Milo was considering what he should do, all bovine stupidity: my favourite thug.
'Do me a favour, drop your flute and grab a sword, Milo!'
Milo acquired a sword by the simple method of seizing the nearest mercenary, lifting the wild man off his feet, and crushing him until his eyes bulged and he limply dropped the blade.
'Cuddle a few more!' I gasped, managing to disarm the next while my boot made an imprint on his ragged chainmail trews which if he was one for the women he would bitterly regret.
Now Milo and I could set ourselves back to back and work away from the wall. The opposition circled more widely, but we had more time to watch for them. When two charged from different directions we ducked by common agreement and let them impale themselves with an ugly crunch.
The crude fencing practice lasted less time than I thought. The last two who could run dragged off the wounded. To disguise their connection with the Pertinax house, Milo and I threw the dead outside in the street gutter opposite, like the dirty dregs of some drunken brawl the previous night.
'You caught it, Falco?'
Nothing hurt yet, but I was dripping badly: a long cut, down my left side. After five years as an informer I no longer felt the need to faint at the sight of my own blood but this was the last thing I wanted today. Milo was urging me to seek medical attention but I shook my head.
We hurried back, to look for Gordianus. No one answered when we called. I locked the street door and took the key. I found the spigot and turned off the fountain; as the water hung and then dropped, a nerve-racking silence fell throughout the empty house.
We stalked upstairs, constantly listening. One by one we flung open doors. Empty salons and deserted bedrooms. Dust undisturbed on pediments. Woozy flies flinging themselves against closed windows in warm solitude.
Gordianus was in the last room of the first corridor we explored. He had slumped against the marble dado and we thought he must be dead. Not so; only despairing.
'I had him-I got my knife in him-but he attacked me and I bungled it…'
Checking him over for physical damage, I muttered sympathetically. 'There's a world of difference between dispatching something woolly at the altar, and taking human life-' Pertinax had belted the Chief Priest viciously against a wall. Not much surface bruising, but at his age shock and exertion were taking their toll. He was having such difficulty breathing I worried for his heart.
I joined Milo in carrying the priest downstairs, and hurriedly let them out together. 'Milo, you look after him.'
'I'll come back-'
'No. What's here is mine.'
He helped make a pressure pad and bind up my side with the white veil I had worn at the ceremony. Then I watched him and Gordianus leave.
This was how I wanted it: Pertinax and me.