Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

A grim duel began which went on for over a month, Spartacus trying to break through Crassus's fortifications and Crassus throwing him back. The Roman high command knew that food must be running very short in the Spartacani camps when every soldier Spartacus possessed Caesar had estimated the total at seventy thousand attacked along the entire eight mile front, trying to find the Roman weak point. It seemed to the Spartacani that they had found it toward the middle of the wall, where the ditch appeared to have crumbled under an onslaught of spring water; Spartacus poured men across and over the wall, only to run them into a trap. Twelve thousand Spartacani died, the rest receded. After that the Thracian who was not a Thracian tortured some prisoners he had saved from the consuls' legions, scattering his teams of men with red hot pincers and pokers where he thought the maximum number of Roman soldiers would see the atrocity and hear the screams of their comrades. But after experiencing the horror of decimation Crassus's legions feared him a great deal more than they pitied the poor fellows being ripped and burned, and coped with it by electing not to watch, stuffing their ears with wool. Desperate, Spartacus produced his most prestigious prisoner, the primus pilus centurion of Gellius's old second legion, and nailed him to a cross through wrist and ankle joints without according him the mercy of broken limbs to help him die. Crassus's answer was to set his best archers along the top of his wall; the centurion died in a blizzard of arrows. As March came in Spartacus sent the woman Aluso to sue for terms of surrender. Crassus saw her in his command hut, in the presence of his legates and tribunes of the soldiers. "Why hasn't Spartacus come himself?" asked Crassus. She gave him a compassionate smile. "Because without my husband the Spartacani would disintegrate," she said, "and he does not trust you, Marcus Crassus, even under truce." "Then he's cleverer these days than he was when he let the pirates swindle him out of two thousand talents." But Aluso was not the kind to rise to any bait, so she did not answer, even with a look. Her appearance was, Caesar thought, deliberately contrived to unsettle a civilized reception committee; she appeared the archetypal barbarian. Her flaxen hair streamed wild and stringy over back and shoulders, she wore some kind of blackish felt tunic with long sleeves, and beneath it tight legged trousers. Over the clothing of arms and ankles she blazed with golden chains and bracelets, had loaded the long lobes of her ears with more gold, and her henna stained fingers with rings. Around her neck she wore several loops of tiny bird skulls strung together, and from the solid gold belt at her trim waist there dangled grisly trophies a severed hand still owning some nails and shreds of skin, a child's skull, the backbone of a cat or dog complete with tail. The whole was finished with a magnificent wolf pelt, paws knotted on her chest, the head with bared teeth and jewels for eyes perched above her brow. With all this, she was not unattractive to the silent men who watched her, though none would have called her beautiful; her kind of face with its light, mad looking eyes was too alien. On Crassus, however, she failed to make the impression she had striven for. Crassus was proof against any attraction save money. So he stared at her in exactly the same way as he stared at everyone, with what seemed a gentle calmness. "Speak, woman," he said. I am to ask you for terms of surrender, Marcus Crassus. We have no food left, and the women and children are starving in order that our soldiers may eat. My husband is not the kind of man who can bear to see the helpless suffer. He would rather give himself and his army up. Only tell me the terms and I will tell him. And then tomorrow I will come back with his answer." The general turned his back. Over his shoulder he said, his Greek far purer than hers, "You may tell your husband that there are no terms under which 1 would accept his surrender. I will not permit him to surrender. He started this. Now he can see it through to the bitter end." She gasped, prepared for every contingency but that one. "I cannot tell him that! You must let him surrender!" "No," said Crassus, back still turned. His right hand moved, its fingers snapped. "Take her away, Marcus Mummius, and see her through our lines." It was some time later before Caesar could catch Crassus on his own, though he burned to discuss the interview. "You handled it brilliantly," he said. "She was so sure she would unsettle you." "Silly woman! My reports say she's a priestess of the Bessi, though I'd rather call her a witch. Most Romans are superstitious I've noticed you are, Caesar! but I am not. I believe in what I can see, and what I saw was a female of some slight intelligence who had got herself up as she imagined a gorgon might look." He laughed spontaneously. "I remember being told that when he was a young man Sulla went to a party dressed as Medusa. On his head he wore a wig of living snakes, and he frightened the life out of everyone there. But you know, and I know, that it wasn't the snakes frightened the life out of anyone. It was simply Sulla. Now if she had that quality, I might have quaked in my boots." "I agree. But she does have the second sight." "Many people have the second sight! I've known dear old grannies as dithery and fluffy as lambs who had the second sight, and grand looking advocates you wouldn't think had a single corner of their minds that wasn't solid law. Anyway, what makes you think she has the second sight?'' "Because she came to the interview more frightened of you than you could ever have been of her."

For a month the weather had been "set," as the mother of Quintus Sertorius might have put it nights well below freezing point, days not much warmer, blue skies, snow turned to ice underfoot. But after the Ides of March had gone there came a terrible storm which started as sleet and ended with snow piling up and up. Spartacus seized his chance. Where the wall and ditch fused into the ravine closest to Scyllaeum and the oldest of Crassus's veteran legions had its camp the whole one hundred thousand Spartacani left alive hurled themselves into a frantic struggle to bridge the ditch and climb over the wall. Logs, stones, the dead bodies of humans and animals, even large pieces of loot were flung into the trench, heaped up to surmount the palisade. Like the shades of the dead the enormous mass of people rolled in wave after wave across this makeshift passage and fled into the teeth of the storm. No one opposed them; Crassus had sent the legion a message not to take up arms, but to remain quietly inside its camp. Disorganized and haphazard, the flight unraveled what little structure the Spartacani host had owned beyond hope of knitting it up again. While the fighting men better led and disciplined floundered north on the Via Popillia with Spartacus, Castus and Gannicus, the bulk of the women, children, aged and noncombatants became so lost they entered the forests of Mount Sila; amid the tangles of low branches, rocks, undergrowth, most of them lay down and died, too cold and too hungry to struggle on. Those who did survive to see better weather came eventually upon Bruttian settlements, were recognized for what they were, and killed at once. Not that the fate of this segment of the Spartacani held any interest for Marcus Licinius Crassus. When the snow began to lessen he struck camp and moved his eight legions out onto the Via Popillia in the wake of the Spartacani soldiers. His progress was as plodding as an ox, for he was always methodical, always in possession of his general's wits. There was no use in chasing; cold, hunger and lack of real purpose would combine to slow the Spartacani down, as would the size of their army. Better to have the baggage train in the middle of the legionary column than run the risk of losing it. Sooner or later he would catch up. His scouts, however, were very busy, very swift. As March ground to its end they reported to Crassus that the Spartacani, having reached the river Silarus, had divided into two forces. One, under Spartacus, had continued up the Via Popillia toward Campania, while the other, under Castus and Gannicus, had struck east up the valley of the middle Silarus. "Good!" said Crassus. "We'll leave Spartacus alone for the moment and concentrate on getting rid of the two Samnites." The scouts then reported that Castus and Gannicus had not gone very far; they had encountered the prosperous little town of Volcei and were eating well for the first time in two months. No need to hurry! When the four legions preceding Crassus's baggage train came up, Castus and Gannicus were too busy feasting to notice. The Spartacani had spread without making more than an apology for a camp on the foreshores of a little lake which at this time of the year contained sweet, potable water; by autumn the same locale would have held few charms. Behind the lake was a mountain. Crassus saw immediately what he had to do, and decided not to wait for the four legions which followed the baggage train. "Pomptinus and Rufus, take twelve cohorts and sneak around the far side of the mountain. When you're in position, charge downhill. That will take you right into the middle of their camp? As soon as I see you I'll attack from the front. We'll squash them between us like a beetle." The plan should have worked. It would have worked, except for the vagaries of chance the best scouts could not divine. For when they saw how much food Volcei could provide, Castus and Gannicus sent word to Spartacus to retrace his footsteps, join the revelry. Spartacus duly retraced his footsteps and appeared on the far side of the lake just as Crassus launched his attack. The men belonging to Castus and Gannicus bolted into the midst of the newcomers, and all the Spartacani promptly vanished. Some generals would have clawed the air, but not Crassus. "Unfortunate. But eventually we'll succeed," he said, unruffled. A series of storms slowed everybody down. The armies of both sides lingered around the Silarus, though it appeared that it was now Spartacus's turn to leave the Via Popillia, while Castus and Gannicus used the road to march into Campania. Crassus lurked well in the rear, a fat spider bent on getting fatter. He too had decided to split his forces now that his eight legions were reunited; the baggage train, he knew, was safe. Two legions of infantry and all the cavalry were put under the command of Lucius Quinctius and Tremellius Scrofa, and ordered to be ready to follow whichever segment of Spartacani left the Via Popillia, while Crassus himself would pursue the segment on the road. Like a millstone he ground on; as his legion was attached to the general's division, Caesar could only marvel at the absolute tenacity and method of this extraordinary man. At Eburum, not far north of the Silarus, he caught Castus and Gannicus at last, and annihilated their army. Thirty thousand died on the field, tricked and trapped; only a very few managed to slip through the Roman lines and flee inland to find Spartacus. Greatest pleasure of all to every soldier in the victorious army was what Crassus discovered among the tumbled heaps of Spartacani baggage after the battle; the five eagles which had been taken when various Roman forces had been defeated, twenty six cohort standards, and the fasces belonging to five praetors. "Look at that!" cried Crassus, actually beaming. "Isn't it a wonderful sight?" The general now displayed the fact that when he needed to, he could move very fast indeed. Word came from Lucius Quinctius that he and Scrofa had been ambushed though without grievous losses and that Spartacus was still nearby. Crassus marched.