at the painted shield while the other charged in with the point of his sword levelled. Parrying away the man on his left with a firm punch of the shield, he flicked the other’s blade aside with a deft twist of his own blade, lunging forward on a bent knee to run him through with the long sword’s point. With a shriek of pain the bandit fell back from his intended victim, clutching at his stomach, and the mysterious figure turned to his other assailant, whipping the blade in low as his remaining opponent jumped back in to attack him again, severing the man’s leg at the ankle.
Obduro shook his head in disgust, drawing his own sword as the stranger stepped past his defeated men and regarded him dispassionately through the eyeholes of the cavalry mask.
‘It seems that I’ll have to deal with you myself.’ The bandit leader stared at his opponent for a moment longer before speaking again, his voice a mixture of assumed superiority and curiosity. ‘I’ve always found it easier to fight man to man without the constraints imposed by this frankly ludicrous disguise. And to be honest, not only am I curious to find out just who has the courage to face me, given my justified reputation with this weapon, but I’d like to see your face as I send you to meet Mithras, or whichever god it is that you serve. What do you say? Shall we lose these awkward helmets?’
The other man nodded, and the two men lifted their face masks simultaneously, staring at each other before Obduro broke the silence.
‘Well, now. Centurion Corvus… or perhaps I’d be more accurate to have said “Centurion Aquila”? It seems that your enforced necessity for disguise has become a bit of a habit, doesn’t it? And that jaw seems to have healed quicker than might be deemed feasible.’
Marcus smiled thinly back at him.
‘Disguises come in many forms. When you told your man to put me out of action I decided it might be a good idea to allow you to believe you’d succeeded. A whisper in my wife’s ear was enough to have her play along, and so, as far as Tungrorum knew, my jaw was broken. But nobody died to foster that illusion, whereas you, Obduro, seem to have elevated the knack of spending other men’s lives to conceal your identity to an art form. And that’s the last time I’ll use your somewhat over-regarded title. It seemed to me at first that you were at least genuine in your desire for freedom from the empire, but now I can see you’re just another honourless robber with no concern except to escape with the fruits of your violent trade. There never really was a plan for you to defy the empire from the forest, was there, Sextus Caninus?’ He waited for a moment, while Caninus stared back at him with an unfathomable expression. ‘Yes, I called you by your real name. It wasn’t a girl called Lucia you left to rot in a disused stable all those years ago, was it?’
The other man nodded, raising an eyebrow as an indication of respect.
‘Well done. How long have you known?’
‘That you killed your brother Quintus in a fit of jealousy over something or other before you hid him under a floorboard and ran for your life? I’ve known that for certain since you admitted to it just a moment ago. Before then it was no more than an educated guess. How long have I known that you’re not Quintus? For a matter of hours, since I found a dead body in your fortress earlier today.’
Caninus attacked without warning, stamping forward and swinging the leopard sword in a deadly arc, but Marcus had been waiting for the onslaught all the time he’d been talking, and he lifted his shield in defence rather than going blade to blade with the bandit leader, knowing that even his patterned spatha could never hope to trade blows with the fearsome damascened steel. With an expression of glee Caninus chopped his sword into the round shield’s rim, but rather than hacking cleanly through the layered wood and linen, the blade’s fearsome edge bit deeply into the bowl’s edge before stopping dead against something beneath its painted surface, sticking fast. Knowing that if Caninus managed to wrench the blade free he wouldn’t be fooled a second time, Marcus used every ounce of his arm strength to twist the shield violently, wrenching the sword out of Caninus’s hands, then tossing it aside behind him. Without a second’s hesitation the bandit leader lowered his face mask and leapt forward, moving so fast that he was inside the Roman’s defences before Marcus had a chance to use his own sword. Holding his opponent’s sword hand aside, Caninus pulled his head back to deliver a powerful head butt, but realising what the bandit leader intended Marcus dropped the sword and grappled with him, pushing him off balance and preventing the blow from landing. Forcing his opponent to the right, the Roman hooked a foot behind the struggling Caninus’s right leg and then reversed his grip, using the struggling bandit’s own strength to throw him into the stone frieze propped against the temple’s wall. Caninus saw his chance, and kicked his body off the frieze’s surface to lunge full length across the floor, grasping for the hilt of Marcus’s discarded sword and raising the blade to hack it into the Roman’s legs and end the fight. But, unbalanced by his kick, the heavy stone slab fell away from the wall, landing squarely on his feet and legs. The bandit leader screamed and dropped the sword, twisting desperately in a futile attempt to free himself from both the stone panel’s massive weight and the agony of his shattered feet and ankles. Marcus pushed the sword away from him with a booted toe, then bent and picked it up, sheathing the weapon. He bent down again and pulled off Caninus’s helmet, revealing a face twisted in agony and hatred. The bandit leader stared up at him helplessly, still writhing in pain. His voice, when he spoke through gritted teeth, was harsh with hate.
‘You have the favour of the gods today, it seems! Kill me!’
Marcus shook his head, standing up to stare down at his prostrate enemy.
‘There was no luck involved. You brought your blasphemous blood cult into this holy place, and Mithras dealt out your punishment in the way he saw fit. And you’ll die soon enough, you can be assured of that.’
He tugged the damascened steel blade from his shield, looking down at Caninus in a mixture of pity and contempt for a long moment before raising the shield and lowering his face mask ready to fight, stepping cautiously up the steps that led to the outside world. A score and more tattooed gang members stood waiting for him with Petrus at their head, and Caninus’s remaining men were scattered across the square where they had fallen in what looked to have been a brief and one-sided combat. Marcus waited in silence as the gang leader stepped forward and drew himself up to speak.
‘Obduro, put down your sword and accept the terms I offer you, or I will send these men at you, too many for even you to kill. I have promised them each a share of the gold waiting for us in the temple, to them if they live, or to their families if they die, and all stand ready to take you down if you refuse to surrender!’
Raising the helmet’s faceplate, Marcus smiled into Petrus’s astonishment.
‘The man you call Obduro, former imperial prefect Caninus, awaits the emperor’s justice in the temple below us, having already been judged by Mithras and found wanting. This temple is holy ground which I am sworn to defend with my life. If you want the gold, you will indeed have to come through me…’
He lowered the faceplate again, readying himself for the inevitable onslaught, then turned to face the source of a fresh voice.
‘And me!’ Julius was hobbling across the square with a spear as a prop, and he took his place alongside his comrade with a wink. ‘I’ve come to offer you the chance to surrender, Petrus. If you give it up now you’ll be treated far better than if you make us work for it.’
Petrus’s smile broadened.
‘Just when it doesn’t seem as if life could get any better, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place. The soldier who invaded my business, killed two of my men and stole a valuable item of my property presents himself to me on a silver plate with an offer of “ the chance to surrender ”.’ He wiped an imaginary tear of mirth from his eye, shaking his head at the grinning centurion. ‘Surrender? Really? To quote your words back at you, I’ll have your cock and balls fed to my dogs, Centurion, and I’ll do it while you’re still alive to enjoy the sight. Right lads, let’s have-’
Julius held up a hand.
‘Before you set your men on the pair of us, there’s just one thing.’ He put a shiny brass whistle to his lips and blew a long shrill blast. For a moment the men around him heard nothing other than the echoes of the whistle’s note dying away, but just as the smile was returning to Petrus’s face, and with a sudden rattle of hobnails, a century’s strength of soldiers burst into the square from several directions, their shields and spears raised to trap the gang members where they stood. Julius raised his eyebrows at Marcus, who raised his cavalry helmet’s face mask and grinned out at the men of his own century as they herded the captives into a tight knot and forcibly disarmed them at spear point. A hulking gang member scowled down at the diminutive Hamian confronting him, only to find himself with the point of the easterner’s dagger pressed firmly into his crotch.
‘Move it or lose it, arsehole.’
The soldiers around the Hamian nodded approvingly, and more than one gave the big man a look that
