by Mark Morris
“Most unfortunate,” he said consolingly. “Your man showed early promise.”
Batiatus clenched his teeth in a rictus grin.
“Simple mistakes merely indicated his lack of experience. Your warriors fight well, good Hieronymus. A credit to your training methods.”
Hieronymus raised a hand, accepting the compliment with easy grace.
“I will not deny a certain eye for talented prospects, but I cannot claim full credit. Good Crassus here has been generous enough to bestow his experience in battle.”
“You have feeling for work of a doctore?” Batiatus called across to the Roman nobleman a little sourly, earning a surreptitious poke in the back from Lucretia sitting behind him.
Crassus turned, his face deadpan, his gray eyes brimming with scorn.
“It affords amusement to act as Hieronymus’s tactician — only in advisory capacity of course. A mere passing of the time.”
“Of course,” Batiatus replied, his voice equally cold. “Forgive my tone if it leaned to implication of anything but.”
Crassus remained silent, regarding Batiatus with the stare of a butcher wondering how best to slice and present a slaughtered beast.
“Crassus only adds to sound methods already employed within ludus. Mantilus stands a great source assuring victory,” Hieronymus said, smoothing over the momentary awkwardness.
“Your spiritual attendant, for lack of better description,” Batiatus muttered.
“Indeed. His ministrations most beneficial to me and my gladiators.”
Batiatus nodded curtly and called for water, more as a way of excusing himself from the conversation than because he really needed a drink. He could not deny, however, that his throat was dry and that he was sweating profusely, a condition that was more endemic of his present predicament than of the heat of the day.
So far his gladiators had lost five of the six bouts in which they had competed. His sole victors, and lucky ones at that, had been the German brothers, Agron and Duro, both of whom had sustained injuries that would see them under the care of the medicus for some time. The street prattle of Capua had been mostly true- Hieronymus’s men were savage, wild-eyed and often reckless-but under more normal circumstances Batiatus would still have been confident that the skill, speed and finesse of his own stable would have been more than a match for their raw ferocity. But as Batiatus had feared, the recent problems within his ludus had taken their toll, and like Solonius’s fighters before them, his men were badly out of sorts-lacking in strength, slow to react and unable to concentrate.
“Who stands eager to step to sands for next match?” Hieronymus asked as Spiculus’s remains were pierced with a large hook and dragged from the arena.
Batiatus watched as fresh sand was strewn over the blood that had gushed from the body of his defeated man.
“Tetraides,” he muttered glumly. “Who hails from same land as you, good Hieronymus. A Greek, fighting as provocator.”
Spartacus was lying on the desert sand, vultures wheeling overhead. The merciless white disk of the sun was baking his body, his skin a deep, angry red in the unbearable heat, but he couldn’t move. He tried stretching out a hand, but it was impossibly heavy, as though invisible weights were pressing down upon it. There was blood on his fingers, and when his gaze shifted (even the tiniest muscle-twitch needed to adjust his vision was an effort) he saw that there was blood on his body too-that his entire chest and stomach was coated with it.
It was oozing from a wound just beneath his breast bone, from the same wound, in fact, that had killed Sura. With one savage thrust the blade had pierced Sura’s flesh, grated against the bone of her rib cage, and punctured her heart. Spartacus understood that because Sura’s heart and his own were as one, the killing blow had ended not only her life, but his also. And though he yet breathed, he knew also that he was dead already, and that all he could do now was watch as his and Sura’s life, slick and red- so red that it hurt his eyes-pumped out of him.
Soon we shall be together, he thought, and through the pain the thought comforted him.
Then his eyes shifted again and he saw her approaching across the sand, the sun at her back turning her into a shimmering silhouette. He watched her grow larger in his vision, and finally he blinked as she bent toward him, blocking out the sun.
“Spartacus,” she whispered, reaching out and shaking his shoulder.
He frowned, his lips barely moving. That is not my name.
She shook him again.
“Spartacus.”
Anger and distress leaped in him. He glared at her, betrayal in his eyes. That is not-
“-my name!”
It was cold, dark; the sun was gone. He jerked upright, the sound of the words he had just shouted still echoing in the air. He looked around, momentarily confused. Saw stone walls, and a stone floor strewn with reeds and sand. He could smell blood and sweat and oil. Someone was leaning over him-not Sura, but Varro.
Varro’s voice was soft in the dimness, his blond hair catching the light from the barred window overhead.
“You wake from dream, Spartacus,” he said. “It is nearly time. For the primus.” Varro’s hand was cool on his hot flesh. “Our moment of glory-or of death.”
Tetraides swung the short sword in his hand, a downward blow intended to slice through the visored helmet of his opponent and cleave his skull. The smaller, quicker gladiator, however, fighting as a thraex with a curved sica, flung up his shield, which bore the motif of an eagle battling a snake, and deflected Tetraides’s lumbering attack.
The broad-shouldered Greek, cumbersome in his heavy armor, staggered slightly as his sword skidded from the surface of the thraex’s shield. The thraex took advantage of the Greek’s momentary lack of balance to spin and strike upward with his sica. The blade sliced between the pectoral, protecting Tetraides’s chest, and the greave, protecting his left leg, finding the soft flesh just above his hip. Tetraides cried out as the sica parted the skin there in a neat slash, blood spraying from the wound and speckling the sand.
It was not a serious injury, but for a moment Tetraides’s vision grayed over. Already debilitated by the sickness sweeping through Batiatus’s ludus-a sickness which Tetraides still attributed to necromancy, despite dominus’s order to speak no more of the matter-the provocator’s armor that enclosed him felt constrictive and claustrophobic, limiting his movements. Usually he was grateful for the extra protection, particularly the visored helmet, which extended over his shoulders, but today he felt as though his head was encased in a bear trap, heavy and stifling, and stinking of hot iron and his own feverish sweat. Out in the baking heat of the arena, he felt as though he was gliding not through air, but wading through water. His opponent, by contrast, seemed to flit and buzz around him like a fly, stinging him at will.
Although it was a ludicrous notion, Tetraides would have liked nothing more at that moment than to sink to the ground and submit to the arms of Morpheus. He was so exhausted that he could barely keep his eyes open, and not even the knowledge that his life was at stake seemed to provide him with the extra boost of energy that he needed. Even so, he continued to lumber after his opponent, swinging his sword, only vaguely aware of how much the crowd was laughing and jeering at him. Their reaction was due to the fact that each time he lunged at the thraex, having pinned him in his sights, his blade would encounter only empty air, the thraex having subsequently leaped nimbly out of his way.
Occasionally the thraex would dart beneath his defenses and nick him with his sica, drawing blood. To the watching crowd it seemed as if the thraex could leap in and make the killing blow whenever he chose, but for now he seemed content to simply circle the big Greek, like a lethal predator tormenting prey that was double its size and weight, in the hope of gradually wearing it down.
Up in the pulvinus, Batiatus could hardly bear to watch. He used his hand to shade his eyes in embarrassment, flinching each time he heard a fresh burst of laughter from the massed hordes.
&nb
sp; “I fear my thraex toys with your provocator for the merriment of the crowd,” Hieronymus said sympathetically. “I hope he ends torment soon. It would be unbecoming to draw out the contest to absurdity.”
“Your words travel to him,” Crassus muttered. “It appears he sets to the task.”
Wearily Batiatus raised his head, bracing himself for the inevitable.
Tetraides was so exhausted he could barely lift his sword. He lumbered in circles, his opponent now no more than a dark, fleeting shape in his peripheral vision. Sweat poured down his face inside his helmet, blinding him, and his breath echoed stertorously in his ears. Together with the pounding of his heart as it pumped blood through his veins, the sound drowned out the derision of the crowd-a small but tender mercy.
From the corner of his eye he saw a shadowy figure suddenly dart at him, and swung his sword toward it. As the blade swished once again through empty air, he became aware of a stinging sensation in his abdomen. Next moment the stinging became a sort of dragging, followed by the strange and altogether more unpleasant feeling of something thick and wet and slippery sliding down his legs. Tetraides looked down, and was astonished to see fat, pink-gray ropes of intestine, carried on a small waterfall of blood, surging from a wide rent in his belly. The intestines slipped over his sandaled feet and spilled across the sand, like a mass of blind snakes trying to escape from a box. As the last of his strength drained out of him and his head began to fill with dizzy, buzzing blackness, Tetraides dropped his sword and his shield, and toppled over backward on to the sand. He felt no pain. He felt nothing but the irresistible desire to sleep. As his opponent stood over him, sword poised to deliver the killing blow, Tetraides closed his eyes.
When the arena was once again clear, the cornus sounded out their fanfare. As Marcus Crassus rose to his feet, the crowd quietened expectantly. The tall, austere Roman stood for a moment, his gaze sweeping the arena, waiting for complete silence. When he had it, he slowly raised a hand.
“Citizens of Capua! Brothers of Rome!” he began, his voice carrying easily despite the fact that he seemed to be making no particular effort to raise it to a shout. “As visitor to revered city, I am honored to present final event of esteemed games! A battle of blood and sand, for ultimate glory! An opportunity for old legends to die and new ones to rise from their ashes!”
Standing in the shadows of the tunnel, waiting to face the long walk toward the huge iron gates at its far end, and out into the cauldron of the arena, Varro turned to Spartacus and raised an eyebrow.
“The great Crassus does not favor our chances,” he said.
“I will take great pleasure in disappointing nobleman of Rome,” Spartacus muttered.
They listened as Crassus first introduced Hieronymus’s men-a hoplomachus said to hail from Thrace, like Spartacus himself, and a secutor from Syria.
“Conserve energy,” Oenomaus’s low voice said from behind them. “Use guile and allow Hieronymus’s novices to expend their own. The secutor is quick but undisciplined, his companion no more than lumbering oaf with head thick as rock.”
“Like all Thracians,” Varro said, grinning at Spartacus.
Spartacus’s lips twitched, but he rolled his eyes to the sky as though to convey the fact that the comment was beneath his consideration.
“If you stood as yourselves, full in strength and vigor, victory would be snatched in but quick moment,” Oenomaus continued, “but present circumstances even the odds. Despite the appearance of leveling, these flailing savages are not fit to receive honor of primus. They would prove champions lacking all worth, such that Rome would rejoice at Capua’s plummet from greatness. Do not permit such shameful outcome.”
“We will not fall,” Spartacus muttered.
Varro nodded grimly.
“My brother speaks for us both.”
Oenomaus clapped them on the backs and pushed them forward. As they walked toward the gate, guards on the other side dragged them slowly open in readiness. Up in the pulvinus they could hear Marcus Crassus coming to the end of his introductions.
“… from house of Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, I give you Varro, son of Rome. Joined in primus by the current Champion of Capua. Behold … Spartacus!”
The announcement was half-hearted, lacking true drama, but as Spartacus marched out in to the arena, the crowd released a full-blooded roar and began to chant his name. Varro raised his sword in acknowledgement, but Spartacus was unmoved by their adulation. He cared little for glory. Now that Sura was gone he cared little even for life. He fought only to repay Batiatus for attempting to reunite him with his wife-and indeed, for doing so for a last, precious moment-and because Sura would not have wanted him to simply give up and die.
Striding to the middle of the arena with Varro beside him, he assessed his opponents, his gaze unwavering. He could tell at a glance that Doctore had been right. Hieronymus’s men were snarling and prowling like wild animals, barely able to contain their desire to engage Spartacus and Varro in battle. The eyes glittering through their helmets looked black and crazed, and their hairy bodies were matted with dirt and sweat. To be an effective gladiator, Spartacus knew that you had to have both a clear head and a measure of self-discipline. It was more than evident that these men lacked both.
He turned to face the pulvinus, staring up at Marcus Crassus unflinchingly. Crassus stared back at him with evident distaste. And then, almost casually, he flapped a hand.
“Begin!”
Immediately, like wild dogs let off the leash, Hieronymus’s men came for them. As Doctore had said, the secutor was fast and agile as an ape. He wore an egg-shaped helmet with round eye-holes and carried a large rectangular shield and a stabbing sword. The hoplomachus lumbering in his wake was clearly a veteran of many battles, his body criss-crossed with a multitude of long-healed scars. The man was armed with a long spear in one hand and protected by a small, round shield, which he held in the other. A short sword was tucked into his belt for short-range work.
The secutor targeted Varro and ran at him, screeching. Unperturbed, Varro, fighting as murmillo, raised his shield and calmly fended off his opponent’s initial attack flurry. The air rang with the clang of iron on iron as Varro, concentrating hard, adjusted his feet and his shield arm to face each fresh blow, effectively creating a shell around himself.
Eventually, after slashing and stabbing at Varro perhaps thirty times or more without connecting, the secutor backed off for a short rest, panting so loudly his tongue might be lolling from his mouth behind his blankfaced helmet.
The hoplomachus, meanwhile, closed in on Spartacus. It was the same as Varro’s situation, though reversed-a bigger, slower opponent against a smaller, more agile one.
Not that Spartacus was feeling particularly agile today. His limbs felt tired and strangely hollow, and his mind, normally so sharp in assessing his opponent’s intentions, seemed to be stuffed with heat and dust, dulling his thoughts.
Armed with two swords and without the protection of a shield, he had to rely on his guile and experience. He lowered himself into a crouching stance to make himself less of a target as the hoplomachus approached, spear raised above his head in readiness to strike.
Suddenly he did strike, his arm jabbing down. Spartacus heard the crowd gasp as he flung himself to one side, the point of the spear whistling past his left ear. Spartacus rolled in the sand-a move he had practiced many times before-and sprang back to his feet. Usually he would perform the maneuver with no ill-effects, but today his heart pounded with the effort of it and his head swam for a moment, black and red shapes jittering in his vision.
He blinked and re-focused. The hoplomachus was turning slowly, coming for him again. Before he had time to raise his spear, Spartacus leaped forward, ducking under his defenses and slashing at him with the sword in his right hand. The hoplomachus lowered his shield, but Spartacus’s sword sneaked underneath it, slicing through the greave protecting the bulky gladiator’s left leg and drawing first blood. It was nothing
but a minor injury, but the crowd whooped in delight. Spartacus backed up, wiping sweat from his face with his forearm, breathing hard to regain and conserve his energy.
Unable to restrain himself, Batiatus jumped to his feet and instinctively punched the air.
“Yes!” he cried, before realizing that Crassus was regarding him with disdainful amusement.
“You appear desperate, as hungry dog leaping upon scraps,” the Roman muttered.
Batiatus lowered his fist and tried to remain aloof.
“I merely rejoice at grace of a true champion. His first blow one of beauty, to be followed by many of like appearance.”
“We shall see,” Crassus replied with a thin smile.
The bout became a cat and mouse contest, Hieronymus’s men launching wave upon wave of attack, and Spartacus and Varro having to use all their skill and experience to fend them off. There would be flurries of action, followed by increasingly longer periods where both pairs of gladiators would circle one another warily, weapons poised, looking for a vital opening.
After a while the crowd inevitably began to get restless, but Spartacus didn’t care. He was not here to please them-he had never been interested in pleasing them. He was concerned only with keeping himself and Varro alive.
And Doctore’s tactics were working. Slowly but surely Hieronymus’ s men were tiring, taking longer and longer after each attack to recoup their strength. The secutor was panting like a frustrated dog, his body streaming with sweat, and the hoplomachus was noticeably slower than he had been at the start of the contest, and starting to leave gaps in his defenses.
True, Spartacus and Varro were tired too, but only fractionally more than they had been when they had first walked out onto the sand. For them, it was simply a case of keeping their concentration and standing their ground, wearing down their opponents, and looking to capitalize on any mistakes …