Legionary Read Online Free PDF Page A

had not turned their sexual attentions on him, but almost every other male slave had been left bleeding and haunted after being dragged away for a night. Every morning he had run his chapped fingertips over his only possession; the legionary phalera — tracing it lightly for fear of rubbing away the precious engraving. He wore it around his neck on a leather thong. Despite everything, and in his father’s memory, the fight had never left him.
    That he was living his final moments was not so much of a surprise. What puzzled him more was that he had survived so many of the illicit ‘jobs’. It had begun five years ago, when he was just fifteen, after a chance meeting with a shadowy character outside the Hippodrome. He had started taking on sorties for the Blues and the Greens — the pseudo-political gang rabbles who held sway on the streets of the capital. Once before, while on a job for the Greens, the Blues had caught him, then proceeded to beat him into unconsciousness, leaving him for dead in the gutter. He remembered that sensation; the numbness, the feeling of darkness creeping slowly through his flesh. He had lain there all night, and only when the morning sun touched his skin was he able to move, to crawl back to Tarquitius' villa. He shuddered at the memory and prayed that if he was to die today, that it would be a quick death.
    Purposeful footsteps hammered towards the door behind him. Pavo jolted as the doors shot apart, crashing against the walls. The footsteps rapped up behind him and then stopped dead. Silence curled its fingers around his neck, but he resisted the urge to turn around.
    ‘Pavo! You treacherous little runt! I keep you, feed you…have you any idea what you’ve done? Have you?’
    The broad, toga-clad figure of Tarquitius strode into view to seethe in front of him. Thirteen years had done little to improve the senator’s sickly appearance. More than matched for height these days, he struggled to avoid Tarquitius’ bloodshot, bulging eyes.
    ‘A senator’s name is not to be sullied!’ Tarquitius barked in a tone so high pitched that his voice crackled off towards the end of the sentence. ‘A slave will not shame his master! A thief is disgrace enough — but to insult my name by stealing from the bishop?’
    Pavo tried to suppress the small itch in his throat, but it grew into words that tumbled from his lips. ‘I stole nothing. A man was murdered…’
    ‘Silence!’ Tarquitius’ cry reverberated around the room and his hand whipped up — the stumpy knuckles hovered in a fist, inches from Pavo’s face. The two stared at each other.
    ‘What are you waiting for?’ Pavo spoke, his voice trembling. Every other slave had suffered terrible wounds from the same hand. Some had been battered into total paralysis and some to death. Fronto the slave master had broken nearly every bone in Pavo’s body over the years, but Tarquitius had never hit him. Not once. He thought of that day in the slave market and the crone.
See that the boy comes to no harm from your hand.
    Tarquitius’ eyes narrowed and he lowered his hand. ‘You play a dangerous game, boy. The bishop
expects
your throat to be cut. No, he
demands
your blood!’ He hissed, his breath reeking of garlic. ‘I cannot let this go unpunished. The bishop wants you gone from this world, and that is what must happen.’
    Pavo’s skin crawled.
    ‘Fronto!’ He snarled, the name bouncing around the villa, searching the corridors for the slave master.
    So there would be one last bout of pain. Just like the beatings. The physical agony was nothing to him now — just a routine, really. Yet the darkness of death crept on his skin as it hared in on him.
    ‘My name will be sullied if the senate house finds out about this,’ Tarquitius grumbled.
    Pavo blinked, eyeing the senator, something was different about his tone.
    ‘But…you are to be…freed,’ Tarquitius spat the words like a sinew of troublesome meat. ‘Freed and