Free The Sword of Revenge by Jack Ludlow Page A

Greek wonder if Quintus had set Thoas to spy on his stepmother. He could quite believe it, which only served to widen the gulf between what he thought of the father and the lack of regard he had for the son. It was because he decided to say nothing that Cholon missed the point; his suspicion of Claudia outweighed every other consideration. If he had spoken, he would have found that Thoas, along with her handmaiden Callista, had been bought from Quintus as soon as the will was read.

CHAPTER FIVE

    The road was dusty, the air hot and arid, so Didius Flaccus ordered his men to dismount and walk the horses, a command greeted with blank and silent stares. It worried him that they did not grumble; he was used to the company of legionaries, and they did little else. These men were not soldiers, though a few of them must have been so at one time. They had recently been guards and instructors at a gladiator school, which had gone under due to the owner’s debts; tough, scarred men and ruthless, who would spear an opponent on the nod from anyone who would pay their wages. He had offered them more than that to act as his personal bodyguard because what he had to do would be hard and dangerous. The Sicilian slaves he was about to take over would work or die, probably both, and no one man, alone, could feel secure in such a situation.
    ‘How far’ve we come?’ demanded Toger. ‘I need a wet.’
    Flaccus stopped and half-turned to answer; unlike the others, this individual actively troubled him. He was squat, lantern-jawed, with huge shoulders and a square head covered in tight curls. His eyes, small and pig-like, never ceased to move, as though he was forever on guard against some unseen attack, an impression strengthened by the worry lines that furrowed his tiny forehead. He would smile occasionally, but there was no friendliness in it. Toger’s physical presence was alarming and he had a wild and unpredictable temper. The other men did not like him, though they laughed heartily enough at his feeble jokes, and never questioned any of his suggestions. They were afraid of him and it was quite possible, Flaccus thought, that the best way to ensure their undying loyalty would be to kill him.
    ‘We’re near a place called Aprilium,’ he replied, looking around the cultivated fields that lined the road and stretched to the grazing land for sheep and cattle on the nearby foothills. The substantial and well-tended villas they had passed were ample evidence of the wealth such land produced, just as they were proof that the owners would not be common farmers. Barbinus himself had a property round these parts – one he had just avoided – there was no way he could take this bunch of thugs intosuch a place, but thinking on that reminded him of another fact. His mind went back to the pass at Thralaxas and the men he had left to die there. ‘A few of my cohort came from round here, poor bastards.’
    Toger snorted derisively. ‘Poor bastards is right, if they have to work the soil.’
    ‘They’re even worse off than that. They were trampled into it, that is if there was anything left of them after they had been hacked to pieces.’
    ‘Are you thinkin’ of payin’ any social calls?’ asked Dedon, another of his ruffians.
    Flaccus did not reply. Clodius Terentius had come from land that lay close to the Barbinus properties, which caused the centurion to remember two other things: Clodius had been a surrogate legionary for someone better off than he, called Piscius Dabo. The second thing was that Clodius had died owing him money. They would have to stop for the night soon, find a bunkhouse in one of the flea-ridden post-houses that lined the route. How much better and cheaper it would be to impose themselves on a free billet. Right now, Flaccus was paying for everything, their wages as well as their bed and board; a personal bodyguard had not been part of his deal with Barbinus. This lot would not consent to sleeping in a field and if