The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  Drenis swallowed. Their Skaris, a man Drenis had known since he first had memories. He had been like a brother to Spartacus, the only one of them who was his equal physically. The last time Drenis saw Skaris had been in the slave market in Rome, as they were sold off to different masters and different fates. He had never expected to hear word of him again, unless it was of his death in an arena somewhere. He’d been sure the man lived on only in memories from a time and place that seemed long gone. But this man had just said he yet lived and was near.

  As the others were stunned as well, Drenis found voice for them: “Is he in good health?”

  “He is. He is a giant,” Shrew said. “If you know him, you’ll know this. He fought for a time in Rome—victorious always—until my master purchased him and brought him to Nola. The lanista wants him strong. Thinks he will be a big draw.”

  “Yes,” Spartacus said, “I imagine he would be. There are not many like Skaris walking the earth. Shrew, look me in the face and tell me what you say is true. My kinsman, Skaris, lives and is near. A man I knew from a boy, who I loved and fought with. A man I thought dead by now. Look at me and tell me if he truly lives.”

  The Nolan replied, “Just three days ago when I escaped the ludus, Skaris lived and was in good health. He wanted you to know it.”

  Spartacus looked askance at Gaidres, then at Drenis and beyond him to several others. “Skaris knows of us?”

  “He does,” the man said. “Your name is spoken by many mouths. They call all that join you the Risen. Children graffiti the words on walls. Skaris, hearing what you were doing, wished you to have a message from him.”

  “The Risen,” Spartacus said. He weighed the words a moment and then asked for the message.

  The man hesitated. “These are the words he wished me to say. Not mine, his. Skaris said, ‘Stop wasting time, you stupid ass. Free me, so we can win this war.’ ”

  Drenis laughed. It wasn’t just the words. It was the way Shrew inflected them, deeper than his normal voice. Blunt and forceful, like Skaris himself.

  “He called it a war?” Gaidres asked. “For such a big man, he is no fool.”

  “Also, he said that if you couldn’t be bothered to save a countryman, then do it to get back at the Sullans.”

  Spartacus adjusted the angle of his head. “And what did he mean by that?”

  Showing a scant collection of crooked teeth, the man said, “He said you’d ask that, in just that way. Just as you did. After Sulla came back from Thrace, he built a villa in Nola. He took property from the locals and doled it out to his veterans. They live there still, as do the men who were robbed. Sulla is no more, of course, but many of the men who fought for him yet live.”

  “And some of those live in Nola,” Spartacus said.

  Shrew had found comfort in his own voice. He began to chatter about Sullans in Nola, naming them and describing their properties. Spartacus wasn’t listening. His eyes looked distant. His fingers made a small motion in the air. Seeing it, Shrew slowed his speech. Then stopped.

  “Are there others of my people there?”

  “Thracians? Yes, a few, but they’re just women.”

  Drenis felt his pulse quicken. For a moment he didn’t know why. And then he did.

  “Maedi women?” Nico asked.

  The man’s face indicated he’d no idea how to tell one Thracian from another.

  When it seemed that might end the topic, Drenis asked, “What names do they go by?” He immediately felt his face flush. Stupid question, the kind that as boys they would have teased him for. Even now, if they knew what he was thinking, his comrades would laugh at him. He tried to keep the urgency of his question from his face.

  Shrew shook his head. “I don’t know their names. Just that they’re Thracians. Two of them. And a girl as well. They are given to the men. You know…”

  He ended vaguely, but Drenis did know. Two of them. That was something to hold on to. The words stayed with Drenis after the others moved on. Two of them. He wanted to ask more. What do they look like? Is one of them a beauty with blond hair? Is she named Bendidora? He couldn’t ask any of these things, though. It was preposterous to even hope for it. It had been over two years; so many horrors could have befallen her by now. But there were two of them. Thracians. They had to be somebody. Why couldn’t one of them be his Bendidora, the woman he was betrothed to and then denied? He saw her as she was that first time in Muccula’s hall, when his eyes couldn’t get enough of her, and he wanted so badly to press against her.

  Gaidres broke a silence that Drenis hadn’t noticed had ever begun. “Spartacus, what are you thinking?”

  “You already know,” he answered.

  “What?” Drenis breathed.

  “But you were not thinking this thing just a moment ago,” Nico said. “I love Skaris as well, but we can’t attack an entire city to free one man!”

  Drenis realized what they were talking about. Yes, they could attack the city! That was just the thing to do. Not just for Skaris, though. For the Thracian women. For Bendidora. That thought seemed suddenly huge and urgent. It was, he realized, what all this had been about. In the days after they’d escaped Vatia’s ludus, he had yearned to fly from Italy, to race north and climb the alpine mountains there and run all the way back to Thrace. Back to Bendidora, whom he would claim as his again if she still dwelled there. But they hadn’t done that. Spartacus said that that would only make for a temporary reprieve. It would change nothing about Rome. The history they had behind them would become the future in front of them again. He spoke reason, and Drenis could do nothing except follow him. But his mind never turned long from the woman he had been denied.

  Spartacus pursed his lips and shrugged. “Maybe we can attack an entire city, for many reasons. Skaris thinks we can. He wouldn’t have sent this one if he doubted it.” He leaned in toward the Nolan slave. Steady-voiced, he said, “You will help us get inside the city.”

  Say, yes, Drenis commanded, silently. Yes.

  The man considered the question. He nodded.

  “You agree too readily,” Spartacus said. “Why are you eager to return to a place that you just escaped?”

  Shrew held up his hands. With his thumbs, he made the motion of touching them to the tips of his missing little fingers. More vaguely, he swiped toward his damaged ears. “These things you can see are nothing beside the unseen ways my master tormented me. I want him to suffer beyond what he can imagine. I want to attend to him once more, in my own way.”

  “And you think we can bring that about?”

  The man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “If not Spartacus, then who?” he asked. “If not now, then when?”

  —

  As he runs the alleyways of Nola with a small group of Thracians and the slave who guides them, Drenis thinks her name. Bendidora. He invokes it again and again. He makes the name a prayer. Let one of the women in the ludus of the foul Spurius be his Bendidora. He knows it’s a selfish thing to wish. Thinking so means he wants her to have been a slave and suffered in the ways a woman as young and beautiful as her would’ve suffered. That’s wrong and he knows it. But he doesn’t wish to have made that happen, only to be able to rescue her from it and for them to be joined as they should’ve been. Joined and free.

  They come across Nolans several times in the alleyways. Each time Shrew falls back and the gladiators unleash their blades. Men fall, for Spartacus has placed no mercy above them. Women get kicked on their way, except for one who tries to shove a fire poker into Dolmos’s eyes. Nico cuts her throat for that.

  They pass slaves too. Some of these they kill, but only when they’re not sure and must decide fast whether they are enemies or not. The ones who quickly answer the demand to show a brand or stigma or a neck ring or a nicked ear are spared. Many can do that. Spartacus has them all shout out in Latin and Thracian both, in Greek if they know it. The town’s slaves are free. Nola’s masters are masters no more. He doesn’t instruct them to do so, but the men also
shout his name, so that both master and slave know who has made this bloody dawn.

  “There,” Shrew finally says. He’s panting, face slick with sweat. He keeps wiping the back of his hand across his lips, as if something bad-tasting were smeared across them. “That’s it.”

  Following his pointed finger, it’s obvious. The ludus announces itself with bold letters splashed above the door in red paint and with murals of fighting men engaged in battle. The drawings bring color to the building, but they don’t hide the crumbling mortar on which they’re drawn, nor the disrepair of the roof or the clutter of what seems like several different structures wedged together. The main door stands shut and guarded by a youth, who sits in apparent agitation on a stool. The chaos has not reached here yet, but it’s in the air.

  The moment the youth spots them, he springs to his feet. He begins shouting and banging on the door, pleading to be let in. Nico reaches him first. He pierces him through the back and grips him by the shoulder as he works his short sword side to side until the boy drops.

  Dolmos sets his shoulder to the door and pushes, but Shrew says, “Leave it. There’s a better way.”

  He leads them around to one side of the ludus and shows them a low shed. They climb it one by one. From its roof they reach the lip of a higher wall, and from that one they can see inside. Training grounds below them. Posts for hacking at, squares of sand. Drenis pauses just a moment as the others rush past. He wonders if any of them see the irony in them breaking into a ludus. It doesn’t seem so. They leap one after another, until Drenis is the last. He hits the sand hard but lets his legs fold and he tucks into a roll, keeping his dagger hand out to one side.

  “Go!” Spartacus shouts. He gestures in all directions. “As I said!”

  By that he means rush about the place, slaying masters or those who yet serve them, freeing those who are chained. Most importantly, find Skaris. Shrew had said there were six men employed as guards, and another six who were slaves tasked with keeping their fellow slaves in check. That’s why Spartacus chose twenty men for this mission, not including Shrew.

  “Thracians!” Shrew calls, his voice sharp enough to turn heads. “The dominus is a bald man. The only one like that in here. Do not kill him. I want him.”

  They all rush in different directions. Drenis hesitates for a second time. He wants to follow them all, or get in front of each of them so that he will see Bendidora first. He told nobody what he hoped to find here, so none will know his claim to her. If he’s not there to stop them, it could go badly. But he can’t follow them all. And then he thinks of Shrew. Of course! He should’ve asked him where the women are kept. He casts about for him, but he’s nowhere in sight. Somebody screams. The clash of metal and the sound of something toppling over. Shouts and the pounding of feet. Still he can’t move, not wanting to choose wrongly.

  Spartacus emerges from one of the passageways. His sword is bloody, as is the fist of his free hand. “Drenis!” Spartacus snaps. “Don’t stand there! Follow me.”

  He does. He has to, even though all he can think of is her. He’s behind Spartacus when a guard tries to run him through with a spear. The point passes over Spartacus’s shoulder and nearly into Drenis’s face. Spartacus grabs the shaft and yanks the man from the alcove in which he hid. He stomps down on the back of his shin, snapping the bones there. The man cries out, but just briefly. Spartacus uses his spear to end him.

  And Drenis fights beside him when two men with large shields and Roman swords stand waiting for them outside Spurius’s quarters. Drenis isn’t entirely sure how he kills his man, but he does. A moment later the man’s sword is in his hand. He stands that way, sword and dagger both clenched in his fists, as Dolmos kicks open the door to the lanista’s chamber. Squeals of terror burst from inside. Nico arrives suddenly and is the first through the door, tall Dolmos behind him.

  The third to enter is to be Shrew, but Spartacus snatches him by the arm and demands that he take him to Skaris.

  “I must have Spurius!” Shrew answers.

  “You will, but Skaris first.”

  Shrew is timid no longer, but Spartacus is Spartacus, not to be refused. He shows them the way, taking them down a dark staircase to a subterranean level. It’s dank in the narrow passageway. The air is still, hung heavy with sweat and urine and feces. When they reach the row of cages, Spartacus calls for Skaris by name, speaking Thracian.

  “About bloody time!” Skaris’s voice booms back. “I should break your necks. You think I like being here when you’re free and running about?”

  Drenis has never heard sweeter words. Skaris is alive. He reaches through his bars and grabs at the air until Spartacus reaches him. He clutches at him, fingers twining in his hair. Spartacus grins back at him. “And who is this? Drenis as well!” The man’s calloused hand is so rough as to be painful when he grabs Drenis by the chin. He doesn’t care, though. He grins as much as Spartacus. Skaris is to stand with them again. And if that’s possible, so too is it possible to be reunited with Bendidora.

  It takes some time to fumble in the dim light with the keys Spartacus had collected from the slain. Skaris keeps up his jovial complaints even as other men beg to be released as well. The cages are not true cells like the ones that housed them at Vatia’s. They are fit only for animals. The men inside them crouch or curl on their sides, so cramped are the spaces. Having pity on them, Drenis picks up some of the keys that Spartacus has discarded and starts to open other cells.

  At some point Shrew slips away. Drenis doesn’t notice him going. He curses himself for stupidity. He should have asked Shrew where he would find the women when he had the chance. He works as fast as he can, but his fingers tremble. Bendidora, he just wants to go to her. Each passing moment vibrates with danger. He wonders where Nico is and hopes that he doesn’t find her.

  Skaris roars as he kicks the door of his cage open. He’s out and on his feet, huge in that cramped space. He embraces Spartacus like a brutal lover and whispers words close to his ear. And then he does the same to Drenis. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”

  And then, “Give me a blade.”

  He gets one. Drenis starts to ask after the women, but they’re in motion before he can think how to phrase it. They shove the newly released men before them. As they pass a large cage with a man standing in it, Skaris says, “You can leave this one, for all I care. I told him you would come, and he pissed on my faith.”

  “Skaris, you ox. Don’t be stupid. Unlock my cage, as well.” Latin with a Roman accent. The command in it is like that of a soldier, a sharp voice, one familiar with being obeyed. Its authority is enough to cause a hitch in Drenis’s step. A hand shoots out through the bars and clamps on his forearm. Drenis tries to wrench away, but the man holds tight. His body slams against the bars. His face presses between them. A Roman face, though bearded with thin, curly hairs. “Free me. I will join you. I know who you are. Spartacus, yes?”

  “No,” Spartacus says, returning. He grabs the man by his wrist and twists his grip free and flings his arm back against the bars. “I am Spartacus, and I don’t know you. I came for Skaris, and I have him. Go to your fate.”

  “My fate?” the man snaps. “My fate is to be revenged on Rome. If you leave me, you’re a fool, Spartacus. I was a Roman officer. Disgraced through no fault of mine. Condemned and made a slave.”

  Spartacus dismisses him, starts to move on.

  “Soon you will need to fight entire legions,” the man says. “You know that day is coming. Who better than me to show you how to defeat them? Take me as a prisoner if you wish, until you know that I am true to my word.”

  Spartacus looks to Skaris. “Who is this one?”

  “He’s Rufius Baebia,” the big man answers. “He was shamed for something and offered death or the arena. You will have heard of him. He is called the Persian.”

  That lights interest in Spartacus’s eyes. “You are the Persian? My lanista had plans to match me with you.”
<
br />   The Roman smiles. “You changed his plans. Do so again, and I will fight beside you instead of against you. This is meant to be. I chose the arena as my sentence so that I might live long enough to be free again. Take me with you, Thracians. I know things you will want to know as well.”

  Spartacus passes the question to Skaris, who shrugs. “This one has been a pain in my ass, but what he says is true. He knows how to kill as well.”

  That decides it. The Persian who is really a Roman named Rufius Baebia is released.

  Back on the main floor again, Drenis finds Shrew attending to his master on the training ground. The bald man is naked, gagged, and strapped to an upright wooden beam. His legs are pulled far apart by chains secured to eyebolts. His eyes quiver and jerk, more like a shrew’s than Shrew’s. By comparison, the slave is calm. He kneels, satchel open in front of him, sorting through what looks like medical instruments in all their horrible manifestations.

  “Shrew,” Drenis asks, “where are the women?”

  The man glances at him, looking annoyed to be distracted from his work. Gone is the timidity of that first interview, or the trembling tension of waiting in the alley. “What?”

  “Thracian women. You said there were two, and a girl. Where are they?”

  He jerks his head toward a corridor on the other side of the ludus grounds. “Through there. To the left when the passage ends.” And then, as something amusing occurs to him, he adds, “You might want to hurry. Others of your brethren have been that way before you.”

  Drenis does hurry. Again he thinks of Nico. He hadn’t known it before, but he doesn’t trust him, doesn’t want him to set eyes on Bendidora before he’s claimed her as his own. He has to shove his way through the corridor, for the newly released slaves are tearing the place apart. He makes the turn as Shrew described and stumbles into a courtyard, open to sky above and bright.

  They’re there. Two women and a girl. He sees them, but they are facing away. The two women are both golden-haired. The child bright red in the morning light. They live. That much of Drenis’s hope has come true. The rest of it?