Mithridates the king smiled, his eyes distant. “I shouldn’t have let them come, but I never thought the Romans would cover so much distance in a single night. As soon as we realized they were in the area, they were on us, attacking. My wife was killed at the end, and my daughters dragged out and murdered. My youngest girl was only fourteen and she had her back broken first before they cut her throat.”

Lucius felt the blood draining from his face as he listened. There was such an intensity in the man’s slow movements that he almost took a step back into the arms of his soldiers. He had heard the story when he first arrived, but there was something chilling in listening to the calm voice describe such horrors.

Mithridates looked at Lucius and his finger pointed at the younger man’s chest.

“Where you are standing is where I knelt, tied and battered, surrounded by a ring of legionaries. I thought they would kill me then, and I invited it. I had heard my family screaming, you see, and I wanted to go with them. It started to rain, I remember, and the ground was sodden. Some of my people say rain is the tears of gods, have you ever heard that? I understood it then.”

“Please . . .” Lucius whispered, just wanting to ride away and not hear any more.

Mithridates ignored him or didn’t hear him through the memories. At times it seemed as if he had forgotten the Romans were there at all.

“I saw Sulla arrive and dismount. He wore the whitest toga I have ever seen. You have to remember that everything else was covered in blood and mud and filth. He looked . . . untouched by it all and that . . .” He shook his head slightly. “That was the strangest thing to see. He told me the men who had killed my wife and daughters had been executed, did you know that? He didn’t have to hang them, and I didn’t understand what he could want from me until he offered me a choice. Live and not raise arms again while he lived, or die at that moment, by his sword. I think if he hadn’t said that about the men who killed my girls, I would have chosen death, but I took the chance he gave me. It was the right choice. I was able to see my sons again, at least.”

Mithridates turned to the two men with him and smiled at them. “Hoca here is the eldest, but Thassus looks more like his mother, I think.”

Lucius did take a step back as he realized what Mithridates was saying.