Death of a Gladiatrix, Act Three: The Blood of the Empire

3.1 The Road of Ash and Salt

You left Rome in autumn. That day the city gate closed behind you, and its boom saw you off.

Marcus had already gone ahead to the east. The messengers said he would station troops along the road through the province of Mesopotamia and meet your column there. Your father was still in Rome, handing over his business in the Senate.

You were caught between the two of them, like a valuable object that had been sent out of the house but not yet reached the hands of the one it was sent to.

All the way, the column followed the Roman road.

The road was flat and straight. Every Roman mile a stone marker appeared, carved with the emperor’s name and the distance.

Rome was always like this. It made every road lead to Rome, and it let Rome’s order flow out along those roads over the whole world — just as you had read in books.

But the further east you went, the poorer the land along the road became.

First a few burned huts. Further on, whole villages burned to bare ground. Now and then there were small roadside shrines to foreign gods, the faces of the statues smashed off. No one had replaced them, and no one dared to take them away.

By a river, flies swarmed around a dead sheep, or the body of some other animal, and the hot wind carried the smell of rot into the carriage. Your slaves let the curtain down at once to block your view.

But the smell of rot did not grow any less.

You lifted a corner of the curtain and saw a line of prisoners in the distance.

At first it was a few men being marched along, hands tied behind their backs, iron rings on their feet. Later it was a whole column of people strung together on chains — old men, women, children half the height of a grown man. They walked along the edge of the road, their chains clinking.

They would be driven west as slaves.

The steward said, “Some are old Parthian subjects, barbarians who’ve been conquered. Some are free people who didn’t pay their taxes, or couldn’t. The legions deal with them according to the rules.”

They were living people, not the blur they became at banquets when someone called them barbarians. One woman’s headscarf was embroidered along the edge with a fine blue thread, the stitches close together. One old man wore a bronze charm on his chest, its edge rubbed bright. One child held half a wooden doll with no arms.

Once you had seen their eyes, it was hard to go on thinking of them as notes on the maps in your father’s study. On Roman maps, slaves were listed beside horses, wool, timber and lead mines — one more resource worth taking.

Scylla rode alongside, towards the back of the column.

She did not speak much. In the hottest part of the day she would hand her water skin to the grooms and drink very little herself. When you came to a spring or a stream, she would stop and put her fingers into the running water.

Once, you asked her what she was looking at.

“Where the water comes from. Water remembers the way,” she said.

You did not know what to say to that.

One night the camp was pitched beside a dry riverbed. Wind blew across the open ground, carrying the smell of animal dung, ash and wild grass. Soldiers were lighting fires in the distance. Scylla sat alone on a rock, sharpening her short sword.

Moonlight lay along the edge of the blade like a thin, cold frost.

Almost without meaning to, you asked, “What is the North Sea like?”

She stopped for a moment.

“Cold.”

It was so short it was almost a refusal.

“When the sun goes down, the tide runs far out.” She scraped the mud from the sole of her shoe with the knife. “The rocks come up. Fish stay in the shallow pools. Children run out to pick up shells, and the old people call them back. If you’re slow, the tide comes after you from behind.”

“Did you go and pick them up when you were little?”

“Yes.”

She said no more. The knife scraped the leather sole with a rough, hoarse sound.

This was how she talked about home. No long speeches, no commentary, no sighs, not even much feeling. Or perhaps, when she used Latin, this was all she could say.

When she saw water, she would speak of the tides at sea. When the wind turned cold, she would speak of the sea fog. When the people at a way station brought out salted fish, she said that fish dried in the north was so hard you had to break it with the back of a knife.

It was as if… she was only placing one small piece of another world in front of you — like putting a crystal on the tip of your tongue and letting you taste for yourself whether it was sugar or sea salt.

Some weeks later, you entered more dangerous country.

At every garrison, someone came to pay their respects to you. They spoke respectfully of the governor’s daughter, and of how Marcus of the House of Claudius had already made everything ready up ahead.

From their mouths, again and again, you heard the name of the emperor Trajan.

The emperor has conquered the east! The Senate has voted to raise a column for him in Rome! All his conquests will be carved in the stone! The greatness of Rome will shine for a thousand ages!

When that time came, the carved column would rise straight from the ground to the sky, for later generations to look up at.

Would it be a stone that never changed? You could not help imagining it. Would that enormous column cross the long years and last to the very end of the time humans could reach? You wanted to ask — like the sacred flame in the Temple of Vesta?

But Claudia was not beside you, and no one gave you an answer.

Outside your imagination, you saw other kinds of stone, very different from Rome’s great deeds.

The foundation stones under the walls of burned houses. The boundary stones fallen beside ancient tombs. The millstones soldiers had prised apart looking for hidden grain.

Outside one village, some local people knelt in front of an officer. They were willing to pay taxes, willing to hand over grain and goods, but they did not want to tear down their little temple, and did not want their children to learn Latin prayers.

The officer listened to the interpreter, then waved his hand and ordered the shrine pulled down. The statue hit the ground and broke in two.

An old woman threw herself at it, wailing. Her nails clawed at the dust, black dirt packed under them. Soldiers dragged her away.

You let the curtain fall and closed your eyes, until the crying, the pleading, the whips and the chains had all faded completely.

But that day, you could not sleep at all.

The column stopped beside a salt flat. When the sun went down, the ground glowed orange-red. In the distance a line of prisoners was walking west, the sound of their chains coming and going, mixed with the bells of the pack animals.

Scylla stood behind you.

You asked her, “Do they have their own gods too?”

“Yes.”

“Their own language?”

“Yes.”

“Their own homes…”

Scylla looked into the distance and did not answer that one. She did not need to.

You suddenly remembered a saying Romans often used: war will feed itself (Bellum se ipsum alet). Before, it had sounded like a judgement from the battlefield — short, strong, a help to quick thinking.

But now it had a face. It had teeth.

War would eat the granaries, eat the children, eat the villages along both sides of the road. When it had finished eating, it would send whoever was left to be sold, and turn them into the pay for the next war.

The emperor Trajan’s campaigns were not over yet. Perhaps, you thought, no campaign ever ends by itself.

Not until… it eats itself.

That night a messenger brought a report from the road ahead. The new province was unstable. Roman officials had been attacked. Small Roman garrisons had gone missing.

“This is only the usual back and forth in a new province,” the captain of your guard said. “Once Legate Marcus meets us, everything will settle down.”

In the dark, the column was silent. No one answered.

You reached out and folded the map shut. The wax on it was not quite dry, and it left a little red on the pad of your finger. You could not rub it off. You could only watch the colour sink deeper into the lines of your skin.

Before dawn, another messenger arrived from the front.

The clerk took the wax seal, and his face slowly went white in the torchlight.

There were only two lines:

The rebellion around Mesopotamia has spread.

The main road to Legate Marcus’s garrison has been cut.

3.2 A Standard Out of Order

After that, the news came in like a flood.

A rebellion had broken out in the eastern province of Assyria. The Roman general holding it had been killed, several way stations had fallen, the roads had been cut, and supply wagons had been raided.

Next came the province of Mesopotamia, where you were going. Rebels were moving there too. The main road was cut, and the side roads were full of danger. No one could promise that the next water source was still in Roman hands, or that there were no rebels lying in wait in the hills.

Your column could not go on. It was stuck at an abandoned way station near the border.

Until, at dusk on the third day, a standard appeared at the far end of the western road.

It was a company of Roman soldiers carrying an eagle standard. They looked worn out. The red cloth on the pole that stood for their legion hung as if the wind might tear it off at any moment.

Someone among your attendants shouted, “It’s Lord Marcus!”

At that, everyone breathed out. The slaves whispered to each other, the clerk hurriedly straightened the folds of his toga, and several guards took their hands off their sword hilts. A Roman standard meant order, supplies and safety.

Marcus rode at the head.

He still wore his officer’s cloak, his breastplate polished, his sword in order. From a distance he was still the brilliant legate of the noble seats. But as the distance closed, you saw the rough stubble along his jaw, his sunken eyes and the dark rings under them, and a tear in the hem of his cloak, its edge caked with dry mud.

He still dismounted handsomely.

“Aelia.” He bowed. “The gods be thanked, I’ve found you.”

The captain of your guard answered almost at once. “With the legate here, we’re safe.”

“What’s the situation ahead?” you asked. “Chaos,” he said. “The rebellion in Assyria has pulled in several regions around it. I’ve just brought my men out from the front to regroup, and to escort you away from the rebels.”

His voice was not loud, but loud enough for the people around to hear.

“We’ll go back to Rome first, and join the governor there.”

As soon as he finished, your attendants crowded round, chattering. Marcus raised a hand to calm them, still carrying himself like a man in control.

“And your men?” you pressed.

He paused.

“Spread out to contact the other garrisons. You know how it is — roads on the frontier aren’t like Rome’s. Orders travel slowly.”

Marcus smiled again.

“There’s no need to worry. I’ll take charge here. Tomorrow we’ll join up and go round to the south-west, and head back to Rome first to report to the Senate.”

The people in your column accepted the legate’s arrangements without a second thought. Soldiers were put on watch rotas, the horses were rearranged, and the captain of your guard gave Marcus the best tent. More wood went on the fires, and meat was stewed in the pots. Someone began talking about tomorrow’s route, about going back to Rome, and there was even a good deal more laughter in their voices.

Marcus moved among them with a bronze cup inlaid with gold, pouring wine and toasting each person in turn.

But you kept looking at the standard.

It had been planted in the middle of the camp, with no standard-bearer guarding it. There was dust on the cloth, but no spatter of blood, no smell of fire.

Scylla sat outside your tent, quietly sharpening her sword.

She had not spoken all day. Her eyes had never left Marcus.

Only when you came to her side did she turn her gaze to you.

“What did you see?” you asked.

She wiped the blade with a cloth. Her voice was low.

“He doesn’t smell of blood.”

You frowned.

“His soldiers do,” Scylla said. “But he doesn’t.”

You remembered that day at the arena, and what she had said to Marcus in the noble seats: You’ve never really killed anyone.

“Perhaps he commanded from the rear.”

Scylla did not argue. She stood up, her eyes passing over the tents in the camp.

Marcus was talking with the clerk, his posture correct, a cup in his hand. But he was not looking at the clerk. Every so often, his eyes went past the firelight to where Scylla was.

Once.

Twice.

The third time, you saw it too.

It was not the proud look of a nobleman at a slave, nor an officer sizing up a guard. It was more like a man on his guard against something.

The night wind blew, and a cold sweat broke out across your back.

“He’s watching you,” you said.

“I know.”

“Why?”

Scylla did not answer. She only went on wiping her blade.

You were silent for a while. In the distance a soldier was coughing, again and again, like a weariness that could not be held down.

A bad feeling began to stir in you. If Marcus had not retreated, but fled the battlefield, then everything was different.

Trajan was an emperor who worshipped war, a strategist who led his own armies to conquer new lands. In a province only just won, any retreat would set the emperor’s anger alight…

If Marcus really was a deserter, then when he got back to Rome he would face decimation.

One man in ten chosen by lot, put to death by the hands of the other nine. That was discipline — the wall that protects the state (Disciplina praesidium civitatis).

Was that why he had to “take charge” of your column?

The thought was like a block of ice. It froze you where you stood.

You looked across the campfire. Marcus was laughing softly, as if telling some light, amusing story. Several attendants around him laughed along and kept raising their cups, but the wine in Marcus’s cup was almost untouched.

When the night grew deeper, the camp finally went quiet.

In your tent, Scylla looked at you.

“We should go,” she said.

“Go where?”

She did not answer.

It was still a long way to Rome, and the country outside was still in chaos.

“For now we travel with Marcus,” you said. “It’s only for the time being.”

Scylla lowered her head slightly.

“Once we’re somewhere under Roman control, we’ll separate from them at once,” you went on. “I’ll have the steward write down the numbers, the dates, the route. If there’s anything wrong with him, I’ll report it to the Senate.”

“And if he doesn’t let you go back?”

Scylla asked.

You did not answer.

That night, Scylla kept watch outside your tent.

Each time you woke, you could see her shadow on the canvas. She did not sit down. She only leaned against a wooden post, her short sword across her hand. The wind stirred the firelight, and her shadow swayed. You had once been afraid of shadows at night. This time there was no Claudia with her stories to drive the fear away — and yet the shadow made you feel safe.

For the next few days, you travelled with Marcus.

By day, he was still polite and correct. He explained the route to you, said which villages could be trusted and which springs were not safe to stop at. He was gentle with the attendants, kind to the wounded, and towards you he kept up the concern proper to a betrothed.

But some details could not be hidden. The soldiers were listless, their minds elsewhere. And whenever the camp was pitched, the first thing Marcus asked about was not water or the watch, but whether anyone was coming up the road behind them.

At the same time, he kept looking at Scylla.

At first you thought it was disgust. Later you saw that it wasn’t. Marcus’s eyes often went past you to Scylla’s face and studied her openly, as if he meant to use his gaze as a ruler and measure every line of her brows and eyes.

Scylla noticed, of course, but she said nothing.

At night she kept watch outside your tent. Sometimes she sat by the carriage sharpening her knife; sometimes she walked a circuit of the camp.

On the fourth night, Marcus sent word that at dawn the column would turn south onto a smaller road, to avoid the main road the rebels had cut.

The clerk thought it was sensible. The guards nodded. But in fact that road was more dangerous, longer, and further from the way stations Rome controlled.

Scylla stood outside the tent and heard all of it.

When you went out, you found her watching Marcus’s tent. Firelight showed through the canvas, and inside it were a few blurred, moving figures. Marcus was speaking very quietly. Now and then you could hear a few words: “witness”, “the governor’s daughter”, “the northern woman”.

You stopped.

Scylla put out her arm in front of you.

“Don’t go over there.”

Her arm did not touch you. It only hung in the air across your path, and the moonlight made her scars shine.

“You heard?” you asked.

“Some of it.”

“What is he going to do?”

Scylla did not answer. When she looked at you, there was none of the cold hardness of the arena in her eyes, and none of the calm of the oath she had sworn in the courtyard.

There was something heavier there, something that made your skin crawl, hidden under the silence.

“Tonight, don’t leave my sight,” she said.

3.3 The Night Before the City

That night, from the hillside, you could see the lights in the direction of Rome’s lands.

Faint lights, beyond the plain, the low hills, the night mist and the camp that was not yet asleep, like a few embers about to go out.

The column was only a day’s journey from Roman territory. Past the way station ahead, you would be under the protection of Rome’s great order, and your family would come to meet you.

And for that very reason, if some evil that must not happen in Rome was going to happen, this was its last chance.

You did not sleep.

In the tent, Scylla sat across from you.

Her sword lay across her knees, one hand resting on the scabbard, the other held out to the fire. The firelight lit her sea-grey eyes, and the flickering glow in them was like the glitter of the tide.

You had so many things to ask.

Why, all the way from Rome to here, she had kept watch outside your tent every night. Why, after Claudia had spoken with her only once, she had agreed to guard you. Why, when Marcus looked at her, she seemed to recognise the shadow of disaster.

And those first words of all: your eyes are like someone I once knew.

But when those words reached your throat, not one of them would come out. You only held your cup of water mixed with wine and sipped it slowly, hoping to wash down the words stuck in your throat.

Scylla looked at the fire, as if she had heard all those unspoken sounds, and slowly began to speak. “A long time ago, there was a ship on the North Sea.”

Your hand stopped at the edge of your robe.

“There were two women on the ship,” she said. “They had their own names, their own language, their own god — Nehalennia. One was good at reading the wind and the currents; one was good at weaving nets, fishing and mending sails. They shared one ship. In winter they went south, in summer they went back north.”

She said it word by word, very slowly.

“Every winter they brought goods south. They wore sealskin and coarse wool, and tied their hair with bone pins and cords. The wind dried their skin, the sun burned their faces red, and the ropes tore open the palms of their hands. People called them barbarians. But everything the barbarians brought was good… sealskin, whalebone, amber, coarse wool, tallow, the long tusks of sea beasts.”

You looked at her.

“And ambergris.” The fire shone in her eyes, and she went on. “It’s dug out of the belly of a great beast. When it’s first pulled from the water, it stinks. But put it in clay jars, wrap it in cloth, seal it with wax, and send it to Rome’s noblewomen, priests and emperor — and they love it. They don’t only rub it on their foreheads. They offer it to their gods.”

The corner of her mouth moved, but there was no smile in it.

“The women of the North Sea found that funny.”

In the fire, a piece of charcoal collapsed with a small cracking sound.

“But later, when iron chains went round their necks, they stopped laughing.”

You looked up.

And Scylla went on. “From north to south, there were people who caught people and people who sold them, and they used Roman silver to carry them from one port to the next. They did everything they could to stay with each other, always, always… When they reached Rome they were still together. But they had lost their barbarian names.”

She raised her hand and touched the ring of scars round her wrist.

“They became Amazonia and Achillia.”

Your hand gripped the cloth of your robe.

“They were my mothers.”

Scylla said.

You remembered the Vestalia of so many years ago, the sand that gave off heat and the smell of blood. Those two women standing in the sunlight, wounds on their shoulders, blood on their teeth. The red cord in their hair — perhaps each had woven it for the other with her own hands.

That day had been their last fight. In the Roman stands, flowers and coins had fallen together.

You said nothing.

Scylla did not stop either.

“When I heard the news, I was already outside Rome. People said that at the Vestalia that year, they would appear in the same show. There are few gladiatrices, and Romans love that kind of circus. They wanted to watch two North Sea women die for them, like something out of a story.”

She spoke a little more slowly.

“I couldn’t get into the arena. I had no money. I stopped a lot of people, but no one stopped for me. Then… I saw the Vestal’s carriage.”

You looked up.

The firelight wavered in her eyes.

“I knelt in the road,” she said. “In your language, I begged her to save my mothers.”

Claudia’s white robe, the lowered carriage curtain, the crowds stepping back along the street — they flashed through your mind. You imagined a northern child kneeling in the dust, looking up to beg a hand for mercy.

If that hand went up, her mothers would live.

“Did she agree?” you asked.

For a long time Scylla did not answer.

Wind blew into the tent, and the lamp flame leaned to one side.

You closed your eyes for a moment. You knew the answer, though you had come to it another way.

In that instant it was as if you were a child again, watching the two women standing on the sand of the arena, looking up around the stands and smiling. After all these years you finally understood that the smile had not been for the bloodthirsty Romans. It had been for a child who might be somewhere in the stands.

“Later, a Roman noblewoman took me away from in front of the Vestal’s carriage.” Scylla was still talking. “She gave me water, gave me bread, gave me clothes, had someone wash the fleas off me. She asked my name. I didn’t tell her, and she didn’t beat me… She looked into my eyes, for a long time.”

In the fire, the last thin stick broke.

“Back then I didn’t trust her. Romans only catch slaves,” Scylla said. “I just wanted to go back. I thought that if I got away, I could still save them. There were bandits on that road. I heard them talking. They were planning to rob travellers. So in the night, on purpose, I told them where the noblewoman would be…”

Your cup slipped from your fingers.

The bronze cup fell onto the felt rug with a dull thud. The water left in it spread out, and the felt quickly darkened.

Scylla did not look at you.

“They came,” she said. “They killed the guards, they took the carriage, and then…”

Suddenly the only sound in your ears was the small cracking of the coals.

You knew who the noblewoman was.

All the mysteries of this road, your aunt’s pauses, the strange sudden words Scylla had spoken the first time she met you — in this moment they all fitted together.

At last Scylla raised her head, looked at you and said:

“I didn’t know then that she was your mother.”

You sat there without moving, without answering. Something almost like the iron taste of blood rose in your throat. You thought of the mountain road in your father’s study that no one had mentioned for years, the frankincense beside the coffin at home, and your own small shoulders, wrapped in black cloth.

Many people had said it was an unlucky attack. Bandits had suddenly appeared on that road, the road was hard and there was nowhere to run, and there were not enough guards. Many unexpected things had piled on top of each other and caused an accident.

But the word “accident” can always bury a great deal of truth.

“When I saw the Vestal again,” she said, “she recognised me.”

You looked up.

“Claudia?”

“She recognised the child who had knelt in front of her carriage,” Scylla said. “She knew I had been with your mother, so she asked about the attack. I said it was an accident. I said the bandits dragged me off, and later I was sold.”

“What else did she say to you?”

“She wanted to make up for what happened back then. She asked me what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Freedom.”

Scylla’s hand rested on the scabbard. She sat perfectly still.

“She promised,” Scylla said. “As long as I left the city of Rome and brought you to the province, I would be free. The contract would be burned, my name struck off the slave rolls. She swore it by the fire of Vesta.”

You drew a deep breath and paused for a moment.

“So you guarded me for that.”

“At first, yes.”

She lowered her eyes to the sword across her knees.

“Once I was out of Rome, freedom was already very close. The frontier is in chaos. Running away isn’t hard. A horse, a knife, a water skin — I could get them all.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

She was silent for a long, long time, until the night wind blew the tent flap open and let the dark in.

“Because your eyes are like your mother’s.”

After that, she said nothing more.

3.4 False Bandits, Real Blades

That night, Marcus made his move.

Only later did you learn what he had done. Under cover of the night watch, he had a group of his most trusted men change out of their uniforms. They hid their shields, swords and helmets under the wagons, put on rough sackcloth cloaks, covered their faces with black cloth, and took up daggers and axes.

Their plan was to blame the crime on bandits afterwards. They would burn the tents with fire, and the records would be lost in the confusion.

As for you — a senator’s daughter, blood kin of the future governor, the one who had seen his shameful retreat — you would die in a border raid that anyone could understand.

The surviving second-in-command later confessed more of the details.

In Marcus’s script, he would come back with his sword drawn.

He would save the rest, gather the column together, and lead what was left of it back to Rome.

Before the Senate he would say that rebellion had broken out everywhere and bandits were running wild in the chaos. He would tell them how he had fought through blood, how he had lost his betrothed, how he had come home to Rome with his grief and his last glory.

He wanted a battle of his own so badly that he had designed his war out of a tent, a night, and a woman’s death.

For this, he had even moved your tent to the edge of the camp.

The reason was that it would be easier to get you out from there — if anything happened at night, your guards could take you away from the fighting at once. Marcus’s tone could not be faulted. The captain of your guard listened and thought it very thorough.

That was exactly where his plan broke.

He had not thought that the edge was the place Scylla knew best.

Close to the dark, far from the noise — even the slight sound of a foot on dry grass, she could hear clearly enough.

After nightfall, she had you take off your outer robe and pushed you into a corner of the tent. She piled up the chests and blankets, then threw a thick blanket over you, leaving only a narrow gap.

“Don’t come out,” she said.

You watched her pick up your robe.

“What are you doing?”

She did not answer. She simply put your clothes on.

The cloth did not fit her shoulders. A noblewoman’s robe looked almost ridiculous on her, and the belt was tied too tight. She lowered her head to arrange it — clumsy, but without hesitation.

She covered half her face with the veil and pinned your silver clasp to her chest.

In the dim firelight, she became a you that could be mistaken for the real one.

You hid among the baggage, weighed down by the blanket. Through the gap you could see the firelight outside and hear the sounds of the camp at night.

In the second half of the night, first the horses were startled.

Then came short cries, as if someone’s mouth had been covered and the sound cut away.

Then the clash of weapons and confused screams rose on every side, and someone began shouting, “Bandits!”

Under the blanket, your hand pressed down and your fingertips found a fallen pin. The point pricked into your palm, and you were so tense you forgot to let go.

Outside the tent, someone fell. Armour struck stone with a hollow sound, heavy and slow. Then suddenly you heard the voice of the captain of your guard. He was outside, shouting Marcus’s name.

“Legate! Over here!”

Right to the end he believed in Marcus — believed the legate was the man who had come to save you.

The next moment, the shout broke off.

The tent flap was lifted.

Marcus came in.

Blood dripped from his sword. It ran down the edge of the blade to the point and fell onto the rug. His face was smeared with dust and he was breathing fast. It was not the courage of a man who had cut his way out of a battlefield. It was more like a man who had just done the hardest thing of his life, and at once regretted that his hand had shaken so plainly, so without grace.

You learned later that he had killed the captain of your guard.

It was the only person he ever killed with his own hand.

The man who had trusted Marcus most, who had kept telling everyone that “the legate will bring us back to Rome”, had been stabbed from behind, under the ribs, through the heart.

He looked at the figure by the brazier, wearing your outer robe.

“Aelia.”

Scylla had her back to him and did not turn round at once.

Marcus took a step forward.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant them to do it more cleanly.”

Scylla still said nothing.

“You shouldn’t have seen what you saw.” His voice began to lose the calm of the banquet hall and turned impatient. “Your father needs a hero, not a daughter bringing questions back to Rome. When you’re dead, I’ll bring the column home for you. I’ll tell him you were very brave.”

As he spoke, he raised his sword.

In that instant you almost threw off the blanket, but you held yourself back. You clenched your teeth, and the taste of blood spread through your mouth. You saw Marcus thrust, and Scylla turn her body aside.

Your robe was slashed open by the blade. The next moment, Scylla flung something straight at him and blocked his view. Marcus did not know what to do — and in that one small gap, Scylla had him.

She seized the bones of his wrist with a backhand grip and drove her knee into his stomach. Marcus staggered back, his sword slipped from his hand and hit the ground.

Hearing the fight, one of the masked men rushed in. Before he could even see what was happening, Scylla’s short blade swept across his neck.

As he fell, he tore open the canvas of the tent.

Marcus took the chance and struggled to reach his fallen sword, but Scylla had already stamped on his wrist. The bone gave a sharp crack.

“Tie him up.” You could not stop yourself. You threw off the blanket, pulled yourself up against the chests and gave the order loudly. “Take him back to Rome. Let military law judge him.”

Scylla’s short blade was pressed against the side of Marcus’s throat. Under its edge, the skin was already bleeding.

Marcus lay on his back on the ground, his chest heaving. He looked at you, then at Scylla’s face, lit by the fire.

The veil had slipped during the fight, and the firelight fell on her sea-grey eyes.

A strange excitement flashed across Marcus’s face.

“I see…” He suddenly laughed and spat bloody froth into Scylla’s face. “You filthy slave. You northern bastard!”

Scylla’s short sword moved slightly, as if she meant to stop him speaking.

“Scylla.” You raised your hand. “Don’t.”

Marcus seemed to fall into a kind of madness, and his voice suddenly rose.

“I know your secret! Bastard — you, you’re all—”

He did not finish. The short blade was faster than he was.

Scylla cut his throat.

You stood there, your hand still raised.

Blood sprayed across your hands, across Scylla’s face, over everything inside the tent.

Marcus clawed at his neck with both hands, red between his fingers. After a moment’s struggle, his hands fell away.

You stood where you were.

The echo of the order you had just given was still in the air: tie him up. Take him back to Rome. Let him be tried.

And Scylla had disobeyed it.

She slowly got to her feet, her short blade pointing at the ground, blood dripping from it like coral beads from a broken string.

She did not explain, and she did not ask for forgiveness. Your robe hung from her shoulders, and through the tear you could see her own armour, as if two selves had been cut open by the same blade.

Marcus’s body lay in your tent. And in the distance, the lights in the direction of Rome slowly grew harder to see.

The sky was nearly light.