“I thought you would look older,” he murmured, and a look of irritation came into her eyes.

“I look how I look. I still don't know you.”

Brutus sheathed his sword. He wanted to say who he was and have shock break through her confidence, to see her eyes widen in amazement as she realized what an impressive young man he was.

Then it all seemed worthless. A long-suppressed memory came to him of overhearing Julius's father talking about her, and he sighed to have it confirmed. He was in a whorehouse, no matter how rich it seemed. It didn't really matter what she thought of him.

“My name is Marcus. I am your son,” he said, shrugging.

She froze as still as one of her statues. For a long moment she held his gaze, then her eyes filled with tears and she dropped the bow with a clatter and ran back down the corridor, slamming the door behind her with a force that shook the walls.

The guard was looking at Brutus with his mouth open.

“Is that true, sir?” he said gruffly. Brutus nodded and the man flushed with embarrassment. “We didn't know.”

“I didn't tell you. Look, I'm going to leave now. Is anyone waiting to put a bolt in me as I go through the door?”

The guard relaxed slightly. “No,” he said. “Me and the lad are the only guards. She doesn't need them, as a rule.”

Brutus turned to leave and the guard spoke again.

“Sulla had Primigenia cut off the rolls in the Senate. We had to take what work we could find.”

Brutus turned back to him, wishing he had more to offer.

“I know where you are now. I can find you again if I need you,” he said. The guard stretched out his hand and Brutus took it in the legionary grip.

On his way out, Brutus passed through the room with the pool, thankful to find it empty. He paused only to collect his helmet and splash a little of the water on his face and neck. It didn't help cool his confusion. He felt dazed by events and desperately wanted to find somewhere quiet where he could think through what had happened. The thought of struggling in the busy crowds was an irritation, but he would have to get back to the estate. He had no other home.

At the gate, a slave came running toward him. He almost drew his sword again at the running footsteps, but the slave was another young girl, unarmed. She panted as she reached him and he noticed the rise and fall of her chest almost absently. Another beauty. It seemed the house was full of them.

“The mistress told me you should return here tomorrow morning. She will see you then.”

Inexplicably, Brutus felt his spirits lift at the words.

“I will be here,” he said.

The pattern along the coast suggested the next settlement would be farther than the soldiers could march in a day. They made better time when they crossed the tracks of heavy animals and could follow them until they turned away from the coast. Julius was unwilling to travel too far from the sound of crashing surf for fear of losing themselves completely. When they turned off a trail, it was hard, sweaty work to cut their way through stalks and thornbushes as high as a man's head and tipped with red thorns as if already marked in blood. Away from the sea, the air was thick with moisture, and stinging insects plagued them all, rising unseen from the heavy leaves as the Romans disturbed them.

As they made camp for the evening, Julius wondered if the isolation of the Roman settlements was evidence of some farsighted plan of the Senate's to prevent these disparate villages banding together as the generations passed, but guessed it was just to give them room to grow. He supposed he could have pushed the men on through the dark, but the officers from Accipiter were far less comfortable in the hot African night than those who had grown up on that coast. Strange animal calls and screams woke them and had hands reaching for their swords, while the recruits slept on, oblivious.

Julius had given Pelitas the task of selecting guards for the watches, matching new men with those he trusted, in pairs. He was well aware that every mile along the narrow game tracks was a chance for the young villagers to desert. With weapons scarce, they went unarmed during the day, but swords had to be given to those on watch, and one or two of them eyed the old iron blades with something like avarice. Julius hoped it was a greed for the things of their fathers, not a desire to steal what they could and run.

Gathering food had presented similar problems. It was crucial that the Accipiter men did not become dependent on their charges to eat. It would be a subtle but significant shift in the ladder of authority Julius had set up. He knew that those who dispense food were the masters, regardless of rank. That was a truth older than Rome herself.

He thanked the gods for Pelitas, who seemed able to trap small animals in these strange lands as once he had poached from the woodlands of Italy. Even the recruits had been impressed, watching him rejoin the group after only a few hours, bearing the limp bodies of four hares. With fifteen healthy men to feed, the evening hunt had become a vital skill, and Pelitas had helped to prevent them splitting into two camps of those who could stalk and those who had to wait to be fed.

Julius looked over to his friend, busy carving slices of pork from the side of a young pig he had caught earlier in the day, breaking its leg with a swiftly thrown rock as it rushed from cover almost on top of them. The mother had not been seen, though squeals had come to them from the distant shrubbery. Julius wished she had come closer so that they could be looking forward to a feast instead of a few hot mouthfuls. There was no spare fat on any of the men from Accipiter, and it would be a while before they lost their gaunt appearance completely. His mouth twitched as he supposed he had the same look. It had been such a long time since he had seen a mirror, and he wondered if his face had changed for better or worse. Would Cornelia be pleased if she saw him, or shocked and upset by the grim look he imagined in his eye, mute evidence to the horrors of imprisonment?

He chuckled to himself at the flight of fancy. He would be the same, no matter how his face had changed.

Suetonius looked up sharply at the laugh, always seeing insult where there was none. It was hard to resist baiting the young man, but in this Julius had set rigid restrictions on himself. He sensed the spite came from fear that Julius would use his new authority to strike back for old injuries. He could not afford to enjoy even a moment of that luxury, in case it broke up the unit he was trying to make. He knew he had to become the sort of leader who was above small grievances, to appear to them as Marius had once appeared to him-cut from better stone. He nodded to Suetonius briefly, then looked away at the rest.

Gaditicus and Prax supervised the camp, marking the perimeter with fallen branches, for want of anything better. Julius heard them go over the sentry rules with the men and smiled in a moment of nostalgia.

“How many times do you challenge?” Prax was saying to Ciro, as he had for all the men.

“Once, sir. They call to approach the camp and I say, ‘Approach and be recognized.' ”

“And if they don't call to approach the camp?” Prax said cheerfully.

“I wake someone else up, wait for them to get close, and chop their heads off.”

“Good lad. Neck and groin, remember. Anywhere else and they can still have enough strength to take you with them. Neck and groin is fastest.”

Ciro grinned, taking in every scrap of information Prax threw at him. Julius liked the big man's heart. He wanted to be a legionary, to know what his father had once loved. Prax too had discovered that he enjoyed teaching all the things he had learned in his decades of marching and sailing for Rome. Given time, the new men would be able to deceive anyone. They would look like legionaries and speak with the same casual slang and expressions.