His attackers came on at a rush. Castus leaped to the left, flinging out his wrapped as the swordsman drove a stab at him. The blade passed through the folds of the cloak, and Castus felt the burn of a gash along his forearm before he dragged the sword aside. The momentum of his leap carried him crashing against the man, his dagger already striking up and out. The man screamed, his legs giving beneath him as the dagger blade slashed through his tunic and dug into his shoulder.
Castus fell with him, the trapped sword dragging his arm and pulling him off balance; then the axe handle came down. The blow struck the arch of his back, and he felt the blast of it in his ribs and lungs but he did not buckle. He rolled, ripping the cloak free of his neck. He needed to get back on his feet; the second swordsman was already above him, blade drawn back to strike.
Rage gripped Castus: he refused to die like this. A wheeling kick, and his boot caught the swordsman behind the leg and tripped him. Up on one knee, the dagger raised, Castus glanced around for the other two attackers. The wounded man was over by the fountain, clutching his shoulder; his friend with the club was circling for a clear strike. Castus twisted himself upright, feeling the blood running hot down his arm. Still no sense of clarity or coordination; he was driven only by a blind desire to survive. The second swordsman had recovered his balance now.
They came fast, and together. First the clubman, striking out with his weapon levelled at Castus’s face. The man with the sword dodged in from the right. Castus ducked the club, stepped in at a crouch and came up hard beneath the man’s reaching arm. One upward blow and the dagger stabbed through the man’s armpit; Castus twisted his grip and felt the blade enter his heart. The clubman gasped, coughing blood as Castus spun the body and hurled it towards the man with the sword. The club clattered to the ground as the swordsman dodged out of the way of the toppling corpse.
Snatching up the club, Castus switched the dagger to his left hand. His palm was wet and slippery with blood. He could see the wounded man by the fountain creeping to his feet, sword still in hand. The third attacker was still unhurt, bouncing on his toes as he circled with his blade low and level. Castus swung the club in wide sweeps, but the man refused to give ground.
One more wide swing, then Castus suddenly hurled the club into the swordsman’s face and darted in after it. He grabbed the man’s right wrist, dragging his arm out; the dagger almost slipped from his bloody grip, but he raised it high and then punched down twice with his left hand, driving it into the man’s exposed shoulder and then into his neck. Something moved fast behind him: the third attacker closing in, and he tensed himself for the killing blow between his shoulder blades; then a scream, and another body sprawled across the paving of the courtyard.
Castus turned. The third man lay dead at his feet, and Brinno stood over him, stripped to the waist, a bloody blade in his hand.
‘I’m sure you could have handled all three, brother,’ Brinno said. ‘But watching you was making me nervous.’
Castus sank down, braced against his knees and fighting for breath. Pain racked his body from his chest to his groin. He rode out a wave of nausea, then straightened and seized Brinno by the shoulder. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I followed you,’ Brinno said. ‘I saw you talking to that eunuch in the baths and knew you were doing something… I don’t know. I’m sorry, brother – I doubted your loyalty…’
‘Well, thanks anyway,’ Castus said. He turned to look around at the courtyard: three dead men, blood spattered on the paving.
‘What were you doing in there?’ Brinno asked with a cold frown.
Castus just shook his head. ‘I have no way of explaining,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to help me get rid of these bodies…’
‘No need for that,’ another voice said. Serapion stood in the lamplight at the open doorway. ‘The dead will be disposed of. You need to leave now, though.’
‘I told you not to follow me,’ Castus said through his teeth. Despite his warning, the eunuch was still his enemy.
‘There’s something I forgot to mention,’ Serapion said, stepping out over one of the bodies. ‘If I were found unharmed, it might look suspicious. As if I somehow helped you to escape.’
‘True enough.’ Castus glanced at Brinno, who shrugged.
‘Do what you must, then,’ the eunuch said.
‘If you insist,’ Castus told him.
He stepped up to Serapion, and with one swinging blow he slammed his fist into the side of the eunuch’s head.
Part Three
15
From the window, Julius Nigrinus watched the horseman crossing the courtyard below. It was night, and summer rain spattered the paving stones and gushed in torrents from the eaves overhead. Closing the shutters, he turned from the window and seated himself beside the brazier. The small room was already uncomfortably warm, but the coals served to dry the air; Nigrinus felt the damp badly. He was tense with anticipation, but he needed to compose himself; he made it a rule never to let his emotions become visible to others. By the time Flaccianus had stamped up the steps from the courtyard and growled his way past the slaves in the antechamber, Nigrinus was perfectly calm, his face blanked, waiting.
Flaccianus threw off his wet cloak, making sure he spattered the notary as he did so. He dumped the leather bag on to the low table.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it till dawn. Hope it’s worth the effort I put in.’
‘I hope you were not too inconvenienced,’ Nigrinus replied, forcing himself to take a few slow breaths before reaching for the bag and breaking the seal. Flaccianus stared at him with a sour expression, then slumped down in the facing chair. Nigrinus had ordered him to ride ahead of the normal post schedule, in order to bring him the bag of despatches with enough time to look through it before it was due for delivery. It was risky, but Nigrinus had a suspicion – more of an intuition than he would care to admit – that this time his investigations would bear fruit. The gods knew he needed it; seven months of probing into the imperial communications networks had given him only hints and shadows, suggestions of a conspiracy at work but nothing tangible, nothing that he could use as evidence, nothing sufficient even to bring a suspect to torture and see what he might confess… And Nigrinus knew that the patience of his chief, Aurelius Zeno, was running short. If he failed to find something soon, he would be assigned to other duties, and all the power and influence he had worked so hard to build would be stripped from him. Besides, his subordinates were getting restless.
‘How much longer are we going to be doing this?’ Flaccianus said. The rain had dampened his hair, and it flopped over his brow in an oily slick. ‘All this time you’ve had me sneaking about, putting myself in peril, and what d’you have to show for it?’
‘Patience,’ Nigrinus said. He was running quickly through the documents spread on the table, sorting them, starting to lever open seals. He was so agitated it was hard to stop his hands from shaking. Surely it was somewhere here…
Flaccianus made a wet sound with his lips. The heat in the room was making him sweat. ‘All right for you to ask for patience,’ he said. ‘You promised me rewards from all this!’
Nigrinus glanced up, hardening his expression. He had taken to paying Flaccianus from his own funds, for expenses, but clearly the man wanted more. They all wanted more in the end.
‘You never even paid me back for that thing in Colonia!’
‘What thing?’
‘Gods!’ Flaccianus flung up his hands in derision. ‘You’ve forgotten it already! I kill a man in cold blood, on your orders, and it means nothing to you?’
‘Ah, yes, that,’ Nigrinus said, stooping again to his work. He remembered now: one of the clerks in the financial offices had found information about a supposed plot against the emperor. He had known too little to be useful, no names or real evidence, but enough to alert the plotters and put them on their guard. Nigrinus had tried to buy the man off, but he had wanted to take it further, in the hope of greater compensation no doubt. In the end Nigrinus had ordered Flaccianus to make the man disappear. A regrettable necessity, for the higher good. It meant nothing to him now.