Taking a moment, he stood Lucilia on the step.
“Breath deep and stay here for a minute.”
She nodded and he ran toward the gate, where Priscus was already beginning to lift the latch.
Fronto dived on him and pushed the latch back down, cupping his hand to his ear. The two men leaned forward to the crack between the gates. At least a dozen men stood outside, armed in contravention of the law, and the familiar hawk-like figure of Philopater stood at the far side of the street, arms folded. As Fronto stared, his heart thumping, the men steadied grips on their weapons and stepped purposefully toward the gate.
“Shit!”
The two men turned and ran back to the side door.
“Come on.”
Grabbing Lucilia, they rushed in, slamming and bolting the door behind them before turning and running into the garden.
Slaves were now at work around the house, trying desperately to quench the flames, but fighting a losing battle. The officers and ladies stood in the centre of the small garden, a small force of Cestus’ men with them. The rest would be in other parts of the house, trying to help the slaves put out the conflagration.
“We have company! Armed men are coming in.”
Cestus immediately began giving orders to his men while Faleria helped their mother across towards him, Caesar taking her other arm gently.
“What are the options, Marcus?”
Fronto shrugged.
“Both doors are infernos. The outer gate’s alright, but that’s where they’re coming in. If we can hold the outside for a while, the civilians can climb onto the stable roof and maybe cross it and drop into the next street, assuming he hasn’t got men there too?”
Caesar nodded.
“Then we’ll have to put steel to steel. Do you have a spare sword in storage, Marcus?”
Fronto threw the door open and stepped inside. Behind him, Caesar walked into the room in a strange silence. Priscus whistled through his teeth.
“What sort of a man” Caesar asked quietly “keeps an armoury in a private house in Rome?”
Fronto reached over to a chest against the wall and drew his gladius from its sheath, examining the glinting point.
“There’s my campaigning gear here, as well as that that used to belong to my father and my uncle. There’s stuff here that was gifts from Verginius and other family friends. You know how it is… one tends to hoard things.”
He turned and threw a gladius, still in its sheath, across to the general, who caught it in a deft hand and drew it, examining the blade.
“This was your father’s?”
“Yes. Priscus, Milo, Galronus and Cicero, help yourself to anything you can find. Cestus, get your men armed.”
Priscus grinned, lifting a lengthy cavalry blade from a shelf, decorative and likely never before used.
“This’ll surprise the buggers.”
“Come on.”
As Cestus shouted his men and pointed them toward the armoury, Fronto stopped in the garden and looked around until he saw Posco issuing commands to a group of slaves.
“Posco? Get into the stables with a few men. See if there’s anyone in the back street. If not, break the wall down and get Bucephalus and the other horses out of there. Start getting the guests out too, beginning with Lucilia and the family.”
Posco nodded and grabbed three of the men gathered around him, running off toward the house’s storage and stabling area. A crash outside announced that the attackers had broken down the outer gate.
“Come on! We’ve got to move.”
Fronto quickly doglegged around the corridor to the exterior door, ignoring the slaves and servants rushing desperately to their tasks, Priscus, Galronus, Milo, Caesar and Cicero at his heels as he ran.
The bolt was thrown back and the six men burst out of the villa, weapons brandished and yelling defiance. The attacking gang had already spread out in the passageway outside, perhaps seven or eight between them and the stable door, countless others in the yard between them and the gate. The house’s occupants, almost entirely military trained, fell into a defensive position without the need for commands and before the milling attackers even realised their victims were among them. Fronto found himself facing the gate, Priscus to his right and Caesar his left, while Galronus, Milo and Cicero formed a line behind them, facing the stable. The open door to the house stood between the rows of defenders and, realising that a means of egress had come available, the thugs of Clodius turned and launched a violent assault on the six men.
Fronto lunged at the first man to close on them, a tall, muscular man with a curved sica blade that suggested his origins lay in the arena. The man grinned, a section of his jaw missing, along with half a dozen teeth, evidence of an almost crippling wound long ago. With a deft flick of the curved blade he knocked Fronto’s gladius aside. The man was good, and unconventional.
Fronto took a deep breath, wincing as he reached for the dagger at his belt with his bad hand, two fingers bound tightly to the others in order to heal correctly. Fortunately, despite the pain, the fingers the thugs had chosen to break would not prevent him from holding a hilt.
The gladiator swept a surprisingly fast and odd stroke, the sica dipping down and then coming back up, the concave edge angled perfectly for a lethal strike to the upper leg near the groin. Fronto was forced to leap back, momentarily inconveniencing Milo who stood behind him. His gladius dipped down to catch the deadly stroke, only just turning it away so that the point scored a jagged line across his leg above the knee.
He drew air through his teeth in pain as his bad hand fumbled the dagger’s hilt, trying to draw it in the press. Beside him, Priscus was locked in a violent embrace with a man a foot taller than him, both too close to bring their weapons to bear. Caesar parried and struck repeatedly, almost perfectly evenly matched with a man that showed all the hallmarks of a veteran legionary. Had he had time to watch, Fronto would have been impressed with the strength and skill the general was displaying.
Instead, he was forced once again to suck in his gut as that swift curved blade made to hook his liver. Gods, the man was fast. Taking the brief opportunity afforded him, he lashed out with his gladius, but the man somehow had his sica in the way in the blink of an eye, pushing Fronto’s blade up into the air. As Fronto marvelled at the sheer skill of this gladiator, the man took the opening he saw, head-butting the wounded legate.
Fronto’s world exploded in pain and for a moment he went completely blind with agony. His skull was already cracked and tender and the man had, likely purposefully, managed to hand his blow on the already broken and bruised area.
He staggered, white light suffusing his world, and felt excruciating pain as that sharp point jabbed into his upper arm, slicing into muscle. Only his unpredictable staggering had saved him from the blow’s intended fatal target.
His vision began to return and he could see the broken-jawed man grinning at him as he drew the sica back to repeat his blow, this time with a more certain aim. As the man lunged forward, however, his eyes locked on his opponent, the dagger that Fronto had drawn and just managed to turn outwards slid into the man’s belly with ease. The gladiator gasped, his eyes dropping to the hilt in his belly.
To his credit, he came on with the blow, ignoring the fatal thrust to his gut, but Fronto was recovering from the stun quickly now and ducked in underneath the man’s sword, ripping the dagger out of the man’s gut and then striking again and again, repeatedly hammering the blade into the tunic, the brown linen filling with blood that ran down from beneath and soaked his legs.
The gladiator was dead before he fell back, the curved blade toppling away to fall on the ground. Next to him, he saw Priscus still struggling in a bear-hug with his opponent. Caesar was now beginning to lose the edge in his fight and, watching the next man bearing down on him, Fronto took advantage of the opportunity to strike a side blow at the general’s attacker, thrusting his gladius into the man’s ribs and whipping it back out in time to t
urn and face the next man.
Behind him there was a grunt and he felt Milo collapse at his feet, the slumping form almost pushing him forward into his enemy. More men were coming at them from the gate; a seemingly endless supply of hired killers.
The smaller, wiry man before him made a textbook military thrust with a gladius and Fronto turned it with his own blade with only a little difficulty, wincing at the pain in his chest and arm as he did so. Again, his dagger lashed out, but the man danced back out of the way. Suddenly devoid of his target, Fronto took the opportunity to change his footing. Milo, below him, was in a pile and bleeding, but groaning and alive. As the man before him made another strangely acrobatic leap forward and thrust with the gladius, Fronto ducked to the side and brought the pommel of his own sword down on the man’s lunging wrist, smashing the bones so that the blade fell away helplessly to the floor.
The man stared at him in surprise, but Fronto had no time to savour the moment as the next man behind thrust with a long sword. Fronto grinned and shifted the prone, panicked and disarmed man into the path of the blow. The small attacker gasped as his companion behind drove the long blade through his back, the tip bursting from the man’s rib-cage and coming dangerously close to continuing on and into Fronto.
A quick jerk turned the man by forty five degrees and ripped the impaling long sword from the next man’s hand and Fronto let the body fall away, blade still projecting from him, as he lunged at the new target. Next to him he heard a yelp as Caesar, having just dispatched another attacker, suddenly succumbed to a blow from a man he’d not seen at the periphery. Behind, Galronus staggered against a wall, clutching his elbow.
“Get inside and close the door.”
Galronus looked like he might argue for a moment, but nodded, ducked through the door they were defending and began to bolt it closed from within.
Behind them, the attackers that had become cut off from their main force had been dispatched, Cestus and his men issuing forth from the stables and stores and falling on them from behind. Now they faced only the attackers at the gate, though there were still many of them to come.
Fronto stepped back.
“Fall back. Defend the passage!”
As he stepped back again Priscus disengaged from the huge man and the two brought their weapons to bear. Caesar clutched his side and fell back in line with them, his sword point running with blood. The enemy rallied over the bodies of their fallen companions and two men stepped out from the crowd, one armed after the fashion of a Samnite gladiator and massively-built, moving in a crouch, the other lithe and reedy with a sword in each hand, both spinning in circles like the sails of a mill. The pair stalked forward, slowly and menacingly.
“Who the hell are these two?” Front said, almost sneering.
He felt a hand touch his shoulder.
“Those two are death, plain and simple. Get in the house.”
Fronto glanced round into the eyes of Cestus and, for the first time, saw uncertainty in the man’s eyes. His urge to stay and fight evaporated with that look and he nodded to Priscus and Caesar. As Cestus and the giant Celt known as Lod stepped forward, accompanied by half a dozen other men, Fronto and Priscus hauled Milo to his feet and half walked-half carried him back toward the stable. Cicero was spattered with blood and held the door open with a hollow expression as they passed through.
The stables had been brought under control, the advancing flames now out, steam and smoke mixing, filling the air with noxious fumes. Fronto caught sight of Posco.
“Have you opened an exit?”
Posco shook his head.
“There are several dozen men waiting in the road to the rear, master. I thought it prudent to concentrate on saving the stables and putting out the fire.”
Fronto nodded.
“Good.”
Gesturing to him, the group made their way into the storeroom and into the house proper. Barrels, sacks and boxes lay around, blackened and charred and now soaking wet. Most of the house’s stores were clearly ruined, and structural damage had been done to the building itself.
“Think your man Cestus can hold them?”
Priscus nodded.
“If anyone can, he can.”
“Good. Posco? What’s the situation?”
The slave shrugged.
“The rear door is still burning. We started getting it under control, but then it occurred that at this point it would just crumble if we put the fire out and then the rest of those men could get in, so we’ve contained it but let it burn.”
“Quick thinking, Posco. Good man.”
“The fire in the bath house was easy to put out, given… well, it’s a bath house, sir. The Oecus is on fire and there is still burning in your father’s room, but the vestibule is under control and the flames are almost out.”
Priscus smiled.
“Sounds like you’ve done a damn good job there. That could easily have gone the other way.”
Fronto nodded.
“Yes, very good. But the front door is clear, you say?”
Posco nodded.
“The flames are out, master. Everything is hot to the touch and you can hardly see your hand in front of your face for the smoke, but the danger is past.”
Fronto grinned and turned to Priscus.
“Want to have a little fun?”
Paetus had been forced to move further into the shadows, aware now that Priscus, and therefore Fronto and possibly several others, were conscious that he still lived. He had changed accommodation and cursed himself for letting his activity become too open.
Clodia had ignored his warnings and pushed her vicious agendas until he’d been forced to take matters into his own hands and remove her from circulation. His opinion of Clodius had plummeted further, if such were possible, with the fact that he barely acknowledged the disappearance of his sister. Indeed, the man had been overheard privately stating his relief that she was no longer messing in his affairs.
And so Paetus had pulled back, returning to mostly just observing events and planning and so now he sat on the wall that surrounded the garden of the house across the road from Fronto’s and looked down. Things had clearly not gone the way the attackers expected. He had counted forty five men with the Egyptian, and ten of them had split off to move into the street behind, presumably to prevent anyone effecting an escape.
He had initially wracked his brains for a way to warn Fronto or even to help, but such desire had melted away when he watched the attack progressing around the burning house and had seen, among the other defenders, Gaius Julius Caesar step out into the passageway, fighting for his life. At that point it had become a matter of supreme indifference which side won, as one of the two men he most hated in the world fought desperately against the forces of the other.
And then things had started to swing toward Fronto’s defenders. Philopater, standing beneath Paetus’ very position, shaded by the laurel leaves that flowed over the wall top, committed the small group of hardy men that had remained by his side and watched as the two psychopaths, known to the underworld as Castor and Pollux in a most impious fashion, moved in to shred the defenders.
Fronto’s guards fought well, especially the one called Cestus. They were losing ground, being pushed back along the passageway, but they were making the attackers pay for every foot, and the Egyptian’s force was rapidly diminishing. Every now and then the deadly Dioscuri twins would move to the front of the attack and cause mayhem before stepping back and letting the others do some of the work. Bodies from both sides littered the yard.
And then something happened that would stay with Paetus for the rest of his life.
The kindling and dried wood that had been stacked against the front door of Fronto’s house, then sprayed with pitch and set alight had burned down quickly. The door had caught and the flames had spread within, but the debris around the entrance had turned to a pile of grey charcoal, steaming in the damp night air and discolouring the house’s white wall.
There was a faint click. Philopater had not noticed, his attention riveted to the scene of destruction that he had caused. Paetus, however, was in a commanding position, and was continually scanning the roof of the house to see where fire still burned.
The front door of the house swung open silently, a cloud of smoke billowing out of the aperture and into the street, entirely engulfing the facade.
At last Philopater became aware that something was wrong.
“What in the name of…”
The cloud billowed and bulged, carbon filling the air and ash settling on the glistening pavement and, as the haze began to thin in the gentle night breeze, three figures appeared in the gloom, stepping out of the cloud and into the street.
Paetus almost laughed as he realised that the figures were Fronto, Priscus and Galronus, all three daubed in carbon, their faces and hands blackened, their tunics dark grey with ash. They looked like lemures, the spirits of the restless dead. He could only imagine what Philopater saw, but the gasp from below told him the man was not moved to mirth.
As the three figures stepped into the air, carrying a blade in each hand, Fronto’s two companions separated and stepped to the side, forming a strange, unearthly barrier between the fight in the yard and the events that were unfurling in the street outside.
“To me!” the Egyptian bellowed, his voice cracking with fear. Had he identified the men yet? Did he care?
The hired thugs paid no attention. They had not heard their master, involved as they were in a fight to the death.
“To me!” he yelled again, desperation flooding into his voice.
One or two of the attackers at the back turned to look; one even strode across to the gate but, as his eyes fell on the black spirits stalking the street, he began to push the gate closed, wide eyed in panic. Paetus heard the gasp from Philopater as he realised his men had abandoned him to his fate.
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