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the example, for he took his chastisements without complaint and with utter indifference to any pain inflicted; the youngster had learnt like him not to cry, steeled himself to avoid any sound if he and his brother came to what were blows or a wrestling match between a pair totally unmatched in size and weight, contests in which Flavius was a constant loser even when he got close to his elder’s height.
    In part his silence was for the sake of his pride, the reluctance to admit being bested. Yet added to that was the influence of one of the emperors of Rome he truly admired, a fighter as well as a philosopher, held in high regard by his father, a paragon he had studied assiduously both within the schoolroom and without, the stoic Marcus Aurelius. That was not the only reading in which he indulged; anything regarding Rome or Ancient Greece he studied with a passion, for instance Diodorus Siculus, who had written of the campaigns of Alexander.
    Another favourite was the
Commentaries
of Julius Caesar and his conquest of Gaul. If the library of Dorostorum was far from comprehensive it did contain volumes of imperial history and giventhe nature of the empire much of that was a story of conquest: Scipio Africanus fighting Hannibal and the final conquest of Carthage. The same story of the very province in which Flavius now lived, taken from Macedonia by the Roman legions and held against constant barbarian attempts to repel them.
    There was the narrative of Mark Antony versus Octavian, of campaigns all along the Rhine and the Danube as well as the conquest of Britain by the lame Emperor Claudius. All the Belisarius sons were imbued with their father’s love of things Roman, though the last of the litter was the most affected. Steeped in his reading he held it as unmanly to show either hurt or to let his parents know that anything untoward had occurred when he and Atticus fought. Being active at robust games as well as regularly taking part in military training and wrestling bouts against his peers, there was little need to explain the appearance of sudden bruises.
    That streak of stubbornness came to the fore now: Ohannes’s attempt to imply they had done enough, that the duty was now to stay and protect the house ran into a wall. Flavius, once the flow of blood from his nose had been stemmed, was even more adamant that his place was alongside his relatives on the field of battle, which left the
domesticus
in a quandary for he lacked the standing to order this youngster around.
    Thus he was torn between the requirement to protect his master’s goods, set against the need to ensure that this much-favoured son, having just survived a dangerous encounter, did not now get himself into any scrape that might prove fatal. In the balance of value there was no other conclusion.
    ‘Then I must accompany you.’
    ‘I would not impose that upon you, Ohannes.’
    ‘You’re not laying it on me and if you knew me better, had you seen the marks on my back, you would also know that few folk have ever got me doing anything I don’t want.’
    ‘I could not be unhappy, after what has just taken place, to have you by my side.’
    Flavius blushed then; that statement sounded and was sententious. The knowledge that such a view was shared seemed obvious by the jaundiced look the words received, added to a derisive snort.
    Ohannes insisted on one last act before departing, which was to drag the bodies of the now dead thieves, as well as that of the murdered soldier left on guard, to be left at each entrance to the house; one outside the kitchen entrance, another by the gate to the stables, both relocked from the inside, the third outside the main atrium doorway, it being hoped this would give pause to anyone else thinking of robbing the place. That complete, it was an unenthusiastic old soldier, now with sword, spear and an axe in his belt, who got himself astride a less gentle mare, a mount made unsettled by the smell of so much blood.
    Flavius