The pursuing dogs jostled for position, each shunting the other, their jaws snapping. Their contest for mastery was to their prey’s advantage, the rabbit pulling ever so slightly ahead.
“Bite the little cunt!” Batiatus shouted at the dogs, a sentiment echoed by thousands all around the arena.
One of the dogs tripped, rolling and yelping, leaving its companion to leap ahead in a new burst of speed. The rabbit charged for the hole in the wall, seeing only shadows and darkness and the promise of refuge from the fanged beast that was even now panting its hot, covetous breath against its hindquarters as-
Instinctively, Spartacus jerked back his head as the rabbit plunged through the grille and into the chamber. It tumbled past him onto a surprised Varro. The dog smashed, yelping, into the grille itself, spattering Spartacus with saliva and blood, before stumbling back, its whimpers drowned out by the screaming crowd.
Varro grunted in surprise as the falling rabbit bounced off his head and into their cell. He lost his purchase on Spartacus’s calves, and stumbled, falling. Spartacus was left dangling, supporting his own weight wholly on the grille, as Varro fell to the floor laughing.
“Varro!” Spartacus called in annoyance. When it became clear that the blond giant was not coming to his aid, he dropped nimbly to the floor.
“If this spectacle is what the people of Neapolis call a day at the arena,” he mused, “our fighting abilities shall hardly be taxed.”
He sat back down, leaning against the wall, and listened to the distant chatter of the crowd. Outside, he heard the sound of the guards herding a new group of unfortunates toward a nearby cell.
“Fresh warriors?” Varro mused, his laughter almost subsided.
“Perhaps,” Spartacus said. “Or perhaps they demand we fight on the sands against ants and mice.”
Partly illuminated by a shaft of light from the arena outside, the broken body of a dying rabbit shuddered, breathing its last before an audience of none.
IX
“What follows, Quintus?”
“The usual midday spectacles. The old and the infirm, the weak and the inconsequential-all set alight.”
“How dull. What has been provided for our midday repast?” Lucretia poked the trays of food, and largely ignored the action below, as the newly arrived Timarchides raised his hands for silence, and then bellowed out the coming agenda.
“These games celebrate the life of Marcus Pelorus, honored resident of this town.”
A few half-hearted cheers issued from the stands. Batiatus plainly heard some comedian in the stalls grunt “Who?” to cackles from his cronies.
As Timarchides spoke, guards led chained figures out to a series of wooden posts-a dozen in a circle dotted around the middle of the arena.
“It is fitting the first blood of the day should be shed in his honor, and in the attainment of justice for his demise. Those you see before you are slaves of the Household of Pelorus, sentenced to death, as is our custom for all slaves beneath the roof of a murdered master.”
“They do not look particularly deadly,” Ilithyia observed, chewing on a walnut. “That one looks too old to carry a sword. And those are all but children.”
“They did not actually murder Pelorus,” Batiatus said. “There is yet another fate reserved for them.”
“You are the expert on gladiators, Batiatus,” Ilithyia laughed. “But their appearance seems to lack a warlike quality.”
“They are not the gladiators of House Pelorus,” Lucretia said. “Their sentence is ‘to the sword,’ which the arena will assuredly take care of in the next few games.”
“Then who are they?” Ilithyia asked.
“Mere bystanders,” Lucretia explained. “In the house of a murdered master, all slaves must die.”
“Seems a little unfair on the cook,” Ilithyia said with a shrug.
“Then he should have made intervention to prevent the tragedy!” Batiatus said.
“What of the stable boys, and chamber maids?” Ilithyia added. “Simply because some escaped bitch pulls a knife on her master.”
“It serves as deterrent,” Lucretia suggested. “These slaves cannot be saved, but they can serve as example.”
“That is one view, I suppose,” Ilithyia mused. “Imagine yourself a slave accused of small crime or indiscretion. If certain death awaits, then what do you have to lose? The thought terrifies.”
Outside they heard the cheers of excitement from the crowd, and the shrieks of agony from the burning slaves. It was nothing unusual for the midday spectacles, and Spartacus and Varro ignored it, as if it were background music in a tavern, or the sound of children playing outside.
A group of half a dozen slaves, marked with the thin welts of castigatory whips, huddled in the next cell. They were five men and a woman. Spartacus found himself unable to take his eyes away from the tattoos and swirls visible on those parts of the woman’s flesh that were bare. She saw him looking.
“Have we met before this day?” she asked, as if no bars separated them, and no cage encircled them.
“Perhaps,” Spartacus replied, “in the winter forests by the Istros. In the throes of battle.”
“A warrior of Thrace,” she mused.
“A witch of the Getae,” he observed.
“How goes the war, Thracian?” she asked, leaning on the bars. “Have your Roman allies proved to be invaluable?”
“As useful as your Getae witchcraft, it seems,” he said, and she laughed.
“Our tribes were friends before,” she said. “Let us not be enemies now.”
Varro snorted in derision.
“You can start your own society,” he said. “Savages Together.”
“What have you done?” she asked Spartacus, ignoring Varro.
“Done?” Spartacus replied, baffled. “I have yet to do anything.”
“Spartacus and I pursue the wild animals in the arena,” Varro said, quicker to ascertain her meaning. “We are the catervarii.”
“The hunters of beasts…?” she said, sadly.
“It will be a sight to behold,” Varro said, his eyebrows raised conspiratorially. “Our gleaming armor, our flashing spears!”
“It is a sadness that I will not be there to see it,” the woman sighed.
Now it was Varro’s turn to be baffled.
“Brother,” Spartacus said delicately, “they are in the cell before ours. They enter the arena first.”
Varro inclined his head.
“But,” he ventured, “no gladiators enter before us. Only-”
Varro stopped short, not meeting the woman’s gaze.
“Apologies,” he said. “I did not understand.”
“Only the convicted criminals,” the woman said, “only those about to die. Nameless and forgotten. Remembered only for our crime.”
“Of what crime do you speak?” Spartacus asked, curious in spite of the situation.
“I killed a Roman,” the woman replied with a deadly smile.
Varro sniffed and walked away. He sat on the bench and tightened the straps on his boots, as if the other cage and its occupants had disappeared.
Spartacus, however, grabbed the bars and leaned in closer.
“Whom did you kill?” he asked.
“Marcus Pelorus,” she replied, enjoying the surprise in his eyes.
“By all the gods,” Spartacus whispered. “You killed Marcus Pelorus?”
“I slashed his throat with a table knife. I watched him drown in his own blood.”
“Why did you do it?”
“For a moment, I was free,” she said.
“How far did you get?”
“We gained but the top of the steps.” She shrugged.
Spartacus stared at the dusty floor.
“You will be next,” he said after a time. “When human torches burn out, the executions by beast follow.”
“What will it be?”
“Lions,” Spartacus said.