The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  He walked toward Nonus, casual, his legs moving strangely, perhaps because of the trousers. He stared at Nonus with an expression that he could only read as amusement. Nonus closed his eyes. The brute would torture and kill him. Of course he would. That’s what they did. They’d cut arteries and drain his blood into cups and drink it. They’d use him like a palus, chopping his limbs off as they laid bets on the quality of blows. They’d cut off his penis and shove it into his mouth. Once he was dead, they’d burn the skin of his skull and scoop out the inside of it, and they’d gild it to drink from. He’d be with them for eternity, a ghastly drinking vessel. He’d heard all about the things barbarians did.

  Gannicus said something to the one about to cut Nonus’s neck. The man’s arm unclenched. He hauled Nonus to his feet and pushed him forward. Gannicus smiled and said in Latin, “You must be a friend. All these others here, they tried to kill us. Not you, though. You haven’t even drawn your sword.”

  Nonus looked down. It was true. There was the hilt of his sword, resting by his hip. His shield still hung awkwardly on his back.

  “If you want to draw your sword, go ahead,” Gannicus said. He paced in front of him, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He rolled his head on his shoulders. “I’ll wait. Get behind your shield as well.”

  Nonus had no idea what to do. A sudden torrent of sweat poured from his armpits. Gannicus didn’t seem to recognize him, but he’d seen the gladiator train often enough to have a host of images of the carnage he could inflict. He’d enjoyed watching the way Gannicus made a dance of it, playful and in control even as he stabbed and twirled, parried and punched. Fighting him was a losing proposition. Nonus would be dead as quickly—or slowly—as the Gaul wished.

  “No? No heart for it?” Gannicus began to pace around him. “Don’t want to split me on that pointy sword of yours?”

  It seemed important to Nonus that he not talk, as if somehow the gladiator would recognize him by his voice, and as if being recognized would be a bad thing, not a good one. He stood, heart hammering.

  “You have a tick, you know?” Gannicus said. “Here, near your shoulder. You should have it pulled.”

  The moment he said it, Nonus could feel the insect, sucking on him. Most of the others were stripping armor and weapons from the corpses and tossing them up onto the wagons. A few gathered around Nonus, talking unintelligibly about him, clearly amused.

  Gannicus stopped in front of him. “Here’s what we offer. Two ways forward. One, draw your sword. Be a Roman. Fight me. Die that way.” He shrugged. “There are worse ways. Or the other way. Take off your helmet. Breastplate. Unbuckle your sword. Give them to us, and we’ll call you friend.” He paused a moment as one of the others said something, then added, “Your sandals as well. A friend would offer his sandals.”

  A few moments later Nonus was garbed only in his undertunic. For a time he worked under the Gaul’s direction. He dragged the bodies of his comrades away from the wheels of the wagon. He got his brother out from under the horses. His brother was lucky not to have had his head kicked in, though that initial blow had knocked him into a snoring unconsciousness. This too seemed a stroke of good fortune. The Gauls found his snorts so amusing, they forgot to kill him. They didn’t forget to have Nonus strip his armor as well. Sandals too.

  And that was it. They drove off in the direction of Arrius’s legion.

  Nonus stayed put. The wagons rolled. The barbarians strolled, singing as they did so. Volesus snored. Nonus looked at the bloody corpses all around him and said, “Brother, that could have gone much worse.”

  —

  Or maybe not. The two brothers survived the day, but they were lumped in with the worst of the tremblers from all the previous encounters with Spartacus. Nonus objected, as the circumstances were so different. No matter. He was, like the real tremblers, condemned to whatever punishment the new commander chose for them.

  Decimation. Reduction by a tenth.

  “What’s it mean?” Nonus asks, grabbing his brother’s arm. Volesus won’t say.

  Nonus learns from the chattering all around him that the punishment is simple. Ancient and brutal. The tremblers are to be divided into groups of ten. One of each of those ten will be chosen to die by lot; the other nine will inflict the punishment. The rest of the army will watch it all and learn from the spectacle of seeing comrade kill comrade for the shame they share.

  Nonus’s mind reels through the information. Just one out of ten? In a way that doesn’t seem so bad. The odds are good. If he’s the one, he’s fucked. But chances are he won’t be. Right? Just don’t be the one. Around him men mumble prayers to their chosen gods, prompting Nonus to do the same. Juno. He’s always favored Juno. Silently, so that others don’t hear, he makes her grand promises of devotion, of future sacrifices and eternal gratitude and service to her name in every act. While he’s so employed, the punishment is organized.

  Soldiers work among the condemned, sorting them roughly, shoving them, kicking them. Each grouping of ten is made to draw bone chips from a cloth sack. Some do it eagerly. Some glumly. Some need to be insulted or cuffed or have their hands shoved in forcibly. A few need to hear threats of things even worse than what is to come if they don’t comply. Still others refuse altogether. One man near Nonus gets punched in the mouth for his refusal to hold out his hands. While he spits blood, the centurion who delivered the blow does the choosing for him. He presses the chip into his fist. “Don’t look at them,” he says. “Pick a chip and hold it in your fist.”

  Other men move through the groups, depositing stones beside each one. Large ones, just the size to be grasped in a hand. They dump them from slings. A few wheel them in and tip barrels of them onto the ground. They build small piles of them. So, Nonus thinks, it’s to be stoning. He saw a woman stoned once. He knows what it means to die that way.

  Please, Juno, protect me, he prays.

  When the sack is offered to him, Nonus stares at it as if nobody has told him what it is or what’s expected of him. A soldier hits him hard on the temple. “Get your paw in there!”

  Nonus extends his hand. The soldier thrusts the bag up and jiggles it, making the remaining chips dance around Nonus’s suddenly numb fingers. He can feel the chips—small squares the size of a thumb. They’re all the same. But they’re also not all the same. One of them is death. The others are life. He tries to feel a difference between them. He asks Juno to help him. Let him know which one is the evil one, which of them blessed with life.

  “Just choose, you coward!”

  The voice causes Nonus to open his eyes. There behind the soldier with the chips stands his brother. Volesus, he realizes, is in the same group of ten with him. Nonus yanks his hand from the bag, shouting, “No, he cannot choose with me! He’s my brother! You see, my brother!” He shouts it over and over again. It’s unnatural. Brother cannot be asked to kill brother.

  “Who is screaming?” a voice asks, haughty, authoritative. “That one? Was it him?”

  Before he can see who is speaking, a blow to his lower back sends a jolt of pain to Nonus’s core. He twists with the agony of it. The centurion who delivered the punch grabs a fistful of his neck skin and squeezes. One agony forgotten, another in its place. “You’re an embarrassment,” the man rasps, not the same voice that asked who was screaming. This voice is blunt, his breath is moist and rotten and exhaled through a toothless mouth. Louder, he asks, “Well, were you screaming? What are you screaming about? Answer the question!”

  Nonus has just enough composure to point out—if only to himself—that the man asked more than one question. He ignores the first and moves to the second. He can barely speak through the pain. He points at Volesus and names him as his brother.

  The centurion hauls Nonus around, and there, watching, is Crassus. Nonus wouldn’t have recognized him personally, but he wears all the trappings of his position: ornate leather body armor, the crimson cloak and bow tied around his torso. He’s flanked by lictors and chosen officers, an
d a black-skinned man stands behind him, silently watching. Crassus moves at the center of them, haughty where they’re attentive. Powerful, while they demur.

  The centurion salutes the commander, bows his head. “Sir, this one says he cannot be in this grouping. He and him.” He points from Nonus to Volesus. “These two. They’re brothers.”

  “So?” the commander responds. “That excuses them? Is that what they think?”

  Volesus, groveling, says not at all. He’s happy to draw against his brother. “I’ll throw the first stone,” he says, “even if it’s him. Especially if it’s him.”

  That doesn’t seem to move Crassus, as Volesus had intended. “Will you? You’ll kill your brother? That’s what you’re offering, is it? Give you the first stone, and you’ll cast it?” He turns to Nonus. “And what about you? Would you throw the first stone?”

  Nonus tries to read the man’s tone. Is there sympathy in it? A glimmer of possibility? Volesus offered to murder him. Does the commander despise him for that? Is he offering to let Nonus live instead, or is he testing him, seeing if he’s equally loathsome? He can’t decide. Would he throw the first stone? Why not? All of this is Volesus’s fault. All of it, right back to joining up in the first place. He nearly says as much. Nearly says, “Give me the stone.”

  But when he looks at his brother, those words die inside him. He hates him, but only as a brother hates a brother, which is sharp and true and real. He can’t deny that. But Volesus? He knows him as well as he knows any living person. He’s known him longer than any living person. When his face is gone, Nonus will have nowhere to look to see himself mirrored. He has no idea if any of his other brothers still live, or where in the world they are.

  Outside the small circle of his fate, he can hear that the punishment is being carried out among the other groups of men. He hears men crying out in pain. He hears stones snapping bones, stones thudding to the ground. He hears the grunts of exertion from those hefting them. Nonus knows he’s taking too long. Crassus has asked for an answer several times. The centurion is towering over him, breathing that hot, toothless breath into his temple.

  “No,” he says. “I would not throw the first stone.”

  The centurion draws back, looking to Crassus for direction.

  As before, Crassus’s response is immediate. “You two disgrace Rome. One of you more pathetic than the other, but I’m not sure which. The gods will decide. If it’s willed, so be. Brother kills brother. See to it.”

  The centurion doesn’t seem sure what that means. “See to it how, sir?”

  “Two chips. One life and one death. The rest are spared. See to it.”

  Nonus begins, “But we—”

  Crassus cuts him off. “One of you will kill the other. The other eight will hold their stones. If you refuse, the eight will stone you both. Centurion, see to it.”

  “You two,” the centurion snaps, “stand here.” He reaches into the chip bag and searches through it. He comes up with two chips. He displays them. One brown. One ivory-hued. “So we’re clear, brown is life; white, death.” He makes the chips disappear in his cupped hands, shaking them like dice. He thrusts out two fists, offering them to the brothers. “Take your chip.”

  Neither does. Volesus stares at the fists. Nonus stares at his brother, his cheeks twitching. “No,” he says. “No, we can’t—”

  “You shit!” The centurion grabs Volesus by the wrist and presses one of the chips into his palm, crushing his fist around it. Nonus tries to back away, but the soldier behind presses against his back with the shaft of his spear. The centurion grabs him, has to fumble with him a moment, punches him, and then gets his wrist and pries his fist open finger by finger. He steps back, holding up his hands to show everyone, but especially the two men, that his palms are empty.

  “Now show us your fate,” the centurion says. “See it, and then do what you must.”

  Volesus opens his fist. The chip is bone white.

  Nonus drops to his knees. That means his is…He lets his chip fall from his fingers to the dirt. Brown. It’s life.

  The centurion gets the other eight to form a circle around Nonus and Volesus. Each of the other men chooses his stone and holds it clenched in his fist. The centurion tells Nonus the way it should be done. Not quickly, he says. “Be a man and make this something everyone watching will remember for the rest of their lives. Smash first his feet.” He points, as if Nonus might not be able to find them if he didn’t. “The knees. Take him to the ground and work up his body. Abdomen. Chest. Break his arms and hands and fingers. Make him pulp. Bash him. Pick up the stone. Bash him. That’s the way this is done. He needs to feel it; you need to inflict it. Smash his skull last. That’s it. Now do it, Nonus. It’s your duty.”

  The centurion sweeps up one of the last stones remaining from a nearby pile. He drops it in front of Nonus. Dead weight. “The count is down from five. If I reach one, the others will stone him, and you as well. Pick it up, soldier. It’s your only choice. Five.”

  This can’t be happening, Nonus thinks. It can’t be. It’s such utter madness, beyond anything he’s seen or experienced in a life plagued by madness. He stares at the stone. It’s near enough for him to reach it, but how can he do that? Doing that means he’s going to—

  “Four.”

  He can’t. His arms are limp. He doesn’t even think he could move them if he tried.

  “Three.”

  Sure that he wouldn’t be able to do it even if he wanted to, Nonus tries to reach for the stone. He watches his hand fall over it and feels his fingers wrap around it before he fully believes he’s done so. It’s large, like an ostrich egg, he thinks. Bigger, perhaps. It’s been a long time since he’s seen one. But it’s not a shell. It’s not fragile, and there’s no life inside it.

  “That’s part of the way,” the centurion says. “Two.”

  Nonus stands, lifting the stone with him. His hand is white and pink from gripping it so firmly. It’s painful in his mangled grip. He looks at Volesus’s feet. Like all the condemned, he’s barefoot. His toes right there, tiny things crusted in dirt, things he’s supposed to smash. He can’t imagine doing it, much less picking up the stone again and again, working up his body, breaking all of him slowly. He can’t do it, and yet he has to. He looks up.

  Volesus is staring at him, his eyes red and wet. He holds his head tilted back slightly, trying to keep the moisture from spilling over his eyelids onto his cheeks. “Nonus—” It sounds like the beginning of something, but that’s all he manages.

  “Do it now,” the centurion says, but he’s lost the urgency of his countdown. “You have the stone.”

  “Our father had a farm,” Nonus says, meaning it only for his brother. “We grew cabbages. Do you remember?”

  “You hated them,” Volesus says.

  “I only said that.”

  “Yes, I knew,” Volesus says. “I always knew.” Overcome, he ducks his head.

  As soon as he does, Nonus pulls back the stone and strikes. He doesn’t aim for toes, though. With all his strength, he directs his blow at the balding crown of his brother’s head.

  Drenis

  In the fullness of the summer, Drenis had never been happier. He was still alive, and the Risen were not yet finished blazing their path. They had massacred Gellius’s army. They had strolled up to Clodianus’s force garbed as Romans, revealed themselves at the last moment, and thrashed them. Two consular legions defeated, their leaders called back to Rome in disgrace. They marched north unchallenged, taking what they needed in passing, growing stronger, their fame spreading. Under Spartacus, the wanton rape and pillage was a thing of the past. They were more than an army on the march. Not just warriors and cavalry. They were craftsmen and herders, drovers and merchants, ironsmiths and butchers and bakers. They had Astera and Kotys and gods by the hundreds. They had women. Children ran among them. New babes were born even as they moved across the land. They drove herds of horses, flocks of sheep, cattle. Wagons and carts of all
shapes and construction rolled and creaked along with their progress, laden with food snatched from around them, crops raised for them, taken as their rightful tribute. They trailed packs of dogs, and above them, in the sky, buzzards circled and crows cawed.

  They met with the magistrates of cities. They sat across from men of stature and offered the gift of friendship to them and made the case that they had mutual interests against Rome. They were stubborn, these people of Italy. Proud and disdainful of slaves. But Spartacus was as magnificent as ever. Leaner than he had been when confined to the ludus in Capua, he was burning off the fat of barley gruel to better reveal the warrior beneath. Who among these magistrates wouldn’t see, eventually, the truth of Spartacus’s assertions? This was not a slave revolt anymore. The Risen were a nation unto themselves, deserving acknowledgment as such and proving it by victory in battle. Spartacus left them to ponder the world as he imagined it for them. “Soon,” he said, “they will come calling on us. Watch. In time, they will.”

  And the people of Italy weren’t the only ones watching the Risen. Ears farther afield had heard of them. A Roman approached their camp in Picenum. He let himself be disarmed and bound, then declared that he brought correspondence they would dearly want to hear. Drenis had been in the tent as Spartacus and the senior officers heard what the man had to say.

  Julius Falcidia was broad-shouldered, with muscular arms that he said he’d inherited from his grandfather: “He was a butcher. Humble stock. My father was more ambitious.” He looked to be in the prime of life, though his hairline was already well receded. He was, he claimed, a representative of Quintus Sertorius, the rebellious Roman general. He had a scroll to prove it. By extension, he spoke in the interests of Mithridates the Sixth, the king of Pontus. The two leaders had been coordinating their efforts, each of them making war in his own theater, dividing the Roman forces and keeping them stretched thin. This was intentional, not just chance. “You, however, are an event of chance,” Falcidia said, “one that Sertorius is very pleased with.”