Maximin Daia ate like a pig, snuffling and slobbering over his meat and wine, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. When the meal was finished, he pushed himself away from the table and wiped his greasy mouth with a brawny, haircovered forearm.
“What did you say your name was?” He spoke directly to Constantine for the first time.
“Constantine.”
“After Constantius Chlorus?”
A sudden silence fell over the four tables in the corner and Constantine realized that the occupants were watching him now, waiting for his answer.
“He is my father.”
“A bastard!” Daia snorted contemptuously. “By what right are you here with us?”
Constantine’s first impulse was to lay one of the knives they had used in eating against the stocky young man’s throat. But he was beginning to learn how to control his normally hot temper, and deliberately forced himself to relax.
“My mother is Helena of Drepanum.”
“A concubinaf’
“A legal wife, divorced from my father not a week ago in Naissus by decree of Emperor Diocletian.”
‘Why did he divorce her?” Maximin demanded. “I suppose she ”
“Constantius was divorced so he could marry my stepsister, Theodora.” Maxentius yawned. “Really, Daia, I think you get more and more like a pig every day, a stupid, ignorant pig.”
Maximin Daia was not offended; apparently the two were close enough comrades to trade insults without anger. “So Constantius left his whelp to spy for him while he is in Gaul and Britain,” he said. “Just be careful where you do your spying, little Constantine, or you’ll wind up with a javelin through your belly.”
The soldiers in training
The next morning Constantine embarked upon a period of the hardest work he had ever done. At sunrise, while the night fog from the gulf still largely shrouded the city, the soldiers in training, officers and legionnaires alike, were routed out by a trumpet and led in a fast run across the country by Dacius himself. It was hardgoing, with obstacles to be surmounted, fences to be leaped, and brawling streams, icy cold after their descent from the mountains, to be splashed through.
The pace never let up, in spite of the centurion’s age. When they reached the barracks once again, Constantine was gasping for breath but was pleased to see that none of the others, particularly the stocky Daia and the languid Maxentius, fared any better than he thanks to the hours he had spent running across the hillsides and along the river banks at Naissus, in preparation for the day when he would begin the rigorous period of training.
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