The slaves with brushes and torches looked up momentarily from their labors, and then returned to work as if the fight had never happened.
“The horns serve no purpose,” Spartacus said coldly. “There is no way for you to employ them in combat, and even if you did, they are blunt to the point of futility. But to an opponent, they offer secure purchase. Absent the defence of your sword-arm from the front, these horns offer your foe a handle by which to drag you down.”
“Very well!” Varro protested in an anguished growl. “Your point is made. Let me go.”
Spartacus climbed nimbly to his feet, holding out a hand to help up his friend.
“The costumes are chosen for us,” Varro said. “I cannot choose my armor.”
“Indeed,” Spartacus agreed. “But you can choose how to wear it.”
He drew his sword from its scabbard and carefully began sawing through the leather chin strap.
“Have you lost mind?” Varro asked, scraping the worst of the black Neapolitan dirt from his frame.
“I do not wish to enter battle unprotected,” Spartacus said calmly. “But I can aid its removal if pulled with sufficient force.”
He held it up for Varro to see. A neat nick in the chinstrap left it only half as wide as it once was.
“I suggest you do the same,” Spartacus continued.
Varro nodded, unsmiling, with the calculation of a man in search of any advantage.
“You are cunning, Thracian,” he said. “No ordinary man would think to win victory by losing that which is to protect him.”
“My only thought, to stay alive,” Spartacus said.
Their fellow slaves from House Batiatus, the swarthy Galatian Cycnus and the jet-black Numidian Bebryx, watched their chatter sullenly.
“You would do well to listen to the Champion of Capua,” Varro said to them quietly. “Or die with closed ears.”
Bebryx sucked thoughtfully on his teeth, peeling them back from his lips with a contemptuous smack. Cycnus also said nothing, fussing instead with the straps of his armor.
“Please yourselves,” Varro said with a shrug. “But mark well our opponents.”
He jerked his head across the clearing toward a second group of gladiators, picking through a pile of antique Roman swords and shields. The others followed his direction.
“Why are there but three of them and four of us?” Cycnus asked.
“Their fourth marches in the procession itself,” Varro explained. “The freedman Timarchides, friend to the deceased.”
“Does this mark advantage?” Spartacus asked.
“A freedman will not seek true danger. He has too much to lose.”
“Strike him with flat of sword and see honor restored?” Cycnus suggested with a grin.
Bebryx sucked on his teeth again, and looked away at the trees warily, as if expecting the wood itself to come for him.
“But he is a freedman,” Spartacus said, “in a house of gladiators.”
“What is your meaning, Thracian?” Varro asked.
“He is not a weak-willed patrician, thinking of wine and the next banquet,” Spartacus said. “He is a gladiator so proficient that he received the wooden sword. We fight a man skilled enough to fight his way to freedom.”
“Oh,” Varro said quietly. “Fuck.”
Batiatus wore black. The unfamiliar color kept taking him by surprise, as if there were a fly on his arm or a mosquito at his neck. He looked around him at the Neapolitan villa, so oddly like the one he had left behind in Capua, as if its architect had hoped to imitate every aspect of House Batiatus.
The floors had been cleaned, scrubbed and washed, but there were still telltale stains. To a lanista’s accustomed eye, a benign pink patch on the marble was no mere discoloration, but evidence of the recent removal of a pool of dried blood. There were chips and nicks in the friezes, suggesting swords and metal objects had been swung in an enclosed space in some recent frenzy.
Pelorus ran a house of warriors, but there was no cause for there to be war in his dwelling. Slaves had cleared away the worst of the debris, but Batiatus still sensed the echoes of that last, bloody dinner party.
Marcus Pelorus was laid out on a long bier in what had once been his atrium. The pool was drained, the furniture removed. Many of the side doors were firmly shut. The house was conspicuously, ominously, silent.
Batiatus approached the bier, glancing down the side aisles in the vain hope of seeing other mourners. Much to his surprise, he appeared to be alone.
“Well,” he said grimly to the corpse. “Present moment holds just you and me, you old bastard.”
Pelorus said nothing, for Pelorus was dead. His face had an odd yellow pallor, dusted with pollen to present the illusion of life, but dusted too much, it seemed the pollinctores had been over-zealous. Batiatus reached out, and then decided against it. He looked around, saw nobody was coming, and reached out once again to poke Pelorus tauntingly on the chin.
Batiatus’s touch inadvertently dislodged the shroud that covered Pelorus’s neck, revealing a gaping throat wound. His lip curled in revulsion as he carefully tucked the folds of cloth back into place. They had been poorly tied, and he shook his head at the low quality of Neapolitan craftsmanship.
“Good Pelorus, at last you find end,” he said to the body. “An end that proves its worth I hope.”
“And what worth is that?” said a loud voice from behind him. Batiatus started. He turned to see a thin, handsome man with carefully tousled hair, wearing a patrician toga with practiced ease.
“Apologies,” Batiatus said. “I thought myself alone.”
“I am Gaius Verres, hospes of the deceased,” Verres said.
“Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, likewise.”
“I do not recall him mentioning that name. Was your friendship close?”
Batiatus’s eyes widened.
“My name never crossed his lips?” he asked, carefully.
“Never,” Verres said, smiling apologetically. “But perhaps he never spoke of Gaius Verres to your ears, either.”
“The years have found us infrequent companions, save haggling over matters of human cargo.”
Batiatus made as if to say something more, then thought better of it.
“The friend of my friend…” he said hopefully, holding out his arm.
“Indeed so,” Verres responded, clasping it firmly with his own. “You have journeyed far?”
“From Capua!” Batiatus said.
“His former home,” Verres said nodding, “though I think his preference was to be by the sea in Neapolis.”
“And you?”
“From Rome,” Verres said quietly. “I was traveling to Sicilia, and resting here with my hospes good Pelorus, before my journey’s resumption. My expectation was not that this would also be our last farewell.”
“You are on business Republican?”
“I am to be Sicilia’s governor!”
Batiatus gasped.
“I was innocent of the elevated circles in which my old friend good Pelorus moved,” he said.
“He was a contributor of great generosity to my campaign,” Verres said. “A wondrous benefactor for a Roman on the course of honors. I am in debt to him for my position, in some ways. And you?”
“Many years ago,” Batiatus said, “the good Marcus Pelorus saved the life of my father.”
“A deed that deserves recurrent voice.” He shook his head and stared appreciatively at the body on the bier. “May the gods bring you reward in the afterlife,” he said to the corpse.
“I have exchanged messages with a man called Timarchides,” Batiatus said. “I am to receive my payment from him.”
“Payment for what?”
“I bring gladiators for the funeral and celebratory games.”
“Then you are in my employ. I am editor of the games!”
“I have brought many fine gladiators from Capua. Although I confess to finding such a request strange.”
“Why?”
“You are aware, good Verres, that in the house of a murdered master…”
“…all slaves must die. Of course.”