A more alert man would have seen the look that momentarily contorted his would-be victim’s face, but the robber was too busy enjoying the opportunity for sport in front of his fellow gang members.
‘She’ll be expecting you home, once you’re done with whatever it is you’ve been doing down here in the slums. So it’s going to be quite a shock for her when we come through the door, isn’t it?’
He smiled into his victim’s flat expression.
‘Of course, you’re thinking that you won’t tell us where your house is …’
He gestured with the dagger, raising it to allow the other man a clear view of the weapon.
‘… but you will. Once we get to work on you you’ll tell us everything, give us anything, just to stop.’
He tapped the blade.
‘I favour the soft spot between the balls and the arsehole, personally. Half an inch of sharp iron inserted just so reduces most men to screaming agony in less time than it takes for a snuffed candle to stop smoking. You’ll tell us where your home is, you’ll shout for the doorman to let you in … you’ll do whatever it takes to stop the pain.’
Leaning forward, he grinned at the man standing before him.
‘So, friend, shall we be going? We’ve got a nice dark place where we can all get better acquainted. Some of the boys here, well, they like men like you, all clean and soft, and they’ve not had the sort of fun that I’m thinking about for so long that I think they’ll be taking turns with you for half the night before we even get round to working out where you live.’
He waited for the inevitable reaction, for the lone aristocrat to make a break for freedom, knowing that more members of his band were waiting behind their victim, but his eyes widened slightly as the man stepped forward instead, close enough for the robber to see his face in the moonlight. The stranger’s expression was set hard enough to send a shiver up the gang leader’s spine, and when he spoke, his voice, though clearly cultured, grated out a single word with a chilling intensity that raised the hairs on his assailant’s arms with a sudden jolt of fear.
‘Yes!’
He struck, the move so fast that the footpad was nose to nose with his intended prey before he had time to react, finding his knife hand captured in an iron grip, while his assailant snatched a handful of hair and then snapped his head forward to deliver a head butt that took the life from the robber’s legs. While he was still staggering at the unexpected attack’s ferocity, his intended victim stripped the dagger from his unresisting grip and whipped the blade up into his throat, arteries and windpipe opened by a single wrenching thrust to release a sudden splatter of blood down both men’s tunics. His assailant pushed the dying man at the nearest of his gang and turned away to confront the men closing in on him from all sides, raising the knife in a hand already slick with his victim’s life blood. A heavyset thug rushed in with his arms spread to grapple the stranger, only to grasp at thin air as his intended victim danced sideways out of his reach, striking expertly to slit his tunic and the wall of his gut with the blade’s viciously sharp edge. Staggering away from the fight with both hands clasping at the slippery coils of his intestines, the wounded thug obstructed the men behind him as they recoiled away from the stench and horror, and their would-be victim spun away from him in search of fresh blood. Two robbers ran at him, while a third loomed from behind their leader where he lay convulsing on the street’s cobbles as his life ebbed away, advancing on the bloodied aristocrat with his fists bunched.
Hurling the dagger at the closer of the two runners to bury its blade deep in his chest, he turned without waiting to see the result, sidestepping the advancing pugilist’s first punch and gripping his tunic, throwing his attacker off balance and counter-punching into the hapless thug’s face, breaking his front teeth. While the man was staggering backwards, his assailant took another step forward, putting him down with a trip and following through with a half-fisted punch to his throat that left him straining fruitlessly for breath through a ruptured windpipe.
‘We’ve fucking got you now!’
He straightened his body to find himself ringed by half a dozen more of the gang, eyes hard with hate as they closed around him with shuffling feet, eyes darting glances at each other as they readied themselves to attack, momentarily deterred by the stranger’s blood-soaked rage and the bodies of their comrades littered around him.
‘We’re going to fuck you up, you cunt, and then we’re going to open your guts and leave you to die here while we go and have our fun with wherever it is that you call home.’
‘Tell me how it happened again.’
Annia tensed in her husband’s arms in the bedroom’s darkness, her body turned away from his and snuggled back against his chest. Her response was no louder than a whisper, but the distress in her voice was as evident as if she’d shouted at him.
‘I’ve already-’
Julius’s interruption was gentle but insistent.
‘I know. You had to tell the Legatus the whole sorry story, and worse than that, you had to tell Marcus.’
Legatus Scaurus and his officers had been delayed in their arrival at Marcus’s house on the Viminal hill until well after dark, caught up in the myriad tasks occasioned by getting two cohorts settled into the city’s transit barracks after their long journey back from the empire’s eastern frontier. Surprised to be greeted by the First Spear’s wife rather than the lady of the house, their bemusement had turned to horror as Annia had haltingly related the story of what had happened while the Tungrians had been away from Rome. After the first initial stunning blow, literally staggering Marcus with its stark horror, his recovery had been as swift as it had seemed complete, on the surface. Taking a seat in the house’s atrium he had composed himself, taken a deep breath and then looked up at his wife’s friend, his face a stone-like mask, asking only one question.
‘How?’
Julius clasped her tighter, stroking her tear-stained cheeks.
‘I need to hear it again. I need to know every detail, because I need to know what he’s going to do, once he’s thinking straight again.’
Marcus had listened to Annia recount the events of the previous year in grim silence and, when her tale was done, had stood without speaking, walking out into the Roman night.
She was silent for a moment.
‘And if I tell you? If I scoop all that … shit up and pour it over myself one more time?’
‘We’ll never speak of it again. Not that we’ll need to.’
Annia sighed.
‘No. The little one will remind us every time we look at him.’
‘So …?’
She sighed again, and then began to tell the story that had shattered their friend’s life once again.
The circle of men tightened, the biggest of them spitting imprecations at their intended prey.
‘I’m going to cut off your prick and stuff it into your fucking mouth!’
‘No, you’re not.’
All eyes turned towards a heavyset, bearded man walking up the street, his voice grating harshly in the night air despite the matter-of-fact tone of his roughly accented Latin.
‘All you’re going to cut are your losses. Now get out of my sight before this all gets much worse for those of you who are left alive.’
The big man turned to face him, reckoning the odds as the newcomer stopped six feet from him, flexing muscular arms and clenching his fists. In the background the choking sounds from the robber frantically struggling for breath through his ruined throat ran to their natural conclusion, and he fell silent. A series of sobs and groans from the darkness of an insula’s deeper shadow, into which the gutted member of the gang had staggered after incurring his horrific wound, told their wordless story of his plight.