Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  Menenius nodded, wincing at the pain in his unhinged jaw, standing slowly. Hortius scooped up the fine sword with his foot and flicked it towards his fellow tribune. Menenius caught the hilt and changed to a comfortable grip, reaching up with his free hand and touching his jaw tenderly, almost crying out in pain.

  “I do believe my friend would like to carve you into slices for that.”

  “Why?” Fronto said as he backed into the corner.

  “Because of his jaw, you fool.”

  “No… why all this? Why Tetricus? Why me? Why Pinarius or Pleuratus?”

  “Or any of the others? Are you blind, Fronto? For Caesar. All for Caesar.”

  The bottom seemed to fall out of Fronto’s world.

  “Caesar?” he croaked in shock.

  “Sometimes the general doesn’t even know what’s good for him. You yourself have said that. He needs protecting from himself. It’s only right to repay people for the good they’ve done you and Caesar’s looked after us.”

  Fronto’s mind raced. If the pair weren’t removing those close to Caesar, what was going on? The realisation struck as his mind furnished him with the image of the general when he’d received the news about his nephew. A problem solved. And Pleuratus? He’d carried sensitive messages about Clodius and all-but revealed that to Fronto. And he and Tetricus? Well it was quite possible to see Fronto as a problem for the general. And… ‘the others’? He wondered just how many corpses the tribunes had left across Gaul, Britannia, Germania and even Rome itself.

  “You made a mistake with Tetricus though. You just took a dislike to him, didn’t you? And if you hadn’t murdered him, I’d never have bothered looking into the matter as deeply.”

  Menenius made a painful mumbling noise and Hortius leaned close to his friend, nodding.

  “He’s right: what difference does it make? I’m afraid the time’s come, but I will make it quick for you, since you were once one of Caesar’s closest. Perhaps we’ll even lie you next to your poor sister.”

  Fronto realised with a shudder that whatever else he might have done, Clodius had delivered Faleria to her house unharmed, where she’d come across the tribunes lurking in wait. The bastard tribunes had done this to her.

  The two killers stepped forward, blades coming up.

  “Tsk, tsk” came a voice from the corridor behind them.

  Fronto blinked and peered off into the gloom. The shape of a heavy, squat man with a blade in his hand was silhouetted against the light from the atrium. As the tribunes turned to the new arrival, a taller, thinner man stepped out next to him. Fronto’s heart pounded.

  Fabius and Furius?

  * * * * *

  Fronto watched in stunned disbelief as the two centurions stepped forward, raising their swords.

  “You two are a disgrace to the army of Rome” Furius growled as he stepped to the side, flexing his arm ready for the coming fight.

  “Pompous fool” Hortius snapped and leapt at them, Menenius right behind him despite the broken jaw paining him.

  Fronto watched the opening flurry of moves in tense silence. Menenius was slower and more deliberate than before, his cocky speed absent as his face sent waves of pain through him with every pulse of his blood. And yet, Fronto had to admit, he was still very much a match for any ordinary swordsman. Fabius and Furius were quickly driven back to the corner. Fronto glanced around and saw his sword lying unattended. Scrabbling over to it, he picked it up in his left hand, the fingers of his right still pointing off at unpleasant angles.

  He would not be able to wield the damn weapon. He had long ago learned that wielding a sword with his off-hand was more of a danger to him than to the enemy, and there was no hope of him gripping it with his right. With deep regret, he dropped the blade again. This fight would have to be up to the two veteran centurions.

  The four combatants were now out of sight, back around the corner towards the atrium. His skin prickled again as he realised there was every possibility the fight might range into the room where Faleria lay under her sheet. He could ill afford to let that happen, when even a stray footfall might be the end of her, weakened as she was.

  Rounding the corner, he could see the two centurions being pushed back into the atrium through the hanging sheet, which was now shredded with sword cuts. His eyes fell on the door to the right hand side and he scurried across to it.

  His sister was on her knees her head held in her hands.

  “Faleria!”

  She looked up sharply, her one good eye wide and blood-tinted.

  “Marcus?”

  His heart pounding in his chest, weak knee threatening to give way any moment, Fronto ran across the room and dropped to envelop his sister in an embrace.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I… headache!” she said quietly.

  “Come on. It’s not safe here.”

  Almost as if to confirm his words, the sounds of fighting increased in volume and he could see the shadows of fighting men on the corridor wall opposite the bedchamber’s door. As slowly as he dared, Fronto helped his sister to her wobbly feet and crossed the room.

  “Maybe we should lock ourselves in” he mused, but decided against it. Better to find somewhere to hide her than trap themselves where the tribunes already knew to look.

  “The baths. Come on.”

  Almost carrying her, tears running down his face at the pain in his broken fingers and from biting his lip against it, he hurried her from the room, past the ongoing fight at the edge of the atrium and back towards the house’s small bath complex. A quick glance told him that things were not going so well for his would-be saviours. Furius was already moving at a lean, his free hand clutching his side as he fought, and Fabius was limping and leaning against the wall. Worse still, the fight seemed to have spun around in the atrium and the centurions were now backing towards them, retreating into the bed-chamber corridors again… and the bath complex.

  Desperation beginning to hound him, Fronto grasped Faleria with his good hand, his bad one held away but the arm beneath her side for support, and guided her along the corridor to the bath house, horribly aware that there was no exit anywhere on this side of the house. If the tribunes killed their opponents, they would only have to search long enough and they’d find the siblings.

  He would make them work for it, though, and pay for every inch of ground. He wouldn’t let them get to Faleria if he could possibly prevent it.

  The door swung open under their weight and he hurried Faleria into the changing room. The complex was completely refurbished and smelled of fresh paint and tiling cement. Positioned at the edge of the house, the only light that shone into the room was from a window that opened onto the peristyle. For a moment, Fronto wondered whether he and Faleria might fit through it, but decided against an attempt. It would be touch-and-go at best, and with Faleria barely conscious and his hand ruined, their chances were small.

  His eyes ran to the corner of the room at the house’s outer wall, where the doorway led deeper into the baths towards the hot bath and the steam room. Pausing for a heartbeat, he listened. The sounds of desperate fighting were clearly getting closer. Damn it, the centurions were being driven back towards the baths.

  Urgently, he made it to the doorway and looked down the dark vestibule lit only by a small aperture high in the wall. He held Faleria up and looked her in the eye.

  “Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. I…”

  “Get in there. Go to the cold room at the far end and hide in the bath. The complex is not active, so there’s no water. Don’t come out until I shout you.”

  “What if you don’t” she asked pointedly.

  “I will. Go hide.”

  Faleria held his gaze for a moment and then nodded painfully and scurried off down the passageway. Fronto looked around the room, taking in his options as the fight drew ever nearer. The room was virtually empty. A mosaic covering the floor and displaying Thetis and Peleus coddling the in
fant Achilles was a new addition, as were the multitude of fascinating fish painted on the walls. Other than that there were three niches for clothes and a single labrum bowl on a stand at waist height. Unlike the great marble dishes of the public baths or the sizeable granite one in the steam room, this one was perhaps eighteen inches across and of carrara marble. Large enough for a single person to wash their hands in.

  It would offer little protection, and as yet no water flowed into it.

  What was it with these baths? Last year he and Priscus had fought two gladiators in the damned complex. Now, refurbished and looking like a different place entirely, here he was waiting for swordsmen again.

  There was a thump against the bath complex door and instinctively Fronto ducked behind the labrum and tried to disappear in the shadow.

  The door opened with a crash and Furius almost fell into the room, staggering backwards all the way across the mosaic until his back hit the wall opposite. Hortius came limping in after him, dragging a leg down which a torrent of blood flowed. As the two met again at the wall, their blood-slicked blades clashed and rang, both fighting for their lives and both badly wounded. Fronto looked from the pair to the door and back, wondering whether he’d have time to get Faleria out, when Menenius backed into the room, lurching left and right, awash with blood. Fabius staggered in after him, slashing wildly and clutching his bloodied face with his free hand.

  What to do?

  Slowly, Fronto stood, his weak knee giving slightly and causing him to grasp the labrum and put his weight onto it. The bowl wobbled where the cement had not quite taken properly. He steadied himself and straightened in time to see a killing blow.

  Furius, backed against the wall, plunged his gladius through the tribune Hortius, straight into the sternum, pushing until the blade emerged from his back in a gout of blood. The tribune staggered, spasming, the blade falling from his twitching fingers, but Furius was in no condition to stand on his own and, all his weight thrown into the strike, the two men collapsed to the floor together, where the centurion let go of his sword and rolled away onto his back, breathing in shuddering, heavy gasps as blood trickled from a dozen wounds.

  Fabius, meanwhile, was having less luck. Menenius, even with his broken jaw, was easily better than him, and was driving him back across the room, inflicting cut after small cut, gradually bleeding the strength out of the centurion.

  The centurion staggered back, cursing noisily, wiping the blood from his face where it ran in torrents from a vicious cut that had ruined his left eye. Fabius was almost done, and he clearly knew it. Furius would be of little help, lying on the floor and trying to hold on to his consciousness without expiring. And Fronto would hardly be able to hold a sword in his right hand or swing it convincingly with his left.

  His fingers gripped the edge of the labrum with seven good fingers and his knuckles whitened with frustration.

  It took him only a moment to realise that he’d actually lifted the marble dish from the stem, jagged and cracked cement hanging from the bottom.

  A slow grin spread across his face as he watched Fabius being driven across the room towards the far wall, Menenius intent on the kill. Almost silently in his soft leather shoes – thank you again, Lucilia – Fronto padded around the room’s edge, gripping the labrum as best he could. Once he was directly behind the tribune, he began to step slowly and silently forwards, raising the bowl to strike.

  His grin fell away as Menenius stabbed the centurion in the shoulder, causing him to yell and stagger away, and then turned to face Fronto and the raised labrum bowl.

  The tribune tried to say something, but his jaw would not allow it, and instead he winced, his eyes flashing angrily as he readied his sword and stepped forward to lunge at Fronto.

  The legate screwed his eyes tight, waiting for the blow he could do nothing about, but all that happened was a dull thud. After another heartbeat he opened his eyes to see Menenius toppling to the floor, Fabius standing behind him, sword raised and the ash pommel coated with matted hair and blood.

  “Sorry we’re late” the centurion managed, grinning through the blood pouring out of his face before collapsing to his knees, breathing heavily.

  Fronto stared down at the two men. The centurion was rocking slightly on his knees, reaching up to his lost eye gingerly with a blood-slicked hand. Menenius was groaning as he lay on the floor, blood running from the fresh wound on his scalp.

  His own eyes narrowing, Fronto dropped painfully to a crouch, casting the bowl heavily to one side where it cracked several tesserae of Achilles’ shoulder, and wrapping the fingers of his left hand around the hilt of the tribune’s magnificent sword. His hand closed on the ivory grip and he lifted it slowly, feeling its reassuring weight. It really was a stunning piece of work. Much too good for a murderer, however uncommon he may be.

  His mouth set in a firm, unyielding line, Fronto shuffled across to the fallen tribune and turned him over. The man had his eyes closed, groaning and probably concussed from the pommel-bashing.

  “Wake up, you vicious bastard!”

  Menenius opened his eyes a crack, but they refused to focus.

  “Come on” Fronto urged him. “Wake up!”

  Less than gently, he gave the tribune a prod in the neck with the point of the gleaming, crimson blade, drawing a bead of blood. Menenius’ eyes shot open and his vision resolved itself.

  “Thank you. And fuck you.”

  With every ounce of strength he could muster, Fronto drove the blade down through the tribune’s sternum, hearing it crack and then groan as the widening blade forced the split bone apart. He felt the blow ease as the tip found organs to tear through and then slow again at the spine – though it punched through without too much difficulty – creating a shudder-inducing sound as it screeched on the mosaic tesserae beneath.

  Menenius gasped and almost bucked like a panicked horse, pinned to the floor with his own blade.

  Fronto leaned over him and watched for almost a hundred heartbeats until the light went out in the tribune’s eyes and he passed away. He then reached down and found a coin from his belt purse with his good hand and carefully slid it into the man’s mouth.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Fabius asked quietly. “He doesn’t deserve to pay the ferrymen.”

  Fronto looked up at the centurion and grinned lopsidedly. “Well I don’t want his malevolent spirit knocking about this side of the Styx. Besides, if he passes to Elysium I’ll get the chance to gut the bastard again when I get there.”

  Fabius laughed, a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth as he did so.

  “What in the name of Juno’s knockers are you two doing here?”

  The centurion sighed and sagged.

  “Priscus thought you might need some looking after. He’s a bit busy, but he seemed to think we might be able to help.”

  “You were the ones on that liburna at Ostia?”

  “Mm-hmm” the centurion confirmed.

  “Well I’m damn glad you came.”

  Fabius struggled to get to his feet and Fronto leaned over to help. The two men aided each other to make it upright, swaying a little as they stood. As the centurion staggered over to the heaving form of Furius, Fronto bent and drew the blade from the tribune’s body with some difficulty, admiring it as it came free.

  “I don’t normally like to loot the dead, but… well, it’s not like he needs it.”

  He grinned at the look on Fabius’ ruined features and hurried over to help him lift Furius. He was no medicus but he’d seen plenty of wounds in his time. Fabius would live, for all the loss of his eye, but it was touch and go whether Furius would survive his belly wound. The next day or two would tell.

  “Do you suppose you can make it out to the storehouse in the yard?”

  “I doubt it. Why?”

  “Because there should be a jar of wine out there and I’m in sore need of a drink.”

  Fabius laughed painfully.

  “First, I think we ne
ed to retrieve your sister and try and send for a medicus of some kind.”

  Fronto shrugged and almost fell as his knee wobbled.

  “I feel I might be about ready to give this knee that month or two’s rest now.”

  EPILOGUE

  The slave opened the door and started in surprise at the gathering outside.

  “Tell your master that Marcus Falerius Fronto is here to see him.”

  The slave nodded and closed the door, scurrying off inside. Fronto turned to those who’d accompanied him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Balbus said quietly.

  “Positive.”

  “And you don’t want me there?”

  Fronto shook his head. “I’m fine, Quintus. In fact, you should go and see Faleria and tell Galronus to break the seal on that amphora. I’m certainly going to need a drink when I get back.”

  Lucilia narrowed her eyes at him and squeezed his arm. “Do you want me to stay, Marcus?”

  “No. Go with your father. I’ll see you all back at the house. We’ve got things to arrange, and I want to be there when Galronus pops his question. I will piss myself if she says no.”

  Lucilia smiled warmly. “That’s not going to happen, Marcus. Get used to the idea.”

  Fronto laughed quietly and watched as Balbus and his daughter turned to head back to their house on the Cispian. At the bottom of the street, a respectable distance away, half a dozen of Balbus’ newly-hired guards waited for them. No longer was the older man willing to risk the ladies on the streets of Rome without a suitable escort. Things had changed in the city, and not for the better. Still, things would be better for them next week when they left along the Via Appia for the winter at Puteoli; Balbus, Corvinia, young Balbina and their retinue included. After all, how else would they gather the families together for the wedding ceremony that was now looming on the horizon.

  “Stop smiling like a dazed girl-child” Fabius admonished him from behind. “You’ll look like an idiot.”

  Furius, at his other shoulder, laughed for a moment until the pain of his belly-wound stopped him.