The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  Some scout the coastline, where the wall ends by abutting a massive outcropping of rock, its cliffs dropping down into the blue waters. They could send swimmers around it at night. Or a force on a few good vessels. They could attack from the far side and hold a portion of the wall long enough for another force to pull a section of it down. It’s a thought, but none wish to trust themselves to the waves again. The idea withers.

  A week of this, and then Spartacus calls for the entire army to be assembled for battle near the wall. He has them muster in a great mass. He rides his stallion in front of them, berating the Romans as cowards. He rides close enough to shout at the wall, challenging them to come out and take the field. He promises not to attack until they’re in position. He calls for Crassus, saying he’ll swear to him directly, before everyone. Come out, and let them have a battle. Three days he makes the same offer. Three days he gets nothing more than hurled insults in return.

  At the close of that third day, Spartacus, standing just outside missile range, turns his back to the wall, lifts his tunic to expose his buttocks, and farts so loudly the Romans might actually have been able to hear it if the gathered army hadn’t erupted in laughter and cheers. Spartacus stalks away. Behind him, man after man goes through a variation of the same routine, bottoms bared, slapping the skin. That’s the end of offering battle that way.

  Spartacus calls a council meeting. Castus hopes he will hear him say both how they will free themselves and that once they do, they should run for home. That’s what he wants to hear. If he doesn’t, he will stand, and before everyone’s eyes, he will split with the man he loves and argue for everyone flying to their respective homelands. The prospect of the latter makes him sick to the stomach, but if he has to do it, he will.

  They meet a few miles inland, where the bulk of the Risen move after they give up on luring the Romans from behind the wall. It feels good to ride into the hills, away from the sight of the sea and the moist smell of salt in the air. The air is just as damp, and cooler, but it feels fresher as the salt-tinge fades. It doesn’t take the memories of the disaster away—he sees Skaris’s raft overturn again and again in his dreams—but it helps to clear his head. He starts to replace old worrying thoughts with new ones. How do they escape the south when the Romans have built a wall all the way across the peninsula? From what he’d seen on the afternoon they rode close to it, the structure was stout, the pit deep. Any rush on it would expose them to a rain of javelins and arrows shot down from above. He hates the Romans for devising such a trap. They are cowards but deadly ones.

  The council is held in a grove of stone pines, a little distance from the main encampment. The mature trees rise on long, narrow trunks, as if they’re competing with one another to reach the greatest heights. Only there, high up, does their plumage shoot out horizontally. They look like so many parasols held aloft by thin, elongated giants. The canopy would be little protection from a downpour, but today there is just a light mist, enough to chill as it creeps across the hills.

  The assembly is larger than Castus expected. They stink of moist wool and unwashed bodies, smoky clothes and oily hair. He knows most of the men, but not all of them have sat at council before. Some have been with them from the start. The Libyan, Nasah, and Kut, of the Nasamones, swore on the table in the ludus back in Capua. Thresu was with them in Capua as well. He leads a contingent who claim Etruscan identity, not Romans, but people suppressed by them here in Italy. There are new men, also, ones who rose to be leaders as more and more diverse peoples joined the Risen. The Greeks hold together, led by a man who claims Spartan blood. There are men here to speak for the Illyrians, for the Galileans and Syrians, for the Iberians. There are even some to speak for the groups of people who joined together across clan or race, those who needed to belong and looked past the things that made them different. Even Baebia, the Roman, now has a following behind him, Latin speakers who look to him as a champion of sorts. Now they sit at council. They do, but Skaris, Dolmos, Nico, Crixus, and Oenomaus don’t. Castus has nothing against these new men, but he does hate the absence of those who are gone.

  Gannicus, when he sits next to him, whispers, “Don’t die, Castus. It appears we are easily replaced.”

  When Spartacus arrives, he wears a thick woolen cloak that Castus recognizes. It had once been Skaris’s. He wades into the assembly, greeting men by name, as always. Astera is there as well. She leads Dolmos by the elbow. She stops at the edge of the group. When Dolmos tries to follow Spartacus, she pulls him back, whispers something to him. He stands beside her, but his eyes follow Spartacus with a nervous intensity. Castus knows what it reminds him of—a dog, anxious to see his master surrounded by other dogs. He hates that he even thinks it. He tries not to.

  Spartacus warms his hands over the central fire and says, “You all know that I’ve lost men dear to me. Men I loved. We all have, but I feel these losses keenly. Truly. I feel them here, at the center of me. Skaris was like a brother to me. I wish that we had his body here. That we could build a pyre for him, and that everyone who knew him could come and make an offering. Give him a gift to go into the next world, so that he could arrive with the gods with evidence of how much he was loved here. I can’t do that, though. The sea swallowed him. It’s not only him I mourn in my heart.” He presses his fingers to his chest. As if spurred by the touch of his fingers, he coughs, several times. He’s not the only one. Several others do the same, as if he’s given them permission to. “But look into each other’s faces. All of you who are here in the council. Look to each other, and see not just the men who have been lost. See new brothers being made. We yet have much work to do. Best we do it as one. I know there is grumbling. I know some feel that I have taken us to a bad place. You know the situation we are in. Sit with me, and hear what I now propose we do about it.”

  He turns and calls to Hustus, who waits in the shifting vapor just outside the shelter of the trees. “Come. Bring him.”

  Hustus jogs away, to where his group of scouts stands around one dejected-looking figure. A Roman prisoner, Castus realizes as he’s led under the trees. He looks wetter than the weather merits, like a drowned rat with dark hair slicked to his tanned face. He wears the trappings of a legionary, though not the sword or javelin or dagger. He holds his hands in a strange manner, his fingers crooked and in motion, touching each other as if he were counting some vast, complicated sum on them.

  “This man,” Spartacus says, “is a Roman. You can see that. He is fresh from Crassus’s legions. He came to us.”

  “A deserter?” Baebia says. His tone has no approval in it, and his face no warmth.

  “He holds the key to our breaking through the Roman wall.” That, so casually said, quickens the interest on the faces staring at the Roman. Spartacus clears a cough from his throat. “Tell them, Nonus, what you told me.”

  The Roman looks as if that’s the last thing in the world he wants to do. Head bowed, face hidden, he addresses his words to the ground in front of him. His voice is a mumbled whisper that wins him a few curses, demands that he speak up. Spartacus moves toward him. The Roman flinches, but Spartacus gently touches his chin. He raises it, bringing Nonus’s whole head up so his face is more clearly on display. Spartacus steps back and makes a calming motion with his hands. “You have a voice. Use it. We want to hear you.”

  When the Roman tries again, his words are still halting. He pauses often, as if a thought other than one he’s begun has just occurred to him, and he’s unsure which should be said first. Still, he makes himself understood. The wall, he explains, has weak spots. It’s strongest on either coast, where travel is easiest and the routes open and the climate temperate. That’s where most of the construction has been, and it’s where most of the soldiers are stationed. The Roman officers assume the rebels will attack one of the coastal walls. They have also built walls at passable spots in the mountains, but these were more hastily constructed. They’re not as well manned. It was one of these that Nonus had been assigned to.
He fled one night, squeezing through the unfinished wall.

  “Why should they be well manned?” someone Castus can’t see asks. “They’re mountains. It’s winter. I’ve no love of mountains. Or winter.”

  “You might love them both if they save you,” Nonus responds.

  “You want us to march into the heights?” Ullio asks. “Into snow and ice and jagged peaks? Who says there’s a way through? We’ll lose many to cold and illness and injury. We’ll use up what little food we have. And there’s no forage up there, is there? I see what this is. A trap.”

  The Celt isn’t the only one who thinks so. A chorus of voices add variations to his complaints.

  The Roman glances around, looking increasingly agitated. Likely, he can’t understand most of the polyglot aspersions thrown at him. “It’s true the mountains are rugged!” he says, finding more volume than before. “As rain falls here now, snow does up there. But there is a route. Climb high enough, and you reach a plateau that runs atop the range. A good route, if you know it’s there and are willing to climb to it. It’s a road in the sky. There is a wall blocking it off, but it’s as I said. Not as strong as the coastal walls. Not as many men there behind it. That’s what I came to tell you.”

  He doesn’t seem to have convinced anyone. The complaints against him build.

  Spartacus raises his hands and calls for quiet. It takes a moment, but he gets it. “You all speak reasonable concerns,” he says, “but we don’t have to believe just him. One of your own attests to the same. You know her. Vectia. She led you from the destruction of Crixus’s army back to join the Risen. You know she knows this land. She is here. I could have her tell it if you need to hear it from her.”

  Spartacus points to where Vectia stands, also at the edge of the gathering. She leans against a tree trunk, arms crossed, her head hooded and face in shadow. Nobody asks to hear Vectia tell it.

  Shrugging, Spartacus continues. “This route in the sky”—he draws it with his arms, a high route, something beautiful—“she used it once when her master was avoiding men he was indebted to. It won’t be easy, but the Romans will not expect it. To use it would be a tactic like Hannibal used when he crossed the Alps. Or using the marshes of the Arno. It will work precisely because the Romans won’t think we’ll do it.”

  Gannicus leans in to Castus and whispers, “Now he compares himself to Hannibal.” It’s not a complete thought, but he leaves it there.

  “Why should we believe him?” Nasah asks. His face is dark, nose sharp as an ax blade, and his hair tightly curled. “A man who betrays his people is no man.”

  “What of a man who has been betrayed by his people?” Spartacus asks. “This Roman told me his story. If you want, ask him to tell it again. Rome has used him, used him again and again. They’ve taken everything from him. We all know what that feels like, don’t we? So what if he was born Roman? Can’t he take issue with them? Don’t despise him for it. On the day that other Romans are as bold as he”—he pauses, looking around, making sure that everyone has heard the beginning of his sentence and gets hungry for the rest—“on that day, Rome is destroyed.” He clears his throat. Coughs once, hard, and then puts humor in his voice. “There is another thing. This isn’t the first time some of us have seen this man. You didn’t mention it, Nonus, but I know you, don’t I?”

  The Roman’s jaw drops. He seems at a loss for how to answer. His mouth moves as if he’s working up the moisture to spit but can’t do it. Instead he nods.

  “They damaged your hands badly that night, didn’t they?” At the mention of them, Nonus draws his hands closer to his belly, hiding them. “You see, brothers, Nonus is the man who, in our earliest days of freedom, led us to a stash of weapons. This Roman did this for us, on the very night that his own people tortured him.”

  Gannicus guffaws. “I thought I recognized the little weasel! He was in a Roman convoy we took back in the spring. In Lucania, wasn’t it? He’s the one we left alive. Yes, I remember him now. I asked him if he wanted to join us. He didn’t then. Why the change now, Roman?”

  Nonus has a quick response. “Because that day you didn’t take my life, or my brother’s. I went back to my people, only to have them condemn my brother to death.”

  “They killed him?”

  This time, the anger in his response is palpable. “No, they made me do it.”

  That cuts the mirth Gannicus has injected into the interview. For a time, it leaves the group in silence. When someone speaks again, it seems the topic of Nonus’s trustworthiness has been settled. For a time, the Roman gives further details of the wall’s construction.

  Castus listens. He watches Spartacus, seeing his enthusiasm for a plan that, already, is growing in the group’s mind. He’s turning them again, winning them. He’s got them wanting more from him. He’s got them hoping he has the answers. But Castus isn’t sure he does. Without the gods to favor him, his answers can come to nothing. Does nobody think this but him? He looks at Astera. Her face is unreadable, a finely sculpted mask that betrays nothing about what’s inside her.

  “Spartacus, you have my respect,” Kut says. He’s small of stature but known as being deadly quick with his knife and a fine horseman as well. “But many are unhappy. They say we have lost the favor of the gods and have lost our way because of it and have become trapped.”

  There! Good, someone has said it, Castus thinks. He’s not the only one who thinks it.

  “We are not trapped,” Spartacus says. “We could march tomorrow, into the mountains and through their pathetic wall. And after that I know a way to gain us everything we need. Provisions. Wealth. Power. Status. A safe fortress like none we’ve had so far. It’s a way to make our freedom last. Think of the Risen as made up of so many different arm rings. Clans and races and faiths: each one a ring. Some of you, I know, would see these rings thrown into the air, each flying a separate way. You fear the future will bring that, and because you fear it, you are creating it. All of us scampering to get what we can before Rome makes us slaves again. That is not what I see.”

  He unfastens the clasp that holds his cloak. He shrugs the garment off and holds it out. “Here, give this to my brother. He is cold there at the edge of the gathering.” There’s a moment of confusion, as the man holding the cloak casts around for who he means. Someone whispers to him, and soon the cloak passes from hand to hand and reaches Dolmos, who grasps it and brings it to his chest. Astera loosens his grip and shows him that he should slip it over his shoulders.

  Spartacus stands tall, stretching, looking relieved to be free of the weight of the cloak. Also, looking magnificent in a way he hadn’t just moments before. His arms are bare, chiseled and stigmaed, his shoulders wide. Castus notices that he’s no longer coughing. He doesn’t pause to clear his throat. He doesn’t look tired or grieving. Was he pretending to be ill? Or has he just shrugged it off? He looks, to Castus, as if he’s been blessed once more.

  “Do you know what I see? Not the chaos of flying rings. I see the scorching path of an arrow that pierces all of the rings at once.” He demonstrates this, making his curled hand into the rings and shooting them with the finger of his other hand. He turns, making sure everyone sees the arrow that pierced all the rings. “All of us, captured on that arrow and shot straight to the heart of our enemy.”

  Despite himself and his pledge and the things he’s thought it means, Castus feels a flare of warmth on his face. It’s the opening before hope enters. It’s something akin to love. To worship. He wants to know what this way to gain everything they need is. This scorching arrow.

  “This plan, I swear, will please the gods. Do you want to hear it?”

  Kut, who happens to be the one Spartacus’s eyes land on, nods. Gestures. Looks exasperated. “Yes! That’s what we all want.”

  Spartacus looks around, seemingly considering whether they deserve to hear it. “Hustus, take this Roman away. I wouldn’t want to reveal all to him.” He waits as Hustus pulls the deserter away. He waits until he
’s out of earshot, and further until he’s gone from sight. And even a bit more after that. Only when the wait seems unbearable does he ask, “You really want to hear it? You have faith in me still, enough to hope my words will please your gods?”

  When Spartacus seems assured that he believes the men still have faith in him, he tells them his plan.

  Vectia

  Leaning against a tree trunk at the edge of the council meeting, Vectia tries to keep her attention on Spartacus. She wants to hear what his plan is as much as anybody. Unlike the others, though, she has to keep her focus despite the distraction of the dead behind and beside her. She hears the muted sounds they make, the incoherent whispers. She doesn’t turn to look at them. There is nothing to see that she doesn’t already know. The ghosts are still with them, more than even before. She neither fears them nor loves them nor mourns for them. She knows that they can’t harm her, any more than she can free them. Still, their constant presence tires her. She keeps her gaze veiled beneath her hood. It’s why she wears the hood. Not because of the cold. Because it limits her vision. Like them, she watches Spartacus and his council. Like them, she’s hungry for his words. He speaks to so many, though he doesn’t even know it.

  “Imagine this,” Spartacus says. “We go into the mountains, on to this plateau, through the wall, we come down from on high, and we march on Brundisium. We take it and make our base there. Brundisium, that’s our goal.”