The Emperor's Knives: Empire VII (Empire 7)

by Riches, Anthony

  ‘What the fuck do you want?!’

  Scaurus kept walking, his face set in an expression of respect and his empty palms spread wide.

  ‘Simply to express my respect for your achievements, Legatus. I read your book on the German Wars and was most taken with the brilliance of your tactics.’

  Marius sneered and turned back to the woman, raising his knife to make the kill.

  ‘Well now you’ve expressed them you can fuck off, you brown-nosing little b—’

  Without breaking stride, the tribune caught his raised knife hand, twisted his wrist and forced the blade down, ramming it into the gap between throat and collarbone.

  ‘What?! You …’

  Marius’s eyes rolled upwards as the expertly placed cut severed the blood supply to his brain, sagging in Scaurus’s grip. The tribune put a foot into the battered woman’s chest and pushed her over, dropping the legatus’s dead weight on top of her and hissing a command that he hoped would penetrate her addled consciousness.

  ‘Lie there and keep him on top of you if you want to live. Scream and move about without throwing him off and they’ll think he’s raping you.’

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly, but her rescuer was already in motion, walking quickly back towards the stairway down which he and Marcus had entered the hall.

  Avenus reached Pilinius and clasped his arm, nodding his approval at the evening’s entertainment.

  ‘You’ve surpassed yourself my friend, this is an evening we’ll look back on for years to come. I would have come over to pay my respects earlier, but I’ve been babysitting the two new boys you invited tonight, Scaurus and Corvus. Mind you, I don’t think much of either of them, to be honest with you. One of them took umbrage at the nature of our activity …’ He bent closer and assumed a confidential tone, missing the look of bafflement on Pilinius’s face. ‘I had your men take him outside, with instructions to deal with him quickly and quietly. The other one just wants to watch people being killed, from the sound of it. A typical legion man, no sophistication at all …’

  He fell silent, realising that Pilinius was staring at him with a perplexed expression.

  ‘New boys? What new boys? Do you really think I’m stupid enough to invite strangers to an evening where we’re dismembering the next best thing to the imperial family, you fool!’

  Avenus raised his eyebrows in protest.

  ‘But he’s just over there watching Marius do his usual stab and stare! He’s a tribune from Britannia—’

  He fell silent and recoiled a pace at the expression on Pilinius’s face.

  ‘Where is he?!’

  The senator turned to follow Avenus’s pointing hand, but all either of them could see was the legatus’s body atop his writhing prize, her screams and cries of pain barely audible over the room’s din.

  ‘Well, he was there a moment ago.’ Avenus scanned the room. ‘Look, there he is!’

  Pilinius turned and shouted at the men behind him.

  ‘Guards! To me!’

  Scaurus ran for the stairway, pointing back at the crowd behind him and shouting to the single man standing guard on the exit from the hall.

  ‘There, look!’

  His thrown knife served to do no more than distract the man, flying high and wide of its target, but he was on top of the guard too quickly for him to do any better than half draw his sword. Driving him back against the wall, he grabbed his opponent’s hair and battered his head against the cold stone and then, while he was still reeling from the concussion, ripped the weapon free from its scabbard and rammed it between the man’s ribs. Cries of consternation were filling the hall now, as the guests realised what was happening, and Pilinius stepped out of their press with a pair of his men on either side. A hush fell as he stepped forward, only the incessant cries and moans of those of Perennis’s slaves who were being vigorously raped breaking the silence. The senator pointed at Scaurus, his face contorted with anger.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, stranger, but I know what I’m going to do to you.’

  The tribune grinned back at him, lifting the dead guard’s sword to forestall any attempt to rush him.

  ‘Oh, but you do know who I am. Your friend Avenus has already told you, I’m a tribune recently returned from Britannia. And I didn’t come back alone, Pilinius, I brought a friend with me. A man called Marcus.’

  The senator laughed at him, shaking his head.

  ‘Marcus? Is the name supposed to hold some significance for me? And where is this “Marcus” now? Avenus here had my guards take him outside with orders to deal with him.’

  Scaurus shook his head, tutting.

  ‘There’s me failing to make proper introductions yet again. My apologies, Senator. My name is Gaius Rutilius Scaurus, tribune commanding the First and Second Tungrian cohorts. And my friend? His full name is Marcus …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Valerius.’ A smile crept across his face at the sudden widening of Pilinius’s eyes. ‘But you know his last name, don’t you?’ He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. ‘And as to where he is …?’

  Pilinius leaned forward slightly in spite of himself.

  ‘He’s behind you.’

  The men facing him turned to find that in the short time that their attention had been fixed on Scaurus, a dozen armed men had filed quietly through the door in the far wall, their shields set in an unbroken line in front of which stood a single man with a sword in each hand. He walked forward, ignoring the three guards advancing on him with their swords drawn.

  ‘Tiberius Asinius Pilinius!’

  The first man sprang in to attack with an incoherent scream, but the newcomer barely broke his stride as he pushed the sword wide with the long-bladed spatha in his right hand before punching the shorter gladius in his left deep into his attacker’s belly. He shouldered the stricken guard off his blade and continued his advance, staring grimly at the other two men before him.

  ‘Tiberius Asinius Pilinius! My name is Marcus Valerius Aquila! In the name of Nemesis I have come for you!’

  The two remaining guards attacked together, but their attacks were poorly coordinated and the lone swordsman parried both blades with ease before spinning low and hacking the nearest man’s leg off at the knee. The remaining guard backed away with a look of terror, and Marcus called out to his quarry again.

  ‘Surrender yourself, Pilinius! Surrender to me now and these other men can go free!’

  The senator turned and ran for the stairs, but in the distraction of Marcus’s fight with his guards Scaurus had quietly stepped into the stairway and swung the massive iron gate closed behind him. He slid the heavy bolts home and grinned at Pilinius as he pulled uselessly at the metal grille, shaking his head sympathetically.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Senator. It seems that the time has come for you to face the reality of what happens when monstrous crimes like these catch up with you. And here come your friends …’

  Half a dozen of Pilinius’s guests descended upon him, clearly intent upon taking Marcus up on his offer of clemency. Their host managed to cling on to the gate’s iron bars for a moment, but the strength of the men dragging him away was not to be denied. Taking a limb apiece they hauled him kicking and shouting in front of the waiting centurion, one of his guards stepping in to snap a powerful punch into his temple to quieten his protests. Marcus walked slowly forward with his swords raised, scanning the crowd of men before him with disgust.

  ‘Drop your weapons and get back against the far wall. Any man found with a knife will die alongside this animal!’

  Guests and guards backed away slowly, their swords and knives clattering to the stone floor, and Marcus looked across the room at the slaves still standing in their places on the robbers board.

  ‘Cotta, get these people out into the garden. All except for Perennis’s wife. Bring her to me.’

  He returned his gaze to his intended victim, squatting to look into the senator’s face.

  ‘You killed my father.’

 
; Pilinius looked back at him with a hint of defiance in his stare, as his wits returned.

  ‘We took your father alive and gave him to the praetorians. Whatever happened to him is on their hands, not mine. I can tell you who else—’

  ‘Save your breath for the screaming. I know who else was involved.’ Marcus raised his gladius to silence the senator’s attempt to buy his way out of what was coming with information the centurion already possessed. ‘You killed my mother.’

  Pilinius nodded.

  ‘We did. She took it bravely th—’

  The sword’s point jabbed towards his face, stopping inches from his eyes.

  ‘Not we. You. You built this place specifically for the purpose of the torture, rape and murder of innocent women and children taken from the homes and families of the men Perennis set you to murder, didn’t you? These men …’ He swept the sword point up to gesture at the guests huddled against the far wall. ‘These scum are indeed culpable for those evil acts, but without you they would never have had power over so many innocents. Over my mother.’

  Cotta coughed behind him, and Marcus turned to find him holding Perennis’s wife by the arm. She was crying, and holding her ripped tunic closed with one hand to cover her nakedness.

  ‘Might we afford the dignity of a cloak for this lady, do you think?’

  Cotta nodded, walking across to the wall where the guests’ cloaks hung from pegs, selecting a good thick garment and carrying it back to drape over the woman’s shivering body. Marcus nodded his thanks and then spoke to the dead prefect’s wife in a firm voice.

  ‘Madam, your husband ordered the destruction of my family, the deaths of my father, my sisters and my brother. Doubtless many more members of our household died here, in ways that you can imagine only too clearly given the squalid scenes we have both witnessed here tonight, ways that you and your family would have been subjected to had we not intervened. I hated your husband for that crime, I participated in his downfall and my only regret, to be frank with you, is that he did not die at my hands. However …’

  He shook his head at Pilinius in disgust.

  ‘I cannot condone such animal behaviour, even when directed at the family of my enemy. You will go free, Madam, although you would be wise to disappear into the depths of the city and never again use the name Perennis, unless you want to fall into the hands of another man like this one. Perhaps your former slaves will help you to survive, if you treated them decently before the end of your former life?’

  She nodded helplessly, her face bleak as the terms under which she had been spared from Pilinius’s debauched games sank in.

  ‘But before we turn you loose, you have one more decision to make. How should this man die?’

  The woman looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before realisation dawned.

  ‘You offer me the chance to visit upon him the indignity and agony he intended for me and my daughter.’ Marcus nodded. ‘Then just kill him. I have no use for the memory of his agony.’

  Cotta ushered her away, and Marcus raised an eyebrow at Pilinius.

  ‘If you’re ready? You might want to go to meet your ancestors with some small shred of pride intact.’

  The senator closed his eyes, screwing his face up against the expected agony, but when Marcus stepped in it was to chop at the kneeling man’s throat with the palm of his empty right hand. Pilinius fell choking to the floor, his body writhing as he fought for breath that could not pass his swollen and broken throat, his eyes bulging in horror as he stared up at his killer.

  Marcus stepped over the dying man, gesturing to Cotta for the guest’s weapons to be collected as he addressed them.

  ‘I promised you men your freedom if you gave him up!’

  Avenus stepped out of the throng.

  ‘So let us go! You have no right to—’

  He gasped as the longer of Marcus’s swords whipped out and opened his throat, dropping to his knees with a horrible bubbling gurgle as his lifeblood ran down into his lungs, then fell forward onto the stone floor in a spreading pool.

  ‘Would anyone else like to debate my rights with you, now that we’ve restored some order?’

  Silence reigned for a moment before he spoke again, the spatha’s bloodied blade levelled at his aghast audience.

  ‘You bastards have no more right to life than he did. How many of you took part that night my family was destroyed? How many of you “deflowered” my sisters? And what of my brother, for those of you with a “taste for a shapely boy”? Killing you all would remove a canker from this city’s heart, a cabal of perverted, sadistic monsters who should have been strangled at birth!’

  Scaurus strolled across to join him, hefting his own sword.

  ‘And to strike a more practical note, gentlemen, how many of you will seek revenge for this indignity against your exalted personages, eh? You were quick enough to surrender Pilinius, a man whose friendship you held dear until a moment ago, so is that the measure of your honour? You’ll swear to a man to forget all that has happened tonight, I’m sure of that, and yet I expect that tomorrow morning the city will be hunted from end to end by your informants, all of them greedy for the huge rewards you’ll offer for the man that provides you with the information that will bring us to bay. You, Secretary!’

  Belenus stepped forward, his face an essay in hope, and the tribune hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘You’ll have your freedom, as the reward for betraying your master, but you’ll pay half of everything you own into a temple of Mithras as your grateful expression of thanks for Our Lord’s intercession on your behalf. Send word to me as to which temple you choose to take the money, and if you fail to do so within a week you can be assured that I’ll find you and kill you myself. Get out.’

  The freedman hurried past the two soldiers with a look of gratitude, and Scaurus returned his gaze to the remaining captives, knowing that they were close to rampaging forward despite the swords’ threat.

  ‘Centurion Cotta!’

  ‘Tribune!’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What do I think, Tribune?’

  ‘Indeed. You strike me as a man with the nerve to order these men’s deaths if you feel they deserve it, and the wit to have mercy on them if you feel it deserved. I leave it in your hands.’

  Cotta was silent for a moment, as if reflecting on the question, sweeping a cold stare across the men before him. He raised his sword, pointing it at them and raising his voice to shout a command.

  ‘No! Prisoners!’

  Albinus was waiting when they opened the villa’s rear gates, his bodyguards standing in a protective arc around him as the Tungrians walked out into the street. He stared in silence as Cotta’s men guided the first of the wagons through the gates, terrified women staring out from between its rear flaps. As the second wagon followed it away down the hill, and the gates were pulled to, he found his voice at last.

  ‘Rutilius Scaurus. I knew if I waited here for long enough you’d saunter out through those gates.’

  The tribune gave him a tired glance.

  ‘Centurion Cotta, if that man or any of his party so much as twitch a hand for their weapons you have my express order to kill them all.’ He shook his head at the incensed senator, waving a hand as if to dismiss him. ‘You’re too late, Decimus. Centurion Aquila’s vengeance on Asinius Pilinius is complete, and all that’s left for you is to slip away into the darkness before what’s left of the senator and his guests are discovered and it all gets rather more exciting round here than we might like. And remember, my threat to expose you as having stolen a fortune in imperial gold still stands, in case you or anybody in your pay feel like informing on us.’

  He turned to walk away and then, as another thought struck him, turned back.

  ‘Oh, and the next time you see our mutual informant Excingus, you might want to do two things – you can give him a message from me and then you can ask him a question for both of us.’

  Albinus sh
ook his head in apparent exasperation.

  ‘Still making demands are you? Go on then, what is it you want me to tell the informant?’

  ‘Only the obvious. Not to make the mistake of thinking that he’ll get away with this last act of treachery. As of this moment his charmed life is on borrowed time, and the next time I see him I’ll have his head!’

  The senator nodded.

  ‘And the question?’

  ‘It’s the same question you’ll be asking him, if you get the chance. That greasy bastard contacted you before Dorso died in the fire, didn’t he? He could have tipped you off to the fact that we were coming for the praetorian that night, but he didn’t. Why? Then, when he led the centurion here to Brutus’s hiding place, the ideal opportunity for him to have delivered my man to you without our ever having known the truth, he didn’t. And lastly, when he tipped you off to the fact that we would be making our move on Pilinius tonight, he failed to mention the one thing you had to have if you were going to take advantage of the information …’

  He raised a hand to display his invitation, the silver rectangle winking red in the torchlight.

  ‘After all, he knew all too well that you’d never get into one of Pilinius’s special parties without one of these. I’m keeping mine as a souvenir of the night when I cleansed this city of some of its worst men. So, why didn’t he procure an invitation for you, Senator? It wouldn’t have been that difficult, given that he had Pilinius’s secretary over a barrel.’ He turned away again, calling back over his shoulder. ‘I think I’ve worked it out …’

  6

  Marcus rose before sunrise, having slept fitfully. Sitting on the bed, he mused briefly on Scaurus’s final words in the officers’ meeting the previous evening.

  ‘Last night we did a great service to Rome, gentlemen. We removed a dozen of the most depraved men in the Senate, and with a little luck we will have knocked a large enough hole in their ranks for a little fresh air to get in. And, let us not forget, we have also dealt out justice to the third of the men who slaughtered our colleague’s family. However …’ Marcus had already known what was coming next. ‘I can see no way that we’ll be able to bring that justice to the fourth of them. For one thing we no longer have the dubious services of the informant Excingus on our side.’