CHAPTER THIRTY
Down the wide, polished marbled floors marched the tall figure of Decimus, dressed in toga of wine red stitched in fine gold thread. The soft whisper of sandaled feet was a gentle reminder to him that he was in the halls of the greatest power on earth and in a palace filled with powerful, and dangerous, men. The hunter and the hunted came in all sizes and shapes. But whether found in the thick forests of Germania, or the rolling deserts of the Carthaginian plains, or here in the civilized world of politics and imperial power, one had to remember that sometimes the hunter might soon discover he had actually become the prey and the prey was now the relentless hunter.
Keeping pace step by step by his side, dressed in the simple attire of a Grecian freeman, marched the silent,
