Peppis saw Marcus waver and pressed on. ‘You’ll need a servant, someone to carry your sword and look after your horse. Please don’t send me back.’
Marcus shrugged his pack from his shoulders and handed it to the boy, who beamed at him.
‘Right. Carry this. Do you know how to look after a horse?’
Peppis shook his head, still beaming.
‘Then you will learn.’
‘I will. I will be the best servant you ever had,’ the boy replied, his arms wrapped around the pack.
‘At least the captain can’t object,’ Marcus said.
‘No. I didn’t like the man,’ Renius replied gruffly. ‘Ask someone where the nearest stables are. We’ll move on before dark.’
The stables, the travellers’ resting house, the people themselves were a peculiar mixture to Marcus. He could see Rome in a thousand small touches, not least the serious-faced legionaries who marched the streets in pairs, looking out for trouble. Yet at every step he would see something new and alien. A pretty girl walking with her guards would speak to them in a string of soft gibberish that they seemed to understand. A temple near the stables was built of pure white marble as at home, but the statues were odd, close to the ones he knew, but with different faces cut into the stone. Beards were much in evidence, perfumed with sweet oils and curled, but the strangest things he saw were on the walls of a temple devoted to healing the sick.
Half- and full-size limbs, perfectly formed in plaster or stone, hung on the outer walls from hooks. A child’s leg, bent at the knee, shared the space with the model of a woman’s hand and nearby there was a miniature soldier made from reddish marble, beautiful in its detail.
‘What are those?’ Marcus had asked Renius as they passed.
‘Just a custom,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘If the goddess heals you, you have a cast of the limb made and presented to her. It helps to bring in more people for the temple, I should think. They don’t heal anyone without a little gold first, so the models are like a sign for a shop. This isn’t Rome, lad. They are not like us when you get down to it.’
‘You don’t like them?’
‘I respect what they achieved, but they live too much in the glories of the past. They are a proud people, Marcus, but not proud enough to take our foot off their necks. They like to think of us as barbarians and the high-bred ones will pretend you don’t exist, but what good is thousands of years of art if you can’t defend yourself? The first thing men must learn is to be strong. Without strength, anything else you have or make can be taken from you. Remember that, lad.’
At least the stables were like stables anywhere. The smell brought a sudden pang of homesickness to Marcus and he wondered how Tubruk fared on the estate, and how Gaius was handling the dangers of the capital.
Renius patted the flank of a sturdy-looking stallion. He ran his hands down its legs and checked the mouth carefully. Peppis watched him and mimicked his action, patting legs and checking tendons with a serious frown on his face.
‘How much for this one?’ Renius asked the owner, who stood with two bodyguards. The man had none of the smell of horses about him. He looked clean and somehow polished, with hair and beard that shone darkly.
‘He is strong, yes?’ he replied, his Latin accented but clear. ‘His father won races in Pontus, but he is a little too heavy for speed, more suited for battle.’
Renius shrugged. ‘I just want him to take me north, over the mountains. How much are you asking?’
‘His name is Apollo. I bought him when a rich man lost his wealth and was forced to sell. I paid a small fortune, but I know horses, I know what he is worth.’
‘I like him,’ Peppis said.
Both men ignored the boy.
‘I will pay five aurei for him and sell him after the journey is over,’ Renius said firmly.
‘He is worth twenty and I have paid for his feed all winter,’ the trader replied.
‘I can buy a small house for twenty!’
The trader shrugged and looked apologetic.
‘Not any more. Prices have gone up. It is the war in the north. All the best ones are being taken for Mithridates, an upstart who calls himself a king. Apollo is one of the last of the good stock.’
‘Ten is my final offer. We are buying two of yours today, so I want a price for both.’
‘Let us not argue. Let me show you another of lesser worth that will carry you north. I have two others I could sell together, brothers they are, and fast enough.’
The man walked on down the row of horses and Marcus eyed Apollo, who watched him with interest as he chewed a mouthful of hay. He patted the soft nose as the continuing argument dwindled with distance. Apollo ignored him and reached back for another mouthful, pulled from a string sack nailed to the stable wall.
After a while, Renius returned, looking a little pale.
‘We’ve got two, for tomorrow: Apollo and another one he called Lancer. I’m sure he makes the names up on the spot. Peppis will ride with you, his small weight won’t be any trouble. Gods, the prices these people ask for! If your uncle hadn’t provided so generously, we’d be walking tomorrow.’
‘He’s not my uncle,’ Marcus reminded. ‘How much did they cost us?’
‘Don’t ask and don’t expect to eat much on the journey. Come on, we’ll pick the horses up tomorrow at dawn. Let us hope that the prices for rooms haven’t risen as high, or we’ll be sneaking back in here when it gets dark.’
Continuing to grumble, Renius strode out of the stables, with Marcus and Peppis following him, trying not to smile.
Marcus sat easily on his horse, occasionally reaching forward to scratch Lancer’s ears as they rode down the mountain path. Peppis was dozing behind him, lulled by the gentle rhythm of the horse’s walk. Marcus thought of waking him with an elbow to see the view, but decided to leave him alone.
It seemed as if they could see all of Greece from the heights, spread out below in a rolling green and yellow landscape with groves of olive trees and isolated farms speckling the hills and valleys. The clean air smelled different, carrying the scent of unknown flowers.
Marcus remembered gentle Vepax, the tutor, and wondered if he had walked these hills. Or perhaps Alexander himself had taken armies through to the plains on his way to battle distant Persia. He imagined the grim Cretan archers and the Macedonian phalanx as they followed the boy king, and his back straightened in the saddle.
Renius rode ahead, his eyes swinging from the narrow trail to the surrounding scrub foliage and back in a monotonous pattern of alertness. He had withdrawn into himself more and more over the previous week of travel and whole days had passed without more than a few words spoken between them. Only Peppis broke the long silences with exclamations of wonder at birds or lizards on the rocks. Marcus hadn’t pushed for conversation, sensing that the gladiator was happier with silence. He smiled wryly at the man’s back as they rode, mulling over how he felt about him.
He had hated him once, at that moment in the courtyard of the estate, with Gaius lying wounded in the dust. Yet a grudging respect had existed even before Marcus had raised his sword against him. Renius had a solidity to him that made other men seem insubstantial in comparison. He could be brutal and had a great capacity for callous violence, oblivious to pain or fear. Others followed his lead without a thought, as if they somehow knew