"Go to the ergastulum and fetch Agias this instant," cried Drusus, in thundering accents, to the trembling Mago, who had appeared on the scene.
Mago disappeared like magic, but in an instant a din was rising from the front of the house,—cries, blows, clash of steel. Into the peristylium, where the angry young master was standing, rushed the old slave woman, Laïs.
"Hei! hei!" she screamed, "they are breaking in! Monsters! a hundred of them! They will kill us all!"
Drusus grew calm in an instant.
"Barricade the doors to the atrium!" he commanded, "while I can put on my armour. You, Mamercus, are too old for this kind of work; run and call in the field-hands, the clients, and the neighbours. Cappadox, Falto, and I can hold the doors till aid comes."
"I run?" cried the veteran, in hot incredulity, while with his single hand he tore from its stout leather wall-fastenings a shield that had been beaten with Punic swords at the Metaurus.[114] "I run?" he repeated, while a mighty crash told that the front door had given way, and the attackers were pouring into the atrium. And the veteran had thrust a venerable helmet over his grizzled locks, and was wielding his shield with his handless left arm, while a good Spanish short-sword gleamed in his right hand.
The others had not been idle. Cappadox had barred both doors leading into the front part of the house. Drusus had armed, and Falto,—a more loyal soul than whom lived not,—burning to retrieve his blunder, had sprung to his patron's side, also in shield and helm.
"They will soon force these doors," said Drusus, quietly, growing more composed as closer and closer came the actual danger. "Falto and I will guard the right. Cappadox and you, Mamercus, if you will stay, must guard the left. Some aid must come before a great while."
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.