He lowers his sword and slides his dagger beneath the rope that belts his waist. He walks toward them. They’re distracted by Nico, who has found them first. He holds chains in his hand as if he’s just released them. He gestures and talks, joking with them in Thracian. Perhaps Drenis thought ill of him for no reason. They’re Thracians. Here, in this foreign land, that makes them kin, women to be liberated, not harmed. Right now he’s glad Nico has their attention. It allows him to walk up right behind them without being noticed.
He puts a hand on the nearest woman’s shoulder. She turns quickly, as does the other. Drenis stares at one face and then the other. Then he checks each again. One is a fair face, round with large eyes. The other is thinner, but pretty too, with the pucker of a scar curling from the edge of her mouth. Their faces cause an assault of memory. In both of them, he sees Thrace. He sees sisters and cousins, mothers and grandmothers, girls admired from afar. He sees women he has lain with. Others he wishes he had. He sees the girl he was betrothed to but never had. That’s what hurts most.
Neither is Bendidora. No matter how many times his gaze switches from one to the other, that does not change. They remain who they are. Two women he has never seen before, even though there are a hundred ghosts captured in their features.
Drenis is standing, arms hanging limply at his side, when Spartacus appears beside him. “Do not despair, brother. I know what you wished for. It is possible she was never yet a slave in this land. Don’t wish that slavery upon her. Wish instead to see her again in Thrace. She had eyes for you before. She yet does, I’m sure.”
Someone begins to scream. The lanista. Shrew, it seems, has begun his revenge.
“Listen,” Spartacus says. He wraps a heavy hand around Drenis’s neck and pulls him close so that their foreheads touch temple to temple. “You may see her again. I don’t know. You may. Ask it of the gods, and all things are possible. But all things are mysteries as well. You should have eyes for the women within sight. Many are warm to you, handsome Drenis. Some god blessed you with a face women love to look upon. Men are jealous of it. You would do well to give them reason to be jealous. Right?”
Spartacus releases him. He grins. “Enough! We talk of women in this moment? Strange thing.” And he’s gone, shouting for the others, asking for an accounting of what’s transpired, reminding them there is everything to do. Sullans to kill. Slaves to free. Weapons to unlock. Armor to strap on. A city to bring to heel. This is another victory. Drenis knows that he should lose himself in it. He will. He just wishes he could put the dream of Bendidora from his mind.
“Why do I want her so much?” he asks.
It’s just a whisper. Nobody stops to ponder the question with him.
Sura
“Sister,” Sura whispers, “we should not do this now. Spartacus is—”
Astera looks up. Her eyes cut. It’s just a glance, but a glance is all Astera needs. She is saying that Sura has no business restating what she’s already dismissed. She’s saying that Sura is standing too close and listening to things she has not been invited to listen to. She should step away and do only what is asked of her. As is so often the case, there’s reproach in the purse of her lips, a jagged disappointment etched in her eyebrows.
Sura steps back. She holds a black puppy in her arms, though it’s mangy and dirty and she doesn’t like the touch of it. She turns and stands where she is supposed to. Together with Cerzula and Epta—who also hold pups—she makes the points of a triangle around Astera and the girl, Laelia. This is what Astera wants her to do. Be the point of a triangle equal to the other two, and keep the puppies calm so as not to offend the goddess. Is it wrong of Sura to want more? She wants to learn the words Astera uses to commune with Kotys. Why shouldn’t she? Why should only Astera know them, and now this girl? Is it wrong to hate the girl because she has become Astera’s right hand? The girl should be holding a pup. She is not even Thracian.
More than that, though, is that they shouldn’t be doing this right now. They should be with Spartacus. At this very moment, Spartacus might be fighting for his life. He might be dead, though if he dies, word will fly to them faster than sparrows. Still, he could die. Why then does Astera carry on with a ritual that could be set aside until later? This is something they’ve done several times already, a simple offering to keep faith with the goddess. It’s nothing that need happen just now. It all swirls angrily inside Sura. She wants to be beside Astera, so close they can whisper to each other as she learns the spell, and she wants to drop the puppy and run to where the crowd has gathered to watch Spartacus face Oenomaus in a fight that must leave one of them dead.
The five of them are alone in the space Astera claimed the first night in Nola. It was once the garden of a villa set on a rise at the edge of the city, where the hills start to grow into mountains. The owners, now dead, walked these paths and smelled these flowers and gazed at the fish swimming in the tiled ponds and took in the views of a world they thought they owned. Now the place is fragrant with the incense Astera had them scour the city for. A holy place now instead of one of leisure. A place in which they drew the goddess’s eye and offered praise and thanks for all the things achieved because of her.
And because of Spartacus, who may even now be dying.
Astera works as if she has no mind of the enormity of the moment. She intones her spell. She directs Laelia’s hands, having the girl take over the job of dropping the herbs into the bowl of water. First a pinch of this one. Then that. She points with her fingers, and the girl does as she instructs. Sura could do the same. She tries to keep her annoyance off her face.
Glancing at Cerzula, the oldest of them, she wonders why she never acknowledges the slight done to them all. She had asked her this once when the two of them were alone, preparing for their role in taking down the moon. It was, perhaps, the most important of their ceremonies. They would play a part only in the beginning, readying the circle in the woods, calling the goddess to see it, gentling the snakes that Astera would soon have twined around her arms and neck. The truly important part—when Astera captured the full moon in a bowl of water and talked through it directly with the goddess—that part they were forbidden to see. Chafing at this, Sura had asked if Cerzula wished to be let in on the mysteries they were kept from.
“You do not have the blessing of the goddess,” Cerzula said. “I don’t either, but we serve one who does. Be content with that, sister.”
“And the Roman girl, she is blessed?” Sura asked. Her anger was shallower with women other than Astera, closer to the surface and easier to let slip. “Why her? She’s not even of our people. How can she have the blessing of the goddess? She didn’t even know the name Kotys until we taught it to her!”
Cerzula had lifted the long coil of a snake. It was both loose and somehow stiff in her grip. She slipped it into a pouch and then lifted it and hung it around her neck. She said, “It’s not for me to say.”
To Sura, Cerzula was maddeningly flat and accepting.
Laelia takes up a necklace of shells on a string. She entwines it in her fingers and lifts both her hands to the sky. Sura sees her lips move, but she speaks too softly for her to make out the words. Astera is just beside her, whispering in her ears. She has her arms around the girl, supporting her as if she can’t stand on her own.
Weak, Sura thinks. Weak and a girl and not Thracian. She thinks of how she pushed that Roman woman’s head into the water back in Capua on the night they broke out. She thinks of it often, how easy it is to take a life, how it can be quiet and secret instead of loud and public, as the men prefer.
Astera stands back and watches Laelia, and then she turns and looks at Sura. Astera walks over to her. The woman’s thin fingers pry her arms apart. She takes the puppy and says, “Your mind isn’t as it should be. Go and be my eyes, if you like. You will be more use to me there. Tell me when it is over.” She walks back toward Laelia.
—
The crowd gathered in the city’s forum is thick. Me
n, but also women and children; all want to see this. Sura moves through it, shouting when her way is blocked. She is Astera’s own eyes, she proclaims. She tells people to part for the priestess’s eyes. They do. There are benefits to being one of Astera’s women. In her wake, her women are safe. Men may look upon her and Cerzula and Epta, but they dare not abuse them. Not anymore, though Epta carries proof that men once did abuse them. She has a child growing in her womb, likely put inside her back in Capua. By whom? One of the guards? A gladiator? A friend or business partner of Vatia’s? Or Vatia himself? There are too many possibilities. There’s nothing Epta can do about it, until it’s born at least. Then, if it were Sura, she’d be rid of it. Leave it, and let it be the past.
Now they have the privileges of shelter and food. Many bring them animals to sacrifice, or gifts to pass on to Astera. As one of her women, they are free to choose for themselves which men they wish to lie with. Cerzula took Gaidres as a partner, an older man but one she says is gentle while still strong. Epta avoids men. She’s taken no man to bed since they escaped Vatia’s. Many would have her—even with a child already in her—but she won’t have them. Sura is sure that the girl has eyes for Drenis. He doesn’t know it. He is blind to some things, and Epta does nothing to make him notice her.
Sura herself? She can’t have the man she wants most. This, every time, makes her think unkindly of Astera. The other women have the right to choose, but only if the choice is not Spartacus. He is Astera’s. One day, she hopes, that will change.
She has been favoring Kastor instead. She noticed him truly one night after seeing Spartacus walk naked through the encampment. Spartacus went shouting for everyone to see what he was. A man free to do as he pleased. Free! He did it with such humor and confidence that all loved it. Sura wanted him then but couldn’t have him. Moments later Kastor strode by, also naked, in merry imitation of the Thracian. He wasn’t the same, but he had something. In his swaggering confidence, he didn’t take himself too seriously. His blue eyes had constant humor in them. He wore a silver torque around his neck and thick loops in his ears. He was a Celt in stature and features, but not just a Celt. There was something exotic in him. And something kind.
The first time they were together, Kastor had looked at her strangely afterward. “I don’t know what just happened here: if I fucked you, or if you fucked me.”
She liked that he said that. She knew the answer, of course. She’d put him on his back and ground against him. She’d leaned back and felt the whole long shaft of him touching places she’d never had touched before. She’d come that way, not even thinking of Spartacus. Yes, she had most certainly fucked him. She planned on doing so again.
“After this is over, you should come to Galatia,” he’d said. “There are many men like me there. You would like it. And I’m not jealous.”
Tempting, the thought of those many men like him. Still, he isn’t Spartacus. The others wouldn’t be either. But she does like what he does to her, and she to him, and what he says about it. Even though he isn’t a Thracian and he isn’t Spartacus, maybe she can be content with him. If she has to be.
Reaching the clearing, Sura stands at the edge of it. She hates Oenomaus and always has. He stands naked, a human mountain, thick with muscle and heavy with flesh atop it. His mane of dirty blond hair makes him look lion-headed, with an upturned, bushy mustache. She hates that mustache, wants to grab it in a fist and saw it off with a knife. She hates his nakedness. She hates his scars, the way they attest to injuries that should’ve killed him but did not.
Compared to him, Spartacus has a beauty of form, looking almost chaste in his loincloth. He stretches his muscular torso, talking with Skaris, seeming to make small talk. Skaris is similar to Spartacus, well formed in the same ways but taller, broader. He’s the one who should champion the Thracians in this. Judging by his face—which is not so at ease as Spartacus’s—he thinks the same and is frustrated because of it.
Around them, the crowd murmurs in expectation. There is no mirth, though. There’s fear instead. Are they really to kill each other? She hates that. Hates that in foolishness one or the other may change all their lives with a sword thrust. She sees no sense in it.
Spotting Drenis, she heads for him. She grabs his shoulder and half turns him around. “Why is this happening?” He seems reluctant to take his eyes off the two men for too long, but he looks at her when she squeezes his shoulder. “Tell me,” Sura says. “I am Astera’s own hand. Speak when I ask it.”
“I thought the girl was—”
“That one is but a girl. I am the priestess’s hand! Explain this.”
“Oenomaus challenged Spartacus. He wants sole command. Thinks it should be his as there are many Germani.”
“But only Spartacus has the goddess with him.”
“Yes. And he is the one who most want to lead us. Still, Oenomaus made the challenge. He says Spartacus is wrong in his thoughts. We should stay here in Nola and reap everything we can. Reinforce the walls and put out the call for all slaves to join us, so that we have vast numbers when the Romans come. Spartacus says no. We should leave here. Otherwise the Romans will build a wall around us and trap us. Oenomaus wants to fight when next we can. Spartacus wants to fight only when it suits us. He wants only victories. If we can survive until the season cools, we can encamp for the winter and train an army. Many will come to us then. Then we will be ready to meet the Romans. That’s what Spartacus says. Oenomaus says no to all of it.”
Drenis glances back at the two men, taking Sura’s eyes with him. Oenomaus is bellowing to rile up his Germani. They answer him, their howls like so many wolves. He insults Spartacus, glorifying himself. Though he’s still naked, he’s armed now. A sword that looks like a long cleaver, sharp on just one side. He’s a butcher, Sura thinks. He also hefts a large shield. It’s rectangular, with rounded edges, chipped and battered but sturdy-looking, with three metal disks decorating the face of it. On his arm it looks light, though it must in fact be very heavy.
“Must he fight naked?” Sura asks, disgust wrinkling her nose.
“He is a Gaesatae,” Drenis says. “That’s an order among the Germani. Men who join the Gaesatae fight naked. They think it attunes them with the flow of the world.”
“Does it?”
Drenis shrugs. “He’s a fool. First he wants to run for the mountains. Then he wants to fight on the open field. Then he wants no part of the deceits that bring us victories. He has no mind but to be against anything Spartacus is for. I just wish he weren’t so bloody good on the sand. Even if he makes a mistake, they say he can’t be killed. He is favored by Wodanaz.”
“I spit at Wodanaz,” Sura says. She spits for emphasis. “He has but one eye. Kotys has two.”
Drenis looks dubious. “Still, I wish Spartacus wouldn’t do this. It’s a Germani custom, this sort of duel.” He leans a little close and whispers, “In truth he’s only doing it because Astera says Oenomaus is the one who would have betrayed the escape.”
Sura, her face close to his, stares in his eyes, unsure what he means.
“On the night we rose, someone was going to betray us. Astera named Oenomaus as that man. As he would then, he will still. So. Spartacus lends himself this.”
“Of course,” Sura says. “I know this.”
She sees Kastor. He’s shouldered through to the open space and is saying something into Spartacus’s ear. Is he offering to fight in his place? The thought constricts her throat. For the sake of the Risen, Spartacus must live. She knows that. But for herself, so must Kastor. She doesn’t have to worry long. Kastor takes Spartacus’s head in his hands and presses their foreheads together. And that’s it. He backs away and joins the wall of men, watching. Not fighting. That’s good. And also it’s not. Beside him stands the Greek, Philon. Sura hopes the satchel he carries won’t be needed. By the palor of his face, he hopes the same.
Spartacus doesn’t ask his supporters to howl for him. Instead, he says he wishes this duel did not have t
o be. He wishes Oenomaus would know him as a brother and trust in him. As he cannot, it comes to this. “So be it,” he declares. “Know this: I hold no anger toward Oenomaus or toward the Germani. This is to be done as a thing between men. I will send Oenomaus to the Otherworld to be born as a new babe. Do not be angered by this, for it’s what your chieftain wants. As in all things, we do this in the sight of the gods. Watch, and see who they favor.”
He faces Oenomaus, looking for a moment as if he intends to fight him without weapon or shield. Oenomaus finds this as odd as Sura does. “Where’s your weapon?”
Gaidres steps forward, holding something long and thin draped in a sheet. Spartacus takes the object from Gaidres, letting the older man pull away the sheet to reveal a straight, swordlike weapon, longer than a javelin, with a leather-wrapped handle nearly half its length. The sight of it causes a murmur; excitement from the Thracians, confused questions from others.
Oenomaus stares at the weapon. “What is that?”
“A weapon of Thrace!” Spartacus projects to the crowd. Smiling, he tests the feel of it in his two-handed grip. “In my country we call this a rhomphaia. Our gods gave us this weapon.”
“How does it just now appear?” Oenomaus asks. “I’ve not seen this before.”
“Found right here in Nola.” Spartacus cuts the air with the blade, looking pleased at the feel of it. “Sulla settled his soldiers here. Gave them villas. The very same shits who had tormented my country. Someone must have taken this as a trophy. Now I’ve taken it back.”
“You cannot hold a shield and wield that,” Oenomaus says.
“Your advantage is clear, then.” Spartacus lifts the long blade in front of him, his hand wide spaced on the grip. “Come, let us see who is the better man. A few moments only, and we will know.”
The thought of Spartacus falling within the next few moments sets Sura’s heart beating at a furious pace. As they start to circle each other, she finds it hard to breathe. She places one hand to her chest, gentling it. That cleaver could cut off Spartacus’s arm. It could slice his throat open. It could do damage in so many ways. Spartacus doesn’t even seem to know it. Why grin like that, when a man so wants to kill him? Yes, Spartacus, with his rhomphaia, could take off Oenomaus’s arms, even cut through a leg. But the two things are not equal. One thing she wants; one she does not.
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