Castus holds up a hand but waits a bit longer. He sends a prayer to Wodanaz. And that’s it. It’s time. He drops his hand, squeezes the mare, and urges her forward. No shout, just motion. Weaving through the narrow screen of trees is a frantic confusion. Castus pulls on the reins, keeping control, staying calm, but his legs squeeze urgency into the mare as well. Not too rushed, he’s saying, but fast. The mare sees the clearing and lunges for it. She breaks through a cluster of downed branches. The brittle limbs snap against her chest and legs and speckle Castus’s face. But she’s through. Beside her, others pour into the open and quickly find their legs. Castus gives his mount the reins to open up, and she does. Oh, she does. Though he’s jolting with the mare’s gallop and he’s discarded the four-pronged Roman saddle that the horse had come to him with, the grip through his knees and legs is firm. None of them yell. They’re silent, with nothing more than the pounding of hooves to announce them. It’s not long before that’s noticed.
The Romans spot them. They respond. They turn. The side becomes the front, and all the rows behind them fall into place. They shrug out of their packs and toss the frames down. They strap on helmets, bring up their shields and overlap them, making themselves a scalloped barrier. The entire line becomes a wall, a wide one against which his two hundred may break like a wave against stone. Mounted officers gallop up and down the line, shouting orders.
Wodanaz, they are fast, Castus thinks. All Father, slow them. Cloud their minds. He wonders if Wodanaz, one-eyed, is watching. He wonders if he’s sent valkyries to aid them. Do they, even now, hang unseen in the sky above, watching to see if they’re worthy?
Hooves pounding, riders on either side of him, Castus holds the reins in his left hand. In his right, two javelins. He shifts one into the vise of his left hand and hefts the other. He shouts, “Throw!” He hurls the javelin, using his arms and torso, twisting with the throw. The missile flies and disappears over the front ranks of Roman shields, higher than he intended. Other missiles do the same. Some pierce shields. Some find a way between them. One javelin skims the top of a shield in the front line. It pierces a man in the face. He twists with the shaft of it like a deadly horn he’s blowing. A few deaths, yes, but mostly disruption. Confusion. Gaps in the shield wall. That’s what they need.
Castus switches the other javelin to his throwing hand, hefts it. As he prepares his throw, he checks. Already the Romans are reforming. They close the gaps. Others step into the place of the fallen men, and they become a wall again. They’re fast. Too fast. He doesn’t throw. They have only two volleys, and he can’t give them time to reform again. They have to reach them in a moment of chaos. That’s the only way this will work. They’re coming toward him so fast now. At least that’s how it seems. He knows they’re standing still, but they seem to race toward him at the speed of the mare’s hooves. He can see individual faces. He knows which men he’ll crash into. He sees them brace, sees their eyes and the fear there. Or the hatred.
It’s these final moments that decide the charge. The closing heartbeats. Ten of them. They are a stampede of horses and men, hooves and javelins, snorting nostrils and roar cries.
Nine heartbeats.
They must ride as if they will mow the Romans down and trample them into the earth. They must be all this, complete force, unstoppable.
Eight.
A hail of javelins rise from somewhere in the Roman host and fly toward them. Castus ignores them. He has to be unstoppable.
Seven.
It’s a lie, though. Even now, the Romans can stop them. For all the pounding motion and the screaming fury heading toward them, the Romans have the trick. They’re making themselves a wall of shields. A thing instead of so many men. All they have to do is hold still.
Six.
Castus can feel the first traces of it, the mare’s mind working, starting to balk. She—like all the horses—does not run into a motionless wall. If the Romans hold, the charge fails. If they stand still until three heartbeats, the horses will pull up and crash into one another and become a milling confusion. And they will all die because of it.
Five.
He lifts the javelin, readying his throw.
Four.
He’s so close now that when he throws, he’s aiming for the open mouth of a particular legionary. He hurls with all his strength. The others do as well. The soldier with the open mouth ducks the javelin. He avoids it, but he also dips his shield enough that the man beside him gets pierced through the base of the neck. Other missiles slam into shields, skid under foot, careen off helmets. Motion. Men. Gaps and confusion. Just enough. Enough for the soldiers to all share a moment of terror and break because of it. Enough for the horses to see routes through them and to run for them.
Castus reaches across his torso and grabs his sword hilt. He tugs. A cavalry sword, longer than a foot soldier’s, it’s hard to free the blade. He has to pull savagely on it. By the time he begins to swing the weapon, he’s already well inside the Roman infantry. They’re instantly around him, a sea of men who the mare swims through, panicked, snapping her head and rising so that she can pummel the air with her hooves. She nearly throws Castus. He presses forward, and when her forehooves touch the earth again, he urges her farther in. From her back he stabs at anyone within reach. Stabbing. Stabbing. Stabbing. That’s all he need do now. Stab and stab and stab until he dies.
Or not, if Spartacus’s plan works.
—
“Do you understand what I’m asking of you, Castus?” Spartacus had asked. Since he’d begun describing what he wished to do, he hadn’t looked tired at all. He seemed as excited as a boy dreaming of war, not a man who might actually die in the very effort he was describing. “You understand what I’m asking?”
“We are not the real attack.”
“That’s right,” he said, “you’re the feint. You’re the fist that jabs like this.” He demonstrated. “So that when they react to it, the guard is dropped, and the other fist can make the kill. You make them turn and look at you and believe you’re some mad, avenging Celts, crazed at Crixus’s death. Keep them looking at you for just a time. Then the other fist will strike.”
—
It does. The other fist. As Castus stabs and stabs, shouting, driving his mount through any gaps he can find or create, the true attack emerges from the trees on the other side of the Roman force. They come on foot, the bulk of the rebel army, but they don’t have as far to run. While the Romans near the cavalry fight to kill them—and the others look on, unable to get near—Spartacus and Gannicus, Skaris and Nico and Dolmos and Goban and all the others run from cover. They are as silent as their armor and pounding feet and panting breaths allow them to be. Silent enough that only a few Romans see them coming. Only a few shout warning, and just one gets off a single horn blast. Silent enough that many are taken down before they can even turn.
The impact of their arrival rocks the entire legion. Castus feels it, a shock that reverberates through the men around him. They don’t know what’s happening, but Castus, mounted, can see that the other fist has struck. He yanks the mare around, shouting to the other riders with a new urgency. He presses her back through the legionaries, hacking, swinging wildly to keep them at a distance. He doesn’t have two hundred with him anymore, but those who still ride turn with him and drive their way out of the legion.
Bursting into the open and galloping away, Castus, for the first time, believes he isn’t going to die today. He isn’t going to be reborn a babe in the other world. No, he lives, covered in blood. Alive. He lives because Wodanaz must be watching.
He lives because Spartacus is Spartacus.
The mare, she lives too. Good thing, because they have still more to do.
—
“Once we hit them, get free and gather your men, Castus,” Spartacus had said. “Or you, Goban, if Castus falls. Sweep around and guard the rear of the war column. Let no one escape. No horseman, certainly, but no one on foot either. Camp followers? No. Contai
n them all. Gaidres, you do the same at the northern end of the valley. Surely, riders will try to break from the cavalry in front and race to take word to Clodianus. Don’t let them. Keep word of the battle from escaping. This thing is crucial, so do it well.”
The commander had been hunched over as he spoke, directing his words from his mouth through his fingers and giving them to each man he addressed. He rose and breathed and addressed them all. “Do you know why the killing will be easy? A Roman soldier is only as good as his discipline. They are not as powerful as us individually. They’re not tall and strong like us. But they’ve looked out at a world of better men and found ways to defeat us. They found ways to train that take best advantage of cowardice. Because the Roman way of fighting is cowardly, isn’t it? Behind shields, locked so close together there’s no choice but to jab, jab at whatever faces you. They teach them what to do ahead of time. Each man has his role, and it’s small, and he—being a coward—has to play only his small part. We Thracians don’t like fighting that way. We want our gods to see our acts of valor. And how can they see when everything is hidden behind those shields and you can’t tell one man from another?”
“That’s no way to fight,” Gannicus agreed.
“No, it’s not, but as a whole they become more than a Roman can be on his own. It’s clever. And this cleverness, we will deny it to them.”
—
As ordered, Castus does. He mills with his company out of reach of the foot soldiers, assessing them, snapping orders to keep them moving quickly. Castus doesn’t count how many are still with him. The numbers are the numbers. Counting them won’t change that. Some are injured and will have to stay here, guarding this flank with their presence more than their actual ability. One man’s foot dangles from his ankle. He howls at the pain of it, staring at it and scrabbling on the ground as if he’s trying to kick it free. Another pretends to be fine and says as much when Castus asks after him. A moment later he topples from horseback, landing on his head and snapping his neck. A quick death, better than the gut wound that weakened him and would also have killed him, but slowly. Men wrap cuts with ribbons of cloth they’d brought for the purpose.
Goban has a head wound that looks horrible. He dismounts and stands bent over, shaking his head from side to side, spraying blood from his long hair. Castus fears his wits are gone, but it’s just that the blood stings his eyes. He remembers the stream and runs for it, plunging his head in. It’s an ugly cut, but it’s just scalp that was ripped from his skull. The bone beneath is intact. Castus wishes Philon wasn’t away on his mission. They have other healers, but he trusts the Greek the most. With help, Goban wraps his head and mounts, looking, with his bulbous head, like a pale version of a desert Libyan. He spits blood and teeth and says, “Sorry. I’m ready.”
A good soldier, Goban. If they both live, he’ll tell him so later.
Some horses are lame or are bleeding out. Men quickly trade them. Dispatch them as necessary. His mount is nicked here and there, likely bruised deeply, but she feels sound beneath him. He feels her chest with his hands. There’s blood, but of course there’s blood.
When he has all the riders he can on mounts that will still carry them, they turn and ride along the legion, just far enough out to go unmolested. They ride the whole long line of them until they get around the rear end. They fan out, spaced wide, and they let no one escape. No one. Not Roman soldiers. Not camp followers. Not the Roman horseman who thinks his mount is faster than theirs. Not the knot of women who try to slip through them, begging with their hands raised not to be harmed. Not the boy fleeing with a bundle of rope over his shoulder. Not the officer who rides with a mounted guard tight around him. They almost get out but don’t. No one escapes.
Castus catches only occasional glances of the main melee. As with any battle, it’s hard to make sense of a confused swarm of men in motion. The two armies are engaged in one massive brawl. He can’t divide the two sides, as they’re all mixed together. Romans haven’t held to the formations of neat rectangles they favor. And that’s a good thing. That’s what Spartacus wanted, to smash their ordered ranks into chaos and make it a man-to-man slaughter. It’s a free-for-all. And if it’s a free-for-all, the gladiators win.
Goban arrives beside him, wheeling a horse that he barely has control of. The bandages on his head are brown with blood, but he grins a newly toothless grin. “Today is ours! It’s ours!” He points. “Look, even their horses are abandoning them. That one is mine.” He kicks his mount to intercept a riderless Roman horse, one regally attired. A tribune’s horse? A legate’s?
No, it’s Goban’s.
That thought makes Castus smile as well.
They finish the battle. The Risen pick their targets and chase them down, stabbing them in the back and cutting their legs out from under them and slitting throats. Then it’s rounding up surrendering troops, abusing them, stripping them of weapons and armor, and making them stand, dejected and dishonored, in a circle of armed killers. Signs of rank are stripped from officers. They’re made to stand like the others. Spartacus presides over this formally, establishing order as he does so. He has all their armor gathered in a mass. He makes sure that all the prisoners—How many? Hundreds? Thousands?—are gathered in one mass, defenseless. When they are, he gives the order and has them slaughtered with their own weapons. The Risen who surround the dying soldiers howl and shout and lose themselves in bloodlust. Before long they are climbing over a circle of bloody corpses to get at those still living. Until they’re all dead.
After them, it’s their wounded. Found where they lie or crawl, moan and beseech. Each of them slain. Complete defeat. Of how many? Six? Seven thousand?
While Castus has no sympathy for the Romans, something about the complete slaughter of unarmed men puts a knot in his stomach. It seems, before he understands it, an act of wanton cruelty. As much as they can kill and want to kill and will kill Romans, he doesn’t like to think of Spartacus being wantonly cruel.
As it turns out, he’s not. He’s tactically cruel. No more or less.
Kaleb
“Come attend this thing with me,” Crassus says. “I want it documented for my papers. Afterward we’ll see to the matters of correspondence.”
The senator stands in his camp tent, arms raised. His body slave works beneath them, attempting to put the finishing touches on his accouterments. The boy is not one of Crassus’s but was assigned by the legion on Crassus’s arrival in Picentia, far from Rome, the edge of civilization, as it were. South of them, rugged mountains, home to wild things and men and, of late, fugitive slaves. Kaleb is beginning to suspect that the boy was chosen as some small slight against the new commander, as he doesn’t seem familiar with the work. He’s already had to retie the scarlet sash of Crassus’s new rank several times, seemingly unable to drape the bow to Crassus’s liking.
“As you wish,” Kaleb says. He’s already opened the circular leather container his master’s personal mail arrived in. From it, he’s plucked out and arranged the papyrus rolls on his camp desk. One column for military correspondence, one for financial concerns, one for personal matters. Having read the personal ones already, a portion of his mind composes the responses he’ll write in the senator’s name. Those ones—matters familial and marital—Crassus has no issue with Kaleb reading before him. It’s the military and the financial letters that he’s more guarded with.
Signs of the body slave’s growing distress are obvious. His fingers start to tremble. Kaleb wants to tell him to relax. It’s just a bow, easy to tie no matter the waist it’s meant to adorn. It’s not for him to offer advice, though, certainly not in front of his master. Instead, he says, “There are three letters from your wife.”
Crassus scowls at the boy. “No, fool! Look, you’ve made the two ends uneven. Start again. Start right in order to finish right. Do it.”
Stuttering an apology, the boy does.
When Crassus answers Kaleb, his tone is different. While it falls short of bridg
ing the master-slave status between them, it’s familiar, only mildly condescending. It’s the voice he uses with Kaleb in private. His tone showing a lean measure of favor toward the Ethiopian that contrasts with his growing disdain for the fumbling slave. “Tertulla thinks I have nothing better to do than correspond with her about the details of life back in Rome. Read them to me later, then write a response. The usual things. My love and that. All is well. Assure her that glory is coming to the house of Crassus. You know the words.”
“Yes, master,” Kaleb says. He’s penned such missives hundreds of times already. While traveling to oversee far-flung investments. When Tertulla was away at one of their country villas. Even, on occasion, when husband and wife were both in Rome but Crassus couldn’t bother to walk from his quarters through to hers. He’s written several already on this venture and will certainly write quite a few more before the work is concluded.
“Oh, leave off it!” Crassus snaps, swatting the slave’s hands away. “Go. Spend the night in practice and have it right by tomorrow.” He grabs one of the boy’s hands and squeezes it in his fist. “Make these fingers useful to me, or I’ll feed them to the camp dogs. You hear?” He releases his hand. “Go.”
The boy slinks away, looking much like an abused imitation of one of those camp dogs. If he gets a chance, Kaleb decides, he’ll talk with him in the morning. Calm him if he can. He doubts Crassus would actually feed his fingers to dogs. That would be a waste, and Crassus is never wasteful. He would, however, have the boy reassigned to some work that might be worse than losing his fingers.
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