Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  The air blurred with stones. First there was the slushy whip of the slings being released, and the moment after, the deafening din of the slingshots hitting the bronze shields set up in front, thick as hail in an autumn storm.

  It made him happy, Servius realised. Violence had always been a means to an end for him, as it had been for the General; the study of strategy, curiously dispassionate. You'd never see the General in a brawl; for him, it was thought that came first, the planning and the care, and violence was only the necessary, momentary action that came between the plan and its conclusion.

  "The greatest victory," the General had said once, "would be to win a battle without ever striking a blow." Again and again he had Servius plan battle orders that put his forces in such a good strategic position, and his enemy in such a bad one, that a rational enemy would surrender without a fight.

  "Has it ever happened?" Servius had asked once.

  "Sometimes," the General said.

  Of course, it depended on one's enemy being rational.

  Killing, for instance; that was necessary. It was, regrettably often, kill or be killed, but there had always been some fastidious element in Servius' mind that shrank from it.

  But hearing the stones thunder on the shields, Servius understood the attraction of violence. Destruction as an end in itself, the thrill of the little boy smashing crockery against a wall. He understood now the way some drunks enjoyed their rages, given licence by the drink to hit out and smash things, people, lives. To be Tinia, he thought, to hurl thunder!

  "Impressive, isn't it?"

  Tarquin had come up to stand beside him. Elegant, as always; and, as always, disconcertingly able to read Servius' thoughts.

  But then Servius looked again. So many stones had fallen short, not hitting the targets; and one slinger had managed to swing wide and askew, hitting one of the officers' horses, which had kicked up and run on to the field, stopping the rest of the practice while three of the junior officers tried to catch it (and Servius could have told them running after a horse was the worst thing you could do, but let them learn it the hard way). He looked at the slingers; a single volley, and they were standing relaxed, slings dangling, and even if the horse problem meant they couldn't fire, they should at least have loaded a fresh shot into their slings and have them at the ready, so they wouldn't have to grope for the loose end of the string and reload when they were needed again.

  That was the trouble with a citizen army. No one knew what to do. He'd thought having slingers would make life easier for the new plebeian drafts - farmers and their boys who used slingshot to scare the birds off the new sown corn, to drive the boars and deer out of the fields; city lads who'd used a sling to hunt pigeons for the pot. Well, they knew how to shoot – except for whoever had slung that shot wide – but they had no discipline, no idea what war was like. That would have to be drilled into them.

  "I hope our enemies don't get the same idea," Tarquin was saying. "I wouldn't fancy a chariot charge against that sort of thing."

  "I don't suppose they will."

  "And if they do?"

  "We'll think about it then."

  There would be ways round it; there always were. A hoplite charge, with the men holding their shields above their heads, like a monstrous metal turtle. A distraction. In open country, setting fires to burn the grass and smoke the slingers out. But right now, he had other concerns, like getting that damn fool horse back into the lines.

  "You know horses, Tarquin."

  "You're thinking about that poor gelding they're yelling at out there?"

  "Exactly. Just... see to it, would you?"

  He could have done it himself; but that would mean leaving the plebeian slingers to Tarquin's contempt. Better to drill the slingers himself, and have Tarquin capture the horse...

  "You," Tarquin yelled at the three hapless officers who were trying to chase the loose beast towards each other. "Back here."

  "But we're..."

  "Now!"

  Tarquin picked up a bucket.

  "You'll want a halter, sir," said one of the officers.

  "I will, will I?"

  "That's a bucket."

  "Oh, I had no idea. I really thought it might be a shield," Tarquin said nastily. "Now, where's the quartermaster?"

  Servius allowed himself a grim smile. Tarquin had things well in hand. The horse, freed of harrassment, quietened a little, though it still stood between the slingers and their targets.

  The other trouble with a citizen army. Tarquin's horsemen were all patricians. Fighting was a hereditary career for them, a privilege of wealth, the wealth that paid for their gilded bronze armour, their sharp swords and proud horses. War wasn't a luxury, though; it was a hunger, and one that needed bodies to feed it, and so Servius had increased the centuriate again.

  No one had liked his census. No one ever liked being forced to disclose facts; about themselves, even less. But he'd had accurate information, for once, and he'd brought another four centuries into being, forcing the wealthier traders to contribute in proportion to the property they owned. Each man according to his means; that was fair enough. And then for the others, men who owned nothing, or little enough – a few tools of their trade, some cracked pots and a spare tebenna for 'best' – he'd created the slingers' class. No horse to pay for, not even a roughly forged sword, just the plaited belt and a handful of stones.

  He'd even used the veterans and the half crippled as his rearguard, for the defence of the city. No one got invalided out or retired in this army, just redeployed.

  But in the meantime, he had to teach men to become soldiers.

  That was the trouble with a citizen army. And then there was the trouble with the noble army, too, which was that everyone, and not just Tarquin – who was striding across the field now, shaking the bucket from side to side, clucking gently to himself – wanted to play hero, to indulge in single combat. But he wanted his men to fight in tight formation; war was no time for an Achilles to spend his time seeking out one splendid Hector to drag behind his chariot, it was time for the cavalry to accept orders. The horse were usable, interchangeable, and in the last resort expendable, just like any other force a general had at his disposal. But he'd had a hard time getting those flashy, individualistic aristocrats to accept it. Eleven gods in a basket, there were days he felt more Roman than Etruscan, when he had to deal with Tarquin's sort.

  Tarquin was back. The field was clear. Behind the lines somewhere, he thought, a contented horse would have its nose stuck in a bucket of grain, the sharp sting of slingshot quite forgotten. If only men were so simple to lead.

  "You're next," he told Tarquin.

  "We're ready."

  That was gratifying; no protest at being made to do double duty, catch a loose horse one moment, lead his men in a drill the next. A scowl had just begun on Tarquin's face, but it was quickly smoothed over with an ungenuine but bright smile. Tarquin was so like Tanaquil, sometimes, that ability to assume fleeting expressions like ripples on deep water; beneath, in the dark depths, Servius wondered what lurked.

  Tarquin fisted a quick salute, turned, left. Precise. In fact too precise. There was a certain art to that, which only the well-born possessed; managing to be utterly insolent, as if they'd yelled "Cock, piss, cunt" at you, yet without putting a foot wrong – there was nothing you could call them out on, if anything, they were over-correct, over-polite, over-subordinate, but you knew as well as if they'd smacked you in the face that they despised you. The experience left Servius feeling soiled and oddly ashamed.

  The line of horse was already drawn up by the time Tarquin got there, the slingers having been cleared out of the way by shouting and, where necessary, the swing of a whip or the flat of a sword. (He'd have to do something about that, too.) Crested helms shivered in the breeze, but the men were immobile, their horses still but for the occasional shift of weight from one foot to another, or a protesting toss of the head.

  All eyes
were on Tarquin. He held up his arm, waiting for the silence to become even more absolute; and just as the whole world seemed to catch his breath, brought it down, and kicked his horse on.

  They charged well. They reached the line of shields almost together, though Tarquin was in front by a head. They wheeled back from the line in good order, too, easing down to a trot once they were out of bow's length. That was nicely judged, he thought; go on, hit them again. And they did, and again, wheeled back, maintaining their line.

  Anyone could attack; it was maintaining an orderly retreat that was the real measure of an army. The better the retreat, the sooner and better you could hit back. Those were his orders to cavalry; disengage, don't get drawn into close combat with footmen, maintain your manoeuvrability. If it worked as well as this in real warfare, he'd be happy.

  And now the hoplites were standing ready, like ranks of bronze statues; bronze helmets, bronze breastplates and greaves moulded to the form of the muscle. Their faces were hidden by the cheeks of their helmets, from which dark sightless holes instead of eyes stared out. Only their thighs, under their leather skirts, and their naked arms were human, and vulnerable.

  "Forward!" a voice commanded, and forwards they went, the metal rattling and clashing. The round shields glittered where the sun hit their bronze facings. Men with red horsetails mounted on their helms and faces as red as their crests led each division of the whole, but for the most part it was young men in the front.

  That morning he'd been shocked to see two old men in the front line. He'd called them out of the ranks; not their fault, he said, but didn't they know they should be further back?

  "I fought at Collatia," said one. "I earned my place."

  "Not in front," Servius said.

  "I want to see a fight."

  "No doubt you will. But I need you in the back."

  And back they went. They weren't happy. Nor was Tarquin. "You want young men in war," he'd said.

  "You want young men at the front. Old men in the front line – well, that shouldn't happen. But I need them at the back."

  "You don't need old men at all," Tarquin said stubbornly.

  "You don't know how infantry works, do you?"

  "I fight with the horse."

  "Well then. Infantry works like this; keen young men at the front, and old experienced ones at the back, pushing forwards."

  "Keen young men don't need pushing forwards."

  "They do if they get windy," Servius said. "The old ones'll keep them moving smartly."

  "For what that's worth."

  "And it's the old ones who'll stick their heels in and stop a rout, if the greenhorns at the front start to panic. Have you ever seen a retreat?"

  "No cavalry I've commanded has ever needed to fall back."

  "You'll see defeat soon enough. It comes to us all."

  Tarquin shrugged.

  "What matters isn't one defeat. It's what you salvage from it." Which wasn't what Homer said, but then Homer was quite often wrong about these things.

  "But a retreat?"

  "Is often the wisest course. The veterans have seen it all before. They'll keep the retreat steady."

  "But if the young ones break and run?"

  "They won't. They can't."

  It was the old ones he was worried about. They were the men who got trampled in a disorderly retreat; they were the men who got left behind, when the front ranks went too fast; and still, they were the heart of the army.

  In the drill, the advance started well, but as they moved up the field, the first two lines started wavering. It wasn't a question of courage, as it might be in war, but simple inexperience. At one end, the lines moved far apart as the front raced, and the men at the back couldn't keep up the pace; elsewhere along the broad front of the phalanx, the back was moving forwards too fast, men treading on the heels of the line in front of them, and the front line was being pushed out, so that the solid straight edge of the phalanx was becoming ragged.

  "This is messy," Servius said, turning round to look for Gnaeus. "Get the commanders over here. Get the men to fall back to their starting position."

  "It will throw the agenda out, sir."

  Another of those damned functionaries who seemed to be everywhere now he was king. How had he managed to keep them out of his way in Velx? Had they all swarmed around the Vipienas, and he'd never noticed? Or was this part of Tarquinius' heritage, in which case he'd better start pruning them out, and bringing a few of his own hand-picked men into the army, even if that started a scare about Romans being replaced by Etrurians of half the quality at twice the price, and he knew that it would. Damn, why was nothing easy these days? Back in Velx he'd have simply fired the pipsqueak...

  "The agenda?"

  "They'll be late back to camp for their meal, sir."

  "Really." His voice held a warning, which the soldier managed not to hear, or ignored.

  "Yes, sir."

  "They'll be here all day if they don't get it right. You can tell them I told you. And all night, come to that."

  "Yes sir."

  Romans were good fighters, but they had a very limited vocabulary, he thought. And where the hell was Gnaeus when he wanted him?

  "Not a man of many words, that," Tarquin said.

  There was a long wait while the commanders were summoned, and given Servius' message, and went back to their troops, and explained what had to be done, and the whole phalanx was drawn up in order again. The air was poisoned by hard looks and unuttered curses, and the longer things dragged on, the worse it got.

  "Is it worth it?"

  Servius was surprised Tarquin had to ask. "A phalanx only works if it moves as a single unit. What you saw earlier... an enemy could pull our army apart."

  "But why are we using a phalanx anyway?"

  "Because it's unbeatable."

  "On level ground, yes."

  "Which is where we'll fight."

  "Given the chance. But if the enemy moves into the hills... You can't take a phalanx across broken land."

  "True, the enemy will have the advantage there; they disappear into the gullies, into the forest fringes, the heathland. You can't take a phalanx there."

  "You can't."

  "But you can't take a chariot there either."

  Tarquin scowled.

  "We pick our fights," Servius said. "We draw our enemies out, where we want them. We tempt them on to the plains. We seduce them into the valleys. And then we throw the phalanx at them."

  "No room for the horse at all, then," said Tarquin, as if he'd expected this all along.

  "Oh yes."

  "Where, then?"

  "When the phalanx has broken them, you sweep them up."

  "Chasing them down?"

  "Exactly."

  "Hardly sport, chasing men who're running away."

  "Sport? What do you think we're in this for?"

  "To win, I suppose."

  "To win. Not just to win a battle. To do something no other city has ever done; to lead Etruria forwards under one rule."

  "You've been speaking to my mother."

  Servius didn't deny it. But his image of Rome triumphant was rather different from Tanaquil's.

  The men were reshuffling the lines. More delay, while they worked out who went where, as if that would solve anything. Solidity came through practice, and they were running out of time.

  "You have to admit it makes sense," Servius said.

  "Yes." Tarquin looked down at his feet. "It does if you're a Roman. But I don't know how Tarchna feels about it. Or rather, I do."

  Someone shouted. The men were ready again. There was a sudden clash as the front rankers brought their spears down ready to move, and then a moment of stillness. Waiting for command; if there was a torture set aside for soldiers in Hades, it would be living that moment of tension again and again, always at the ready, always afraid, before the battlecry and the release of action. The phalanx bristled with spears, the shields shone in the sun, and the men held st
eady, silent. Servius felt his flesh creep. It was a sight to inspire terror.

  Again the shout went up, again the phalanx marched forwards. This time, the front held straight, though here and there Servius could see gaps in the wall of shields.

  "They're drifting apart sideways," Tarquin said.

  "You fix one thing, and something else goes wrong. That's the way things are."

  "So?"

  "So we start again. Pull them back, start again."

  They went back again and again, five times in all, till the hour for the men's meal was long past, and the sun was beginning to decline. It was hot, the men were sweating, there was no shade and no water. Servius' aides muttered, and Tarquin pouted, and Servius knew the men would be cursing him; but there was no choice. The army had to be ready. And so back they went, till they got it right.

  Tarquinius

  He didn't know why he had to watch the hoplites. Infantry was not his thing. He had his horsemen, his chariots, his own methods of warfare. His own hand-picked band, not this motley assortment of never-met-before farmers, traders, and immigrants.

  Fighting on foot was what you did if you fell off your horse. And in the nature of it, it was scrappy, every man for himself, fighting your way out of a situation you didn't want to be in in the first place. The skill was in the skirmish, in managing your horse and dominating his cowardice and flightiness, in the great onrushing sweep of attack.

  Fighting on foot was for slaves.

  And now Servius was pulling men out of the front line because he thought they were too old. The first sensible thing he'd done all day.

  "I fought at Collatia," the old man was protesting, though why that messy and almost lost sequence of actions had become the standard by which all battles were judged, the gods alone knew. "I was in the front line at Collatia. I've earned my place."

  "Not in front," Servius said. Not at war at all, if Tarquin had his way.

  The front line at Collatia. That man had been, what, forty even then? So he was fifty, or more, now, and time had eaten away at his face, leaving it creased and rough. No doubt age had eaten his courage away too, and his sinews, and his strength. But Servius let him fight at the back, with some story about the old men keeping the line when young men ran. A nice try, but you could see the old man didn't believe it; it was pure facesaving bullshit.

  If only Servius wouldn't try to persuade him, too. Servius had these ideas. True, he'd won enough battles; and some people would say his military tactics were not exactly revolutionary, they were what the Greeks had done for centuries, using the massed infantry to dominate the battle. Anyone could see the old men's fire was dead; they had wives and children and chickens and goats to worry about, they'd save themselves efficiently, if it came to a rout. Only the young men had greed for glory burning a hole in their bellies.

  Servius kept telling him how to manage a retreat. That verged on an insult.

  "No cavalry I've commanded has ever needed to fall back."

  "You'll see defeat soon enough. It comes to us all."

  Not to me, Tarquinius thought. Not to me.

  There was something impressive about the hoplites, he had to admit. A wall of shields, a wall of blank bronze faces. All individuality lost in the immense collective. This wasn't the kind of war where a young man made his name; it was almost a force of nature, a landslide or a flood. Mind you, if you weren't an Etruscan noble but, let's say, a Faliscan olive oil trader or a fifth son of a dirtgrubber, that might be a good thing. Your name would never have been ennobled by a poem on your great deeds, and it still wouldn't be. Oxdrivers, slaughtermen, dungspreaders; they might be anything, these men, but once they put on their bronze helms they lost such indignities, became pure spirits of war. Did it feel like that inside their ranks? Like the all-powerful, intoxicating rhythm of the dance?

  But they moved so slowly, compared to the speed of a chariot or a horse. And already he could see the phalanx was falling apart, the front bulging out, the sides straggling, men falling off the pace and out of line. Because it was too big, or perhaps because he was sweating too much, one man's helmet had slipped, and another man's shield was dropping forwards, so that a gap between him and his neighbour, and exposing him from chin to belly to a spear thrust or slashing sword; and another man had taken off his helmet, and was trying to brush the sweat out of his eyes with his forearm while still holding the helmet clumsily in that hand. Suddenly the illusion of invincible bronze men was broken; they were bags of guts and blood the same as any other man, bags to be slashed or burst.

  Servius called them back, of course. Again, again, again.

  There was no room here for glory, no room for the dashing or the reckless or the spontaneous, electric knowledge that a good fighter possessed of exactly where to plunge into the melee, how to flow through it and feel the blades cut air around him, but never land. This was dull.

  And Servius was right. If he could use his men like this, no city would stand against him. Tarquin and all his cavalry would be useless. Like this, he felt, his life would be over before it had even begun.

  Tanaquil

  Tanaquil had always exercised; she couldn't remember a time when she hadn't, with chubby childlike paws, wielded a wooden javelin like her mother, or wrestled with the other children under a tutor's watchful eye. The culture of the body and the culture of the mind were inseparable; both trained, both responsive, whether for work or for war or for pleasure.

  She still exercised; not as much now, perhaps, as in her youth, but enough to keep her muscles defined, her reactions fast. She loved the good tiredness that came from physical exertion, hated the bad tiredness of winter days and ageing body. But here in Rome, of course, a woman exercising was a strange thing, even a wicked thing. She could still ride out, still took her chariot openly on the roads, but to work with sword or javelin, she exercised only in her own courtyard, with one or two of her women, and only those of Etruscan birth and upbringing.

  Only men exercised in public here. Rome still needed dragging into civilised ways, she thought. And even for men, there wasn't much provision; the exercise ground was just an open space between two wooden colonnades, dusty in summer, and in the winter churned up into mud. Servius was meant to have made improvements, but everything took second place to the army now; building could wait. So Rome, the great city which his army was meant to make even greater, became the city of the half-finished, the delayed, the abandoned project; a city whose public places became dingier by the day. Once the Capitoline temple had been finished, Servius snapped his purse shut. Ploughshares were beaten into swords, and the hammers you heard everywhere in Rome these days were those of the forges turning out hundreds of identical spearheads, swordblades, helmets; the stonemasons and carpenters were out of work.

  Everything was justified by the army now, even exercise. No one ran the long footrace any more, or danced, as they did in Tarchna; it was all spear practice, wrestling, boxing, lifting weights. There was a new discipline, the pankration, which seemed less a discipline than a relapse into barbarism, the main rule being that there were no rules, though a few of its practitioners regarded eye-gouging as a step too far. Still, the wrestling was worth watching; even if most of the men were veterans, their flesh criss-crossed with scars, their faces set with the ugliness that descends after too many killings, there were always a few younger men, still smooth of skin and long of limb, as Tarquinius had once been, in a past that grew ever more distant. And sometimes, but rarely, one of the fighters would display real skill; the sort of wrestler who used his opponent's weight against him, who could nonchalantly turn out of the way of a haymaker and hook a negligent foot under his enemy's knee, and watch him fall, almost as if surprised by the success of the tactic, or who could somersault over an attack, roll over to come back up instantly on his feet, and then deliver a perfect kick to the jaw. Such fights never lasted long, but they were vastly more entertaining than the kind most of the men liked, endless bouts of slugging in which noth
ing ever happened, but each competitor's face became gradually bloodier and more shapeless, before finally, one of them gave up and fell, more from tiredness than any knock-out blow.

  So she was here with Elissa, sitting on a bench watching the men train.

  "They think I don't notice," Elissa said. "But I see what they're up to. See that shaven-headed one there?"

  He was staring at Elissa, but as soon as he noticed the women's eyes on him he turned his face away.

  "Do they always do that?" Tanaquil asked.

  "Often enough. Oh, I'm used to it. It's the ones who come up to you at banquets in good houses and ask how you know when your hands are dirty, or how you learned to speak Latin, those are the ones I really hate. And the ones who always wanted to try it with a black girl. They don't realise just how easy an offer that is to refuse."

  "Men never do," Tanaquil said; her mind was only partly on their conversation, since she was looking out for one man in particular. And there he was, her old opponent Faustus, now fat and fifty, though not as fat as he would have been without his rigid habit of daily training. Despite his belly, he'd resisted the flabbiness of middle age; he looked good for another twenty years of tormenting Tanaquil.

  "He's visiting whores these days," Elissa said.

  "Faustus?"

  "I saw you looking at him. You're interested?"

  "Everything he does interests me."

  "I never thought he was your type."

  "He's not." She'd thought Elissa understood her better than that; she was slightly annoyed at the girl's obtuseness. "Everything I try to do, Faustus opposes. Everything Tarquinius ever tried to do, he opposed. Every time I try to achieve anything, I have to get his objections out of the way first. No wonder I want to know what he's doing."

  "Well, he's visiting whores. And he never used to."

  "I wonder why. He's married."

  "That never stops them."

  "Of course not. But... well, he's one of those stiff Roman sorts. And his wife's not unattractive. And not ill. Without why the sudden change? It's odd."

  "That's not all. One girl told me he falls asleep without doing it."

  "And still pays?"

  "Of course he pays."

  "And just falls asleep?"

  "Apparently."

  Faustus was warming up; stretching out first one leg, then the other, swinging his arms, loosening his body in preparation. There was something stagy in his movements, as if he realised he was being watched; something he must be used to, by now, he'd been so influential for so long. He took hold of his left foot in his left hand to pull it up behind him, balancing one-legged for a moment. His balance seemed not quite sure.

  "No funny turns?" Tanaquil asked.

  "Now you come to ask... one of the girls said he stumbled when he got up to go, and complained he was feeling dizzy, and another said he seemed drunk, but didn't smell of wine. But there might be nothing in it at all; everyone has their bad days… why are you asking?"

  "Just concerned about his health," Tanaquil said.

  "Just hoping it's bad."

  Tanaquil's smile was acid.

  Faustus was holding out his fists to be wrapped. He'd box; not the usual exercise for an older man, even an athlete. Most gave it up in their twenties, while they were still winning.

  An old man trying to spin out the fraying thread of old victories, clinging on to the illusion of youth? Or the elder statesman still fit for battle? She gave Faustus credit for not being a hypocrite; he wasn't trying to deceive his public. But she wondered whether he was deceiving himself.

  Perhaps his health was beginning to fail. Perhaps he was just getting old, and he thought the whores would give him a new sense of life, would prop up his illusion of continued youth. She could have told him that wasn't how it worked; old men get young women, and then they feel even older.

  He'd started boxing now with one of the younger men – not that much younger, about forty, she'd have guessed; perhaps thirty-five. That was one of the things about growing older; once, she'd have been able to tell you exactly, that one's thirty, that one's thirty-two, or twenty-eight, by the cut of his hair, his clothes, the look of his skin, and she'd have been right, but now, all those years blended into one undifferentiated mass, men too young for her to guess.

  If she'd thought of a way, she would have finished him already. He knew too much. Or rather, he guessed too much; she'd been careful enough that certainty could never be come by, not by him, not by anybody. Only Manius and Servius knew the truth, and they would never incriminate themselves. She'd daydreamed of ways she could get rid of him; an unblunted sword used in practice, a momentary slip and an accidental, too well aimed thrust; a dish of mushrooms; a thistle under his horse's saddle, which might work, or might not, and could always be explained as a practical joke, or a practical joke gone wrong, depending on whether it was fatal or merely humiliating; a statue falling from a temple's pediment, a lump of stone from a building site... and yet, practically, it was too difficult to move against him. If only his health was really failing, he might relieve her of the responsibility for having him removed.

  "Don't pull your punches, boy." That was Faustus, red-faced, too slow to turn that last attack.

  "Boy? Who are you calling boy?" But his opponent smiled; he was used to this taunting, you could see that it amused him. He jabbed another punch at Faustus, but he was dancing, not fighting.

  "An enemy wouldn't spare me. Keep pressing on, keep pressing on."

  "Oh, I am, I am."

  "You're not. You're pulling your punches. Fight properly, damn you."

  Faustus was working hard; he had to raise one fist to his forehead every so often to stop the sweat blinding him. He must be forcing himself to move; one foot seemed heavier than the other, so that he tended to turn to the left, a tendency of which his opponent took no advantage. That was either stupid, or tactful, and more probably the latter.

  The two circled for a while, sparring, till Faustus managed to land a couple of blows; and they were hard, you could hear the solid thump, and the expulsion of breath, which gave the other man all the excuse he needed to stop, though he wasn't quite winded. It hadn't been such an unequal match after all; she noticed, as Faustus towelled himself down, that his muscles were still ridged and hard. Hard as the rock Rome was built on, she might have said, only the Travertine rock was soft and workable, and that Faustus very clearly was not.

  "Gods damn it, woman, can't you keep your eyes off a man? You've no business here."

  "Oh, I do," she said, smiling her blandest smile.

  "What is it, then?"

  "I wanted to find Tarquin," she said. "I've bought him a new horse."

  "Nice for him." He wheezed, then coughed hard.

  Tanaquil's eyes softened; she put a hand on one of his bandaged fists.

  "You need to take care of yourself," she said.

  "I need to train."

  "You need this." She held up a small pot. "I had it made up for Tarquin. He was coughing. But I'm sure I can get more."

  "Put it down there," he said, jerking his chin at the neat pile of his clothes. "I'll take it later." She thought he was probably lying, but she put it there, anyway, and watched as one of the boys came to unwrap his knuckles.

  The man he'd been sparring with had got dressed already, and was talking to a couple of youths who had been watching. One of them, it turned out, was in Tarquin's division; they'd been drilling on Mars Field, charging and counter-charging, and practising holding a formation.

  "We never used to practise like that," he said; "you need such good control of your horse. Control of speed, to stay in line. To turn quickly. And Tarquin's such a good horseman."

  Not as good as I used to be, she thought. But she smiled, and encouraged the boy; hero-worship was always useful. And they talked a little about infantry drill, since Faustus' opponent fought unmounted, with his men; and about the importance of exercise. They did exercise, didn't they, even though they wer
e horsemen?

  "Of course," the boy said. "Tarquin says even the best rider might be unhorsed, and then you'd need to know how to fight on foot."

  "And I hope you have a good opponent? That's most important."

  "We fight each other, most of the time," said the other boy, a big-eyed, shy lad who hadn't outgrown a certain adolescent gangliness.

  "He doesn't win that often."

  "I do sometimes."

  "Yes, sometimes."

  "It's sad," she said, "when you see someone can't get a good fight any more, because people go too soft on him."

  "Tarquin always says he'll take on the hardest ones. He says he hates it when people try to let him win."

  "He hates it when he loses."

  "I'm sure he does," she said, turning to the boxer . "But you know, I watched that last fight. And Faustus was right. He was never pushed."

  "You wouldn't want me to kill him."

  "He's fit enough."

  "He's an old man."

  "He's in the army. And he's right. An enemy wouldn't let him win out of respect for age. It'd be a spear through the guts straight off, if he couldn't look after himself."

  She could see the point had sunk in. It was the sort of kindness that could prove fatal; an unprepared man, an unfit man, an unpractised man, would be at the enemy's mercy, would survive on luck rather than his own merits. An unprepared Faustus could so easily be killed.

  "And he notices," she said. "Don't think he doesn't."

  "He's the last one left," the boxer said mournfully. "The last commander we have left from the old days."

  That touched her, and she talked a little about how Rome had been when Tarquinius had moved there with her, and the changes she'd seen, and she had a little cry about Gaius gone, and old Ancus Marcius the good old man, and last (and least, to be honest) her son Arruns. And by the time she'd finished, and the boxer had talked about his time on the front line in the Collatia campaign, or Apiolae, or Crustumerium, or wherever it was, the lads could probably not remember who'd given them the idea of riding hard on Faustus, but they knew not to give him an easy time.