by George R. R.
The Romans were mounted on their horses. They were relaxed now, laughing and joking among themselves but keeping their eyes on us. They held long spears cradled against their bent elbows and pointed at our throats. Occasionally one of the Romans would poke the tip of his spear against the man he guarded, prodding his chest or pricking his neck, smirking at the shudder that ran through the unguarded flesh. They outnumbered us, three Romans to every captive. Matho had always warned that they would come in overwhelming numbers. If only there had been more of us, I thought, then remembered how pitiful our resistance had been. If all the Carthaginian fugitives scattered across the desert had been gathered in one place to fight the slave raiders, we still would have lost.
Then the Romans drew back, and down the aisle left in their wake their leader came riding, leading Matho behind him by a tether fitted around the old man’s neck. Like the rest, Matho was naked and bound. To see him that way made me lower my eyes in shame. Thus I avoided seeing the face of the Roman leader again as he rode slowly by, the hooves of his mount ringing on the stone.
He reached the end of the row and wheeled his horse about, and then I heard his voice, piercing and harsh. He spoke Punic well, but with an ugly Latin accent.
“Twenty-five!” he announced. “Twenty-five male Carthaginians taken today for the glory of Rome!”
The Romans responded by beating their spears against the stony ground and shouting his name: “Fabius! Fabius! Fabius!”
I looked up, and was startled to see that his eyes were on me. I quickly lowered my face.
“You!” he shouted. I gave a start and almost looked up. But from the corner of my eye I saw him pull sharply on the tether. It was Matho he addressed. “You seem to be the leader, old man.”
Fabius slowly rotated his wrist, coiling the tether around his fist to shorten the lead, drawing Matho closer to him until the old man was forced to his toes. “Twenty-five men,” he said, “and not a woman or child among you, and you the only graybeard. Where are the others?”
Matho remained silent, then choked as the tether was drawn even tighter around his throat. He stared up defiantly. He drew back his lips. He spat. A gasp issued from the line of captives. Fabius smiled as he wiped the spittle from his cheek and flicked it onto Matho’s face, making him flinch.
“Very well, old man. Your little troop of fugitives won’t be needing a leader any longer, and we have no use for an old weakling.” There was a slithering sound as he drew a sword from his scabbard, then a flash of sunlight on metal as he raised it above his head. I shut my eyes. I instinctively moved to cover my ears, but my hands were bound. I heard the ragged slicing sound, then the heavy thud as Matho’s severed head struck the ground.
In the midst of the cries and moans of the captives, I heard a whisper to my right: “Now it begins.” It was Lino who spoke—Lino, who knew the ways of the slave raiders, because he had been captured once himself, and alone of all his family had escaped. He was even younger than I, but at that moment he looked like an old man. His shackled body slumped. His face was drawn and pale. Our eyes met briefly. I looked away first. The misery in his eyes was unbearable.
Lino had joined us a few months ago, ragged and thin, as naked as now and blistered by the sun. He spoke a crude Punic dialect, different from the cosmopolitan tongue of us city-dwellers. His family had been shepherds, tending flocks in the foothills outside Carthage. They had thought themselves safe when the Romans laid siege to the city, beneath the notice of the invaders. When the Romans turned their wrath against even shepherds and farmers in the distant countryside, Lino’s tribe fled into the desert, but the Romans hunted them down. Many were killed. The rest, including Lino, had been captured. But on the journey toward the coast he had somehow escaped, and found his way to us.
Some of the men had argued that Lino should be turned away, for if there were Romans pursuing him, he would lead them straight to us. “He’s not one of us,” they said. “Let him hide somewhere else.” But Matho had insisted that we take him in, saying that any youth who had escaped the Romans might know something of value. Time passed, and when it became clear that Lino had not led the Romans to us, even those who had argued for his expulsion accepted him. But to any question about his time in captivity, he gave no reply. He seldom talked. He lived among us, but as an outsider, keeping himself guarded and apart.
I felt Lino’s eyes on me as he whispered again: “The same as last time. The same leader, Fabius. He kills the chief elder first. And then—”
His words were drowned by the clatter of hoofbeats as Fabius galloped down the line of captives. At the far end of the row he wheeled about and began a slow parade up the line, looking at each of the captives in turn.
“This one’s leg is too badly wounded. He’ll never survive the journey.”
Two of the Romans dismounted, unshackled the wounded man, and led him away.
“A shame,” Fabius said, sauntering on. “That one had a strong body, the makings of a good slave.” Again he paused. “And this one’s too old. No market for his kind, not worth the care and feeding. And this one—see the blank stare and the drool on his lips? An idiot, common among these inbreeding Carthaginians. Useless!”
The Romans removed the men from the line and closed the links, so that I was forced to shuffle sideways, pulling Lino along with me.
The men removed from the line were taken behind a large boulder. They died with hardly a sound—a grunt, a sigh, a gasp.
Fabius continued down the line, until the shadow of man and beast loomed above me, blocking the sun. I bit my lip, praying for the shadow to move on. Finally I looked up.
I couldn’t make out his face, which was obscured by the blinding halo that burned at the edges of his shaggy blond mane of hair. “And this one,” he said, with grim amusement in his voice, “this one slew my mount in the battle. The best fighter among you lot of cowards, even if he is hardly more than a boy.” He lifted his spear and jabbed my ribs, grazing the skin but not quite drawing blood. “Show some spirit, boy! Or have we already broken you? Can’t you even spit, like the old man?”
I stared back at him and didn’t move. It wasn’t bravery, though perhaps it looked like it. I was frozen with terror.
He produced the silver dagger I had buried to the hilt in his mount’s neck. The blood had been cleared away. The blade glinted in the sunlight.
“A fine piece of workmanship, this. A fine image of Hercules on the handle.”
“Not Hercules,” I managed to whisper. “Melkart!”
He laughed. “There is no Melkart, boy! Melkart no longer exists. Don’t you understand? Your gods are all gone, and they’re never coming back. This is an image of the god we Romans call Hercules, and that’s the name by which the world shall know him from now until eternity. Our gods were stronger than your gods. That’s why I’m sitting on this horse, and you’re standing there naked in chains.”
My body trembled and my face turned hot. I shut my eyes, trying not to weep. Fabius chuckled, then moved on, reining his mount sharply after only a few paces. He stared down at Lino. Lino didn’t look up. After a very long pause, longer than he had spent staring at me, Fabius moved on without saying a word.
“He remembers me,” Lino whispered, in a voice so low, he could only have been speaking to himself. He began to shake, so violently that I felt the vibration through the heavy chain that linked our necks. “He remembers me! It will happen all over again....”
Fabius removed two more captives from the line, then finished his inspection and cantered to the center. “Well, then—where are the women?” he said quietly. No one answered. He raised his spear and cast it so hard against the cliff wall above our heads that it splintered with a thunderous crack. Every face in the line jerked upright.
“Where are they?” he shouted. “A single woman is more valuable than the whole lot of you worthless cowards! Where have you hidden them?”
No one spoke.
I glanced past him, at the place wh
ere the crevice opened into the hidden cave, then quickly looked away, fearing he would see and read my thoughts. Fabius leaned forward on his mount, crossing his arms. “Before we set out in the morning, one of you will tell me.”
* * * *
II
That night we slept, still chained together, under the open sky. The night was cold, but the Romans gave us nothing to cover ourselves. They huddled under blankets and built a bonfire to keep themselves warm. While some slept, others kept watch on us.
During the night, one by one, each of us was removed from the circle, taken away, and then brought back. When the first man returned and the second was taken in his stead, someone whispered, “What did they do to you? Did you tell?” Then a guard jabbed the man who spoke with a spear, and we all fell silent.
Late that night, they came for Lino. I would be next. I braced myself for whatever ordeal was to come, but Lino was kept for so long that my courage began to fade, drained away by imagined terrors and then by utter exhaustion. I was only barely conscious when they came for me. I didn’t notice that Lino was still missing from the circle.
They led me over the ridge and through a maze of boulders to the open place where Fabius had pitched his tent. A soft light shone through its green panels.
Within the tent was another world, the world the Romans carried with them in their travels. A thick carpet was underfoot. Glowing griffon-headed lamps were mounted on elegantly crafted tripods. Fabius himself reclined on a low couch, his weapons and battle gear discarded for a finely embroidered tunic. In his hand he held a silver cup brimming with wine. He smiled.
“Ah, the defiant one.” He waved his hand. The guards pushed me forward, forcing me to kneel and pressing my throat into the bottom panel of stocks mounted at the foot of Fabius’s couch. They closed the yoke over the back of my neck, locking my head in place.
“I suppose you’ll say the same as all the rest: ‘Women? Children? But there are no women and children, only us men! You’ve killed our beloved old leader and culled out the weaklings, so what more do you want?’“ He lifted the cup to his lips, then leaned forward and spat in my face. The wine burned my eyes.
His voice was hard and cold, and slightly slurred from the wine. “I’m not stupid, boy. I was born a Roman patrician. I used to be a proud centurion in the legions, until...until there was a slight problem. Now I hunt for runaway slaves. Not much honor in that, but I’m damned good at it.”
“I’m not a slave,” I whispered.
He laughed. “Granted, you weren’t born a slave. But you were born a Carthaginian, and I know the ways of you Carthaginians. Your men are weak. You can’t bear to be without your women and children. You refugees out here in the desert always travel in a group, dragging the old bones and infants after you. What sort of worthless life are you leading out here in the wilderness? You should be grateful that we’ve come for you at last. Even life as a slave should seem Like Elysium after this pathetic existence. What’s your name, boy?”
I swallowed. It wasn’t easy, with the stocks pressed so tightly against my throat. “Hanso. And I’m not a boy.”
“Hanso.” His curled his upper lip. “A common enough Carthaginian name. But I’m remembering the spirit you showed in the battle this morning, and I’m wondering if there’s not some Roman blood in your veins. My grandfather used to boast about all the Carthaginian girls he raped when he fought your colonists in Spain. He was proud to spill some Fabius seed to bolster your cowardly stock!”
I wanted to spit at him, but my neck was bent and the stocks were too tight around my throat.
“You’re not a boy, you say? Then you shall be tested as a man. Now tell me: Where are the women hidden?”
I didn’t answer. He raised his hand, making a signal to someone behind me. I heard a whoosh, then felt an explosion of fire across my back. The whip seared my flesh, then slid from my shoulders like a heavy snake.
I had never felt any pain like it. I had never been beaten as a child, as the Romans are said to beat their children. The pain stunned me.
Fabius seemed to revel in the punishment, laughing softly and repeating the same question as the whip struck me again and again. My flesh burned as if glowing coals had been poured on my back. I promised myself I wouldn’t weep or cry out, but soon my mouth lost its shape and I began to sob.
Fabius leaned forward, peering at me with one eyebrow raised. His scar was enormous, the only thing I could see. “Youare a strong one,” he said, nodding. “As I thought. So you won’t tell me where the women are hidden?”
I thought of Matho, of all his fretful plans, of my own fault in sounding the alarm too late. I took a deep shuddering breath and managed a single word: “Never.”
Fabius sipped his wine. A few drops trickled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “As you wish. It doesn’t matter anyway. We already know where they are. My men are busy flushing them out even now.”
I looked up at him in disbelief, but the grim amusement in his eyes showed that he wasn’t lying. I spoke through gritted teeth. “But how? Who told you?”
Fabius clapped his hands. “Come out, little eagle.”
Lino emerged from behind a screen. His hands were no longer bound, and the collar had been removed from his neck. Like Fabius he was dressed in a finely embroidered tunic, but his expression was fearful and he trembled. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.
The guard who had wielded the whip removed me from the stocks and pulled me to my feet. If my hands hadn’t been bound behind my back, I would have strangled Lino then and there. Instead, I followed Matho’s example. I spat. The spittle clung to Lino’s cheek. He began to raise his hand to brush it away, then dropped his arm, and I thought: He knows he deserves it.
“Restrain yourself,” Fabius said. “After all, you two will have all night together in close quarters to settle your differences.”
Lino looked up, panic in his eyes. “No! You promised me!”
He squealed and struggled, but against the Romans he was helpless. They stripped the tunic off him, twisted his arms behind his back, and returned the collar to his neck. They attached us by a link of chain and pushed us from the tent.
Behind us, I heard Fabius laugh. “Sleep well,” he called out. “Tomorrow the temptatio begins!”
Even as we stumbled from the tent, the Romans were herding their new captives from the hidden cave. The scene was chaotic—wavering torchlight and shadow, the shrieking of children, the wailing of mothers, the clatter of spears and the shouts of the Romans barking orders as the last of my people were taken into captivity.
* * * *
The bonfire burned low. Most of the Romans were occupied in flushing out the new captives. The few Romans who guarded us grew careless and dozed, trusting in the strength of our chains.
I lay on my side, my back turned to Lino, staring into the flames, longing for sleep to help me escape from the pain of the whipping. Behind me I heard Lino whisper: “You don’t understand, Hanso. You can’t understand.”
I glared at him over my shoulder. “I understand, Lino. You betrayed us. What does it matter to you? We’re not your tribe. You’re an outsider. You always were. But we took you in when you came to us starving and naked, and for that you owed us something. If my hands are ever free again, I swear I’ll kill you. For Matho.” My voice caught in my throat. I choked back a sob.
After a long moment, Lino spoke again. “Your back is bleeding, Hanso.”
I turned to face him, wincing at the pain. “And yours?” I hissed. “Show me your wounds, Lino!”
He paused, then showed his back to me. It was covered with bloody welts. He had been whipped even more severely than I. He turned back. His face, lit by the dying firelight, was so haggard and pale that for a moment my anger abated. Then I thought of Matho and the women. “So what? So the monster beat you. He beat us all. Every man here has wounds to show.”
“And do you think I was the only one to betray the hiding place?” His voice became sh
rill. One of the guards muttered in his sleep.
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“You kept silent, Hanso. I know, because I was there. Every time the lash fell on you, I cringed, and when you resisted him I felt... I felt almost alive again. But what about the others? Why do you think they’re so silent? A few may be sleeping, but the rest are awake and speechless, afraid to talk. Because they’re ashamed. You may be the only man among us who kept Matho’s secret.”
I was quiet for a long time, wishing I hadn’t heard him. When he began to whisper again, I longed to cover my ears.
“It’s their way, Hanso. The Roman way. To divide us. To isolate each man in his misery, to shame us with our weakness, to sow mistrust among us. Fabius plays many games with his captives. Every game has a purpose. The journey to the coast is long, and he must control us at every moment. Each day he’ll find some new way to break us, so that by the time we arrive, we’ll be good slaves, ready for the auction block.”
