My army, Castus thinks. He doesn’t like that and wishes Gannicus hadn’t said it. It grants him too much import. And too much responsibility.
—
Three days earlier he and his Germani brethren hiked up through a moist, vine-choked ravine. They scrambled over moss-slick boulders, pulling on vines, splashing through the stream they were ascending. Breathing hard, feet wet, grime under his fingernails, Castus almost felt as if he were home again. Hunting as he did as a boy. Raiding as he did as a young man back home. He was not home, though. He was here, in Italy. That had been his curse for some years now. He had thought it would be until his end came. Now he was starting to believe otherwise. Life was not all in the past, he’d begun thinking. There was a future. And if what the priestess was saying about Spartacus was true, it might be a grander future than anything he’d yet imagined.
Oenomaus led them, a band of twenty he had handpicked. He’s always in front, even when being led by the scout that had found the farm they intended to raid. He had a way of striding that was constantly impatient. He made the youth struggle to keep pace with him, running beside him, pointing and gesturing the way. Castus pitied the lad. He tried hard, though Oenomaus gave him no credit for it.
Oenomaus is his chieftain, now that they have sworn allegiance to him. He’s the only one of them who was a Gaesatae before being enslaved, one of that chosen sect of mercenary warriors. There was no doubting he was the foremost among the Germani physically. He had a bulk all his own, distinct from the other men of stature. Spartacus was tall and broad-shouldered, each of his muscles proud, positioned as a sculptor would arrange them. Kastor was big but lanky. Crixus was shorter. He was coiled tension, with a sharp nose to cut through it. Oenomaus’s bulk was like that of the bear he swore he could become when he wished to. Hunched and fleshy and heavy. No one would choose him as a model for a statue. But neither would he stand still long enough to become one. He never paused. He rolled on his feet. He swayed. His head moved often, as if his nose was always catching scents on the air. His voice, too, was bearlike, a grumble that never seemed happy.
It took the gathered gladiators and runaways days to decide upon the structure of command. They cast vote upon vote. By the end they had the inevitable triad that should have been obvious from the start. Not one commander over all of them, but three. The Thracians, who had started it, who had the god-talker and her chosen hero. The Allobroges, who were the most numerous. And the Germani, who numbered nearly as many since they combined the members of more than one Germanic tribe. They were each to have command of their own men, but they were to share decisions that affected them all. Oenomaus might have been pleased to have his stature given equal measure to that of Crixus and Spartacus. Others who wanted as much didn’t get it. But being one of three did not please him. He led his men as they left the morning council without a word and came here to raid on their own, as Oenomaus believed they had a right to do.
When they crested the hilltop Oenomaus halted them, telling them to drink if they needed to. He, apparently, didn’t need to. As the others reached for their water skins, he planted his foot on a stone and took in the landscape. The contours of the land lay like a soft blanket cast over sleeping bodies, rolling away into the graying distance. Nearer, a patchwork of fields and thickets of trees, and a river in its still meandering. And on one hillside, flowers of some sort bloomed radiantly red. Castus took it in as well, thinking that this land, cruel as the masters of it were, was not without beauty.
Stroking the golden hair of his unruly mustache, Oenomaus said, “We will accept this for now. Not forever, but for now. I know what would happen if we broke away. The Romans, being cowards, would turn away from Spartacus and the others and follow us. They’d call on every ally whose lands we have to pass through and they would all stand against us.”
“I fear none of them,” Erlich said. He was young, stupid, and eager to rise in Oenomaus’s estimation.
“You should,” Gannicus said, “but if we were fast—”
“Fast is good,” Oenomaus acknowledged, “but we are few. Too few to take on Roman armies by ourselves. And we have already lost the advantage of surprise. No, I’m telling you, the way for us to get home is to first grow stronger. There are Germani all up and down this country. Thousands and thousands of them. Bring them to us. Win them. When we are strong enough: that’s when we break and go our way. This is what I say, and it’s how it will be.” He closed the matter with a grunt, then moved to another issue. “He was drunk.”
The he, of course, being Spartacus. With Oenomaus of late, the he in most of his thoughts was Spartacus. The same was true for Castus, though for different reasons.
Gannicus pulled his mouth away from his water skin. “We were all drunk. Too few mouths and too much wine. We made a contest of who could down the most. Spartacus didn’t even win.” He wiped water from the corner of his mouth and looked around at the others wryly. “I’d say I did. That snake would’ve come to me except that my breath was too heavy with wine stink! With wine sick, to be honest.”
The others laughed at Gannicus. He was as self-interested as Oenomaus in his way, but his way was humor and being at the center of it. He was good company. Not as brutal as Oenomaus, but he was a good fighter as well. Had he put himself forward to lead the Germani, Castus would have supported him.
Oenomaus acknowledged no humor in the exchange. The creases in his forehead became mountain ranges. “Did you see him stumbling, pulled this way and that by screeching women? What hero was ever led so?” He asked questions, but he didn’t wait for answers. “None, because he is no hero. A man becomes a hero after his deeds have been done, when they can be numbered and attested to. What has Spartacus done to have so many tongues wagging about signs from the gods?”
He went on, saying he’d done nothing that the rest of them hadn’t done as well. They all rose in the ludus. They all killed if they got the chance. They all walked every step of the way here from Capua.
Castus held his tongue. With Oenomaus it was hard to know what would offend. Agreeing with him or disputing him: both were equally likely to kindle his anger. In this case, though, he was not in agreement with him, so he especially should stay silent. All people were born with their fates in place. So why wasn’t a hero a hero even before he had done the things that would make him great? Had Oenomaus forgotten that it was Astera who somehow unlocked the ludus with the power of her goddess, and that she had made it known that Spartacus was her goddess’s chosen one? Why else would a snake wrap around his face like a lover, kissing him with her tongue? He wished he had seen the sight himself. Though it didn’t really matter. He imagined it vividly enough that it was almost as if he had been there.
Thinking of it made him wish he were one of the Thracians. He loved his own people, but it seemed that the Thracians were truly propelled by the hand of their goddess. How else did they know about the bowl in the top of the mountain called Vesuvius? This wasn’t Spartacus’s country, but he seemed to know it as if it were. He brought to council news of a flat stretch hidden in the heights, a basin dotted with large pines, lush with berries, and like a cage for deer and goats, squirrels and rabbits. With a lake of water bluer than the sky reflected in it. A perfect place that, for some reason, the Italians around it didn’t even seem to know existed.
Since they’d moved their camp there, they’d been raiding down the mountain’s hillsides almost daily. A feast just there for them to look down upon and pluck from as they wished. Vineyards. Orchards. Pastureland. Farms. They perched above it all and swept down as they pleased. Even Oenomaus couldn’t claim they weren’t eating well. They spread the word among the slaves whom they left unharmed, urging them to the summit of the mountain. It was a landmark visible to anyone within miles of it. Many had already come, and more were doing so each day. And wasn’t this all Spartacus’s doing? To Castus, it clearly was.
He’d watched Spartacus one afternoon as he trained on a high boulder with only the sky
behind him. He wielded a weapon carved from a sapling. It was a long thing that Castus couldn’t quite make sense of. Too long for a sword, though shaped like one. Not a staff either, but nearly so. Regardless of what the weapon was, he twirled and spun it at blurred speed. Slicing wide arcs. Sometimes punching with it, thrusting, snapping it at angles. It was quite a dance. Castus had been unable to take his eyes off him, even as he feared Spartacus might look down and catch him spying on him.
It’s jealousy, Castus thought, that kept Oenomaus from seeing what so many others saw. That worried him. He almost pointed out that if Spartacus were to be the instrument of Rome’s destruction, it was a blessing to them all, but he’d done that once already. It didn’t go over well.
“What comes first,” Oenomaus asked, “the snake, or the hand that holds it?”
Gannicus, standing where Oenomaus couldn’t see him, rolled his eyes. “A question for the ages, my friend. Have I time to answer it? I thought we had a farm to ravage.”
“Astera and her goddess…Why ask us all to bow to a female god? It’s a war god we need. It’s Wodanaz and—”
“Brother,” Castus said. He got that word out, but had trouble finding the ones to follow it when Oenomaus set his glare on him. “I—I mean, we don’t know the power of their god.” He glanced from face to face, looking for agreement, unsure if he saw it or not. “Let’s not speak ill of her, or her priestess.”
For a moment, the others answered with silence. Eyes slid toward Oenomaus. He chewed a response as if he had bitten something foul and were about to spit it out. But Castus was only saying what was right. They all knew it. One never knew what might insult the gods. Why let words slip that would turn their anger toward you? It was basic reason. That was all he’d stated. He had another idea as well. Something he had been thinking but had never spoken of.
“I think that their god”—Castus chose not to say her name—“is the same as our Nerthus. Both of them speak through priestesses. Both care about the fates of the people and intervene for us. I think that we have different names for the same being. Another face of her, perhaps. If so, to insult her is to insult Nerthus as well. Don’t you think?”
Not the most eloquent of arguments, but he saw that some, at least, understood him. Maybe they’d had the same thought before, especially as their fortunes had risen with the Thracians and with the Celts. It’s as if the god the Thracians worshipped were willing to bless them all. Why would she do that?
Oenomaus’s expression didn’t soften, but neither did he say whatever he was about to before. “Enough talking. Let’s go. Show us this farm, boy.”
It sat in a hollow at the end of a long valley. From the ridgeline above, having thrashed through the snarl of shrubs growing beneath the taller pines, they could see little of it. But the youth told them what they couldn’t see. A farmhouse. Several storehouses. Slave quarters. He swore that at least some of the slaves had asked for them to come. These slaves wouldn’t fight them. They would welcome gladiators. When their master was dead, they would show them where he stored his treasures. There was more hidden there, they claimed, than was obvious.
“This doesn’t look like a rich farm,” Oenomaus said. “You said it was rich. That’s why we’ve come all this way. This, though, is just some poor bastard’s fields.”
The youth, who had been a shepherd before joining them, spoke quickly in answer. He had a wine-colored stain on his face. Pity, for he was otherwise handsome. He explained that his master liked to pretend to be a simple farmer. He took pride in it and left the place in a humble state. But in truth he was rich and lived in Neopolis. He came here to play a role and to host friends.
“Are they here now?” Gannicus asked.
“They were,” the boy said, “but they left when word of the uprising spread. Only the master and some of his family stayed. He is proud, see, and not afraid.”
“Proud?” Gannicus smirked. “Men die from that.”
Oenomaus was caught on a different word. “Uprising?”
Castus knew the word annoyed him. It’s too grand, Oenomaus thought. Spartacus and Gaidres liked to talk about a large-scale uprising, something to make all the slaves of Italy rise with them. Oenomaus thought of it only as the beginning of an escape. A way to get home again. Had he his way, they would be running for the mountains already. He’d lost those first few moments, though, propelled as they all were by the Thracian’s sense of purpose. Now it was not so easy to break away.
The boy didn’t seem to notice the danger in Oenomaus’s tone. “Yes, word is spreading,” he said, enthusiastically. “They flew from here as soon as they could. So frightened.”
“So there won’t be much there.”
“There will,” he insisted. “They flew, but there are stores of things down there. Rich things that the master wants to protect. I haven’t seen them, but the house slaves say you will be pleased.”
“Fools,” Oenomaus said. “He should have fled with his friends and left us to raid as we please. Instead…” He left it there, not saying what was going to happen to them instead. He didn’t have to. He gave orders. He would go down through the woods from here and stay at their edge. Gannicus was to work around, keeping hidden in the woods, and position himself on the far side of the estate, as near as possible without being seen. “Wait for my roar,” Oenomaus said. “When you hear it, attack.”
Castus was not to be with the main attack. Oenomaus told him to work through the woods across the ridgeline, to a cluster of boulders that sprouted up out of them. There he was to keep lookout. He would have a better view down the valley along the main road that might bring aid to the farm. If he saw anyone coming, he was to let them know. Castus knew there was an insult in the assignment, but he didn’t acknowledge it.
He worked his way through the woods to the boulders and sat, letting his eyes roam toward the hills blocking the far horizon. Here and there long trails of smoke rose into the air, marking other farms. There was a town beneath the distant hills but not near enough to be a danger to them. A carriage traversed the valley from one side toward the other, then turned toward the town. Nearer, the longer he looked, the more he noticed people working the fields. Tiny figures. They would be slaves. He knew that, though he couldn’t see their stigmas or chains from a distance. The view was exactly as it should be for their purposes. No one would come to aid the people of the farm. Not those slaves. Not the people in that distant town. If the owners of the villa had prayed to a god for protection, the god must not have been listening. So often, it seemed to Castus, that was the case.
Far down the valley, at the point at which the road curved out of view, there was movement. It was too distant to make out what. He didn’t try. He had something else to think about. He wondered if Spartacus loved Drenis, if they lay together as he would with either of them. They were different but each beautiful in his own way. He wondered if Thracians, being from lands near to the Greeks, looked kindly on the love between men. He had searched them for signs of it, but he wasn’t sure.
And it wasn’t just that. The things Spartacus said—and Gaidres with him—filled Castus with a strange excitement. They spoke reason. When they talked, it all made sense. They were not alone here in Italy. There were a million like them, none of them happy with their lot. Why shouldn’t they band together and break their chains and ravage those who enslaved them? Celts had once sacked Rome itself. Back then they had to march all the way down from the mountains. Now they were already here. If they stayed together like a clenched fist instead of rushing off in separate directions, they had the might to challenge Rome. When Spartacus said such things, Castus couldn’t help but believe.
Oenomaus roared. Something about the sound sent a thrill of exhilaration through Castus, and something about that sensation snapped his attention back up to the road and the hint of motion there. All at once, with terrible certainty, he knew what his eyes saw.
—
An army. That was what he saw entering the valley.
And that’s why he’s now up in the middle of the night. He waits as some start the descent, which is their first, but not their only, obstacle of the night. He can’t see the drop from where he stands behind others and still back in the trees, but he knows what’s there. He saw it in the daylight. The land falls away, clifflike, slabs of cracked and fissured stone. Vines and roots cover the stone in a gnarled, living lacework. Far below, the sheer face dives down into a jumble of rocks, beyond which the forest begins. Such a height. All at angles that make his head swim. He is glad he cannot see the scene clearly now.
“Come, you!” A man waves at him impatiently. Castus scurries forward, embarrassed that he let a gap form ahead of him. The man is an Allobroges, one of Crixus’s people. It’s they who climbed the cliffs the night before, picking out the route and anchoring the vines they would need. Two of them, he’d heard, fell to their deaths. One fell but didn’t die. He lay broken on a spur of rock, crying his torment until one of his kinsmen climbed down and ended it for him.
“Secure your sword,” the Celt says. “You need both hands.”
Castus hadn’t thought of that. He’s not sure what to do until the man takes the blade from him and jabs it, roughly, down the waist loop of his loincloth. “One hand over the other, like this.” He demonstrates. He grabs Castus’s hands and squeezes them around the coarse weave of the vines. “Lean back, and get your feet against stone. Feet flat, yes? All right, go.” That’s all the instruction he’s to receive. The Celt is already calling for the next man, one who, like Castus, has let a gap form.
As he goes over the edge, Castus asks aid of Wodanaz, the god he favors because he bestows strength in dealing with enemies. The climb is his first enemy. Help me defeat it in your name, Wodanaz, he thinks. He tries to lean back, to keep his feet flat. It doesn’t feel right. He grabs for the stone with one hand. His feet slip away beneath him, and he’s dangling, kicking for purchase, vine tearing his palm. The Celt thrusts his head over the edge and whisper-shouts, “Feet flat on the stone, I said! Ass low. Stop kicking, you fool!”
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