The Art of War

Chapter 23

Rome, 4 August AD 69

Trabo

I had no idea what was wrong with Vespasian’s mistress as her litter came back down the hill again.

She wasn’t screaming in pain or anything; well-bred ladies rarely do until they’re staring death in the face, and often not even then, but she was clearly unwell, in a decorous kind of way. The echoes of her anguish rippled up and down the Quirinal in a manner that seemed likely to draw her to the attention of even more cutthroats and bandits than carried her litter.

Sure enough, they turned up before she was halfway down; five or six, or eight, or possibly ten quietly shambling figures homing in on either side of the floating white cave like jackals on a new corpse.

The Guard detachments should have stopped them, but, bizarrely, I couldn’t see any Guards any more. They’d shadowed Caenis all the way up the hill and kept covert watch on the house she had been in from the moment she entered. Now, though, they’d all vanished, even on this, the second largest street up the Quirinal, which was, at the very least, a dereliction of duty. When I was employed to protect Rome, my men and I had marched the hill in tent-units of eight and, believe me, none of us was ever out of sight of those coming behind or going ahead.

The litter-bearers seemed to have noticed neither the lack of Guards nor the bandits slowly closing in on them. They trotted across the courtyard to Isis’ shrine as if there was nothing amiss and continued down the hill.

I followed, a strategic distance behind. I hadn’t killed any Guards yet that night and my blood still sighed for the hunt, but this was more interesting: Vespasian’s mistress had been visiting Vespasian’s brother and one corner of her litter was borne, if my instincts were right, by Vespasian’s spy.

It may have been that the shady men following didn’t know that, but they were careful, not the mindless thugs of the night before, and if I had had to bet, I would have said these were off-duty Guardsmen, sent out under cover of night to do what could not openly be done by day.

The litter came to the steepest part of the hill. The bearers leaned back, stiff-legged, taking the full weight on their shoulders in an effort to stop their burden careering down the hill. Sweat shone from them, briefly, in the light of the few lamps. Then, in three paces, they left the lucent puddles behind and entered a lampless dark where there was no sweat, no shine, only the ghosted outline of the litter and the sound of men in labour, and a woman’s groaning.

‘ Go! ’

I didn’t need to hear the hissed order to know this was where the ambush must take place; I had set enough myself to see the obvious. But the command came in Latin, which confirmed all I had thought and gave me, if I needed it, the last excuse to intervene.

As the men converged on the lumbering litter, I ripped off my money belt and wound it round my right hand. No pain now; the promise of battle made me well-nigh immortal.

I was Achilles. I was Zeus. I was the bear-man the Guards feared so much that Lucius had threatened to flog anyone who mentioned it in his hearing.

The attackers were running downhill, cautiously because it was dark. This might have been the Quirinal, but that didn’t mean the route was necessarily free of debris.

I caught the last man in the line before he reached the litter. Surprise was my best weapon and I needed to kill in silence. My left arm hugged my enemy’s throat, crushing it tight. My gold-weighted right fist struck hard below his ribs, from the side and slightly in front. It crushed upwards, seeking the heart, the liver, the kidneys; anything soft that could be bruised and broken.

There was a moment’s frantic struggle; fingers clawed at my arms, a gladius swung up and had to be blocked, a nailed heel struck down on my instep, ripping the skin; I had to step back to avoid it a second time.

The man was good, and fought well, but I had the first grip and that’s what counts. I braced my right fist against my left to make a lever, pulled once, hard, and the fight was over. I lowered the body to the ground.

I had armed myself during the day with a small double-edged knife which I had strapped to my left ankle. It came free with a tug. They thought me a bear, and so I used the blade to slash once across his throat, and then thrice more across his face: no harm in keeping up the illusion.

Ahead, the litter was no longer wobbling. At a single, quiet command it had been set on the ground and the four half-lame, squint-eyed, disreputable idiots who bore it were looking less lame now, more confidently competent. They bore cudgels that were the mirror of the ones the bandits had used against the spy the evening before; they might have been the very weapons, collected and stored for later use.

For one last moment, the night was perfectly still. To the east, a star fell from the sky, leaving a long singing trail across the dark. As if on that divine signal, the remaining ambushers attacked. There were a dozen of them; a tent-unit and a half, and they came forward in a particular formation that all the Guards know, called the Goose Wing: a staggered line that curves into the enemy and can slice open a waiting block.

There was a gap at the far right-hand edge of their formation where the man I had killed should have been. I slotted myself into his place, wielding my little knife in my gold-weighted fist; once committed to a thrust, nothing short of a shield could stop it and these men weren’t carrying shields.

The nearest of the attackers was to my left. Reaching him, I turned, lifted my blade in salute and was rewarded by the fleeting grin of one who thought he had a friend at his side. The illusion lasted another two paces and then, launching forward, I struck my blade across his unarmoured throat.

Too easy! And there was not time to crow over the body. Happy now, but not happy enough, I spun, found another target, swept up the fallen gladius and used it in my left hand, to balance the knife in my weighted right. Another enemy fell, his throat laid open, his blood soaring in diminishing arcs on to the empty street.

A fourth came at me, blade thrusting fast, straight for my chest. I slewed sideways, felt it skitter past, shifted the gladius to my right hand and stabbed in, ferociously fast, hard, at an angle to the man’s unprotected flank.

There was a sense of resistance destroyed and I lost my fist in the blood-hot ribcage as the weight of my belt carried me through mere skin and flesh and fragile bone. The Guard choked on a gout of his own blood and toppled like a tree, dragging me with him.

I stumbled, caught in a tangle of legs. I landed on my out-flung palm, felt my wrist crack, rolled, swearing, and And lay very still. A blade sliced the air above me and stopped on a level with my eye. Its point was black with flesh and gore.

‘If you move very slowly,’ said Vespasian’s spy, ‘I will let you rise. If you try to move fast, I will kill you, my gratitude for your help last night notwithstanding.’

About him was silence; a dozen or more Guards were dead or dying. Not one of the attacking force had lived. The odds were three to one in their favour and they had fought as motley a group of eunuchs, barbarians and squint-eyed youths as you could never want to assemble in one place.

But it was the Guards who were dead and not one of the litter-bearers so much as scratched. What could Otho have done with these men on his side? What could Vespasian do?

I lifted my hands to show they were empty, and levered myself cautiously to my feet.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

‘One of us does,’ said Pantera, and took my right arm and twisted it behind my back and marched me over to where they had set down the litter.