The Furies of Rome by Robert Fabbri Page A

looked down at the mangled corpse of the dogs’ victim and spat at his ripped face. ‘Whoever you are you deserved what you got for shooting one of my dogs, arse-sponge!’
    Magnus eased Castor around and examined the entry wound, pulling gently on the shaft; the hound whimpered but made no move to savage its master for causing it more pain. Looking relieved, Magnus hugged the dog and kissed its broad shoulders whilst tightening his grip on the arrow. ‘You’ll be fine, Castor; it went in at an angle and hasn’t touched the bone.’ Castor yelped, brief and high-pitched, as his body stiffened; his head turned, jaws open, and began to lunge at Magnus. But Magnus held up the arrow and the hound checked itself, recognising that its master had done it a service and not a mischief and, rather than attack Magnus, it licked his face before turning its tongue’s attention to the open wound. ‘That’s a good boy,’ Magnus said as if talking to a favoured slave or a small child.
    A groan from behind him took Vespasian’s attention away from Magnus and his dogs as he remembered that one of the hunting slaves was still alive. He lay, breathing in ragged gasps, lying on his back staring up at the canopy, a hand clutching each of the arrows piercing him.
    ‘What happened?’ Vespasian asked, kneeling down next to him.
    The slave turned frightened eyes onto his master. ‘The dogs got their scent, master. There were four of them butchering a wild boar carcass. But they ran when they heard us. Three escaped.’ He indicated with his head to the savaged man. ‘He was the fourth. As the dogs brought him down, Gallos and me went after the other three but …’ He looked miserably at the two shafts piercing his body.
    Vespasian squeezed the slave’s arm. ‘Lie still; we may be able to save you if we get you back soon, before you’ve lost too much blood.’
    The slave nodded, smiling faintly, evidently aware of the remoteness of that possibility as Vespasian suddenly realised that there was somebody unaccounted for. ‘Where’s Domitian, Magnus?’
    Magnus stood and looked around. ‘I don’t know, sir; the last time I noticed him was when the dogs went crazy, he was behind me.’
    Vespasian looked back in the direction whence they had come; there was no sign of his young son or his pony. Hoof-beats from down the hill to his right gave him a moment of relief until he saw Sabinus returning, alone and at speed.
    ‘Where’re the boys?’ Vespasian asked.
    Sabinus pulled his mount up to a skidding halt. ‘Titus is fine; he had his horse shot from under him but not before he brought one of them down; he’s stayed with the bastard. You need to come quickly as we have rather a delicate situation on our hands.’
    ‘Shit!’ Vespasian swore as the reality of the predicament that Sabinus had explained to him became apparent. He stood at the eastern edge of the wood looking down the slope to the gully that was the limit of the Flavian lands.
    ‘You see?’ Sabinus said, dismounting next to him.
    ‘The bastards!’ Magnus growled, hauling a straining Pollux back by the lead; Castor stood gingerly on three legs next to him, shivering slightly and making no attempt to pull his master away down the hill.
    ‘What do we do, Father?’ Titus asked; his left hand had a firm grip of the hair of a man kneeling in front of him and his right hand held a blade to his throat.
    ‘Nothing hasty; keep your prisoner alive and safe and in full view of those cunts.’ Vespasian stared at the two men, just a hundred paces away; one held a bow ready to release an arrow at him whilst the other held a squirming small figure by the throat and grinned. Domitian’s shrieks of fear and protest echoed around the valley; his pony lay dead halfway down the hill close to the body of Titus’ horse.
    ‘Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t fillet the boy,’ the man holding Domitian shouted.
    Vespasian stepped forward and held out his hands to show that he