‘Save your breath for the screaming. I know who else was involved.’ Marcus raised his gladius to silence the senator’s attempt to buy his way out of what was coming with information the centurion already possessed. ‘You killed my mother.’
Pilinius nodded.
‘We did. She took it bravely th-’
The sword’s point jabbed towards his face, stopping inches from his eyes.
‘Not we. You. You built this place specifically for the purpose of the torture, rape and murder of innocent women and children taken from the homes and families of the men Perennis set you to murder, didn’t you? These men …’ He swept the sword point up to gesture at the guests huddled against the far wall. ‘These scum are indeed culpable for those evil acts, but without you they would never have had power over so many innocents. Over my mother.’
Cotta coughed behind him, and Marcus turned to find him holding Perennis’s wife by the arm. She was crying, and holding her ripped tunic closed with one hand to cover her nakedness.
‘Might we afford the dignity of a cloak for this lady, do you think?’
Cotta nodded, walking across to the wall where the guests’ cloaks hung from pegs, selecting a good thick garment and carrying it back to drape over the woman’s shivering body. Marcus nodded his thanks and then spoke to the dead prefect’s wife in a firm voice.
‘Madam, your husband ordered the destruction of my family, the deaths of my father, my sisters and my brother. Doubtless many more members of our household died here, in ways that you can imagine only too clearly given the squalid scenes we have both witnessed here tonight, ways that you and your family would have been subjected to had we not intervened. I hated your husband for that crime, I participated in his downfall and my only regret, to be frank with you, is that he did not die at my hands. However …’
He shook his head at Pilinius in disgust.
‘I cannot condone such animal behaviour, even when directed at the family of my enemy. You will go free, Madam, although you would be wise to disappear into the depths of the city and never again use the name Perennis, unless you want to fall into the hands of another man like this one. Perhaps your former slaves will help you to survive, if you treated them decently before the end of your former life?’
She nodded helplessly, her face bleak as the terms under which she had been spared from Pilinius’s debauched games sank in.
‘But before we turn you loose, you have one more decision to make. How should this man die?’
The woman looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before realisation dawned.
‘You offer me the chance to visit upon him the indignity and agony he intended for me and my daughter.’ Marcus nodded. ‘Then just kill him. I have no use for the memory of his agony.’
Cotta ushered her away, and Marcus raised an eyebrow at Pilinius.
‘If you’re ready? You might want to go to meet your ancestors with some small shred of pride intact.’
The senator closed his eyes, screwing his face up against the expected agony, but when Marcus stepped in it was to chop at the kneeling man’s throat with the palm of his empty right hand. Pilinius fell choking to the floor, his body writhing as he fought for breath that could not pass his swollen and broken throat, his eyes bulging in horror as he stared up at his killer.
Marcus stepped over the dying man, gesturing to Cotta for the guest’s weapons to be collected as he addressed them.
‘I promised you men your freedom if you gave him up!’
Avenus stepped out of the throng.
‘So let us go! You have no right to-’
He gasped as the longer of Marcus’s swords whipped out and opened his throat, dropping to his knees with a horrible bubbling gurgle as his lifeblood ran down into his lungs, then fell forward onto the stone floor in a spreading pool.
‘Would anyone else like to debate my rights with you, now that we’ve restored some order?’
Silence reigned for a moment before he spoke again, the spatha’s bloodied blade levelled at his aghast audience.
‘You bastards have no more right to life than he did. How many of you took part that night my family was destroyed? How many of you “deflowered” my sisters? And what of my brother, for those of you with a “taste for a shapely boy”? Killing you all would remove a canker from this city’s heart, a cabal of perverted, sadistic monsters who should have been strangled at birth!’
Scaurus strolled across to join him, hefting his own sword.
‘And to strike a more practical note, gentlemen, how many of you will seek revenge for this indignity against your exalted personages, eh? You were quick enough to surrender Pilinius, a man whose friendship you held dear until a moment ago, so is that the measure of your honour? You’ll swear to a man to forget all that has happened tonight, I’m sure of that, and yet I expect that tomorrow morning the city will be hunted from end to end by your informants, all of them greedy for the huge rewards you’ll offer for the man that provides you with the information that will bring us to bay. You, Secretary!’
Belenus stepped forward, his face an essay in hope, and the tribune hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
‘You’ll have your freedom, as the reward for betraying your master, but you’ll pay half of everything you own into a temple of Mithras as your grateful expression of thanks for Our Lord’s intercession on your behalf. Send word to me as to which temple you choose to take the money, and if you fail to do so within a week you can be assured that I’ll find you and kill you myself. Get out.’
The freedman hurried past the two soldiers with a look of gratitude, and Scaurus returned his gaze to the remaining captives, knowing that they were close to rampaging forward despite the swords’ threat.
‘Centurion Cotta!’
‘Tribune!’
‘What do you think?’
‘What do I think, Tribune?’
‘Indeed. You strike me as a man with the nerve to order these men’s deaths if you feel they deserve it, and the wit to have mercy on them if you feel it deserved. I leave it in your hands.’
Cotta was silent for a moment, as if reflecting on the question, sweeping a cold stare across the men before him. He raised his sword, pointing it at them and raising his voice to shout a command.
‘No! Prisoners!’
Albinus was waiting when they opened the villa’s rear gates, his bodyguards standing in a protective arc around him as the Tungrians walked out into the street. He stared in silence as Cotta’s men guided the first of the wagons through the gates, terrified women staring out from between its rear flaps. As the second wagon followed it away down the hill, and the gates were pulled to, he found his voice at last.
‘Rutilius Scaurus. I knew if I waited here for long enough you’d saunter out through those gates.’
The tribune gave him a tired glance.
‘Centurion Cotta, if that man or any of his party so much as twitch a hand for their weapons you have my express order to kill them all.’ He shook his head at the incensed senator, waving a hand as if to dismiss him. ‘You’re too late, Decimus. Centurion Aquila’s vengeance on Asinius Pilinius is complete, and all that’s left for you is to slip away into the darkness before what’s left of the senator and his guests are discovered and it all gets rather more exciting round here than we might like. And remember, my threat to expose you as having stolen a fortune in imperial gold still stands, in case you or anybody in your pay feel like informing on us.’
He turned to walk away and then, as another thought struck him, turned back.
‘Oh, and the next time you see our mutual informant Excingus, you might want to do two things — you can give him a message from me and then you can ask him a question for both of us.’
Albinus shook his head in apparent exasperation.