The Emperor Series Books 1-5. Conn Iggulden

in the grip, swearing with incoherent rage.

      ‘Let go! Marius is …’

      ‘I know. We can’t save him.’ Tubruk’s face was cold and white. ‘His men are too far away. We’ve been overlooked for a moment, but there’s too many of them. Live to avenge him, Gaius. Live.’

      Julius swivelled in the grip and fifty feet away saw Marius go down under a heaving mass of bodies, some of which were loose and boneless, already dead from his blows. The others held clubs, he saw, and they were striking wildly at the general, beating him to the ground in mindless ferocity.

      ‘I can’t run,’ Julius said.

      Tubruk swore. ‘No. But you can retreat. This battle is lost. The city is lost. Look, Sulla’s traitors are on the gates themselves. The legion will be on us if we don’t move now. Come on.’ Without waiting for further argument, Tubruk grabbed the young man under the armpits and began pulling him away, with Cabera taking the other arm.

      ‘We’ll get the horses and cross the city to one of the other gates. Then on to the coast and a legion galley. You must get clear. Few who have supported Marius will be alive in the morning,’ Tubruk continued grimly.

      The young man went almost limp in his grasp and then stiffened in fear as the night came alive with more black shapes surrounding them. Swords were pressed up to their throats and Julius tensed for the pain to come as an order broke the night.

      ‘Not these. I know them. Sulla said to keep them alive. Get the ropes.’

      They struggled, but there was nothing they could do.

      Marius felt his sword pulled from his grasp and heard the clatter as it was thrown on the stones almost distantly. He felt the thudding blows of clubs not as pain, but simply impacts, knocking his head from side to side in the crush of bodies. He felt a rib snap with an icicle of pain and then his arm twisted and his shoulder dislocated with a rip. He pulled up to consciousness and sank again as someone stamped on his fingers, breaking them. Where were his men? Surely they would be coming to save his life. This was not how it was meant to be, how he had seen his end. This was not the man who entered Rome at the head of a great Triumph and wore purple and threw silver coins to the people that loved him. This was a broken thing that wheezed blood and life out onto the sharp stones and wondered if his men would ever come for him, who loved them all as a father loves his children.

      He felt his head pulled back and expected a blade to follow across his exposed throat. It didn’t come and, after long seconds of agony, his eyes focused on the forbidding black mass of the Sacra gate. Figures swarmed over it and bodies draped it in obscene costume. He saw the huge bar lifted by teams of men and then the crack of torchlight that shone through it. The great gate swung open and Sulla’s legion stood beyond, the man himself at the head, wearing a gold circlet to bind back his hair and a pure white toga and golden sandals. Marius blinked blood out of his eyes and in the distance heard a renewed crash of arms as the First-Born poured in from all over the city to save their general.

      They were too late. The enemy was already within and he had lost. They would burn Rome, he knew. Nothing could stop that now. His holding troops would be overwhelmed and there would be bloody slaughter, with the city raped and destroyed. Tomorrow, if Sulla still lived, he would inherit a mantle of ashes.

      The grip in Marius’ hair tightened to bring his head higher, a distant pain amongst all the others. Marius felt a cold anger for the man who strode so mightily towards him, yet it was mixed with a touch of respect for a worthy enemy. Was not a man judged by his enemies? Then truly Marius was great. His thoughts wandered away and back, fogged by the heavy blows. He lost consciousness, he thought only for a few seconds, coming to as a brutal-faced soldier slapped his cheeks, grimacing at the blood that came off onto his hands. The man began to wipe them on his filthy robe, but a strong clear voice sounded.

      ‘Be careful, soldier. Your hands have the blood of Marius on them. A little respect is due, I believe.’

      The man gaped at the conqueror, clearly unable to comprehend. He took a few paces away into the growing crowd of soldiers, holding his hands stiffly away from his body.

      ‘So few understand, do they, Marius? Just what it is to be born to greatness?’ Sulla moved so that Marius could look him in the face. His eyes sparkled with a glittering satisfaction that Marius had hoped never to see. Looking away, he hawked up blood from his throat and allowed it to dribble onto his chin. There was no energy to spit, and he had no desire to exchange dry wit in the moments before his death. He wondered if Sulla would spare Metella and knew he probably wouldn’t. Julius – he hoped he had escaped, but he too was probably one of the cooling corpses that surrounded them all.

      The sounds of battle swelled in the background and Marius heard his name being chanted as his men fought through to him. He tried not to feel hope; it was too painful. Death was coming in seconds. His men would see only his corpse.

      Sulla tapped his teeth with a fingernail, his face thoughtful.

      ‘You know, with any other general I would simply execute him and then negotiate with the legion to cease hostilities. I am, after all, a consul and well within my rights. It should be a simple enough matter to allow the opposing forces to withdraw outside the city and lead my men into the city barracks in their place. I do believe, though, that your men will carry on until the last man stands, costing hundreds more of my own in the process. Are you not the people’s general, beloved of the First-Born?’ He tapped his teeth again and Marius strove to concentrate and ignore the pain and weariness that threatened to drag him back down to darkness.

      ‘With you, Marius, I must make a special solution. This is my offer. Can he hear me?’ he asked one of the men Marius could not see. More slaps woke him from his stupor.

      ‘Still with us? Tell your men to accept my legal authority as consul of Rome. The Primigenia must surrender and my legion be allowed to deploy into the city without incident or attack. They are in anyway, you know. If you can deliver this, I will allow you to leave Rome with your wife, protected by my honour. If you refuse, not one of your men will be left alive. I will destroy them from street to street, from house to house, along with all who have ever shown you favour or support, their wives, children and slaves. In short, I will wipe your name from the annals of the city, so that no man will live who would have called you friend. Do you understand, Marius? Pull him to his feet and support him. Fetch the man water to ease his throat.’

      Marius heard the words and tried to hold them in his swirling, leaden thoughts. He didn’t trust Sulla’s honour further than he could spit, but his legion would be saved. They would be sent far from Rome, of course, given some degrading task of guarding tin mines in the far north against the painted savages, but they would be alive. He had gambled and lost. Grim despair filled him, blunting the sharpness of the pain as broken bones shifted in the rough grip of Sulla’s men, men who would not have dared lay a finger on him only a year before. His arm hung slack, feeling numb and detached from him, but that didn’t matter any more. A last thought stopped him from speaking at once. Should he delay in the hope that his men could win through and turn the situation to his advantage? He turned his head and saw the mass of Sulla’s men fanning out to secure the local streets and realised the chance for a quick retaliation had gone. From now on, it would be the messiest, most vicious kind of fighting, and most of his legion was still on the walls around the city, unable to engage. No.

      ‘I agree. My word on it. Let the nearest of my men see me, so that I may pass the order on to them.’

      Sulla nodded, his face twisted with suspicion. ‘Thousands will die if you tell untruth. Your wife will be tortured to death. Let there be an end to this. Bring him forward.’

      Marius groaned with pain as he was dragged away from the shadow of the wall, to where the clash of arms was intense.

      Sulla nodded to his aides. ‘Sound the disengage,’ he snapped, his voice betraying the first touch of nerves since Marius had seen him. The horns sounded the pattern and at once the first and second rows took two paces back from the enemy, holding position with bloody swords.

      Marius’ legion had left the