Don’t die, Sura thinks.
Oenomaus attacks first. He comes in close and feints with his shield. His sword darts out. Spartacus bats it away. Their postures are so different. Oenomaus has that great shield to hide behind. He can reach out from safety, protected the whole time. Spartacus has only that long, thin strip of metal between him and death. It doesn’t seem a fair pairing.
Don’t die.
Despite his bulk, the Germani is nimble on his feet. His legs are fast, shifting position and then setting like tree trunks when he chooses to. He slashes; Spartacus parries. It’s not a slow dance between them, but Sura can follow every move. For a time no blood is drawn. Then that changes.
When it does, the change is so sudden, Sura realizes it only because the two become instant blurs of movement that her eyes can’t fully follow. Spartacus twirls the rhomphaia, slashing down and whirling circles with the blade, high and low, dust swirling around him. Oenomaus punches with his shield, making it a moving wall of a weapon. His cleaver slashes out. He’s a butcher trying to cut meat. Their weapons clang in staccato bursts and dull thuds of the rhomphaia on the wooden shield. Sura has no idea what’s happening until they break apart. Both still on their feet. Blood appears on Spartacus’s thigh. And then on Oenomaus’s forehead. She didn’t see either cut being made.
She does see it when Oenomaus catches Spartacus under the chin with his shield, a blow that snaps the Thracian’s head to the sky. Spartacus responds with a thrust at the Germani’s neck. Oenomaus bats away the rhomphaia with the edge of his shield. That shield! Sura wants someone to strip it away from him. Spartacus spits blood from a mouth of crimson-tinted teeth.
Don’t die.
For a thing that could be over in an instant, the duel seems to take forever. Sura’s belly is clenched so tight, she’s begun to ache. If Spartacus dies, they will all scatter. This thing cannot hold together without him. It will be the end of it, and the wolves of Rome will fall on them again. She is sure they all know it, everyone watching. She would have expected them to be loudly cheering, but they’re not. They’re muted. Watching. Breathing no better than she.
Don’t die.
Slick with sweat and smeared with blood, both men grow tired. Oenomaus sometimes sets the base of his shield on the ground. He stays behind it, but he doesn’t swing it as forcefully as when they started. The muscles in Spartacus’s arms bulge with the exertion of keeping the rhomphaia out in front of him. Gone are his wild swings. He’s no longer chipping away chunks from Oenomaus’s shield. Instead he searches for a way around it. He darts in and jabs and retreats as the cleaver comes down, always just missing him. Oenomaus grunts his frustration. Spartacus is as silent as the crowd.
Don’t die. To which she adds, Kill him. Kill him.
She wonders why the goddess is letting this go on so long. Maybe Wodanaz is strong even with his one eye. Or maybe it’s Astera’s fault. Perhaps Kotys is with her, attending to that sacrifice and not seeing this. She wants to leap up and run and grab her and drag her here by her hair. But she also knows she can’t do that. She can’t take her eyes from this, and despite her fears, she doesn’t want to share this with Astera. And behind that is a thought not fully formed about what she would do if Astera’s neglect harmed Spartacus. She doesn’t have time to explore this, because of what happens.
Spartacus stumbles. He takes a knee in the dirt and lets the point of the rhomphaia touch the ground. Oenomaus comes from behind his shield, raising his cleaver. His arm, cocked back behind his head, starts to arc around. This time, though the motions are startlingly fast, Sura does see what happens.
Spartacus yanks the rhomphaia diagonally, catching the edge of Oenomaus’s shield and shifting it away from his body. He lunges from his knee, but the Germani curves his body around the thrust as his sword hand starts to cut down. For an instant it looks as if Oenomaus will cleave Spartacus in two. But Spartacus jerks the rhomphaia back at Oenomaus, cutting deep into his torso and slicing across it. Spartacus spins with the motion. Oenomaus’s downward attack never finds him. It loses its fury at just the point it would’ve cut into him.
Spartacus roars. He turns his back to Oenomaus and stalks away, muscles quivering, arms tense at his sides and his head thrown back as he shouts his rage to the sky. His face is blood-smeared, lips twisted like a snarling animal’s. He’s never looked fiercer, never more godlike. He isn’t weakened. That stumble was intentional. It’s what got him around the shield.
Sura aches low in her abdomen. She wants to have Spartacus right there, before everyone. She would even do it in front of Kastor because in that moment it feels as if he would understand. She would climb his body where he stands and crash her lips against his bloody mouth and devour him. She knows that he would want her if she did that. His sex could be freed in a few tugs, and then he’d be inside her, and nobody—not Kastor, not even Astera—could stop them.
The Germani yet stands. He’s dropped his sword, and his arm cradles his abdomen. He tries to shake the shield free of his other arm, but he can’t manage it. He plants the base of the shield on the ground and lowers himself to one knee. And then the other. The act contorts his face. He breathes ragged, gasping breaths. Each of these seems to hurt him as well. Clearly, his clenched hand and the stretch of his forearm are the only things keeping his insides from spilling out. Sura can see the blood and fluids oozing through his fingers.
Oenomaus tries to say something in his language. Sura can’t understand him, but he doesn’t actually get whatever he wants to say out. He tries a few times, pausing between attempts to pant. Then he stops trying. He topples forward and crashes to the ground. He’s instantly limp, dull weight with no life in it. His insides escape his belly and pool in the dirt beneath him.
Now voices rise in a great applause. A tumult of moving bodies and chanting of Spartacus’s name over and over again. The tension of the duel combusts like fire touched to kindling. Where before there was drama and worry, now there’s euphoria. The will of the gods is clear. Spartacus is the chosen one to lead them. Only the Germani stand stone-faced. Only they see this as a loss. Sura hopes they are not fools like Oenomaus. She prays they swallow their pride and accept what the goddess has decreed.
When she looks back to Spartacus, all of the tension and rage has left him. He sways on his feet, looking as if he thinks he should do or say something, but can’t remember what. He falters as he begins to move away. Sura rises to run to him. She takes but two steps before Astera appears.
The priestess, who wasn’t even supposed to be witness to this, is at his side. She slips under Spartacus’s arm and holds tight to his torso. She’s there, were Sura wanted to be. With her hands red and her tunic smeared with canine blood, she looks to be as much a crimson warrior as he. Both of them hold the eyes of the entire crowd now. It’s as if she planned her arrival just so, so that both of them would be victorious, both of them covered in the blood of sacrifice. The people will speak of it. They’ll say that while Spartacus fought, Astera communed with the goddess protecting him. They’ll say the two of them defeated Oenomaus together, and both of them will be yet more revered for it. Yet more feared for it.
Sura recalls her words. Go and be my eyes, if you like. Tell me when it is over. Is that what she did? She forgot and thought she was seeing for herself. She thought she was feeling for herself. Now she’s not sure. Maybe Astera really can see through her eyes. And if she can do that, what can’t she do? What can’t she know?
As if in answer, Astera’s gaze lifts and touches on her. Just for a moment, but it’s enough. Again, a message. An answer to a question she couldn’t have heard, yet did.
Dolmos
There are things Dolmos doesn’t fear that he knows some men do. He doesn’t fear death in battle. He believes in the next world and knows that if he is brave, he will be welcomed by his ancestors. He is not overly concerned about injuries. He has broken bones before, smashed his nose, been pierced by the prongs of a trident, and had his nippl
e sliced off in the arena. All these were unpleasant things, but in the moment each injury had seemed almost mundane. He’d never understood why he needed nipples anyway, so the loss of one was no real concern. He’s not afraid of riding hard and being thrown, for riding hard feels pure and perfect. Things so good should come at a price. If he falls and breaks his back, it was just time to pay that price. Things of the body and of war don’t trouble him.
Public speaking does.
That’s why he has a hard time staying still as he and the Greek medicus, Philon, wait for the shepherd boys to return. The two of them have been riding together for some weeks, along with a few other speakers for Spartacus, and the youths as well. They left the Risen in the south, in the area called Bruttium. They are based now in the city of Thurii, though to some degree they own all the southern tip of Italy. So much had happened as the autumn waned into winter. And so much more is possible for the coming year. That, among other things, is what Dolmos and the Greek have been traveling the countryside declaiming to all who will listen.
The two men lean against a crumbling stone wall. The air is chill and damp, no real winter but what passes for one in this place. The ocean is near enough to salt-tinge the air. Seabirds reel in the sky not far away. Philon chews on a dried fig, working at the fruit with a dogged persistence. He says, “You’re anxious, aren’t you?”
Dolmos moves his head, a response but not an answer. He pulls the dark wool of his tunic more snugly around his shoulders. His answer is a sullen mumble. “Always before we’ve spoken together. What if I don’t remember it all?”
“You? You’ve never forgotten a word Spartacus has spoken. You could probably recite the stories he told as a boy.”
That is true. Still, it doesn’t calm him. “But the words…sometimes they stick on my tongue.”
“Latin will do that. If it helps, imagine that Spartacus is there beside you. Make him proud by speaking for him.”
Dolmos tries to take the comfort from this that Philon intends, but he can’t. “If Spartacus were beside me, he would speak for himself.”
“Pretend he’s lost his voice.” When Dolmos lets his alarm show, the Greek clarifies. “A sore throat, I mean. Sometimes a man can lose his voice for a time. That’s all I mean. Calm yourself, friend. Here. Do this.” Philon tilts his head and, eyes nearly closed, inhales a long, slow breath through his nose. “Smell the sea. It’s a soothing scent, isn’t it? To me it always was.”
Dolmos likes the smell, but it’s not soothing. The sea is too much a seething mass of motion for him to ever find the scent of it soothing. He’d rather the smell of the high plains of Thrace in spring, abloom with tiny wildflowers and whipped by the wind.
“Do you think they’ve been gone too long?” Dolmos asks.
“Hustus and the others? They’ll be back soon enough. No doubt the Greeks are being hard to herd together. My people, they can be like cats, each with a mind of their own.”
“You grew up among Greeks?”
“In Syracuse, yes.”
“Would you talk about it? If you were a Greek in—” He stops. “What place?”
Philon makes a vague motion in the direction of the sea but not quite. “Syracuse. It’s not far. On Sicily. An island quite near. It’s so near, you can see it from the tip of southern Italy.”
“How did you end up in the ludus with us?”
“It’s too long a story. Surely you’re tired of hearing me ramble on about things.”
“No,” Dolmos says. “You speak like water bubbling in a stream. It comes so easy for you.”
Philon flashes his crooked smile. “Hear that? That’s a poet talking. Dolmos the poet! Have you any more such imagery in you? There, you’ve just described it. When you speak to the farmers, make your words like water bubbling in a stream. Nothing’s easier.”
After further prodding, Philon does speak of his origins. He claims to have been born free but to have no memory of those early years of liberty. By the time he became sensible of himself, he had already been sold into bondage by his father. So much for paternal love. He was a merchant, a Sicilian Greek, though with a touch of some other blood in him. Considering the nautical blood of the Greeks and in his family, one might have expected the seas to offer them good fortune. Not so. His father had very little luck navigating through the pirates of the eastern waters. Lost both his ships to them. And lost not only his hopes of a fortune but also every copper coin he laid claim to. Faced with the wrath of his creditors, he sold off everything he could. That included Philon and his mother.
“Your own father?” Dolmos asks.
“My own father,” Philon agrees. “I don’t remember the man. If he came up to me on the street, I’d think him a stranger.”
Dolmos doesn’t say it, but a person should know the man who gave him life. His father had a large nose and a bushy mass of black hair. He had his hand cut off at the wrist in fighting the Dii, but it was not his sword hand so he said it didn’t matter. He liked to drink, as any good Thracian does. And he liked to sing. Dolmos is grateful he knows these things about his father, even though he can’t always see the man’s traits living within him.
“Through no intentional kindness on my father’s part,” Philon says, “my servitude had some advantages to recommend it.”
It was, he explains, a better life than his father could have given him. His first owner was a physician named Diodorus. He ran a school to train others in the arts he was expert at. He saw enough intelligence in Philon that so long as he fulfilled his duties as household servant, errand boy, gardener, and cook, he allowed him to study medicine as well. By the time he was sixteen, the old man would dispatch him to deal with minor patient complaints. He loved this, the short sensation of freedom it allowed. He stole moments to make friends, even found a few lovers whom he still returned to sometimes in his dreams.
“They’re always still youths in these dreams,” he says. “Beautiful young men. Maybe it’s better to remember them that way than see that life has treated them harshly. The issue I take with these dreams is that all we ever do in them is talk. We’re beautiful and young, but all we do is talk. What’s the sense of that?”
Dolmos doesn’t know and doesn’t answer. The subject makes him uncomfortable.
“During my eighteenth year I accompanied my master on a lecturing tour that took us all around Sicily, then away from the island entirely. We made stops at Corinth and Athens, Thessalonica and Pydna. It was almost a good life. Almost. But then we arrived back on Sicily to find Gaius Verres the newly ascendant governor of the island.”
“Who is he?” Dolmos asks.
“A Roman. He thought he’d been given Sicily to rape at his leisure. Exorbitant fees for the wheat growers, the canceling of contracts after services were rendered, the pillage of temple coffers and the theft of works of art, yanked right off the walls and from the courtyards of even rich Romans: the man was a scoundrel. For some reason he took aim on my master. His men descended on our house. They grabbed my frail master and took him away. All his possessions were seized, including his slaves. Including me.”
“With no explanation?”
“None that was made to me.”
“Did this Verres make your master into a slave?”
Philon pauses with a fig pressed between his teeth. He thinks a moment and then releases the fruit and pulls it out. “I’ve no idea. Nobody informed me. I suspect not. More likely he just made him disappear.”
Dolmos gives him a blank expression.
“Killed him, I mean.” He pops the fig into his mouth and points with his chewing chin. “There, our boys return.”
Hustus, Drex, and the one they call Rabbit scramble over a distant portion on the wall and begin making their way along it toward them. Dolmos feels his pulse quicken, but as they’re still some distance away, he asks, “What happened after that?”
“In my story? Just the usual. I was sent from Syracuse to Arigentum, and from there to Tarentum. I was sold twic
e in quick succession. In Tarentum, the slaver who now owned me was overjoyed that I had some knowledge of medicine. He branded me with this.” He points at the stigma MED on his inner wrist. “Diodorus would’ve been appalled. By his reckoning, I was several years away from being a competent physician. My new master was not as particular. I knew some medicine. I was Greek, so a medicus I was. There’s more to tell about how I got from Tarentum to Capua, but now is not the time. Let’s hear what the shepherd boys have arranged.”
—
The shepherd boys aren’t really shepherd boys any longer. They’re strong and sturdy, as resilient as the hills they grew up roaming. As yet they’re still too young to be trained as infantry. Instead, they hone their skills with their slings and with bow and arrow. And they are the ones who make first contact with slaves still in bondage. They try to bend their ears with talk of Spartacus and the Risen. When ears are open, they arrange clandestine meetings for men like Philon and Dolmos to speak with them.
Today Philon goes to meet with a contingent of Greek dock slaves in Barium. Dolmos is to hold forth to field hands outside the city. They’re gathering together for a festival to some local god, out of the sight of their masters and free to mingle. Hustus leads Dolmos to the ruin of a barn they have agreed to meet in. The festivities are down the hill a ways. Music, voices, and the scent of sacrificial fires float up to them when the breeze carries them. One wall of the structure has crumbled, and the roof thatch has mostly fallen through its frame. Still, the space is dark enough for the faces of the men watching Dolmos to seem sinister. They are skeptical, that much is obvious. Hard-faced and tight-lipped, ten or so of them. Several stand with their arms crossed.
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