The Legions of Fire Read Online Free

been plagiarized.”
    Varus felt his face glow. “Sorry, master,” he muttered. He shuffled, glancing toward the audience just to avoid looking at his teacher. His eyes caught Corylus in the front row. He looked up toward the ceiling immediately. It was bad enough being here as Pandareus judged him; it would be even worse to be judged in front of his only friend. Being reminded that Corylus was present helped settle him again, though.
    Corylus’s father, Publius Cispius, was wealthy by the standards of most people—but not by the standards of the senators’ sons who were the majority of Pandareus’s students. Besides facing ordinary snobbery, Corylus was an army brat—raised in camps along the frontier instead of the relatively civilized surroundings of a provincial city. He might have had a very difficult time of it in school, especially since Piso, the acknowledged leader of the class, had a cruel streak.
    It wouldn’t have helped Corylus that he was a real scholar instead of a numskull more familiar with swagger sticks than with the rollers of a book; his scholarship might even have made it worse. And it certainly didn’t help that he and Varus had become friends. Gaius Alphenus Saxa was powerful enough that his son wouldn’t be bullied, even by a Calpurnius Piso, but to extend his protection further would require that Varus have an active personality instead of being a loner, and a rather puny loner besides.
    Corylus was tall and had fair hair from his Celtic mother. Presumably he’d gotten his slender build from her also, but Piso had learned the first afternoon following class that “slender” didn’t mean “weak.” He’d shoved Varus and found himself with his right arm twisted up behind his back and his thumb in a grip that could obviously dislocate it any time Corylus wanted to.
    Another boy—Beccaristo, son of a wealthy shipper from Ostia and Piso’s chief toady—tried to jump Corylus. He fell screaming when Corylus brought his heavy sandal down on his instep.
    Piso had shouted for his entourage of servants to help. None of them moved. Corylus’s man hadn’t said a word, just watched with his right handunder his toga. The thing he was gripping would be about the right length for an infantry sword.
    Corylus had released Piso then. He’d straightened his toga and grinned, not saying a word. And Varus had said, “Master Corylus, would you care to come home with me for some refreshment? I’d like to discuss the
Epilion
of Callimachus, which the master cited in his lecture.”
    Varus warmed at the memory. It was probably the smartest thing he’d ever done in his life. It had cemented his friendship with Corylus at the very beginning of their relationship.
    Pandareus rolled the volume closed with the same smooth grace as he’d been reading it with. “Thank you for the early look, Master Varus,” he said formally as he handed it back. “I await your reading with interest.”
    The water clock reached the tenth hour, the time set for the declamation. The bugler called over the ringing of the quarter-hour gong.
    Apollo and the Muses, be with your servant,
Varus whispered under his breath as he mounted the podium.
    As if to make him even more uncomfortable than he already was, his sister, Alphena, came marching down the aisle without so much as a maid to accompany her. She gave a peremptory gesture to the freedmen beside Corylus and sat down in the front row, glaring up at Varus.
    She looked furious.
    T HE REAL PROBLEM WAS N EMASTES the Hyperborean, but Alphena wasn’t allowing herself to think about that. She was as angry as she ever remembered being.
How dare my stepmother tell me that I need to get married! Why doesn’t Father stand up to her?
    This was one of those times that Alphena wished she weren’t quite as smart as she knew she was. Much as she fumed over Hedia—who was only