"I agree," Norbanus said. "Let's get rid of them."
"Talk first," Marcus said gently. "We are diplomats, after all." These words were greeted with sighs and groans, which he ignored as he rode forward. He stopped the customary distance and waited to see who the leader of this ragged band might be.
A man wearing an old-fashioned helmet and breastplate, riding barefoot, rode forward a few paces. "Greetings, Romans," he called. He was gap-toothed and scrubby bearded, but he had an air of authority, like a centurion of long service.
"So you know who we are. You have an excellent intelligence service."
The man grinned. "Intelligence service? You mean the world is full of men willing to betray strangers for a handful of coins."
"I'm following you, but your accent is strange to me. Are you Samnite?" He chose the nation at random, naming an old enemy people.
"No, they live far south of here. I'm Ligurian. I think we should discuss the terms upon which we will allow you to continue breathing."
"By all means," Marcus said, leaning forward, listening with evident interest.
The bandit chief looked puzzled and, for the first time, uneasy. "You don't seem very frightened."
"Should we be?" Marcus said. "You seem to be splendid fellows and we're all friends here, are we not?"
"They're all mad," said one of the bandits. All of them fingered their weapons, staring greedily at the fine animals and clothing and equipment.
"This is how it will be," said the leader. "You will all dismount and strip. All of your valuables go on the ground. Then you can walk back to Patavium unmolested. We won't hold you for ransom or sell you as slaves, so long as you make no resistance."
Marcus gazed past him. Heaped at the end of the bridge was a tangle of ropes, chains and shackles. "What are those for?"
The man followed the direction of his gaze. "If you resist, we ransom or sell the survivors. It's the custom."
Marcus straightened. "This is how it is going to be. We will not give you a single animal or a single coin. You will stand aside and allow us to cross, and you will live. We're Romans, you see. We don't negotiate with bandits, pirates and the like. We crucify them." He looked at a nearby copse of trees. "Plenty of good timber for crosses here. We don't have nails, but wood pegs work as well and hurt worse." He took his helmet from his right saddle horn and fastened its chinstrap.
"Eh?" The bandit leader was nonplussed. Then he saw Marcus shrug his cloak from his shoulders, revealing his glittering iron mail as he took the round shield from his left saddle horn. Behind him the rest of the party did the same. In an instant, the trade delegation had become a cavalry troop. For a moment he was shaken, but then realized that he still had the advantage of numbers, by more than two to one. He turned to order his men forward, but Marcus did not wait.
It was always, he knew, best to seize the initiative in the face of superior numbers. He drew his sword and spurred his horse in a single motion. He did not bother to give orders to his men. They knew exactly what to do. This had been drilled into them from the day they first straddled a horse. In an instant his horse was even with that of the bandit chief. He leaned over his saddle and thrust with his arm at full extension. The bandit, expecting a cut, was caught by surprise as he raised his wooden shield, still trying to draw his sword. The point went into his throat just beneath the chin, passing through and separating the neck vertebrae. He went backward out of his saddle, dead before he hit the ground.
As Marcus was withdrawing his sword, a footman rushed up on his left and tried to seize his bridle. Marcus punched with the iron-sheathed edge of his shield, a straight thrust that crunched into the man's temple, dropping him instantly. Then the other Romans were even with him, formed into a skirmish line, their lances and swords rising, falling, thrusting like some great mechanical device. Each man engaged the enemy before him while keeping an eye on those attacking his comrades to right and left. A moment's inattention by any of the bandits and a lance would be into his side and out again before he was even aware of it. It was Roman practice in such a fight for a horseman to protect himself from the man directly before him while using his offensive weapons principally against attackers to either side. They had learned that they inflicted far more losses on an enemy this way than by heroic, one-on-one duels.
In an amazingly short time, most of the bandits were on the ground and the rest were running, some of them onto the bridge from which they jumped into the waters below, so desperate were they to escape this unprecedented killing machine. Marcus reined in but some of the younger men continued to chase the running bandits, spearing them or cutting them down as if this were a stag hunt, not a fight against men. Marcus did not call them off. He did not like bandits and it was just as well that the people in these parts learned the terror of Roman arms. It would make for less trouble later.
Titus Norbanus rode up, his sword red to the hilt, his mail splashed with blood as well. "A few seem to have gotten away," he reported.
"How many?" Marcus asked.
"Four or five, I think."
"Just as well. Let them spread the word."
"But we promised them crucifixion!" Norbanus protested. Marcus scanned the little battlefield. "There are probably some here you can crucify."
"No, they're all dead," Norbanus said, sounding deeply disappointed.
Flaccus rode up. "I'm glad of it. Crucifixion is a lot of work."
Norbanus looked him over. "That's a clean sword you have there."
Flaccus held the weapon up as if studying it. Its polish was unmarred, its edge innocent of notches. "So it is. This means I won't have to clean it, doesn't it?"
"Since you rested during the fight," Marcus said, "you can see to disposal of the bodies."
"Of course. I'll summon the slaves. They can go round up some peasants and we'll have these poor wretches piled up and incinerated before nightfall." He sheathed his sword and rode off, calling for the servants.
Marcus dismounted and walked down to the river to wash the blood from his sword. Blood was the worst thing in the world for a sword, oddly enough. Leave it on too long and it would etch and stain the blade, ruining the fine polish. As he swept the blade back and forth in the flow, he reflected that it was going to take more than a long march and a fight with bandits to make a Roman of Flaccus.
Fifteen days later, they came within sight of the walls of Rome.
Chapter 5
They stood on the plain north of the city and gazed upon the walls built by the king Servius Tullius. On the heights within the walls they could see the great temples of Juno and Jupiter. All their lives they had been told of these places and they knew the topography of Rome and the surrounding countryside as well as they knew their own city.
"The walls!" somebody said with a sob in his voice. The great, ancient wall was reduced in places to rubble, only small sections still standing to their full height.
"What did you expect?" Titus Norbanus said. "Hannibal would never leave a strongly fortified enemy city within his domains, any more than we would. He pulled the walls down, so we will build them up again."
"That we will," Marcus affirmed. "Come on, let's go see what the Carthaginians left us."
So they rode across the river plain, along the old northern road that led them to a gap in the wall where once had stood the Colline Gate. Within, they found a dismal expanse of tumbled masonry, overgrown with bushes, weeds and even full-grown trees where once had stood the proud houses of the patricians, the tenements of the poor, the markets and plazas of the great city.
"This is the temple of Quirinus," Flaccus said. The structure stood atop a rise of ground, the Quirinal hill. Its pillars and portico were still intact, but the roof was gone.