cracked out, but the horn blowers were lying in pools of their own blood. One still struggled with his assailants, hanging on to the slim bronze tube despite the vicious stabbing his body was taking. Marius drew the sword that had been in his family for generations. His face was black with rage. The two men died and Marius raised the horn to his own lips, tasting the blood that had spattered onto the metal.
All around him in the darkness, other horns answered. Sulla had won the first few moments, but he vowed it wasn't over yet.
Julius saw the group dressed as messengers were all armed and converging on where Marius stood with a bloody horn and his bright sword already dark with blood. The wall loomed behind him, flickering with torch shadows.
‘With me! They're going for the general in the confusion,’ he barked to Tubruk and Cabera, charging the back of the group as he shouted.
His first blow took one of the running men in the neck as they slowed to negotiate struggling groups of fighters. Finally, Marius' men seemed to have woken up to the fact that the enemy were disguised, but the fighting was difficult and, in the flashing colours and blows of combat, no man knew which of the groups were friends and which were enemies. It was a devastating ploy and inside the walls everything was chaos.
Julius ripped his blade across a leg muscle, crashing his running feet over the body as it collapsed and feeling satisfaction as he felt the bones shift and break under his sandals. At first he was surprised at the group not standing to fight, but he quickly realised they had orders to assassinate Marius and were careless of any other dangers.
Tubruk brought down another with a leap that had them both sprawling on the hard cobbles. Cabera took one more with a dagger throw that caught Sulla's man in the side and sent him staggering. Julius let his blade scythe out as he clattered past and felt a satisfying shock up his arm as it connected and slid free.
Ahead, Marius stood alone and other, black-clad figures converged on him. He roared defiance as he saw them coming and suddenly Julius knew he was too late. More than fifty men were charging at the general. All his soldiers in the area were dead or dying. One or two still screamed their frustration, but they too could not reach his uncle.
Marius spat blood and phlegm and raised his sword menacingly.
‘Come on, boys. Don't keep me waiting,’ he growled through clenched teeth, anger keeping despair at bay.
Julius felt a hard fist jerk at his collar and drag him to a stop. He roared in anger and felt his sword arm batted away as he spun to face the threat. He found himself looking into Tubruk's stern face.
‘No, boy. It's too late. Get out while you can.’
Julius struggled 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?’