A heartbeat later, another guard followed him. Then a third.
Ducking down, Fabiola spat a bitter curse. How could I have been so stupid? she thought. Jupiter does not bother with the likes of me.
The way ahead had been blocked with piles of refuse, lengths of wood and broken pottery. Eager to get away from the Forum, Tullius had not seen it. Fabiola had not been paying attention either. On another day, she might have thought the waist-high rubbish just indicated a particularly poor street, a place where the inhabitants cared for neither health nor hygiene. Not today.
This was an ambush.
A fourth missile hissed through the air, taking the guard nearest to her through the neck.
They could not go forwards. Or back. Certain death awaited in the Forum. Eyes swivelling, Fabiola looked for the archer.
One of her five remaining followers pointed. Then he screamed, clutching at the arrow jutting from his left eye. Falling to his knees, he tugged frantically at the shaft, and Fabiola heard metal scrape off bone as the barbs pulled free of the socket. His face drenched in blood and aqueous fluid, the brave guard staggered upright, sobbing with pain. Now half-blind, he would be of little use in the impending fight.
From a side alley, ten ruffians emerged. Dressed in ragged, dull brown tunics, they were carrying an assortment of weapons: spears, clubs, knives, rusty swords. There was one bowman, an evil-looking type who smiled as he notched another arrow to his string. His companions were similarly unsavoury in appearance.
‘Look what we’ve got here, boys,’ said a spearman with a leer.
‘A noble lady!’ answered another. ‘Always wanted to try one of those.’
The archer licked his lips. ‘Let’s see what’s under that fine robe.’
The men moved in, their faces filling with lust. This would not just be robbery. Fabiola saw rape and death in their dark eyes. But instead of fear, anger boiled up inside her. These were the lowest of the low: the scum who waited to prey on the weak and unarmed fleeing the battle.
‘Mistress?’ asked her guards in unison. Without Tullius, they were unsure what to do.
She swallowed hard. None had shields, leaving them defenceless against missiles. If they did not act fast, they would all fall to the bowman. There was only one way to overcome their ambushers, who were most probably cowards. Producing the dagger Tullius had given her, Fabiola bared her teeth. ‘Run straight at them,’ she hissed. ‘It’s that, or we go to Hades.’ If this was the end that Jupiter had chosen for her, she would at least die well.
Seeing her determination, the guards’ courage rose. Four raised their swords, and the one-eyed man unsheathed a knife. With his reduced ability to judge depth of field, a short weapon would be easier to fight with. In a heartbeat, the five were lined up beside her. Slaves or not, it was better to die fighting than to just be slain out of hand.
A scream of rage and defiance left Fabiola’s mouth. Raising her blade, she charged forward. Everything was falling apart. The gods had answered her: she was surely alone in the world. If death took her now, it would be a release.
Her men roared in response and followed close behind.
The battle was brief, and brutal.
Acting on a hunch that she would not be killed at once, Fabiola ran straight at the archer, who was drawing a bead on someone over her left shoulder. She felt a rush of air as his arrow shot past her cheek and a strangled cry from behind her as it landed. Then she was on him. There would only be one chance: her blow had to disable or kill, instantly. Before the thug even drew breath, Fabiola had slammed her dagger deep into the point where his neck met his body. It was where she had seen Corbulo stick pigs as they were being slaughtered. A high-pitched scream left his lips and he dropped his bow. She didn’t hesitate. Pulling her blade free, Fabiola stabbed him twice more, in the chest. His wounds gushing, the archer fell backwards and out of sight. He would be dead within moments.
Fabiola looked at the hand holding her weapon, her right. It was completely red, sticky with blood. It was sickening. It was hard to know which was worse: this, or having to couple with old, fat senators.
‘Bitch!’
Instinctively she ducked, avoiding a wildly swinging sword. Facing her was an unshaven, skinny man wielding a rusty gladius. Although Fabiola had not been trained to use weapons, she had watched Juba teaching Romulus enough times. She had also seen the Lupanar’s two doormen sparring with each other. This fool has no idea how to fight, she thought, feeling a surge of hope. But she had never been trained to do so either.
He lunged forward again but she easily dodged away.
‘More used to stabbing people in the back, eh?’ Fabiola sneered, wondering what to do next. To get within knife range, she would have to go dangerously close to his sword. The thug sensed her indecision at once.
‘I’m going to enjoy fucking you when this is over,’ he panted, trying to snatch her dagger.
She had him now. Fabiola slipped down the top of her dress, revealing her full breasts. Survival mattered far more than her modesty.
Eyes goggling, he dropped his guard.
‘Like what you see?’ she asked softly, cupping one invitingly.
The plebeian could not answer. The only women he could afford were the worn-out whores who lived around the tombs on the Via Appia: toothless, diseased, half drunk most of the time. In comparison, Fabiola was like a vision of a goddess. He licked his lips and moved a pace forward.
Her smile changed to a she-wolf’s snarl as he drew near enough. In her mind, this could have been Gemellus, or a hundred others who had used her body. With a backwards slash, Fabiola cut the man’s throat wide open, taking the blade so deep it grated off the cartilage of his larynx. As he toppled over, choking on his own blood, she grabbed his gladius. Two weapons will be better than one, she thought.
When Fabiola had pulled up her dress and looked around, nearly all her men were down, but they had killed twice the number of their attackers. Strangely, the guard whose eye had been taken out was still fighting. Her heart filled with pride at his loyalty and courage. Screaming from a mixture of pain and battle rage, he had disabled two thugs, spilling one’s intestines all over the ground and burying his dagger in the thigh of another.
That left Fabiola and the injured slave against two of the lowlifes, who now looked decidedly less confident. The odds had improved and her spirits lifted a fraction. Jupiter is still watching over us. Do not turn away now, she pleaded. But Fabiola’s hope vanished again as four more men emerged from the alleyway. Drawn by the sound of fighting, they cried out angrily when they saw their comrades lying dead and injured. Dismay was quickly replaced by lust at the realisation that they only faced two enemies, one of whom was a beautiful young woman.
‘Mistress?’
Fabiola turned to face her wounded guard. Runnels of clotted blood covered his left cheek. They had even run into his open mouth, staining his teeth red. But his remaining eye burned fiercely from the clean, right side of his face. The effect was terrifying and must have given him an advantage over the thugs. ‘What is it?’
‘When I’m dead. ’ He paused, looking genuinely distressed. ‘I don’t want to be dumped on the Esquiline Hill, Mistress.’
Fabiola’s heart went out to him. The slave wasn’t afraid of dying with her. Instead, like many of his kind, he feared the indignity of being thrown into the city’s open pits along with excess waste and the bodies of animals and criminals. Like her brother, he had pride as well as courage. Sadly, she didn’t even know the man’s name. ‘If I survive, and you do not,’ Fabiola declared, ‘then I swear before all the gods that you will have your own grave, with a memorial over it.’