Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “So many men, so many points of view,” said Tros.

  “Aye, maybe. But one death for all of them, whatever caused it! You are probably about to die. What thoughts are calming you so that you sit and clean your belt, whereas I fret myself? Ho! Brutus! Take an iron down there and use it freely unless they stop that clamoring — The races, Tros, excite me not at all and I can watch men being tortured — aye, and women, without even curiosity. But when it comes to death I must confess that interests me. Tell me, of what are you thinking?”

  “Of the destiny that governs us,” Tros answered. “I have seen death, too, and I have not yet met the man who must not die. But I believe it is impossible to kill a man until his time comes. And I think that if the gods have use for any one they pluck him out of any danger. But they have no use for men who pray to them and waste good time and energy on whining. I am waiting for the gods to show me half an opportunity.”

  “But I was talking about death,” objected Nepos. “In the next three days eight hundred men, including gladiators, are to die where now the chariots are racing. What think you of death?”

  “It is like tomorrow. I will face it when it comes,” Tros answered. “In the meantime I would like to meet the miscreant who made this belt. He fashioned it too narrow and forgot that sea-air calls for double tanning of the leather. I would let him feel the belt a time or two and learn his trade; some never learn until it dawns on them that being flogged hurts!”

  “Have you no fear?” Nepos asked. “I have seen men so in the grip of fear that they could not feel.”

  “I am familiar with fear,” Tros answered. “It has also grown familiar with me and has abandoned many of its tricks as useless. Now I am afraid of one thing only — that the Britons may believe I have deserted them. There is a king in Britain, and a woman by the name of Fflur, his wife, who love me, and I love them. It would be a miserable destiny to die and leave them thinking I had never even run a risk to protect them from Caesar.”

  “But if you went free, could you do that? How?” asked Nepos.

  Tros’s leonine eyes observed him for a moment. He was instantly alert for signals that the gods might give.

  “If I should swear to you that I am telling naked truth, would you believe me and not ask questions?” he demanded.

  Nepos nodded.

  “I have heard strange truth from many a man in this place under a seal of secrecy. No law obliges me to tell what I learn here. Whoever comes into the carceres, the law has done with; he is a dead man and his secrets die too. But if you speak of the Vestal Virgins I will not listen, because—”

  “I will not speak of them,” said Tros. “But I will say this — if the gods, or you, or any one can get me out of here alive — and I will not go, mind you, without the men who call me master! — I can call off Caesar.”

  “How?”

  “By turning him toward Rome! That is naked truth, on my oath by the shrines of Samothrace.”

  “You have a message for him from — you mean, that if you reach him—”

  “He will take his eyes off Britain and make Rome his goal. He will believe the time has come to try out destiny!” said Tros.

  The Roman throng in the arena roared like mad beasts — shrieked, yelled, clamored — as a four-horse chariot went down under another’s wheels. The tumult swallowed up the roaring of the beasts and there were warning trumpet blasts to stop stamping that might wreck the rows of seats. Expectancy silenced the dungeons, until suddenly they burst into a tumult because nobody reported what had caused the uproar. At a nod from Nepos half a dozen men went into the arena, armed with hooks and ropes, to drag away dead horses and a mangled man.

  “Their first taste of blood!” said Nepos. “This time tomorrow you will hear them offering money to the charioteers to smash their opponents’ wheels! There’s little chance for any novice such as your man.”

  “So?” said Tros.

  “No chance at all. They’ll roll him in the sand before he goes around the spina once. However, I have always thought Pompeius Magnus was a danger to Rome. He has none of the true bronze in him that Caesar has. Caesar can be cruel; he has virtue; he is not afraid of anything and he isn’t lazy. Cato is wrong about Caesar, as I have told him half a hundred times. And so you think the gods make use of you and me? I doubt it. That is not a Roman way of thinking of the gods. However, each to his own theory — and death to us all in the end! Well, Tros, keep up your courage. I would like to see Julius Caesar come to discipline this city! And if Pompey accused you of intriguing with — Who should know better than They what will happen? Well, keep up your courage. It’s against the rules for any one to beg their favor or to hand them a petition, and it’s death, mind you, to insult them, but listen now! There’s no law against, for instance—”

  Nepos hesitated. He was actually trembling. Vestal Virgins were a power so intensely reverenced that even in the carceres their name was sacrosanct. Not only were they unapproachable, but all the reverence of Rome for her traditions and her old grim gods had centered — rallied, as it were — around the persons of the Vestals. They alone were without blemish and without reproach.

  “Not even Pompey dares to put a spite on them!” said Nepos. “But do they know you are in here? I’ll bet they don’t. Who told them? You can’t have told them. They will know for the first time when they see you march out of the dungeon gate. Well — there is no law against my changing the arrangements. Listen — when I send you in to face the lions, march you straight to Pompey’s box and there salute him. That is something only gladiators are supposed to do. Then turn toward the Vestals in the box beside him on his right hand and salute them. Maybe then they’ll recognize you. Who knows? The attendants are supposed to loose the lions instantly when you appear but I will bid them wait while you march once around the arena and let the populace observe how gallantly you bear yourselves. When you have slain the lions, make no appeal but await the Numidians close to the Vestals’ box. And the same when the Numidians are beaten and the gladiators come. Then, if the Vestals choose to spare you, they will have the verdict of the populace and Pompey himself will have to bow to it.”

  Within the dungeon recklessness increased as time wore on. The night after the second day of racing a rebellion broke out and nearly ended in escape. A score of men pounced on the guard who entered their dark hole to feed them, robbed him of his hooked club, slew him, seized the hot irons from the braziers and stormed the stairway leading to the upper cells. Extra guards were summoned from the outside and for an hour there was infernal war by torchlight until all the men who had escaped were roped and four guards, suffering from ghastly wounds inflicted by a hooked club, had been carried out. All the while the fighting lasted Nepos’ voice kept threatening drastic penalties to any guard who “spoiled” a man, as he expressed it; they were needed whole for the arena, able to stand up and die excitingly, so it was the guards, that night, who suffered.

  “Nevertheless,” said Nepos, “they shall wish they had refrained from that attempt. That batch was destined for the elephants, who slay swiftly. Now they shall be torn by dogs, and they shall enter the arena first.”

  His honor was offended by the outbreak and he even put an extra chain and lock on Tros’s cell door.

  “Not that I doubt your good-will, but a madness seizes men at times and they act like leopards,” he explained. “I have known prisoners to break the bars and kill the other prisoners who would not join them.”

  But he let Tros out of his cell next day to watch the racing through a small hole in the dungeon wall. He fettered his wrists behind his back and chained him to a ring-bolt in the stone floor, as he explained it, to prevent the guards from telling tales about him; but the truth was, Nepos was himself half mad with nervousness, as fascinated by the prospect of the butchery to come as were the citizens who packed the seats in the arena.

  They were yelling now for blood. It did not satisfy them that the charioteers showed almost superhuman skill in swi
nging four-horse teams around the curves at each end of the course; they urged the men to break each other’s wheels, to cut in and break horses’ legs, to beat each other with their whips. They howled and whistled when a man won easily. And when the next teams lined up for the start, instead of waiting breathless for the starter to give the signal from his box they yelled advice to the contestants to play foul and hurled abuse to the officials whose duty it was to compel the charioteers to line up properly along the oblique starting-line which was arranged to compensate the outside chariot for the wider circle it must make at the farther end.

  The spina down the center, adorned with flagpoles and dolphins, was as crowded with spectators as were the surrounding tiers of seats. The mob roared loudest when a group who leaned over the spina, clinging to one another, fell and were crushed under chariot-wheels; their bodies tripped a four-horse team and the resulting crashing carnage produced roars of satisfaction that aroused the lions and indignant elephants — so that it was impossible to get the horses started for the next race until attendants seized their heads and some of them were kicked and crushed under the wheels.

  It was mid-afternoon before Orwic’s turn came, and the din that greeted him from the upper seats was evidence enough that Zeuxis and Helene had neglected nothing that could stir the popular imagination. He was dressed like any other charioteer, in Roman tunic, with a red badge to distinguish him, and came out first of four teams through the archway, in a chariot bearing Pompey’s monogram. That meant that he had drawn the inside berth, and the betting odds changed in his favor rapidly, as the mob’s voice indicated, breaking into short staccato barks.

  There was a breathless silence as the four teams moved up to the line, each charioteer reining and urging his horses to get them on their toes — then suddenly an uproar like a vast explosion as the chariot next to Orwic’s swerved in to lock wheels and pin him up against the spina — a trick often played on novices to spoil their chance before the race began. But the uproar broke into a tumult of astonished laughter at the neatness with which the unknown man shot clear of the entanglement and, wheeling, struck the offending veteran across the face. The crowd applauded him until the frantic horses nearly broke out of control, and the more they plunged and fought the men who tried to hold their heads, the more the spectators thundered, stamping their feet until attendants armed with staves belabored them to save the wooden floors.

  Then laughter; for the race was a procession of three chariots pursuing Orwic’s, weaving in and out, maneuvering to wreck each other at the turns, but never coming within lengths of the bay team driven by the Briton, who could hug corners with his horses belly-to-the-earth because he had been taught from infancy to do the same thing with scythe-armed chariots on either hand. The unknown man was in his element. In contrast to the furious histrionics of the others he was quiet, almost motionless. Excepting at the corners, which he took on one wheel like a sail-boat in a squall, he stood erect, his only gesture a salute to Pompey’s box and to the Vestals as he whirled by.

  Men threw money at him; women, flowers when the race was over. Crowned with a wreath of myrtle leaves he was sent once around the course at a slow gallop to acknowledge the applause and Pompey, ignorant of who he was, threw his own wreath down to him. The significance of that could hardly have escaped even a Northman. Orwic reined in to receive the wreath from an attendant, and as Pompey gave his seat to a substitute to preside over the last three races and turned to leave the box he waved his hand in acknowledgment of Orwic’s courteous salute. The last three races were run in a half filled Circus; the noisiest spectators had won money at exhilarating odds, and had gone home to exult about it and to rest in preparation for the much more thrilling entertainment to begin tomorrow.

  It was night when Orwic came, spluttering and gasping at the prison stench and pinching at Tros’s muscles through the bars. “A man rots swiftly in a dungeon,” he remarked, then laughed, a little reassured because Tros gripped him with a sudden strength that hurt.

  “Tros, twenty men have tried to buy me from Helene! I was mobbed out there behind the stables! If it weren’t that I’m supposed to be Helene’s slave I never could have got here. I’d be drunker than a sailor! She pretended I was in danger from the other charioteers — and that was true, they’d kill me if they had a chance.”

  “She had her own slaves spirit me away and one of Zeuxis’ fellows brought me here after dark. Good Lud of Lunden, what a land of stinks! Helene is now spreading rumors that one of Pompey’s men has had me thrown into the arena because she refused to sell me, and that he had bribed the peregrine praetor, whatever that is, to refuse to interfere. It was difficult for me to understand, because the interpreter she had to use knew only a little Gaulish, but I gathered she is working up a great reception for us. What are we supposed to do? Fight lions? Men, too? Romans? I will gladly take a long chance for the sake of gutting half a dozen Romans! How are the men? And have the weapons come? Oh, by the way; Helene said this, or so I understood her; mind you, she is using an interpreter:

  “‘If you deny me, you shall lose your ship. If you accept me, you have only to fight gallantly and you shall sail away.’

  “It sounded like a threat, Tros, but she is working day and night to save you. So is Zeuxis. I understood Zeuxis to say that Conops turned up and joined you in the carceres. What happened to him?”

  Nepos came and with a nod of recognition let Orwic into Tros’s cell. He was too busy for conversation, but he grinned and jerked his thumb up to encourage Tros. His face looked like a demon’s in the lantern light, with tortured, nervous eyes that lacked sleep. Tros and Orwic talked until silence fell, then slept. That night the only men within the carceres who did not sleep were the suspicious guards, who prodded prisoners at intervals through cell bars to assure themselves that none had cheated the arena.

  CHAPTER 95. The Link Breaks

  No wise man fights. Wisdom solves all riddles, and a fight proves nothing except which of a number of fools can hit the harder blow. To be compelled to fight is a confession of stupidity or worse, and very likely worse. But few are wise. Unwisdom traps us in the nets of savagery, from which fear finds no way of escape. Then the luckier fool may win, unless the lesser fool remembers, even in the tumult of the fighting, Wisdom that has no fight to win. The fool says the fight shall settle something; it shall be the end of this or that. Let the lesser fool remember there is no end of folly, but there is a beginning of Wisdom. Let him storm the gates of Wisdom toward a new beginning. Then, though that gate be death, that he assaulted it as a Beginning shall have brought him a little nearer to a true goal. Wisdom, it appears to me, will be at least as useful to us beyond death as on this side. I have never known Wisdom to counsel cowardice.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  DAWN heard the roaring begin, as the populace poured into the seats to make sure none should forestall them by bribing the attendants. There were frequent fights, enormously enjoyed by those whose right to their seats was undisputed; and the shouting of the sweet-meat and provision vendors never ceased until the vast arena was a sea of sweating faces and the equites and senators began to occupy the seats reserved for them — seats that had been specially protected overnight by raising the wooden wall in front of them.

  The spina down the midst had been removed. The Circus was a sea of clean sand glittering in sunlight. Colored awnings, stretched over the seats on decorated masts threw one half of the spectators into shade, except where hot rays shone through gaps where the awnings were roped together. There was a constant thunder from the canvas shaking in the morning wind. Roaring and baying of starved animals provided grim accompaniment. The blended tumult resembled thunder of surf on a rock-bound beach.

  Tros, fettered as before, was allowed to take his place at the hole in the wall, with Orwic chained beside him. Tros asked leave to inspect the weapons, but Nepos, irritable to the verge of madness, snarled at him:

  “Govern yourself! I have had tr
ouble enough! I have lost eight good guards!”

  There was not an object left, in the enclosure by the gate that opened into the arena, which a prisoner might seize and turn into a weapon. The guards’ clubs were fastened to their wrists by heavy thongs. The braziers were set in place behind a grille, where grimy slaves made ready to pass hot irons to the guards; and the first batch of prisoners — they who had staged the outbreak — were hustled in readiness into the irregularly shaped enclosure whose fourth side was the great door that should presently admit them to their death. They all wore clean but very scanty clothing, their own filthy garments having been ripped to rags in the struggle two nights previous; and most of them, acutely conscious of the red-hot irons, managed to look alert, almost eager for the tragedy. They joked. They even laughed. They called themselves the elephants’ dinner, unaware yet that the method of their execution had been changed.

  But first there was a ceremony in the sunshine. To a great heraldic blare of trumpets all the gladiators marched in through the gate that had admitted chariots the day before and, facing Pompey in a line, saluted him, one gladiator making a set speech. There were about three hundred armed men, very splendid in their different accouterments, as dignified and perfect in shape and muscle as so many sculptor’s gods.

  Another blast of trumpets sounded and a mock-engagement took place — parry and thrust with wooden weapons, wonderfully executed but mechanical. It lasted until the crowd grew restless and began to whistle. Then another trumpet blast and all the gladiators marched out, leaving breathless silence in their wake — and two lone, nearly naked slaves who stood beside a trap-door fifty feet away from the eye-hole where Tros and Orwic watched. Each held a rope in one hand and with the other clung to one of the pegs by which they were to climb from danger.