“I am a free man, now,” Timarchides said with a wry smile. “But if Fortuna had been late with favor, I might find myself on sand.”
“Do not let us keep you!” Batiatus laughed. “I am sure a sword and shield can be procured!”
His joke, however, fell flat on an expressionless crowd.
“Quintus!” Lucretia said. “My husband merely jests.”
“I am quite used to it, my lady,” Timarchides said with a weak smile. “It takes true virtue to acknowledge it in another. Often it is the newest of men who have trouble accepting others to their ranks.”
“What is your implication-?” a red-faced Batiatus began, but Lucretia carefully blocked him with her back, pouring more wine for Timarchides as if her husband had ceased to exist. Batiatus stomped back to the dwindling supply of grapes and olives, cramming both into his mouth indiscriminately.
Cicero edged over to Batiatus.
“What is his meaning?” he whispered. Moving away from the refreshments, the two men leaned on the balcony, staring idly at the swirling pattern in the sands below.
“He imagines I despise him because he is newly freed.” Batiatus spat an olive pit down onto the pristine sand. “I despise him for being an oily little cunt. A true gladiator knows his place. A slave is already dead in the eyes of the law, a gladiator doubly so. There is nothing left but to fight well.”
“In hope of freedom?”
“A gladiator that wins his freedom is rare indeed. Fight well, and die well.”
“I struggle to conceive of that.”
“You do not live with death day by day, witnessing gladiators fight poorly in the arena, only to find redemption by manner of defeat, baring neck to slayer. If the gods are kind, we shall see such nobility today.”
Spartacus led the way, his swords at the ready, Barca and Varro looming at his flanks, Bebryx bringing up the rear, to best hide his wounds from their opponents. The doomed gladiators from the House of Pelorus stood, their shields up, their swords ready, standing in a wide “V,” its mouth facing their oncoming nemeses.
“They draw us in,” Varro said. “Their hope to surround us.”
“We are not fools,” Spartacus muttered, halting.
The two groups of men faced each other across the sands, while the crowd grew restless.
“Split up,” Barca said. “Two to each end of the ‘V.’”
“No,” Spartacus said. “That is what they want.”
“We charge,” Bebryx said. “Straight into the middle, and fuck them all if they think they can win by surrounding us.”
“No,” Spartacus said again. “That is also what they want.”
“I want to fight,” Varro said.
“I want to live,” Barca said.
His fellow gladiators turned to stare at him in surprise.
“I shall fight,” Barca said, scowling. “But let us not be fools. I wish to return to Capua absent injury, that I may buy my freedom.”
“Begin!” a familiar voice shouted from the balcony.
“Dominus instructs us,” Varro noted.
“I do not accept their will,” Spartacus said, nodding at the enemy gladiators. “Let us ruin their patterns.”
“How?” Varro and Barca chorused.
“We attack as one, on one point of the ‘V’ alone.” He gestured with one of his swords at the man closest to the balcony. “Let them break rank to come to his aid. Or stand still and see their advantage worn away.”
His fellow gladiators nodded gruffly, and without a further word, Spartacus turned and ran toward the man who stood furthest from the base of the ‘V,’ far out at the tip of its limb.
Spartacus leapt into the air as he approached, scything down with both his blades, barrelling into the man, the full force of his bodyweight crashing into the shield and pitching them both to the ground.
The man swiftly stood up, but made no attempt to riposte. He was still standing, unmoving, when Barca’s great axe hewed into the side of his helmet, hurling him through the air and toward the sands, still. Dead.
Varro and Spartacus exchanged startled glances, seeing the rest of the men remain still. Initial cheers from the crowd soon subsided into a quiet unease. Death alone was not enough.
This is not right,” Verres muttered. “Where is the resistance? Where is the fight? Where is the blood!”
“I fear,” Batiatus said, “that the men of the House of Pelorus seek to deny us entertainment.” He leaned over the balcony and yelled at the men whose shields bore the twin-horned mark of Pelorus. “Fight, you miserable bastards!” he shouted, a sentiment that met with cheers and jeers from the nearby crowd.
“They raised not a finger to save their master,” Ilithyia noted. “Absent such loyalty it does not surprise that their skills are limited, too”
“They were locked in cells below ground, while their master lost his life,” Cicero pointed out.
“Such behaviour has no excuse. They line up like lambs to the slaughter,” Verres said.
“I cannot help but feel,” Cicero mused, “that they stand bravest of all.”
“Then thank the gods that you were not in charge of defending us from Hannibal!” Batiatus said good-naturedly, and all on the balcony laughed.
Spartacus stood before the next man in the line.
“Fight me,” he said.
The man simply stared at him.
“Fight me!” Spartacus shouted.
“Why?” the man said, quietly.
Angrily, Spartacus raised his twin swords, but faltered. He realized he could not do it.
Bebryx had no such qualms, and darted ahead of Spartacus before the Thracian’s hesitation could be seen. Laughing wildly, Bebryx hacked at the still gladiator with the sharp sword of a murmillo, slashing a wide red gash in his neck. The man collapsed to his knees, pitching over, his blood pumping into the sand, his arms twitching in spastic jerks, and then still.
“Who is next?” Bebryx roared at the crowd, brandishing his sword high to ragged cheers. He advanced to the next man in line, who stood, as his fellow had done, motionless. His mouth was pinched in a snarl but he did not move. As Bebryx loomed closer, he closed his eyes and opened his arms, as if to embrace his slayer.
“This is an honor, you ungrateful swine!” the voice of Verres shouted from the balcony. “This is an honor!”
Bebryx hesitated for but a moment, and then thrust his blade firmly into the man’s neck, with enough force to smash between the gladiator’s vertebrae and out the other side. Bebryx’s victim crumpled before him, sliding off the blade, the head all but severed.
In the crowd, someone booed. Soon, the noise was joined by others, low at first and then with growing volume, like a conference of owls.
“I have never found easy victory so hard-won!” Varro muttered.
“Nor I,” Spartacus replied.
“It matters not,” Barca said. “Let blame fall at editor’s feet.” He marched toward the opposite line of men, intent on matching Bebryx’s slaughter on the other arm of the “V.”
Bebryx approached the next man in line. As he drew near, Varro hefted his Greek spear and hurled it at the still warrior. It whooshed through the air in a lazy arc, and clanged harmlessly off a suddenly raised shield.
Realizing that instinct had intervened where will had not, the gladiator sheepishly returned to his stand-to-attention. Bebryx eyed him suspiciously, and then swung his sword at his neck.
The gladiator’s sword sprang up, blocking the path of Bebryx’s.
“At last!” Batiatus shouted. “Fight!”
Bebryx chuckled in surprise, delighting in the scattered applause that now began to spread around the arena.
“That is better-” he began to say, before the edge of the man’s shield smashed into his face.
Spartacus and Varro heard the crowd before they saw the strike. Bebryx stumbled backward in surprise, his mouth a mess of jagged teeth and seeping blood. Dazed, he raised his sword to strike, only for his o
pponent to hack down at his right arm, severing it at the elbow.
Bebryx screamed, his stump spurting blood. He twisted to the side, dropping to one knee as his opponent came up behind him, taking careful, deliberate aim at the junction of his neck and shoulder. The doomed gladiator drove his sword straight down into Bebryx’s heart from above. Bebryx fell, a lump of twitching meat, as his killer bellowed an angry yell of imprisoned rage.
The killer’s face contorted in a sneer, he turned to face the surviving three gladiators of House Batiatus. He banged his sword upon his shield, flicking trails of viscous blood across the sands in elongated strings. Then he pointed the dripping blade at the three men and waited, his feet firm on the earth, his shield raised and ready.
“What true gladiator can resist final fight?” Batiatus exulted.
“And not before time,” Lucretia breathed, “it was to become the worst primus in memory.”
“It may yet be,” Ilithyia observed, “if this warrior’s fellows cling to their deluded protest.”
“Not so,” Batiatus crowed. “Not so! This sudden change in fortune will soon be mirrored. Mark my words.”
“Why so elated, Batiatus?” Cicero asked. “You have surely just lost another slave!”
“Bah, one who already proved himself useless at the graveside,” Batiatus spat. “Bebryx has died in the best way he could, by bringing this primus to life!”
“How so?”
“The death of Bebryx has delivered a dose of the drug that no gladiator can resist.”
“Blood?” Cicero asked.
“Applause!” Batiatus cried, gesturing about him at the bellowing hordes of the audience as they roared their support.
“See!” Batiatus cried. “Their feet shift and paw at the sand like unruly horses in their traces! See them turn to face Spartacus and my men. The death of one enemy awakens them. They are sentenced to die this day. They sulk and spit and complain that there is no justice, but now they remember. There is justice here, amid the blood and sand, for the man who will take it! And if they fall, they die as gladiators!”
The line of the “V” broke in sudden animation, as six men ran to join their fellow warrior. The sands erupted in clashes of steel and wood, as the seven men of House Pelorus joined battle with the three of House Batiatus. Some in the crowd cheered for a gladiator called “Pelorus,” unaware that he was not present on the sands. Others yelled for Varro, the Roman Conqueror, clad today in the armor of a Greek warrior. Some, still, cheered for the Beast of Carthage, once a symbol of Rome’s greatest enemy, now tamed upon the sands, fighting at the Romans’ will, hewing into his enemies with a double-headed axe.
One name rang out above the others, taken up by the crowd, propagating through the stalls and along the steps with each slice toward victory. They cried it out as his twin swords cut into shields and helmets, flesh and bone, he was the “Slayer of the Shadow of Death.”
He was the “Bringer of Rain.”
“The Champion of Capua.”
Spartacus.
XII
SPOLIARIUM
Few saw the Spoliarium. Or rather, few saw it and lived to tell the tale, and no Neapolitan ever asked to venture within. Why would they? It was a place of death and messy endings, of pleadings and suffering. It was no place for a good Roman, only for slaves and beasts who did not know how best to die. It reeked of death, of exotic, unnameable meats left to rot in corners, of scraps of flesh best not identified, putrified on spikes and caught in gratings. The stench could choke a man unready for it; it sent newcomers retching and heaving for the outside world, as if the human body itself recognized, at some atavistic, animal level, that this was a place cursed.
The slave boy shut the door behind him. A hatch opened in the roof above his head, illuminating the chamber for a moment with bright light from above, rays falling on walls stained with black, ancient blood.
Almost as soon as it had arrived, the light was dimmed again by a hail of falling bodies. Lions, men, rabbits and a single horse, dropped through the hatch from the back of the charnel cart, thumping onto the grated floor like sacks of grain. A shield from the House of Pelorus, battered and bent, clattered incongruously with the flesh. A gladiator’s body thudded against the wall and crumpled to the ground. Red blood vibrant against black African skin, the knotted hair matted with blood, one arm missing at the elbow. The absent forearm was thrown in as an afterthought, bearing a raised branding scar, a simple letter “B.”
The light returned as the last of the bodies hit the floor, then gradually dimmed as the hatch was drawn shut, until only pinpricks shone through once more.
The slave boy listened to the continual trickle of a dozen streams of blood dripping through the grate and into the sewer directly below. He wearily lifted a pair of outsized tongs, and grabbed at the first lion, still bearing the mark of the Thracian’s spear. He dragged it in a dozen heaves over to a free space, and then went to grab a meat cleaver from the wall.
“Wait!” a voice said from the doorway. Charon, boatman of the River Styx, stood in the half-light, his hands lifting to his face to remove the skull mask, revealing the wizened head of an old man beneath it.
The slave waited, the meat cleaver poised to fall.
“The lion skins are worth good coin, boy,” the man said. “Do not cut them up. Skin them later.”
Wordlessly, the boy nodded and picked up the tongs once more. The man who had been Charon hung his long dark robes on a peg, next to the mask. He surveyed the chamber with his hands on his hips, observing the long task ahead.
“I want this room clear by tomorrow,” he said. “Lions skinned and separated-teeth, too, if you can. Best cuts from the horse. We feed the dogs tonight.”
There was a low groan from the floor. The boy peered at the battered, savaged form that had once been a man.
“This one lives,” he said, his voice still in the process of breaking, his accent redolent of the coasts of Sardinia.
“Always the way,” Charon sighed, snatching up a long knife from the wall.
“Please…” whispered a voice from the floor. “Help me.”
“What do we do?” the Sardinian boy asked.
Charon peered down at a ruin of a man, his features ravened by lion’s teeth, one eye seemingly gone, his arm dangling limp and bloody, his chest rent by long, deep claw marks to the bone. Even as he breathed, blood seeped from his wounds and dripped through the grate in viscous, dwindling cascades.
Charon handed the slave the knife.
“Do you yet nurse dreams of fighting in the primus?” he asked.
The boy nodded, hopefully.
“Then here marks the commencement of your training,” Charon said. “Kill your first man.”
“Wait,” pleaded the weak voice from the floor. “Show mercy… mercy…”
“Mercy this is,” Charon said flatly. “Well, boy, hurry up.”
The boy moved forward and leaned over the wounded man. He then drew his knife across the man’s throat, spraying them both with a jet of further blood, filling the chamber with an agonised choking noise that went on and on.
“You must press deeper,” Charon said calmly. “That is not a killing wound. Here. Give me the knife.”
Charon took the wet blade from his apprentice, and grabbing the curly hair of his victim firmly in his left fist, he drew the knife hard across the wounded throat in a vigorous sawing motion. A trembling, bloody hand clutched momentarily at the apprentice, but sank to the floor, limp and unmoving.
Charon dropped the head to the floor.
The Sardinian boy made as if to say something, but Charon silenced him with an upraised hand. He listened, intently, in the dripping darkness.
“Do you hear it?” he asked.
Through the drips, through the trickles, there was another noise: a labored, shivering breath.
“Another is alive,” the boy said.
“For but a few moments longer,” Charon said. “Bring the knife. I will sho
w you how to hit the heart.”
The boy clambered over the dead horse to reach Charon, who had found his prey among the lions.
“This one might survive, doctore,” the boy suggested.
Charon looked at him glumly in the half-light.
“I cannot be medicus. With luck and prayer and the greatest of herbs. With careful cosmetics to hide the worst of the wounds. With help to walk on those broken limbs. He might survive. Will you pay for him?”
The boy stammered, unsure.
“I am but a slave, I merely meant- ”
“He is already dead,” Charon said. “We are here to remind him of it.”
He held out the blade once more, and gestured at a space on the chest as it rose and fell.
“Here,” he said. “And slowly. I want you to see the moment that your blade makes a difference.”
The boy carefully placed his blade at the allotted spot and began to push. The flesh puckered beneath the knife’s slow advance, then suddenly gave way with a loud pop. The injured man snarled in anguish, began to scream, until Charon silenced him with a hand on his mouth. The noise continued, muffled, while Charon carried on with his lesson.
“Now,” he said, “see how his chest still moves. You have barely pierced the flesh. There would be more blood, but he is near bled out. Push on… push on, and see now how he flinches. And here… there!”
There was a sudden upwelling of blood, and the struggling ceased.
“You have pierced the heart,” Charon explained. “Measure well the depth required with such a blade.”
Some were already leaving as the acclamation of the primus died down. Cicero had seen retreating backs ambling down the steps, even as Verres and Batiatus made their closing announcements. The rabble had already forgotten Marcus Pelorus, if they had ever remembered him. They had forgotten many of the gladiators, too, and the reason that ten fought against four. But there was talk of the remarkable turnabout in fortunes during the fight with the lions, and much gossip of the painted woman who had lived to see her sentence postponed. It was, he heard patrons saying to each other, a fine day of games put on by Gaius Verres, in memory of Someone-or-Other. Pilorux or Plorus or something like that, may he rest in peace.
Spartacus: Swords and Ashes Page 17
