glancing up briefly and noting the fading light in the sky. Evening was approaching and the shadows in the house were growing menacing.
There was the noise again!
Convinced now that it was coming from his mother’s room, Fronto crossed towards it tensely, sword gripped tight. His mother should still be safely at the villa in Puteoli with Posco and the slaves. This area of the house had apparently been completed, and a hanging sheet separated it from the current workspace, keeping the dust and mess from contaminating the finished work.
The walls had been painted in the modern style, updated from the old look according to Faleria’s designs, mimicking open arches with gardens and landscapes beyond. The work was truly excellent, if a little slow. Faleria the elder’s door had been replaced with what appeared to be ebony, inlaid with a lighter wood. Even in his tense and worried state, Fronto found himself frowning with irritation at the door, wondering just how much the damned thing had cost. More than a centurion’s yearly pay probably.
The strange, muffled noise was coming from behind the near-priceless ebony as he’d suspected — and he moved across, placing a hand on the bronze ring and gently pushing the door inwards. The portal swung on the hinge without a sound; no squeak or creak, oiled and balanced perfectly. His mother’s room, unfurnished, but completed and gloriously decorated, sat in deep shadow and Fronto peered into the gloom, trying to make out something other than the faint shape of the room itself.
A heap on the floor caught his attention and he felt his heart skip a beat. It was a person. A body? A corpse? No, for it moved slightly and shuddered.
A dreadful anticipation creeping across him, Fronto paced quietly across the room and crouched as he neared the heap. He felt a chest-freezing mix of joy and panic to realise that it was Faleria. Was she…?
Gingerly, he dropped the sword to the perfect marble floor and reached for his sister, gently grasping her upper arms and rolling her over. His heart lurched again as her face came into stark relief in the light from the door.
Her eye was swollen and discoloured and there was a huge black-purple patch on her left temple with dried trickles of blood down the side of her face. She had been hit hard enough to kill her, yet Faleria was made of sterner stuff.
She groaned, barely conscious, and one eye flickered, unable to open fully, the other sealed shut by the beating. Grimacing and worried, he began to gently probe around her neck and shoulders, down her arms, then felt gently across her ribs, down to her hips and then her thighs, knees and ankles and feet. Other than the wound to her temple, she appeared to be intact and unharmed, for which he was grateful. The head wound may have been intended as a killing blow anyway, of course.
If Clodius thought he was going to get away with this just by leaving her body for him to find, the scum had another thing coming. Presumably the weasel had received word that Fronto was on his way and had brought her here to unburden himself of her. There would be no direct proof of his involvement now, though Faleria could still accuse him. Undoubtedly that was why he’d had her brains smashed out — or so he thought.
Leaving her, Fronto stood slowly. There were sacks and sheets here and there in the work areas. He could make up a temporary pillow and covering for her until he could speak to Balbus and arrange for a doctor. Despite his initial checks, he knew enough never to move someone in her condition until a professional had confirmed she was alright.
His thoughts running rapidly through everything he was going to do to Clodius, Fronto left the room, striding back to the atrium, where he crouched and collected two sheets and a sack of used rags. Grinding his teeth, fury vying with concern for control of his brain, Fronto rose and turned to go and make Faleria comfortable.
He froze to the spot as his eyes fell on the corridor to the peristyle whence he had originally entered the building. The diminishing light from the garden cast the shadow of a man on the wall: a man moving slowly and purposefully towards the atrium, the telltale shape of a gladius held in his hands.
Still gripping the sheets, knowing that if he dropped them, he might make too much noise, Fronto began to pad almost silently back to the room where Faleria lay, grateful for the first time all year that he’d never exchanged the soft, quiet leather boots Lucilia had bought him for a pair of loud, hobnailed ones.
Carefully, he lifted aside the hanging sheet that separated the completed part of the house and slipped past, lowering it gently so that it hardly moved with his passage. Past the sheet he could just make out the shape of a man with a sword silhouetted on the wall in the atrium, moving towards the impluvium pool at its centre.
Quickly, he moved back to his mother’s room and passed within, feeling the first twinges of pain in his knee and willing it to hold as long as he needed. With a fresh speed, he danced across the room, dropping the sack next to Faleria and covering her with the sheet, so that she resembled at first glance one of the piles of rubbish the workmen had left.
Her eye opened for a moment and, though he couldn’t be sure she’d see him or that she’d comprehend, he held a finger to his lips as he crouched and collected his sword.
He’d done all he could do now, other than what he’d trained for all his life.
Gripping his sword’s handle, he padded back out of the room, turned towards the atrium and strode purposefully forward, throwing the sheet dramatically aside.
Tribune Menenius stood almost ghostly in the pale light
There was no preamble. Fronto, surprised by the tribune’s presence when expecting Clodius’ thugs, had faltered for a second and Menenius was on him instantly. In a flurry of blows, Fronto was driven back through the sheet, blocking as best he could and ducking and dancing out of the way of the flickering strikes that were coming so fast he could hardly credit it. Back in Germania Cantorix had described the tribune as ‘fast as a snake’, and now Fronto could see what the man had meant.
Menenius was no novice with a blade; indeed, he was quite clearly the finest swordsman Fronto had ever seen, his movements lithe and economical. Wherever Fronto moved, Menenius was already there, that shining blade lancing out, swiping, sweeping, descending, rising, lunging, never even needing to block; Fronto simply didn’t have time to try and strike back, spending every heartbeat desperately trying to prevent himself from being skewered.
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
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
