The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  —

  She cradles the bowl in her palms and walks, carefully in the fading light, away from her tent and toward the knoll. She can see the glow of a fire up there and knows they are waiting for her. Her mind is on that and on placing her feet carefully and not spilling the Bright-Eyed Lady. She doesn’t see the man until he’s right there before her. She starts. A splash of liquid leaves the bowl, and she hears it hit the ground.

  It’s Philon. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” the Greek says.

  “You didn’t.” She starts to go around him.

  He sidesteps, again blocking her way. His hands rise, palms toward her, indicating that he’s no threat. “I wish to talk to you.”

  “They’re waiting for me,” Sura says, though she owes him no explanations.

  “I just need a moment.”

  Sura starts around him. He stops her, but just with words this time.

  “There is something I didn’t tell you,” Philon says. “It’s…perhaps more important than I realized.”

  Sura says nothing, but she stays.

  “First, I say again that I didn’t lie to you. Kastor is dead, and it was an arrow that ended him. You must believe that, because the thing I have to tell you depends on it. I should’ve told you this already. I don’t know why I didn’t. During the meeting wasn’t the right time, but I should’ve come to you sooner. I would have, I think, if I didn’t blame myself for his death. I took him to Sicily without needing to, for no good reason except for my own interests. It was a mistake, and it shames me. Forgive me for that, if you can.”

  He pauses, perhaps giving her the occasion to offer forgiveness. She doesn’t.

  “Kastor gave me a message for you. I would write it down if you could read it, but you cannot, right?”

  Sura just stares at him. Something falls through the trees nearby, hitting leaves on the way down and then smacking the earth. An acorn, perhaps.

  “No, of course not.” This seems to disappoint him. He exhales a long breath, then plunges forward, as if he wants to get it all out in one torrent. “Before he died, he told me to tell you that he liked you very much. He would’ve fought to keep other men from you. If he had the chance, he would’ve had a good life with you. When this war was over, he wanted to ask you to go back to Galatia with him. He wanted to put children inside you. He knew they would’ve been fine children. Part of him and part of you: how could they not be fine children? He wanted you to know that you’re a good woman, and that he loved you. He said, ‘Tell her that as I died I thought of the way she rode me, like she was grinding me into the earth. It’s a happy thought to die with.’ ”

  Philon pauses, and Sura stares. Another acorn falls through the leaves, a light quick spish, put, spa, tish. And then the deeper plunk of it hitting the ground.

  “You can see now that these are awkward things for me to say, but I promised him. Now I’ve fulfilled the promise. I hope these words do you some good. His last thoughts were of you. That’s what he wanted you to know.” He looks at her a moment longer, then turns and walks into the night.

  Standing there as the crunch of his footfalls fades, Sura holds all the words he said in her head. She hears them again and absorbs them. They are, she thinks, wonderful words. They make her pulse throb faster. They bring a flush of heat to her face. They fill her head with images of Kastor, and of a ship sailing a turquoise sea toward his homeland. And then of that homeland itself, a place of big features on a wide landscape. She thinks of them entwined in lovemaking as they had been, and imagines it in this other place, in a home she didn’t have until just a moment ago, with children she hadn’t imagined until Philon told her Kastor had thought of them himself. All of it fills her with warmth. Nobody has ever said words like that to her before. The feeling they leave her with is unfamiliar, but she knows what it is.

  This is what it feels like, she thinks, to know joy.

  And that worries her. She hears the faint whispering of Astera’s words. This happiness won’t last. Already she knows that it can turn over in an instant and reveal its other face, the one that is not joy at the things just said but misery that so much was denied her. That, she knows, is just a moment away. It’s so close and powerful.

  Sura looks to the firelight on the knoll. There wait the people she loves, one of whom she’s going to kill. The bowl is still in her hands, held there all the time Philon spoke. She thinks of what she intends to do, and she no longer understands it. There is a different way, a way to trap happiness instead of feeding misery. As Kastor did, promising to think of the two of them in a moment of pleasure and to leave life with that in his mind. This seems a much better idea. It’s one she never thought of before, because happiness has been so rare a thing. She has it now, briefly. Right now.

  She thinks of Kastor wrapping her in his long, strong arms. She hears him saying the things Philon said, but she hears them in Kastor’s deep, always-ready-to-laugh voice. She listens for the chatter of the children they’ve made together, throughout the long unrolling of the years that might have been. She can see it, and for a moment at least, it contents her.

  When she has all of this, she lifts the bowl. She puts it to her lips. Thanking the goddess, she drinks.

  Philon

  Philon awakens. Before he’s even opened his eyes and taken in his surroundings, he knows that he’s on the water. He’s in a boat, and the sea is a chop that smacks against the hull without rhythm. All this takes him only a few conscious moments to realize. What he doesn’t understand is why he’s on the water, in a boat, on a choppy sea. His thoughts are muddled. His mouth is sour with wine. It feels as if someone has stuffed his head with wads of dirty wool, scratchy, constricting.

  Eyes open. There’s wood above him, beneath him as well. He’s in a small, dim cubicle, not a room so much as an irregularly shaped storage space. Light slips in through cracks in the beams above him. Shadows move there—people, judging by the footfalls that accompany them. With his arms seeking purchase on the grainy wood, he levers himself up. The action makes his head swim and brings on a wave of nausea. Gods above, he doesn’t feel well at all. By the smell of vomit in the room, he’s been sick already. Taking in the space, he sees steps, a hatch. The way out. Pushing against it, he’s never felt anything heavier. He wonders if it’s bolted closed. He leans his back into it and drives up with his legs. It swings open easily, like a joke, as if it’s toying with him.

  Clean ocean air smacks his face. He sucks it in. He blinks in the brilliant light of midday and watches as the heaving deck of the boat, busy with moving people, a sail taut above, takes shape. He sees a man he recognizes. Bolmios. He stands with his back to Philon, in animated discussion with one of his sailors. Philon recognizes him, but he doesn’t understand this situation. Why is he here? Like this? He knows there is a reason why none of it makes sense, but it escapes him.

  Beyond the pirate, the sea is wonderfully blue. The swells of the waves are white-tipped. Wind whips across the crests and tears away sprays of white that make the air liquid—despite the brightness of the sun—as if it were raining hard.

  One of the sailors calls to Bolmios. He gestures toward Philon. The pirate captain turns and, seeing him, looks suddenly fatigued. He says something Philon can’t catch to the men near him, then strides across the deck, as smoothly as if they were becalmed. When he reaches Philon, he stands. Something about the way he’s still amid such motion has a sickening effect on Philon. He suspects that he may soon be heaving over the railing. He doesn’t want to do that yet. He wants to understand first, but right now he feels like a man born just that moment, with no idea of the past that brought him here.

  “You look like shit,” Bolmios says. “Likely you feel like shit as well. Clear your head, and come sit with me. You have a decision to make.”

  —

  On that horrible day in Syracuse, Bolmios sailed out of the harbor cursing the Romans, calling on his gods to punish the coward who had loosed the arrow that was taking Kas
tor’s life. They set a devious course away from the island, trying to lose any pursuing vessels by weaving through trade route traffic for a time. They sailed east until they were far from land. In the night he changed course. Lampless in the dark, he edged the vessel north toward Italy. All of it to keep them safe, to find that isolated bit of coast in Bruttium, where they buried Kastor on a high bluff, doing their best to honor the customs of his culture, spilling wine to toast his transition to the other place, where he would be reborn.

  After, Bolmios had found the Risen, just as he’d promised. He had left the shore behind and walked on foot with Philon, saying he didn’t feel right having gone out with two men and bringing back only one, and that he wanted to see this army that Kastor had been willing to die for, and to meet the man who led them. He’d done all that.

  Alone with Philon, Spartacus had asked again and again about Bolmios, his demeanor, his actions, things said and not said. In answering, Philon could find no facts that weren’t favorable to the pirate and simultaneously damning to himself. Bolmios had done everything asked of him. He had, in fact, gone beyond what was asked of him and saved him when surely the Romans would otherwise have captured them both. The fact was that Bolmios had proved himself as constant as Kastor had been.

  “I can find no fault with him,” Philon said. “If he says he can do this for us, I believe he can. And will.”

  His conviction likely helped convince Spartacus to conclude the arrangement Bolmios proposed. The pirate fleet would meet them in the south, at the Strait of Messina. From there, they would ferry a small force of soldiers across to Sicily.

  As soon as Bolmios left to gather his ships, the Risen broke camp and marched south. They took over the Via Popilia, making fast time past Consentia and Terina, Hipponium, Nicotera, and Medma and onward. On Spartacus’s orders, they killed no more than those who came against them. They took supplies of grain, for winter was coming, and they drove all the cattle and swine they could get their hands on. They stole horses, of course. But these things they needed. These things, Spartacus said, would be repaid when Rome was defeated and all Italy free to reap the benefits of the city’s demise.

  The Roman army followed. What the Roman commander was thinking, none of them could say for sure. He didn’t offer battle, didn’t try to impede them. He acted almost as if he were driving them south instead of pursuing them. Fine. That suited the Risen’s objectives. They kept on south, a great wave rolling over the land, filled with purpose, high on dreams of the things to come.

  Weeks later Philon set eyes on Sicily again. Staring across from a point of land jutting out toward the northern tip of the island, he could see the contours of the hills there. They rose vigorously out of the water. A dense growth of forest painted the higher hills green, with the patchwork geometries of cultivated tracts lower down. In one spot, what must be a large fire created a pillar of black that ascended at a diagonal rise. He could pick out villages near the shore, and the ships that sailed along the coastline. A wagon over there. A person riding a horse. They were that close. His eyesight was better than most, but the island was so near.

  And yet it was far as well. It was the currents that mattered, the way they flowed deceptively fast as they rushed through the strait. Out there were pools of whirling water. Waves that rose up and crashed. Liquid crevices that opened up unexpectedly. This was the very place that sea monsters living on either shore menaced Odysseus. Scylla, who lived on the very side where Philon now stood, was a horror. With four eyes and many long necks, terrible heads atop them, mouths with glistening teeth. She reached out with tentacles and snatched sailors from their oars. Or Charybdis, who drank down huge swallows of water and then spat them out to create whirlpools large enough to capsize ships and drag them down. Philon saw no sign of either beast, but he remembered the words that described them and was content to wait for Bolmios, who should arrive any day now.

  Philon turned and looked behind him. Encamped on the beach and up into the bluffs and rocky hills were the two thousand soldiers to be led across to the island by Skaris. The local villagers had all but barricaded themselves in their homes. Reasonable enough for them to be afraid, though little harm would come to them regardless. The scene was busy but unhurried. Some men trained with sword and javelin. Some exercised horses. Others sharpened and oiled weapons. There was the steady clank of mallet on anvil. Numerous fires fought the mild chill in the air. Above them cook pots sent the scents of simmering broths into the gray fall sky. There were women and children among them still, hanging on to their men as long as they could. The rest of the army had encamped a few miles away. With their great numbers they made a defensive barrier against Crassus’s force. Right now getting these two thousand to Sicily was the most important thing. Spartacus was going to make it happen. Everyone knew it now.

  If they needed proof of it, they had only to look to developments on Sicily to prove it. A trading vessel that had come across recently, the crew sympathetic to the Risen’s objectives, said that Verres was in a panic. The governor had called troops from all around the island, ordering them to mass on the eastern coast. The nearest city—Messina itself—he had fortified against attack, and to the smaller villages he’d sent contingents to look out for the rebels, to sound the alarm on the first sign of their sailing. In all this, the Romans on Sicily made it clear that they feared what Spartacus would do if he were let loose in the confines of their jewel of an island. There weren’t the troops to send in sufficient numbers to stop the invasion, not without leaving already roiling situations liable to explode. Lilybaeum, Panormus, Henna: these cities and still others as well, left without properly manned garrisons, could explode at any moment, especially with the scent of panic in the air. Verres could fortify Messina all he liked. Other cities as well. He’d never secure them all, not with enemies within their walls as much as without.

  And Rome? Verres must have pleaded for aid, but there was no sign Rome had any intention of coming to the province’s rescue. No navy plying the seas, shuttling troops. No splitting of Crassus’s force. The commander was at their back still, not attacking but lingering there, content to harass and make life difficult. Content to keep the Risen from Rome.

  Skaris stalked up and stood beside him. He was bearded with a new, exuberant growth of hair, and he wore a long cloak, fastened at the neck and draped over his shoulders. The thick fabric was mostly green, with colorful geometric shapes on it: a row of yellow diamonds, another of red dots, and a jagged blue line. His head was ensconced inside a cap peculiar to the Thracians, an orange, conelike thing, with long flaps hanging down onto his chest like elongated, drooping goat ears. Beneath the cloak he went bare-chested, a fact that must have limited the insulating value of the cloak. Though perhaps, Philon admitted, he would walk around bare-chested as well if he had a physique to match Skaris’s.

  “That’s quite an interesting cap you have,” Philon said.

  “One of my women made it. The fit is wrong. She’s a Celt and doesn’t know better.” He scowled. “Where are your pirates, Greek?”

  “They’ll come. Today. Tomorrow. A few days after. Who can say when there’s so much to arrange? They’re at the mercy of the sea, the winds.”

  “What gods do they call to?” He asked this in Greek. A strange trait of his. Some things he said in rough Greek. Some things in rough Latin. Clearly, he preferred his native tongue to both.

  “I’ve no idea,” Philon answered.

  “Fuck,” he said. Latin for this. “Look at that place! There’s no better place to cross than this, eh?”

  “I don’t suspect so.”

  “I hate this waiting. If I could swim, I would. I can’t, though. I tried once in a gorge, and I sank. I’m too heavy in muscle and bone. Spartacus had to fish me out. Not the only time he snatched my life from death. No, I can’t swim this.”

  “Perhaps you could hold your breath and walk across the bottom?”

  Skaris looked at Philon sharply. “Fuck you, Greek.�
� Latin again. He stalked away to resume his pacing up and down the shore. Skaris was likely the right man to lead the initial force, but he was not nearly as good company as Kastor had been.

  The pirate flotilla arrived the next afternoon. It sailed up from the south on a good wind, taking shape as the haze cleared to reveal it. The vessels varied in size, which was as Bolmios said it would be. The largest of them looked like a cargo ship, wide-hulled and slow but with ample room to press bodies into her hold. The corbita Bolmios mentioned? Philon couldn’t say. The most impressive had the look of a Roman military vessel. Perhaps it was that once. Now it’s more likely to rob from Romans than protect them. Philon couldn’t, at a distance, tell a bireme from a monoreme, but it didn’t matter. Despite the motley array of sizes and shapes, Bolmios had brought the fleet he’d promised. That was all that mattered.

  The pirate captain launched himself into the surf the moment the skiff bearing him ground against the sand. He was talking before Philon could hear him. Every motion and expression conveyed his enthusiasm. His teeth shined as he grinned. He held his arms high, each hand clenching a drinking skin. By his demeanor, they were wine-filled.

  Spartacus was there to meet him. Bolmios greeted him with a full embrace, kissing him on the cheeks. He shoved a wineskin into Skaris’s chest and another at Gaidres. With his arms free, he spun Philon around and pretended to hump him from behind.

  Gesturing toward a chest waiting on the sand, Bolmios asked, “This is it, the gift exchanged between friends to make this thing possible?”

  “If that’s how you want to think of it,” Spartacus said. “It’s the sum we discussed.”

  The pirate made a show of looking around distrustfully. “It’s safe here on the beach?”

  “None will touch it,” Spartacus said, then repeated more loudly, “None will touch this chest, as we all make the gift of it to you together!”