Spartacus (33 page)

But again the wet wind awoke, and the Gladiator smelled it, and felt the unease of his dream return. But was it no more than a dream? To turn from the road to Brindisium for a last account with the Masters. Now, clearly and coldly, in the cold blue of the morning, he saw that venture for disaster with his exhausted, depleted legions, weary and footsore, with blunted swords, no horse to shield their flanks, the slingers without pellets, the sagittarii without arrows. Disaster.

But the sun came, and the wind; and again in Spartacus there moved with a dark, wild passion that mystic kinship with the slaves he led, the thousands who stirred about him in the camp, who had held half Italy these two long years, voiceless, but their unvoiced passion moved in his heart. Exhausted, a footsore army? But the Wolf was there, they might never now leave the Masters save as the victors of these Masters.

The sky rained blood a tenebrous moment. He looked up at it with dark, dreaming eyes, terrible, in a cold, still wrath and sadness; and then turned to the Sicel maid as she knelt by the stool where she had laid his food.

But when he turned some other change came upon him. She saw him, it seemed to her, seeing and thinking dimly, in her passion of fear and love for him, young: the Strategos who was the Strategos, neither young nor old! And he smiled at her with clear, bright eyes, moving like a hunter to her side, and sat by her and they ate together. And she was troubled with the troubled passion that had swept the camp, and would have asked him what he planned.

But he was fey and strange, he spoke of his years in Thrace, the sweep of the forests at morning, how he minded now the light on their trunks and their tall plumes as they marched into evening, north, marching legions he had seen long before any other legions, Roman or Free. And he asked if she remembered such sights in Sicily, but she did not, it was all a cloud and a blur to her; and she was too troubled to heed, staring at him. And the dried corn choked in her throat, so that she could not eat, while the Gladiator sat with his head in his hands, silent. But when he looked at her again, she saw again how young he was. And then she knew without doubt that he was a God, and shivered in fear, though she had been held by him in desire, in the terror of his strength, and he smiled at her now, and kissed her and rose and sought his armour.

And he said, ‘I think this comes to a last pass, Mella. If it's so, you have your knife.' And he thanked her, and said she had served him well, and then looked on the crumbs of the food he had eaten, and said slowly, as if remembering, that they had forgotten, they had made no libation. Nor ever had he done so before, that she knew; and she stared wide-eyed as he flung a little of the corn on the earth, and spilled wine, to whatever Gods there might be in these mountains and in the world.

Then she buckled on his armour for him and would have brought him his light shield that was a horseman's shield; but that he would not take, instead a heavy Samnite shield, borne by such as fought on foot. And he tested its straps and greased them; and Mella brought a double strap that would bind it well on his arm. And he took his axe in his right hand, and bound a gladius under his left arm.

And Mella saw that already he had forgotten her.

Now, all about them rose a great shouting from the slave host, the trampling of many feet, and the singing of men who prepared for battle.

[iii]

As the day broke Crassus marched out his swollen army to take the road to Rome, and straddle that road in defence against the unconquered Spartacists. Scrofas, in chains, marched in the rear, with Quintius made quaestor in his place. The disgraced rout of Scrofas's legions marched in the centre, hemmed in by the legions of Crassus.

The provincial praetor himself brought up the rear, watching the dust of the legions cloud the roads as they skirted the base of the hills and turned east. Then a scout rode up to his tribune, and the tribune swore and came riding to the praetor with the incredible news. Crassus swung round in his saddle.

The slave army, a great thronging of men in disordered, shouting bands, was debouching in pursuit from the Petelian hills. The sun shone and scintillated on their stolen armour, on the Serpent standards of the Gladiators. And then Crassus saw midway the advancing host the white stallion of Spartacus himself.

By the time the legions had halted and swung about, the slave army was only a few stadia away – a great shouting streaming horde, with wind-blown rags and flashing weapons, the sour smell of them struck in Crassus's nostrils as he stared at them with keen, avaricious eyes. Then he turned to his quaestor, Quintius.

‘Make camp and raise palisades. Hasten.'

So it was done. The legions wheeled with the speed of much practice into camp formation, and set to throwing up an entrenchment, thousands working as one under the cries of the decurions and centurions, the brown men of the Isles, the Romans and Italiots, the legions from Spain. The sun hid for a little while in a blink of rain and then came out again and remained unobscured throughout the rest of the day. All the Calabrian countryside seemed to stand in a deathly silence awaiting the outbreak of that conflict under the shadow of her mountains.

The legions stared at the nearing enemy, and heard their shouts and wild singing, the Harvesting Song and the Song of the Serpent, for the madness of a God was upon the slaves. Kleon and Gershom of Kadesh rode cursing to and fro their ranks, seeking to form them into the array that Spartacus had ordered as never before – the cuneus with a schiltroun base. But the women had marched with the men as well, they laughed in the faces of the slave tribunes, shaking their spears towards the Roman encampment that rose in black earthworks higher and higher. A drunken host, drunken with an insane hope, the slaves now clamoured to be led against the Masters without further halt. And they began to cry the name of Spartacus in a great shouting that stayed a moment the sweating Romans building their encampment walls.

Then these saw a great white stallion ridden to the front of the disordered slave ranks, and a whisper ran through the staring legions: THE GLADIATOR. He wheeled round the stallion, armoured with a great Samnite shield upon his arm, and cried to the slaves he would lead them without delay, but they must obey their tribunes and marshal the formation he ordered.

So at last they did, while the Gladiator watched, a smile on his lips. And he felt the blood sing through his great body, and once he looked away from the changing wheel and march of the slaves before him up at the mountains he had seen come pearl-blue. Now they towered black in the sun, peering upon him. And when at last his army was in array, Spartacus dismounted from his horse, the great white stallion captured at the Battle of the Lake long before; and the beast snuffled at his shoulder and looked at him with great eyes.

Then Spartacus stabbed the stallion to the heart, and it fell and died, and a great groan of wonder rose from the slaves. But Spartacus said that if they won this battle, there would be many fine horses got for him to choose from; if they lost it, he would have no need of a horse again.

And he ceased, and they knew then the meaning of the foot-soldier's shield that was double-strapped upon his arm. And for a little they stared at him, sobered, till the blowing of horns in the Roman lines kindled again the rage through their ranks.

And Spartacus, seeing that they might not be stayed, arrayed them in battle-order. In the van he placed the Bithynians, hungry to avenge that first defeat they had suffered from Crassus the Lean. Gershom ben Sanballat had also dismounted, with his tribunes by his side he ran up and down the ranks, calling last orders. And he halted and waited.

Then the slave-trumpets sounded the charge.

The air filled with the hum of pellets and was darkened by a cloud of arrows from the half-built camp. But under and through that cloud the charge of the Bithynians held fast, they clove down the nearer wall and swarmed in the ditch, and there the Romans met them, and Spartacus saw the gleam of the Serpent standard vanish around where the Jew led his legion. Then Gershom vanished in a wave of men that Crassus flung on that gaining point; and, hewing and stabbing, sobbing with rage, the Bithynians fell back as their horns sounded.

But they paid them no heed. Uncommanded, they reformed their ranks and again assailed the camp. Thrice they charged, and thrice were beaten back, but at terrible cost. Crassus saw that the charge of the Bithynians, men with blunted swords, would assuredly fail: and he rode his horse up a little eminence midmost of the camp, to watch the battle.

Then Spartacus flung the remnants of the Gaul and German legions into the breach in the camp walls, and saw Kleon at their head disappear in that fury of stabbing swords and restless spears – saw that, and the Gauls presently stream from the camp in headlong rout. So he knew that the end had come, the spare legions of the Romans advancing at a run outside the limit of the camp to fall on the fleeing slaves. And the Gladiator formed up his men in cuneus, about him the Gladiator guard; and he looked at the knoll whereon Crassus was halted, and tested the buckles on his shield, and led the Thracians forward into the breach.

[iv]

AND SPARTACUS MADE HIS WAY TOWARDS CRASSUS HIMSELF THROUGH MANY MEN, AND INFLICTING MANY WOUNDS; BUT HE DID NOT SUCCEED IN REACHING CRASSUS, THOUGH HE ENGAGED AND KILLED TWO CENTURIONS. AND AT LAST, AFTER THOSE ABOUT HIM HAD FLED, HE KEPT HIS GROUND, AND, BEING SURROUNDED BY A GREAT NUMBER, HE FOUGHT TILL HE WAS CUT DOWN
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The Appian Way

[i]

FIVE thousand fled, making their way north from the battle. These were met by Pompeius, returning at length from Iberia, and cut to pieces. Wearied with slaughter, the legions under Crassus at length made prisoners; and Crassus had those prisoners numbered, and they numbered over six thousand.

And Crassus marched his legions to the Appian Way, and for three days his camp rang with the busy sound of carpenters at work. Many trees were brought to the camp and cut and squared while the slaves, bound and unfed, squatted with no water to drink and the pitiless sun on their heads. And through lighted hours and dark they heard the clink and chime of the carpenters' tools, and smelt the fresh resin of the sawn wood.

But at length all was ready. And Licinius Crassus had the slaves brought forth, all through the heat of a summer day as he marched his army slowly up towards Rome, and one by one nailed on the new-made crosses. And at length even the men of the legions turned in horror from looking back along the horizon at that stretch of undulating, crying figures fading down into the sun-haze. Some, nailed on the cross, shrieked aloud with agony as the nails scraped through their bones or splintered those bones so that ragged slivers hung from the flesh. Some fainted. Some cried on strange Gods, and now at last pleaded for mercy while the legionaries drove the nails home through hands and feet. Then each cross was lifted, and the body of the slave upon it would bulge forth and the crack of the tearing flesh sound as the cross was flung in the hole new-dug. And the smell of blood and excrement increased as the day went by, wolves gathered that night and clouds of carrion-birds, waiting. And at last the last cross was flung in the earth, and the Romans departed.

The night came, heavily with dew. And throughout the miles of the crosses a groan greeted its coming as the coolness revived fainting lips, and men lifted their swimming eyes to the cool, watchful summer stars. Few had yet died, for it was many hours ere inflammation would yet set in on hands and feet, or the blood drip away till consciousness left them. And to that groan there succeeded throughout the night a babble in many tongues, men crying to a God, men crying the names of others dead or lost, men crying in a childish clamour that was wordless. Yet presently even that ceased, for the night grew almost as warm as the day. And by morning on the long lines of crosses the slaves hung with blackened tongues projecting from swollen lips, and glazed eyes, and the drooling moans of stricken beasts.

A great concourse came out from Rome to view the crucified slaves. Merchants passing at last in safety up that long road from the coast looked and shuddered and went by, at the clouding of flies and birds that now began to settle around still bodies that still lived. And sometimes a shriek would rise, and die, and the insects rise in a lazy hum. And the sightseers saw the bodies twisted in many fashions, in the last stretchings of agony; and by another day those who passed through the dripping lines saw that many had been torn by the teeth of beasts.

‘None will live beyond the third night,' they said. ‘There'll never be a slave revolt again.'

And they returned to Rome and light and life and their years, and the darkness that covers them from our gaze.

[ii]

It was the fourth morning, and still Kleon lived.

When they stripped him to nail him on the cross, the legionaries had shouted in mirth to find the slave a eunuch. Then they had maimed him again so that he had lost consciousness, and did not awake till hung on his cross, and the Masters had passed on.

And then pain tore at him, and like the others he babbled curses and complaints, and bit at his lips with his teeth; and something like a wheel that was spiked with fire turned and turned in his brain; and he knew that it might not endure, that death any instant must come, because no agony like this could last. And he fainted again, and awoke to the odours of his own body and the snuffling mouth of a wolf at his feet – that, and the pain, and the growl of the beast as it fled at the shriek that came from his lips.

And the day passed, the sun swung its arc of brightness across the sky so slowly that he thought of it as many days, long stretches of darkness and long stretches of light; and his tongue swelled out between his teeth; and death would not come; and the spiked wheel in his brain grew and grew till it filled the sky, till it burst from his head and he saw it the earth in torment. And about him, in little spaces between his own agony, he heard the last cry of men who died, and saw their bodies bulge and shudder and pass to ease at last.