‘Such a sweet little thing.’ She nodded to the bodyguard. ‘Pick him up, please, but gently. The poor little man looks just about done in for lack of food; you can see his ribs quite clearly. Pick him up and we’ll take him home.’
The soldier did as he was asked, holding the animal away from him with the obvious expectation that it would shortly realise that it needed to urinate.
‘Are you sure, Domina? These street dogs are well known for carrying diseases, and when your back’s turned he’ll just be stealing food and biting the children. What if he has the madness?’
His attempt to persuade Felicia to see sense petered out as he realised that she was shaking her head in a manner that he had learned, even in his short time as one of her protectors, was utterly unequivocal.
‘The madness?’ She put a finger under the dog’s chin and tilted its head, looking into the alert eyes with a smile. ‘There’s no madness here, just a bright little fellow who lacks a meal or two. Bring him along and we’ll give him a little food, see if we can’t fill him out a little.’
Annia bent to look at the dog more closely, dodging back to avoid an attempt to lick her face.
‘You lot haven’t got the sense you were born with! Call that a street dog? No wonder he’s so thin, there’s no way he’s been able to compete for food with monsters like that one.’ She pointed to an evil-looking stray that was lounging further down the alley in the deeper shade. ‘If we throw him back now he’ll be dead in a week. And besides …’ Her face took on a scornful expression which Cotta’s men had come to know all too well. ‘Let’s face it, we’ll all sleep more soundly knowing that we’ve got a guard dog roaming the house. I wouldn’t trust you lot to guard a shit house.’
Felicia smiled winningly at the veteran in whose big hands the dog was trembling, turning away up the hill and calling back over her shoulder to her friend.
‘Come along now Annia, I think you’ve had quite enough sport with these poor men today already. Let’s concentrate our thoughts on what we might call the poor little fellow, shall we?’
Annia bowed her head in a show of respect, shooting the waiting bodyguards a sideways glance.
‘Yes, and what an exciting game! I vote we call him Centurion! It’ll be nice to see this lot having to pay their respects to a skinny little runt like that …’
‘All these years I’ve been singing marching songs about a restaurant with bedrooms up the stairs, I can hardly believe that I’m actually sitting in one.’
Marcus laughed softly at his friend, raising an eyebrow in question.
‘And do you fancy making the trip upstairs?’
Dubnus glanced across the room at the trio of prostitutes who were still sulking against the far wall.
‘She’s too old, she’s too young, and she’s rather too skinny for a man with my tastes. And besides …’ He leaned forward to confide in his brother officer. ‘I’ve never found it easy to do justice to a woman I’ve had to pay for.’ He looked down at his crotch with a significant expression. ‘After all, I hardly need to go beg-’
One of Qadir’s newly trained soldiers walked slowly past the tavern and made eye contact with the centurions in their place at the window, tipping his head back the way he had come, up the hill’s long slope to where the magnificent bulk of the praetorian fortress loomed against the dusk’s purple backdrop. The four men turned away and concentrated on the food set before them. A moment later, the man they had been waiting for strode past them and turned into the tavern, throwing his cloak back over his shoulder and taking a coin from the purse at his belt, slapping it down on the counter in the manner of a man long familiar with the establishment. A pair of guardsmen still dressed in their uniforms had followed him down the hill, and stood waiting at the tavern’s door with expressions of tired boredom. Waving away the customary expressions of respect and greeting that he was offered by the restaurant’s owner, the praetorian graciously accepted a small cup of wine from which he sipped sparingly, nodding gravely to acknowledge the acceptability of the vintage. Dressed in the red off-duty tunic of a praetorian officer, a highly polished vine stick in one hand and a knife hanging from his gleaming leather belt, his thick hair and beard were neatly cut in apparent ignorance of the imperial fashion for long, bushy facial hair. His voice was loud enough to be heard over the buzz of the other customers’ conversation, and the prostitutes looked up with barely disguised boredom.
‘Lentil stew again? Go on then, I’ll take a pot full, and some bread to mop it up with. And the same for my men.’
Dorso leaned against the counter with the look of a man at rest after a long day, his gaze sweeping across the tavern’s customers without any visible sign of interest, and Marcus was careful not to meet his eye. After a short wait the proprietor handed the waiting soldiers three small pots of food and a parcel of bread wrapped in rough cloth, bowed his thanks for the distinguished officer’s custom and escorted him to the door. Marcus spooned up the last morsel of his meal and reached for the cloak in which his knife was concealed, waiting as Dubnus extricated himself from his place next to the window. While Cotta pounced on the untended wine jug, Qadir looked up at Marcus with professional concern, flattening his hands onto the table in the universal gesture for calm.
‘Keep well back from him until the last moment. It would be a shame if he were to take fright at this late stage. Just remember what I told you.’
Marcus nodded.
‘We’re simply out for an evening stroll, nice and easy.’
The Hamian waved the two men away, and emerging into the street they found the soldier Saratos leaning against the far wall with his eyes locked on a point further down the hill. They set off in Dorso’s wake at a gentle pace, their tracking of the praetorian made simple by the vivid red of his finely woven cloak and the two soldiers strolling close behind him. After another hundred paces or so he turned left, off the main street and into an narrow side street that ran away down the hill at an angle, and Dubnus slowed his pace momentarily.
‘Let’s not dive into the alley too quickly, or he might hear us behind him.’
Marcus nodded, reaching into his cloak to ready his knife. Emerging from the alley’s shadows they saw the praetorian thirty paces or so ahead of them with his men on either side, all three of them bending over a man dressed in rags who was squatting against the wall to one side of a heavy wooden door. His powerful voice carried effortlessly to the two men as they approached the small group silently from behind.
‘Ex-soldier, are you? Gods below man, but you stink!’ He rummaged in his purse, pulling out a coin. ‘Here’s a denarius, which I suggest you use at the nearest bathhouse …’
Marcus and Dubnus had closed the gap between them quickly but silently in their leather-soled boots, Dorso’s raised voice covering the faint creaking of their stitching. The praetorians never saw what had hit them as the two men struck. Dubnus smashed his man to the ground with a hammer blow from the lead-cored truncheon that had been hidden up his sleeve, the soldier more than likely already dead before he hit the cobbles, and Marcus struck his target with a bladed hand in the throat, dropping him kicking and choking to the cobbles, then put the point of his knife to Dorso’s throat with a growl of barely restrained anger.
‘You can die here and now, if you choose!’
The praetorian froze, but when he spoke his voice sounded more composed than Marcus would have expected, given the knife’s harsh touch at his throat.
‘It’s true then. No good deed goes unpunished …’
Dubnus took the pot from his hand, reaching into their captive’s cloak for the key they knew would be hanging from his belt. He opened the door and waved a hand at Sanga in dismissal.
‘Let’s go inside, shall we, and find out what it is that you come here to gloat over? You can be on your way, Sanga, although I’d recommend you do indeed find a bathhouse and sweat out whatever it is that’s making you stink like a donkey’s arse crack before you go back to barracks.’