Page 59 of Brother at Arms

Gotarz lay very still, his lips gray. I put my hand on his chest and found it unmoving.

“Who did this?” I asked Arsakes.

Arsakes breathed with difficulty. “Don’t know. I sent Gotarz here to fetch something for me after everyone had gone. When he was slow returning, I came to see what happened. Found a man standing over him, then that man attacked me. He’d have killed me too, if you hadn’t arrived.”

I stepped over Gotarz, set the lamp on the floor, and moved Arsakes’s hand aside. Footsteps behind me indicated Lucius had followed me in. He lifted the wavering light and held it close.

Arsakes peered up at him. “Lucius Aelius?” His voice held amazement with a touch of disgust. “Why are you here?”

“Leonidas just asked me the same thing, only more violently.” Lucius touched his throat, which bore dark marks where I’d nearly throttled him. “Good thing I came. I just saved your life, my old friend.”

Arsakes growled. “Maybe not. This wound’s deep.”

The lamp showed me a jagged cut in Arsakes’s left side. “I will fetch a medicus,” I told him. I didn’t think Arsakes would survive a journey to the Aventine, so I’d have to lead Marcianus here.

“No,” Arsakes protested. “A medicus will bring the vigiles. They’ll blame me for Gotarz’s death, because I’m foreign.”

“Not this medicus.” I turned to Lucius. “Stay with him and find something to stop the blood with.” I stared pointedly at his cloak. “Don’t leave, no matter what.”

“As you wish.” Lucius untied the cloak and folded it into a pad, kneeling on the floor to press it against Arsakes’s side.

Arsakes made a soft noise of pain but remained still. The competent way Lucius held the pad against the wound told me he’d done such things before.

I quit the place, told the lingering carter we needed the light a while longer, and jogged toward the Aventine and Marcianus’s home.

Marcia tried to prevent me from waking Marcianus.

“He requires sleep,” she snapped at me when she opened the front door. “After you drag him all over Rome and he doctors everyone from half-dead gladiators to children who truly need him, he’s exhausted.”

“A man has been hurt. One who will die without him.”

Marcia would have retorted, but Marcianus, roused by our argument, clattered down the rickety stairs in the corner. He was wrapped in a blanket, his hair tousled, and blinked in the glare of the lamp Marcia had lit.

His eyes widened when I explained about Arsakes. He ran upstairs again, descending a short time later, settling a tunic on his shoulders. He bade Marcia fetch his things, and then dashed out, without waiting for me to lead the way.

Marcia sighed but put out the lamp, took up a bag that was apparently at the ready, shooed me out, and locked the door behind us.

We caught up to Marcianus at the now silent Circus Maximus. He hadn’t slowed, though I hadn’t told him exactly where we were going, and didn’t change his pace once I put myself ahead of him.

I took him to the offices, the streets quieting now as deliveries had been made and carters led donkeys to stables before going home to bed.

I was relieved to see that Lucius hadn’t fled while I’d been gone. He rose from where he’d been sitting in the shadows next to Arsakes when we entered.

Marcianus beheld Lucius and let out a short scream.

Marcia nearly ran into the back of Marcianus. “What is the matter?” she asked in half alarm, half annoyance.

“Minerva give me strength,” Marcianus whispered. “It is Xerxes returned to life. But no, you must be Lucius. Leonidas told me about you.”

Lucius shot me an irritated glance. “It was supposed to be a secret.”

“Except to Marcianus,” I said. “He would never betray you.”

Marcianus had already ignored us to kneel beside Arsakes. He carefully peeled the folded cloak from Arsakes’s side, slid the man’s tunic upward, and bent to examine the wound. Marcia had taken over the lamp and held it in precisely the right place for Marcianus to view the cut.

“I’ve seen far worse,” Marcianus told Arsakes reassuringly. “You will mend if the wound does not take sick, which it won’t if you do exactly as I tell you.”

Arsakes eyed him with distrust, but he didn’t argue as Marcianus wiped the wound with cloths Marcia passed him.