The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  It takes her a moment to understand who the dead are, for they’re clearly not only the Roman soldiers who had guarded the wall. And then she knows. Spartacus had said, Then we’ll show them what we think of Roman walls and ditches, eh? Here he had. The bodies, they were the Roman prisoners they’d marched around Italy all this time. The soldiers must’ve been led here, nearly starved, stumbling on their own feet, each of them up to the edge, where they were killed and tossed in.

  As Vectia has paused, people brush past her, both warm bodies and the cold touch of souls. She doesn’t want this stored in her brain, but she does want to know what she feels about it. It’s cruel, as so much of what men do in war is. The innocent, heaped in with the guilty, but isn’t that always the way? She doesn’t despise the sight as much as she might. She looks at it, but she feels nothing. The image of Spartacus warming a boy’s feet on his belly, carrying that boy on his back? That makes her feel many things. This? It just reminds her the Romans would’ve only been crueler. If Rome didn’t want the death of these people, they shouldn’t have reached out across the world and made slaves of so many.

  Thinking that, she makes her way forward, stepping carefully on the bodies. She stumbles once. In catching herself, her hand grips the hair of a dead man’s head. He’s still warm, his blood still wet on her palm. She yanks her hand back as quickly as she can, wiping it on her tunic. She keeps going. Atop the dead and dying, she crosses the trench, climbs through the wall, and carries on.

  After that the crossing—though physically still a misery, though they grow thinner and some fall away and some lose toes and fingers and cheeks and noses to the cold—is almost a thing of joy. The plateau is a great road through the mountains, and they speed along it unhindered. There are Roman armies out there somewhere, but they don’t see them. They march unmolested, and despite the cold, a contagion of mirth spreads through them. They find humor in the toil. They talk of the feasts to come, of soft beds and palaces and riches. Or of small things they want: combs for their hair, baths to clean themselves in, a door to close and be safe behind. A roof so that the rain can’t touch them. So many things. All of them waiting in Brundisium.

  Just a few days on the ridge in the sky, and then they’re descending. Soon they come down out of the snow and taste the coming spring. People talk of the winter as a bad time for the gods. Perhaps the gods’ attention has been elsewhere. Maybe they didn’t know the Risen would be fighting to survive the entire winter. In the time of the gods, none made war in winter. They didn’t know to stay attentive. But with spring, the gods are watching them again.

  As they run headlong down from the mountains to the hills, tumbling with the fall of the earth and with all the momentum of the rivers that churn with melting snow, it feels glorious. They have truly done it. A winter crossing of mountains that had been barred shut to them. She, Vectia, had a part in making it happen. Now it’s just a race toward Brundisium, miles still to go, but easy ones, in mild weather over flat terrain. There she will have a home. It’s a jewel of a city, and if it can be made theirs, nothing will be able to dislodge them. And then won’t all the slaves who haven’t joined them finally rise and rush to them, knowing they are welcome and that the freedom they dreamed of can be sustained? It’s, truly, all within their grasp. So nearly theirs.

  So nearly.

  Kaleb

  When Kaleb enters the command tent, he finds the deserter standing under guard, chained ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist, and yet again ankles to wrists. He’s bedraggled, his tunic ripped and soiled, and he’s bruised all over. One eye is swollen shut, crusted with dried blood. The man has not had a good time of it the last few days. No surprise that. A deserter is an enemy to his own people, to be condemned and humiliated for it. All know that the punishment for desertion is death. The fact that this one has thus far escaped that fate is unusual, but he, apparently, is an unusual man, one who has bet his life on a casting of the dice.

  Kaleb addresses the guards standing to either side of him. “You may go now. The commander is returning. He will be here shortly and interview this man privately.”

  The guards hesitate a moment. They look at each other. They find it hard to be dismissed by an Ethiopian slave. They balk at it, yet both know that Kaleb is only passing on Crassus’s wishes. They know they can’t refuse, and they don’t. They just take their time in leaving, making it appear to be their own idea. One of them asks the other if he is thirsty, the other says that he is, and famished as well. Kaleb lets them go through the motions, standing beside the tent’s opening until they stroll out.

  “You all as well,” Kaleb says to the slaves in the tent. Two scribes, several manservants, a Gallic woman who services Crassus’s sexual needs. She hesitates, but Kaleb says, “Even you. Go. Not far, though.”

  When they are alone, the prisoner meets Kaleb’s gaze directly. His lips have a meanness to them, as if they, more than any of his other features, wish to convey that they think little of the world. He tosses his head to clear his hair, which is long for a Roman, from his eyes. Despite the beating he’s suffered, there’s an arrogance in his battered face. Casually, he says, “So, what happened? A good outcome, I hope. I asked the guards, but they wouldn’t tell me. You’ll tell me, though. Won’t you, friend? Tell a fellow slave what he needs to know. Is the news good?”

  “I don’t know,” Kaleb says.

  “You’ve got a face of stone. I can never tell what you’re thinking. You’re harder to read than Crassus.”

  “A battle was fought. Crassus returns. That’s all I have.”

  The Roman grins. “A battle was fought. See? My information was correct. I told you it was. So Crassus comes to thank me. I saved his hide. He didn’t have a clue what to do until I told him.”

  Kaleb knows his master well enough to know that thanks are unlikely to be coming the prisoner’s way. As for saving his hide…perhaps. He sits down.

  “Aren’t we friends, Kaleb?” the man presses. “All these hours we’ve spent together here. Come on. Why not tell me? Was it a great slaughter?”

  “I don’t know,” Kaleb says, which is the truth. He does want a great slaughter. He’s just not sure who he wants slaughtered, Romans or the slaves who stand against her. He isn’t about to say that, though. “As I said, Crassus will be here soon. The news is his to reveal. Or not. Just wait, now, for my master.”

  “Your master?” There’s mild derision in the man’s voice. “You’re such a good slave, Kaleb. If I ever have a slave, I’ll make sure he’s just like you.”

  The prisoner continues prodding him, but Kaleb doesn’t answer. He picks up a quill and inspects its point, hoping Crassus won’t be too long in returning. Like the prisoner, he’s anxious to know what’s happened. If it’s a victory, that will put him closer to returning to Rome, to being with Umma again, which is the sole thing he desires day and night. Victory, and he may have her as his own, the reward that Crassus has promised awaits him at the successful conclusion of this war. So he wants that. But he also knows that victory means the death of something that he’s come to feel should not die. The two different emotions writhe like snakes fighting within him. Or like snakes making love, he’s not sure which. He just keeps his face impassive and waits.

  —

  A week earlier a patrol found the deserter approaching the Roman camp. He was disarmed and questioned by junior officers. They, hearing the man’s claims, passed him on to their superiors, who in turn did the same. Considering the things the man was claiming, word of him reached the command tent before the day was out. Crassus ordered the man brought to him. “I doubt anything will come of it,” he muttered, “but I’d like to look this traitor in the face and then make an example of him for the men.”

  Crassus liked to do that, make men suffer for past mistakes. It was one aspect of leadership that he excelled at. Other aspects were somewhat harder for him. Kaleb saw what others saw: the commander’s turn toward harsh discipline, strict training, moments of sudden in
spiration and bursts of action, as when he ordered the construction of the wall across Bruttium. He knew as well as anybody how focused Crassus was on his stated purpose: ending the insurrection, killing the gladiators while sacrificing as few Roman lives as possible, making an example of them that would not be forgotten in living memory and bringing peace and security back to Italy. He wanted victory and the accolades that came with it. Those things, everyone knew.

  But Kaleb also knew things that others didn’t: the things that worried Crassus, that he revealed in private moments when he mused aloud with nobody to hear him except his trusted slave. As hungry as Crassus was for success, he was terrified at the prospect of any taint of failure. One setback, one obvious defeat, one rout of the men under him, any of these would tarnish his record with a servile stain he’d never be able to wash off. Crassus, bested by the lowest of the low. Crassus, made a fool of by a barbarian slave, a gladiator too cowardly to accept his fate. He had seen it happen to the men who commanded before him in this conflict.

  So he wanted victory, but without the risks of defeat. That was why he’d yet to face the enemy in a pitched fight. That’s why he hadn’t stopped the rabble’s southward march, why he shadowed them, why he backed if they swerved to offer battle. He hadn’t counted on the rebels attempting to cross to Sicily, but the distraction and delay of that failed effort worked to his advantage. While the rebels floundered at the sea’s edge, he ordered the wall built and the crops and stores of the south put to the torch. He was going to fight them, but only when he was certain of success. Let the gladiators be weak, half-starved, desperate. He’d been willing to let attrition do much of the work for him. Too bad the slave army had broken through the wall before they were weak, starved, and desperate enough for his liking.

  As the rebels raced north along the Gulf of Tarentum, Crassus went back to marching in columns before and behind and adjacent to the enemy. North into Apulia, then veering to the west, cutting deep into Lucania. The rebels seemed to have no direction, no sensible plan that Crassus could fathom. That was good, though. Without a plan, they would make mistakes. Crassus hemmed them in, removed or destroyed forage. He levied new troops as he went. Raw recruits without the training to stand toe to toe with gladiators, but Crassus had other work to put them to, he promised. He had his soldiers attack the enemy in small parties whenever he had the opportunity. He knew his men grumbled at this, thought it unmanly. But hadn’t Fabius Maximus employed the same tactics against Hannibal? Many had grumbled then, but everyone saw the wisdom of it now. The men would have their fight. The moment for it just had to be of Crassus’s design and choice, not the rebels’.

  He’d thought he found such a moment when scouts discovered one of the rebels’ foraging columns—perhaps ten thousand fighting men and as many women and children—camped beside a marsh near Paestum. Knowing that Spartacus’s main column was some miles away, separated by a ridge of mountains, Crassus had planned an attack. He sent a company to flank them, camouflaged and in stealth. It took a day to accomplish. At sunrise the next morning the trap seemed set. Crassus converged on the rebels from the north, as the other company appeared behind them to the south. The pincer attack sent the slaves into a panic. A perfect maneuver. Perfect, except that it was foiled at the last moment. Just as they’d commenced the killing, a great host of the enemy appeared from on high. They came roaring down the slopes of a mountain Kaleb learned the locals called Camalatrum. They appeared as if a god had dropped them there, Crassus said. The confusion of it made the situation a trap within a trap. Crassus had disengaged, barely managing an ordered retreat and escaping a pitched battle. Kaleb hadn’t witnessed this. He’d been back at camp, but he had a version of it in his mind, drawn there by Crassus’s recounting of it for his private records. These were written, of course, in Kaleb’s hand.

  There was something else as well. Crassus, Kaleb knew, didn’t just want victory. He wanted it under his sole command. His and only his. It must be accomplished before any other general could claim even a measure of the glory. Last year he’d felt time was on his side. All of Rome’s top generals had been far away, enmeshed in struggles that promised to keep them overseas on long campaigns. But that was changing. Marcus Lucullus had announced an unexpected victory over the Bessi in Thrace. If he came now and defeated Spartacus as well, he’d be a hero, and Crassus would be brushed to the side. Sertorius had fallen to a traitor’s blade, so Gnaeus Pompey was set as well to return to Italy, wreathed in glory that had been bought with stealth and treachery. So inflated was the people’s regard for Pompey, he had only to touch Italian soil, and any success over Spartacus would somehow be attributed to him. Lucius Lucullus was yet occupied with Mithridates in Pontus, but Crassus was no longer confident it would drag out as long as he’d hoped.

  Crassus had only Spartacus. He was a paltry prize in comparison, worth anything at all only if it was his and his alone. Time was no longer with him. This, perhaps, was the reason he’d chosen to hear from this deserter, a man he’d otherwise have loathed and ignored.

  When the prisoner was led into the command tent, Crassus paced the rug in the center of his tent. He plucked up morsels of food from the late meal that had just been set out for him. Talking between mouthfuls, he was halfway through a dry letter to the Senate. He seemed more intent on boring his colleagues with minute details of grain supplies and rations and requested requisitions than on explaining how he’d let the gladiators escape from the south. The Senate had been dubious about the wall across Bruttium from the start. The complaint went that Crassus had been charged with destroying them, not with signing over the toe of Roman Italy to them. Now that his tactic had failed, Crassus had a good deal of explaining to do. He did so by speaking a lot of words and saying very little.

  Kaleb was in attendance but was glad that another slave was transcribing this particular correspondence. He stood looking over the scribe’s work, charged with spotting errors if there were any.

  The men guarding the prisoner made a show of treating him roughly as they entered. One of them kicked the back of the man’s knee while the other drove him down from the shoulder, then smacked him for not kneeling to his satisfaction. By the look of the prisoner’s swollen face, he’d already failed to do things to a number of people’s satisfaction. The man was chained, but the guards stayed close, both of them with their sword hilts gripped, blades ready to be drawn.

  Crassus completed a sentence of his correspondence. He didn’t look at the prisoner, but he pitched his voice in a low, mean tone that indicated that he was addressing him. “What is your name?”

  “Rufius Baebia.”

  One of the guards punched him on the ear. The other explained why. He was speaking to the commander of the legion, to a senator, to Marcus Licinius Crassus. Address him with proper respect.

  The prisoner repeated his name, and then added, “Sir.”

  Crassus still hadn’t turned to face the man. He sliced a hard-boiled egg in half, placed one of the sections on a biscuit, and bit into it. He chewed, swallowed, and then turned to study the man with his full attention. “I know of a Rufius Baebia. He served under Sertorius in Spain—before Sertorius became a traitor. He was accused of cowardice in battle. A grievous cowardice, if I recall correctly. Several of his superiors died because of his failings. He was disgraced. Condemned. Are you that Rufius Baebia?”

  “I was never a coward.” The guard cuffed him again. The prisoner half-turned, glaring at the man with a flare of anger. Still, he rephrased. “Sir, I am that man, but I was falsely accused and condemned to the arena.”

  “Your guilt was long ago decided. I won’t argue that point.” Crassus shoved the rest of the egg and biscuit in his mouth. “You should be dead. Why aren’t you?”

  “Sir,” the man said, “I’m hard to kill. Thirteen times in the arena didn’t do it. More times than I can count in battle didn’t do it.”

  “Roman justice should be swift,” Crassus said. “In your case it has not been. Since
you admit to being yourself, and to having avoided your fate, I’ll have my men carry out your sentence immediately. That will close the story of Rufius Baebia. It’s the only possible outcome. If you were once a Roman soldier, you know that. And yet you came here of your own accord, making claims of valuable intelligence. You must think very highly of this supposed intelligence if you believe it’s enough to sway my hand.” He paused, offering the man the opportunity to speak.

  Baebia took it. “Sir,” he began, “the gods kept me alive for a reason. They know my innocence, and they led me here with a gift to you to prove it. I have information that will turn this war in your favor.”

  “So you’ve said. Speak it clearly and without adornment. Quickly. The moment I believe you are wasting my time, I’ll have these men take you from here and execute you. So speak.”

  The man did. Judging by the fact that Crassus continued to listen, he didn’t feel the prisoner was wasting his time. In fact, the more Baebia talked, the more intent Crassus became. If what the prisoner was saying was true, it was just the sort of news he’d been waiting for.