Altar of Blood: Empire IX Read Online Free Page B

lived it would have been better for him never to have known, never to have the scars of his family’s destruction reopened.’
    ‘If she’d lived?’
    ‘We thought her delivery would be simple enough, after the ease with which she had the first one, but the baby was too big, and refused to turn, and when she called for help it was too long coming. The doctor who attended her was no better than a butcher. He got the baby out by cutting her open, but she lost too much blood. She died in my arms, her eyes wide with the pain, and as she slipped away she made me promise to care for the child. I swore an oath, Julius, an oath to raise the baby as my own.’
    He wrapped his arms more tightly about her.
    ‘And what else were you to do?’
    Silence fell over them.
    ‘What happened? Is he wounded?’
    Dubnus shook his head at the question, shepherding Marcus into the walled garden with an arm around his back, physically supporting the Roman while the man who had been waiting for them closed the gate. The smell of herbs and fragrant blooms was strong in the warm air, a vivid counterpoint to the iron stink of spilled blood from his gore-streaked tunic.
    ‘He took on a dozen street robbers with nothing more than his bare hands.’
    The Briton raised a hand to forestall the veteran’s anxiety as Cotta stared aghast at the gore caked across the Roman’s tunic and body.
    ‘It’s all other men’s blood, but he’s pretty much burned himself out in the doing of it.’
    Cotta sized up the man whose long-dead father had employed him to educate his son in the fighting skills of the legions from the age of ten, assessing his exhausted posture and blank, empty eyes. He snapped out a command at one of the retired soldiers who formed the tight-knit company of men he had brought to the Tungrians’ close family on their arrival in Rome the year before.
    ‘Fetch me the hot water from the kitchen, and all of the towels! Here, let’s get him onto that bench.’
    The younger man sank gratefully onto the seat, his body trembling with reaction to the mayhem he had visited on the street robbers. Cotta stood over him in silence, staring down at the man he had tutored in the use of blade and point as a boy, when Cotta himself had only recently retired from legion service.
    ‘Get that tunic off.’
    Taking the garment he passed it to Dubnus with a meaningful glance.
    ‘Be better if this went onto the fire, I’d say. The less evidence of this night the better, if the Urban Watch come asking questions.’
    His man returned with a pail of water warmed over the kitchen fire and took the bloody garment away for incineration, and the former centurion knelt in front of his friend, wetting a towel and working at the drying blood that coated Marcus’s face and limbs.
    ‘How many did he kill?’
    ‘There were three corpses on the cobbles when we left, and another man trying to stop his guts from falling out without the wits to know that he was already dead.’
    Cotta shook his head, putting a finger under the Roman’s chin and lifting his head to stare into the half-closed eyes.
    ‘And why? You’ve no idea, do you? If one of those street scum had got lucky and stuck you with a blade, you could be dead now, and for no better reason than you’re filled with rage you can’t turn on anyone who actually matters.’
    He worked with water and towels until his friend’s body was completely clean, then wrapped him in a military cloak and handed him a beaker.
    ‘Wine and warm honey. Once you’ve got that down your neck you can eat this bread. And no arguments.’
    Acquiescing to the commanding note in his former trainer’s voice, Marcus drank deeply, nodding slowly in response to Cotta’s harangue.
    ‘I know … it was pointless … stupid … but …’
    ‘You couldn’t help yourself.’
    The Roman nodded, drinking deeply again, shivering with reaction to the night’s events.
    ‘No.’
    The veteran looked down at his former pupil for a