‘Cheering thought,’ Rufinus muttered. ‘You’ve not yet told me how we deal with around a dozen Praetorians on our own. We can’t risk Perennis. Our job is to save him, so he needs to play dead and stay out of it. It’s just the two of us.’
‘And Acheron,’ smiled the frumentarius.
‘Wonderful. Four each, then?’
Vibius Cestius chuckled. ‘It’s no good you telling young Perennis to trust me if you don’t.’
‘Tell me you have a plan.’
‘I have a plan.’
‘A good one?’
‘Is there any other kind?’
‘Yes,’ grunted Rufinus unhappily.
The door of the mansio suddenly crashed inwards and two bedraggled Praetorians pushed into the room and took up positions to either side of the entrance. Neither carried a shield or wore a helmet, but both were armoured in mail and with a gladius in hand, wet through, stern faced, and ready for business.
‘Here we go.’
As Rufinus drew his blade again and took up his dagger in his left hand, Cestius armed himself with his beautiful silver-hilted spatha, the two of them standing side by side in the centre of the room, halfway between the door and the body lying on the table near the fire. A large shape loomed in the doorway and then entered, his face a grim snarl. Quintus Oppius Glabrio was ready for a fight, his sword twitching in his hand as he took five paces into the light and the dry, dripping and shaking, his cloak voluminous but clinging to him. Rufinus was suddenly struck by how unpleasant the last three days must have been out in the woods. Behind Glabrio, other Praetorians began to file into the room. Rufinus counted past twelve, and his heart thumped with extra panic as the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth men entered. Acheron was by his side now, snarling, black, dripping lips pulled back from vicious white fangs.
Fifteen men against two and a dog.
‘It’d better be a bloody good plan,’ he murmured out of the side of his mouth.
‘Glabrio, you look damp,’ Cestius smiled. ‘How miserable for you.’
A small tic appeared on the cavalry officer’s face, his left lower eyelid jumping repeatedly.
‘I will offer you all this warning once only,’ Vibius Cestius announced, loud and with a deep, oratorical tone. ‘As one of his imperial majesty’s grain men, and bearing all the authority of great Commodus himself, I can confirm that you men are here without imperial consent on a private matter of revenge for your commander here. I will be willing to overlook your failure in this regard if you immediately sheathe your weapons, mount up and return to Rome. If you do not comply with this request, then you condemn yourselves and I will not be held responsible for what follows.’
Rufinus almost laughed. It seemed so utterly nonsensical. Not a single figure moved, nor even blinked, in response to Cestius’ speech.
‘Your gamble failed, I think,’ Rufinus mumbled.
‘What gamble?’ the frumentarius smiled. ‘I was being perfectly genuine.’
‘You are completely insane, you know that?’ Rufinus muttered as those few Praetorians who were not already armed drew their swords.
‘Don’t let my eyes fool you. I am perfectly sane. And I know what I’m doing.’
Finally, his eyelid still dancing, Glabrio stepped forward.
‘Your threats are idle, old man. The frumentarii hold no authority over the Guard, and I have Cleander’s sanction, which is, in effect, that of the emperor. I’m pleased to see the job was done and Perennis has been disposed of, even if it took you to do it and not the young hero here. But now, sadly, you’re both entirely dispensable.’
At a gesture from the cavalryman, the two rear Praetorians shut and barred the main door and the others began to spread out, sealing off the doorway to the back rooms and the stairs to the next floor. Cestius didn’t seem bothered.
‘Well, I warned you,’ Vibius Cestius smiled. ‘And I said it would be the only warning you got.’
Straightening as though on parade, the odd man in the black tunic cleared his throat.
‘Beati manus imperator!’
Rufinus frowned. What was the frumentarius up to?
Glabrio laughed. ‘I was looking forward to gutting the pup there for what he did to my friends, but the chance to take down another damned grain man is too tempting. Which of you to kill first, I wonder?’
Glabrio turned, startled, at a blood-curdling shriek. Rufinus, himself surprised, looked over the cavalryman’s shoulder at the same place as a second screech rang out. Two of the Praetorian near the door had turned on their own men. One had driven his blade through a colleague’s gut from behind, the crimson tip jutting upwards through the front, just below the breast bone, as the victim gurgled and shrieked. The other had slammed his gladius into the neck of the man next to him, straight through an artery and cleaving through throat and windpipe, creating the most phenomenal fountain of blood.
Glabrio was staring in shock. Rufinus glanced at the frumentarius by his side, who shrugged.
‘Why are you surprised? I thought the thing everyone hated most about us was that we infiltrated military units.’
And the killing began. As though a dam had been breached at the mansio’s door, the death of the first two Praetorians triggered the action. The two apparent frumentarii at the rear, each wearing white Praetorian tunics, moved to stand with their backs to the barred door as they faced men who had for months thought them allies. The remaining eleven Praetorians in the room scattered like the seeds of a pomegranate dropped from a height, some closing on the two new enemies at the rear, others making for Rufinus and Vibius Cestius. Two particularly brave men closed on Acheron, who was snarling and tensing to leap. One lucky fellow moved toward the door to the rear rooms, presumably intending to remove all witnesses.
‘Two?’ Cestius smiled, peering at his colleagues by the door. ‘Good. I was only expecting one.’
Glabrio came at Rufinus, two of his men jostling to get to Cestius first. The young Praetorian caught just a momentary glance of the frumentarius raising his blade and turning aside the first two blows one-handed, his other arm still useless in the sling, and then he had to concentrate on Glabrio.
The cavalry officer snarled bestially as he swung his longer blade wide and low, striking for Rufinus’ unprotected legs. The young guardsman spun slightly and dropped his right hand, using the gladius to turn aside the long blade, which still narrowly missed his thigh. Glabrio was no novice and, rather than allow Rufinus to take advantage of his opening up for the swing, the cavalryman turned with it, slamming his shoulder into his heavy-set opponent, knocking him back. Rufinus, winded, was surprised at the weight of the blow, which felt more like a punch with a cestus gauntlet than a mere shoulder.
Rufinus staggered a little, but years in the arena had given him excellent balance and a talent for quick recovery from such moves. Even as he danced aside on his left foot, he jabbed out with his dagger. Glabrio skidded to a halt, his arm coming up to block the blow. It was only then that Rufinus realised the cavalryman was wearing a manica – a sleeve of segmented armour plates – on his shield arm, and that was what had hurt so much with the shove. Rufinus’ dagger skittered along the plates and bounced into the air again harmlessly.
The two men pulled apart once more and Rufinus caught a momentary glimpse of Acheron with his jaws around a man’s knee, shaking him like a rag doll. He winced as a flailing blade opened up a raw pink line through the black hair on the animal’s back, but if Acheron even noticed he paid no attention, snapping his jaws shut and smashing his victim’s knee with his powerful teeth.
Then Glabrio was there again, forcing his attention back to the fight. The cavalryman lashed out with his plated arm, mimicking an old-fashioned legionary shield-barge, partially in the hope of inflicting damage, but mostly intended to distract Rufinus’ attention from the long sword that was coming down in a scything blow toward his neck at a sharp angle.
Now, the man was playing to Rufinus’ strength. The barging arm was almost a boxing
move.
Rufinus ducked under the manica toward its wearer, helpfully also dropping him out of the direct path of the sword blow in the process. The press here was too tight to bring his gladius to bear, but his dagger jabbed out hard instead. He felt the brief resistance of the mail shirt but, while the armour formed of tight, interlinked rings, was excellent at absorbing blows and stopping edges, it surrendered easily to a sharp point. The dagger burst through the armour, scattering iron links across the floor, and plunged into Glabrio’s side. It was nowhere near a killing blow, but it felt good nonetheless.
As the cavalryman pulled back, hissing with pain, Rufinus saw his opening and came in for a truly crippling blow with his gladius.
Instead, he suddenly lurched and cried out, staggering to the side as a blade bit into his hip.
He turned in agony and shock to see a man with a savaged, tattered leg lurching across the floor, swiping at him again and again. Acheron’s recent victim could not stand, but had taken the opportunity to draw blood from Rufinus while the terrifying hound gnawed on another Praetorian instead.
Rufinus gasped as the blood poured through his white tunic in moments, starting to soak his leg in rivulets. Taking advantage of the moment’s reprieve from his recoiling enemy, he stabbed down at the wounded man on the floor, once – turned aside, twice – dodged, a third time, and his blade drove into the man’s neck from above, deep into the hollow of his chest.
He barely had time to twist and rip the blade free before Glabrio was on him again with a roar.
Rufinus staggered back on his wounded hip, gasping and hissing with the pain as the cavalryman’s long sword slashed back and forth in an inelegant, frenzied attempt to wound by sheer number of strikes if not through accuracy. Rufinus backed away more and more, his leg trembling, and found himself suddenly against a table, a boot in his back.
Desperately he raised his gladius and turned aside a blow from the maddened horseman, then flailed with his dagger, only to have it battered back with an armoured sleeve. He tottered to the side, his hip giving a little under the strain, and the cavalryman’s blade took a sliver from his upper arm before thudding down heavily into the timber of the table.
Rufinus felt a surge of panic. He was better than this. He was better than Glabrio, and he knew it, but that unexpected blow to his hip had weakened him and ruined his balance, and had consequently tipped the scales in favour of his enemy. Now, Glabrio had the upper hand and was driving him back, forcing him to fight for his very life.
He lanced out again with the gladius, but the manica turned it as Glabrio lifted his blade for another blow.
Which never fell.
Rufinus turned in shock to see young Perennis, pale and coated with blood, half-raised on the table, his own sword bared and bloody from where he had struck Glabrio in the side. It had been little more than a distraction – a flea bite to a horse – due to the cavalryman’s armour and the lack of strength in the wounded legate. But it had bought Rufinus precious time.
Growling with fresh purpose, he pushed back.
Glabrio fell away, and now Rufinus was on him, regaining the upper hand.
‘Bastard,’ he snarled, as he stabbed out with his gladius, which Glabrio knocked aside with some difficulty. The dagger came forth again and slammed into the mail shirt. The cavalryman yelled in pain and Rufinus, fury now all-but in control of him and overriding the pain, left the dagger jutting from the man’s pelvis just inside the hip, a strange reflection of Rufinus’ own wound. The young guardsman stepped back, watching as Glabrio staggered this way and that, his leg refusing to obey him properly. Without looking, Rufinus held out his open hand behind him and clicked his fingers.
Perennis’ gladius obediently slapped hilt-first into his palm and he wrapped his fingers around the bone hilt, straightening, a deadly sword in each hand, now.
‘Bastard,’ he said again, this time in a low, menacing voice.
Glabrio swung at him, but he knocked away the blade contemptuously.
‘Bastard.’
Rolling his shoulders, Rufinus began to swing the blades in wide arcs, one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. He took a step forward, and then another, carefully, favouring his good leg, the pain in his hip intense. But if there was anything that torture and addiction had taught Rufinus, it was how to handle pain. He clenched his teeth on the effects and overrode them, determined to end the cavalryman. Glabrio stepped back from the whirling gleam of steel that was advancing toward him, his face jerking this way and that, trying to keep an eye on both blades as they moved impossibly in opposite directions.
‘Bastard!’
And suddenly the cavalryman stopped backing away, for behind him, a bulky, black shape issued a menacing growl. Glabrio’s eyes widened. Seething black murder lay behind him, and spinning steel death in front.
Acheron lunged with a snap and a large piece of the cavalryman’s calf disappeared into the beast’s slavering, blood-drenched maw.
Glabrio screamed.
And Rufinus slammed home both blades, one into the man’s neck, just above the collar of his mail shirt and through the grey cavalry scarf, the other into that very open, screaming mouth where it cleaved flesh and bone and chipped and shattered teeth.
‘Bastard,’ said Rufinus once more, his voice now little more than a whisper. He wondered if Acheron understood that this was one of the men who had killed Dis – possibly even the man who had brutally slaughtered Cerberus, the dog’s brother. But Acheron would have seen them all do it at the time, and he had a good, long memory. From the aura of savage satisfaction the beast emitted as he opened his jaws and a sizeable piece of leg fell out, Rufinus felt certain that Acheron understood.
Glabrio staggered, already dead, but still aware, staring almost cross-eyed at the blade jammed in his own face. He tried to shout something, or possibly to scream, but the sword blade was jammed vertically in his mouth and all that came out was a crackly gurgle and bits of tooth.
That, and blood. An awful lot of blood.
Rufinus stared into those crossed eyes, the horror of what was happening to him insisting itself on Glabrio’s dying-yet-conscious brain. Rufinus had always been unable to do this. It had been unthinkable to watch a man’s spirit die. Since that day he had seen it happen to Lucius in that forest in Hispania, he had been unable to do it again, even to barbarian enemies in the battles north of Pannonia. Until the betrayal of Paternus. He had watched the man who had been almost a father figure for a while die in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine hill. He had watched the man’s spirit depart his eyes, and a spell had been broken. And while he was still far from comfortable with such a sight, it came as a small surprise that in this particular case, he was relishing the opportunity to see it happen. And more… with no coin beneath his tongue, Glabrio would not be able to pay Charon to cross the river of the dead. And unless the peaceful departed were willing to help him – which seemed unlikely – Glabrio would probably wander the world forevermore, one of the formless lemures.
Glabrio gagged once more and his eyes defocussed, his ruined leg shaking wildly. Rufinus realised that the only reason the dead man was still upright was his own grip on those two swords. Taking a deep breath, he yanked the blades from their resting places, wincing at the shudder-inducing sound of blade grating through bone. The cavalryman collapsed in an expiring heap.
The fight was almost over. One of the frumentarii by the mansio’s door was on the ground, immobile, the other was fighting with his left arm, the right hanging useless by his side, but was still holding his own. A small heap of dead men lay before him. Another pair of corpses lay in the middle of the room, savaged by the furious maw of Acheron. And even as he turned to Cestius, the frumentarius was busy finishing the last man.
Rufinus tried to walk across the room to help the one-armed frumentarius by the door finish his opponent but now that the adrenaline was ebbing the pain of his hip was starting to make itself felt more, and within two steps he had stopped and
leaned on a chair. Cestius turned to him.
‘See? I told you everything would work out well.’ He called across to the one by the door. ‘Best go finish the one who went into the back rooms.’ The man nodded and made for the door.
Rufinus shook his head, not in denial of anything, but in simple disbelief.
It was over.
Glabrio was dead. They were safe…
No. They were not safe. Far from that, in fact.
‘I wonder if they did send a man to Rome with news that Perennis was dead?’ Rufinus muttered as the corpse of the legate of the Tenth sat up on the table, clutching his bleeding shoulder and breathing heavily.
‘It matters not. Cleander is a thorough man. He will want to know, not to be told.’
Rufinus frowned. ‘So what do we do?’
‘Now that,’ Cestius smiled, ‘is why I have been gathering so many things.’
XXIII – Of captives and corpses
January 26th 185AD
Rufinus stood with spine so straight and shoulders thrust so far back that he worried about falling over backward. It was not out of respect for this man who was now his commander, of course. Far from that, in fact. Nor was it any level of respect for the other men in the room, each of whom had silently, unwittingly added their names to Rufinus’ list simply by association with the new prefect. In fact, with the throbbing pain in his hip, if he slouched in any way, his leg twitched and threatened to give way. Only through rigidity could he stand with any level of comfort. Cestius made a passable combat medic, even if his bedside manner would distress a vulture.
Cleander strolled around the table, tapping his lip. Rufinus had a sudden flash of memory – an image of this man, four years younger but looking almost the same, standing in a corridor of the imperial complex at Vindobona in the aftermath of the old emperor’s death. A slightly chubby face, now a little leaner perhaps, steely grey eyes that looked strangely otherworldly, brown wavy hair, receded from the forehead and now running more and more to grey, a neatly clipped beard. But no longer in the plain grey tunic of a freedman, nor the breeches they had all worn in the cold north. No, now Cleander stood in a richly-embroidered toga as though he were a Roman noble and born to it, not some Bithynian slave who’d climbed the steps of power and grasped Commodus’ tunic hem, dragging himself to the top of the heap.
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