The way he launched himself, feet first at the ankles of the brawler, one foot striking home, threw the man off balance. The spiked club was already swinging, but the increased distance to a body now on the ground, added to his own loss of stability, took most of the strength out of the blow. It still broke an upraised left forearm, the crack of the bone going echoing off the alley walls. Ragas had spun upwards, fear making him unaware of the pain; he knew his left arm was useless, but that was not needed by a right-handed fighter. The bare-knuckled punch took the clubman right on the edge of his jawbone and the crack of that going was audible, accompanied as it was by a scream of pain that died in the brute’s throat as he was knocked unconscious. Ragas was out from under the collapsing body and running, cradling his broken arm, before the body hit the ground. He heard Gafon curse as he leapt over the inert gang member, as well as the ring of his sword blade as it connected with something solid. It was not any sense of direction that made Ragas turn left, just the need of self-preservation, but his hopes lifted as he saw the silver blue streak of the river ahead of him.
The Tiber was not safety; it was fast flowing and treacherous, at its worst as it ran under the inner city bridges, doubly so to a man with only one good arm, but it was better than the certainty that lay behind him, a sword from which he could in no way protect himself. As he emerged on to the open wharf Ragas dug his feet into the wooden boards to add an extra ounce of purchase to his run. At the edge he threw himself with all the force he could muster, his dive taking him clear of the tied up boats. In the interval between leaving terra firma and the icy water closing over his head, Ragas heard Gafon yell in frustration.
His putative assassin was only ten feet behind the splash, but for all that mattered it could have been ten leagues. Gafon could not swim, and even if he had been able to nothing would have got him into the Tiber at a point where it was narrow and deep. Instead he stopped, searching the silver sheen of moon-reflecting water to see if he could spot a floating head. One by one he was joined by the rest of his gang, who were sent downriver to look out for Ragas.
‘He’ll be dead for certain,’ Gafon said, when they re-gathered. ‘I’m sure I heard his arm go when it took that club. There’s no way that he could survive in that river with two good arms, let alone one.’
In some ways Gafon was trying to reassure himself, yet as they made their way back to where the fallen clubman still lay, he reasoned that it made little difference. The odds of the slave surviving went from nil to near impossible, and if he did, would he want anyone to know; the only person interested was the one who had ordered him killed.
‘Look at him,’ Gafon said, as he stood over the crumpled heap of his gang member. ‘Supposed to be a street fighter and yet he gets knocked out by one blow.’
The torchlight picked up the pale cream of the scroll that lay against the recumbent body. Gafon picked it up, handed his torch to another and opened it. He could not read it, but the words of Lucius Falerius filled his thoughts.
‘That scroll must disappear too.’
‘So it shall,’ Gafon reasoned, sensing that in his hand he held a guarantee of his own security. ‘Into my strongbox.’
‘Right, lads,’ he called. ‘Get back to your houses. I’ll go and tell our stuck up employer that his wishes have been carried out.’
The shock of the freezing water, coming straight off the snow covered mountains of the Apennines, sent a jolt through Ragas’s body, yet it was not just the cold he feared but the speed of a watercourse in spate. Tumbling downriver in the teeming cataract, he fought to get his head sufficiently above water to keep air in his lungs, difficult with one arm useless, while with his good arm he sought to stay away from the riverbank. In that Ragas succeeded, but he had forgotten about the Tiber bridges and it was those that did for him. With arches constraining the waters, the speed of the flow increased and he was sent tumbling into a raging torrent that spun him head over heels so that he no longer knew which was up or down.
Still under water, his body going rigid with the cold, Ragas knew he was going to drown, for with only one arm he had not the means to save himself. His mind turned first to the gods he had worshipped all his life to plead for intercession, aware that they never had in all the years he had made obeisance to them and that they were not going to now. But then as his lungs filled with water he saw the image of that child in the basket as he had handed it to Lucius, the infant that ensured his bloodline was safe. So perhaps his gods had not deserted him after all. He could have, many times, died in battle, but they had kept him alive till he had fulfilled that one function. So, if the earth had no further use of him, he could depart it in peace.
The corpse that washed up downriver was beyond recognition, naked, battered as it was by rocks and scarred by sand so that it looked as if it had been flayed; there was no way to tell who the man was or from what part of society he had come. Bodies washed downriver towards the port of Ostia were nothing new; they could be paupers dead of starvation, victims of robbery and murder, slaves killed by their masters, even men in despair who took their own life.
Those who found it were decent folk, farmers and fisher folk, and pious enough to appease Mania, Goddess of the Dead, so they had the good grace to set up a pyre and give the body some sort of burial, watching as the soul of this unknown casualty was taken up to the heavens in the smoke of his burning corpse.
Gafon returned alone as promised to the Falerii household, to tell Lucius that his orders had been fulfilled, glad that the man who had employed him seemed satisfied enough to gift him another purse of gold for his efforts. But he was not allowed to depart without what the senator called advice, but which he knew to be a threat.
‘Be careful how you pay off those to whom you owe money, Gafon. Sudden evidence of wealth, or even claims of unexpected good fortune, makes men wonder, and that causes them to gossip.’
‘I shall take care, Lucius Falerius, and if I can ever be again of service…’
‘I cannot see that we shall ever need to meet again.’
Gafon felt the scroll inside his tunic, pressed against his belly. They would meet again, all right, when things died down. Lucius Falerius would pay handsomely for that, just to ensure that no one connected the disappearance of his warrior body slave with the murders he and his band had just committed. He exited to streets that were now full of wild people and flaming torches, as those who had supported the plebeian tribune, and saw in him hope for the future, reacted noisily to the news of his death.
CHAPTER SIX
He should not have been there, wherever there happened to be, and as Clodius forced his eyes open, he tried at the same time to focus so that he could locate himself. Normally he woke in the shack, warm when the wind was not too fierce, with the familiar smell of the sod-brick walls, his pig snuffling, chickens clacking and the odour of peat smouldering on the fire. Now he was cold and what little sun penetrated the canopy of trees above his head hurt his eyes. He turned on his side, but the tangled tree roots looked so menacing close up that he threw himself onto his back, stifling a groan as the stabbing pain filled his entire skull. Slowly it subsided to a dull ache, along with the first flicker of memory: an all-night drinking session with his friends. It had not started that way, just a quick snort to be friendly, but one cup of the rough red wine, unwatered, had followed another, until the prospect of Fulmina’s anger at his prolonged absence faded. By the time they had started on the grain spirits that was distant indeed, and it continued to recede with each cup, till any concern about what his wife would say finally evaporated completely.
Now such thoughts came back with a vengeance! He lay, eyes still tightly shut, going over in his throbbing head the words he knew would greet him; he had heard them from Fulmina often enough before. Clodius opened his eyes a fraction and struggled slowly to his feet, knowing her wrath would just have to be faced, and the sooner the better. His mouth was as dry as a bone, with his tongue like a piece of leather in the middle and his nose had that painful sensation at the top that feels like the start of a cold. He must have been snoring fit to wake the dead. Gently he rocked back and forth, aware that he was still suffering from the effects of drink, putting his hand out to steady himself against the nearest tree.
‘Never again,’ he croaked, rubbing his throat, this a vow he often made in the morning when his head hurt, one he struggled to keep when the sun went down. He looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings and his voice croaked again as he berated himself. ‘You’ve done it again, Clodius Terentius.’
