Walking beside Kastor, breathing hard even as he tries to look calm, he asks, “Where are we going?”
“Do you know a safe house to hide in?” Kastor asks, but then immediately scowls the idea away. “No, that won’t work. Romans are thorough bastards. They’ll know by now each and every person you are acquainted with in the city. That Iphitus, if he didn’t betray us before, he will have by now.”
Philon wipes at his eyes, trying to clear them of the stinging sweat trickling into them. He only makes the stinging worse, his vision blurrier. Kastor has to yank him by the elbow into yet another alley, narrow and overhung, dim enough that the man seems to know not to let go of him. Together like that, they continue, arguing both the identity of the betrayer and the best course of action now. Kastor is for working their way down to the harbor, coming in through the fish paste warehouses. They should be able to see if Bolmios is docked where he said he would be. If he is, he may still be true to them. It’s possible. The Romans could’ve found them in a hundred other ways. There are always hands greedy for Roman coin.
But Philon will have none of it. It means nothing if Bolmios awaits them except that he’s set yet a further trap. They should get out of the city immediately, he argues. Head inland, perhaps, to Acrae. Or just enough to then traverse to a quieter coastal town. Elorus would do. They still have coin. Surely they could find someone to make the journey to Rhegium. He has more than one idea, and they tumble out as if each were racing to get ahead of the other.
“No,” Kastor says. “First we find out about Bolmios. Any other way has a thousand risks. But if he is still true, he is the way back. Straight as an arrow.” He gestures in a manner that shows the simple ease of his logic. Arrow straight. From here to safety, just like that.
Philon has never doubted one of the man’s assertions more. “He fooled us both. And you he’s still fooling.”
Kastor makes a face, one that says he doesn’t agree or disagree. “Anyway, he’s not the only one who knew our mission. Remember that.”
—
That was true enough. At this point—weeks here on Sicily—many knew of them and what they proposed. That was the point of this venture. It’s why he met with Acamas in Panormus. Here was a man who had been sold on the same auction block as Philon. Who better to begin with? Who better to share a dream of freedom in the making? Next it was the two brothers, Diocles and Phillip, in Lilybaeum. He had known them in childhood and found they still burned with the same hatred of their lot they’d always harbored. He spoke with a gathering of field hands in a barn outside of Leontini, and farther inland he spent the night huddled over a fire with shepherds, filling their heads with grand notions. He told of what Spartacus had done, and of what he promised he would do. He detailed the signs and portents that attested to his greatness, and he saw that his words made many minds reel with the possibilities.
There was fear as well. Skepticism. Doubt. Questions. So many questions. But that was all to be expected. And there was danger in each and every encounter. Yes, he sought out people he knew well, but his words could not be only for them. Any of them, he knew, could betray them. That was how uprisings were squashed before they began. But trusting and spreading the word was how they were born as well.
“If we live through this and make it back to Spartacus in one piece, I’ll believe anything is possible,” Kastor said after a stilted, fractious meeting with the fishermen of some small village. “I’ll kiss Astera’s feet and tongue that goddess of hers if she’ll have me.”
“I hope to see that,” Philon said. “The part about kissing the priestess’s feet, I mean.”
Kastor threw an arm over his shoulder. “No, my tongue in the goddess would be the thing to see. Trust me.”
Weeks in now, Philon did trust him. More than that, he had come to know him. Kastor liked words, and he liked best to talk about himself. For some reason, this wasn’t the bore it could’ve been with other men. If Kastor were only foolish talk, Philon would have grown tired of him. But he also spoke of things that made him seem more a puzzle than the open book he proclaimed to be. The time, as a boy, that he cut off the tip of his favorite dog’s tail. He was mad at his father and had an ax to hand, and the dog’s tail was there and above the chopping block, and he was wagging it. Something about this annoyed him. He let the ax blade drop and heard the dog howl the pain of it and run bleeding away. It was, he claimed, the worst thing he’d ever done.
Or that he had a wife back in Galatia who bore him a child. Only the boy was born earlier than he should’ve been, and he was stouter than he should’ve been at the same time. The numbers of months, when he counted them on his fingers, did not sit right. Nor did the boy’s dark eyes. He knew the child had been conceived when he was away on campaign. He knew, but he never said a word about it. He didn’t disown the child, or beat his wife, or kill her. Instead he raised the boy and even loved him for the few short years he had before fighting in the wrong battle and losing and becoming a slave to Rome.
One evening as the two men talked in the back of the gently swaying boat, Kastor said, “You know, before coming on this journey, I almost gave Sura pledges. You know the woman I mean, right?”
Philon knew her. He’d never liked her. “She’s the one who always looks angry.”
Kastor looked at him with a curious expression. “You think so? I wouldn’t say angry. Hungry, that’s what she is. Not for food, I don’t mean that. She wants things.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Her hair. You know what it reminds me of? Ripening barley. It’s the same golden color.”
Philon, if asked, would say her hair was yellow. Challenged to compare it to something? He would say straw.
“I had a mind to ask her to go to Galatia with me, once this war is won. I didn’t say it to her, but I thought it. I don’t suspect my wife has waited for me, and that boy isn’t mine, so…You know the thing about her? I must’ve made her feel good, and she lay on my chest talking. She was just a girl when she was enslaved. She never married. Never had a man. She was just an Odomanti girl when they took her to Rome and then other places and eventually Capua. You know what that means for her?”
Philon didn’t answer.
“Yes, that’s right. You do know. She has not had a good life. Whatever she might have been if she were free…that was denied her. It’s no fault of hers. Just fate being cruel. When I get back, I’ll tell her. Why not make her feel good, eh? I should have said these things to her.”
“Say them when you return.”
Kastor shrugged. “Maybe.”
“What are your people like?” Philon asked. “For someone from the east, you don’t seem…eastern.”
“Ah, that. Easily explained.” He leaned in as if confiding a secret. “I’m a Celt just the same as Crixus and the like. Yeah? But we Galatians got bored of our homeland. We went on an adventure. Fought our way east, then down through Greece. The Greeks had been mighty, yes? But my people found them short. Right? We beat them and looked for more. And then a king heard of this and sent for us. A Bithynian. He says, ‘Come fight for me in my land. Kill my enemies, and I will pay you well.’ So we did that. We crossed the Bosporus and fought for him. Then, when that was done, the king said, ‘Friends, piss off. You’re not my problem anymore.’ Fair enough, right? But we liked it there. So we went a little distance away—out of respect—and then we stayed. That’s all there is to it. We are Celts abroad. You Greeks do the same.”
“You were there for this?”
“No, I wasn’t so lucky. It’s all true, though.”
Weeks later, all the cities on their itinerary completed, Sicily nearly circumnavigated, he and Kastor both yet had their heads residing on their shoulders. They’d talked themselves hoarse and knew they’d been heard. Sicily would not rise on its own, but it would erupt when Spartacus touched the flame to it. Confident of that, Philon proposed one more stop. Why not? One more city. One more friend to get reacquainted with.
A
nd what was that last city, with that last friend to visit? Syracuse. Lovely, cramped, learned Syracuse. Home, through the ages, to so many men of note. Famous men of science and learning, of warcraft and commerce. And not-so-famous men, like one Iphitus, an actor in a theater troupe that, fortunately, was doing a long engagement in the city. Philon had heard this from Pavlos, though he didn’t let on how keenly the news interested him. Once he’d won Kastor’s reluctant agreement, he’d convinced Bolmios to drop the two of them at the city docks. The pirate was to carry on to Catana on his own business but would return for them in two days’ time. Over those two days, Philon hoped Iphitus would entertain them in the Greek style. He was not a likely agent to aid the uprising. This was a social matter. He was a friend from his youth, once a close one. Philon didn’t offer a full explanation of their closeness, but he didn’t have to.
“Men fucking each other?” Kastor had frowned at the thought.
“No, friend. Men sharing each other’s company. Good food and wine and leisure, talking of high things. The fucking is optional.”
As he described it, so it was. They watched the actor perform in some dreary drama by a local writer, a name Philon couldn’t manage to keep in his head, especially as he saw little promise in his work. Still, though, Iphitus was every bit the man Philon would’ve hoped he’d grow into. Slim, but with balls of muscle perched on his shoulders. Not a warrior’s musculature. More an acrobat’s. Black, curly hair, with eyebrows that were a bit too prominent from up close, but fine for the contortions of acting. Ears that jutted out just a little, enough so that Philon wanted to pinch them, as if playing with a child.
The play they got up to that first night was not the play of children, though. Nor the next, when the three men were the last to drink through the night, outlasting Iphitus’s theater companions. That night saw the weakening, to some degree, of Kastor’s resolve. A long, drunken flirtation, so much lewd talk, leading up to Iphitus asking for a glimpse of Kastor’s thing of legend.
Kastor shrugged. He smiled. “Since you ask so nicely.” He tugged at the cord holding his skirt tight to his waist. When he had it undone, he peeled back the fabric and unfurled his much-touted glory. “As I said, isn’t it?” Both Greeks agreed. Sighing, Kastor leaned back. He flattened himself against the couch. “Go ahead then. Show me what four Greek hands can do.”
Philon cleared his throat. “What?”
“You heard me. Look, Greek, this is not yesterday. It’s not tomorrow. I know what was past, but not what’s to come. I’m here now, though. So…show me what four Greek hands can do.”
—
Quite a night, that one. Only ruined by the arrival of day, and the battering down of a door, and this flight.
“Smell that? We’re near.” As Kastor leads them out again into an open lane, Philon realizes just where they arrived. Fish stink. The pungent, sickeningly alluring scent of the paste vats. The whole time Kastor has been leading them toward the harbor, as they had arranged with the pirates.
“No! I said not to the docks! The pirates sold us out. Why don’t you see it?”
Kastor pulls him close and keeps his voice low. “I don’t think so. I just don’t feel it. You have to trust me. I know men better than you do.” He lets that sit a moment, then finds amusement in it. Grins. “I should say, I know men differently than you do. Let’s just spy the docks and see if Bolmios is where he said he would be.”
Philon doesn’t get a chance to answer. Hand clamped to the Greek’s elbow, Kastor pulls him into the busy fish market they must pass through to gain the vantage point onto the docks. He can see the alley they want on the far side. Just there, yet with so many in their way. Despite himself, Philon follows the taller man, his gaze bouncing about, searching for Roman soldiers.
He finds them. Three of them enter from the very alley they seek. Further proof! Philon thinks. He swears under his breath. Kastor is silent, but by the way he turns and suddenly begins to inspect a display of fresh-caught fish, it’s clear he saw them too. “Look at these,” he says. “I like the sole. Don’t you? I mean for freshness.”
“We can’t be caught,” Philon says. “If we are, everything is—”
“We won’t be. Just don’t look at them, and stand here talking about the fish. The fish. Look at the fish.” To help him, Kastor leans and points, indicating an overlapping display of flat-sided fish. “The sole is fresh, but mackerel, that’s what I favor. I like a fish with richer meat, don’t you?”
The fishmonger, who had been finishing with another customer, arrives in time to praise his eye. Just caught this morning, she claims. Just now laid out on the mat. She says, “Watch they don’t flap away.”
As she speaks Latin, Philon switches to Greek, his voice low and only for Kastor. “We can’t be caught.” He tries to look at the fish, but he can’t help following the Romans. They’re moving through the stalls, getting closer. “If we’re caught, everything is ruined. Nothing of what we arranged will hold.”
“If we’re caught, we’ll have more immediate concerns than that.” Kastor’s Greek is ugly. He sounds like a Macedonian pig farmer when he speaks. Philon has told him this before, but every time he thinks it anew. In Latin, he tells the fishmonger, “The sole. We’ll take the sole. Ah—six of them.”
He hears Kastor haggling with the woman on the price, but he doesn’t follow it. The Romans pass into the row of merchants. That’s good, but they’re still near. They begin to work down the aisle toward them. They stop a little ways down, and Philon pulls his eyes away just as the third man seems about to look at him.
When he looks back at the fish stall, the woman—having just handed Kastor a parcel of fish wrapped in a cloth—is staring at him. So, for that matter, is Kastor.
“Really, Philon? You can’t manage to just stand here?” Kastor looks so frustrated with him that Philon begins to form a defense. The Galatian knocks his words away with a swipe of his long fingers. He leans in and whispers, “Here’s what we do. Walk. We just walk. This way.”
There’s so much sense in that plan. The way for them is clear. The route open, and the Romans in conversation in the next aisle. Philon tries to walk casually, but for some reason walking is a trick of a thing. Nothing feels right about it. Hasn’t he walked countless steps in his life? He seems to have forgotten how to do it and is stiff because of it.
Still, the ground passes beneath him. The stalls slide by. The people around them move, oblivious. The Romans don’t call to them. Though he can’t believe it, the alley mouth swallows them, and they’re in shadow and away and—though he could barely manage walking—running seems to come easier. Because of it they’re away from the market, into the maze of lower streets, and soon out onto the ledge from which to view the northern pier that Bolmios promised to meet them at this very morning.
“Shit,” Kastor says.
Beside him a moment later, Philon sees the same sight. No boat. Not Bolmios’s, at least. Nothing, though the date and time were such that he should have arrived even the night before. Then they hear the sound behind them. Unmistakable. The sound of sandals slapping hard and rapid on the paving stones. The sound of pursuit. When he and Kastor turn around, though, it isn’t Roman soldiers converging on them. Kastor calls it first.
“Bolmios!”
The pirate and one of his crew members careen into view, looking out of breath and disheveled in a manner exaggerated by their flamboyant garb. Bolmios slows his pace, frowns as if he doesn’t enjoy being caught hurrying. He tugs at the drape of his shirt as he walks the last few paces toward them, displeased with the way it billows over his waist cord. “You fools are hard to find,” he says in a rapid whisper. “We’ve been scouring the city for you. And just when we catch sight of you, you flee. I take it you know the Romans are after you?”
“So we’ve gathered,” Kastor answers.
“Let’s go then. The ones in the market may have spied us trailing you.” He asks one of his crewmen, “Tarhun, which way?”
<
br /> Tarhun answers with a thrust of a long finger.
“Come.” Bolmios begins to follow it, around the corner in a different direction than either of them had come from.
Philon grabs Kastor’s wrist. “Wait! Why should we trust you?”
Wheeling back on him, Bolmios forgets his whisper. “Why should you trust us? You little shit! We’ve been dodging Romans to track you down.”
“You weren’t where you were supposed to be.”
“Be glad of it. We can still get out of here. Come.”
“Kastor,” Philon says, “we can’t go with them. Who is to say they won’t lead us right to soldiers?”
Before Kastor could respond, Bolmios explodes. “You doubt us? Us?” His hands do a rapid, frustrated dance in front of his face, as if he is grasping at flying insects with murderous intent. “You stupid Greek! Look to your own for treachery. I don’t know who betrayed you, but it wasn’t us. We learned of it just in time. That’s why we moved the boat. No time to reach you first. Listen. I am here! You see me? Come with me now. I’ve already put my neck out too far for you.” He strides off in the direction his crewman had indicated.
Tarhun beckons to them. “Come on! We’re with you. Just come!”
Philon clenches Kastor’s wrist to stop him from following. Turning back on him, the Galatian says, “I told you. I trust them! We have no—” His eyes jump from Philon’s face to something beyond him. “Hell. And me without even a knife…”
It is one of the Roman soldiers from the market. Seeing them, he draws his sword and comes forward behind the point of his blade. Head turned to the side, he shouts back toward unseen comrades.
Kastor repeats his “Hell.”
That’s enough to convince the Roman he has his quarry. “Stand still! You are captured.”
Kastor doesn’t stand still. He walks toward the soldier and begins speaking to him casually. “Ah, I know you,” he says. “You’re looking for those slaves, aren’t you?”
Tarhun bolts.
“Stand still!”
The Risen Page 26
