Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles (75 page)

His breath was coming in gasps already, while Menenius seemed to be hardly winded, a malicious grin plastered across his face.

Strangely, despite the desperate circumstances, Fronto couldn’t help but notice the sword in the tribune’s hand. No legionary sword, this. Menenius’ gladius was a perfect blade. Noric steel with straight fuller running down the centre, the hilt formed of orichalcum and embossed with the images of deities. The handle, where he could see flashes of it moving, was of perfectly carved ivory. The sword was worth more than the damned ebony door. It was not the sort of sword carried by an ordinary soldier.

Who
was
this Menenius?

Back he moved again. Drawing his opponent past the open door to the room where his sister lay, Fronto kept his eyes on the man, desperately watching that dancing blade and barely reacting in time. His knee gave a warning wobble and he almost fell as he rounded the corner, heading towards the rooms where he, Priscus and Galronus had stayed the previous year.

“You’re better than I thought, Fronto.”

Menenius’ voice was light, as Fronto remembered, but mature and steady, lacking all the frivolity and foppishness he’d heard before.

“You too.”

“I’ll end it quickly for you if you don’t make me work for it. A proper soldier’s death?”

Fronto sneered. “A proper soldier dies in battle, not submitting to a murderer. Is that the blade that killed Tetricus?”

“Why yes, Fronto. It so happens it is.”

The tribune was suddenly under his reach, slashing with the razor edge of the beautiful blade. Fronto felt it skitter across his ribs and hissed with the pain as he danced to the side and almost fell on his weakened knee.

“So that will be your end, Fronto. Your knee can’t hold you when you have to move sharply left. Best keep your guard to the right, then, eh?”

In a flash – a fraction of a heartbeat – the sword was withdrawn and then stabbed again, before Fronto could even bring his own gladius down in the way. The blade bounced off a rib again, only an inch below the previous cut, and he involuntarily moved away, his knee buckling and almost bringing him down. Panicked, he staggered a few steps away, realising with a sinking sensation that, not only was he hopelessly outclassed, he was backing into the corner, and when that happened it was all over.

“Very good, you know?” Menenius complemented him. “Despite your weakness, you’re still the best I’ve faced all year.”

“Not difficult” Fronto snapped, “given that the rest of them were sleeping or unawares.”

The tribune laughed and the sound chilled Fronto to the bone.

“You have no idea, Fronto. If you only knew the scale of my year’s work.”

Fronto’s mind raced. Overconfidence? Perhaps he could trick Menenius into doing something foolish? The man was clearly supremely confident. No. He recognised instantly how dangerous such an attempt could be. The tribune was certainly confident, but also totally in control. Every move he made was calculated beforehand, faster than Fronto could credit. Menenius was not a man who would fall into the trap of overreaching himself.

Which left only the unexpected.

He saw the door to his room as he passed and realised he was almost at the corner and running out of time. The tribune’s blade lashed out again, this time higher, scarring a line across his bicep, though not enough to wound or incapacitate. Lurching left and wobbling on his knee, Fronto realised that Menenius was playing with him like a cat with a mouse. The bastard could have killed him ten moves ago or moreemel was forcing him to put his weight on his weak knee and smiling maliciously every time that leg shook.

With a sudden flash of realisation, Fronto knew what he could do; the
only
thing he could do. But it relied on Menenius moving first.

The legate gave a pained hiss and his left leg trembled slightly.

The blow came, exactly as Fronto expected, to his right hand side and high, to score across his shoulder. He allowed it to connect. If he was seen to feint, the tribune would know and counteract instantly. The man was simply that fast. Instead he had to play into Menenius’ expectations.

As the blow drew blood, Fronto staggered on his bad left knee and fell. Even in the heartbeat it took, the tribune’s glorious sword came back for another blow, rising to drive down at his fallen opponent.

But Fronto was not falling. His leg screaming agony at him, he pushed on his bad knee and rose again, coming up unexpectedly at the tribune’s side, out of the reach of his weapon.

Swordplay forgotten, Fronto’s free fist lashed out and landed a skull-fracturing blow to the side of Menenius’ head. There was an audible crack and for a moment Fronto wondered whether he’d broken the man’s neck. But Menenius, stunned by the blow, simply folded up and fell to his knees, his broken jaw misshapen and hanging down at one side, blood gushing from his lips and his cheek where the Falerii signet ring had imprinted the Ursus symbol into his flesh.

The tribune’s sword skittered away across the marble from numb fingers as his knees cracked to the floor.

“I’d love to take the time to go through your crimes with you one by one” Fronto grunted as he stepped in front of the murdering tribune. Raising his sword, he reversed his grip and made ready to stab downwards. “I’m not playing your games though. Say hello to Hades for me.”

The bulk-issue military gladius, pitted with marks from battles long past, a blade that had been with Fronto for two decades, descended towards the point in Menenius’ neck where his collar bones met; a killing blow.

And suddenly Fronto’s world exploded in agony. He’d been so intent on the strike that he’d not heard the tell-tale whup… whup… whup… of the sling. The lead bullet struck his hand where he gripped the hilt and he felt three fingers break under the blow, the sword almost launched from his hand to clatter across the floor, coming to rest next to the tribune’s own beautiful blade, and almost parallel.

Fronto gasped with the astounding pain and stared down at his bloody, misshapen hand.

How had he not anticipated this?

Idiot!

Tribune Hortius strolled calmly from Fronto’s own room, the perfectly oiled and silent door now standing open.

“What a fool. I said we should just have jumped you together from the start, but my poor, dear friend has always had such a flair for showmanship. And a total self-belief. He simply could not conceive of a way you could beat him. I argued, but what can you do? He’s a friend.”

The tribune had discarded the sling, allowing it to fall to the floor, drawing his sword as he moved into the room.

“I would humbly say that I have a less inflated ego than dear Menenius. I may not be quite the swordsman he is, but I suspect you’d find that I’m still considerably better than average. And not quite so prone to showing off.”

Fronto glanced across the floor at the swords and made to rise, his knee screaming at him in pain. Energetically and with impressive speed, Hortius danced across the room, placing a foot heavily over the fallen sword.

“Oh, no. I’m not so subject to my own ego that I have to let you re-arm first. Step away from Menenius.”

Fronto did so, slowly and quietly, backing shakily towards the side corridor and its guest rooms. The tribune gestured to his friend with his free hand. “Are you alright? Can you stand?”

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 deepregret, 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.