Swords Around the Throne Read Online Free PDF

laughter, quickly cut short – Rogatianus was already storming up the stairs with three men behind him. Was this really a fight, Castus wondered, or were they just destroying the place?
    â€˜Centurions!’ men were shouting – his own or theirs he could not tell – ‘Centurions, get out!’ Bodies collided with him and he shoved them aside.
    He grabbed a man by the tunic, hauled him off his feet and flung him back towards the gate. A figure barged against him, bloody-mouthed, shouting. Not one of his own.
    â€˜Cocksucker!’ the man screamed, and swung a wild punch. Castus leaned out of the man’s reach, then jabbed the heel of his palm against his breastbone, knocking him back. The man reeled; one swift blow to the jaw and he dropped cold.
    Castus strode on across the yard into the surge of bodies around the far door. Diogenes was at his side, and Flaccus the standard-bearer.
    â€˜Stay close at my flank,’ he said. ‘The rest of you keep in behind.’
    He glanced back and saw Valens casually headbutt a soldier of the Second Legion. The man fell sprawling, and Valens grinned and shrugged.
    There was another man on the ground near the door, ringed by bodies. In the spill of firelight Castus recognised one of his own soldiers. Unconscious, blood all over his face. One of his tent-mates kneeling beside him, screaming.
    â€˜They’ve killed him, centurion! The bastards have murdered him!’
    Castus leaned over the fallen man. Cut scalp, shallow but bleeding heavily.
    â€˜He’s not dead. You three, get him back to his billet. Go!’
    Flaccus and Diogenes had cleared the other men from the entrance to the lower room. The heavy door was half-shut, with something wedged behind it, a bench or table. Castus took a step back, drew up his shoulders and then kicked at the boards. Sound of shattering wood from inside.
    â€˜After me!’ he said. ‘If anyone resists, drop them.’
    Over the wreck of splintered timber he pushed his way inside, four men at his back. A single glance took in the scene: the low brick-vaulted room fogged with smoke, bodies wrestling in the glow of the fire, other men cheering, yelling; a woman standing on a table in a ripped gown, shrieking with laughter. Stink of burnt food, sour wine, vomit and blood.
    With his stick thrust forward Castus forged his way into the mass of men. He grabbed at them, heaving them back towards the door as he pushed between them. The noise of the fight rang under the low ceiling – his own shouts were lost in it. He reached up, seized the shrieking woman around the waist and hoisted her to the floor, then leaped onto the table where she had been standing, bending his head beneath the low brick arch.
    â€˜Enough!’ he shouted into the clamour. ‘That’s enough!’
    But now he could see over the heads of the mob into the depths of the room. He saw the man pinned to the floor between benches – another of his own men, a young recruit named Speratus – with three or four soldiers grouped around him, kicking him and stamping on his body. He saw, at the rear of the chamber, another table with men seated on it, watching the fight with expressions of drunken glee, like spectators at a gladiator bout.
    His own men were hanging back now, falling away towards the door, and only the gang of Second Legion men were left, with their prisoner, Speratus, trapped between them. Looking at the fallen man, Castus remembered how his father would beat him that way, stamping on him as he lay prone.
    Something crashed beside his head: a flung jug shattering against the bricks. Shards sprayed his ear. Down off the table in one bound, he shoved two men aside and grappled a third, dragging them away from Speratus. Somewhere behind him were Valens and Flaccus, but just for a moment he was surrounded by hostile bodies. Someone swung a fist and he blocked it; from the corner of his eye he saw the flash of a drawn