know you’re a perceptive man, Marcus, and you know my mind. I will wait for you in Puteoli until the demons stop chasing you.”
Fronto stared at her, a dozen emotions battering him in constant waves, leaving him feeling drained and yet less sure of himself. He watched as she rose, crossed to the door and, with a last, lingering look, walked off to her room, leaving him entirely alone.
Standing slowly, he crossed to the door, but she was already gone. Wearily he stepped across the threshold, around the peristyle, and to the armoury that stored so many memories. With a sigh, he lifted the baldric over his head, uncomfortably, and held the sheathed sword tightly. For a long moment he stared down at the weapon, a quality blade freshly made so many years ago for an eager young tribune heading off to fight with Caesar in Spain.
His finger traced the text picked out on the leather in bronze.
GN VERGINIO
With a last, deep, sigh, he returned the weapon to the rack on the wall before turning and heading for the baths.
Fronto grunted with the release of tension as he lay flat on the bench at the side of the caldarium. He had arrived at the cold bath to find the water a dark grey where first Galronus and then Priscus had dunked themselves. Shaking his head with a smile, he had added his own sooty coating to the slick floating on the surface and then strode through to the hot room to find Priscus standing at the large labrum, washing himself down to remove the last remaining traces of the filth.
The presence of a strigil and towel lying in a pile at the room’s centre announced that Galronus had been and gone. The Belgic officer had taken to bathing after the Roman fashion, but still held a faint and unshakable distrust of the process.
“I see you decided to skip the full experience and just dip and wash?”
Priscus shrugged as he crossed the room and lay down on the bench opposite, the steam in the room billowing up and making Fronto’s face hazy in the cloud of white.
“No slaves around to help scrape, and just too much shit to clean easily.”
Fronto laughed.
“Yes, I saw the cold bath. Looks like a sewer.”
Priscus sighed as he settled back.
“I’ve got rather used to this, you know? Two years of bathing in weed-infested Gaulish rivers makes you appreciate the simple comforts. Though at least a running river would clean us more thoroughly in this state.”
“We’ll be clean enough.” Fronto smiled. “Once we’ve seen the family off, we can drop in at the piscina publica on the way back for a swim. That’ll get the last off.”
“You sound considerably calmer and more content than I’ve seen you since you returned to Rome.”
Fronto nodded, unseen in the mist.
“Strangely, despite all the trouble we’re having, some things long overdue seem to be falling into place and I’m finding that I’m feeling curiously positive.”
It was Priscus’ turn to laugh.
“That has the sound of a woman’s involvement. You been cornered by that little morsel of Balbus’?”
A low rumble was Fronto’s only answer and Priscus laughed again.
“Thought so. She’s been stalking you like a lion, you know.”
“Oh shut up.”
There was a light metallic clunk and Fronto laughed.
“I thought you were forgoing the scraping.”
“I am.”
Without time to breathe, Fronto rolled off the bench and painfully onto the mosaic floor as the tip of a blade slammed down through the slatted wood precisely where his sternum had been a moment before.
“Gnaeus!” he yelled as he rolled and came up into a crouch, naked but ready. The sounds of desperate movement through the mist and the faint view of shapes moving confirmed that Priscus was also busy.
Ducking back instinctively, Fronto saw the bulk of a large figure loom in the mist and swung his right fist with as much force as he could muster.
His knuckles connected with a helmet and a resounding ‘clong’ echoed through the vaulted room. Fronto cursed as he withdrew his hand, the fingers numb from the impact, and the gladiator’s head became clearer through the clouds.
The helmet, a huge, iron construction, bulkier and far heavier than those used in the army, had a wide brim and a full faceguard, two round holes for the eyes the only elaboration. Two long blue feathers rose up decoratively beside the huge plain iron crest. Fronto’s knuckles had not left a dent, unsurprisingly. The same could not be said in reverse.
He had only a moment to see the wide, battle-crazed eyes of the gladiator flashing white in the deep darkness of those two holes before the huge rectangular shield with its dented and marked bronze boss hit him full in the chest and sent him hurtling backwards against the huge granite labrum, whose contents sloshed for a moment, slopping water onto the hot floor where it quickly burned off to steam.
Fronto shook his head in a daze and drew sharp breath at both the heat of the floor where he floundered and the pain in his shoulder, ribs and knuckles. Pushing himself up against the granite stand, he reached his full height for only a second before he had to duck madly to avoid the swung sword that whistled past his ear.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” he shouted, unable to concentrate enough to think of anything more useful, hoping that someone would hear the cry.
Quickly recovering, he danced out of the way of where he could see a vague looming shape and suddenly found himself mere inches away from Priscus, who pushed him back, just as a long, narrow and sharp sword swished through the air where he had been. Castor and Pollux had clearly marked their own targets.
As he staggered from Priscus’ shove, Fronto heard the attack coming before he saw it and threw himself forward into a painful roll across the mosaic floor, the blade passing harmlessly over the top of him as he came back up against the bench where he had so recently been relaxing.
“A hundred denarii just to piss off and bother someone else” he yelled.
His answer came in the form of the gladiator’s shield, swung out horizontally so that the dented bronze strip along the edge caught Fronto on the elbow, spinning him bodily and sending him sprawling across the bench.
Across the room he heard a cry of pain and could only hope it was the other gladiator and not Priscus that had issued the sound. There was no time to enquire, though, as, ignoring his throbbing elbow, he jumped up onto the bench, spied the looming shape of the huge man and kicked out as hard as he could.
The gladiator, even suffering such a restricted view and all but rendered deaf by the huge helmet, pulled back out of the way and the momentum carried Fronto off the bench and face first onto the floor.
How could the man be this alert and quick in such armour?
He struggled to turn onto his back and once again had to roll out of the way as the gladius slammed point first into the floor where he had been, sending up shards of plaster and half a dozen black and white tesserae.
Fronto scrambled away past the wide granite labrum, desperately trying to plan a useful move, but unable to come up with anything. The forbidding shape of that enormous helmet with its incongruously elaborate feathers appeared out of the enveloping mist and suddenly the sword lunged across the huge bowl’s flat surface, the water slopping this way and that, splashing Fronto’s chest as he danced back and right, being sure to keep the huge labrum between them.
As the sword pulled back away, Fronto anticipated the next move and ducked down to his left as the huge shield swept horizontally across the water’s surface, smashing the nozzle that fed the fresh water into the bowl and causing the jet to spray out at an angle.
He hardly had time to straighten again before he had to duck back out of the range of that thrusting blade.
And then he saw it coming.
Pollux made his mistake and Fronto, every bit as experienced in combat as the gladiator, recognised the opening for the opportunity it was and leapt on it.
