J. Clements - Spartacus - Swords and Ashes

“I see my forests,” she breathed. “Forests in snow at sunset…”

“Apologies,” he said to her. “I should have protected you.”

“You did,” she said. “I had but one message.”

“Did the bitch say message ?” Batiatus demanded, stumbling along the dockside toward them. “Did she say message?”

“Batiatus?” Medea wheezed. “Your name will be known throughout… the Republic… You will be famous… as dominus to… Spartacus…”

“Yes, yes,” Batiatus said dismissively, finally reaching the place where they lay. “Tell me not what I want to hear, woman. I will not fall for such tricks. Give me words for Cicero. Give me something for the Books Sibylline!”

“She dies.” Spartacus whispered hoarsely.

“And it is costing me a fucking fortune!” Batiatus shouted.

Medea’s eyes turned glassy, staring but unseeing. Her voice croaked, as if not her own, choked with errant blood.

“ Unto your beasts of burden ,” she choked, “ Thracian manumission .”

“What?” Batiatus said. “What the fuck does that-?”

“ And as a legion hell-bound, violent expedition .”

“Cicero!” Batiatus called. “Come quickly!”

“ Across great Greece’s heel and toe, the fires shall spread .”

Cicero began to run across the docks, a flurry of linen as his toga bloomed outward. He pushed aside porters, leaping ropes and boxes. Spartacus glanced up momentarily to see the quaestor’s approach, but kept his eyes on Medea as she struggled to speak her dying words.

“ A final Saturnalia ,” she said, “ to seven hills imperiled dread. ”

Medea’s hand fell, still, causing her chains to rattle to the dirt. Spartacus held her gently, uncaring of the blood that soaked him.

Dockside slaves pushed the ship away from the quay with long gaffes, setting its prow pointed toward the sea, ushering it into deeper water so that its journey could begin.

“The Afer Ventus will blow tomorrow,” Verres said frowning. “We will do well to clear port before it, else we must tack far away from Italia, if we are even to creep closer to Silicia.”

“I hurry not,” Timarchides said. “Though I yet wish I could have witnessed the death of the Getae witch for myself.”

“Pelorus is avenged. In this life or the next. Do not trouble yourself with petty grievances.”

“Petty?” Timarchides said. “I lied concerning our intimacy, following your suggestion. But he was still trusted friend, and the best of masters.”

“Cruel Fortuna caused his death, and that of his gladiators.”

“I tried to save them,” Timarchides said quietly, almost to himself. “I tried to save as many as I could. Nobody would have missed the undertakers whose place they stole. It could have worked. Eight might have lived, had not the sicarii failed. Or even the four that carried us to the harbor. That would have been something .”

Verres turned back to look at Neapolis and the black mountain that hung above it like a shadow, and caught the sight of a lone figure sprinting down the jetty.

“They were loyal to me,” Timarchides said. “They died for me as they might have died in the arena. But voluntarily so.”

“Timarchides!” called a boy’s voice. “Timarchides!”

“One of the ‘dice’ yet lives,” Verres said, pointing to the approaching figure, blood-stained but whole, darting along the outer harbor wall.

“We should wait for him!”

“And miss wind and tide? They wait for no man.”

The lone surviving slave of the House of Pelorus, seeing the ship receding, hurled off his clothes as he ran toward the sea. Wearing nothing but a loincloth, he cast aside his knife and plunged into the water, swimming after the ship in a powerful crawl.

“Fortuna smiles,” Timarchides noted. “It is the Sardinian boy!”

“A strong swimmer, then,” Verres noted, as the boy drew closer. His arms began to flag, but he was almost upon the ship, his hands reaching up, flailing for a rope to grab.

“What news of the others?” Verres called to the boy.

“Dead, dominus, all dead,” came the reply from amid the waves.

“You are all that survives?”

“I am,” the boy answered, returning to his diligent, steady crawl through the water, edging ever closer.

Verres looked dolefully at Timarchides.

“He is the last,” Verres said. “He is the last survivor that may yet, on some future day, relate truth of our machinations to a quaestor in hope of mercy or manumission. He is the last of the House of Pelorus that might reveal the depths of your deception, and consign you once more to the slavery whence you came. What would you do?”

Timarchides stared at Verres for a moment, and then snatched up a rope, throwing one end into the water. He hung tightly onto the hawser as the boy clambered up, gasping with the effort, his lungs heaving with great exertion.

“You did well,” Timarchides said, as the boy reached the gunwhales.

The Sardinian boy smiled, panting, with relief and elation.

Then Timarchides snatched up a knife, and slashed the boy slave’s throat in one sweeping deadly movement. A wounded, pleading look came into the boy’s eyes as he tumbled from the ship, splashing red into the waters of the bay of Neapolis.

Timarchides watched the body as it floated face-down, a branded “P” on its right forearm, matching the faded one that yet persisted on his own. The ship began to leave it behind, sailing ever farther out to sea, leaving the body where it fell, drifting on the waters.

Verres laid a conciliatory hand on the freedman’s shoulder.

“Death comes to us all, Timarchides, but not freedom. Think on that as we sail to Sicilia.”

Timarchides shook off his hand, and stared at the churning waters of a bruised sea.

“The story of Rome is the story of us,” Verres said. “Of you and me. The story is of the freemen of Rome. There is no space for slaves. They are invisible. No one has care for thoughts of a slave. His hopes. His dreams. His desires. No more worthy of our consideration than the dreams of an insect. You are free. Be free.”

As the ship’s prow turned to face the harbor mouth, her sails filled with a strong breeze, propelling the ship forward, firstly at a crawl, and then with the increasing wash of broken waves against the hull.

He lay on the firm wooden table, as he had lain for days, his chest barely moving in halting breaths. The early signs of a beard poked through the clammy skin of his face. His hair, usually cropped close like a Roman warrior, had begun to grow out toward its original Gaulish mane. His eyes stared ahead, at the ceiling, unseeing. His hands were folded gently on his stomach, pressing on the sodden bandages, sticky with blood and pus.

When the door opened, he made no sign of noticing it. He stayed on the table, almost as still as Pelorus had been on the bier.

The footsteps that approached were light, dainty, unaccompanied by the clack of hobnails or the slap of hardened sole leather. They were the steps of feet shod in mouseskin or deerskin, supporting a frame far lighter than the average inmate of the ludus. The newly arrived figure halted, its passage marked by the continued waft of draping silken sleeves, and the unmistakeable scent of Egyptian musks.

“Crixus,” she said.

On the table, his lips twitched. His eyes showed no emotion or reaction, but his mouth moved the tiniest degree.

“Crixus,” she whispered.

There was no further movement from him, save the faintest sigh in the slowly moving chest.

“The medicus will return presently. I do not have long.”