Laughing Wolf

by Nicholas Maes

  “Although we can still change our minds,” he suggested, “we can march to the north, dissolve our army and allow every man to make his way home.”

  “If we disband,” Magonus answered, “the Romans will find new people to enslave.”

  “This is a war to the death,” Gannicus agreed. “Either we die or the Romans do.”

  “In that case, we’ll fight,” Spartacus said with a shrug. “I just hope the gods are well-disposed to us this day.”

  He motioned to a contingent of boys who were dressed all in white. Because the slaves had no cavalry, these boys had been directed to precede the army and fire on any horsemen that approached. Having organized the troops, he motioned Felix over.

  “Climb this hill and observe the battle from its crest,” he advised. “Wait until the sun is halfway to the horizon, then proceed due east as fast as you can. After you’ve covered five miles, turn north and continue to Panarium. Avoid travelling on the diagonal as it will be thick with Romans. And take this.”

  He handed him his toga, which had been laundered and repaired. Its folds were damp but would dry out in the sun.

  “If you meet any Romans, they’ll assume you’re one of them.”

  “You have our thanks,” Felix croaked, his voice heavy with emotion.

  Spartacus nodded. He was about to move away when, just as suddenly, he pulled Felix to him.

  “Remember me,” he whispered, practically crushing his ribs. “I will survive somehow if you keep me in your memory.”

  “I’ll remember you,” he gasped. “I give you my word.

  Your presence will be with me till my dying breath.”

  “Then farewell, Felix. May the gods smile brightly on your task, and may you only know the glow of freedom all your days.”

  Without another word, he turned away. As he stepped toward his beloved Thrax, a young boy handed him a metal helmet, a bowl-like contrivance with a blood-red crest. Fitting this on, he led his horse forward.

  His troops were muttering and looked downcast. Now that they were on the verge of battle, they were skittish and uncertain of themselves. One thickset man blocked Spartacus’s path and confronted him, his arms akimbo.

  “The rumour is you’d rather run than fight,” he cried, in a tone loud enough for dozens to hear. “Is that why your horse is trailing behind you? So that you can flee if the Romans defeat us?”

  Spartacus paused and considered the man. A thousand pairs of eyes were witnessing this scene and he could smell the numbing fear taking root in his troops: clearly a gesture of some kind was necessary. He sighed and drew his sword, causing his challenger to retreat a step. Instead of attacking the man, he turned and kissed his horse. As Thrax nuzzled him back, he drove his sword into his breast, killing him instantly as the bronze met his heart.

  “I am now without a mount,” he cried, as Thrax shuddered involuntarily and fell to the soil. “I hope you will accept this as a pledge I won’t desert you.”

  Felix and Carolyn jumped in shock, horrified by the sight of blood and the beast’s last spasms. The troops were startled but murmured with approval, while the thickset man fell to his knees and begged the general’s pardon for having doubted his courage. Squeezing the man in reassurance, Spartacus raised him to his feet and climbed a nearby boulder.

  “I have often heard it said,” he declared, in a voice that travelled the length of his army, “that the Romans have been graced with wisdom, hence their mastery of the world’s populations. And yet for a people so wise, they must be fools, because this day they fight a battle that they are fated to lose. Yes, my dearest friends, these legions that thirst to tear our hearts from us cannot possibly achieve victory this day. Consider their purpose: they wish to steal our liberty and make us slaves again. It seems a simple task, yet is as hopeless as returning spilled wine to its bottle. If today we rout our foe from these meadows, even they will admit that they have failed in their quest and we are not dumb beasts to be deprived of our freedom. And if fortune proves fickle and their swords should prevail, not only will death release us from their shackles, but they shall know by our willingness to die in battle that we value freedom above life itself. Both in victory and defeat they shall find themselves worsted.

  “My friends and fellow freedmen, our time beneath the sun is short. From cradle to grave, we seek our purpose. What is man? What reason do our struggles serve? The tears we have shed, the toils we have shared, what monument do they raise, what gods do they ennoble? I don’t know. I cannot say. There is one sole truth I grasp, and one alone: I have your trust, I have my freedom, and I will fight for both until the sword is pried from my hand. War awaits us. Let us march. Death is not unwelcome if I die by your side.”

  The effects of his words were marvellous to behold. From downcast and stooped, the troops were standing straight and cheering themselves hoarse. Without further ado, Spartacus hastened to their front and led them forward at a rapid trot. Felix and Carolyn climbed the adjoining hill and found a perch on its crest where they could watch the proceedings — not that Felix had any doubts how this struggle would end.

  “This is crazy,” Carolyn said. “They can’t find a better way to settle their disputes?”

  “They will not be slaves.”

  “I’m talking about the Romans.”

  “They have problems of their own.”

  “It’s so brutal, all of this. Are you going to watch? I don’t want to witness the death of these people, never mind which side they fight on.”

  “It would be … dishonourable not to,” Felix said, although the idea of watching Spartacus fall pained him deeply. “My father always said that history is an act of friendship. I never understood what he meant … until now.”

  They fell silent. By now the slaves were well into the meadow and were formed into their three divisions, each marching alongside the other and with a twenty-metre gap between each group. Each was further divided in three: the front line’s purpose was to absorb the foe’s onrush; the second was expected to go on the attack; while the third, consisting of the truly hardened troops, was to hold the soldiers in tight formation. These were tactics that mirrored the Romans’ own.

  The Romans. As soon as scouts had seen the slaves advancing, there’d been a blast of trumpets and the troops had left off work on their camps, grabbed their weapons, and arranged a battle line. Their discipline was breathtaking: three minutes after they had spied the slaves, they were charging forward in an orderly fashion: six rectangles, each with six thousand souls, were converging on the slaves from different angles.

  “I see Spartacus,” Carolyn said, using her retinal enhancements. “And Crassus is urging the Romans on.”

  “He can’t believe his luck,” Felix groaned. “He didn’t think Spartacus would meet him in battle.”

  The Roman cavalry charged ahead of the legions, and were met by a wave of archers and slingers. A number of knights were knocked from their horses, or were forced to retreat when struck by a hail of arrows, but others reached the archers and inflicted havoc: points of white lay still on the landscape, like boundary stones marking the start of Death’s dark realm.

  A hundred metres yawned between the armies, then eighty, fifty, twenty, ten. Like hives of rabid bees converging, the masses finally clashed with a din so loud that the crash of bronze on bronze was like a world-shaking thunderclap. Although the forces were too far off for him to spy in any detail, Felix could tell their roiling, boiling masses were wreaking terrible violence and shedding blood by the buckets. The sun was reflecting off a million points of metal and the cries of men fighting and killing and dying rolled into a wall of sound that seemed solid enough to bruise an onlooker’s skin.

  Several times each line threatened to buckle, only to regroup and redouble its fervour. As Crassus sent two legions to charge the slaves obliquely, three flaming arrows ignited the heavens and, from their positions in the surrounding hills, Spartacus’s reserves poured in from the sides, like the jaws of a wo
lf snapping closed on its prey. Viewed from afar, this mass of half-crazed humans was like a monster drawing its first breaths of air, its infant lungs heaving backwards and forwards.

  “The sun is halfway to the horizon,” Carolyn cried. “We should think of leaving.”

  “Let’s wait a few minutes. Where’s Spartacus?”

  She squinted and saw him ranging in the front lines. Wherever his men were weakening, he urged them to hold fast, even as he lashed out fiercely at the Romans. He was tireless and pushing as hard as he could.

  “Magonus has been wounded,” she reported. “There’s a spear in his shoulder. Wait, he’s lifted a Roman and is swinging him in circles. He’s knocked five soldiers down … he’s plucked the spear out and … three more Romans have been battered. His men are taking courage … oh, he’s been hit in the throat … he’s on his knees … the Romans are swarming him … his men are resisting, no, they’re moving back.”

  Felix closed his eyes. He was sweating profusely, yet trembling with cold. Although he’d known from the start the slaves would lose, it was nightmarish to see them fall in battle, just as it was horrible to watch so many Romans die. If they knew that, down the road, every human on the planet would be threatened with extinction, would they shelve their differences and stand together?

  Carolyn was nudging him. He opened his eyes.

  “Spartacus is charging Crassus!” she cried. “He’s gathered some men and is rushing the general! I can see his crest bobbing up and down. He’s thirty yards from Crassus and is cutting through the troops.”

  “I can’t see.” Felix was squinting until his eyeballs hurt. “It’s all one quaking, bloody mass.”

  “He’s rushing forward … he’s twenty yards and getting closer. Crassus sees him … his troops are fighting back … he’s smashing them … wait, he’s hit … no, he’s charging still … he’s ten yards off. The Romans are massing … his men are dropping off like flies … he’s lost his helmet and …”

  “That’s enough,” Felix said, jumping to his feet. “It’s time to leave.” That said, he bounded down the hill and starting running east.

  He knew what was happening. Ten yards off from Crassus, Spartacus was face-to-face with hordes of Romans, without a single friend to back him. Two centurions were hounding him like wild dogs. Killing one, he was struck by the other, just below the ribs. As he stabbed out, he kept calling to his men, but they were too far off to rally. Crassus was yelling, “Kill him! Kill him!” A hundred blades were lunging at Spartacus, striking his legs and arms and chest. The light was fading. His lungs were tasting his last breath of air, and his heart was pumping faintly, faintly … it had stopped. And now the Romans were trampling him like a doormat as they muscled forward to liquidate their adversaries.

  The world was filled with death, Felix was thinking. Spartacus was gone, his men were being slaughtered, and, two millennia later, the plague would ravage everyone. He thought about his father, lying on the lawn. His mother had died on Ganymede’s cold surface for want of food and oxygen. General Manes was gone, the professor was gone, the doctor, too, and everyone on earth….

  “Felix! Wait! Don’t race ahead!”

  He couldn’t help himself. He was running like a panicked deer. The world was closing in on him, war was closing in on him, time and fate and death were closing on him, and, if he dared stand still for even a second, they would wrestle him down and grind him to powder.

  He ran and ran and ran. He threaded through some hills and, when these ended, he dodged a tract of woodlands for the space of two miles. A stream blocked his way — a branch of the Silarus — but he splashed across its waters and charged through mud, scrub, sand, and sharp stones.

  “Turn left,” Carolyn panted, as they reached the boundaries of a modest town. “Panarium is north.”

  Veering north, with the sun sinking in the west, he ran full tilt, his chest on fire. On and on he stumbled, passing houses, barns, and rustic shrines. Some farmers were carrying a bundle in a winding sheet, their heads bent earthwards in a show of grief. A funeral. Yet more death. It was squeezing out his oxygen, but he couldn’t stop running, not to drink, not to rest, not to pay his respects.

  “Felix! The sun’s setting. It’s getting hard to see.”

  He entered a field with grazing cows. The animals scattered before his advance, their lowing either protests or advice to take it easy. But they didn’t know, they couldn’t guess, that death was in pursuit of them, too, otherwise they wouldn’t chew grass at their leisure. He jumped an ancient boundary wall and charged across a field of grain, certain that death was hiding in among these stalks. He crossed a second stream and barrelled through an orchard, his feet hammering the senseless earth, his eyes trained squarely on the far horizon, to a point in space that he could never reach, not before death had claimed him for its own.

  Then Carolyn tackled him. The sun was gone, the moon hadn’t risen, and he would break a bone if he continued. They fell to the earth and a bed of green received them. He struggled to stand, but she pinned him to the soil, both of them panting and soaked with sweat. For minutes they lay there, her hands refusing to let go, yet conveying, for all their roughness, a tenderness her ERR would normally suppress.

  And then they slept, their arms wrapped tightly round each other.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sun was rising and had a blood-red tinge. Felix stirred beneath its rays and discovered that Carolyn was curled against him. He was faintly embarrassed but grateful for her warmth: the earth was freezing and the morning dew had soaked his toga. At the same time he appreciated the … closeness of her presence.

  He glanced around him. Where …? They were lying in some farmer’s field. Unlike the neighbouring plots, it contained no grain or vegetables, but was filled instead with a simple flower.…

  His heart practically stopped. Squirming free of Carolyn, he picked a flower and studied it closely. Yes, no doubt about it, the petals resembled a smiling wolf in profile. He gave a resounding, heartfelt whoop.

  “Carolyn! Wake up!” he cried. “We’ve finally made it!”

  “What is it?” she groaned. “And don’t start running again.…”

  “We’re in Balbus’s field! We’ve found the lupus ridens!”

  Carolyn climbed to her feet and surveyed the terrain. Spying the flowers’ telltale pattern, she managed something close to a smile. Not satisfied with this show of emotion, Felix grabbed her by the waist and danced with her, spinning her in circles as a million “laughing wolves” looked on.

  “What now?” she panted, coming to a stop.

  “We’ll find a temple,” he gasped. “In Pompeii, no, in Paestum. It’s fifteen miles away and probably our best bet.”

  “Fifteen miles? We can get there by this afternoon. I just wish we had some food on hand, because the last time we ate was yesterday morning.”

  “I’m starving too. In fact …”

  He raised a flower and bits its petals off. As Carolyn watched him in disgust, he chewed energetically and swallowed the mass down.

  “Come on,” he urged her, reaching for a second one. “We know it isn’t poison. Besides, if we’re infected with the plague, we should eat these flowers to stop the symptoms from erupting.”

  With a disgruntled look, she bit into a flower. While its petals had a faint sweet taste, the stalk was tough and difficult to swallow. Still, their hunger was so pressing that they ate until they had sated themselves. Gathering multiple samples of the plant, they wrapped them into the folds of their clothing and secured the bulges with double knots. This task done, they quit the field.

  Their legs were stiff from the previous day, and, because it was cold and their clothes were damp, the first few miles were difficult. Gradually their muscles slackened and the sun warmed them up. The sky was a hospitable blue and the landscape was attractive. Most important, they were close to completing their mission.

  “Maybe this world isn’t so bad,” Carolyn spoke.

>   “Oh?”

  “I’m not backtracking now. I still think these ancients are hopelessly backward, and their superstitious practices are ridiculous. But I’ll admit there is something admirable about them. And, I suppose, I envy them their freedom.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I mean their freedom to express their emotion. I live in a box with this ERR. I know it keeps me and others from exploding, but I wouldn’t mind experiencing true emotion for once.…”

  She broke off as a woman came running toward them, cradling a newborn. She looked distraught and on the brink of collapse. Spying the pair, she came to a halt, not knowing whether to turn about or to flee straight past them.

  “It’s okay,” Felix called. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The woman didn’t move, as if hoping they would take her for a corpse or statue. Her baby bawled a little, but it was weak with hunger and its wails were thin.

  “We were with Spartacus,” he declared. “I promise you, you’re safe.”

  The woman studied him. She was twenty years old but had the carriage of a crone, as if her youthfulness had buckled beneath her tribulations. Her hair was matted, her skin was filthy, her clothes were rags, and her sandals were ruined.

  “They’ve lost,” she cried. “For all their strength, they’ve been cut to pieces.”

  “I know. I’m very sorry.”

  “The Via Appia is lined with the survivors. The Romans have crucified six thousand men and have left them to die a slow, painful death.…”