“Has it occurred to you,” said Betto, “that while you were out looking for the next great lecture series, most of the rest of us were happy just to get laid without our pricks falling off.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What in Cerberus’s two tongues are you talking about?”
“I need more skills.”
Betto looked dumbfounded. “Why couldn’t you just say that?” He turned to Malchus. “Why couldn’t he just say that?”
And so it was that Betto and I began our training all over again.
Chapter XI
56 - 55 BCE Winter, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
It was several weeks after our mission to the balnea Numa before lady Cornelia and Livia could both be released from their social and medical obligations to travel together into town. The streets were still unsafe, and would remain so until after the elections, which Crassus would continue to have postponed until Januarius. I forbid Livia from this outing; she laughed. Why is it I will not be taken seriously? Neither her personal safety nor the threat of rain would make her see sense, and I could not bring myself to have the guards confine her. She argued her position with a whispered kiss against my ear. “You’ll thank me next time you suffer from one of your migraines.” The headache would arrive either way, for the thought of her out and vulnerable in the city was making my temples throb and the cords in my neck turn to iron.
After a promise that our itinerary would have a single destination and no impulsive excursions, Malchus, Valens, the lady’s man, Buccio and I escorted the women to the herbalist’s, a tiny shop down a crooked street little more than an alleyway. Betto had wanted to come as well, but domina was out preparing for the parties that would festoon Sulla’s Victory games like banners. Crassus had sent so many men to guard her, including Betto, that you could barely see her litter, let alone get near it. We opted to abandon the use of such a carriage, as it would attract more unwanted attention than our paltry guard could comfortably accommodate. As for Hanno, he had discovered the stables, and the horses had discovered him. Love grew unbridled, if you will forgive the pun, by horse and boy alike.
The games were of particular importance to the Crassus household, since they were held to honor Sulla’s victory against Marius and Cinna in the Civil War a generation earlier. There was not a Roman alive older than forty who did not remember that the battle at the Colline Gate would have been lost had it not been for Marcus Crassus and his 2,500 Spaniards. Sulla’s forces were about to be overwhelmed when my master, right beneath the very walls of the city, broke through Marius’ Samnite defenders, allowing Rome to be taken into the loving but brutal arms of its conqueror. Some of the older optimates could still be heard to murmur that had Crassus been just a little older (he was thirty-three at the time) the city and the dictatorship might have gone to him. Rome loves nothing so much as a hero.
I have reminded you on several occasions that I am no Roman. While Crassus would be the man of the hour for the last week of October, this celebration, of all the dozens of festivals held throughout the Roman calendar, was most reviled by this chronicler. Before Sulla had himself declared dictator of Rome, he and his armies had been preoccupied with the sacking of Athens, abducting everything of value, from our books, to our art, to our greatest minds. To whit, me. To be fair, at nineteen, my mind still had some small way to go before it would come fully into its season. That point aside, this festival had special significance for me: not long after the butchery had abated I was captured, brutalized and chained; given as a gift of gratitude from the victorious general to his young lieutenant. While Rome drinks, eats and whores itself into a stupor to mark the occasion, for me this holiday must in perpetuity commemorate the end of my freedom and the beginning of my life as a slave.
If this were not reason enough to abhor these games, I have another. For over 700 years the festival that honored mighty Zeus was held in Olympia near the town of Elis, a celebration of man’s feeble but worthy attempt to mimic the gods in prowess and speed. It is no coincidence that these two festivals, one infant, the other ancient and venerable, are held at the same time of year. As I have previously perhaps overstated, when Sulla’s armies trampled our fair city, the dictator transported everything he could lay his hands on to Rome, including the Olympic Games themselves. Fortunately, he died two years later and no one objected when the official competition quietly stole back to Greece, where it belonged. As Greece honored Zeus, so Rome continues to venerate Sulla with its imitation of the Olympiad. And Rome, being the repository for all the world’s stolen wealth that it is, keeps offering greater and greater prizes for the winners in each event. The celebration of Sulla’s conquest is an irresistible cynosure for every athlete within a thousand miles. They stream to Rome to compete, leaving our original celebration destitute of quality competitors. I spit on Sulla’s Victory games. In private, naturally.
•••
I paid little attention to whatever ointments and herbs Livia was purchasing. My eyes, and those of Valens and Malchus, were trained on the crowded street, scanning for trouble. Buccio kept a rear guard at the back entrance to the shop. All of us had short clubs looped into our belts, save for our two real legionaries, Malchus and Valens, who kept their hands on the pommels of their ill-concealed swords. And of course, there were my knives.
We came to grief at the intersection of the wide Nova Via and the Porta Mugonia at the base of the Palatine. To our left loomed the vined and hoary columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator. The wind rose, the bare branches of the trees above us on the hill argued with each other in coarse, scratchy voices, and it began to rain. We were just about to start our climb to home and safety when Livia called my name with low urgency. We turned to see twenty of Clodius Pulcher’s brutes walking quickly down the cream brick steps of the temple. Most were unknown to us but their leaders had sickeningly familiar faces. To a man they wore the look of smug imprudence that comes from being on the side with overwhelming odds in its favor. Two of them wore the trappings of gladiators: a retiarius with his net and trident, and a hoplomachus, with padded leggings, a small round shield on his left forearm, a dagger in his left hand and a stained lance in his right. Neither of them wore helmets, but their expressions were as hard as armor. Those two stood on either side of Velus Herclides. There were only four or five long strides between us.
“Furina’s feces!” Malchus muttered under his breath. “This is not good, Alexander.”
“Drusus Quintilius Malchus,” Herclides called, smiling like a cat with a sparrow beneath its paw, “How do you like me without the beard?”
“This crossroads is a sacred place,” Malchus called back as Herclides’ men moved in, forming a semi-circle in the broad plaza of the gate. Behind us rose the Palatine.
“I was hoping you and I might have another moment.”
“And you’ve just brought weapons into a temple.”
“But as you can see, we’ve brought them back out again.” His men chuckled.
“Bad luck to spit in the face of the gods,” Valens said. His gladius slid into view, whispering a soft farewell to its scabbard. Behind Herclides, the scarred Palaemon leered.
Malchus held Valens back with an outstretched arm, then stepped in front of him. “Your complaint lies with me, Velus. Let us walk apart and settle our differences privately.”
“You?” Herclides said with surprise. “You’re a fellow legionary. How could you think a bone with any meat on it lay between us?” His face was smiling, but his eyes, flitting left then right to check the positioning of his men, made my legs weak. “It’s the women we want, same as before.”
I called out, “What would Clodius Pulcher say if he knew what you were up to?”
“Well, if it isn’t the Mantis. Best guess? He’d probably say, ‘save some for me.’”
When the laughter died down I said, “You know who we serve.” Som
ehow, I kept my voice from flying off into the upper registers. “Let me remind you: Marcus Licinius Crassus.”
“Mantis, hadn’t you better start praying?” This evoked a drool-laced cackle from Palaemon.
“Back then,” I continued, fear spilling words from my mouth like bees fleeing the nest, “you must have been, what? Fifteen? Twenty? Old enough to remember. The Via Appia? Spartacus? You are no more than twenty assembled here. Marcus Crassus was in a hurry back then, what with wanting to nail up six thousand as quickly as he could. With you lot, he’d most probably, and this is just a guess, of course, but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he took his time with you and your men. You’d be begging for crucifixion by then, that is, if you still had tongues. Is that how you picture the end of your days, Velus Herclides.”
“That’s good, Mantis. Truly.” Herclides’ voice wavered just a fraction. “But if you keep needling me, who’s going to be around to tell him? Besides, I can always grow another beard.”
“You know I can’t allow this, Velus,” Malchus said in a low and steady voice, his weapons drawn. His hands had been empty, but now, as if by sorcery, pugio and gladius circled slowly in each hand.
“Why Camilla,” Herclides said to Malchus’ gladius, “aren’t you looking bright and shiny today.” He rubbed his roughly shaved chin with a hand fairly covered with coarse, black hairs. Tufts of the same sprouted from the back of his rough-spun tunic and climbed the front of his chest to the base of his neck. “I might spare you,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait. You shouldn’t have interfered, Drusus. As many as we are now, it’ll take hours to get these lovelies back to you. Think of the time you would’ve saved if you’d have let the Mantis hand them over back at the baths.”
Valens turned to Malchus and said quietly, “The road up the hill is narrow. Easier to defend.” Then he walked up to Herclides, his sword point two feet from his chest. “You sure your blurry eye is up for this?” he asked.
Herclides shrugged. “For what? Nodding my fucking head?”
Which he did.
“Valens!” Malchus yelled. The retiarius threw his net from Valens’ left. Minucius leapt right to dodge its iron entanglement, and stepped into the braced and waiting point of the hoplomachus’ lance, a trap the two gladiators must have planned from the outset. Valens made no sound that we could hear above the hiss of the rain. Minucius dropped his sword and grabbed the wooden shaft with both hands to try with all his might, his strength sapped by agony, to stop what he knew would happen next. The gladiator pushed and twisted, then yanked the weapon out from his body with a sickening tearing sound. Minucius Valens fell dead in the street.
Many things happened either in quick succession or simultaneously, I cannot remember clearly. Malchus bellowed, switched dagger and sword hands and threw his pugio into the neck of the hoplomachus. The gladiator had enough strength to pull the blade from his throat, gripping it as Minucius had held the lance that had killed him. Then he fell to his knees, pitched forward onto our fallen friend, his own blood spreading across the back of the man he had killed.
There were only two daggers in my belt. Now one of them lodged just below the neck of the villain nearest Malchus, the thrust of his sword aborted by my blade. It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.
Brutal death is a thing unnatural, a foul insult to whatever order holds sway in the universe. Or a bloody argument that we are lost in the midst of Chaos. Valens was the first victim laid upon the altar of Crassus' revenge. A man I never knew was the second. So many would follow, I weep to think of it.
Drusus screamed for us to run. We turned our backs on our assailants and fled up the hill, knowing there was no hope of escape. Livia and I did our best to shepherd our small flock away from the wolves who loped confidently behind us. Fifty feet ahead the road narrowed. If we could make it that far, we could turn and defend ourselves. It would be the most logical place for us to fight and die. Only an instant before I had wondered what kind of man gives his life for those he barely knows? I wanted to hate Valens because I was unable to find another way to end this. Because I knew such pointless bravery was beyond my understanding, beyond my emulation. Valens had once joked that a hero is a fool too afraid to have the good sense to turn and run away, but his last act among the living gave that jest the lie.
They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a man will always make a choice—either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain that death is stalking you with strides you cannot outrun, there is no time for thought. You do not choose. Like Betto, or Malchus, or Valens, you act, doing either one thing or the other. Now I understood the lesson Minucius had taught us. I glanced at Livia, her knuckles wrapped white around a small club I had not seen her conceal, her features constricted with determined antagonism. I was furious and wretched to think of all the things we were all about to lose.
Then we stopped. Everyone stopped. There came a noise so startling, so magnificent, that all who heard it were compelled to seek it out, their eyes drained of will, filled with terror. If there was a herald to announce the eruption of a volcano, if the gods trumpeted a warning before the earth split apart and solid ground became as jelly, this was that noise. It was the sound that birthed all despair. It was doom proclaimed in a register so low with so many discordant voices the rain itself lost hope and abated. Malchus was first to regain himself and shout for us all to resume our flight.
The best gladiators are inured to distraction. This sound was curious, but no immediate threat to the retiarius. He turned to look behind him, saw nothing and returned to the task at hand, the task assigned to him and paid for by Velus Herclides. He hefted his trident, shifting it ever so slightly in his upturned palm to settle in that well-worn place of perfect balance. In that moment, flesh and black ash and iron were all as one. Malchus, protecting our rear and retreating backwards up the hill, made a large and unavoidable target. Thirty feet separated the gladiator from Drusus. Another sixty lay between my friend and me. I pushed Livia up the hill and ran the other way.
The retiarius was about to release his spear. He was too far away for me to risk a throw on the run, but by the time I could get close enough it would be too late. I shouted, “DOWN!” and hoped that Malchus could hear me above the din. Though he must have heard my feet slamming on the path above him, though his back was to me, Malchus did not waste time turning round to question his orders. He kicked his feet back and threw his hands out in front of him. The trident was moving through the air, but I had called my warning too soon: the gladiator had adjusted the angle of his throw. Its three barbed points would pierce Drusus through his left side. My knife was out; for this to work, the spear’s living target would be but a blink away from my own. I aimed my blade, leading my mark at a point just to the left of where Malchus’ knees were when he was standing a heartbeat before. The knife spun at an oblique angle into the tines of the spear, disrupting its flight just before I crashed into Malchus myself. His main weapon spent, the tactical situation on the ground changing in an instant, the gladiator bolted. Malchus and I scrambled to our feet; I found myself warding off our assailants with the gladiator’s trident alongside an extremely put out Camilla.
•••
The noise was unbearable. To our left, from the direction of the forum, the Nova Via emptied into the plaza about one hundred yards from our vantage point. Now, bursting from the wide avenue came a running throng. They did not stop to admire the temples or basilicas that lined its borders, but ran as if safety lay without the city walls. Many of them were shouting; some were screaming. They were pushed, almost physically, by stentor
ian blasts echoing and rebounding off every surface. Herclides tried to rally his men, but except for Palaemon, they had voted with the majority and were heading in a diagonal stream across the plaza to blend into the mob and escape whatever horror approached.
I saw what at first I took to be a Roman general sitting tall and imperious on a black, high-stepping stallion, both horse and rider adorned in polished silver furnishings. But no, this was no Roman, but a daemon in human guise. It was bald, yet from the top of its head sprouted two curved horns, each almost a foot in length. Its ears hung thick and low to its neck, framing a gaping, scowling mouth below flattened nose and slitted eyes. It turned to look in our direction and I flinched, fighting the urge to run. Then it pointed at us and I did shut my eyes, but only for an instant. I don’t think anyone noticed.
The origin of the terrible noise now became visible, but seeing the source did nothing to quiet the argument between the frantic voice of reason urging me to flee, and the wonder-struck curiosity cooing foolishly to tarry and behold this spectacle. The impostor general’s minions appeared, row after row of bare-chested creatures in motley leggings and boots of rough-cut hides. Their skin was a brilliant blue painted with swirls and slashes of crimson; the hair that sprouted from below their nostrils hung almost as low as their braids. Each of them held aloft a vertical, six-foot tall length of brass that ended in a bristling head, some with the likeness of boars, some dragons, some horses. As they entered the plaza, the notes they blew from these instruments leapt from deep, droning tones to shrill barks and earsplitting yips. It was enough to make one beg for a return to the first noise that had set our skin to crawling, sonorous by comparison; or at the very least for a good pair of waxed ear plugs. The instrument, I later learned, was called a carnyx, and there would come only one other time in my life when I heard a cacophony of sound that constricted my heart with more dread.
A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven Page 12
