Free Emperor: The Blood of Gods (Special Edition) (Emperor Series, Book 5) by Conn Iggulden

over a city lit by speckles of fire. The flickering yellow and orange resembled a disease ruining healthy skin, spreading too fast to control. The window brought a warm breeze into the little room, but it was no comfort. The house was in the perfume district, a mile east of the forum. Three floors up from the ground, Brutus could still smell the destruction of the previous days. The odour of rich oils mingled unpleasantly with wet ash and he wanted a bath to rid himself of the scent. He was sick of smoke and the roars of distant clashes. As soon as darkness fell to hide the seething masses, they came out again, in greater and greater numbers. Those with guards had barricaded themselves to starve in their homes. The poor suffered worst, of course. They always did, easier prey to the raptores and gangs than those who could fight back.
    Somewhere close by, Brutus could hear the tramp of marching soldiers, a sound as familiar to him as anything in the world. The legions in the Campus Martius had not mutinied, at least so far. The Senate had drafted rushed orders to bring them in, a thousand men at a time. Two separate legions had spread through the city, hard-pressed even so as the mobs gave ground step by bloody step. Brutus rubbed a spot on his forearm where a thrown tile had caught him a glancing blow earlier that day. He had been protected by a century of men, but as they escorted him to his house on the Quirinal hill, the roofs nearby had filled with rioters and a rain of stones and tiles had come arcing over. Had they been waiting for him, or was it just that nowhere was safe?
    He clenched his fist at the memory. Even a century could be overwhelmed in the narrow streets. The Senate had reports of soldiers hemmed in on all sides, battered from above, and even one atrocity where oil pots had been thrown and set alight, burning men alive.
    With tiles and stones shattering all around, he’d given the order to take a side street. They’d marched away from the location, intending to double back quickly on parallel streets to kick in doors and trap their assailants. He recalled the hooting jeers of lookouts above their heads, watching every step. The roofs had been empty by the time his men reached them, just a litter of broken tiles and scrawled messages. He’d given up on reaching his house and gone back to the safe area around the forum, where thousands of legionaries patrolled.
    ‘I think it’s getting worse, even with the new men in from the Campus,’ Cassius said, dragging Brutus back to the present. Like him, the senator was staring out over the city.
    ‘They can’t go on much longer,’ Brutus said, waving his hand in irritation.
    The third man in the room stood to refill his cup with rich red wine. The two at the window turned at the sound and Lucius Pella raised his white eyebrows in silent question. Cassius shook his head, but Brutus nodded, so Pella filled a second cup.
    ‘They are drunk on more than wine,’ Pella said. ‘If we could have saved the senate house, I think it would be over already, but …’ He shook his head in disgust. A stone building should not have fallen just because wooden benches burned inside. Yet as the fire reached its height, one of the walls had cracked from top to bottom. The great roof had come crashing down, collapsing with such speed that it actually extinguished the fires within.
    ‘What would you have me do, Lucius?’ Cassius asked. ‘I have brought in legions. I have secured the permission of the Senate to kill those who ignore the curfew. Yet it goes on – no, it spreads! We have lost whole districts of the city to these cattle with their clubs and iron bars. A million citizens and slaves cannot be stopped by a few thousand soldiers.’
    ‘Mark Antony walked to his house today, with just a few men,’ Brutus said suddenly. ‘Did you hear that? He is their champion, after his speech appealing to the mob. They don’t touch him, while my name is howled like a wolf pack.