The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  Astera, up close, is striking. If she were another woman, Vectia would think her delicately pretty, and so young. One to be jealous of. That’s not how she feels, though. If Astera knows she is pretty, she does not think being so is of much use. Nothing about the way she holds herself asks to be admired. She’s harder than that, and her mind appears to be on other things entirely. She wears a silver torque, a heavy one intended for a man’s thick neck. It should look strange on her, but it doesn’t. Her thin neck and visible collarbones aren’t cowed by the weight of it.

  The priestess says, “We have ghosts among us. You brought them here.”

  Of all the things she might’ve opened with, this one catches Vectia by surprise. She whispers, “You see them, too?”

  Astera narrows her eyes. She doesn’t whisper. “See them? No, I don’t see them. I feel them. Right now this place feels crowded. More so than it should, but I don’t see them. Do you?”

  Vectia nods.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “They are around us,” Vectia says, reluctantly. “They are those who died with Crixus. They followed me, but I did not mean to bring them.”

  Astera crosses her arms, lifts her gaze, and lets it float. After a time, she says, “I think that if you had been raised with your people, you would have been a priestess to them. Perhaps a powerful one. No, I don’t see the dead around us. But if you do, I don’t have to. What’s your name?”

  “Vectia.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  Vectia isn’t sure what that means, and she doesn’t get to ask.

  A different figure emerges from the council tent. Spartacus this time. The men about the tent stir. A few converge on him, but he puts them off with the palm of his hand. He’s not ready to speak with them yet. He casts about, gaze passing the two women twice before catching sight of Astera the third time. He pushes through the cluster of men and strides to them.

  “This one,” Astera says when he is near enough, “sees ghosts.” She points to Vectia with her chin. “A great host of them around us right now. They are the slain Celts who have not found the next world.”

  “What do they want?” Spartacus asks it first of Astera. When she doesn’t answer, he turns the question to Vectia. “What do they wish of me?”

  At first Vectia doesn’t look at his face. He wears a simple tunic that leaves his arms bare. She looks at those instead. The striations of the rounded balls of his shoulder muscles are visible beneath the skin. She wants to touch them. She sees herself cupping her palms around both shoulders and telling him to look at her. Look at me, she would say. Or some version of her, not what she is now but before, when she was young and men saw her. It’s a confusion even as she thinks it. And why think this now? He asked a question. Answer it.

  “I don’t know,” she says, surprised to find her voice steady. “They don’t talk to me. Just follow.”

  “Are they angry?”

  “No.” She’s certain that’s true, though she can find no way to elaborate on it. “No.”

  “Did you guide Crixus? When he was living, I mean.”

  “No. I would have, but he had others he listened to. Anyway, where he wanted to go, I didn’t know.”

  “ ‘Where he wanted to go,’ ” Spartacus repeats. He exhales and rubs his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “Hunting in the mountains.” The way he says it attests to his aggravation. And sadness. His features match his voice. Aggravation in the lines of his forehead. Sadness around his eyes. That’s what she sees. Also, that he is looking at her.

  He twists the coarse strands of his beard between his fingers. “You didn’t lead Crixus, but when he was killed, it’s you who got these others back to us. Is that so? Ullio said it was he at first but then admitted you knew the land better.”

  As that’s true, Vectia says nothing.

  “How did you find us? Even if you know the land, you didn’t know we would be here.”

  “I asked your goddess to direct me,” Vectia says.

  Spartacus looks at Astera. Something passes between them, though neither talks. He squats down. “Tell me what happened on Gargano. I’ve heard it from Ullio. Now you.”

  “We were destroyed.”

  “Yes. How?”

  Vectia shrugs, not because she doesn’t know, but because the facts are too nakedly clear. She almost doesn’t want to say them. Doing so feels like a betrayal, but then she remembers that Crixus is dead. He’s a ghost like the others. Spartacus, he’s still with the living.

  “The men wanted to hunt,” she says. “Good hunting there. Boar and deer. We made a camp on a great slab, and the men went out in different directions. They said the Romans wouldn’t follow us into those mountains, but they did. They attacked before we knew they were there. Our men were not prepared. They tried to rally, but the Romans poured up onto the slab, marching the way they do, all of them tight together. Our men were not tight together. They tried to get the Romans to fight them man to man, but they wouldn’t. I didn’t see Crixus die. I don’t know how it was with him. The same, I think. They were not trying to defeat them. It was lost the moment it began. Even I, watching and hiding, knew that. They were trying to die bravely. That’s all. They did that. Many men, learning of what happened, came to the Romans and died the same way.”

  “Bravely, I’m sure,” Spartacus says, “so that they can be born well in the next life and so that your gods will see them die fighting, as men should. I understand this. My people are the same.” He thinks a moment. “Still, though, I’d rather they had lived fighting. You say there are ghosts among us. That means they are displeased. They’re not yet in their other world. They must want us to avenge them before they move on. We will, and then they will go, as they should.”

  Spartacus glances up at Astera again. He exhales. “Listen, Vectia. I have ears for what you know. If the dead see fit to follow you, I am willing to as well. Right now, to the east, a Roman army is closing on us. Their scouts know where we are. They’re watching us as we speak, and are just a few days away. Right now the army that defeated Crixus is converging as well. They came a different way than you. They are down this valley to the south. We are trapped between them. So I have to defeat them both. And for that, I need to know the land as you do.”

  Vectia looks at the people who stand near. She looks at those who watch them from farther away and at the unseen ghosts thick among them. They have come here to Spartacus with her. Yes, wishing for him to avenge them. Crixus, she now feels, was never meant to be her chieftain. No, her loyalty should’ve always lain with Spartacus.

  She asks, “What do you want to know?”

  Castus

  Castus dismounts where the ridge begins to slope downward. He whistles two sharp notes, a sound that instructs the rest of the cavalrymen to do so as well. He listens to the clank of metal and the creak of leather and the sounds of sandals crunching the brittle soil. In the black of night, with the thin light of the stars barely touching them through the canopy above, he can hear them better than he can see them. From here they will walk. Better that each man leads his horse, feeling for rocks and roots and irregularities with his feet, not with the horses’ hooves.

  He wishes he could check once more that this is the right place to descend, but he knows it is. He’s followed the instructions the woman gave. He takes careful steps, easing his horse with his hand, with occasional murmured words. The others do the same. Someone slips every now and then. Someone curses and gets shushed to silence by others. Sometimes he hears a horse balking at the strangeness of this, needing to be calmed. They all know how to do it. They all know horses. That’s why they were chosen for this. He to lead them, two hundred to follow. Germani all.

  “You do this thing,” Spartacus had said, “and we will destroy them.”

  There is another force of cavalry, Thracians that one, led by Gaidres, but they are farther down the ridge, enough so that they travel separately and do not confuse their numbers. Their role is to b
e different, though the plan includes them both.

  “Do this thing, and when you kill,” Spartacus had said, “kill for Crixus and for those who died with him.”

  The first death is for Crixus, Castus allows. Any after that, for Wodanaz. Do you hear me, Wise King? he asks. The words are just whispers on his tongue, but Wodanaz’s ears are not like men’s. He can hear what men cannot. He just has to notice and turn his gaze, and then he knows what’s in men’s hearts. Hear me, bringer of victory, Castus thinks, and give me the courage to send souls to you. Open your mouth for them. They’re coming.

  “Break right through them,” Spartacus had said. Castus remembers the way he’d gestured the ease of this with the blade of his hand. As easy as cutting through air. “Understand? Cut into their heart. Do so, and the beast dies.”

  A beast, yes, but is a legion not thousands of beasts? Thousands of hearts?

  No. Castus stops that line of thinking, not wanting to make doubts into reality. Instead, he repeats, Wodanaz, hear me and give me courage. Guide of souls, give me courage…

  It’s a slow descent. It has to be, so that they suffer no injuries fighting the slope. Often they bunch tightly together, impatient, but that’s good too. Let nobody get lost. When he feels the need to, he whistles back and stands still until he hears Goban’s response. Two birds talking. One at the vanguard. One in the rear. Thus they keep the group as one.

  They reach the base of the slope and move forward until the woodland thins. Castus stands for a long time at the edge of the wood. Mosquitoes find them, careen around, seemingly spoiled for choice and unsure where to feed first. Castus listens past the whir of their wings. His eyes scan up and down the valley. It’s not a wide valley, but it’s exposed, tall grasses and shrubbery and the thin snake of a river that winds through it. No fires. No talk or noise not natural to the night. The ridge rising on the far side of the valley is much the same as the one they descended through. He looks for anyone among the trees but sees nothing in the dark shadows. The hillside could throng with men. Or it could be empty.

  A Thracian appears in front of them as if he’d stepped from another world into this one. One moment he’s not there. The next he is. It’s so sudden that Castus almost voices his alarm. The sound is in his mouth and stopped only by the savage look on the man’s face, a warning and condemnation. Castus loosens his jaw and breathes out the shout he almost made. This man is where he’s supposed to be, as planned. He’s a Thyni nightwalker. A scout and messenger tonight. He confirms that the cavalry are in the right place, though they must extend their line up the valley. He whispers this, quickly, and then is gone again. Just like that. Here, then gone.

  The men and mounts spread out in a rough line. Castus stands beside the mare, feeling and smelling her. She’s been his for just a week, but already he’s fond of her. She’s brown and plain to look at, but he’s found her to be stronger than she appears. Also, she seems familiar with the accouterments of war. He’ll find out in a moment if that’s true. He clicks to her, and she lifts her head. He hasn’t named her. Not yet. Not until he knows her better, until she’s proven that she can live.

  —

  The morning before, the commander had called a council of the clan leaders and generals, several scouts who had just returned from following the approaching army, and the old Celtic woman, Vectia, who had led the few surviving Celts back to the main army. The Roman, Baebia, was in attendance as well and on the receiving end of more than a few hostile glares. They met away from the camp, in a temple of rocks on a bluff above the main encampment. Castus sat between Gannicus and Goban, already knowing the situation they faced but hoping, somehow, that when Spartacus spoke, his words would reshape it all to their benefit. They didn’t.

  “Here are the ways we are fucked,” Spartacus said. “Crixus’s army destroyed. Ten thousand who were with us are now not. Dead or captured, and if captured, soon to be dead. Acknowledge it, but don’t dwell on it. We will mourn him and all the dead in time. We will do it right, in such a way that the gods will know who Crixus was and that many here honor him. That mourning, though, we must lift and carry until the time is right. At this moment, two Roman forces are closing on us. Lucius Gellius commands one. Cornelius Clodianus the other. Consuls, both of them. Clearly, they intend to press battle within days. Crixus, he wouldn’t want us to lose to them, would he? What, then, do we do about it?”

  “We fight whichever army gets here first,” Skaris said. “Or both of them at once. If we die”—he shrugged his broad shoulders—“it’s our time.”

  He makes it sound simple, Castus thought. And there was a sort of honor in that simplicity. It would be a warrior’s death. A free man’s death, sword in hand. Wasn’t that better than any of them would’ve thought possible in cursed Vatia’s ludus? And hadn’t they seen and done grand things since then? And could the gods fault them, they who had grasped freedom from slavery and spilled so much Roman blood?

  “We might prevail,” Gaidres added. “Crixus was defeated. Not us.” He looked to Ullio. “I mean no insult.”

  The words, though stated firmly, faded into a sullen silence. No stated insult, yet insult was there. They all knew it. Crixus had been stubborn, then foolish as well. Stubborn for not working from city to city, as Spartacus was doing. Stubborn for not fully seeing the largeness of Spartacus’s vision. Foolish for choosing to go hunting instead. Had Spartacus chosen to ridicule him, few would have objected. He didn’t, though, so others didn’t either.

  “We may prevail,” Spartacus acknowledged, “but the Romans aren’t fools. They’ll coordinate. They’ll choose the time to attack, and they will do so together. Of course they will. Why wouldn’t they? Be confident, brothers, but not overly so. We trained through the winter, yes. That’s good. In pure numbers we have more fighting men. How many by the last count, Drenis?”

  “Nearly thirty thousand,” the young Thracian said. “With the survivors of Crixus’s force, just over thirty thousand.”

  Spartacus nodded. “So a good number. But of that thirty thousand, how many can we absolutely count on not to break? Not enough. A pitched battle is the Romans’ to lose. I’d rather it be ours to win. If we’re to fight them, we need a way to do it on our terms. How do we find our own terms?”

  He looked from man to man for the answer. Castus thought his face looked older than before, but he couldn’t place why. He was no more wrinkled. Certainly no less fit. It might just have been that his wavy hair and beard had grown with their freedom. They framed his features in a way that gave him a different character. He looked even more like a chieftain. Gannicus liked to say he avoids thinking because nothing wearies a man more quickly. Perhaps that’s it. Spartacus, fatigued not in body but from thinking for all of them.

  “Skaris, I hear you,” Spartacus said. “You speak as a warrior, and that’s right for you, but look to that camp. How many women are there? How many children and older folk? We’re not just an army. We’re a nation. If we face the Romans and are defeated, what happens to them? The worst things. We all know that. The worst things.”

  “They came of their own choosing,” Skaris said.

  “But we accepted them. Don’t tell me there’s not a promise in that.”

  “What do you want, then?” Gannicus asked. “To flee? I’m no coward, but they have us at both ends, as you say. Should we disappear? We could melt into the hills, emerge elsewhere, and fight a different day. The old woman, she would know where to go.” He pointed at Vectia, the Celtic woman, with his sharp chin. “I don’t mind listening to a woman if she has things to say.” Another slight to Crixus, Castus thought. He saw Ullio tense at it. “You know where to go, don’t you? How can we escape them?”

  “There is no good way,” the woman answered. For a woman who looked so clearly Allobroges, her Latin was of this land, with none of the blunt inflections of her people. That makes sense, Castus thought. She is of this land. That’s why she knows it.

  “She and I spoke of that alre
ady,” Spartacus said. “There is no good way. Hills that way. Rocky ridges that. Mountains and little forage that way. Still another way hems us in with the coast at our backs. Safe today, trapped tomorrow. She tells a miserable story.” He smiled at her. “This time there’s no ready way to escape. Ask her if you want to, but I kept her up most of the night going over it. Doing so again will waste time.”

  “Aren’t we doing that anyway?” Goban asked.

  Another smile. “I’m just making sure I have your attention. Do I?”

  “You’ve told us we’re fucked,” the Libyan, Nasah, said. “Yes, you have our attention.”

  “Good, because we had a good talk, didn’t we, Vectia?”

  —

  They had. That’s why Castus leads two hundred horsemen. It’s why he descends the hill in the night and stands hidden until the Roman legion appears from down the valley. He passes the order for his men to mount. The whisper flies away to both sides, passing mouth to mouth. He breathes, remembering that death is but a transition. Its flip side is birth in the other world. Maybe, he thinks, that other world will be better. Maybe it will be good to be a child again. If he is a babe again, he will have a span of years ahead of him without responsibility for war. Maybe, but before that there is this, and he must do it the right way. He climbs atop the mare. As he positions himself and his weapons, he leans forward and murmurs in her ears, telling her what’s about to happen, assuring her that it’s good and right and that if she is to die in the coming moments, she should be proud, for not all horses have such heroic deaths.

  Romans. Thousands of them. The column has been thinned to accommodate the valley. Their pace is brisk, which is good. At the front, their lead cavalry, which are not for Castus to be concerned with. They’re for Gaidres. It doesn’t take long for Roman infantry to reach where the Germani cavalry is hidden and begin to pass them. Castus searches for the details Spartacus named, and he finds them. Their standards held high. The soldiers in their ordered lines. All their kit on their backs, frames hung heavy with supplies, food and cooking things and stakes for camp, weapons as well, but on their backs instead of in hand. Their helmets not on their heads but dangling from their necks. Yes, just as Spartacus said.