“Don’t talk that talk to me, white man,” Sparticus growled truculently.
Preacher ignored him. “I mean it. You can get out of here, too.”
Sparticus would have none of it. He came at Preacher with a huge cudgel, a single, long spike protruding through the side of the thick tip. It swished through the air as Preacher jumped backward. Muscles rippled under the oiled black skin as Sparticus planted another big foot on the sand and advanced again.
Preacher whipped the air with his flail. The spiked ball smashed into the boss of the shield on Sparticus’ left arm. It made a resounding, thunder-clap sound. Instead of retreating, Sparticus stepped in. The men found themselves chest to chest. The muscles in Preacher’s left arm and shoulder strained to hold the powerful arm that supported the cudgel.
To the onlookers they appeared to be dancing as they shuffled their feet to find better purchase. Some began to clap rhythmically. Cries of “Fight! Fight!” rang in the tiers. Preacher spoke quiet reason to Sparticus.
“Even though slavery is the law of the land, it don’t amount to a hill of bison dung out here. If you join us in winnin’ free, an’ takin’ them helpless missionaries with us, I’ll personally guarantee that you can make a new life for yourself in the High Lonesome, an’ live a free man.”
Sparticus curled his lips in a sneer and snarled his reply while he cuffed Preacher with a backhand blow with the cudgel. “What do I want that for? I’m due to earn the rudis soon. That’ll make me a wealthy man, an’ free. Why should I risk all of that for a passel of white folk who prob’ly owned slaves before they got captured?”
Preacher gave it another try. “They’re Bible-thumpers. Mission folk. Their kind don’t hold slaves.”
“Knowed me a preacher-man down South. He owned hisself three house slaves. I’ll be a big man around here after I kill you an’ retire.”
Unable to obtain dominance above, Preacher used an old Indian trick. He shifted his weight to one leg, shot the other forward and hooked his heel behind the ankle of Sparticus.
With a swift yank forward, he toppled the big black gladiator off his feet. At the last second, Preacher rolled away as Sparticus crashed to the ground. Impact forced grunted words from Sparticus’ mouth.
“You’re good, I give you that. Who are you, anyhow, Arturus?”
Preacher decided to gamble it all. He turned his flinty gaze straight into the eyes of his opponent. “They call me Preacher.”
An expression of respect, flavored with awe, filled the gladiator’s face. “Fore Jesus, I didn’t know.”
They had come to their knees now. The force of their impact with hard-packed sand had knocked the flail from Preacher’s hand. He saw the trident only a scant foot from his grasp. Sparticus hefted the club and licked his lips.
“I’ll be the richest man around if I finish you,” Sparticus declared.
“If. I’d think on that were I you.”
Sparticus found that to somehow be funny. He threw back his head to laugh, and Preacher quickly unfurled his net and flung it over the kneeling man. Sparticus flung it off like a mere cobweb. Though not before Preacher could snatch up his trident. Opposite him, Sparticus bounded to the soles of his high-laced sandals. Preacher seemed to react slowly, gathering his net.
With the quickness that made him famous, Sparticus charged. The cudgel led the way. Preacher deflected it with the shaft of his trident and prodded at the chest of his opponent. Sparticus laughed mirthlessly and came on. Forced to give ground, Preacher brought his heel down on the haft of a dropped weapon. Instantly, he stumbled and tottered off to one side.
Sparticus seized the moment. “You gon’ die, Preacherman.”
Preacher recovered himself as the deadly club swished past his left ear. The heft of the lethal object slammed painfully into the top of his shoulder. Already directed to its target, the trident cut a ragged gash in the lean side of Sparticus. Dizzied by repeated injury, Preacher missed an opportunity to end it.
Pain made his next cast erratic. The net slid from the oiled skin of his opponent and fluttered to the ground. Goaded by the press of time, Preacher hastily gathered it. A blur of movement told him Sparticus had anticipated the miss. The black man bore down on him and forced another retreat.
Feeling the effects of blood loss, Preacher stumbled again. Seized by a frenzy, the crowd howled and stomped their feet. Sparticus acted at once on the tiny break given him. Overconfident now, he stepped in for the kill, only to have Preacher let loose the net again, this time tightly furled. Using a technique he had learned from the instructors, he sent it out like a sinuous snake to coil around Sparticus’ ankles.
Immediately he recovered his balance. Preacher ran swiftly around the black gladiator and bound his legs together. Then, a hefty yank took Sparticus off his feet. In a staggered rush, Preacher closed with him and held the trident poised to drive two tines into the man’s thick neck. Slowly, reluctantly, he looked up at the imperial box.
Quintus Faustus had bounded to his sandals moments earlier. He jumped up and down in agitation, his face white, eyes wild, his small, red mouth twisted grotesquely. His breathing came rapidly, and he showed obvious signs of arousal. He cut his pale blue eyes to Preacher’s hot, gray orbs as he stuck out his arm.
Slowly, almost lasciviously, he turned his thumb down.
“Last chance,” Preacher told Sparticus.
With considerable regret and hesitancy, Sparticus nodded in the affirmative. Preacher relaxed the position of his weapon. Above him, the shrill voice of Faustus held an edge of hysteria.
“Kill him! Kill him!” he wailed.
Calmly, ignoring the willful child, Preacher reached down and unbound the legs of Sparticus, raised him to his feet and disarmed him. Then he turned to the box.
“He yielded,” he said simply.
Face clouded with tantrum warning flags, Faustus shoved out his lower lip in a spiteful, pink pout. “I don’t care. It’s my games, and my birthday, and I want to see men die.”
Preacher replied with calm restraint. “I will not kill a man who yields to me.”
White froth formed in the corners of Faustus’ mouth. He dropped his wand of authority into the cushion on his chair and made small fists of his slim, long-fingered hands. His sallow face flushed scarlet as he stamped one foot like a girl.
“I want him dead! Now! Now! Now!” he shrieked.
To his surprise, Preacher looked on as Marcus Quintus rose from his chair and spoke into his son’s ear. At the first words, the boy went rigid, and he shook with the intensity of his childish fury. The more Quintus spoke, the lower the shoulders of Faustus drooped. At last, his tower of rage was reduced to a pitiful bleat.
“But, Father.”
“Do it!” His father hissed loud enough to be heard by the men on the sand.
In a show of bad grace, the boy gave a reluctant nod of agreement. He picked up his wand and raised it above his head. The trumpets blared. By then it had become unnecessary. The spectators perched on the edges of their seats in silent expectation. Faustus pointed to the surviving gladiators, one by one.
“Come forward,” he intoned.
Preacher, Sparticus, Philadelphia, and Buck did as commanded. They were the only ones. Faustus shook with his barely suppressed outrage, and he stammered as he addressed the four fighting men. He again pointed at each one with the staff of office.
“Since you three are under sentence of death for attempted escape, and you, Sparticus, have made a cowardly surrender and are already a dead man in our eyes, you shall all be thrown in with the Christians and lions. Let the games proceed.”
17
Preacher faced the frightened missionaries in the large holding pen. Arms folded across his chest—a gesture of strength and determination he had picked up from the Indians, rather than one of weakness—he addressed them in a low, hard voice.
“I am only going to say this once. The only way out of here is to fight. There will be plenty of weapons about the
arena. I seen ’em puttin’ out swords and some spears. They won’t be as good a quality as what the gladiators have, but you can kill with them.”
“To kill another man is to damn your soul for eternity,” Phineas Abercrombie blustered. “Not a one of us will do that.”
Preacher cocked his head to one side and eyed Abercrombie with a cold eye. “I was thinkin’ on them mountain lions. They’re fixin’ to eat you before you have a chance to turn a sword on a man. You’d best be willin’ an’ able to stop them before you go worryin’ about facin’ a man.”
Raising a stubborn chin, Phineas answered stubbornly. “If it comes to that, we’ll be martyred with a hymn on our lips.”
“Where’s your pappy, Sonny? Best be hidin’ behind his skirts,” Preacher grunted, then turned to the others, ignoring the pompous Abercrombie. “Your best bet is to fight back to back, four of you together. Protect your wimmin an’ children inside the squares. That way no lion can come at you unexpected. When the last one is finished off, that’s when we go for the walls. Help one another up an’ over and then we make a dash for it.”
Encouraged by Preacher’s positive outlook, Sister Amelia Witherspoon came forward. “Do you think we really have a chance?”
“If you do what me an’ my friends say, you have a lot better chance than followin’ this feller here who seems hell-bent on dyin’ for no reason. Seems to me he’s a few straws shy of a haystack. For the rest of you, I reckon you know what to do when the time comes.”
“What if we do kill the lions, only to be faced by men?”
Preacher gave them a nasty smile. “Well, there ain’t many of them left. Or didn’t you watch us out there? But, by damn, if that’s the case, you kill them, too. It’s the only way.”
Tingling notes sounded the final fanfare.
* * *
Out on the sand, the missionaries stood in blinking confusion. Boos and insults greeted Preacher and his fellows. Ignoring them, the four fighting men quickly armed themselves. Catcalls and jeers rang down on the terror-stricken Gospel-shouters. Tentatively, Sister Witherspoon began a hymn.
That brought gales of raucous laughter. More mocking retorts came from the audience. One bloodthirsty spectator pointed at Amelia. “Hey, that one’s good-looking. Wonder how she’d be in . . .”
“Why aren’t they in the buff, like usual?” inquired another.
“Where’s that fat one I saw brought in?”
A smaller, low gate swung open, and one of the handlers gave a mighty shove to the back of Deacon Abercrombie. He stumbled out onto the sand, bare to the waist. His pale, bleached-looking skin and flabby condition produced a windstorm of scornful sniggers. His wife ran to him, tears bright in her eyes, face a-flame with embarrassment.
“Cover yourself with my shawl.”
Shame encrimsoned the deacon’s face. “You might not want to be kind to me, my dear. I—I betrayed you all to that monster Quintus. I only wanted freedom for you and I. I fear I may have prevented your one good chance to escape.”
She draped the shawl over his shoulders and patted him consolingly. “There is a strange man, one of the gladiators, who says we still have a way to get out of here.”
“Where is he?” Abercrombie asked eagerly.
“Over—over there.” Agatha Abercrombie pointed to Preacher.
Phineas Abercrombie scowled. “The troublemaker. I’d not put much stock in him, my dear.”
And then they let out the lions.
At once, Deacon Abercrombie began to edge toward Preacher. The spectators cheered and shouted. They rose and clapped their hands in a wavelike motion around the tiers of seats. At first, the cougars seemed as confused and blinded by light as their intended victims. They padded about without direction, sniffed the air and uttered menacing growls. Tension built while the short-sighted critters sought to locate their prey. Two met head-on and traded swats and snarls. Three of the Mobile Church in the Wildwood’s women uttered shrill screams.
One big, anvil-headed beast raised up from sniffing and turned baleful yellow eyes toward the sound. The women screamed all the more. One of the men broke and began to run to the far side of the arena from the deadly animals. At once the golden-orbed puma changed into a study in liquid motion. Flawlessly he streaked through the frightened missionaries, most of whom had remained stock still.
It rapidly closed the ground and launched itself at the back of the running Bible-thumper. Long, curved claws ripped mercilessly into tender flesh and raked along the back of the helpless man. His screams of agony set off a new explosion of yelling, stomping and applauding among the onlookers. At once, Deacon Abercrombie’s flock came to life and scrambled as one to put distance between themselves and the ravenous animals.
* * *
Preacher turned with all the fluid ease of the deadly cat and hacked through its spine, above the shoulders, with a single blow from the gladius he held. It died at the same time as the missionary it had attacked. Instantly, Preacher turned to face another of the beasts bent upon attacking him.
“Dang it,” he roared as he split open the nose of the offending puma, “do like I said!”
With Philadelphia on his right, Buck on the left, and Sparticus behind, the four fought off three more cougars. First two, then six more of the missionaries got the idea from this efficient means of downing the snarling bundles of lightning-fast fury. They quickly armed themselves and formed defensive squares. Only Deacon Abercrombie remained alone and exposed. One big cat soon discovered this. While his wife screamed with terror and the deacon made squawking noises, the cougar pounced.
“Stop! I command you in the name of the Lord,” Abercrombie found voice to thunder. Then he was shrieking out his life. The sand soon pooled with red. A woman among the missionaries screamed when a mountain lion dragged her out of one formation.
Only a short distance away, Preacher took two fast steps forward and plunged the leaf-bladed gladius to the hilt in the animal’s chest. It released the woman, shivered mightily, arched its back, and fell dead as Preacher drew out the sword. Fickle as always, the crowd went wild.
Now the spectators cheered the beleaguered missionaries. They had thought to be amused by the pitifully useless antics of the condemned wretches, only to find objects of admiration in the sudden courage displayed by desperate people. Preacher took note of it and spoke to his companions.
“Imagine that. All of a sudden they’re on our side. Reckon that’ll jerk the jaw of that bloody-minded boy-brat.”
Buck answered through a grunt of effort as he split the skull of yet another cougar. “He likes to see blood run, right enough. But I don’t think it’s that of his prize cats. That one’s sick in the head. You can tell by the look in his eyes.”
“Best save our breath for fightin’,” Preacher advised. “Let’s get these folk on the move, form up close together, in two lines. Less target for the cougars that way.”
One of the tawny creatures leaped into the air for a high attack. Preacher squatted and split open its belly with his gladius. “What good will that do?” Sparticus grumbled as he drove a pilum into the chest of a raging puma.
Preacher answered quickly. “We can move around the sand like the hands on a clock. Finish off what’s left in no time.”
At the shouted urges of the mountain men, the desperate missionaries began to form into two lines, back-to-back. Over his shoulder, Preacher called to those behind him. “Can you walk backwards an’ still fight them critters?’ When they assured him they could, he issued a loud, if imprecise, command.” Then let’s git to it.“
The crowd howled in glee as the enraged cougars died one at a time. When only a single pair remained, those on the sand could not hear a word said by anyone beside them. All around them, the last of the big cats could smell the odor of their dead companions. Fangs dripping the foam of their fury, they flung themselves at the wall of human flesh that inexorably forced them to move. A scream emboldened them as an inexperienced missionary went down,
his chest and belly clawed open. The cougar that had felled him did not get to savor its victory.
Even before the line had formed, Amelia Witherspoon had taken up a pilum and had speared one of the cats. Now she sank the javelin into the side of the blood-slobbering beast that had disemboweled Brother Frazier. The creature screamed like a woman, arched its back and lashed out uselessly with weakened paws. Amelia hung on to the shaft and felt the power of the animal vibrate through her arms. The hind feet left the ground, and she had to let go quickly to keep from being dragged down onto the dying cat.
“Good girl,” Preacher said, though no one could hear him over the roar of the mob in the stands. “I knew she had some pluck.”
An instant later, he had to defend his life against the last of the beasts. It hurtled at his part of the line with a mighty, bowel-watering roar. Preacher buried his gladius in its chest, though not before it had its forelegs wrapped around him and the claws bit agonizingly into his back. Then, half a dozen swords, javelins, and tridents sank into the golden coat to drive the last of life from the animal. Pressure eased in Preacher’s back, and he felt the gentle touch of Philadelphia as his friend pried the claws from him.
“It’s all done.”
“I doubt that, Philadelphia.”
Once assured that no more mountain lions lurked to spring upon them, the surviving force turned as one to face the blighted little boy who ran the games. Preacher saw through the haze of pain, and the sting of sweat in his eyes, that Faustus’ face had been twisted into a mask of evil. With a sudden-born smile of such sweetness as to melt the hardest heart, the boy made a signal with his imperial baton.
* * *
First came the cleaning crew. They hauled off the carcasses of the dead cougars, spread fresh sand over the pools of blood, then exited. It gave everyone time to catch their breath. It also allowed the timid among the missionaries to exercise their imaginations on what might come next. Preacher, Philadelphia, Buck, and Sparticus considered the same thing, though not colored by fear and trepidation.
Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Page 18