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made contact with them.’
    Flavia looked at him in alarm. ‘What do you mean by that?’
    ‘Because they’re notorious slavers; they take whomever they can find and sell them, hundreds of miles away in the south, to the Garamantes, who apparently have massive irrigation
works that enable them to grow crops down there; it’s very labour intensive.’
    Flavia burst into fresh tears.
    Vespasian fought to resist the urge to comfort her, knowing that once he touched that body he would be lost. ‘I’m sorry, Flavia, but it’s the truth. He was absolutely mad to go
out there. How many men did he have with him?’
    ‘I don’t know for sure, at least ten, I think.’
    ‘Ten? That’s preposterous; there are thousands of Marmaridae. Let’s pray that he hasn’t found them and that his water hasn’t run out yet; how much did he
take?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Well, if he doesn’t turn up in a couple of days then I’m afraid you’ll have to fear the worst. If he’s gone southeast then the first place that he can get water
– if he hasn’t taken a local guide to show him where the wells are hidden – is the oasis at Siwa just before the Egyptian border; that’s over three hundred miles away and
can take between ten and twenty days to get to, depending on the conditions.’
    ‘Then you’ll have to go and find him.’
    ‘Find him? Do you have any idea how big an area we’re talking about and how many men I’d have to take just to ensure that we’d get back?’
    ‘I don’t care,’ Flavia snapped. ‘He’s a freeborn Roman citizen and it’s your duty to protect him from slavery.’
    ‘Then he should have asked me for an escort before he went off on that idiotic trip,’ Vespasian retorted, aroused even further by the spirit that she was showing. ‘For a
reasonable price I could have provided him with some cavalry.’
    ‘Then provide him with the cavalry now instead,’ Flavia insisted, rising to her feet. ‘I’m sure that he will prove generous when you find him.’
    ‘And what if I refuse?’
    ‘Then, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, kinsman or not, I will go to Rome and let it be known that you sat by and did nothing as a member of the equestrian order was abducted and sold into
slavery. And I will furthermore allege that the reason that you did nothing was because you wanted to bed his woman.’ With that she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
    Vespasian watched her go appreciatively, drew a deep breath and exhaled, shaking his head; she was certainly right about one thing: he did want to bed her. But she could give him more than just
pleasure and, as his heart continued to send the blood racing around his body, he knew that he would risk anything to possess her.
    Reacting out of instinct, Vespasian punched his left arm up, catching the lightning-swift downward cut of a
gladius
on the guard of his
pugio
. Twisting the dagger
left, he forced the sword aside and down as he thrust his gladius forward at belly height to feel it parried to the right by firmly held iron.
    ‘So we may get some lion hunting in after all,’ Magnus said, pulling away from the embrace that the move had ended in. He was looking pleased for the first time since arriving in
Cyrenaica; sweat glistened on his scarred torso.
    ‘I haven’t decided whether or not to go yet,’ Vespasian replied, taking the on-guard position: standing crouched, almost square-on, gladius low and forward with his pugio to
one side and slightly withdrawn.
    They were exercising next to a pomegranate tree in the courtyard garden at the heart of the Governor’s Residence, taking advantage of the cool of twilight. A couple of slaves worked their
way around the colonnade lighting torches; the smoke that billowed off the freshly lit pitch-soaked rags contrasted sharply with the clean, fresh smell of the recently watered garden.
    Magnus feinted to the right and then brought his gladius back-handed slicing towards Vespasian’s neck;