But again the veteran whipped out an angry oath, and thundered, “You stay, you soft-fingered Quintus!  You stay and face those German giants!  Why, you are the very man they are after!  Leave fighting to an old soldier!  Take him away, Cappadox, if you love him!”

“I will never leave!” blazed forth Drusus.  “My place is here.  A Livian always faces his foes.  Here, if needs be, I will die.”  But before he could protest further, Cappadox had caught him in his powerful arms, and despite his struggles was running with him through the rear of the house.

Pandemonium reigned in the atrium.  The gladiators were shivering fine sculptures, ripping up upholstery, swearing in their uncouth Celtic or German dialects, searching everywhere for their victim in the rooms that led off the atrium.  A voice in Latin was raising loud remonstrance.

“AEdepol! Dumnorix, call off your men!  Phaon hasn’t led our bird into the net.  We shall be ruined if this keeps on!  Drusus isn’t here!”

“By the Holy Oak, Gabinius,” replied another voice, in barbarous Latin, “what I’ve begun I’ll end!  I’ll find Drusus yet; and we won’t leave a soul living to testify against us!  You men, break down that door and let us into the rest of the house!”

Mamercus heard a rush down one of the passages leading to the peristylium.  The house was almost entirely deserted, except by the shrieking maids.  The clients and freedmen and male slaves were almost all in the fields.  The veteran, Falto, and Pausanias, who had come in, and who was brave enough, but nothing of a warrior, were the only defenders of the peristylium.

“You two,” shouted Mamercus, “guard the other door!  Move that heavy chest against it.  Pile the couch and cabinet on top.  This door I will hold.”

There was the blow of a heavy mace on the portal, and the wood sprang out, and the pivots started.

“Leave this alone,” roared Mamercus, when his two helpers paused, as if to join him.  “Guard your own doorway!”

“Down with it!” bellowed the voice of the leaders without.  “Don’t let the game escape!  Strike again!”

Crash!  And the door, beaten from its fastenings by a mighty stroke, tumbled inward on to the mosaic pavement of the peristylium.  The light was streaming bright and free into that court, but the passageway from the atrium was shrouded in darkness.  Mamercus, sword drawn, stood across the entrance.

“By the god Tarann!"[115] shouted Dumnorix, who from the rear of his followers was directing the attack.  “Here is a stout old game-cock!  Out of the way, greybeard!  We’ll spare you for your spirit.  Take him, some of you, alive!”

  [115] The Gallic thunder-god.

Two gigantic, blond Germans thrust their prodigious bodies through the doorway.  Mamercus was no small man, but slight he seemed before these mighty Northerners.

The Germans had intended to seize him in their naked hands, but something made them swing their ponderous long swords and then, two flashes from the short blade in the hand of the veteran, and both the giants were weltering across the threshold, their breasts pierced and torn by the Roman’s murderous thrusts.