Full length… like the cavalry often wore. The man’s six-sided shield confirmed his status as a Praetorian horseman. And Rufinus knew him from the wayside on the road to Tibur so long ago. He smiled, and the guard frowned at his expression, turning as he heard a low, menacing growl.
Rufinus’ smile widened as the man’s eyes bulged. ‘Where did you get that dog?’
‘He belonged to a friend. He’s a good lad really… unless you cross him.’
The cavalryman backed up to the wall and fumbled for his sword hilt. ‘Bastard thing should be dead! Get him away from me!’
Still smiling, Rufinus turned to the gate, stepped to the bar and lifted it, slowly and carefully, feeling the muscles in his arms burn with every flex, more cuts across his body hissing their agony at him. Concentrating on his task and trying to ignore the pain, he slid back two bolts and lifted others from the indentations in the threshold slab, trying not to listen too closely to the noises behind him, though the initial shriek that was cut short had been tough to ignore.
Finally, he swung open the gate just enough to step through and staggered out into the city. Behind him, Acheron hurried along, the hair of his head glistening wetly. That brief scream that had echoed around the vault of the gateway had turned into low moans of agony, and Rufinus could hear the shouts of other men on duty running across to the cavalryman.
But he and Acheron were now in the city and picking up speed to a fast walk as they made for the great amphitheatre of Vespasianus, with its crowds and delights, its victims and murderers. He would prefer to run, but was well aware of his limitations. Even the slowest jog would likely make him black out. A fast walk was all he could reasonably manage.
There was still time.
And his friends would be there at the western gates to help.
He could make a difference; for the emperor and for Pompeianus; for Saoterus and for… for Perennis. He wondered whether Acheron had killed or wounded the man at the gate but, either way, at least Rufinus wouldn’t be there to look in his eyes as he faded. Whatever the man got, he deserved, for taking part in the brutal murder of a loyal imperial agent.
One day Rufinus would find the other five cavalrymen and administer appropriate justice, as well as to the prefect who had sent them.
One day, but not today.
Today he had other duties…
XXVII – Commodus
THE great Vicus Patricius, that began near the Castra Praetoria and ran down to the very heart of the city, was strangely empty and quiet. Scores of times during his months in barracks, Rufinus had walked that street, fighting his way through the crowds and purchasing fruit or bread at the stalls of the street vendors.
Not so today. The street was almost devoid of life, barring the few sellers whose businesses were failing or slow enough that they could not afford to take time off for fear of missing a sale. They looked uniformly hopeless and bored.
Here and there a beggar remained; those who were too immobile to have moved themselves down toward the great amphitheatre and the richer pickings of the crowds gathered there. A few slaves hurried about their business and, once or twice, Rufinus spotted people who were obviously running late for the games, hurrying along their spouses with irritable words.
Yet the quietness, unusual as it was, was of no interest to the Praetorian guardsman staggering deliriously through it at the fastest pace he could safely manage with his myriad injuries, a black dog the size of a wolf at his heel. Rufinus could feel the seeping of a tiny trickle of blood into the linen wraps that bound him from several cuts. He could feel the crack of burned, blistered skin with the movement, the constant throb in his disfigured hand.
He ignored them all.
Because they were simply pain, and pain could be ignored.
Because there were so many things of far greater importance.
He felt panicked. More than ever, this was a race against time. The last surge of noise from the crowd had died away a hundred heartbeats ago and everything had settled. The animals and gladiators would be in position in the arena now, and that meant that everything was ready and awaiting the arrival of the Emperor. Even a moment’s drop in the pace could make him too late to stop the assassin’s blade. He could have been there by now if he could run. If he could even jog, rather than hurrying at an uncomfortable stagger,
He felt the weight of unfathomable responsibility. A million people and more lived and breathed in the city and of that astounding number only he and the conspirators themselves knew what was coming. No one else could possibly help. No one else could do anything. If he failed, there was no second chance, no reserve force of Gallic cavalry waiting in the treeline.
Just him.
He felt anger.
Anger at the audacity of people who believed they had the right to question the undisputed emperor of Rome and who planned to murder him for their own benefit. Lucilla particularly. After all, what true Roman could plot the death of their brother? Images of Lucius flashed momentarily through his seething mind.
He felt anger at the emperor himself for allowing his freedmen so much control over the state, while he played editor for the games and enjoyed his luxuries and for permitting the world to reach this desperate situation. Rufinus felt he knew Commodus enough to know that the man was capable of so much more.
Anger at Pompeianus for having the ability to have done something about all this, and yet sitting back and letting it happen while he moved his imagined pieces on an imagined board.
Anger at five guards of whose faces he had only a memory and who had tracked down a loyal Roman agent and slit his throat in the name of ‘duty’.
Most of all, he felt anger at prefect Paternus, who had taken him under his wing and raised him from the legions only to set him on a path of espionage, murder and bloodshed that had stained both their hands and tarred their souls; a man whose path had strayed from the honourable duty of the Praetorian Guard into chaos and crime; a man whose very abuse of his position made him the worst kind of villain.
Rufinus ground his teeth as he stumbled hurriedly along, Acheron plodding easily at his side, heads turning at the sight of a white-clad Praetorian staggering like a drunken madman accompanied by a giant hound. A quick swig from the vial of painkiller, with no thought as to what dosage it was. He could not spend the time measuring.
He barely noticed as the wide thoroughfare that descended from the Viminalis hill gave way to the narrower streets of the subura. This area of the city was the most thriving and busy, permanently full of life (mostly of the ‘low’ variety) and teeming with the poor, beggars, soldiers on furlough, whores and thieves, hawkers and drunkards and spies. That the subura seemed to be as deserted as the higher regions was telling of just how many people had converged on the great amphitheatre at the eastern end of the forum to attend the games, to see the arrival of the Golden Emperor Commodus, or simply to sell their wares to the crowds, peddle their flesh, or cut a few purse strings.
The noise was increasing again with the closeness of the masses. The sound of a quarter of a million excited, expectant people arose ahead. Rufinus rounded a curve in the street and caught sight of the upper arcades of the great amphitheatre. Even now, with everything that was at stake, it was hard not to marvel and just drink in the sight of that great wonder of construction. The top level, with its solid facade, punctured with square windows, supporting the dozens of poles that held the great retractable sunshade aloft. The third level, below that, with its encircling arcade of decorative arches, each containing a statue of a God, a hero of Rome, or an emperor of the past. And below that, out of sight behind the buildings, a second level mirroring the third, all above a final, lowest arcade of entrance arches.