His deductions proved slightly askew as he heard a second strong voice telling the others to shut up. So… at least one other proper fighter. They would be the two to take down first, given the chance.
‘Check every aisle. Make sure we’re alone. Then get to work, but make sure you take only the valuable stuff. This has to look like a genuine theft.’
Fronto felt his blood surging and boiling. No name had been mentioned, but given that little slip, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind who was behind this ‘incident’.
He pressed himself back against the roof support, the ash pole vertical and pulled in tight. He watched the first two men pass, peering in half-heartedly, making only a cursory check for lurking figures and completely missing the Roman hidden behind the thick wooden pillar. On the assumption the three at the other side were moving at roughly the same speed, that would leave three men at the rear still to come. It was tempting to wait until everyone passed and then strike, but that was too dangerous. While moving now risked landing himself with enemies on both sides, if he waited, the more experienced men might well see him and he’d lose the element of surprise, ending up trapped in this aisle.
It was fifty-fifty whether that second authoritative speaker would be on this side of the warehouse or the other. He counted under his breath and heard the footfalls of the third man behind the pillar. Taking a silent breath, he stepped out from the support, levelling the staff as he moved. As the figure of the third man came into view, the iron-hard butt of the staff hit the man in the stomach, hard enough to burst organs. There was an explosive rush of air from the man’s mouth, almost masking the grunt of pain as the figure fell away with a clatter to the darkened floor.
He knew that the thug in charge would not be so foolish as to walk into the same position – that commanding voice belonged to a man who knew his business. And so, keeping as much of the initiative on his side as he could, he stepped around the corner into the main hall of the warehouse. The leader turned out to be too far away to attack, since he had stayed close to the entrance.
Fronto momentarily weighed up the value of running over and taking down the leader anyway, against the likelihood that the result would be him being brought low by the other five interlopers in short order and then beaten to death. Instead, he decided upon a path of creating as much chaos and confusion as possible. When a legion lost cohesion, men stopped listening to the calls of their cornicen and to their centurions’ whistles, and there was a true danger of complete failure. Such was all the worse when a force did not have the discipline of a legion to begin with. If he could keep them off-balance, the leader could not control them and Fronto would have a chance.
‘Over by the door!’ he shouted in a passable Massiliot Greek. Two of the hired morons turned to look at the second warehouse door, past the empty table, while one was already running back towards his boss. Fronto lashed out with the spinning staff and swept the running man’s feet from under him. As the lad fell with a squawk, his legs flailing up in the air, Fronto spun on his heel, allowing the staff to build up momentum as it circled until it struck the flailing legs with the crack of breaking bone.
‘What in the name…’ came the second commanding voice from nearby, and Fronto reappraised. Two men down but only injured. Four men still intact, and the leader by the rear exit. Soon they would pull together and he would be in trouble.
Leaping towards the two at the head of the group, who had initially passed him while he hid, he smacked one of them in the centre of the back with the staff, hearing ribs break. The second man jumped lithely out of the way, and two others were now closing on him. Three down, but three well-prepared men now tightening in an arc around him. All three had clubs a good two feet long. He had the reach, of course, but the moment those men got inside the span of his staff, his weapon would be rendered ineffective and he would have to fight off clubs with his fists. The situation was beginning to look rather dire.
Buying himself time to think, Fronto began to twirl his staff around him in a very showy fashion, passing it from hand to hand behind his back with each rotation, making sure to keep himself far enough from walls and shelves to avoid catching the sweep of the weapon. He could almost have laughed. Masgava and he had argued for several hours over why the big man had bothered teaching him such a clearly decorative move. He’d not been able to see any circumstance in which being able to do this would be of benefit.
Yet here he was, spinning the thing like an acrobat and holding off three thugs in the process.
Time. He had a moment to think. Could he get out of the nearer of the doors?
But that would leave these men with free rein in his warehouse. An escape, but hardly a win.
His spin faltered for a moment as the staff caught the hand of one of the men who’d tried tentatively edging closer. It hadn’t been his weapon hand, sadly, but certainly
that
appendage would not be useful for some time, if ever.
A cry of dismay at the far end of the warehouse changed everything. The second sound, which followed quickly on the first, was a familiar voice.
‘Fronto?’
Not Masgava, after all. In fact, it was the slightly pinched tone of Glykon, the local recruit to his business. He’d found early on that there was something that unsettled him about Glykon, but right now he had to admit that he’d rarely been more grateful to hear his name called.
‘Here!’ he replied, noting the sudden sounds of a scuffle at the warehouse’s far end. He heard the distinctive rasp of a sword leaving a scabbard’s collar and flinched for a moment. His spinning staff went slightly astray and he lost his spin-rhythm. Fortunately, the three men facing him had turned their attention away from their prey, focusing on the new activity at the far end.
‘Fronto! I’m coming,’ Glykon yelled, and then: ‘get out of my way you greasy anus!’
There was a sound that Fronto recognised as sharpened iron being turned aside by hard wood, and the interlopers’ leader yelled ‘pull out!’
Fronto watched the three men turn and run, happy to get out of the range of his staff. The one with the broken ribs was on his feet now, arms huddled round his aching midriff, but running for his life with the rest. One of them was helping up the last man – the one Fronto had first winded. The Roman winced as the escaping troublemakers paused long enough to smash a few amphorae and grab a couple of the smaller, more portable, vases, and then they were gone.
Fronto leaned on his staff for a moment, heaving in grateful breaths. One of the now-fled thugs had helpfully placed their small lamp on the table while they’d faced him and had left it there when they ran, the light continuing to throw the room into golden visibility. As he stumped towards the table and then slid his feet into his sandals, he turned to see Glykon limping down the warehouse towards him. The local employee’s stubbled face and close-shorn black hair gleamed in the lamplight. He was holding one arm tight across his chest, blood from some small wound soaking into his chiton, and he’d clearly taken a blow to the leg that had caused the limp but not drawn blood. A lucky man, or else Glykon was more martially-skilled than Fronto had thought. The Greek had held only a short club and had survived a run in with a veteran criminal armed with a blade.
‘You alright, Domine?’
The Roman mode of address formed within a Greek sentence seemed extremely odd, but the tone was respectful and concerned, and Fronto found himself warming to the odd man.
‘Remarkably, I seem to be entirely unharmed,’ he glowered at a mass of pot sherds further along the warehouse and a growing pool of dark red around them. ‘My stock does not seem to have borne up quite so well. I think that’s the Chian busy running out into the gutters.’ He shook his head, turning to more immediate concerns. ‘And you? I see you’re bleeding. Is it just a flesh wound? We’d best get you seen to. It’s a bit early for the physicians to be open in town, but Balbus’ major domo is a former field medic, and he knows a thing or two about wounds.’
Glykon smiled. ‘Your wife is beside herself with worry, sir. I can walk on to master Balbus’ house, or even stitch the wound myself. First thing’s first: let’s get you home, sir.’
Fronto nodded slowly. ‘If you’re really alright. I cannot thank you enough for your timely arrival. My business concerns would have been the last of my worries in another quarter of an hour.’
Glykon gestured to the door. ‘I’ve brought the spare keys, sir. Go ahead and sluice down in the fountain outside and I’ll lock up and meet you there. You could do without being spattered with other people’s blood when the domina sees you. It would raise difficult questions, sir.’
Fronto nodded. ‘Quite right. Sage advice, there, my friend. I’ll see you outside when I’ve cleaned up. And when we get home I want to set a two-man armed guard in the warehouse each night. Hierocles has just shifted his game up a notch. I’m going to make him sorry for this.’
* * * * *
‘I still don’t like this.’
Lucilia nodded patiently. ‘I know dear. You’re startlingly un-Roman in your outlook sometimes, you know, my love? But bear in mind that these people will soon have a roof over their head, a warm home, good meals and even a few coins. Better than the free but poor of Rome. And every slave you buy is someone you save from fieldwork or the mines, if you’re feeling philanthropic again. They won’t understand their good fortune after spending their youth living in mud huts and washing in streams.’
Fronto snorted. ‘Sorry, Lucilia, but that’s the sort of blinkered
Romanitas
that only afflicts those who haven’t fought alongside the Gauls. Don’t forget that many of them served in Caesar’s army. They have their own world that’s in some strange ways more civilised than ours. And they don’t live in mud huts. They have stone- and timber-built houses with windows and doors and rugs and furniture.’
‘And there’s little chance of another servile war,’ Lucilia went on as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘The Spartacus debacle taught people a lesson.’
‘Balls! It taught people a lesson for a couple of years. A few people have shunned slaves, but the rest stopped treating them so badly for a few months until the horrors were forgotten, then they went straight back to beating the boys and humping the girls like a good Roman
pater familias
.’
‘Then you be an exception to the rule.’
‘You don’t understand, Lucilia. The majority of the slaves at the market will be Gauls of one tribe or another. It’s possible I was even commanding the fight when some of them were taken. And even if not, they were once free men with a sense of nobility and they’re hardly likely to view a new Roman master with any level of acceptance. If you buy a Gaul and speak Latin, watch for a makeshift knife in the night.’
‘Then just be choosy about who we buy. I am quite capable of selecting good house slaves. You can steer us right in terms of Gauls, and Glykon knows the trade world, so he can advise us well on who to take on for your business.’
Fronto turned and looked at the dark-haired Greek who followed at a respectful distance. Behind him, Masgava and Aurelius watched the crowd carefully. Masgava had decided that following the ‘incident’ at the warehouse, Fronto would have an armed guard whenever possible, and the former officer had not the strength to argue. Consequently, while Biorix and Arcadios watched over the warehouse, the big ex-Gladiator and the superstitious former legionary accompanied he and Lucilia, both wearing nondescript local-style clothing but with a long dagger and a short one at their belt beneath the cloaks they all wore against the Januarius chill. The temperature had finally risen last month and the skies had been blue for weeks. At least it never snowed or froze down here like it did in the north, but there was still a chilling wind from the sea.
Glykon was clearly doing his best for the business. He had managed to secure a few small deals, to help alleviate the pressure, with the contacts he had in the city. And he worked all hours, despite a lack of bonus in pay. And, of course, he had saved Fronto’s skin in the warehouse. Lucilia had wanted to give him a gift for his timely interruption there, but Glykon had refused, labelling it his duty. He was a good man. But…
Far from the agora, close to the huge pottery warehouses and the kiln buildings pouring their pungent smoke into the sky, the slave market was strangely – given the general chaos of the Greek city-state – a much more ordered and solid affair than the sprawling mass of the graecostadium in Rome. Enclosed by a wide boundary wall, the place consisted largely of three large blocks of pens, each subdivided into rooms labelled with the traders’ signs, the central yard with a block for the display of wares, a set of wooden seating stands that could easily double as a theatre, and a separate building that housed the market’s staff and guards.
The small group approached the gate to the complex, Lucilia almost buzzing with the anticipation of the trade, Masgava and Aurelius watching their surroundings carefully, and Fronto gazing longingly at the
Artemis
tavern across the road. As they neared the pair of guards, Glykon stepped ahead and opened the purse of business funds he carried on behalf of his employer.
‘We’re here for a private visit.’
The two men looked at the purse and watched as Glykon counted out two small coins apiece, before nodding and gesturing inside. It was the way of things. Those with influence or money or both could arrange such a visit instead of having to sit in the crowd at the public sale in an hour or so and argue with the rest of the buyers. For a small gratuity to the gate guard and a small donation to the market funds, they would be permitted to peruse the indoor pens, select any goods they wished to purchase, and then speak to the merchants who would be here gearing up for the main event. If a deal could be reached early, that slave would be withdrawn from the lists for a private transaction.