The Princess and the Pirates(84)
I was off the bale in an instant, but not to butt anyone in the face. I dived and rolled, catching Alpheus just below the knees, toppling him and sending his wreath rolling across the floor to be trampled beneath the scuffling feet. There were shouts and muffled groans and the familiar, butcher-shop sound of blades plunging into bodies and chopping against bone. Light streaming through the doorway glittered on bared blades and glowed redly from the sprays of blood that saturated the air. Among the droplets, flowers and leaves from the festival wreaths drifted to the floor.
Alpheus tried to rise, but I doubled up my legs and let him have both feet beneath the chin. His head snapped back and cracked into an amphora, breaking the heavy clay and spilling poor-quality olive oil onto the floor. If I couldn’t defeat a poet, even with my hands tied behind me, I deserved to die.
“Metellus,” somebody bellowed, “where are you?” I recognized the voice of Aulus Gabinius, come to do me in just like a flamen killing a bull, although just then I felt more like a second-rate sheep, one not even worthy of sacrifice. I looked toward the door, measured the distance, scrambled to my feet, and leapt over a pair of struggling bodies. Even as I did, I saw more people crowding into the doorway. Just my luck.
But one thing was certain: I did not want to linger another minute in that cellar. I ran for the crowd, hoping to bull my way through and keep running. A sword rose, lanced toward my belly, then several strong hands stopped me as solidly as if I had run into a wall.
“A man could get killed rushing onto sharp steel like that,” said Ariston, grinning. One of his hands rested against my chest. The other held his big, curved knife. So he was with them, too? Then I saw who was holding the sword that just pierced the cloth of my tunic: Hermes, his face gone so white I could not help laughing.
“Hermes, if you could see yourself!”
“You’re something of a sight yourself,” Titus Milo said. His were the other hands that had stopped me so abruptly. Milo never carried weapons because he never needed them. Hermes resheathed his sword with a shaky hand.
“What,” I asked, “is going on?”
“You’ve led us a lively chase, Captain,” Ariston said. He spun me around and slashed my bonds with a single stroke. “Your boy came running to the base, said you’d been abducted, and we should all turn out and look for you.”
“I knew something like this would happen,” Gabinius said, walking toward us. He was wiping blood from a sword that looked as natural in his fist as a finger. “That’s why I’ve had my men watching you all day. When they said they’d seen Furius Marcinus in town with his hair cut and his beard shaved, I suspected he’d want to take care of some unfinished business and sent them to bring you to me. They saw Alpheus make off with you, so I set them to combing the town. One of them spotted the man they sent out for wine and followed him back here, then ran to fetch me. Why didn’t you just bring your suspicions to me, Metellus? It might have simplified things.”
“I thought you were trying to kill me.” I looked over the room. There were bodies everywhere, lying among the leaves and petals, in a mixture of oil and blood. All of Alpheus’s men lay dead. Alpheus himself looked dead. Marcinus and Nobilior were certainly dead, their throats decorated with gaping wounds. “I see you’ve eliminated your partners.”
“Metellus,” he said, “I am showing forbearance out of respect to Caesar and your family; but if you accuse me of complicity in the murder of my friend Silvanus, I may just make a clean job of it right here.”
“Let’s not be hasty now,” Milo said, smiling his most dangerous smile. Hermes and Ariston let their hands fall to their sheathed weapons.
“We have more than a hundred armed men just outside,” Hermes said.
“So have I,” Gabinius answered.
Suddenly I was very tired. “There’s been enough bloodletting today,” I said. “Let’s not have Romans fighting each other in a new territory. The civil wars ended twenty years ago. Come on, let’s get away from this slaughterhouse and talk somewhere where there’s clean air.”
“Good,” Gabinius said, handing his sword to one of his men. “By preference, in a place where you can get a clean tunic.”
An hour later, washed up and dressed in a clean tunic, I walked out to the terrace before my quarters. Gabinius was there, and Milo and Mallius, the new governor.
“Hermes,” I’d asked as I bathed and dressed, “how did you know to summon help so quickly?”
“I found Julia only two streets away from where I left you. I gave her your message, and Flavia said Paphos had no tavern named Hermaphroditus. I knew that woman would know what she was talking about.”