Chapter 12

The only thing that happened on our way to the palace was that we met a group of young men out on the town, but they took one look at the force of bodyguards and made themselves scarce. Everything was fine at the palace, and we were escorted into a private dining room. Along the way, I had been assured that the bodyguards would be ushered into the quarters reserved for the praetorian guards and would be fed and entertained. I could imagine what form the entertainment would take!

As promised, only Claudius and his two bodyguards were also in the room. Claudius smiled when he saw our finery and commented on how elegant Atrina looked in her new gown. He also commented that I looked very good in my finery and asked who designed it. Claudius nodded sagely when I said that it was all Atrina's doing.

We had an excellent meal accompanied by some pleasant conversation on trivial topics; however, as soon as the food had been removed, Claudius got down to business. I showed him my estimate of the cost of cleaning up the city with my pigs, and he was impressed at the detail in the report. The only thing he questioned was my request for 8,000 aureii annually for my bill. Claudius insisted that I had not covered all of my expenses properly, and "suggested" that I up my bid to 10,000 aureii annually.

I gulped in surprise at that, but Atrina simply thanked Claudius for the suggestion and told me to make the correction, which I did. Claudius announced that the full amount of 10,000 aureii would be delivered to me in the morning by courier. I thanked him, and Claudius changed the subject.

"I see that you have brought with you a wooden stick. Is that the weapon you use for stick fighting?"

"Yes, Caesar, it is. Of course, I turned in my other weapons when I was escorted to your presence, but the soldiers did not recognize my baton as a potential weapon. That is one of its virtues."

"Excellent! I'm glad you brought it. May I see it, please?"

I handed the baton to Claudius, and he looked it over carefully. He could see that it was exactly as I had represented it—nothing but a common piece of wood. Claudius raised an eyebrow and asked for a demonstration.

I really had no choice but to agree, so slaves were called to clear a space in the room. That took a few minutes, but it was quickly done. I think that the slaves had been warned to be ready for this chore.

"Do you want your opponent to use a wooden sword, or would you be willing to demonstrate against a fully armed man?"

"Caesar, that is up to you. However, I should point out that I may have to be a bit rougher in my demonstration if my opponent were to use a sword."

"That's a good point, but let's try it anyway. Suppose you spar with Lavilius, here. He is quite skilled with his sword, so he should be a worthy opponent. How about his shield and armor? Should he keep that or not?"

"Caesar, perhaps he should keep his armor. That way I will be less likely to do him any permanent damage. Lavilius may attack me whenever he is ready."

I was holding my baton loosely in my right hand when Claudius nodded. More quickly than I would have believed possible, Lavilius drew his sword and lunged at me, fully intending to gut me on the spot. This was a bit more than I had expected, so I reacted more by reflex from my training than from conscious thought.

I held the baton at opposite ends and brought it across my body quickly enough to deflect the sword to one side. The sword was aimed at me so that it could easily have slipped between my ribs if it had gotten that far. As a result, the sharpened edge of the blade dug into the wood when I struck the blade aside, and it hung there, entrapped for a moment. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I twisted the baton so that the sword was dragged from Lavilius' hand. Obviously, he had been caught unaware of having me block his sword that way, so it was easier to disarm him than either of us expected.

Lavilius jumped back and brought his shield up to protect himself from attack to his body. In almost one continuous motion, I turned loose of the baton with my left hand and swept the baton around to strike him on his left knee, which was below the bottom edge of the shield. The sword fell to the floor during this maneuver, and I did not strike Lavilius as hard as I would have in a normal fight. However, the strike was painful enough for Lavilius to know that I would have broken his knee if I had not pulled the punch. Lavilius did not fall from the hit, but he certainly staggered from it.

As an act of bravado, I used the end of the baton to flip up the sword so that I could catch it in the air. With a little flourish and a grin, I handed the sword back to Lavilius. He bowed and grinned back at me, so I could see that he bore me no permanent ill will, though I am sure that he would have swatted me with his shield if he got the chance.

Meanwhile, Claudius was almost beside himself with admiration for me. He cheered and applauded for some time. Claudius was an aficionado of gladiatorial combat, so he could fully appreciate what I had just done. On the other hand, Atrina was siting there with her mouth open from the gasp she had started when I was first attacked.

Once the fight had stopped, Atrina jumped to me and hugged me in her famous death grip. She chided Claudius, "Cousin, that was a foul trick. Conan might have been killed or seriously injured for your amusement. You should make amends right now!"

Claudius started to cloud up in anger, then he quickly thought better of it. He did let his actions be clouded by his temper all too many times, but this time he caught himself before he went too far. "You are quite right, my dear cousin. I apologize to you both. However, I did see more than I expected of this marvelous fighting method. Tell me, Conan, can you teach others to fight like that?"

"Yes, Caesar, I can. Do you wish to learn?"

Claudius laughed so hard that he nearly fell from his chair. "Oh, no, not me! I pay people to protect me. I was just wondering if you could teach this kind of fighting to some of my praetorian guards. There are times when I wish to subdue someone without having him chopped into mince meat before he can be questioned."

"I regularly teach this technique to my bodyguards, and I am starting a class in two days. I would be happy for you to send some of your guards to the class. They can learn along with my men. Perhaps they can even teach us some things."

That was the end of the meeting for that night, so we went home. I was still in a daze over how much money we were going to make off this clean up contract. When we got home, Atrina was in the mood for sex, so she dragged me to the baths and off to bed. Fucking Atrina was more work than I had expended in my short fight, but it certainly was a hell of a lot more fun!

About mid-morning the next day, a troop of praetorian guards showed up escorting a cart. In the cart were chests, and, in the chests, were 10,000 aureii! My God, I had never seen so much money at one time! It took the rest of the morning to count the money and get it transferred to our vault. I tipped the guards who had escorted the money and the freedmen who had done the actual work, so everybody went back to the palace in a very happy mood.

Immediately, I put the steward on to hiring the additional men we needed and to buying the necessary pigs. He also arranged for the additional carts, fencing, and other stuff that we wanted. He even found some unemployed ex-soldiers to guard our work crews and materials. One of my major concerns was that people would steal our pigs for food, and I needed to stop that before it started. It was going to take two or three weeks to put the plan into operation, but I wanted to get started as soon as possible.

I couldn't help expecting trouble when Messalina finally got back to town. Claudius had exiled her to one of his farms with orders that the only things she was allowed to fuck were donkeys and horses. Claudius thought that this order would make Messalina give up sex for a while, but he didn't know his wife that well. She had a special framework and bed built, and she put on a show for her guards and slaves every day. It was reported that she was a bit sore the first couple of days, but she did very well after that. I didn't know how much of this story to believe, but everyone else who heard it had no trouble believing it. Anyway, it was three months before she came back to Rome, and she didn't act the least bit frustrated.

There was less shit in the streets than there had been garbage, since the Romans had indoor plumbing from the early days of the city. The problem was that the animals that also used the streets did not have that advantage. Every four-footed animal in the city used the streets as a public toilet, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. My pigs did a great job in eliminating the spoiled food dumped into the streets, but the only thing that could be done about the shit was to wait for a rain storm to wash the stuff into the sewer and eventually into the rivers. I was trying to come up with a solution to that problem, but so far it had eluded me. Oh, well, all I could do was to hope that I would get an inspiration.