and Cotta had grinned at each other in the square the previous evening, both of them deaf to Albinus’s furious protests as he’d been led away, and the veteran centurion had wrapped him in a bear hug that had squeezed the breath from his body before pushing him away and looking him up and down.

‘I thought you were dead, boy, but look at you, scars and all! You can join my little team of lads any time you like!’

Marcus had stared dumbly back at him, smiling through unexpected tears and was unable to reply. After a moment’s silence, Scaurus had coughed politely behind him.

‘Ah …’

Cotta had straightened, throwing a salute at the senior officer.

‘Tribune, sir!’

‘There’s no need for all that, Centurion, given that you’re retired.’

The veteran had shaken his head dismissively.

‘A man leaves the legion when his twenty years are up, Tribune, but the legion never really leaves the man, does it, sir? Tattoos, scars and memories of dead friends, they’re all still there until the day you die, and since me and my lads are time-served veterans for the most part, we can recognise a fellow professional when we see one. Which means that we’ll be saluting you, and calling you “sir” just as long as we’re working alongside you.’

Scaurus had stepped forward, regarding Cotta from beneath raised eyebrows.

‘As long as you’re working beside us, Centurion? Whatever gave you that idea?’

Cotta’s return stare had been utterly unabashed, the tolerant gaze of a career soldier when challenged by his less-experienced senior officer.

‘The fact that me and my lads know Rome a damned sight better than your boys, no disrespect intended, First Spear.’ Julius had nodded his head gracefully, a corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile at his tribune. ‘The fact that I’ve burned my bridges with one of the most powerful senators in the city by failing to obey his order to kill the centurion there. And the fact that I’ve been beating common sense into this officer of yours since he was half the age he is now, although to little avail given the stories I’ve been hearing about him from your soldiers, once they’ve got a few cups of wine down their necks. Put simply Tribune, you need us. And I’m not about to allow that silly young bugger to get himself killed in Rome, not when he seems to have made a tolerable job of surviving everything else that’s been thrown at him up to now.’

Once the usual dawn officers’ meeting was out of the way, Julius went to report to Scaurus as to the two cohorts’ strength, gathering Marcus and Dubnus to him with a glance as he left the transit barracks’ cold and slightly dingy headquarters building. The tribune greeted them cheerfully, inviting them to join him at his breakfast table where, Marcus was unsurprised to discover, Cotta was already busy ploughing his way through a plate of bread and honey. Scaurus gestured to the empty seats around the scarred and stained table.

‘It isn’t often that a man gets to eat fresh bread of quite such good quality, and the honey’s excellent. Help yourselves, gentlemen.’

He turned to the silent Arminius, who was doing his best to avoid attention in the room’s corner.

‘Don’t you have a young pupil to be teaching the martial arts?’

The German gave him a hard stare before shrugging and making for the door.

‘I’ll find out what you’re planning soon enough, don’t worry.’

Cotta raised an eyebrow at the door as it closed behind him.

‘You’re not beating that slave enough, Tribune.’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘I tried it, in the early days of our relationship, but it seemed to make no difference to his attitude, and it all proved to be rather a lot of energy expended to little effect, so I stopped bothering. He means well enough …’ He took another piece of bread and popped it into his mouth, looking at Marcus with a quizzical expression, and when he spoke again his tone was deceptively soft. ‘So, are you determined to see this through then, Centurion?’

Marcus heard the edge of formality that underlaid his tribune’s apparently disingenuous question, and straightened in his chair.

‘Yes Tribune.’

Scaurus shook his head, his lips pursed in grim amusement.

‘Relax man, I’m not intending to try to stop you, far from it, I just want us all to be very clear on the likely consequences of taking action again these men. For a start, there’s our new friend Cleander to consider. I’d imagine that the imperial chamberlain will smell a rat pretty quickly if we start killing the men whom the emperor depends on to carry out the task of confiscating the assets of the wealthy, wouldn’t you? And that’s before we ponder what the reaction of the remaining members of the group might be when they realise that they’re being hunted. If so much as a hint of our involvement in the deaths of any of these men becomes known, then we can expect a violent reaction, to say the least, and even if there’s nothing to point to us, they’re all going to get paranoid very quickly when the first of them dies.’

The young centurion nodded earnestly.

‘Exactly my thinking, sir, and I wasn’t planning on any sort of assistance from anyone within the cohort. This is my debt to pay, and I’ll—’

‘Really?’ Julius shook his head in disbelief. ‘You were expecting that we’d happily sit here getting fat on too much wine and spicy food, while you blunder round this cesspit of a city in search of revenge? What were you going to do, rely on that arsehole Excingus to see you right? That bastard would sell you out in a heartbeat; this man Cleander’s thugs would snap you up and you’d never be seen again. Is that what you were planning?’

Marcus shook his head.

‘No Julius. Credit me with a little intelligence. I know Rome as well as any man, and I have more friends in the city than you might imagine.’

Scaurus pursed his lips, tilting his chair back.

‘All the same, the idea that you might dispose of four men with that sort of profile on your own is perhaps more than a little ambitious. I don’t doubt that your man Cotta here will be able to provide you with some assistance, but perhaps it might be worth reviewing what Excingus told us yesterday and apply a little thinking as to just how hard they’re going to be to kill, shall we?’

He raised a single finger.

‘Let’s start with Senator Pilinius. The man lives in a veritable fortress, far better protected than Sigilis’s domus. Entrants to the place come through the front door in the main, past enough of his bodyguards to weed out any attempt at infiltration without very much effort. If they don’t want to be seen participating in that sort of entertainment, and they’re of sufficient importance, then they slip in via the back door, where his men will all be armed to the teeth with much less work to do and therefore twice as vigilant. Given how Pilinius and his cronies get their enjoyment, I’d imagine that they’ll be more than a little jumpy too. All of which would tend to indicate that he might be easier to get to on the street, but then as I recall it, Excingus told us that the senator goes everywhere with at least half a dozen bodyguards, which means that we’d have to attack him with twice that many men to be sure of getting to him. And I don’t know about you, but the idea of a running knife fight on the streets of the capital doesn’t really fill me with any enthusiasm for the likely success of such a desperate roll of the dice, or for our anonymity being preserved for that matter.’

He raised a second finger alongside the first.

‘Then there’s Dorso. As a serving guard officer he lives in the praetorian fortress which, I hardly need to remind you, contains several cohorts of soldiers, only one of which is on duty in the imperial palaces at any time. Getting into the fortress will be hard enough, but killing Dorso without alerting anyone else, and then getting out of the place undetected? That’s a rather tall order.’

Two fingers became three.

‘Then there’s Brutus, who would be the worst of them if it weren’t for Mortiferum, but let’s worry about the gladiator in a moment. His “Silver Dagger” gang must number at least a hundred men, and that’s before we factor in loosely affiliated members of dozens of the smaller gangs that he tolerates in return for payoffs and instant obedience when he demands it. As soon as he hears of the deaths of any of the others he’ll shut himself up in whatever slum bolt-hole it is that he uses when the heat’s on, with enough men gathered about him to make anything less than a full-blooded attack nothing more than a waste of effort and lives. And there’s no way I can take the cohort on to the streets of Rome, we’d bring the Guard down on us like a hod full of bricks falling from a sixth-floor building site.’

Cotta puffed out his cheeks, shaking his head at the scale of the difficulties they faced.

‘And as you say, if the other three are going to be hard …’

Towards the end of their briefing the previous day, Excingus had turned the conversation to Mortiferum, shaking his head at the very prospect of getting to the man.

‘It can’t be done, gentlemen, because the Death Bringer, crafty sod that he undoubtedly is, hides himself away in the very last place on earth that he’s going to face any threat. He spends all his time, when he’s not out slaughtering rich families for the emperor that is, in the Dacian Ludus.’

Marcus and Scaurus had nodded their understanding, exchanging gloomy glances, but the remainder of the party had stared back at him blankly.

‘The Dacian Gladiator School? No? I see I’ll have to explain. There is an arena in Rome, gentlemen, of which you might have heard. It is the Flavian Amphitheatre, built by the emperor Vespasian a hundred years ago, the foremost arena in the empire and big enough to allow sixty thousand people to watch the games that are held there. Thousands of gladiators fight in that arena every year, and each one of them has to be trained and prepared for his moment on the sand, which is why there are four official training schools for gladiators clustered around the building. There’s one called the Gallic School, where they turn out the heavy boys, fish men, hoplites and the like; there’s the Morning School, where they train men how to fight wild animals …’

‘Why the Morning School?’

The informant had shrugged at Dubnus with an expression of irritation, his tone sarcastic.

‘Perhaps it’s because the beast fights tend to take place in the morning?’

The Briton had shrugged back as he replied, clenching a massive fist.

‘And perhaps I’ll impose on the senator’s hospitality just a little. Don’t forget that I can still remember the stink of the shit running down your legs from the time I missed killing you by no more than a dozen heart beats.’

Excingus had nodded, his smile suddenly dazzling.

‘A fair point, Centurion, and well made. Shall I continue?’

He’d waited for a moment and then resumed his lecture.

‘Then there’s the Great School, which turns out all of the smaller fighting specialisms, spearmen, chariot drivers, net fighters and so on, and last of all, there’s the Dacian School. With a name like that their specialism’s rather obvious, I suppose: lightly armoured sword fighters, originally Dacian prisoners when Trajan set it up since he’d just conquered the province. And if the other three members of this very exclusive gang look hard to get to, just consider how hard it’ll be to get to a man who lives in a cell alongside another two hundred or so like him, all of them worshiping him as the deadliest fighter in the place …’

Marcus nodded at Scaurus, taking another piece of bread from the breakfast table.

‘Excingus was probably correct yesterday when he said that getting to the gladiator’s going to be impossible. I think it’s probably for the best to concentrate on the others for the time being, and wait to see if Fortuna offers us any way to get to this “Death Bringer”.’

Dubnus shifted in his seat.

‘And if you’re right, then the violent death of the first of them will alert the other three that someone’s coming after them.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘It seems likely, Centurion. After all, it’s not as if there’s any shortage of men with a motive, even after their victims’ households have been torn apart. Distant relatives who weren’t actually quite so distant, friends determined to have revenge for the dead … there must be a fair few men in Rome who’d be more than happy to catch any one of these men off guard.’

The bearded Tungrian stared at the map for a moment.

‘It seems like we’ll have to make sure that the first couple of deaths look like accident or incident then, won’t we …?’

When Marcus had given his wife Excingus’s key earlier that morning, her first reaction had been stunned silence. After a moment, he realised that she was welling up with tears.

‘That’s the key to your father’s house in the city?’

His wife’s reaction was wordless, a tear trickling down her cheek as she fought for composure, and Marcus spoke gently into the silence.

‘And now a calculating animal like Excingus hands it to me with a smile. What to make of that, I wonder?’

Taking a deep breath Felicia managed to speak, her voice trembling with emotion.

‘I doubt it would stand much comparison with what you were used to when your father was still alive, but it’s a quiet enough little place, and I was so fond of it before we left Rome. I grew up in that house, and it’s my last link to my mother and father. When I married that bastard Bassus, he took the key off me and sent it to his brother. He said that we would live in it when he was posted back to Rome, but that we might as well get some use out of the place in the meantime. I’d all but forgotten it, with everything that’s happened since, until you put this key in my hand. But how did that awful man come by it, I wonder?’

She fell silent again, lost for words at having the means of access to a house she had long since abandoned to the wreckage of her previous marriage. Marcus shook his head.

‘He wouldn’t tell me, but I doubt there was very much subtlety to his taking possession of the place. Where is the house?’

‘It’s up on the Aventine Hill.’

He wiped her tears away and took her hands in his.

‘I’ll ask Cotta if a few of his brighter men might escort you into the city later, and you can go and have a look around the place and decide what you want to do about it. Half a dozen scar-faced veterans ought to be enough to deter the most determined of thieves. Why not take Annia with you, and make a morning of it? After all, there are plenty of shops on the way, and you were saying that you needed to find some better clothing than the stuff you’ve been wearing for the last few months. Why not treat her, and buy the children something new to wear as well?’

Rummaging in his purse, he’d spilled a handful of coins onto the bed between them, eliciting a tearful smile from his wife.

‘Well now, Centurion, what a nice idea! It’ll make a change from all of our money going to fund exotic swords and the latest fashion in helmets …’

When Marcus had requested Cotta to lend him a few of his men to escort Felicia and Annia into the city, and explained the real purpose of the expedition, the veteran’s response had been swift and unequivocal.

‘That’s a job for me. If your women and children are going to set foot outside of this barrack then I’ll be the man escorting them, me and a few of my choicest lads, the best combination of bright and nasty, if you know what I mean. If Senator Albinus wanted you dead to teach the tribune here a lesson, then I can’t see him hesitating to kill or abduct your wife if he sees the opportunity. And from what you’ve told me about this Excingus character, he won’t hesitate to inform the senator about your circumstances if he gets to hear about our little falling out with Albinus. So I think I’ll take a careful look around the place before there’s any talk of moving in, shall I?’

The Tungrian officers watched as the small party headed for the barracks’ gate before turning back to their training duties. Scaurus and Julius had decided to maintain the two cohorts’ fitness and weapons skills regimes while the Tungrians were in barracks awaiting their next orders, reasoning that whether they were sent back to Britannia or elsewhere in the empire, they were likely to be in the thick of the action soon enough. The hulking first spear nodded happily at the sight of his men working hard at their weapons skills.

‘Not bad, if I say so myself. Not bad at all.’

The transit barracks’ parade ground had been converted into a training area, with dozens of pairs of men sparring with wooden swords while others looked on and offered derisory advice before taking their own turn. A piece of open ground alongside the barracks had been commandeered, with twenty wooden posts having been erected at one end. In front of each post a tent party of seven or eight men took turns to hurl their spears at the man-sized wooden target from twenty paces; those men who missed being detailed off to run the field’s perimeter with the offending weapon held over their heads before rejoining their comrades.

‘Infantrymen sweating their bollocks off in the sunshine. What an agreeable sight!’

The three centurions turned to see who was addressing them to find themselves under the scrutiny of an amused-looking man in an anonymous tunic, his boots scuffed and battered from continual heavy use and only cursory attention. Every inch as tall as Dubnus, if nowhere near as massive in build, his heavy beard was flecked with grey, and his brown eyes were set in a face whose skin resembled aged leather.

‘And you are?’

The newcomer nodded to Julius, ignoring the harsh tone of his question with a good-natured smile.

‘Avidus, Centurion, Third Augusta. You?’

The first spear stared at the other man for a moment with his eyes narrowed, and for a moment Marcus spoke quickly, convinced that Julius was on the verge of setting about the stranger with his vine stick.

‘You’re not an infantry officer, are you Avidus?’

The weathered face turned to look at him with its amused expression untroubled by Julius’s glare.

‘Infantry? Fuck no! I, sonny, am one of that glorious band of men who get the opportunity to march at the head of the legion. I’m a pioneer, gentlemen, or to be more precise, a surveyor in command of a detachment of pioneers.’

Dubnus looked at him for a moment with an expression of growing glee before finding his voice.

‘You’re a road mender!’

Avidus rolled his eyes, shaking his head in disgust.

‘And here was me thinking that I might receive a more sympathetic reception from a member of the auxiliary forces, but clearly one bone-stupid grunt is much like every other, whatever armour they’re wearing.’

Julius found his voice, putting out his hand.

‘Julius, First Spear, First Tungrian Cohort. I was going to beast you for being out of uniform but since you’ve clearly got a pair on you, I won’t waste my breath. What brings you to a transit barracks on the road from Rome to Ostia?’

The surveyor shrugged.

‘You tell me. Me and my lads have been here for the best part of a month.’

‘You mean you’ve been sent here and then left to rot?’

‘You’ve got it. Nobody seems to know where we’re supposed to be going. We were detached and shipped over here in response to a request for skilled manpower from a legion somewhere else in the empire, but by the time we got here the original request had been mislaid.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Knowing my luck, we’ll end up getting sent somewhere really fucking cold where the only work going is digging out blocked latrines.’

Dubnus spread his hands in a gesture of disbelief.

‘Come on though, a whole month without orders this close to Rome? Have you seen the whores they’ve got in there?’

Avidus nodded wearily.

‘We felt the same, for the first fortnight or so. A different girl every night, and how long was that likely to last, so we went at it like prize-winning chariot horses until we realised that we weren’t going anywhere any time soon. Now our money’s more or less gone, so we’re limited to the occasional walk into the city to look at the women.’

‘Look but don’t touch?’

The surveyor nodded knowingly.

‘Exactly. A duck’s arse and an unpaid whore, the two tightest holes you’ll ever find.’

Julius stroked his chin thoughtfully.

‘So you know the best places to go, where the value’s to be found, right?’

Avidus nodded, pursing his lips in the manner of a man considering his expertise.

‘You could say that. We certainly spent enough silver finding out where not to go!’

‘In that case, Centurion, I think we can provide each other with some mutual service. You can tell me where best to send my lads when we allow them into the city for a wet, and in return I can ask my tribune if we can spare a little money to let you spend the rest of your time here in some degree of comfort. Which legion did you say you were from?’

The surveyor grinned, pulling up his tunic sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a winged horse.

‘The Third Augusta, First Spear, Africa’s finest!’

Excingus walked into Albinus’s office between a pair of the senator’s newly recruited bodyguards and bowed deeply, but when he raised his head the expression on his face was anything but subservient. His host waited in silence while the informant looked about him with naked curiosity.

‘So, do you like what you see?’

Excingus smiled gently at the acerbic note in Albinus’s voice, and inclined his head slightly as he replied.

‘Indeed, Senator, you are clearly a man of some considerable learning, if I am to judge by the large number of scrolls on your shelves.’

Albinus laughed tersely.

‘You understand flattery then.’

The informant bowed, his lips twitching in another smile.

‘Indeed I do, Senator. And a good many other things besides. Although the principal subject I thought to discuss with you is betrayal.’

The senator sat back.

‘Is it indeed? My secretary gave me to believe that you have something greatly to my advantage to offer?’

Excingus pursed his lips.

‘I believe that I can persuade you that the two are one and the same, Senator Albinus, if you’ll allow me to explain?’

Albinus waved a patrician hand.

‘I can spare you a little time.’

‘Thank you. I will deal with betrayal first. As the story has reached my ears, your previous associate Gaius Rutilius Scaurus has of late chosen to play a game more suited to his own ends than those which align with your own, and without any of the respect that ought to be forthcoming from a man in his position to a man of your status. I believe that a recent attempt to teach him some manners foundered on the rock of another man from whom you might have expected somewhat more loyalty than was in fact displayed when the moment arose?’

The senator’s face darkened.

‘If you’ve come to rake over the coals of my recent disappointments then you’ll very shortly find yourself on the street with a new set of lumps, Informer.’

Excingus opened his arms wide, tilting his head in question.

‘I simply seek to establish the facts, Senator. I’ve found in the past that the redress of injustices is more easily achieved when all parties are clear as to what needs to be achieved.’

He waited for a moment, and at length Albinus waved a hand.

‘Then continue. But move to what you have to offer to my advantage sooner rather than later.’

‘Indeed. To illustrate that potential benefit, I must first point out that I have achieved a position of some influence with your senatorial colleague Gaius Carius Sigilis. He purchases information from me with regard to the activities of certain men who are, shall we say, loosely aligned with the imperial household. Men who provide the emperor with their services when the occasional need arises for prominent members of society to be removed from their positions.’

Albinus leaned across the desk.

‘Sigilis buys information from you in order to understand whether he’s likely to be murdered for his estate?’ The informant nodded, and Albinus leaned back, looking at the ceiling as he spoke again. ‘As well he might. I may be safe from such threats due to my recent services to the imperial chamberlain, but he most certainly is not, from the rumours I hear. But what does this have to do with Scaurus?’

Excingus smiled.

‘The tribune has recently contacted Senator Sigilis, and indeed visited him, with the sole intention of using the information I sell to him to track down and murder each of the four men who have become known as “The Emperor’s Knives”. He is accompanied, as I am sure you will be aware, by a young centurion who goes by the name of Corvus, although he is in reality the son of Appius Valerius Aquila. And this young man is consumed with the need to have his revenge for the destruction of his family. It seems that now his main target is dead, killed by the emperor as a direct consequence of your recent visit to the palace bearing an obscene quantity of stolen gold, he has resolved to deal with his father’s murderers in person.’

‘And the benefit that this might have to me is …?’

‘Given that I will be feeding Scaurus and Aquila with the information they will then use to hunt down the emperor’s tame killers, it would be remarkably easy to point them in the direction not of their intended target, but instead send them head first into a trap of our devising.’

Albinus nodded slowly.

‘I like the way you think, Informant. And your price for delivering these ungrateful bastards into that trap would be what exactly?’

‘A modest one. I’m already very well paid by Senator Sigilis. This is more of a personal matter than for financial benefit, so I can afford to make my fee for the job a modest one. Shall we say ten aurei in gold, to be paid when Scaurus and Aquila are delivered to you?’

The senator smiled.

‘Two and half thousand sestertii? I would have paid a good deal more, but you know your own price. So, our interests are aligned then, it seems. Very well, come back to me when you have information upon which I can act. And in the meantime, I think it best if you do not come to my house again. Send a messenger with a proposed meeting place, somewhere public, and we can contrive to meet and talk with a lower profile than will be the case if you’re seen entering my property.’

Excingus inclined his head again.

‘As you suggest, Senator.’

‘There’s no need for you to struggle with all that baggage, Domina. My young lads will be happy to carry your purchases for you.’

Cotta had been a provider of bodyguards to Rome’s ruling class for long enough that he knew the ways of the women with whose safety he was entrusted, which was why he had brought a pair of his younger recruits along on the shopping expedition. Taking Felicia’s load of fresh food and clothing from her, he distributed it between the pair, giving them a significant look as he did so.

‘And what you learn from this, my lads, is that you never take just enough men on a shopping trip. Someone’s going to end up holding whatever it is that you’ve all gone looking for, and we can’t allow good manners to compromise good security, can we?’ He turned back to Felicia with a smile. ‘Shall we be on our way to your house, Domina?’

The doctor raised an eyebrow at him.

‘There’s really no need to call me that, Centurion. My name will make a perfectly adequate form of address.’

Cotta shook his head with a tight smile.

‘Sorry, Domina, but whether you appreciate it or not, you’re the wife of a Roman senator, even if he has fallen on rather harder times than we might like. One of these days that young man’s family name will be restored to its previous status, and I see no reason not to show due respect to it in the meantime. Now, where is this house of yours, exactly?’

They climbed the Aventine Hill at a pace sedate enough for the women, who were both carrying their children, until at length Felicia stopped and stared in a combination of hope and trepidation at a house of moderate size in its own modest garden, protected from casual onlookers by a six-foot-high wall. Overlooked on three sides by larger buildings, it was nevertheless clearly still the sort of residence that only a well-to-do and moderately wealthy family would be able to afford. The district was of a decent quality, with nothing more jarring to Cotta’s trained eye than a pair of roughly dressed children playing with a wooden hoop on the corner. Taking in Felicia’s determined expression, the veteran officer held out his hand.

‘Perhaps I ought to go in first, Domina. After all, we have no idea what might be waiting for us inside. If I might have that key please?’

After a moment’s thought she surrendered the iron key, and with a word to his men to stay on their toes, Cotta opened the gate and looked cautiously through it into the garden, a well-tended paved affair with flower beds and plant pots that had clearly been weeded and watered recently. Slipping though the gateway he pushed the door back into place, sliding a dagger free from its sheath on his upper-left arm as he turned to stare at the house. Padding softly across the paving slabs, he walked quickly to the window on the front door’s left, peering through the glass’s rippling sheet into the room behind it. Nothing was moving. Walking on round the house, he found a door, and, lifting the latch, was surprised to find it unsecured. It opened with a gentle creak that announced his presence as obviously as if he’d knocked, and, abandoning stealth, he went through the doorway with his knife held ready to fight, finding himself in a well-sized kitchen which had been left scrupulously clean by the previous inhabitants. The plates and pans were clean, and stacked in orderly piles, and there was none of the smell of rotting food he had expected. Moving through the house he found the same situation in every room, the floors clean, the furniture well ordered, but no trace at all of whoever had lived in them previously, and after a few minutes of cautious searching he shrugged, sheathed the knife and made his way to the front door.

‘The place is empty, my lady, with nothing more troubling than a slightly musty smell – will you come inside?’

The two women walked into the house, Felicia looking about her with a mix of wonderment and disbelief, while Annia simply stared at the rooms’ relative opulence with unabashed approval.

‘Soft furniture? Glass windows? It’s lovely, Felicia! You’re so lucky to have something like this!’

The doctor nodded in a distracted manner, turning to Cotta with a questioning look.

‘And there’s no sign of anyone?’

The veteran shook his head.

‘No, Domina, nothing to give any clue as to who was living here before the place was emptied out.’

She took a deep breath and then, with a brisk nod of her head, made a decision.

‘Very well. This house belonged to my father, and since it was never transferred to my first husband’s ownership whoever was living here would have known they had no claim to it when he was killed in Britannia. They were probably just hoping that I would never return.’ She looked about her again with a new light in her eyes. ‘This is my house, and I shall treat it as such. Centurion, would you be so good as to inform my husband that I will be taking up residence here for the period that we are in Rome, and request him to send up my clothes?’

‘I will, Domina. And I’ll arrange for a standing guard to be mounted on the property, to make sure that you and the child aren’t bothered.’

Felicia smiled gratefully at him before turning to Annia.

‘Will you stay and keep me company? It’ll make a pleasant change from repairing broken soldiers, and we can pretend that we’re a pair of respectable Roman matrons for a few weeks.’

Her friend looked about her for a moment before grinning at her mischievously.

‘I think I can bear the hardship, Domina. After all, the last time I had a proper roof over my head for more than a day or two I was running a brothel, so it’ll make a novel change not to have a constant stream of soldiers walking in with their pricks tenting their tunics.’

A spluttering cough behind Annia coupled with the sudden look of amusement on her friend’s face made her turn back to Cotta, whose face was a picture of uncontrolled amazement. Putting a hand on his arm, she favoured him with a sweet smile of apology, patting his hand as he fought to regain his composure.

‘I’m sorry, Centurion, I’d completely forgotten that you don’t yet know who we are and where we’ve come from. You and I must sit down over a glass of wine when all this excitement is done with, and I’ll explain the finer workings of a city whorehouse to you. And now, Domina, shall we go and have a look around your lovely home?’

‘So tell me, Centurion, what sort of engineering tasks are you and your men trained for?’

Avidus raised his eyebrows disapprovingly.

‘Which tasks, Tribune? All of them.’

Scaurus frowned.

‘Really? I thought there was a tendency to specialise?’

The engineer nodded knowingly.

‘Well there is, sir, except you have to bear in mind that we’re the only legion on the entire African coast. If our bridge builders got lost in a sandstorm or ambushed by the locals, then we’d look a bit stupid when we got to the next river only to find the crossing burned out. Third Augusta has always made sure that every man in the pioneer centuries is skilled for every task, which means that when we’re not on the march we don’t get sent to bring in the harvest or pick stones out of the fields, we get sent for training.’

‘So you can genuinely carry out any feat of military engineering?’

Avidus raised a hand and tapped the raised digits with his other forefinger.

‘Road repair, mining operations, bridge building, demolition, siege machinery—’

‘What, you mean you can build bolt throwers?’

He smiled at Dubnus’s question.

‘Yes. But not just bolt throwers. Siege towers, catapults, battering rams … you name it, me and my lads can do it.’

Julius walked around the desk from his place behind Scaurus to stand beside the engineer.

‘The centurion here and his men have been lost in transit, from the look of it. Wherever it is they’re supposed to be going, the idiots in charge of manpower appear to have mislaid the instructions. And of course, no one wants to ask the grown-ups for fear that they’ll end up looking stupid. So at some point soon these poor sods are going to find themselves being assigned to a legion just to get them out of the way before they become a serious embarrassment, and they’ll probably end up freezing their balls off in Germania. Or …’

He let the word hang in the air, and Scaurus raised a jaundiced eyebrow.

‘Or? Or what? The last time we had this discussion I ended up taking on a half-century of disgruntled legionaries and having more than one interesting conversation with the Sixth Legion’s camp prefect. It was a good thing he was feeling friendly towards us in the wake of our having rescued their eagle from the Venicones, wasn’t it? And now you want me to quietly fold a century of engineers into your cohort?’

‘It’s only thirty men, tribune, hardly a—’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘No you don’t. He’s a centurion, they’re a century. And what makes you think that the man in charge of troop allocations won’t smell a rat when you slide this man and his soldiers up your sleeve?’

Julius’s face went blank, and Scaurus’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

‘You’ve already made the deal, haven’t you?’

His first spear shook his head.

‘Not my place to do so, Tribune, but the officer in question tells me that he’s open to reallocating Avidus to us if we’re happy to make a modest donation to his temple.’

He stared at the wall behind the tribune and waited for Scaurus’s reaction in silence, knowing better than to attempt any form of persuasion on a man who he knew to be stubborn in the extreme once his mind was made up.

‘So you’ve offered him a bribe?’

Julius shook his head.

‘Not at all. I simply enquired as to where Avidus’s century was likely to end up, and then let slip that we’d be happy to look after them for a while. The request for the donation was all his idea. Apparently they want to put in a new altar stone …’

‘And you, Centurion? What do you think of the idea?’

Avidus shrugged.

‘I’m a soldier, Tribune. I go where the army tells me to, dig holes while unfriendly natives practise their archery skills on me, fill them in again and then start marching. As long as our pay and conditions aren’t changed, my lads and I will happily tag along with you for a while. Preferably somewhere warm?’

Scaurus frowned and turned away, looking out through the unshuttered window at the barracks buildings that faced the headquarters.

‘I won’t deny that you’d be useful to us …’ He turned to face Julius. ‘How much does this transit officer want then?’

A knock at the door interrupted Julius before he had a chance to reply, and one of Cotta’s men was escorted into the room by the duty centurion, the battered pugilist Otho. Jumping to attention, the bodyguard explained that he had been sent to inform Julius and Marcus of the fact that their women had decided to remain in the city overnight, and would they mind sending up some clothing and bedding?

‘Well now, I suppose that’s not entirely unexpected. I don’t suppose we should expect your ladies to stay cooped up in this rather stark barracks when there’s a house on the Aventine Hill going begging, should we? Perhaps we might go for a look at this place, the three of us, and you, Centurion Avidus, if you fancy a walk.’

Scaurus grinned at his officers with the look of a man relishing the prospect of a break from the usual routine.

‘And who knows, if we’re really lucky, we might get out of the gates without an escort of jealous barbarians.’

Mortiferum was hard at work on the Dacian Ludus’s practice ground when Senator Pilinius appeared at the door of the enclosed rectangle of sand-strewn ground on which they were sparring. He looked across the ranks of trainee gladiators as they toiled at the repetitive exercises that would build their strength and muscle memory, clearly searching for his comrade in the emperor’s service.

One of the three men sparring with Mortiferum noticed his glance up at the senator, and relaxed his defence on the assumption that their opponent would break off the fight to speak with such an important visitor, but the champion gladiator seized his chance with the speed for which he was famed.

‘Ignore him!’

He danced forward to attack with both swords raised, parrying the man’s clumsy defensive cut with one blade while flashing the other wide to his right, forcing the other two back as he swiftly stepped in closer and shoulder-barged his victim over a hooked ankle to send him reeling. As the helpless gladiator sprawled on the hard, sandy surface, Mortiferum lunged in, tapped him delicately on the throat with the tip of his heavy wooden practice sword, and then flung himself forward, somersaulting over the fallen man’s prone body to land on his feet with the downed fighter between them, spinning as his feet hit the sand and raising his swords to fight, shouting a command.

‘Stop!’

He looked at his remaining two sparring partners with a questioning look.

‘Look where we are. You, stay down, you’re dead! You two, what do you do now?’

The brighter of the trainees answered first.

‘We either split and come at you to either side of the corpse …?’

Their teacher shook his head.

‘Not the best answer, Felix. First rule of fighting as a pair – never fight alone if you can avoid it, or a good swordsman will simply kill one of you quickly and take his time with the other.’

‘Or we could come at you together around him to one side or the other …?’

The champion gladiator shrugged and grinned.

‘We can play at going round and round him all day, I’d say. The crowd would lose interest in that long before I would, and everyone knows what happens when the crowd gets bored.’

Felix nodded glumly.

‘We have to jump the corpse together?’

Mortiferum nodded.

‘That’s the best approach, nine times out of ten. One of you might stop a blade, but the other ought to get a chance to return the compliment, at least against a good to average opponent. In this case, of course, you’d both be dead before you could regain your footing. So, what was the mistake that Sergius here …’ He prodded the recumbent trainee with the boot of his toe, shaking his head at the man. ‘And you can stop giving me that look unless you want me to prod you somewhat harder with my sword next time. What did you do wrong that allowed me my opening?’

The fallen man, who had propped himself up on his elbows to listen, replied, ‘I followed your eyes, Death Bringer.’

‘You followed my eyes. In point of fact, you all followed my eyes, but I went for you, Sergius, for two reasons. Firstly, because you were the closest, and secondly because you were perfectly positioned so that your corpse would put an obstacle between me and these two. Get up then.’

Sergius rolled to his feet away from Mortiferum, knowing better than to put himself inside the reach of the deceptively dangling wooden swords. The champion fighter raised one of them to point at his training partners.

‘Don’t I keep telling you that watching your opponent’s eyes only tells you where he’s looking, not where his sword’s going. You need to watch the point, ladies, nothing else matters.’

Sergius cocked his head in puzzlement.

‘Don’t we need to watch the other man’s body as well?’

Mortiferum nodded, grinning back at his training partner.

‘When you’re ready my friend, yes you do. The time will come, if you’re good enough, that you’ll know what’s coming next just from the set of a man’s body, the twitch of a muscle, the way his eyes flicker—’

‘But you told us not to look at the eyes!’

The champion gladiator’s grin widened.

‘Yes. I told you that, because you’re only capable of watching one thing at a time. When I face a man, I can see everything, every twitch and blink, every little tell as to his next move, and I absorb and understand them all without ever having to think through what’s happening. I see how much blood there is on the sand behind him, and whether he might slip if I push him backwards. I see the faces in the crowd, and whether they’re shouting acclaim or just baying for blood. I see the men in the imperial box and what their mood is, so I can put him down quick if they’re looking forgiving or let him make a decent show of it if I think they’ll need convincing that he’s worth saving. I can see the wounds I’ve already given him, how much they’re bleeding and how dark the blood is, so I know how badly I’ve hurt him and whether it’d be kinder to kill him clean.’ He grinned again, shrugging at the skill with which he had been gifted. ‘I see so much more than you do, a little of which is training, but most of which is just how I was born. And now …’

He raised a hand to acknowledge Pilinius’s presence, knowing that to delay any longer would be an unnecessary and highly visible snub to the man.

‘And now I can see that the senator would very much like me to stop what I’m doing and go to see him. And while it’s tempting to ignore him for a while longer, I see no value to be had from antagonising him.’

Dropping his training swords to the floor, he walked over to where Pilinius was waiting for him, making a cursory bow of his head in place of the usual obeisance, and fixing the senator with a direct stare.

‘Senator?’

If the patrician was irritated at the apparent lack of respect, he hid it well.

‘Mortiferum. Our partners in crime and I have come to an accommodation as to how we best deal with your request for payment of the sum withheld by our new patron.’

The gladiator nodded.

‘And?’

‘And so here …’ He took a purse from the slave standing behind him, his secretary and accountant. ‘… is your fee. Feel free to count it.’

Mortiferum shook his head.

‘There’s no need for such vulgar display of lack of trust, Senator. I’m happy that any need for unpleasantness has been averted. After all, you do have a rather significant event looming in your calendar. Far better not to have it disrupted by any unpleasant occurrences, wouldn’t you say?’

Pilinius stared at him for a moment before responding, and when he did his voice was acerbic.

‘Quite so, Mortiferum, quite so. But it seems that the details of my evening’s entertainment have spread beyond the circle of men I might usually have trusted with the information. I won’t ask you where you obtained that tasty morsel of gossip …’

Mortiferum bowed his head again, knowing that Pilinius already understood just how unlikely it was that he would ever share such a sensitive source of information.

‘… but I would ask you to pass it no further. The powerful men with whom I share these rather singular pleasures would be far from pleased to have their tastes revealed to the city. And their displeasure might be rather more punitive than mine.’

He turned and walked away, his slave shooting the gladiator a swift, unfathomable glance before turning to follow him. Mortiferum weighed the purse for a moment before tossing it to an identically dressed and equipped man who had walked up behind him during the conversation.

‘Here you are brother, this is the fee from the Perennis job.’

His sibling caught the leather bag and also weighed it in his hand.

‘I told you they’d crumble if you applied a little pressure. Even that halfwit Brutus is clever enough to know there’s not a man in the city that could stand against Velox and Mortiferum.’

Mortiferum nodded, turning back to his sparring partners.

‘Indeed. And now, since that little transaction has left me feeling dirty, I think I’ll work up a sweat by turning these three inside out a few times. Remember girls, watch the blade, not the eyes!’

The Tungrian officers walked up the Viminal Hill as the sun was approaching its zenith, Julius wiping the sweat from his beard with an expression of disgust as Cotta walked out to meet them.

‘This bloody city’s too hot, too hilly and too bloody full of half-naked women for my liking.’

Scaurus looked about him, mopping at his damp forehead with a handkerchief.

‘At least the ladies distracted our bodyguard enough to cause them to fall behind and thus spare us the usual running commentary on the goods in the shop window.’

Marcus looked back down the hill, to see that the single prostitute their escort had stopped to talk to had swiftly been joined by half a dozen of her fellows. Scaurus grinned knowingly.

‘Well now, that’ll be hard for them to walk away from without incurring the wrath of the ladies. I suggest we get inside, before the shouting starts.’

Cotta tipped his head to indicate an empty shop up a side road opposite the house.

‘Before we do, Tribune, might I suggest that I stroll across and find out who that shop belongs to? If the price sounds sensible my suggestion would be that we rent it for whatever period will make the owner happy enough not to ask any questions as to what we’re doing with it?’

Scaurus looked across the street, sizing up the indicated building.

‘What an excellent idea, Centurion! Please do.’

The officers had only been inside the domus as long as it had taken for the barbarians to extricate themselves from the clutches of the group of irascible prostitutes and walk up the hill under a hail of abuse, look around them and declare that, whilst it was clearly a very nice house if you liked that sort of thing, there was really nothing quite like a wooden hall, when there was a knock at the door. Taking the arrival to be Cotta returning from his errand, Marcus answered it only to find Excingus waiting between a pair of the veteran centurion’s men.

‘Ah, Centurion, how nice to find you’ve already made yourselves at home. I was hoping that my small gesture wouldn’t go astray …’

Marcus waited expectantly, raising an eyebrow at the young centurion who stared back in bafflement for a moment before realising what it was that Excingus was waiting for.

‘Wait here, Excingus. I cannot invite you into my wife’s house without her knowledge and acceptance.’

Felicia frowned in disbelief, and as she opened her mouth Marcus was certain that she was about to flatly refuse the informant access to her house, but then she closed it again, smiled at her husband and nodded.

‘By all means, Marcus, invite the man in.’

Her husband stood and stared at her for a moment in disbelief before turning back to the door.

Excingus smirked at him before walking into the domus, looking around with an expression of satisfaction.

‘It’s nice to see the fruits of one’s labours being employed to good effect.’

Felicia greeted him with a stony face, her body stiff with anger.

‘If you have fond imaginings of some sort of a reconciliation between you and I, you’d be well advised to disabuse yourself of them. I’ll remind you that you participated in the murder of an innocent medical orderly and the abduction of a pregnant woman, in the company of a man whose clear intent was to rape and then kill me once I’d served the purpose of distracting my husband and thereby facilitating his murder.’

Excingus nodded.

‘No more and no less than I had expected, Domina.’

‘And if you expect your “only following orders” act to soften my ire, then again you are doomed to disappointment. You could have discharged your duty to seek and apprehend my husband without resorting to the depravity you had planned for me.’

‘And which you avoided by the less than civilised expedient of ramming a knife up into my colleague’s jaw?’

Felicia’s face hardened involuntarily at the memory, and Excingus was unable to prevent himself from flinching minutely at the ferocity of her expression.

‘Yes. And be warned, Informant, this is the first and last time that I will willingly accept your presence in this house. The next time you set foot inside my door, whether you come bearing either weapons or flowers, the result will be just the same.’

Excingus bowed.

‘Understood, Domina. But before I take my leave, might I have a brief word with your husband’s commanding officer? I believe he’s here?’

Scaurus stepped out of the dining room with a curt nod to the informant.

‘How can I help you, Varius Excingus?’

‘How can you help me? Or how might I help you, Tribune? I have information for you, news of a potential opportunity to strike at one of the Emperor’s Knives.’

‘And you want money for this information?’

Excingus smiled, shaking his head.

‘No, Rutilius Scaurus, I’m already quite satisfied financially. Senator Sigilis has established a generous schedule of reimbursement to reward me for the reduction in their numbers, by whatever means …’

Scaurus favoured him with a jaundiced look.

‘I see. And you’re presumably hoping that we will be the “means” by which you collect your payment?’

The former frumentari shrugged.

‘I had assumed that we had a shared interest. Perhaps I was mistaken in my belief that you were burning with the desire to right the wrong done to your centurion’s father, and so many other innocent victims of these men’s depredations?’

Scaurus nodded briskly.

‘Very well, we’ll play your game, Excingus, but not here. We’ll meet tomorrow morning then, as soon after dawn as you like. Come to the transit barracks on the Ostia road and ask for the Tungrians. Your safety is assured.’

‘I’d rather not—’

Scaurus barked a laugh, his grin lopsided with wry amusement.

‘I’m sure you’d much rather not come onto our ground, but then the choice isn’t yours to make, not unless you want to miss the opportunity to collect whatever generous bounty the senator has put on our, as yet unrevealed, target’s head. And now, Informant, I’d say that your welcome here has reached its limit. I suggest you leave before the doctor here changes her mind, and requests me to have you killed as recompense for the orderly whose murder you so casually ordered. It would be a request I would find hard to refuse.’

Excingus nodded dourly and turned for the door.

‘If you guarantee my safety then I will come to your camp. But be aware, gentlemen, that should you break that vow I will have left a very clear trail to your door.’

‘One more thing, Informant …’

He turned back in the doorway and made an exaggerated bow.

‘How might I help you further, Domina?’

Felicia walked forward and stared into his eyes.

‘What did you do with the previous occupants of this house?’

Excingus laughed softly.

‘Ah, so now that you have possession of your father’s house, you wonder what price was paid to allow you to walk back in. Worried that I had your former husband’s family put to the knife, are you?’

She held the stare, her lip curling in disgust.

‘It did cross my mind.’

His face creased into an affronted frown.

‘Then put it out of your mind, madam. This is Rome, not the sort of frontier village you’ve become used to, and I am most assuredly not given to the wanton acts of murder that are the emperor’s preserve. Your former brother-in-law and the rest of his family are safely tucked away somewhere not too far from here.’

He turned and left without waiting for a reply, leaving the Tungrians staring after him and the barbarians in particular fingering the hafts of the knives they had secreted about them. Julius shook his head in disbelief, raising an eyebrow at Scaurus.

‘Really, Tribune? We’re going to work with him after what he did in Britannia? He’ll sell us out without any hesitation whatsoever.’

The senior officer answered, still staring at the door through which Excingus had made his exit.

‘I see little choice. As of now we don’t even know which of the four of them he has in mind for this “opportunity”, so we either take the chance he’s presenting, with an eye open to the risk he presents, or we let it pass and give up on the whole thing.’

The two men stared at each other in silence for a moment before Cotta interjected.

‘I’d say that you’re both right.’ He gestured to Scaurus. ‘The tribune has it correct when he says that there’s no way we can take the vengeance we’re seeking without that man. But on the other hand, the first spear is right to say that we can trust that odious bastard no further than we can piss … begging your pardon ladies.’

Felicia and Annia smiled demurely, and the former soldier continued with his face slowly reddening.

‘Anyway … what I was going to say was that there might be a way to bring a greater element of trust to the relationship.’

Julius frowned in disbelief.

‘Greater trust? You’re suggesting that we might give that boot-scraped piece of shit the benefit of the doubt?’

Cotta shook his head.

‘Not exactly. The problem is that right now we only have two choices: either to trust him blindly or to kill him. One choice is recklessly naive, while the other ends any hope we have of taking revenge for the death of Marcus’s father. What I have in mind might just give us a third option.’

‘You don’t want to know, Marcus, leave it at that.’

Cotta shook his head firmly at his former protégée, his mouth set in a tight line of determination.

‘I have to know. I need to understand just how bad it—’

The veteran cut him off with a sweeping chop of his hand.

‘Just about as bad as you can imagine, for all the fact that you’ve seen the ugly face of war. Some things are just better not being discussed, or you’ll end up going mad simply because they were here and you weren’t.’

Marcus stood up and paced away across the small garden. Beyond the house’s wall the sounds of the city were ever present: the slap of feet on cobbles, the shouts of shopkeepers and street hawkers rising in an incessant discordant chorus. Scaurus had taken his escort of barbarians back down the hill, leaving the young centurion to spend the evening with his wife under the watchful eyes of his friend and several of Cotta’s men.

‘And that’s my point. I wasn’t here, but they were. My entire family gone, overnight, and me never any the wiser as to what happened to them. For all I know they may have been sold into sl—’ He fell silent at the look on his friend’s face, as Cotta’s last line of resistance crumbled. ‘What?’

‘Lucius.’

His face took on a haunted expression, and Marcus recalled that Cotta and the gladiator had started training his younger brother only the year before his own enforced exile to Britannia. He waited patiently for the former soldier to compose himself.

‘I heard later that Lucius was sold to one of Pilinius’s friends. Seems that the senator had no need of him, given the number of women who were taken from your father’s villa, so he disposed of him in return for enough money to buy himself a formal toga.’

Having broken his silence he was unable to stop talking.

‘Your mother and sisters were served up as part of one of Pilinius’s parties. I don’t know what happens behind the walls of his villa, but I do know what the end result is. One of the servants who got away in the confusion came to find me a few days later, and took me to the illegal dumping ground out past the Esquiline gate. Your sister Livia’s body was lying there naked, with its eyes already pecked out by the crows. We buried her, and searched the pits for anyone else from the household, but we didn’t find anything to tell us the fate of the rest of your family, or any of their household for that matter.’

Marcus looked at him for a moment, and imagined the revolting task of searching the infamous dump, strewn with rotting corpses and infested with vermin and wild dogs.

‘Thank you.’

The two men were quiet for a moment.

‘Your father was tortured, of course. They will have thrown his body in the main sewer to be flushed into the Tiber, I’d imagine.’

Marcus was silent for a moment longer.

‘I’m going to kill them all. Each and every one of the men who did this to my family are going to look me in the eyes as they die, and realise that they are no better than wild animals. And when I’ve killed all four of these Knives, I’ll only have one more man to deal with.’

Cotta put a hand on his arm, shaking his head slowly.

‘Do you remember when I used to tell you never to back down from a fight, or a slur on your honour? To hit any man that threatened you with either first, any way you could, and to keep on hitting him until he’d stopped fighting back?’

‘Yes. My father said much the same thing to me more than once, albeit somewhat less graphically.’

The veteran’s face was deadly serious.

‘Just this once, ignore us both. You have a wife and child, you have friends who respect you and a new life to enjoy. Take that prize and run with it Marcus, and ignore the bloody path that leads to revenge, or you’ll end up losing everything! There are more important things, as you’ll only find out the hard way if you go up against these men.’

He stared at his friend, and Marcus shook his head helplessly.

‘I know! Pilinius is too rich, Brutus is too well protected, Dorso lives in the praetorian fortress and Mortiferum is too fast with a sword even if I could get to him! But I have to try! Can’t you see that?’

Cotta nodded sombrely, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

‘Yes. Only too clearly. I just wish I could make you blind to it.’

The first cohort’s 6th Century were sitting around outside their barracks in the late-evening sun exchanging weary insults, bone-tired from a full day of exercise and training, when Qadir, the centurion commanding the 9th Century, walked around the corner with a dozen men in his wake. Quintus, the century’s chosen man and its leader in Marcus’s absence, leapt to his feet and bellowed for his men to do the same.

‘Attention! Get on your feet, you maggots!’

Qadir, the only one of the cohort’s officers to hail from the eastern end of the empire, waited until the soldiers were all standing erect before speaking, his heavily accented voice deceptively soft as he addressed Quintus.

‘Good evening, Chosen Man, and my apologies for interrupting your evening. The tribune has detailed me to form a small unit of men for a special task, and there are one or two of your men who, your centurion tells me, should have the requisite skills for the job.’

‘Yes, Centurion! What skills are you looking for, Centurion?’

Qadir smiled faintly at Quintus’s bellowed response.

‘I think the main requirement for the role would be that the soldiers in question must have absolutely no scruples, be possessed of a strong disregard for authority and be willing to do anything, no matter how unpleasant or indeed contrary to accepted standards of right and wrong. I told Centurion Corvus, of course, that he could be describing nine men out of ten in this cohort, but he replied that he had two very special individuals in mind. I presume that you have some idea of who he might have meant?’

Quintus nodded.

‘Oh yes, Centurion, I know exactly who the young gentleman had in mind.’ He raised his voice in a parade-ground bellow again.

‘Sanga and Saratos, front and centre!’