Altar of Blood: Empire IX (2 page)

He dragged the knife backwards, severing the finger with a single pull of its ragged edge, staring into the Roman’s eyes as they slitted with the pain, nodding slowly as the captive met his stare, then said two words in Latin that only the victim would ever hear.

‘Forgive me.’

‘Now then, here’s a rarity, eh lads?’

The figure who had strutted out of the night’s deeper shadows spoke with the confidence of a man who knew that he had the upper hand in whatever it was that was about to happen. Lean and hard muscled, he grinned in apparent amusement, the dagger in his right hand glinting in the glow of a crescent moon and countless stars. Insulae rose around them in rough-faced rows, lights extinguished and shutters firmly closed to keep out the sounds and smells of the Roman night, a time when robbers roamed the streets and the population’s rubbish and faeces littered the cobbles. There would be no help forthcoming for any man foolish enough to find himself alone in such a place after dark.

‘A man with money who chooses to walk through this part of the city at this time of night needs to have his wits about him, or better still a gladiator or two. He needs to have hired big men, friends, ugly men with scars and blades. Men he can depend on to scare bad people like us away, and bring him home safe.’

The robber strolled towards the lone pedestrian standing in the road before him with the easy gait of a man taking his leisure, grinning wolfishly at the tunic-clad man he and the men behind him had interrupted in his progress through the fetid streets of Rome’s Subura district, stopping a few paces from the subject of his wry monologue. More men coalesced out of the night to either side of him, stepping forward to reveal their ragged clothes and hard faces.

‘And yet here you are, unarmed and all on your own, without so much as a well-built slave to steer you clear of trouble. It’s not clever, not with you so clearly being a man with a lot to lose. Look at those shoes lads, that’s proper workmanship. Worth a gold aureus to the right man, they are. And that tunic? What sort of man walks the streets of Rome after dark on his own in a tunic with a purple stripe on it? Your purse must be weighing you down like a bull’s ball bag. And you’ll have a house somewhere a good deal nicer than this shithole, probably with a pretty little wife waiting for you to get home and see to her needs …’

A more alert man would have seen the look that momentarily contorted his would-be victim’s face, but the robber was too busy enjoying the opportunity for sport in front of his fellow gang members.

‘She’ll be expecting you home, once you’re done with whatever it is you’ve been doing down here in the slums. So it’s going to be quite a shock for her when
we
come through the door, isn’t it?’

He smiled into his victim’s flat expression.

‘Of course, you’re thinking that you won’t tell us where your house is …’

He gestured with the dagger, raising it to allow the other man a clear view of the weapon.

‘… but you will. Once we get to work on you you’ll tell us everything, give us anything, just to stop.’

He tapped the blade.

‘I favour the soft spot between the balls and the arsehole, personally. Half an inch of sharp iron inserted just so reduces most men to screaming agony in less time than it takes for a snuffed candle to stop smoking. You’ll tell us where your home is, you’ll shout for the doorman to let you in … you’ll do whatever it takes to stop the pain.’

Leaning forward, he grinned at the man standing before him.

‘So, friend, shall we be going? We’ve got a nice dark place where we can all get better acquainted. Some of the boys here, well, they like men like you, all clean and soft, and they’ve not had the sort of fun that I’m thinking about for so long that I think they’ll be taking turns with you for half the night before we even get round to working out where you live.’

He waited for the inevitable reaction, for the lone aristocrat to make a break for freedom, knowing that more members of his band were waiting behind their victim, but his eyes widened slightly as the man stepped forward instead, close enough for the robber to see his face in the moonlight. The stranger’s expression was set hard enough to send a shiver up the gang leader’s spine, and when he spoke, his voice, though clearly cultured, grated out a single word with a chilling intensity that raised the hairs on his assailant’s arms with a sudden jolt of fear.

‘Yes!’

He struck, the move so fast that the footpad was nose to nose with his intended prey before he had time to react, finding his knife hand captured in an iron grip, while his assailant snatched a handful of hair and then snapped his head forward to deliver a head butt that took the life from the robber’s legs. While he was still staggering at the unexpected attack’s ferocity, his intended victim stripped the dagger from his unresisting grip and whipped the blade up into his throat, arteries and windpipe opened by a single wrenching thrust to release a sudden splatter of blood down both men’s tunics. His assailant pushed the dying man at the nearest of his gang and turned away to confront the men closing in on him from all sides, raising the knife in a hand already slick with his victim’s life blood. A heavyset thug rushed in with his arms spread to grapple the stranger, only to grasp at thin air as his intended victim danced sideways out of his reach, striking expertly to slit his tunic and the wall of his gut with the blade’s viciously sharp edge. Staggering away from the fight with both hands clasping at the slippery coils of his intestines, the wounded thug obstructed the men behind him as they recoiled away from the stench and horror, and their would-be victim spun away from him in search of fresh blood. Two robbers ran at him, while a third loomed from behind their leader where he lay convulsing on the street’s cobbles as his life ebbed away, advancing on the bloodied aristocrat with his fists bunched.

Hurling the dagger at the closer of the two runners to bury its blade deep in his chest, he turned without waiting to see the result, sidestepping the advancing pugilist’s first punch and gripping his tunic, throwing his attacker off balance and counter-punching into the hapless thug’s face, breaking his front teeth. While the man was staggering backwards, his assailant took another step forward, putting him down with a trip and following through with a half-fisted punch to his throat that left him straining fruitlessly for breath through a ruptured windpipe.

‘We’ve fucking got you now!’

He straightened his body to find himself ringed by half a dozen more of the gang, eyes hard with hate as they closed around him with shuffling feet, eyes darting glances at each other as they readied themselves to attack, momentarily deterred by the stranger’s blood-soaked rage and the bodies of their comrades littered around him.

‘We’re going to fuck you up, you
cunt
, and then we’re going to open your guts and leave you to die here while we go and have our fun with wherever it is that you call home.’

‘Tell me how it happened again.’

Annia tensed in her husband’s arms in the bedroom’s darkness, her body turned away from his and snuggled back against his chest. Her response was no louder than a whisper, but the distress in her voice was as evident as if she’d shouted at him.

‘I’ve already—’

Julius’s interruption was gentle but insistent.

‘I know. You had to tell the Legatus the whole sorry story, and worse than that, you had to tell Marcus.’

Legatus Scaurus and his officers had been delayed in their arrival at Marcus’s house on the Viminal hill until well after dark, caught up in the myriad tasks occasioned by getting two cohorts settled into the city’s transit barracks after their long journey back from the empire’s eastern frontier. Surprised to be greeted by the First Spear’s wife rather than the lady of the house, their bemusement had turned to horror as Annia had haltingly related the story of what had happened while the Tungrians had been away from Rome. After the first initial stunning blow, literally staggering Marcus with its stark horror, his recovery had been as swift as it had seemed complete, on the surface. Taking a seat in the house’s atrium he had composed himself, taken a deep breath and then looked up at his wife’s friend, his face a stone-like mask, asking only one question.

‘How?’

Julius clasped her tighter, stroking her tear-stained cheeks.

‘I need to hear it again. I need to know every detail, because I need to know what he’s going to do, once he’s thinking straight again.’

Marcus had listened to Annia recount the events of the previous year in grim silence and, when her tale was done, had stood without speaking, walking out into the Roman night.

She was silent for a moment.

‘And if I tell you? If I scoop all that …
shit
up and pour it over myself one more time?’

‘We’ll never speak of it again. Not that we’ll need to.’

Annia sighed.

‘No. The little one will remind us every time we look at him.’

‘So …?’

She sighed again, and then began to tell the story that had shattered their friend’s life once again.

The circle of men tightened, the biggest of them spitting imprecations at their intended prey.

‘I’m going to cut off your prick and stuff it into your fucking mouth!’

‘No, you’re not.’

All eyes turned towards a heavyset, bearded man walking up the street, his voice grating harshly in the night air despite the matter-of-fact tone of his roughly accented Latin.

‘All you’re going to cut are your losses. Now get out of my sight before this all gets much worse for those of you who are left alive.’

The big man turned to face him, reckoning the odds as the newcomer stopped six feet from him, flexing muscular arms and clenching his fists. In the background the choking sounds from the robber frantically struggling for breath through his ruined throat ran to their natural conclusion, and he fell silent. A series of sobs and groans from the darkness of an insula’s deeper shadow, into which the gutted member of the gang had staggered after incurring his horrific wound, told their wordless story of his plight.

‘Or what?’

‘Or we take your ears.’

The robbers spun to face a new threat from behind them, a pair of men with daggers and the look of knowing how to use them. The older of the two grinned at them and waggled his knife at the nearest of the robbers with a smirk.

‘My mate here’s from Dacia, see, and everyone knows those barbarian bastards are cannibals. He’s got a fondness for ears, see, and you’ve all got ears, which means he’s got a hard-on like a donkey’s meat stick at the thought of it.’

The gang’s new leader shook his head in amazement.

‘What the
fuck
…?’

His incredulity was cut off by a third voice, so hoarse from a lifetime of shouting at soldiers that it was little better than a harsh whisper. Its owner stepped up alongside the bearded man, the moonlight revealing a spectacularly battered face, as he raised a massive, scarred fist and grinned happily at them.

‘First we’ll beat you dumb fuckers senseless, then we’ll cut you up badly enough that none of you will ever get a woman to look at you again without showing her the weight of his coin first. Or you can fuck off.
Now
.’

He watched impassively as the robbers vanished into the street’s shadows, stepping forward to look at the blood-spattered aristocrat with a slowly shaking head.

‘Sorry to have spoilt the fun, little brother, but you looked to have bitten off more than you could get in your mouth. And now you’ve spilled some blood let’s have you away home, shall we?’

Marcus nodded silently and turned away, looking down at the dead man whose throat he’d punched in before nodding and lifting a hand in recognition of the fact that his friends had saved him from the gang’s violent revenge. The man with the battered face impassively watched him head back down the street the way he’d come, speaking to the bearded soldier next to him without taking his eyes off their friend.

‘What are we to do with him, Dubnus? I know he’s always been reckless, but this?’

His comrade nodded slowly.

‘He’s out of his mind with it, Otho. Your saw his eyes, not a flicker of emotion. Come on, and bring those idiot watch officers of yours with you. Knowing our luck he’ll find another gang round the corner and we’ll have to do the whole bloody thing again before we get him home.’

They followed the lone figure at a sufficiently close distance to deter any further attack, Dubnus watching his friend walking through the darkened streets with a troubled expression.

‘Look at it through his eyes. His family murdered, him forced to run as far as the Wall and find his feet as an officer in the biggest tribal rebellion for decades while the emperor’s men hunted him like a dog, fighting in Germania, Dacia, Parthia, and now …’ He shook his head in evident disbelief. ‘And now this. You have to wonder how much more he can take without losing his mind completely.’

Otho laughed mirthlessly.

‘You think
this
looks like he’s sane? You’re his closest friend, but even you can’t believe he’s got a firm grip on himself.’

Dubnus grimaced.

‘Since the first day I met him he’s always been as taut as a loaded bolt thrower. I hoped he’d find some peace once we’d settled accounts with the men who slaughtered his family, but this …’

His comrade nodded.

‘He’ll keep on finding ways to provoke men to attack him, so he can put them down and take their lives to no good purpose. And soon enough he’ll go too far, and find himself in shit too deep for you and me to pull him out of. Are you willing to die alongside him?’

The big Briton shrugged.

‘He may be blinded by his rage, but he’s still my brother. And yours. Uncle Sextus may be a long time gone, but I still live by the rules he gave us. If one of us is threatened then it’s a threat to all of us. So if my brother Marcus chooses to throw himself up the palace steps with a sword in his hand I’ll be there to fight and die alongside him.’