“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.