‘That was better, Tribune. Good aggression with the blade, tidy defence with the shield. Now let’s see how well you cope with an attack. Ready?’
Varus nodded and fell back, waiting with his sword and shield positioned in readiness for his opponent’s attack. Flamininus snorted his disgust behind Marcus.
‘Gods below, this isn’t some sort of glorified training session! Either fight or get the fuck out of the ring and let some real men have a go!’
Marcus replied without turning his gaze from Varus.
‘Let me know when you find a real man, Tribune Flamininus, and I’ll be delighted to spar with him. Until then I suggest you keep your mouth shut unless you want it shutting for you …’
He waited a beat for the insult to sink in.
‘Again.’
The evil-tempered tribune stormed forward, raising his sword and shield.
‘Get out of the way, Varus, I’m going to teach this upstart bastard a lesson!’
Varus straightened up from his defensive pose with a look of confusion, and Umbrius beckoned him over.
‘There’s no reasoning with the man in this mood. He won’t be happy until he’s faced this man and proved himself to be the better of them.’
‘Prove myself the better of him?’
Flamininus raised a disgusted eyebrow.
‘I do that simply by standing here. I’m going to teach this fool what it means to face a trained swordsman. By the time I left Rome there wasn’t an instructor in the city I couldn’t beat.’
He sprang forward, lunging with his wooden sword’s point, repeating the move twice more as Marcus calmly stepped back with his swords held ready, not deigning to block or parry.
‘You fucking coward! You’re no better than Varus!’
Abandoning his fencing style, Flamininus attacked again with a swing of his sword, the blade skating harmlessly down a sloping sword raised in effortless defence. Stamping forward to punch at his opponent with his shield’s heavy iron boss, his strike found only empty air as Marcus span away to the left, jabbing his sword’s blunt and splintered point into the bicep of Flamininus’s right arm.
‘Fuck!’
Stepping back, Marcus waited while his opponent grimaced at the pain, barely managing to maintain his trembling grip of the heavy practice sword’s hilt.
‘You’re too slow. Too predictable. And you make threats that your skill can’t deliver.’
The tribune’s face twisted in anger, the pain in his arm forgotten as he squared up to his tormentor.
‘I’ll have you, you f-’
Marcus was upon him in a whirl of blades, forcing his hapless opponent back half a dozen steps before Flamininus’s mind had caught up with the havoc that the Tungrian was playing with his defence. A wooden sword point snaked through his guard to jab into his thigh, and while he was still reeling, another smashed the shield from his hand. Umbrius nodded decisively.
‘That’s enough! Give it up, Flamininus, he has you at his mercy!’
The tribune recovered himself enough to look down the length of the wooden sword point only inches from his face.
‘Nothing to say, Flamininus?’
The response was growled between gritted teeth.
‘This isn’t over.’
Marcus smiled equably back at him.
‘I’m afraid it is. Your skill at arms is no better than average, no matter how many instructors took your gold and told you that you were a second Achilles. This bout is over.’
He turned away, tossing the wooden swords aside for the next man, only to stiffen in pain as Flamininus slammed his weapon’s wooden blade into his right thigh with enough force to leave a line of blood oozing where the sword’s ragged wooden edge had pierced the flesh. The enraged Flamininus drew his sword back again, his eyes pinned wide with the need to do harm, and as Marcus turned to face him, he whipped the weapon in at head height in a vicious swing clearly intended to strike him in the face.
Ducking under the attack, Marcus fell back, twisting sideways to evade a furious lunge.
‘Stop this idiocy, or I’ll-’
The sword swung high into the air, his assailant clearly aiming to deliver a knockout blow, and Marcus stepped swiftly in, butting his opponent hard with the brow guard of his helmet and sending him staggering backwards with blood running down his face, clearly dazed.
‘Umbrius, call this fool off before I’m forced to put him down hard!’
The senior tribune shrugged with a half-smile.
‘You’ve enraged him past the point that I can control him, Tribune Corvus. I suggest you make yourself scarce before he regains his wits.’
Flamininus shook his head and roared back into the fight, swinging the wooden sword extravagantly and forcing Marcus to retreat in the face of its whistling arcs.
‘This is how a Roman gentleman deals with a piece of shit like you!’
He raised the sword and stepped in fast, once more clearly going for the blow that would finish Marcus, but in the split second that the blade was raised to its highest point the Tungrian stopped retreating and stood his ground, suddenly face-to-face with the enraged tribune. Stabbing out with a half-fisted punch, he lunged at Flamininus, twisting to put the full strength of his body behind the blow. Seeing the punch coming, and with no way to avoid it, Flamininus instinctively reared back, taking the full force of Marcus’s knuckles not in his face, as had been the intention, but squarely in the throat. He staggered back, his eyes bulging as he fought for breath that would not come through his traumatised windpipe. An attempt to speak resulted in nothing more than a strangled grunt, his gestures becoming increasingly frantic as he beckoned for help with imploring eyes.
Umbrius stepped forward with a look of concern.
‘Very well, you’ve stopped him, now help him-’
Flamininus fell to his knees, his lips turning blue as he stared helplessly at the men around him. Marcus shook his head as he looked down at his stricken colleague.
‘I’ve seen this before, I’m afraid. He’s already dead.’
Umbrius turned to stare at Marcus, his face suddenly aghast as the Tungrian’s words sank in. Before he could speak, the tribune toppled full length into the parade ground’s dust, writhing as his body contorted in its death throes.
‘You’ve killed him.’
Umbrius dragged his gaze away from the twitching corpse, shaking his head in amazement.
‘You’ve killed a brother officer!’
Scaurus sat back in his chair, looking at his senior tribune with an expression of disbelief.
‘You want what?’
Umbrius’s face was set hard.
‘Justice, Legatus.’
‘Justice? And what measure of justice am I supposed to indulge you in, when a man who was clearly a lunatic provokes another who is far more skilled, and then through his own ineptitude suffers the consequences?’
Umbrius nodded, his face hard.
‘There! You say it yourself! Your man Corvus has fought in a dozen battles! He is a consummate killer, and when poor Flamininus provoked him he responded with immediate deadly retaliation. No warning, no attempt to disarm his opponent, just a straight punch to the throat. A punch he knew would kill Flamininus.’
He folded his arms, his face set in lines of defiance. Scaurus pursed his lips, his expression a combination of amusement and irritation.
‘Don’t think I don’t know the game you’re playing, Tribune.’
The silence stretched out until Umbrius decided to ask the inevitable question.
‘Game, Legatus? A Roman gentleman is dead, murdered in cold blood by your man. Why would I be playing games under such a circumstance?’
‘Please, give me credit for a little intelligence. I’d imagine you’re delighted to have Flamininus off your back, given that he was little better than a mad dog. But you know that the governor has taken a violent dislike to me, mainly because I was the messenger of his removal from the post from which he’s made so much money. You know that if you make a formal complaint to Domitius Dexter then he’ll be delighted to overrule me, and declare a formal investigation into Flamininus’s death. Doubtless he’ll call in one of his cronies from another legion, and between them they’ll manage to find Tribune Corvus guilty of murder. So let me make this very clear to you, Tribune, you can go running to higher authority if it pleases you, but if you do you’ll be inviting him to victimise a man who is guilty of nothing more than defending himself against a lunatic.’