Spartacus (14 page)

‘You are fools,' said Varinus.

‘So the bearded slave said,' remarked Piso reminiscently. ‘He was a short-tempered man, like yourself, Varinus, and swore by a God called Iave.' He chuckled. ‘I'd no mind to risk a slit throat for the sake of the Senate or a few slaves. How fares your wife, Varinus?'

But the praetor had turned on his heel and left him. Next morning, dour and unshaken, he turned southwards again. As he marched news was brought to him by a Gaul, a slave who had deserted the insurrection, that the Thracian Gladiator, whose name was Spartacus, had detached a party from the main slave horde and was marching swiftly towards the sea in order to engage Cossinus. Hearing this news Varinus altered his line of march, left the Gaul hanging crucified on a nearby tree, and pressed westwards towards the coast.

But at midday, in a marshy plain amidst low foothills, he found a considerable body of men waiting to give him battle. For the first time in a month his face lighted up. He saw that the campaign would end here, now that the rebels had come into the open.

His cavalry, a small body of four hundred horse, the Roman commander divided and placed on either wing of his main battle. They were heavily armed and armoured and well mounted. In the centre he marshalled the Tenth Legion, with gladii, breastplates, and bearing the short pilum: these men were the stay of the Republic, short in stature, brown-skinned, disciplined as no other troops in the lands that fringed the Middle Sea. They halted motionless, in taciturn silence, in contrast to the light-armed troops from Cisalpine Gaul, who clamoured with the usual din of velites. Beside these Gallic troops Varinus placed a body of slingers on the flanks. Then he took heed of the ordering of the slave-army that opposed him.

A small man, evidently a Gaul, and mounted on a small and shaggy horse, marshalled the slaves. It was Crixus, helmeted and in Roman armour. In the centre, opposing the Tenth Legion, and grouped around the Snake standard of the slaves, he set the Gauls and Germans, the first under Oenomaus, the second under the scowling half-mutiny of Gannicus. For the German, believing that the command should have been deputed to himself by Spartacus, had marched sulkily since sunrise. His Germans also considered that their leader had been slighted and so drew away from the Gauls.

Seeing that his centre was likely to split even before it was attacked, Crixus sent a Thracian, Ialo, to watch by the German leader, and, at the first sight of treachery or cowardice, to drive a knife in his throat. Suspecting the intent of Ialo, Gannicus, albeit still sulkily, held the Teutones in check. Further, he hated the Masters more than he hated either Crixus or Spartacus, and the blood of his unquestioned bravery began to beat across his forehead.

In their ranks the marshalled slaves fidgeted, with twitching faces. For it was the first time, unshielded by ruse or hill or lake, they had faced that dread of the Middle Seas, the legionaries of the Masters. At first there was almost panic in the ranks, as those men from the vineyards and mines and warehouses gaped open-mouthed at the enemy they fronted, and remembered the sting of the lash on their backs, and the averted head of a slave in the presence of a Master. And then, in a kind of glad despair, they realized they must stand and fight, there was no escape.

With that realization there came on the slaves hate with remembrance – hate built on memories dreadful and unforgivable, memories of long treks in the slave-gangs from their native lands, memories of the naked sale, with painted feet, from the steps of windy ergastula, memories of cruelties cold-hearted and bloody, of women raped or fed to fish to amuse the Masters from their lethargy, of children sold as they came from the womb, of the breeding-kens of the north, where the slaves were mated like cattle, with the Masters standing by. And a low, fierce growl of hate rippled up from the marshalled slaves, the hiss and rattle of the Snake that faced the Wolf.

For a little, out of sling and arrow-shot, the two armies halted motionless. Then said Crixus: ‘We've come to the feast, but the meat is still uncooked.' Thereat he took a javelin in his hand, rode forward, stood high in his stirrups, and hurled the javelin whistling through the air. It buried itself in the breast of a front-rank legionary and slew him instantly. On an eminence to the rear of the Roman force, Varinus saw this play and smiled with a sour contempt. He had already gauged the quality of the slave leadership, and ordered his horse to feign a frontal attack.

Out from either flank they swept and poured across the dusty turf upon the slave front. The sods dashed high from the racing hooves, and the soldiers rode with levelled hastae, low-bent in their saddles, silent. They brushed through a curtain of arrows, scraped the Gaulish front, and fell on the men of Gannicus. With a roar the Germans leapt forward to meet them.

Crixus rode like the wind till he stood beside the standards of Gannicus. ‘Keep fast in your ranks, retiarius. It is only a ruse.'

Circling like swallows, the horsemen drew off, leaving here and there a hamstrung horse or a slain rider. But Gannicus's ranks were broken, and, looking up at the words of Crixus, the German slaves beheld an unexpected sight.

Shielded under the cavalry ruse, Varinus had set the legion in motion. Rank on rank, steadily, Samnite shields poised to guard the right breast, and elbows crooked behind pila for the thrust, they advanced at a pace that grew ever swifter. Swallows skimmed the near-by hills, there was a drowsy hum of bees in a tree, a slave coughed and coughed, with dust in his throat. The Germans gazed appalled.

In a moment the crash of the Roman attack echoed up through the valley like the noise of a comber on a shaking rock. Now the inferiority of the newly forged long swords of the slaves became plain. Hacking and hewing, the slaves fell back before the deadly inthrust of the pilum. Cleft through the breast in the moment of swing or recovery, they fell like butchered cattle. Round on the left wing of the slaves rode the Roman cavalry again, and the defeat turned to rout. Screaming, the Germans fled from the terror of the Masters' attack.

Crixus sat his horse behind his Gauls and ate pensively at a handful of plums he had stolen from an orchard.

‘Were Kleon the Greek here he would tell me that the battle is lost. But I am no General. Therefore I think it is won.'

Too late Varinus perceived the same. Like an avalanche the Gauls, wheeling at the roar of their horns, fell on the flank of the pursuing Romans, for Crixus, seeing the lie of the land, had placed them a little in advance of the Germans, though this fact was inapparent from the Roman stance. The slave horse, negligible in number, but composed of great-limbed Thracians, miners and lumbermen, met the circling Roman cavalry, and, armed with clubs, splintered the levelled hastae and smote down the riders. In a moment the fortune of the battle changed. The Germans turned and the legionaries, caught between two enemies, struggled to reform in double lines. But this, in that marshy ground encumbered with dead, they could by no means achieve.

Varinus rode from the field with a hundred horses and took the northward road. Ten stadia away he halted and at nightfall the survivors of his force began to straggle back. A legionary of no rank, a Gaul, saved almost a third of the infantry, fought a way out of the slave-press, and escaped to Varinus in the dusk.

Overbusied in looting the dead and killing the wounded, the slaves did not pursue. Further, Crixus, having obeyed his orders to hold Varinus, made no attempt to pursue him. Instead, he encamped on the battlefield, sending messengers to Kleon in the Papa camp, and to Spartacus, hurrying from the slaying of Cossinus.

Varinus and his rout laboured half the night at the erection of a trench and stockade. Hourly they expected the slaves to attack, but the night about them remained void and voiceless. Waiting, Varinus sat down to his tablets and penned to the Senate the news that the band of escaped slaves had grown to an army, strong, ferocious, and well led. He made no mention of his defeat, but only that he had drawn back and awaited reinforcements. These he urged should be sent at once.

Next morning his scouts reported that the slave army had vanished again into the Lucanian hills.

The Pits of Death

[i]

TWO men, helmetless, but with long swords girded to their shoulders, lay in a cane-brake near the camp of Varinus. All day they had lain there, and all the previous night, suffering the dews and the mists of morning with a hardy indifference, for they were slaves and Gauls. One, red-haired, large of feet and hands, had snored so stertorously in the hours of the night that his companion, wakeful, had frequently kicked him also awake. Lest the Romans hear.

This companion was a smaller man whose left cheek had been branded with a slave iron, and so twisted his face in a humourless smile. He ate olives endlessly and threw the seeds at the birds which hopped and chirped near the brake with bright, curious eyes. Already the earth was thick with stained leaves and the browns of autumn were on all the land.

Through the shielding walls of the cane-brake came the sounds of Varinus's encampment, and sight of a high stockade over-topped by the eagle signum.

Brennus yawned. ‘Gods, but I'm wearied. When next we come to a farm, I'll drink hot milk from a horn and share the bed of a woman. If there are any women left.' He yawned again. ‘I'd give my life to lie with a girl in a withy stockade and hear an aurochs low.'

His brother, grimy with leaves-stain, frowned grotesquely. ‘I'm not minded to die till I've cut more Roman throats.'

‘They should be cut in the interest of peaceable men sleeping,' said Brennus, listening with closed eyes to the mechanical shoutings of the centurions from Varinus's drill-ground. ‘Is this Master never to move after the Free Legion?'

‘He'll move when the new men come from Rome. Till then we stay here, as Crixus bade us.'

‘Gods, don't I know it? Wake me if they ever come, or if another wearied man strolls out to rest near our shelter.' He looked back at a dark, shapeless heap behind him, already smothered in drifting leaves. ‘You had all the sport last time.'

When next he awoke it was with the urgent hand of his brother upon his arm. Noon had passed. From Varinus's camp came the same ceaseless hum except that it seemed to have increased in volume.

‘The legionaries have come from Rome. The Seventeenth Legion, I think. Sh!'

Suddenly the brother slid from his crouching position and lay flat. Brennus followed his example, and then peered through the interstices of the cane-brake.

Two men, both carrying swords, but without armour or helmets, walked side by side. They were deep in converse, and Brennus, recognizing the nearer man, strained his ears. It was the commander of the Romans, Varinus.

Closer they came, then passed. Then wheeled and passed again. Brennus's hand stole to the hilt of the long sword that rested across his shoulder. At the movement his brother gripped him again.

‘O son of foolishness and a forest bitch, is this the time to play with a sword? Didn't you hear?'

‘I heard, O brother of the son of a forest bitch. Now I'd end their planning and make south to Crixus.'

‘And won't the legions remain and new leaders be found? Any fool may lead an army. Now of
these
leaders we know the plans. Of the plans of their successors you'd know nothing, being by then poison in the stomach of some Lucanian wolf.'

Brennus growled, but withdrew his hand from his sword. They watched the slow stride of Varinus and his companion back to camp. Then Brennus glanced at his brother.

The latter nodded and rose cautiously to his feet. He spoke one word.

‘South.'

Brothers, and rivals since infancy in the games of childhood and barbaric youth, they made south, each at his uttermost speed, running shoulder to shoulder, in the huntsman's long lope. Finding that their new swords encumbered them, they threw them away, retaining only their knives. Hours passed, but they did not ease their pace, encouraging each other with taunts and jests. With the fall of darkness they were many miles south of Varinus's encampment, and came to a deserted village in the hills.

There they found a stray goat, milked it, drank its milk, slew it, broiled and ate its flesh: then lay down to sleep. At moon-rise the indefatigable brother roused Brennus, and they sat out again.

They slept once more, in a sheltered ravine, just as the dawn tipped the eastward mountains. Awaking, Brennus pointed to a far summit that rose like a copper dagger against the blue bowl of the dawn.

‘Papa.'

[ii]

Crixus had entrenched the camp of the Free Legion in Gaulish fashion, dyking it with sloping sides and setting thorns in place of a stockade. So strong was it now that many of the slaves believed it would repel even the attack of a legion. Within its bounds all the warring and raiding parties had reassembled in the last few days, Crixus from his defeat of the Masters in the Battle of the Gauls, Gershom ben Sanballat from his systematic raiding and looting in the foothills, Oenomaus from a sudden descent on Thurii. Amazed, the slaves awoke to the sudden plenty in their camp, food, weapons and clothes, and stared at these things, stuttering, and turning shamed, hesitant faces from unaccustomed garments and unaccustomed comforts. Then they would remember the Battle of the Gauls, where they had faced a legion in the open and defeated it: and in all the slave horde a strange new spirit stirred, with no longer the bravery of desperation, but instead a pride and a wild hope.

Walking the bounds of the camp that morning, Crixus the Gaul hailed Gershom ben Sanballat, the commander of the Bithynians, who was stalking past him in silence, his fierce eyes fixed on the ground.

‘You are early abroad, Bithynian.'

‘As you are, German.'

Crixus laughed. ‘German? I am a Gaul.'

‘And I am no Bithynian. I am a Jew.'

Crixus nodded. ‘I'd forgotten. A very worthy people, though they eat horses. Or am I thinking of the Thracians?'