A voice filled with authority barked an order from the tower beside the gate, and that order must have been obeyed because no more spears came his way. He waited, still with his arms outstretched, feeling like a target for pilum practice.
‘You don’t look like a friend,’ the voice said suspiciously. ‘You look like one of the barbarian wolf men who threatened to burn us out a few days ago unless we support that fat bastard Vitellius. What about the others? I see some shadows in the murk behind you that don’t look like shadows.’
Valerius waved Serpentius and the legionaries forward and heard a reluctant shuffling of hooves from behind. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t feel particularly brave himself, parading within range of unknown numbers of frightened and suspicious spearmen.
‘You look even less like friends now.’
‘If we weren’t friends there’d be hundreds of us, not just seven, and we wouldn’t be standing here. We’d have already swarmed over your pathetic little walls and I’d have cut your throat before your sentry there had even woken up.’
‘Pathetic, is it?’
‘You know you won’t last five minutes when they come for you. You should pack up now and get everyone to Placentia while you can. At least you’ll have a chance there.’
The man laughed nervously. ‘You’re just trying to get us into the open, so we’ll be easier to slaughter.’
‘No,’ Valerius said with exaggerated patience. ‘I’m trying to get a message to Prixus Lucianus Longinus, the man who represents your interests in the Senate.’
A grey-bearded elder wearing a centurion’s helmet appeared behind the palisade. He reminded Valerius of Falco, the militia commander who had helped defend Colonia from Boudicca. ‘What message?’ the man demanded, but now his voice sounded more curious than suspicious.
‘That is between myself and the senator.’
There was a long pause before the man made up his mind. ‘Then you can carry it to him yourself.’ The words were spoken with exaggerated dignity. ‘He’s too stubborn to come and live with us ordinary mortals, even if it gets him killed. Take the road round the walls and up to that fancy villa on the hill there. You can’t miss it.’
Valerius hesitated before turning away. ‘My advice is good.’
The other man nodded gravely. ‘Perhaps.’
They rode wearily up the hill in single column and the growing light showed them approaching a well-maintained villa of substantial proportions along a track running between cultivated rows of vines. There was no wall, only a low hedge that formed a barrier between those who owned the land and those who only worked it. Valerius pushed his horse forward through the carved wooden gateway into a courtyard formed by the three sides of the white stucco building. As they reached it, a large bell began tolling in the city below, triggering a flurry of activity within the house. Four fluted pillars flanked the doorway and the shadows between them filled with figures that gradually became recognizably human. In the van was a tall, balding figure holding an old-fashioned sword of a pattern that might have been carried by Divine Caesar himself. Behind him stood a short, almost square peasant wearing a savage scowl and wielding a woodman’s axe. They were backed by what looked like the household ladies and their servants, each armed with whatever had come to hand at short notice. Less enthusiastic were the slaves, who sidled round the angle of the building carrying staves and mattocks.
‘Raaaargh!’ Serpentius’s lion’s roar broke the silence and the slaves disappeared like morning mist under a bright sun. The Spaniard grinned. Valerius darted an annoyed glance at his friend and turned to the man in the formal toga with the sword.
‘Prixus Lucianus Longinus?’
The aristocrat peered at his visitor through rheumy eyes. ‘Yes, and I am prepared to die for what is mine.’ As he said the words he raised the sword, but Valerius backed his horse away and pulled back the wolf’s head hood that had left his face in shadow. He dismounted and advanced on the old man. The sword shook in wrinkled hands and the axeman’s eyes flared dangerously.
In the shadows of the portico Domitia held the knife that would, if necessary, end her life with honour, but something about the commanding figure in the wolfskin cloak awoke a memory. When the hood went back her heart seemed to stop. What was it? Unkempt dark hair. A stubbled face, the expression savage, as if the man who wore it had spent an eternity in the company of death. Battle-scarred and grim, it was marked by hunger and privation so every bone seemed ready to cut through the skin. Yet there was something about him that made her pause. The eyes. She recognized the eyes.