Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  The house was quiet; no work going on. Likely they had finished for the day, and the partially used stacks of bricks in the yard suggested they’d downed tools and left recently. For a moment, Fronto reached for the handle of the front door, his hand going to the purse at his belt, before he realised the locks had been changed and his key would be useless. Presumably the workmen kept the keys during rebuilding, as well as the keys to the locked store where all the furnishings, decorations and other goods of the house were contained until the work was complete.

  Frowning for a moment, not happy with the thought of having to break down his own door, a thought struck him and he made his way into the yard, tethering his horse to the gate and sidling between stacks of bricks and tiles, saw-benches and sacks of lime and of sand brought from Puteoli; bagged mere miles from the family’s estate. The side door of the house stood as he remembered, though slightly charred and as yet unreplaced.

  Some small irritated part of his soul complained silently about the slow progress of the workmen, but Faleria had been insistent on choosing the men who had the best reputation for completed work rather than the fastest.

  Hurrying across the yard, he was grateful to find the small plant pot with the Ceres decoration, upending it and retrieving the key to the yard door. Taking a deep breath, unsure as to what to expect from the house’s interior, he scurried across and opened the door with a click, swinging it inwards. The corridor running off left and right seemed to be in a completely charred and ruinous state. Work had not yet reached this part of the house and the floor was covered with cement-stained boards, empty sacks and small piles of materials.

  Resisting the urge to see what had become of the garden, he turned left. The atrium would be the first port of call for cash-gathering; then his mother’s room, and finally the oecus. Mother was old-fashioned and didn’t like even secretly buried money to be anywhere near the slave quarters.

  Shaking his head at the stained walls and ruined frescos, the cracked and broken marble floor and the general smell of cement and damp, he moved through to the atrium. The monochrome floor mosaic of a hunting scene was a uniform grey of cement dust, though it seemed to have suffered no damage. At last, as Fronto glanced towards the front door, he realised he’d reached the current point of work, and he had to admit that the refurbishment of the hall to the front door and the walls of the atrium had put them in probably better condition than he’d ever seen them. New paint was being applied to one of the walls, a sheet hung over it to prevent the dust in the air from damaging it.

  A chisel and hammer and a pile of white marble sat in a corner, where a craftsman was busy re-skirting the wall’s base with loving care.

  It almost seemed a shame that he was about to start creating extra work for them.

  Picking up the hammer and chisel, he moved across the mosaic to where an African man had speared a great cat and bore a look of amazement that had amused Fronto when he was a child. Carefully placing the chisel so as to damage the fewest tesserae possible, he tapped the top and began to deface the mosaic. The other two caches were sensibly buried beneath a single flag, but he remembered father being adamant that he wanted a hunting mosaic in the atrium because the fat and wealthy Scaurus had one. Mother had been unwilling to admit to having funds buried of which he was unaware and had watched with a straight face as the beautiful mosaic was laid over her first storage pot.

  Tap. Scrape. Tap. Scrape.

  A strange noise stopped him for a moment and he paused, the chisel held above the maimed African. Silence. After a moment he decided it was the sound of cats in the street outside somewhere. They were a menace in the neighbourhood.

  Tap. Scrape…

  There it was again. It wasn’t cats. Definitely not cats; and it appeared to be coming from inside the building.

  Suddenly alarmed, Fronto gently lowered the hammer and chisel to the floor and rose from his crouch, glancing at the kit bag that he’d dropped nearby. Crossing lightly on the balls of his feet, he bent down and withdrew his gladius from the bag, unsheathing it with a quiet hiss and dropping the scabbard back to the floor. Feeling a little more secure, he began to pad quietly into the corridor opposite the one from which he’d entered, glancing up briefly and noting the fading light in the sky. Evening was approaching and the shadows in the house were growing menacing.

  There was the noise again!

  Convinced now that it was coming from his mother’s room, Fronto crossed towards it tensely, sword gripped tight. His mother should still be safely at the villa in Puteoli with Posco and the slaves. This area of the house had apparently been completed, and a hanging sheet separated it from the current workspace, keeping the dust and mess from contaminating the finished work.

  The walls had been painted in the modern style, updated from the old look according to Faleria’s designs, mimicking open arches with gardens and landscapes beyond. The work was truly excellent, if a little slow. Faleria the elder’s door had been replaced with what appeared to be ebony, inlaid with a lighter wood. Even in his tense and worried state, Fronto found himself frowning with irritation at the door, wondering just how much the damned thing had cost. More than a centurion’s yearly pay probably.

  The strange, muffled noise was coming from behind the near-priceless ebony as he’d suspected – and he moved across, placing a hand on the bronze ring and gently pushing the door inwards. The portal swung on the hinge without a sound; no squeak or creak, oiled and balanced perfectly. His mother’s room, unfurnished, but completed and gloriously decorated, sat in deep shadow and Fronto peered into the gloom, trying to make out something other than the faint shape of the room itself.

  A heap on the floor caught his attention and he felt his heart skip a beat. It was a person. A body? A corpse? No, for it moved slightly and shuddered.

  A dreadful anticipation creeping across him, Fronto paced quietly across the room and crouched as he neared the heap. He felt a chest-freezing mix of joy and panic to realise that it was Faleria. Was she…?

  Gingerly, he dropped the sword to the perfect marble floor and reached for his sister, gently grasping her upper arms and rolling her over. His heart lurched again as her face came into stark relief in the light from the door.

  Her eye was swollen and discoloured and there was a huge black-purple patch on her left temple with dried trickles of blood down the side of her face. She had been hit hard enough to kill her, yet Faleria was made of sterner stuff.

  She groaned, barely conscious, and one eye flickered, unable to open fully, the other sealed shut by the beating. Grimacing and worried, he began to gently probe around her neck and shoulders, down her arms, then felt gently across her ribs, down to her hips and then her thighs, knees and ankles and feet. Other than the wound to her temple, she appeared to be intact and unharmed, for which he was grateful. The head wound may have been intended as a killing blow anyway, of course.

  If Clodius thought he was going to get away with this just by leaving her body for him to find, the scum had another thing coming. Presumably the weasel had received word that Fronto was on his way and had brought her here to unburden himself of her. There would be no direct proof of his involvement now, though Faleria could still accuse him. Undoubtedly that was why he’d had her brains smashed out – or so he thought.

  Leaving her, Fronto stood slowly. There were sacks and sheets here and there in the work areas. He could make up a temporary pillow and covering for her until he could speak to Balbus and arrange for a doctor. Despite his initial checks, he knew enough never to move someone in her condition until a professional had confirmed she was alright.

  His thoughts running rapidly through everything he was going to do to Clodius, Fronto left the room, striding back to the atrium, where he crouched and collected two sheets and a sack of used rags. Grinding his teeth, fury vying with concern for control of his brain, Fronto rose and turned to go and make Faleria comfortable.

  He froze to the spot as his eyes fell on the corridor to t
he peristyle whence he had originally entered the building. The diminishing light from the garden cast the shadow of a man on the wall: a man moving slowly and purposefully towards the atrium, the telltale shape of a gladius held in his hands.

  Still gripping the sheets, knowing that if he dropped them, he might make too much noise, Fronto began to pad almost silently back to the room where Faleria lay, grateful for the first time all year that he’d never exchanged the soft, quiet leather boots Lucilia had bought him for a pair of loud, hobnailed ones.

  Carefully, he lifted aside the hanging sheet that separated the completed part of the house and slipped past, lowering it gently so that it hardly moved with his passage. Past the sheet he could just make out the shape of a man with a sword silhouetted on the wall in the atrium, moving towards the impluvium pool at its centre.

  Quickly, he moved back to his mother’s room and passed within, feeling the first twinges of pain in his knee and willing it to hold as long as he needed. With a fresh speed, he danced across the room, dropping the sack next to Faleria and covering her with the sheet, so that she resembled at first glance one of the piles of rubbish the workmen had left.

  Her eye opened for a moment and, though he couldn’t be sure she’d see him or that she’d comprehend, he held a finger to his lips as he crouched and collected his sword.

  He’d done all he could do now, other than what he’d trained for all his life.

  Gripping his sword’s handle, he padded back out of the room, turned towards the atrium and strode purposefully forward, throwing the sheet dramatically aside.

  Tribune Menenius stood almost ghostly in the pale light

  * * * * *

  There was no preamble. Fronto, surprised by the tribune’s presence when expecting Clodius’ thugs, had faltered for a second and Menenius was on him instantly. In a flurry of blows, Fronto was driven back through the sheet, blocking as best he could and ducking and dancing out of the way of the flickering strikes that were coming so fast he could hardly credit it. Back in Germania Cantorix had described the tribune as ‘fast as a snake’, and now Fronto could see what the man had meant.

  Menenius was no novice with a blade; indeed, he was quite clearly the finest swordsman Fronto had ever seen, his movements lithe and economical. Wherever Fronto moved, Menenius was already there, that shining blade lancing out, swiping, sweeping, descending, rising, lunging, never even needing to block; Fronto simply didn’t have time to try and strike back, spending every heartbeat desperately trying to prevent himself from being skewered.

  His breath was coming in gasps already, while Menenius seemed to be hardly winded, a malicious grin plastered across his face.

  Strangely, despite the desperate circumstances, Fronto couldn’t help but notice the sword in the tribune’s hand. No legionary sword, this. Menenius’ gladius was a perfect blade. Noric steel with straight fuller running down the centre, the hilt formed of orichalcum and embossed with the images of deities. The handle, where he could see flashes of it moving, was of perfectly carved ivory. The sword was worth more than the damned ebony door. It was not the sort of sword carried by an ordinary soldier.

  Who was this Menenius?

  Back he moved again. Drawing his opponent past the open door to the room where his sister lay, Fronto kept his eyes on the man, desperately watching that dancing blade and barely reacting in time. His knee gave a warning wobble and he almost fell as he rounded the corner, heading towards the rooms where he, Priscus and Galronus had stayed the previous year.

  “You’re better than I thought, Fronto.”

  Menenius’ voice was light, as Fronto remembered, but mature and steady, lacking all the frivolity and foppishness he’d heard before.

  “You too.”

  “I’ll end it quickly for you if you don’t make me work for it. A proper soldier’s death?”

  Fronto sneered. “A proper soldier dies in battle, not submitting to a murderer. Is that the blade that killed Tetricus?”

  “Why yes, Fronto. It so happens it is.”

  The tribune was suddenly under his reach, slashing with the razor edge of the beautiful blade. Fronto felt it skitter across his ribs and hissed with the pain as he danced to the side and almost fell on his weakened knee.

  “So that will be your end, Fronto. Your knee can’t hold you when you have to move sharply left. Best keep your guard to the right, then, eh?”

  In a flash – a fraction of a heartbeat – the sword was withdrawn and then stabbed again, before Fronto could even bring his own gladius down in the way. The blade bounced off a rib again, only an inch below the previous cut, and he involuntarily moved away, his knee buckling and almost bringing him down. Panicked, he staggered a few steps away, realising with a sinking sensation that, not only was he hopelessly outclassed, he was backing into the corner, and when that happened it was all over.

  “Very good, you know?” Menenius complemented him. “Despite your weakness, you’re still the best I’ve faced all year.”

  “Not difficult” Fronto snapped, “given that the rest of them were sleeping or unawares.”

  The tribune laughed and the sound chilled Fronto to the bone.

  “You have no idea, Fronto. If you only knew the scale of my year’s work.”

  Fronto’s mind raced. Overconfidence? Perhaps he could trick Menenius into doing something foolish? The man was clearly supremely confident. No. He recognised instantly how dangerous such an attempt could be. The tribune was certainly confident, but also totally in control. Every move he made was calculated beforehand, faster than Fronto could credit. Menenius was not a man who would fall into the trap of overreaching himself.

  Which left only the unexpected.

  He saw the door to his room as he passed and realised he was almost at the corner and running out of time. The tribune’s blade lashed out again, this time higher, scarring a line across his bicep, though not enough to wound or incapacitate. Lurching left and wobbling on his knee, Fronto realised that Menenius was playing with him like a cat with a mouse. The bastard could have killed him ten moves ago or more. He was forcing him to put his weight on his weak knee and smiling maliciously every time that leg shook.

  With a sudden flash of realisation, Fronto knew what he could do; the only thing he could do. But it relied on Menenius moving first.

  The legate gave a pained hiss and his left leg trembled slightly.

  The blow came, exactly as Fronto expected, to his right hand side and high, to score across his shoulder. He allowed it to connect. If he was seen to feint, the tribune would know and counteract instantly. The man was simply that fast. Instead he had to play into Menenius’ expectations.

  As the blow drew blood, Fronto staggered on his bad left knee and fell. Even in the heartbeat it took, the tribune’s glorious sword came back for another blow, rising to drive down at his fallen opponent.

  But Fronto was not falling. His leg screaming agony at him, he pushed on his bad knee and rose again, coming up unexpectedly at the tribune’s side, out of the reach of his weapon.

  Swordplay forgotten, Fronto’s free fist lashed out and landed a skull-fracturing blow to the side of Menenius’ head. There was an audible crack and for a moment Fronto wondered whether he’d broken the man’s neck. But Menenius, stunned by the blow, simply folded up and fell to his knees, his broken jaw misshapen and hanging down at one side, blood gushing from his lips and his cheek where the Falerii signet ring had imprinted the Ursus symbol into his flesh.

  The tribune’s sword skittered away across the marble from numb fingers as his knees cracked to the floor.

  “I’d love to take the time to go through your crimes with you one by one” Fronto grunted as he stepped in front of the murdering tribune. Raising his sword, he reversed his grip and made ready to stab downwards. “I’m not playing your games though. Say hello to Hades for me.”

  The bulk-issue military gladius, pitted with marks from battles long past, a blade that had been with Fronto for two decades,
descended towards the point in Menenius’ neck where his collar bones met; a killing blow.

  And suddenly Fronto’s world exploded in agony. He’d been so intent on the strike that he’d not heard the tell-tale whup… whup… whup… of the sling. The lead bullet struck his hand where he gripped the hilt and he felt three fingers break under the blow, the sword almost launched from his hand to clatter across the floor, coming to rest next to the tribune’s own beautiful blade, and almost parallel.

  Fronto gasped with the astounding pain and stared down at his bloody, misshapen hand.

  How had he not anticipated this?

  Idiot!

  Tribune Hortius strolled calmly from Fronto’s own room, the perfectly oiled and silent door now standing open.

  “What a fool. I said we should just have jumped you together from the start, but my poor, dear friend has always had such a flair for showmanship. And a total self-belief. He simply could not conceive of a way you could beat him. I argued, but what can you do? He’s a friend.”

  The tribune had discarded the sling, allowing it to fall to the floor, drawing his sword as he moved into the room.

  “I would humbly say that I have a less inflated ego than dear Menenius. I may not be quite the swordsman he is, but I suspect you’d find that I’m still considerably better than average. And not quite so prone to showing off.”

  Fronto glanced across the floor at the swords and made to rise, his knee screaming at him in pain. Energetically and with impressive speed, Hortius danced across the room, placing a foot heavily over the fallen sword.

  “Oh, no. I’m not so subject to my own ego that I have to let you re-arm first. Step away from Menenius.”

  Fronto did so, slowly and quietly, backing shakily towards the side corridor and its guest rooms. The tribune gestured to his friend with his free hand. “Are you alright? Can you stand?”