“We may yet meet them at the harbor,” Batiatus said suddenly.
“What?”
“The litter must take winding road that slopes toward sea. But we, Cicero, we may take the steps that lead direct.”
“Lead on, Batiatus. Lead on!”
“I did not know,” Timarchides muttered sourly, “that so little of the ludus remained. These four slaves that bear us to the harbor are all that we could salvage.”
“Come now, Timarchides,” Verres said, toying idly with the curtain of the litter. “You have your freedom. Pelorus had his funeral games. The estate has been run into the ground, but our purposes here in Neapolis are achieved.”
“Your purposes.”
“Yours, too. Sicilia is not prize command. It does not have prospect of triumph presented by military consulship in the east. Nor does it have old-world allure of Greece, or frontier excitements of Gaul or Hispania. But what it possesses in abundance is vast, simmering volcano of slaves, many of whom learned stories of rebellion and atrocity at their mother’s knee.”
“A dangerous posting.”
“For the wrong man, it would be. But you are seated next to the man who is right for such a job, and you shall be my right hand. We shall tolerate no suggestion of revolt. We shall be merciless on slaves, and merciless on masters who do not adequately manage such beasts that reside beneath their roofs.”
The litter swung about as the bearers negotiated a hairpin turn, the street turning back on itself as it descended toward the harbor.
“You will force masters to take blame for slaves’ rebellions?” Timarchides asked.
“Are not owners responsible for their animals? There shall be fines. Confiscations. Inspections. Under governorship of Gaius Verres, slaves will be kept in their rightful places, or owners will suffer consequences.”
“I have been slow to realization. A price must be paid.”
“Most certainly.”
“A price paid, no doubt, into the coffers of Gaius Verres.”
“Fines and forfeits, tithes and taxes. To both our fiscal posterities.”
“We must reach Sicilia first,” Timarchides cautioned, looking behind him. He gestured, causing Verres to twist in his cushions and follow the direction of Timarchides’s pointing finger.
“What is it?”
“Varro, blond Roman slave of Batiatus. He follows us. His face set to purpose.”
“Deal with him.”
“Deal with him yourself.”
“Bearers, speed your pace!” Verres called, tapping on the curtain supports for emphasis. The porters increased their march, and the litter began to sway as if on troubled seas.
“I say to you, Timarchides: get out at the next turning,” Verres said, “and deal with the slave.”
“And I say to you: fight your battles with your own hand.”
“You are free, Timarchides, but you are not a tyrant of your own dominion. You still have superiors.”
“Meaning youself?”
“Of course, meaning me! You serve at the pleasure of the Governor of Sicilia. And it pleases me that you will put an end to Varro’s pursuit. Now!”
“Wait,” Medea said, suddenly ceasing her steps, and dragging Spartacus to a halt.
“Follow me,” he said pulling her forward.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I must catch them.”
“Why?”
“Medea, there is not time for this.”
“I have time entire to stay here and breathe sea air.”
“Medea!”
“You seek to apprehend slaves. Slaves who will die if caught. I will not aid you in that enterprise.”
“I seek to apprehend slaves who will bring down Gaius Verres. A Roman governor.”
“Now,” she said with a delighted smile, “now, you secure my assistance. Run!”
She sprinted on with such speed that Spartacus first had to struggle to keep up, her chain stretching taut behind her, all but dragging his arm.
Suddenly, it was Spartacus who stopped and Medea to be jerked to a standstill by their mutual manacles.
“Spartacus!” she shouted. “The chance awaits to wound a true Roman. Do you not appreciate the scale of this undertaking?”
“Scaling is my thought,” he said briskly, pointing to another of the several stairways that descended toward the harbor. “These run perpendicular to the road that the litter must take. We can dart ahead, as if spurred by Mercury himself.”
“Then why do we tarry? Down the steps! Move!”
Varro quickened his pace as he approached the turn in the street, ducking and swerving between merchants and vendors, sliding deftly around chatting ladies in demure veils. And then a man who sidestepped at the same time as he.
Varro darted to the left, but so did the man in front of him.
“Who do you seek?” Timarchides asked, throwing back his hood.
Varro glanced past the Greek’s shoulder, seeing the litter receding through the crowd. He made to shove Timarchides aside, but the burly Greek grabbed his hand.
“You miss my touch, Varro? Is that it?”
Varro bellowed with anger, and punched with his free hand, a blow that Timarchides easily dodged. The freedman twisted and turned so that he dragged Varro’s right arm with him, throwing the Roman over his shoulder and hard to the ground. But Varro grasped at his tormentor, tugging down on his tunic, and planting his foot in Timarchides’s stomach as he fell, propelling the freedman in a somersault over his head and hard into a stack of earthenware jars.
A crowd began to gather, calling and jeering at the fighting men.
Teeth gritted against the pain of a dozen jagged cuts, Timarchides threw himself at Varro. But the gladiator rolled deftly out of the way, and snatched up a meat cleaver from a butcher’s table. He advanced toward Timarchides, swishing the iron blade experimentally.
“Think on what you are doing, Varro,” Timarchides said, backing away as the crowd gave the men wide berth.
“I have thought on it long and hard,” Varro said, luxuriating in the weight of the cleaver. He grabbed Timarchides by the neck, raising the cleaver high above his head in victory.
“I am a free man,” Timarchides choked as Varro pulled his head back. “And you, a slave. Take my life, and you take your own as surely as if you had slit your own throat.”
Varro hesitated, only for an instant, before a wooden club descended upon his head. His vision exploded in a cloud of pinpricks of light, whirls of darkness encroaching from the edges of his sight, the sharp pain registering only briefly, as unconsciousness came over him, and he slumped to the ground.
“Gratitude,” Timarchides said to the butcher who had struck the blow.
“No slave shall strike a freeman,” the butcher said, holding out his arm, partly in a gesture of camaraderie, but also with the palm upturned, in hope of reward. But Timarchides had already turned, running for the next set of stone steps toward the harbor, leaving Varro at the feet of an inquisitive crowd.
Varro moaned, softly, stirring from his sudden slumber. He made to get up, but slumped once more, weary beyond words.
The bearers were sweating hard now, their feet stumbling as they tried to keep up the pace. The Sardinian boy at the back was dragging his feet. The old man at the front was flagging, causing the litter to lean dangerously along the axis.
Verres frowned with irritation, and prepared to rebuke them, only for something to come charging out of nowhere, speeding from a staircase between two houses, straight into the side of the litter.
The litter pitched to the side and then crashed to the ground, upending Verres and his cushions.
“Fools!” he shouted, clambering to his feet. But as his head poked through the curtains, he saw the agents of his demise, Spartacus and the Getae witch, chained together by manacles at their wrists, and already locked in combat with the bearers.
Verres gazed momentarily on the scene, and then caught sight of Timarchides dashing i
nto the street a block further up at the next set of steps.
“To the harbor, Timarchides!” he shouted. “We sail with tide, with all who reach docks in time.” With that, Verres darted for the alleyway between two houses that concealed the next staircase toward the harbor, the masts of the ships already looming above the rooftops nearby, the cry of gulls already rising above the voices of the streets.
Spartacus and Medea faced four, all bearing knives. As one, he and Medea snatched up broken pieces of the carrying poles, now readied as makeshift clubs.
The first bearer lunged at Spartacus. The gladiator dodged instinctively, unwittingly dragging Medea into the blade’s path. She batted it away with her own club, smacking down on the man’s arm and causing him to drop the knife. Spartacus punched the surprised attacker in the face, but was forced to duck beneath an attack from a second assailant.
Medea snatched up the knife with her left hand, sweeping it up and into the chin of the man who had dropped it, driving its blade through his mouth and into his skull. He tried to scream, but the deluge of blood already choked his throat, causing him instead to cough bright red liquid over the chained fighters. Medea kicked him away, twisting his ruined face from the knife, and leaving him on the ground to die.
Three yet remained, the brands of the House of Pelorus visible on their arms.
“You are betrayed!” Spartacus cried. “Your masters desert you. Surrender and see them brought to justice.”
“Justice already awaits us,” the older man said, whom Varro had called Charon. “Execution is our fate.”
He lunged at Spartacus with the knife. Spartacus leapt backward, dragging an unwilling Medea with him.
“Run!” the old man shouted at the other two.
“But, doctore...” the boy said.
“Run!”
They hesitated long enough for Medea to stab at one, tearing a gaping wound through his ribs to a ruined heart. The man tumbled to the ground, grunting in final agony, leaving but the old man and the boy.
The old man threw himself at Spartacus and Medea, barging them to the ground amid the wreckage of the litter.
The boy saw his chance and fled, pelting down the steps as Spartacus and Medea flailed in the dust. The old man punched and kicked with fierce precision, seemingly knowing all the points where nerves stood close to skin, or muscle gave way to bone.
Medea howled in pain as one well-placed jab found her shin. She rolled away, but was halted by the chain that bound her to Spartacus.
The old man struggled to his feet, only to be tripped by the chain itself as Spartacus and Medea tugged it round his ankles. He landed badly, close to a fallen knife.
“Wait!” Spartacus said. “Do not!”
But the old man drove the dagger deep into his own throat, and crumpled before them, his blood pooling and swelling in puddles, reaching over the edge of the topmost step, and beginning a slow, viscous cascade toward the harbor.
“The boy yet remains!” Medea said.
Spartacus waited not a moment, deserting the still-twitching corpse of the man who once played Charon, and dragging Medea down the last set of steps that terminated in the harbor itself, amid a thrumming bustle of sailors and merchants, whores and slaves.
Spartacus and Medea charged with locked steps, their paces matched as if a single man of twice their weight pounded along the dockside jetty. Their arms pumped in unison, unencumbered by the chains that truly bound them, and steadily, achingly, they began to draw near to the fleeing Sardinian boy.
He leapt over boxes on the jetty. He darted past sailors at their tasks. But then, he tripped.
His flight was halted for mere moments, but it was long enough for his twinned pursuers to reach him.
Spartacus grabbed at the boy, bringing all three of them down hard onto the wood with the thump of bodies and the rattle of chains. The boy twisted and wriggled, straining against Spartacus’s firm hold, his free hand reaching for his fallen knife.
“Let me go,” the boy pleaded, “and I shall live free. Hold on to me, and I shall be broken in pursuit of futile truth.”
Spartacus looked into the boy’s eyes, and saw for the briefest instant what some slaver might have once seen in the eyes of a forgotten Thracian—a plea poised on the brink between chains and liberty, a moment when a man might yet be free, if only he could make one final sprint for sanctuary.
“I have my orders,” Spartacus said, with reluctance.
“If you are victorious,” the boy said, “then I will die, merely for being present in the house of a murdered master. That is all you will achieve.”
Spartacus let his grip slacken, suddenly prepared to disobey Batiatus in the pursuit of a greater victory.
It was then that the boy struck out with his knife.
Medea had time for but a single syllable of denial, grabbing at the knife with her own hand. It tore through the soft webbing of her fingers, and cut deep into the flesh of her palm. Even as she screamed, the boy’s knife descended again, rending a deep, savage gash across her chest and into her abdomen.
Spartacus clutched at her, failing to staunch the flow of blood, as the Sardinian boy pelted away from them, sprinting like a deer for the jetty and the departing ship.
Medea clutched at the gaping wound, her mouth quivering in involuntary shivers.
“At last,” she said, forcing a smile, “I have my desire, and died to a purpose: preserving you.”
“We shall find a medicus,” Spartacus said desperately, looking in anguish at the thick river of blood pouring from her, soaking him and the wooden slats of the jetty, dripping in long streams into the waters below.
“It is too late,” she said. “Do not lie to me now, Thracian, after we have been so true. The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” she wheezed, her hand reaching out to rest on his cheek.
“A... medicus...” Spartacus repeated, his words catching in his throat, as he looked about him and saw no chance of aid.
“Do not concern yourself with Verres and Timarchides,” she said, with a smile that belied the pain. “They will come to no good end.”
“How do you know?”
“I see posterities, Thracian,” she coughed. “Do you not yet believe me?”
“Apologies.”
“And I see yours, Thracian. Such wonders lie before you.”
“My wife? Do you see my wife?”
“Your Sura? Your beloved Sura? Yes, Thracian, I see her. I see you reunited, but...” She coughed again, black blood erupting from her mouth and running down her cheek. “Apologies.”
Spartacus had held dying warriors before. He felt the twitching in her body that spelled the end, as internal organs gave up their unity and each began to fight in solitary panic.
“I see my forests,” she breathed. “Forests in snow at sunset...”
“Apologies,” he said to her. “I should have protected you.”
“You did,” she said. “I had but one message.”
“Did the bitch say message?” Batiatus demanded, stumbling along the dockside toward them. “Did she say message?”
“Batiatus?” Medea wheezed. “Your name will be known throughout... the Republic... You will be famous... as dominus to... Spartacus...”
“Yes, yes,” Batiatus said dismissively, finally reaching the place where they lay. “Tell me not what I want to hear, woman. I will not fall for such tricks. Give me words for Cicero. Give me something for the Books Sibylline!”
“She dies.” Spartacus whispered hoarsely.
“And it is costing me a fucking fortune!” Batiatus shouted.
Medea’s eyes turned glassy, staring but unseeing. Her voice croaked, as if not her own, choked with errant blood.
“Unto your beasts of burden,” she choked, “Thracian manumission.”
“What?” Batiatus said. “What the fuck does that—?”
“And as a legion hell-bound, violent expedition.”
“Cicero!” Batiatus called. “Come quickly!”
“Across great Greece’s heel and toe, the fires shall spread.”
Cicero began to run across the docks, a flurry of linen as his toga bloomed outward. He pushed aside porters, leaping ropes and boxes. Spartacus glanced up momentarily to see the quaestor’s approach, but kept his eyes on Medea as she struggled to speak her dying words.
“A final Saturnalia,” she said, “to seven hills imperiled dread.”
Medea’s hand fell, still, causing her chains to rattle to the dirt. Spartacus held her gently, uncaring of the blood that soaked him.
Dockside slaves pushed the ship away from the quay with long gaffes, setting its prow pointed toward the sea, ushering it into deeper water so that its journey could begin.
“The Afer Ventus will blow tomorrow,” Verres said frowning. “We will do well to clear port before it, else we must tack far away from Italia, if we are even to creep closer to Silicia.”
“I hurry not,” Timarchides said. “Though I yet wish I could have witnessed the death of the Getae witch for myself.”
“Pelorus is avenged. In this life or the next. Do not trouble yourself with petty grievances.”
“Petty?” Timarchides said. “I lied concerning our intimacy, following your suggestion. But he was still trusted friend, and the best of masters.”
“Cruel Fortuna caused his death, and that of his gladiators.”
“I tried to save them,” Timarchides said quietly, almost to himself. “I tried to save as many as I could. Nobody would have missed the undertakers whose place they stole. It could have worked. Eight might have lived, had not the sicarii failed. Or even the four that carried us to the harbor. That would have been something.”
Verres turned back to look at Neapolis and the black mountain that hung above it like a shadow, and caught the sight of a lone figure sprinting down the jetty.
“They were loyal to me,” Timarchides said. “They died for me as they might have died in the arena. But voluntarily so.”
“Timarchides!” called a boy’s voice. “Timarchides!”
Spartacus - Swords and Ashes Page 26
