"I think we need no more bloodshed. Throw away the swords, boys. Far away. You! The pretty one! Pick up your friend's sword and throw it over there, too." He looked at me and nodded towards my horse. "Mount up. No names, no recriminations. Let's go."
I knew he was warning me, but I was too far gone in anger to pay any heed.
"No, " I said, snarling. "Not yet. This dog meat called me an old man. I want to taste his tripes."
"Forget it. Let it lie. Mount up."
I ignored him, fixing my eyes on our tormentor. Let him show me his power now. I stepped sideways to the table and put down the sword and the cross side by side, and then I stepped away.
"There it is, buck, " I said. "The only thing between you and your sword is an old man. Now, either pick it up and use it, or give me the belt and scabbard and I'll leave you to swim in your friends' vomit." He glared at me and spat into my face, making me close my eyes reflexively as he leaped for me, his fingers spread like talons to rake my eyes. He really did think me an old man! I jumped a step backwards, seizing his right hand in my left, lacing our fingers and using my smith's strength again to jerk him forward and down, off balance. As he sprawled towards me, I took my full weight on my bad leg and smashed my right knee forward into his beautiful, depraved, young madman's face, and felt his nose give way. I released his hand quickly and stepped to the side, placing myself again between him and the table.
I snatched a quick glance at Plautus. He sat motionless, his eyes on the others, his bow half drawn. My antagonist was in no hurry to rise. He knelt on all fours, head down, blood and saliva drooling from his broken face.
"Finished already?" I taunted, and he raised his head slowly to stare at me with more malevolence than I had ever seen on a human face. I could have felled him again at any time as he got slowly to his feet, but I waited.
"Come on, Deus! Kill the old swine!" This, hissed by one of his friends, was the first utterance any of them had made. Deus! I thought again. Short for Claudius? If this buck is a god, he's a god from Hades. He came at me again, more cautiously, and I felt the effect of those muscles of his. He was obviously used to fighting with cestes, the armoured gloves of the gladiators, for he used his bare fists like hammers. I took one solid blow on the shoulder that would have beheaded me had his aim been better. As it was, I went reeling, and he was on me like a wildcat, intent on ripping off any part of me he could lay hold of. He was well trained, but so was I, and in a far rougher school than any he had attended. I set out then, methodically, to thrash him badly enough to mar his beauty forever, and I succeeded. I cannot recall another occasion when my anger exceeded the rage I felt that day. At one point, when he stood swaying and helpless on his feet, his tunic covered with blood and sputum, his face a broken, bloody mess, I knew that I was overdoing it, but I was in the grip of some elemental fury. I heard Plautus shout to me to leave him, that he had had enough, but again I ignored him and measured out one last, sledgehammer blow. All my resentment, my anger, my fears and my disgust went into that blow, and the man went down as though I had used a real iron maul — and I was still angry. I took his sword from the table and flicked the edge with my thumb. It was very sharp. I used it to cut away his tunic from neck to hem, and then the fine woollen shorts he wore beneath it, so that he sprawled naked, and then, God forgive me, I carved a great "V" on his hairless chest.
"'You'll remember meeting me, you whore's spawn, " I muttered. "Be thankful I didn't cut off your dick and stick it in your mouth." I rounded on the others, who were all white-faced. "Well? Will you remember me?
And leave old men in peace in future?" They flinched away from me, and suddenly I felt sick. I spat at their feet and left them, taking the still-wrapped cross and mounting my horse to follow Plautus away from the place. The doors of the mansio remained shut. Nobody sought to hinder our departure.
We rode in silence for more than half an hour, and for most of that time I shook as though palsied. And then the reaction set in, and I dismounted and was violently sick. When I had finished retching I still felt miserable, but with a different kind of sickness. I felt unclean, soiled inside. Plautus waited, still mounted, until I was done. I led my horse to a convenient stump and got back onto its back, nodding to him to lead on. Again we rode in silence, and when he kicked his mount to a gallop, I followed without asking why.
A long time later we came to a stream, and Plautus dismounted and drank from it. I sat and watched him with-out really seeing what he was doing until I became aware of the foul taste in my own mouth. I slid to the ground and bent my head to the running water, rinsing my mouth and gargling and spitting until my mouth tasted clean again. I felt that, inside, I would never again be clean. I straightened up and stared out into the stream, which was quite wide. The sun still felt warm on my shoulders, but the strength was gone from its heat. I walked slowly out into the water until it rose to my knees and then I sank down into it, letting its coldness chill me.
As I rose to come out again, I saw that Plautus was sitting watching me, his back against a tree. His eyes never left mine as I walked to the bank and stood looking down at him.
"Feel like talking about it?"
I shook my head.
He shrugged. "I think we should camp here tonight. Anyone looking for us isn't likely to come this way."
I looked around. "Where are we?"
"You're asking me? We're lost, that's where we are. Couldn't keep going south. That's where the uncle's villa is, remember? Anyway, he heard us saying we were headed south. So I turned east as soon as we were out of sight of the place. We headed east for over an hour and then I turned north. That's where we are now. Anybody looking for us would have to know where we were going. Since we don't know, they can't either. There should be fish in that big pool down there. I'll see if they're willing to eat hooks."
He got up and left, and I lay down, enjoying the cold clamminess of my soaked clothing. Minutes later, it seemed, I awoke, chilled to the bone, and stripped and rubbed myself down with my cloak. Plautus was still fishing. By the time he returned, carrying four fair-sized fish, I had a fire going and we spitted the fish and cooked them. I was hungrier than I had any right to be, and the fish were good. We ate in silence. Finally, lying comfortably in a hollow in the bank, I felt I could talk about it.
"How did you know who he was?"
"I didn't, at first." Plautus's answer was immediate, as though we had been talking about it all along. "It only came to me when somebody called him Deus. Unusual name for a living man. I'd only heard it once before, when somebody was talking about him. Then I remembered that the same person had said that he was related to Quinctilius Nesca. I remember thinking at the time that was appropriate. Have you ever met Nesca?"
"No, I've never even seen the man."
"Well, that's your good fortune. He's a nasty package. Lives in Constantinople at the Court most of the time, but he has estates outside Rome, one estate here, obviously, and an island in the Aegean where he's supposed to have nothing but pederasts and catamites. No women anywhere. The word is that he likes to eat human flesh. Babies, broiled whole and flavoured with spice and cinnamon."