Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) Read Online Free Page A

fellow with a scarred face straighten up a little as he passed. From the corner of his eye he saw the tell-tale shift of something under the cloak. Lightning-fast, Pavo swung and shot out a hand, fiercely grappling the man’s wrist through the cloak until the sinews in his arms bulged. The man winced and a dagger fell from the bottom of his cloak.
    ‘Go and haunt some other street,’ Pavo snarled.
    The mugger’s eyes darted over Pavo’s face, panicked. He backed away, then turned and ran, leaving his fallen blade.
    The moment was gone like an unwelcome breeze, and Pavo turned his attentions to the listing tenement before him. His heart pounded as he looked up to the third floor and let anticipation run riot. He bounded up the rickety timber stairs onto the third floor landing, his face broadening with an incontrollable grin . . . until he beheld the vacated apartment, door ajar. His Cursus Publicus scroll lay unopened where it had been shoved under the door. The room was bereft of her things. Just a bare bed and a scarred table sat there, an irate-looking mouse scowling at him from its surface, interrupted from its meal of a bread crust. Then he saw a lonely-looking strip of red silk on the table, layered with dust. He stalked inside and lifted it, shaking the dust clear and holding it to his nose, inhaling the weak trace of Felicia’s scent. It was just like the piece she had given him which had been lost in Persia. Her farewell to him? A way of leaving the past behind? His pounding heart stumbled to a near standstill.
    ‘Ah, so you’re alive?’ a voice remarked glibly behind him.
    He swung round to see a glass-eyed old man in the doorway of the adjacent apartment.
    ‘Where is she?’ Pavo panted.
    ‘Long gone. Back in the summer. She left here with a faceful of tears.’ The old fellow wagged a finger at Pavo as if in reproach. ‘She heard word that your lot had been slain out in the Persian deserts.’
    Pavo cast a bitter look at the Cursus Publicus scroll, wishing he had been able to get word to her sooner.
    ‘She left the city to help at the Great Northern Camp and the five mountain passes,’ the old man added. ‘For months now, trains of workers and oxen have been leaving Constantinople in droves to help supply and maintain the camp. She felt it was the best place for her. Things are dire out there from what I hear – legions cobbled together from the few bands of men who survived Ad Salices, and more Goths than a man can count trying to break through the passes.’
    ‘Aye, aye, we’ve heard much talk of this Northern Camp since we returned to the city,’ Pavo said, his eyes darting as he tried to make sense of things. Felicia seemed to be enticed to danger like a bee to a bloom. Indeed, he snorted, she had been drawn to him. The flash of amusement faded and he wondered if their time together was over. If Felicia thought he was dead then he had to get word to her at this distant camp. He ploughed his fingers through his hair in frustration. Why, why didn’t you wait just a little longer? he thought.
    ‘Where are you headed?’ the old man said as Pavo staggered past and trudged down the stairs.
    Pavo looked back up, his face sullen. ‘Where else does a man go after he has lost his woman?’
    ‘Have one for me,’ the old fellow chuckled.
    The bustle outside seemed smothered and distant and he felt numb as he made his way back up the main street towards the Forum of the Ox. This square space was set in the dip between the third and seventh hills. The place was dominated by the glistening bronze sculpture of a bull at its centre – still bearing black stains from its days as a method of execution, where Christians would be roasted alive in its hollow belly. These days, the forum hosted no such spectacles. Now, the Forum of the Ox knew only trading by day and unfettered iniquity by night. And, rather fittingly, it was where he had arranged to convene and drink with his few surviving XI Claudia