The Silver Eagle by Ben Kane Read Free Book Online Page A

Fabiola had learned never to give up.
    Dogged faith, and the desire for revenge, was what had kept her alive.
    A deep baying sound suddenly rose from beyond the courtyard walls. It was a noise that Fabiola had heard occasionally since arriving in Pompeii, but always at a distance. As it grew louder, she could see fear growing in her slaves’ faces. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Dogs. And fugitivarii , Mistress.’ Seeing her blank response, Corbulo explained. ‘Bounty hunters. They’ll be after a runaway.’
    Fabiola’s pulse increased, but she did not panic. I am free, she thought firmly. Nobody is pursuing me.
    Searching for the sound’s source, they walked a little way out into the large, open fields which surrounded the villa. Stone walls, bare trees and low hedges separated each from its neighbour. This was flat, fertile land, most of it fallow at this time of year. Two weeks earlier, the soil had been tilled, leaving it to breathe before it was planted with seeds in the spring. Only the winter wheat remained, small green shoots poking a hand span from the earth.
    Normally, Fabiola liked to stand and take it all in. At this time of year the landscape was stark, but she loved the noisy jackdaws flying to their nesting spots, the crisp air, the absence of people. Rome’s streets were always thronged; inside the busy Lupanar had been little different. The latifundium had come to mean seclusion from the brutal realities of the world.
    Until this.
    Corbulo spotted the movement first. ‘There!’ He pointed.
    Between the gaps in a hedge some two hundred paces away, Fabiola spotted a running figure. Corbulo had been correct. It was a young man, wearing little more than rags. A slave. Clearly exhausted, with his lower body covered in a thick layer of mud, his face was a picture of desperation.
    ‘He probably tried to give them the slip by hiding in the river,’ announced the vilicus .
    Fabiola had taken pleasant walks along the waterway that separated her property from the estate belonging to her nearest neighbour. It would never seem the same again.
    Corbulo grimaced. ‘It never works. The fugitivarii always check under the banks with long poles. If that doesn’t work, the dogs will catch their scent.’
    Fabiola could not take her eyes off the fugitive, who was casting terrified glances over his shoulder as he ran. ‘Why is he being hunted?’ she asked dully, knowing the answer.
    ‘Because he ran away,’ Corbulo replied. ‘And a slave is his master’s property.’
    Fabiola was intimately acquainted with this cruel reality. It was the same reason that had allowed Gemellus to repeatedly rape her mother. To sell her and Romulus. To execute Juba, the giant Nubian who had trained her brother to use a sword. Owners had the ultimate power over their slaves: that of life and death. Starkly reinforcing this, in the Roman legal system, the pride of the Republic, there was no retribution for the torture or killing of a slave.
    A pack of large dogs burst from the cover of the nearest grove, their noses alternately sniffing the ground and the air for their quarry’s scent.
    Fabiola heard the young man wail with terror. It was an awful sound.
    She and Corbulo watched in silence.
    A group of heavily armed men emerged from the trees, urging the hounds on with shouts and whistles. Cheers went up as they caught sight of the slave, whose energy looked almost spent.
    ‘Where’s he from?’
    The vilicus shrugged. ‘Who knows? The fool could have been running for days,’ he said. ‘He’s young and strong. I’ve known the chase take more than a week.’ Corbulo looked almost sympathetic. ‘But those bastards never give up. And a man can’t run for ever on an empty belly.’
    Fabiola sighed. Nobody would give food or help to a fugitive. Why would they? Rome was a state based on foundations of war and slavery. Its citizens had no reason to aid those who had fled captivity. Brutal punishments, terrible living conditions and a poor