The Exiled

by David Barbaree

  Olympias must be the girl Marcus was talking about before.

  ‘And what of the gladiators?’ Virgilius asks. ‘Are any with you?’

  ‘Three for certain,’ Minnow says. ‘We’ve been with Sulpicius for years, and we’ve had enough of his cruelty. But one,’ he looks at Marcus, ‘Olympias’s brother – he was badly injured in the games. So he won’t be much help. The rest . . . I’m not sure. If this were any other day, I’d wager they’d fight to save their master’s life. But today . . .’ He looks in the direction of Vesuvius. ‘We are a superstitious lot,’ he says, ‘Gladiators, I mean. The gods hold our fate in their hands. They decide whether we live or die in each fight. So, all this . . .’ He pauses again, trying to describe the unravelling of the world. ‘They’re scared. They might jump at the chance to run.’

  ‘What’s Sulpicius’s plan?’ Virgilius asks. ‘Is he expecting us?’

  ‘He’s had us ready for a fight ever since the Parthians came,’ Minnow says. ‘He knew you were watching his house – your men made it obvious. Red capes don’t blend into a forest very well. We also saw most of your men pack up and leave a few hours ago, but Sulpicius won’t relax until the Parthians are away.’

  ‘Is that the plan?’ Virgilius asks. ‘For the Parthians to run?’

  Minnow nods. ‘They’ve got a boat in Puteoli ready to take them from Italy.’

  ‘Is the Aryan boy inside,’ I ask. ‘Sinnaces?’

  I picture Sinnaces escaping on a boat, staring at the Italian shore as it recedes into the distance.

  ‘You mean a Parthian?’ Minnow asks. ‘I don’t know his name, but there’s a Parthian boy. Eighteen or so? He’s not faring well. He paces nervously, day and night.’

  I can feel every man’s eyes on me. Do they see my shame?

  ‘The boy is mine,’ I say. ‘He will die by my hand, not a Roman’s.’

  They wait for me to say more. But what more is there to say? Honour demands I kill the boy.

  Manlius, knowing I have nothing more to say, breaks the silence. ‘How will we get in?’

  ‘Same way I got out,’ Minnow says. He kneels and draws in the dirt two large squares, connected by a smaller rectangle. ‘There’s an old pipe, tall enough for a man to stand, which connects to the baths. It will bring us into this part of Sulpicius’s villa.’ He points at one of the squares. Then he points at the second large square. ‘This is the Lanista. Other than a few gladiators patrolling the villa, most of the gladiators will be here.’

  ‘Can we keep the gladiators locked inside the Lanista?’ Virgilius asks.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Minnow says. ‘The gate is open. And the moment Sulpicius or the Parthians see us, they will sound the alarm and all the gladiators will come running.’

  ‘What do we do then?’ Virgilius asks. ‘We can’t fight that many men at once.’

  ‘I can handle them,’ Marcus says.

  A few eyebrows are raised.

  ‘You?’ Manlius asks. ‘You are going to handle thirty gladiators on your own?’

  Marcus looks up at the setting sun. ‘Yes, but after dark. And I’ll need a chicken and a translator.’

  ‘A what?’ I ask, with obvious annoyance. I had been coming around on Marcus. But I can’t stomach arrogance. Particularly in battle. In my experience, it is what gets you killed.

  The boy ignores me. ‘Theseus,’ he asks, ‘how’s your Etruscan?’

  ‘Shit,’ Theseus says.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Marcus says, then turns to Minnow. ‘Can you get me into the Lanista, without the Parthians sounding the alarm?’

  Minnow nods.

  ‘Are we really going to put our lives into the hands of this boy?’ I ask.

  Prefect Virgilius looks at Marcus. ‘What do you plan to do?’

  ‘I’m going to tell them to leave,’ Marcus says. He begins to admire my cloak, even though it is twice his size. ‘Can I borrow this?’

  Marcus’s brief explanation is enough to convince Virgilius – maybe not that his plan will work but to let him try. I argue against it, but only up to a point. This is my one chance to get Sinnaces and clear my name. The odds are long – whether we use Marcus’s plan or any other.

  We follow Minnow through a ditch, water up to our knees. We move slowly, crouched as low as we are able, until we reach the pipe. It’s tall enough for a boy to stand in, but I have to duck like a giant entering a peasant’s hut. But it serves its purpose. After a hundred paces or so, we climb into Sulpicius’s baths. Two people are waiting for us. A gladiator with his arm in a sling and a girl with stunning blue eyes.

  When the girl sees Marcus she runs to him and they embrace.

  Olympias, I suppose.

  The gladiator with his arm in a sling watches us empty out of the sewer and says, ‘This is it?’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Minnow says, nodding at Marcus. ‘We have a plan.’

  Marcus slides his finger along the rim of the sewer and uses the sludge he scavenged to paint a design on his face, lines under his eyes, along his nose, and two strikes across his chin.

  ‘What sort of plan?’ the injured gladiator asks.

  *

  Minnow takes us to the training ground, a rectangle of sand, surrounded by a two-storey colonnade.

  The sky is grey and growing darker.

  Marcus begins to carve a large square into the dirt, the size of three ox carts, side-by-side.

  A bell rings. Our presence has been detected.

  Gladiators stream into the training ground and along the balcony. They look exhausted and fragile and ready to kill to save their own skin.

  There are dozens of them, surrounding us on all sides. They whack their steel swords against wooden shields; they are growling and whistling and chanting. All of it is meant to intimidate us.

  It works.

  We are all trained warriors but we have fought enough wars to know it is usually a numbers game. They have the numbers, we don’t.

  Did we make a mistake thinking this boy could somehow overcome these odds? There is something special about this boy, though. I saw it when we hunted together, what feels like an eternity ago; I saw it when we diced; I heard it in Sinnaces’s voice when he talked about Marcus the Spaniard; and I see it now. He is smart, focused, determined, and slightly mad – all of which we’ll need if we are going to walk out of here alive.

  The girl, Olympias, pushes her way toward us. She’s fetched the two chickens Marcus asked for. She’s carrying them by the feet, their wings flapping.

  The gladiators are reluctant to attack. I’m not sure why. There is something strange about Marcus – his incongruous pacing, his chanting in a foreign tongue; the markings on his face; my oversized cloak. I can understand their reluctance. He looks like a demented priest or a sorcerer.

  Marcus mutters something in a foreign tongue and Theseus yells at Minnow, ‘Tell them you have brought a priest of Vulcan.’

  Minnow yells this and the gladiators’ uproar – their growling and the clang of steel against wood – lessens.

  There is a commotion on the balcony above. Sulpicius and the Roman soldiers – the three traitors – are at the railing. The Parthian brothers, Farhod and Farhad, and Sinnaces are there as well. Sinnaces is nervously biting his lip, though I’m not sure he sees me yet.

  ‘What are you waiting for!’ Sulpicius cries. ‘Kill them!’

  Marcus resumes his chanting, louder this time. Theseus translates. ‘This is a priest of Vulcan. He is here to tell you how to survive the wrath of his patron god.’

  The gladiators don’t move.

  Then there is an explosion in the distance, like the one we heard before, and the ground shakes violently.

  When it’s over the gladiators are silent.

  Marcus takes one of the chickens from Olympias. He kneels and cuts it with his dagger. Blood pours onto the sand. He continues his strange chant.

  Sulpicius yells, ‘Kill them, kill them all.’ But his gladiators are mesmerized.r />
  Marcus inspects the chicken’s small, bloody liver, pinched between his thumb and index finger.

  He chants and Theseus translates. ‘The god of fire is angry . . . ’

  Marcus points at Sulpicius.

  ‘. . . at your master.’

  Marcus sacrifices the second chicken.

  ‘Soon,’ Theseus says, translating Marcus’s chanting, ‘Sulpicius and all he holds dear will burn. If you wish to be spared, you only have one hope.’

  Marcus points at the gate.

  ‘Run,’ Theseus says. ‘Run!’

  The gladiators take a moment to absorb these words.

  Sulpicius screams at his doctore to whip his gladiators out of their stupor. The doctore unfurls his whip, but Minnow grabs the doctore by the wrist and shakes his head.

  The gladiators are exhausted, superstitious, terrified of whatever is happening near Vesuvius, and wanting nothing more than to run. But years of servitude make abandoning their master nearly impossible. A stalemate is reached. One that feels impossible to break.

  But this day is not short of phenomenon.

  Ash begins to fall around us, like snow, warm and smelling of fire.

  The gladiators look horrified. We all are.

  Marcus chants.

  ‘Run,’ Theseus says, ‘or burn.’

  One gladiator pushes his way through the crowd toward the gate. The herd follows. Soon they become a mob, shoving each other, barrelling their way to the gate.

  Sulpicius is screaming at his men to stop, threatening their lives if they abandon him.

  ‘Jupiter’s fucking arse,’ Virgilius says. ‘It worked.’

  The gladiators are streaming out one end of the training ground, running for their lives. A gate opens at the other end and Sulpicius, the turncoat Roman soldiers and my fellow countrymen enter the training ground.

  Two battle lines are drawn. We are still outnumbered, but not like before. Now it is a fair fight.

  Across from me are the two brothers, Farhad and Farbod, daggers in hand.

  They charge, running as fast as they can.

  I have time for one arrow. For one man to die. I notch an arrow in the string of my bow, draw it back, and aim it at the brother on the left.

  I open my hand and the arrow is gone.

  It hits the mark; the force is so strong it sends the brother backwards before he drops to the ground.

  The second brother slows to watch his brother die.

  Will this give me time to draw another arrow?

  I reach for my quiver . . .

  The brother is again running toward me.

  I pull out an arrow . . .

  And Farhad’s dagger pierces my chest, near my shoulder. My left hand instinctively drops the bow and reaches up to stop the blade from going any deeper.

  Farhad’s force carries us backward, and we slam into the sand. He is on top of me, his hands on his dagger. He twists the blade and I scream in agony.

  I’ve dropped the arrow, but see it lying beside me.

  Farhad pulls his dagger out of my chest and I scream, a rush of blood fills the void left by the blade.

  Farhad raises the blade to finish me.

  I grab the arrow, along the shaft, near the tip, and swing it toward his neck. It pierces the flesh below his ear. His eyes go wide with surprise.

  He drops his dagger.

  Blood drips from his mouth.

  I push the arrow deeper and his hands fall to his side; his eyes go dark and lifeless.

  I push the corpse off me.

  The battle continues throughout the training ground. Virgilius and his Praetorians are squared off against the turncoat Romans. Manlius and Theseus are surrounded by Parthian soldiers. I retrieve my bow and notch an arrow. I fell one, two, then three Parthians, quickly. Expertly. As I did when I was a young man.

  Manlius kills a turncoat Roman soldier, then goes down onto one knee to catch his breath. He smiles at me from across the training ground.

  Marcus is guiding the girl Olympias and her brother away from the fighting. He is getting them away, to safety.

  On the other side of the training ground, peering around the gate, is Sinnaces. He is too scared to fight.

  He sees me. We lock eyes.

  He runs.

  I sprint toward the villa. Inside the hallways are empty save for a few slaves. They scream when they see me running toward them and fall to the ground. I reach the atrium and glimpse the black of Sinnaces’s cloak disappear around a corner.

  I follow him down a set of stairs, and I see him across a hallway closing a caged door behind him.

  ‘Stop,’ I yell.

  He looks up as he is fumbling with the lock.

  I draw an arrow from my quiver, raise my bow, aim and shoot. The arrow flies between the iron bars and pierces his shoulder. He falls back, crying in agony. Surprisingly, he has enough fortitude to quickly stand and go for the lock. He knows locking that door is the only way to save his life.

  The lock clicks.

  ‘You betrayed me,’ I say. ‘And the memory of your father.’

  ‘You are the turncoat,’ he says. ‘It was you who betrayed your country.’

  I hear the lock click. I draw another arrow and let it fly. I’d been aiming for a spot between two iron bars, at the boy’s chest, but I miss the mark by an inch, and it ricochets off of an iron bar and narrowly misses Sinnaces.

  He smiles and runs for his life.

  *

  Back in the training ground, the battle is over. Of the three Praetorians we brought, two are dead. Another is injured but handling it like a man. Theseus is wiping his blade clean. He looks like he’s been to the market, or on a hike, rather than a battle for his life. Manlius is cut and bruised, but alive. He still does not have his strength back so the fight tonight has exhausted him. He smiles when he sees me.

  Virgilius is kneeling beside a soldier – one of the Roman turncoats. The soldier has a large red nose, the type a man gets from too much drink. He is badly injured: there is a gash across his belly, wide and bloody. He’s on his back, panting and spitting blood.

  ‘What was your plan?’ Virgilius asks.

  The man spits in Virgilius’s direction.

  The Prefect sticks his hand into the injured soldier’s belly.

  The traitor cries out.

  ‘Make this easier on yourself,’ Virgilius says. ‘Tell us where your friends who escaped planned to go.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Be sensible, soldier,’ Virgilius says, ‘this could be your chance.’

  ‘My chance?’

  ‘To make amends for being a traitor.’

  The soldier laughs. Blood drips from the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You are the traitor. You support a pretender to the throne. I serve the last of the Trojans. The legitimate emperor.’

  Virgilius rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me.’

  The soldier is fervent; his voice rises. ‘I serve Nero Claudius Caesar, emperor of Rome.’

  Virgilius sticks his hand back into the man’s guts and the soldier hollers in pain. Virgilius removes his hand and we listen to the soldier’s pathetic panting.

  And then he is gone.

  ‘Fuck,’ Virgilius says. He looks up. ‘Are any more of them alive?’

  Manlius shakes his head. ‘They are all dead or they ran.’

  ‘And what of Sulpicius?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Virgilius says again.

  We hear a noise and turn to see Marcus walking back into the training ground. He has Sulpicius with him. The senator’s face is cut and his arms are tied behind his back. The girl, Olympias, and the injured gladiator are with them.

  The boy never ceases to surprise.

  ‘I thought you ran?’ I say to Marcus.

  ‘I took Olympias into the house to keep her safe. We were in Sulpicius’s office when he came running in. He opened his safe and was filling a bag with gold.’ Marcus kicks the back
of Sulpicius’s legs and the senator falls to his knees. ‘The greedy bastard could have gotten away but wanted his money.’

  Theseus walks up to Marcus and inspects the cuts on his face. ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘No, his doctore was with him,’ Marcus says. He’s exhausted but smiling. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

  Domitilla

  26 August

  Three miles north of Stabiae

  There is a town in the hills above Stabiae. When the people who live there saw us approaching – exhausted and filthy refugees – they brought us water and bread. We spent the night camped by a fire, listening to the stories of a local woman, who claims to have lived long enough to see Hannibal marching through these hills on elephants. We are happy for the distraction.

  The cloud from Vesuvius is gone the next morning. The air is less smoky, less grey. And the tremors have stopped.

  For now.

  We decide to go back the way we came. The terrain between here and Baiae is treacherous and it would take us days to walk what we could traverse by boat in a matter of hours. We retrace the route we walked in darkness. By the light of the day, the forest is ominous. There is a thick coat of grey ash over everything, and there are no animals. No birds chirping above us. No deer disappearing into the brush.

  But the sun – the glorious, warm, beautiful sun – is in the sky once again. It seems proof the world did not end.

  We reach the shore and find the sea is calm. There are pumice stones floating in the water, but they are not nearly the large islands of stone that they formed the night before.

  Pliny’s secretary finds the spot where he left his master. The body is buried under several feet of ash. He kneels, paying his respects.

  Captain Verecundus’s ship is gone. He and his crew have already sailed away, or their ship dislodged from the beach during the tremors and the gods alone know where they are.

  Spartacus sees me staring off at the bay, looking for the ship that brought me here. ‘Augusta,’ he says, ‘not to worry. Two of our three ships are ready to leave immediately. We can take you home.’

  ‘And the third ship?’

  ‘Beyond repair. Another victim to leave on the beach.’

  Before departing, we go to the water to rinse the ash from our hair and skin, wading in up to our shoulders. The sea is warm and a cloudy grey, polluted with Vesuvius’s waste. The sensation of water on my skin is welcome; it’s a relief to scrub away the ash and grime that caked my skin for days.