It means two things at once. Below them, the great beam that secured the gate crashes to the earth, thrown by several men’s hands. Unbarred, the gate rocks. That is one thing.
The other is that from the ludus the Celts finally arrive as a group, propelled by a chorusing scream of voices. They pour out of the black tunnel mouth and hit the training grounds at a dead run. Crixus leads them. He carries a stool grasped by the leg. Others carry chair legs, tankards, buckets, broom handles. Crixus is the first to reach Vatia’s men, who hunker to take the impact. He swings into them with the stool, battering. And then all the men behind him crash into Vatia’s men as well.
The gate cracks open. “Down!” Spartacus orders.
This time Dolmos obeys. They clamber down, shouting for others to do so as well. They rush to help push the gate open. It swings free. Men and women surge past them, pushing them forward. They run into the alley, but they also shout and gesture, urging others toward freedom. The ludus begins to drain. Dolmos sees it all happening and the elation in him is vast. They’re running in the night, down the lane and then to the left, to a broader street. He sees men and women running before and with him. He feels the pressure of yet more pushing at his back.
He thinks, Naí. Naí. Naí!
And then he doesn’t just think it. He shouts it.
Nonus
Nonus Cincia can walk away right now. He is a free man, a Roman citizen. He has the proof of it inscribed on a bronze sheet that he carries with him in case anyone thinks him a slave and accosts him. He’s had to produce it on more occasions than he cares to remember. Does he look so much like a slave? He thinks not, but it’s getting harder to tell the slave and free apart. There are just too many slaves. He once thought that slaves should all wear a brand on their forehead to mark them clearly, but then he conceded that this might not be a good idea. If slaves knew how great their numbers were, they would surely get troublesome ideas.
In any event, he’s a guard, not a slave. He isn’t bound to Vatia’s employ. Even if he had been before, he’s not anymore. Vatia is dead. Nonus is alive. He is glad of it and will keep himself in that state by whatever means necessary.
He tells himself this as he shoves supplies into his shoulder pack. A cloak against the rain. A short-handled ax. Lentils for three days. A bowl and wooden spoon, satchels of herbs, and a round of bread so hard it could suffice as a weapon if all else fails him. He thinks that perhaps what he should do is finish packing, fit his pack onto its frame, grab up everything he owns in the world, and make his escape. Working as guard in a ludus had never suited him, and two nights ago demonstrated in the bloodiest of fashions just how horrid a profession it is.
He would just leave, except that there are too many men nearby, all of them in the cramped courtyard of the guards’ quarters. They’re all making the same preparations he is. And there is Procolus, the head guard. The man has a force of will that Nonus finds impossible to defy. On one hand he wants nothing more than to fly from here; on the other he wants to do nothing to draw attention to himself. He hopes that Procolus will not remember where he was posted that night. The night was so confused and the days since so busy that clearly he has not realized anything yet. If he runs, Procolus will notice. He’ll remember him and think him a coward. And remembering him and thinking him a coward, he’ll recall that he was on duty at the side gate, the one through which the gladiators escaped.
Several men step into the courtyard, soldiers from the city’s barracks. They’re haughty, superior, disdainful of the guards for having failed so miserably. They say that they’re gathering in the lane outside the ludus. Come, they order. Some of the other ludus guards hoist their packs and follow them.
Nonus works faster. He closes his pack and fastens it to the wooden crossbar of the frame. With a thin leather braid, he attaches his cooking pot and canteen. His bedroll goes atop the crossbar. He moves quickly, and yet he delays, readjusting things, untying and tying again. Another man leaves. Perhaps, if the few others also go, he can slip away without being noticed. Why should he care if Procolus remembers him? He’ll be gone. Screw Capua and every citizen and slave in it. There has to be better work than this for a Roman citizen. Perhaps in one of the provinces. Far away, yes, but there his citizenship would matter. He’d get preference. There women would look on him favorably. What provincial girl wouldn’t want a citizen as a husband? He isn’t sure if that’s legal. He should check on that. Matters of the law have always confounded him. Several times he’s suffered for it.
Of course, he wouldn’t have had to be considering this if he hadn’t been assigned to the miserable side gate. What were two men going to do against a horde? Nothing except die, like Celus. What they couldn’t have done was stop the gladiators. So it’s not his fault. And he’s certainly not a coward. He is just realistic about the situations fate presents and the manner in which he should best respond. That’s why he ran when Kastor leaped like a madman from the top of the side gate. When he rolled and came up on his feet, Nonus remembered every time he’d seen the Galatian in the arena. A savage man, stone hard, as likely to laugh in the midst of battle as to cry out. And more of his kind were atop the gate as well, ready to leap.
There was also the fact that he had no love for Celus, the Pompeian he had been sharing the watch with. He was coarse and lazy. He liked to brag about the women he had raped on campaign in Iberia. Half the whelps in that country had his nose, he claimed. The other half his eyes. If that’s true, Nonus thinks, so much the worse for Iberia.
No, Nonus owed Celus nothing. So why die acting as if he did? He ran for cover. He hid behind a stack of timbers when the gladiators poured out of the opened gate. He would make the same choice again. The logic of it seems solid no matter how many times he works through it. He didn’t rise until the flow of pounding feet faded, and he was able to creep back toward the ludus. He stopped at Celus’s body. He rolled him over with the point of his sword and scowled at the bloody pulp that was his face. His claim of fecundity would go forever unverified, especially after what Kastor did to his nose.
Taking advantage of the moment, Nonus bent low, as if he were checking for signs of life, and did the best he could to smear the man’s blood on his blade. Only then—looking, he hoped, as if he were fresh from combat—did he run back into the chaos that still raged in the ludus. He fell in with the others, securing what slaves they could and getting them back into chains. He fought the fires before they could leap the ludus walls and spread. Hot, lung-burning work, but still Nonus preferred it to being dead in the alley.
So he had hidden, and he had deceived. What of it? If he had died in the alley, he wouldn’t now be preparing to march south along the Via Annia in pursuit of the runaway slaves. He was to be part of a corps of men sent in pursuit of the gladiators, some of Vatia’s men joining the troops from the Capuan garrison. They’ll be a hundred strong. The gladiators number less than that. Seventy, Procolus claimed. Maybe fewer. That was his best calculation based on the rolls, minus the few they captured and the one row of gladiator cells that hadn’t been unlocked, the Iberians. Likely, the fugitives will scatter into small bands, each heading its own direction. The company will have little trouble recapturing them. See? He’s alive and being useful. He’s going to be with Procolus and the others when they bring the gladiators to heel. That’s what matters.
He finishes binding his bedroll to the pack frame and debates whether he should attach anything further to it. The last of the household guards leave to join the others. One makes a clucking noise at him. Nonus responds with a vulgar gesture. He looks around to confirm that he’s alone. He can hear the others, but they’re out of sight. He lifts his pack and settles it onto his shoulders. He hooks a corner of his shield with his toe and lifts it to where he can grab it. And that’s it. Pack on his back, sword at his waist, shield in hand. The iron throwing darts fastened to the hollow of the shield add to its weight. He’s ready. He has to walk only a few steps, round the corner, and join
the others.
He doesn’t. It is possible the gladiators haven’t gotten far. Perhaps he is but hours away from meeting them. With the memory of that night still upon him, that thought is not a cheering one. Kastor. Spartacus. Oenomaus…None of them are men he wants to meet again.
He thinks again of the provinces. Maybe he couldn’t get married to a foreigner, but he could surely have one as a concubine. Some men make their fortunes overseas and return to Italy prosperous. That’s the way, he thinks. The only one left for a poor man in a land filled by slaves. In some ways, his lot has become worse than slavery. At least slaves know their value. At least they are worth something. Nonus? With his debts, he has no worth. Less than that, in truth.
Glancing once more at the opening that leads out of the compound, Nonus lifts a foot to begin backing away.
Procolus steps from around the corner. The head guard studies him for a moment. His hands go to his hips, chin rises. “Nonus, come. We march.”
—
“Still giving service to Vatia, aren’t we?” Toscan asks. He marches beside Nonus on the Via Annia. He looks surprisingly happy, considering the circumstances. “He’s dead, but here we are hunting his slaves. I wonder how they did it. So many of them escaped just like that. How is that possible?”
“I’m not the one to ask,” Nonus responds. Toscan’s good cheer annoys him.
The paving stones are hard on Nonus’s feet. His sandals, he realizes, are not suited to marching. He would prefer to jog along the grassy edge of the road, but the garrison captain wants them to look like a military unit, tight together, marching in formation. So it’s the naked stone for them. They move in a group, each of them weighted by a pack similar to Nonus’s. They’re no legion. Nonus has no delusions about that, but they’re armed well enough that people clear the way for them. That’s a nice feeling: to be noticed. Feared even.
The day is chilly, the sky filled with clouds that threaten rain but don’t deliver it. They march into and out of shade, through towns and rolling fields bursting with spring, past villas and graveyards and ruins. The route is easy to follow. The gladiators must have thought the same. They’d come this way and made no attempt at secrecy. More than one unfortunate traveler attests to having been robbed and brutalized. Wagons and horses were stolen, as were weapons and food and clothing. They shout their woes to the passing corps. Attacked in the night. Attacked in the day. Villains rushing from the cover of trees. A horde rampaging down the Annia as if they owned it. One man claims to have lost his wife. Another is more concerned about his flock of goats. They ask who is going to make amends. Is Vatia going to pay for their losses? How they can already know Vatia’s name confounds Nonus, but they do. They curse him as the cause of their woes.
The captain keeps them marching. A brisk pace that, under the burden of the packs, has Nonus breathing hard.
“Listen to them,” Toscan says. “As if Vatia had any say in it. His girl was raped, you know.”
He’s said this several times already. Not that he knows any more about it than Nonus. Neither of them saw the bodies or the scenes of those particular murders.
“They say the brutes passed her from one to another until she was worn out. Then they drowned her for her troubles. The scum. They should all be hung from crosses. They will be, too.”
Nonus half wishes he had been assigned further cleanup duties back at the ludus. That way he might have gotten a glimpse of Vatia’s girl’s body, just to see for himself. For that matter, he might have gotten to see the lanista’s state. He wonders how the slaves killed him, if they mutilated his body in some grotesque way. Surely, they did something to Vatia, something horrible and vengeful. Something quick and dirty. His mind conjures one gruesome image after another.
There are many things they might’ve done, but he’s not convinced that any of the gladiators would’ve taken the time to pass a woman around for pleasure. Not last night. Not considering the things he saw and heard. One of them said “Yes” over and over again in Greek, as if he were in the midst of the best sex Nonus had ever overheard. It was escaping that got them to climax last night, not Vatia’s girl. These are details that he hopes to forever steer clear of. He says, “You don’t know that they raped her.”
“What, you think they would just leave her?” he asks, as if he’s truly perplexed. That, Nonus thinks, is because in the same situation Toscan would not leave a woman unmolested. He can’t imagine that anyone else would either.
In any event, the gladiators couldn’t have been thinking clearly. They haven’t won themselves freedom. They’ve only shortened the possible span of their days. They’ll die today or tomorrow, next week or the week after. They may be thrilled to be running free in the land at the moment, but that thrill will crash down upon them soon. They are all of them branded as gladiators, named as Vatia’s property. Who will employ them? No one. Who will aid them? Nobody. All of Italy will be their enemies. A few might escape to the hills and live a rough life in the forests and among the rocks and animals. That is the best they could hope for. To Nonus, that seems a fate worse than captivity.
They are causing destruction and grief, but none of them seems particularly clever. Staying together, moving so publicly, stealing what they can grab from people unfortunate enough to meet them on the road, or have a home within sight of it. All evidence that they have no plan other than to flee, sticking together as a mob, grabbing what they can before the hand of fate catches up with them.
The properties outside Caserta had a hard time of it. Nonus scarcely believes his eyes. Gods, this is the sort of place Nonus normally would have envied. Prosperous farms. Trellises hung with vines. Groves of olive trees. How was it even labor, he’d always thought, to pluck grapes and step on them? Catching olives when they fell. All the time surrounded by the rolling, tranquil beauty of a landscape that slowly ripens under the summer sun. Or so he’d thought.
Now pillars of smoke attest to the devastation. Villas aflame, barns smoking, carts overturned, and storage sheds raided. At one gutted villa, slaves stand about, sooty and dejected. Bodies have been laid out in a line on the ground, victims, apparently, of the gladiators. Their owner berates them, shouting about their cowardice in not defending the place, smacking and punching them when his passion gets the better of him.
The man’s fury reminds Nonus of his father’s rages. He used to beat his sons in just the same manner, discoursing the entire time on why he was doing it. Nine of them, all boys. Nonus was the ninth, hence his name. He had never been sure whether his father was proud to have nine sons or infuriated by it. His property went to his oldest son on his death. When he died, it skipped over the second son, who had himself died, then fell to the third son for a span of years. More death. The fourth son, Volesus, owns the property now. He has made it clear he doesn’t intend to die. Choice jobs he offered to the next few. To Nonus? Nothing.
On the other side of the city, as the corps stops to take water from a stream, a landowner accosts them. He climbs atop a stone wall built right up against the road. His nose is busted, eye blackened. He walks with a limp that makes Nonus fear he’s just one misstep from toppling off the wall. Nothing’s wrong with his mouth, though. He shouts at them, asking why they’re not marching faster. Don’t they know what’s happening? The brutes came upon him without notice. They banged on the door and shouted that they bore a message from his brother. They spoke of him by name and said the city they’d come from. Both were right. What was he to do but order the gates opened?
“It was a vile thing,” he says. “A trick.”
“How came they by your brother’s name?” the captain asks.
“I don’t know, but when I find out, I’ll tear that fool’s tongue out with a pair of hot pliers.”
The greatest indignity of all is that his slaves suffered only minor injuries. The few that put up a defense had the injuries to prove it, but far too many of them bore not so much as a bruise. “Now I’ll have to sell more than a few of the
bastards—all the ones that I can’t beat the memory of last night right out of.” He makes the captain promise to bring one of the captured gladiators back alive. He’ll erect the crucifix right here on his property. “At my expense, of course.”
And a little later a nervous freight hauler runs out from a cluster of buildings set back from the road. He waves them down, saying he has several wagonloads of gladiatorial weapons hidden in a warehouse nearby. He points to it. “Last night,” he says, breathless with it, “I lay listening to the runaways shouting as they passed. If they had found us out…” He sucks his teeth. “They’d be armed, every one of them.”
“Praise the gods you weren’t found out, then,” Procolus says. His eyes touch on Nonus, move on. Then they pause and come back to him. Nonus looks down, feigns shooing a fly away from his inner leg.
When the man learns that Procolus is from a ludus in Capua, he begs him to take over the shipment. Procolus won’t hear of it. He tells the man to stay hidden, and the captain assures him the roads will be safe again soon. Just keep off them until then.
“So near to a stash like that,” Toscan says, once they are marching again. “Dolts.”
“What,” Nonus asks, “they should’ve been able to smell the weapons?”
“Why not?”
Nonus rolls his eyes up so far, his irises disappear inside his head. He’s always been able to do this. A trick he was asked often to perform as a boy. It’s become his silent protest when faced with stupidity.
The Risen Page 6