"David Drake - Birds Of Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

for the relatively dry surface of the covered sidewalk to make her escape.

Her servants followed her. Three of them snatched up their poles and strutted off with the chair. They
were in trouble enough for falling. Loss of the vehicle besides would invite a level of punishment worse
than anything they could expect at the hands of the mob. The fourth bearer limped along behind his
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fellows. He squeezed his right thigh with both hands as if to force out the pain of the bruise it had
received between a brace and the stone pavement.

Shops were closing abruptly. Like the upper-class woman, they were obvious targets for the mob that
would at other times comprise their clientele. The manager of the wineshop in the alcove next to
Perennius slammed down his shutter without even delaying long enough to tug in the cups chained to the
counter. His three patrons kept an eye on the approaching tumult as they slurped their mixtures of water
and powerful African wine. In a bread shop on the ground floor of the building across the street, a
lounger tried to snitch a roll. He squawked as the counterman caught his wrist and pinned his forearm to
the limestone counter with the iron-edged shutter. The hasp of the padlock within must have had enough
reach to close despite the impediment, because the loafer continued to scream even as the mob boiled
past him.

The counterman was almost certainly a slave, perhaps not even the person responsible to the absentee
owner for management of the shop. He had acted not from necessity or even from personal involvement.
In frustration and ah anger more general than the immediate impetus, he had lashed out against the closest
permissible target.

Perennius felt a rush of fellowship for the counterman as he watched the thief screaming. His palm
sweated on the worn bone hilt of his sword.

The mob streamed past with the ragged implacability of the tide on a strand. The front ranks were of
husky men who probably had a purpose. They were shouting, "Down with Baebrio!" The slogan meant
little to Perennius and perhaps less to the jeering multitude following those leaders. This was simply
entertainment for most of the crowd, the landless and jobless, the helpless and hopeless. They would
pour on, shouting and smashing, until a company of the Watch was mustered to block them. Perhaps by
that time, their numbers would have grown so that it was the Watch instead that scattered in a hail of
bricks and roof tiles. If the riot went that far, it would last a day or more before squadrons of imperial
cavalry arrived from Milan to wash the streets clear with blood.

Thugs with cudgels were running down the sidewalks like outriders, banging on doors and shutters.
Gaius and the agent were hidden by their dark cloaks and the shade of the pillar-supported sidewalk
covering. A thug who had just bellowed something back at his companions recoiled in surprise from the
alcove. He was young and burly, with a touch of Germanic pallor to his face. The cudgel that had halted
in surprise he now cocked back with a snarl and a curse. He did not know the pair of them or care about
them as men, but license faced control and reacted to it like acid on lime.

As the cudgel rose, Perennius grinned and spread his cloak with his left hand. His sword had been slung
centurion-fashion from the left side of his equipment belt. It was that sword rather than the
ball-pommeled dagger in the other scabbard that poised to respond to the club. But it was the grin that