Read Online The Eagle's Vengeance by Anthony Riches - Free Book Online
Authors: Anthony Riches
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weapons. Their tribe are famed for their skills with spear and sword, and those expectations proved to have been well founded.’ He studied the Roman with a curious expression. ‘Speaking of skill at arms, I believe that you, Centurion, have some reputation with your swords? Your men call you “Two Knives”, after the Dimachieri, the gladiators who fight with two swords, I hear?’
The young Roman smiled thinly.
‘You hear a lot, it seems. Is that the skill that you bring to the Prefect’s service?’
The answering smile was equally uncompromising, the small group’s leader clearly untroubled by the status of the soldiers before him.
‘An ability to listen is indeed one of the abilities I bring to my master’s service, Centurion. As to Ram and Radu, I suggest that you might like to train with them when the opportunity arises, and take your own gauge of their prowess. I find their speed quite breathtaking on occasion, especially when they meet opponents with sufficient skill to push them to their limits. Perhaps you might have sufficient skill to bring out their best …’
Julius snorted a quiet laugh into his hand and Marcus smiled again, his eyebrows arching in genuine amusement.
‘And there’s another of those skills for which the Prefect selected you, I imagine? The ability to probe at a man’s defences with nothing deadlier than words, seeking to pique his pride and thereby betray his weakness?’
Drest bowed again, his expression equally amused.
‘And I see that I have met my match in you, Centurion.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘And I doubt you’ve even really tried yet, have you? But when the appeal to pride fails, perhaps there’s an ego that can be massaged?’
The Thracian raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘In which case, enough! I’ll deploy more of my verbal lock picks later, when I can see more clearly which one to use. It is my experience that there is no man alive whose personality will not open to me if I only find the right tool. Speaking of which, allow me to introduce the other member of our small but efficiently constructed band. This is Tarion, an Illyrian from Virunum, in the province of Noricum.’
He waved the last man forward, and as Tarion bowed to the officers, his face carefully neutral, Julius shook his head in confusion, waving a hand at the knife hanging from his belt.
‘I see no sword on this man’s belt, only that toothpick. How can he fight when he lacks any proper weapon?’
Drest nodded to his colleague, who put a hand into his tunic and then flicked it forward with the fingers opening as if he were performing a magic trick. A slim sliver of polished iron hissed across the room between Marcus and Julius and buried itself in the wooden wall behind them.
‘Check the point of impact, if you would Centurion?’
Marcus smiled to himself again at the peremptory tone of command in Drest’s voice, staring back at him for a moment to make the point that this fresh verbal trick had not gone unnoticed before turning on his heel and examining the spot where the blade protruded from the wood, still quivering from its impact with its point neatly bisecting a small knot in the thick plank.
‘Not only can Tarion throw a blade to hit a target the size of a man’s eye, but the “toothpick” he carries on his belt is quite the most deadly weapon I have ever seen when used at close quarters. While a man armed with a sword is still struggling to bring his weapon to bear, Tarion will have stepped in close, opened his throat and then moved on to his next victim. But I can assure you that he was not selected for his abilities with knives; they were a happy discovery once his service had been secured from the magistrate in Virunum.’
Julius’s face darkened in disapproval.
‘He was a bandit?’
Drest shrugged.
‘It would be more appropriate to use the term “thief”. Tarion here was before the magistrate having been caught with his hand upon another
The young Roman smiled thinly.
‘You hear a lot, it seems. Is that the skill that you bring to the Prefect’s service?’
The answering smile was equally uncompromising, the small group’s leader clearly untroubled by the status of the soldiers before him.
‘An ability to listen is indeed one of the abilities I bring to my master’s service, Centurion. As to Ram and Radu, I suggest that you might like to train with them when the opportunity arises, and take your own gauge of their prowess. I find their speed quite breathtaking on occasion, especially when they meet opponents with sufficient skill to push them to their limits. Perhaps you might have sufficient skill to bring out their best …’
Julius snorted a quiet laugh into his hand and Marcus smiled again, his eyebrows arching in genuine amusement.
‘And there’s another of those skills for which the Prefect selected you, I imagine? The ability to probe at a man’s defences with nothing deadlier than words, seeking to pique his pride and thereby betray his weakness?’
Drest bowed again, his expression equally amused.
‘And I see that I have met my match in you, Centurion.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘And I doubt you’ve even really tried yet, have you? But when the appeal to pride fails, perhaps there’s an ego that can be massaged?’
The Thracian raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘In which case, enough! I’ll deploy more of my verbal lock picks later, when I can see more clearly which one to use. It is my experience that there is no man alive whose personality will not open to me if I only find the right tool. Speaking of which, allow me to introduce the other member of our small but efficiently constructed band. This is Tarion, an Illyrian from Virunum, in the province of Noricum.’
He waved the last man forward, and as Tarion bowed to the officers, his face carefully neutral, Julius shook his head in confusion, waving a hand at the knife hanging from his belt.
‘I see no sword on this man’s belt, only that toothpick. How can he fight when he lacks any proper weapon?’
Drest nodded to his colleague, who put a hand into his tunic and then flicked it forward with the fingers opening as if he were performing a magic trick. A slim sliver of polished iron hissed across the room between Marcus and Julius and buried itself in the wooden wall behind them.
‘Check the point of impact, if you would Centurion?’
Marcus smiled to himself again at the peremptory tone of command in Drest’s voice, staring back at him for a moment to make the point that this fresh verbal trick had not gone unnoticed before turning on his heel and examining the spot where the blade protruded from the wood, still quivering from its impact with its point neatly bisecting a small knot in the thick plank.
‘Not only can Tarion throw a blade to hit a target the size of a man’s eye, but the “toothpick” he carries on his belt is quite the most deadly weapon I have ever seen when used at close quarters. While a man armed with a sword is still struggling to bring his weapon to bear, Tarion will have stepped in close, opened his throat and then moved on to his next victim. But I can assure you that he was not selected for his abilities with knives; they were a happy discovery once his service had been secured from the magistrate in Virunum.’
Julius’s face darkened in disapproval.
‘He was a bandit?’
Drest shrugged.
‘It would be more appropriate to use the term “thief”. Tarion here was before the magistrate having been caught with his hand upon another
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