“Such behaviour has no excuse. They line up like lambs to the slaughter,” Verres said.
“I cannot help but feel,” Cicero mused, “that they stand bravest of all.”
“Then thank the gods that you were not in charge of defending us from Hannibal!” Batiatus said good-naturedly, and all on the balcony laughed.
Spartacus stood before the next man in the line.
“Fight me,” he said.
The man simply stared at him.
“Fight me!” Spartacus shouted.
“Why?” the man said, quietly.
Angrily, Spartacus raised his twin swords, but faltered. He realized he could not do it.
Bebryx had no such qualms, and darted ahead of Spartacus before the Thracian’s hesitation could be seen. Laughing wildly, Bebryx hacked at the still gladiator with the sharp sword of a murmillo, slashing a wide red gash in his neck. The man collapsed to his knees, pitching over, his blood pumping into the sand, his arms twitching in spastic jerks, and then still.
“Who is next?” Bebryx roared at the crowd, brandishing his sword high to ragged cheers. He advanced to the next man in line, who stood, as his fellow had done, motionless. His mouth was pinched in a snarl but he did not move. As Bebryx loomed closer, he closed his eyes and opened his arms, as if to embrace his slayer.
“This is an honor, you ungrateful swine!” the voice of Verres shouted from the balcony. “This is an honor!”
Bebryx hesitated for but a moment, and then thrust his blade firmly into the man’s neck, with enough force to smash between the gladiator’s vertebrae and out the other side. Bebryx’s victim crumpled before him, sliding off the blade, the head all but severed.
In the crowd, someone booed. Soon, the noise was joined by others, low at first and then with growing volume, like a conference of owls.
“I have never found easy victory so hard-won!” Varro muttered.
“Nor I,” Spartacus replied.
“It matters not,” Barca said. “Let blame fall at editor’s feet.” He marched toward the opposite line of men, intent on matching Bebryx’s slaughter on the other arm of the “V.”
Bebryx approached the next man in line. As he drew near, Varro hefted his Greek spear and hurled it at the still warrior. It whooshed through the air in a lazy arc, and clanged harmlessly off a suddenly raised shield.
Realizing that instinct had intervened where will had not, the gladiator sheepishly returned to his stand-to-attention. Bebryx eyed him suspiciously, and then swung his sword at his neck.
The gladiator’s sword sprang up, blocking the path of Bebryx’s.
“At last!” Batiatus shouted. “Fight!”
Bebryx chuckled in surprise, delighting in the scattered applause that now began to spread around the arena.
“That is better-” he began to say, before the edge of the man’s shield smashed into his face.
Spartacus and Varro heard the crowd before they saw the strike. Bebryx stumbled backward in surprise, his mouth a mess of jagged teeth and seeping blood. Dazed, he raised his sword to strike, only for his opponent to hack down at his right arm, severing it at the elbow.
Bebryx screamed, his stump spurting blood. He twisted to the side, dropping to one knee as his opponent came up behind him, taking careful, deliberate aim at the junction of his neck and shoulder. The doomed gladiator drove his sword straight down into Bebryx’s heart from above. Bebryx fell, a lump of twitching meat, as his killer bellowed an angry yell of imprisoned rage.
The killer’s face contorted in a sneer, he turned to face the surviving three gladiators of House Batiatus. He banged his sword upon his shield, flicking trails of viscous blood across the sands in elongated strings. Then he pointed the dripping blade at the three men and waited, his feet firm on the earth, his shield raised and ready.
“What true gladiator can resist final fight?” Batiatus exulted.
“And not before time,” Lucretia breathed, “it was to become the worst primus in memory.”
“It may yet be,” Ilithyia observed, “if this warrior’s fellows cling to their deluded protest.”
“Not so,” Batiatus crowed. “Not so! This sudden change in fortune will soon be mirrored. Mark my words.”
“Why so elated, Batiatus?” Cicero asked. “You have surely just lost another slave!”
“Bah, one who already proved himself useless at the graveside,” Batiatus spat. “Bebryx has died in the best way he could, by bringing this primus to life!”
“How so?”
“The death of Bebryx has delivered a dose of the drug that no gladiator can resist.”
“Blood?” Cicero asked.
“Applause!” Batiatus cried, gesturing about him at the bellowing hordes of the audience as they roared their support.
“See!” Batiatus cried. “Their feet shift and paw at the sand like unruly horses in their traces! See them turn to face Spartacus and my men. The death of one enemy awakens them. They are sentenced to die this day. They sulk and spit and complain that there is no justice, but now they remember. There is justice here, amid the blood and sand, for the man who will take it! And if they fall, they die as gladiators!”
The line of the “V” broke in sudden animation, as six men ran to join their fellow warrior. The sands erupted in clashes of steel and wood, as the seven men of House Pelorus joined battle with the three of House Batiatus. Some in the crowd cheered for a gladiator called “Pelorus,” unaware that he was not present on the sands. Others yelled for Varro, the Roman Conqueror, clad today in the armor of a Greek warrior. Some, still, cheered for the Beast of Carthage, once a symbol of Rome’s greatest enemy, now tamed upon the sands, fighting at the Romans’ will, hewing into his enemies with a double-headed axe.
One name rang out above the others, taken up by the crowd, propagating through the stalls and along the steps with each slice toward victory. They cried it out as his twin swords cut into shields and helmets, flesh and bone, he was the “Slayer of the Shadow of Death.”
He was the “Bringer of Rain.”
“The Champion of Capua.”
Spartacus.
XII
Few saw the Spoliarium. Or rather, few saw it and lived to tell the tale, and no Neapolitan ever asked to venture within. Why would they? It was a place of death and messy endings, of pleadings and suffering. It was no place for a good Roman, only for slaves and beasts who did not know how best to die. It reeked of death, of exotic, unnameable meats left to rot in corners, of scraps of flesh best not identified, putrified on spikes and caught in gratings. The stench could choke a man unready for it; it sent newcomers retching and heaving for the outside world, as if the human body itself recognized, at some atavistic, animal level, that this was a place cursed.
The slave boy shut the door behind him. A hatch opened in the roof above his head, illuminating the chamber for a moment with bright light from above, rays falling on walls stained with black, ancient blood.
Almost as soon as it had arrived, the light was dimmed again by a hail of falling bodies. Lions, men, rabbits and a single horse, dropped through the hatch from the back of the charnel cart, thumping onto the grated floor like sacks of grain. A shield from the House of Pelorus, battered and bent, clattered incongruously with the flesh. A gladiator’s body thudded against the wall and crumpled to the ground. Red blood vibrant against black African skin, the knotted hair matted with blood, one arm missing at the elbow. The absent forearm was thrown in as an afterthought, bearing a raised branding scar, a simple letter “B.”
The light returned as the last of the bodies hit the floor, then gradually dimmed as the hatch was drawn shut, until only pinpricks shone through once more.
The slave boy listened to the continual trickle of a dozen streams of blood dripping through the grate and into the sewer directly below. He wearily lifted a pair of outsized tongs, and grabbed at the first lion, still bearing the mark of the Thracian’s spear. He dragged it in a dozen heaves over to a free space, and then went to grab a meat cleaver from the wall.