The Tribune's Curse(62)

“I can’t imagine why. She knows I am on a special investigation, and I can’t keep regular—”

“No, she’s worried you’re lying around drunk someplace.” The little wretch was enjoying this.

“See what I must put up with? The woman has no faith in me.” I glanced toward him, but he averted his face, hiding his expression.

We went northeast past the fine houses of the Carinae, and then were in the crowded warren of the Subura, where I had lived most of my adult life. My head was beginning to throb from too much wine too early in the day. But I was almost home.

We were no more than two streets from my house when I saw the two men strolling very slowly ahead of us: squat brutes in coarse tunics, their massive shoulders almost spanning the narrow street, looking around idly in every direction except toward us. Their steps kept slowing so that we drew unavoidably closer. No way past them without getting within touching distance. Dusk was drawing on, but I could see them clearly.

“Uh, Master—” Hermes rarely used that address in private unless he had something important to say.

“I see them,” I told him. “Right ahead. Well, we’ll just have to—”

“Actually,” he said, “I was going to tell you about the two coming up behind us.”

“Thank all the gods I’m not wearing one of my good togas. Got your stick?”

“Right here.”

“Then we’re about to find out if I’ve wasted my money sending you to the ludus.” My hands dipped into my tunic, and the left came out with fingers slipped through my caestus, the right gripping my dagger. Hermes took out his stick—a hardwood club a little longer than his forearm, the same length and weight as the practice sword used for training in the ludus.

“Take the two in back,” I said. The caestus allows limited use of the hand it adorns, and with that hand I whipped off my everyday toga. It had lead pellets stitched into its corners, which improved the drape, kept it from flapping in the wind, and allowed for more-imaginative uses.

The two in front whirled, crouching, daggers in their fists. I was not interested in talk or negotiation, not at two-against-one odds. The man on the left caught the lead weights in the face before he had properly gotten himself set. I let the toga go, its loose folds enveloping his head as I attacked. I have always found that there is little use in fencing when outnumbered and in conditions of uncertain light. An immediate, unrelenting attack is the best tactic then, unless you have a good escape route, which was distinctly lacking in this instance.

The man to the right was a veteran street fighter and came in fast, undistracted by the other’s plight. He feinted high with his short, curved knife, then came in low, sending a gutting stroke at my belly below the ribs. I blocked with my left forearm, felt the very tip of his blade nick the skin over my left hip, sent my dagger into his chest as the fingers of his left hand clawed at my eyes. We smashed together, and I brought my knee up into his groin as his knife hand sought weakly to carve me and I drew out my dagger and stabbed upward beneath his chin.

The other man bowled into me even as the first fell away, mortally wounded. He had my toga still draped across his shoulders and chest, but his eyes were clear and he had the advantage. I dived for the pavement rather than try to come to grips with him, always a mistake if you don’t have some sort of control over your opponent’s knife hand. He slashed but only nicked the top of my ear, then he kicked at my side and connected solidly. The wind went out of me, and I thought I felt a rib or two give way, but I got onto my back, my legs doubled up and ready to kick as he dived toward me.

He jerked and grunted as something struck him. I thought it was Hermes, but from my new vantage point I could see him dealing with the others. A man howled, clutching a smashed elbow, the cry cut off abruptly as Hermes brought up the blunt tip of the stick hard into the spot an inch below where the ribs join the breastbone. That is a killing blow even with a stick.

In the instant my knife man staggered from the invisible blow, I kicked out, catching him in the belly and sending him backward. In a moment I had my feet beneath me and charged in, catching him in the jaw with my caestus, hearing the bone snap even as I jammed my dagger into his side. He went down with a grunt, and I saw Hermes circling the last man, who was armed with a short sword, grinning as they shuffled their feet on the treacherous footing. I heard shutters banging and voices shouting and things crashing all around. I reached out and grabbed the back of the sword-wielder’s tunic, jerking hard. In the instant that he was off balance, Hermes darted in and fetched him two blows, forehand and backhand, alongside the temples. With a faint crunch of soft bone, the man dropped like a sacrificial ox. The boy really was coming along nicely.