“Their spells will not save them,” Bronton muttered. It was at that moment that the axe hit him.
It clanged into the side of his Greek-made helmet, bouncing harmlessly off into the trees, but heralding a danger closer at hand than a mountain-top sorceress. Getae warriors leapt from behind trees, and out of holes in the ground, throwing off snowy cloaks in a sudden mist of white powder.
He watched as Bronton swung to meet the new assault, screamed a futile negation as Bronton’s spear caught on a tree-root, watched in melancholy slow-motion as the hulking warrior struggled, slowly, too slowly, to prepare himself to meet the Getae charge.
The soldier disappeared, engulfed beneath a wave of the animal skins and skull-masks of the wild Getae warriors. The Thracian line was stretched out too far. Its Greek armors were designed for a phalanx—a push-and-shove with locked shields on a notional Boeotian plain, far, too far, removed from this cold, chaotic day on the uneven ground of a winter forest.
But, like Bronton, he would not go down without a fight. He hurled his spear at the onrushing wall of Getae, whipping out his sword and yelling in defiance. His first victim fell screaming, tripping those behind him as they tumbled over his fallen body. He was waiting for them with his sword and shield, the latter shunting foes aside, the former cracking through their fearsome bone masks into the soft flesh beneath.
He heard other Thracians rushing to the point of ambush. He delighted in the wet thuds of spears and swords connecting with Getae bodies. He exulted as their enemies’ shrieks of battle-readiness gave way to cries of pain and surprise, as the Thracians converged on his position.
In the distance, he could hear the babbling incantations of the Getae sorceress, but paid her no heed. There was business to attend to closer to hand. His dented shield was torn from his arm. He grabbed a Getae warrior by his topknot and dragged him before him, slitting his enemy’s throat, and keeping the body clutched in front of him as a human shield. The man twitched and jerked as Getae spears prodded at his dying form, while fresh blood coursed down his killer’s body, bringing welcome warmth to a cold battle.
The snow-covered ground became a clash of pinks and crimsons, darkening with the death of the day, not from the sunset, but from life-blood splashed in torrents. Warm steam rose from the ground, creating an unearthly mist, as if the surviving warriors were surrounded by the departed souls of their fellows.
He fought amid such ominous shades, seeing only the foes in front of him, trusting to his Thracian comrades to shield his flanks from the Getae. Their darting, whirling attacks seemed to slow, as if coming at him through water. His reactions, too, dawdled to a crawl, and, though his mind remained as swift, his body was slow to react, like a plough pulled by tired oxen.
There were flashes of other memories. Of places and times that were far removed.
Sura giggled and splashed water at him, knee deep in the rushes at the bank of the River Istros, in spring.
Their mouths met, their lips entwined, their bodies naked in a warm summer field.
She glowed with pride, as he handed her father the casket containing her bride-price. It had been autumn.
And Sura was at his side in the snow. That was not right. He remembered this battle. He had fought in this battle for real, when he was a younger man. His wife had not been there. He tried to tell the dream that his wife should not be there, but his mouth was too slow to respond.
The dream-Sura danced through the battle in glee, laughing as he fought his way toward her. She ducked swords and spears, and entwined herself around tree trunks, barely clothed.
“Return to me, my husband!” she cried, her arms outstretched as if to embrace him. “Kill the Getae and return, so that we may make more Thracians!” She laughed, musically, as the first arrows whisked past her head.
Even with time slowed, the arrows darted through the forest as swift as wasps, in twos and threes, and then in dozens, their passage marked by low, threatening thrums as their fletchings buzzed in the cold forest air.
He looked back at the hilltop, saw the sorceress, her arms exulting in command before a triple line of archers, preparing for a second salvo. One side of her face seemed decorated with tattoos in swirls and spikes. She raised her arm, her sleeve falling away, revealing similar pigments there. And then her arm dropped in a decisive movement, unleashing a humming, whistling wall of death.
The Greeks had no time for bows and arrows. Archers hunted birds and game—not men. No real man brought a bow to war, and so Greek design did not defend against such attacks. Greek-made armor was limited, and designed to thwart strikes from a phalanx of men with spears and swords directly ahead. It was not fashioned to protect the extremities and flanks from cowardly darts from a distance.
As the arrows streamed into the forest, they caught the Thracians unprepared. They broke comically on helmets or caught in crests; they thudded into trees and caromed from shields. But the arrows kept coming, darkening the sky in a swarm, hitting home with the sheer law of averages, plunging into eye sockets, cracks in armor; lodging in upper arms and lower ankles.
He felt the sting of an arrow in his heel, and laughed at it—wounded like Achilles.
For a moment, he felt unfamiliar sunlight dapple on his eyelids, and rocked as if on a moving cart. He heard the clop of horse’s hooves on a road and stirred, briefly, in realization. A voice, indistinct and impotent, reminded him that this forest battle had happened long ago.
He need not fear. He would not die.
This was a memory! This was a dream! This was not really happening. He willed himself to wake up, but still fought on, trapped in his invisible cage. Because Sura had not been there when this battle took place, and some part of his dream-self could not let her go unprotected, not even in sleep.
Sura stood, oblivious, in the forest, picking an out-of-season fruit from a dead tree. She held it up toward him, her hand bearing an apple crawling with maggots, as another volley of arrows hummed into the forest.
He shouted at her to get down, to drop to the forest floor, but instead she held out her arms toward the oncoming swarm. He saw her pierced in a hundred places, bloodied in a forest of fletchings as she screamed and called out his name—
“Spartacus!” Varro’s voice pierced his dream.
“I am not...” he began, groggy. Autumn sunlight scattered through trees that moved overhead. He lay on wood... on a cart, on a moving cart, in chains. The other slaves stared at him in some irritation.
“You dreamed,” Varro said. “Loudly, of terrible things.”
Spartacus shook his head and wiped his eyes.
“I dreamed,” he said, “I was free.”
There was little to say. The cart rumbled along the road, its horses steadily dragging it up the gentle undulations of the Appian Way, south toward Neapolis. In its rear were stacked crates of garum—the fish sauce no Roman kitchen could do without—and a huddle of human cargo.
There was little to see. Fields, forests and hills. But no slave farmer cared to greet a passing cart, and no lurkers watched from the woods.
There was little to do. Spartacus sat, silent, lost in thought. The giant Barca’s eyes were closed, his eyelids twitching, dreaming of Carthaginian glories. Cycnus, the hairy Galatian, lolled, not asleep but not awake, rolling with the shaking of the cart. Bebryx, of the close-knotted hair and jet-black skin, glared out at the forest. When their cart rumbled past travelers on the road, he stared at them defiantly, as if inviting attack. Varro wore his own chains heavily, unused to manacles but unable to protest to the freeman—a voluntary gladiator was still a voluntary slave, and lacked the freeman’s right to better treatment.
Something smelled.
Spartacus sniffed tentatively at the air.
“Perhaps,” Varro said, “one of the garum kegs has split?”
Nobody answered him, unless by answer one could mean the endless rambling of their traveling companion, an emaciated old man in rags, his head covered in sores, his arms peril
ously thin.
“Are you him?” he asked the air. “Are you the one?”
The gladiators did their best to ignore him, as they had done ever since Capua.
“I had a son,” he continued. “I think. I had a son. I never saw him. When I was strong, I was taken for breeding. I never saw her face. I never saw her again. But if my seed was true, then she was the mother of my child.”
Suddenly, the wasted, bony hand clutched at Spartacus’s arm. The milky eyes fixed him with unexpected clarity.
“Do not get old,” the man said. “Do not get old.”
“I am a gladiator,” Spartacus replied. “A state I am not likely to meet.”
There was the unmistakeable sound of evacuating bowels.
“By the gods,” Varro said, wincing. “It is not the fish sauce. To be sure, it is not the fish sauce.”
The old man seemed unaware that he was sitting in his own filth.
“The Gracchi will save us,” the old man said. “The brothers Gracchi. Free corn for the masses. Free land for those willing to work. Free games!” He cackled with excitement. “No work! No need to work! Free corn! Free games!”
“Who are the Gracchi?” Spartacus asked.
“Demagogues, long dead,” Varro said. “Only after casting spell of promise.”
“How long dead?” Spartacus asked.
“He would have been a child,” Varro replied, gesturing with his manacled hand at the babbling old man.
“Free games!” the old man declared. “Gladiators and beasts, men fighting men. Criminals thrown to the... to the...” He looked around him, stopped talking and stared at the forest.
The cart came to a gentle halt, the low rumble and clank of its wheels giving way to birdsong and quiet. Their cart stood on the left-hand side of the forest avenue, trees all around, and some branches already entwined overhead. The first errant leaves of autumn made a bid for freedom, whirling downward like falling feathers. A gust of wind shook the branches above them, and caused another dusting of dead leaves to shake free.
They heard the drover clambering down from the front and walking slowly around to the back. He pulled open the rear gate, his nose wrinkling at the stench.
“Old man,” he said. “This is your destination.”
Spartacus peered into the forest, seeing nothing but the trees.
“I have arrived?” the man mumbled. “I have arrived.”
The drover swiftly unlocked the old man’s manacles, dragging him by one of his skeletal arms.
“Wait! Wait!” the old man cried, but he was already falling off the cart. He landed on his ankle with a sickening snap, and began whimpering.
“Hold your tongue or I will cut it out!” the drover snapped, dragging the old man to the edge of the road.
“My leg!” the old man shouted. “It hurts!”
“No concern of mine,” the drover said, dropping the emaciated body in the gutter, among a mulch of fallen leaves, and wet puddles from the most recent storm.
“Where does he take him?” Spartacus asked, but Varro would not meet his eye.
“What does he mean, ‘arrived’?” Spartacus said. “This place is nowhere.”
“Do not leave me!” the old man begged, reaching out to the drover, although the man was already walking back to the cart. The old man tried to drag himself toward the cart, moving in agonising increments across the flagstones.
“Leave you?” laughed the drover. “I am not leaving you. I am freeing you!”
The man blinked, uncertain, trembling from the pain in his ankle.
“I... am... free...?”
“For the remainder of your life,” the drover said, climbing back into the cart.
Spartacus strained at his manacles. He looked imploringly at his fellow passengers, but none of them would look at him.
“Slaves must work,” Varro said sadly. “A slave that cannot work is of no value.”
“But he is a human being!” Spartacus growled. “Is this what Rome means? Is this your civilization? Is this your hospitality?”
“You Thracian tribesmen care for their elders, I suppose.”
“We do!”
“And for your slaves?”
“We hold no slaves.”
“No medicus either, I wager,” Varro snorted. “Perhaps that is why none of you barbarians lives to see old age.”
Their voices receded as the cart rolled on, and soon there was nothing but the sounds of the forest. A broken old man lay sobbing by the side of the road in the dwindling light of day.
A trio of ravens fluttered onto a branch above him and waited. Somewhere within the trees, there was a rustle as something moved toward him. He tried to drag himself up, and the noise from the trees ceased.
The man waited, whimpering, knowing that somewhere in the shadows, some other creature waited with greater patience.
Pelorus’s body had been carefully wrapped, his face lightly brushed with pollen, his cheeks pinched with a dash of rouge. Timarchides watched the undertakers labor around the bier.
“The presence of these men makes me nervous,” he confided to the man who stood beside him.
“A feeling echoed by any man of sanity,” Verres responded. “Undertakers serve to remind all of mortality. A lesser man might see grim-faced men in dark clothes and colored hats. But a thinking Roman sees emissaries of death, and naturally gives them wide berth.”
“Slaves, too.”
“What of them?”
“They regard such men as ill-starred. You see undertakers, Gaius Verres, when someone dies.”
“Er... of course, Timarchides.”
“Slaves, however, see them when master requires the extraction of deep-lodged truths. They are despoilers of human flesh. If you wish to ensure that your slave has not stolen from you; if you wish to find out what he has been told by your rivals. If you wish to punish him in a way that leaves no enduring marks, but scars the mind eternally, then it is for the undertakers you will send.”
“They are torturers?” Verres looked surprised. “Should I need someone twisted or burned, I order it done. I have little concern with hows and wheres.”
“They reside on the outskirts of town,” Timarchides said. “Far from neighbours or prying eyes. Far from rescue or disapproving passers-by. Where screams go unheard and smells of burning flesh unnoticed.” As he spoke, he let his gaze linger on one undertaker in particular, an aging, fleshless man who stood watching the others. Their eyes met, and the old undertaker looked away, fidgeting.
“Let us hope so,” Verres said cryptically. “For now, continue to employ these men in management of this household. A title which, as discussed, I shall see conferred upon you.”
“You foresee no obstacle?”
“Pelorus was blessed with no wife, no children. You were treasured companion, as evinced in your recent manumission. Who better to inherit what shall remain of his wealth when justice is done?”
Timarchides glanced to the side to ensure that none could hear them.
“You play a dangerous game,” he said quietly.
“You do not desire inheritance from Pelorus?”
“It will amount to little,” Timarchides sighed. “But gratitude nonetheless.”
“And when this is done, Timarchides, you shall hold advantageous position in my circle. That I promise you.
“One small regard,” Verres continued, flicking demonstratively at a scrap of papyrus he held in one hand, newly opened. “There is the matter of the hospes list. Those acquaintances of Pelorus deemed so important as to be almost like family members.”
“He had none.”
“He had two.”
“By what name?”
Verres flung his arm around Timarchides in a friendly fashion, and walked him away from the bier. They strode through the house of Pelorus as slaves bustled around them working to make it liveable again. Floors were scrubbed, fragments of glass swept up. Tables were righted or removed for repair by dozens of pairs of hands. N
either man saw the slaves. It was as if the house repaired itself around them.
“Timarchides, now you are a freedman, you must learn to act as one,” Verres said. “In Latin, the hospes, it is... like a guest, and a friend. A guest-friend.”
“All guests are friends by definition. Surely?”
“It is not such a simple matter. A hospes is a man to whom you must open your doors as if your house is his own. And if you travel to his home, he must do the same for you.”
“You are a hospes to Pelorus...?”
“Of course I am. That is why I was staying as honored guest.”
“I understand. It is as friendship should be.”
“Yet it is, as I said, more than friendship and must be given due care. The friend of a hospes is also your hospes. Make appearance at the door of one such man, and proclaim your friendship for his friend, and he, too, must act as your host.”
“Now I see why you cannot bestow such friendship on simply anyone.”
“And yet Pelorus seems to have done just that.” Verres jabbed his finger at the name on the papyrus. “Who the fuck is this Batiatus?”
“The lanista? He provides warriors for the games—that we may ensure that justice is done to all the damned. He held some youthful association with Pelorus, but Pelorus never spoke of days spent in Capua.”
“Who would wish to speak of days spent there?” Verres scoffed. “Make no mind, they may treat this residence like a free fucking tavern. To do in this house as he wishes.”
“Can we not deposit them in rooms at greater distance than these?”
Their wandering had brought them back to the atrium, causing Verres to lower his voice before the bier. He cared not for the slaves, but spoke softly in the presence of the shell that had once been Pelorus.
“This Batiatus is a hospes, Timarchides!” he hissed. “Has understanding not yet penetrated? As the executor of the will of Pelorus, I am compelled to welcome him. As the inheritor, you are similarly obliged. My sponsorship of your inheritance is dependent on you adhering to Roman law!”
Spartacus - Swords and Ashes Page 4
