Spartacus (19 page)

That object the Senate, at length aroused, had stressed as the suppression of the slave rebellion. Both consuls, having suffered in their southern properties from the ravagings of the Free Legions, were in complete agreement for once with the policy of the Senate.

All the forces available in Central Italy were to be taken against the Spartacists. They amounted to three legions, eighteen thousand foot and horse, besides auxiliaries brought from Cisalpine Gaul. The slave-horde under Spartacus was believed to number at least twenty thousand men. But it was composed of slaves, and the odds therefore negligible.

Yet both consuls were discreet and cautious, patricians, cold men, viewing the slave revolt with neither fear nor contempt. They did not underrate the Bandit or his power and generalship. This was a thing to be stamped upon, the slaves killed or recaptured, themselves to win credit and a triumph through Rome. So the winter passed but slowly for them.

Pass it did, however, and in the early days of Spring they took the army south, cautiously, towards Lucania. A host of spies in that country sent them constant word of the movements of the slaves. The Thracian still lingered at Nola with the majority of his following. But they learned it was his intention to attack Capua itself, with great machines built him by a renegade patrician, Hiketas. The consuls hastened their march, for spring was quick in the land.

They came through a country as yet undesolated by the slave armies: for desertions to the Gladiators had almost ceased. All believed that the Free Legions would be crushed before summer; and, watching the passing, horse and foot, of the army of the consuls, this opinion found additional weight among the slave populace. Men and women, they would speak in their sheds over-night of the scenes to follow the suppression of the Bandit. Thinking of that returning passage of the army of the Masters they had seen press south, they would lick dry lips, the slaves, full of a sickened curiosity, seeing their endless days of toil and the whipping-block as upholding lives pleasant and safe in comparison with those who had joined the Criminals of Capua.

But at Nola spring was also finding the Free Legions active. Bands of slaves scoured the surrounding country, for provisions and iron were running low in Nola. With knowledge of that fact Kleon the eunuch was determined to put into operation his plan of pacifying the Italiot cities and gaining them as willing allies. Gershom ben Sanballat, who had captured Nuceria, was accordingly sent to pacify that city, to relieve it from the rule of a brutal Syrian, who had been acting in a fashion semi-independent of the slaves in Nola. The Jew's instructions were to call together the principal men, propose or force an alliance upon them; and demand a monthly tribute of corn and wine. Then he was to hold south into Lucania to every town and city on the way to Metapontum, and consolidate the country into a slave province, yielding provisions and tribute.

But his legion could not be spared to accompany him. Beard-combing and sardonic, the Jew set out, taking with him fifty Bithynians and his cook, the woman Judith. Kleon watched them go, and had a cold twinge of regret. For it was a mission altogether desperate, this of Gershom ben Sanballat's. If the Syrian in Nuceria refused to be moved the Jew might well have to set to the re-conquest of Lucania and South Campania with no greater force than his fifty Bithynians. Doubtlessly his cook would prove of aid.

Meantime, to the east of the Matese mountains, the consuls learned from a captured and tortured slave-rebel that Spartacus at the head of a considerable force had broken out from Nola a month before and crossed into Apulia. Seeing no reason to doubt the news, Gellius and Arrius, having finished with the slave (who grinned and died, being a wild-humoured Thracian), turned east, left Capua to what fate might come on it, crossed the mountains, forded the Fortore into Apulia; and were presently apprised of irregularly armed bands of scouts falling back in front of their march.

[ii]

That hot spring day when the consuls forded Fortore, the tribune Crixus sat on a rock under the shadow of Mount Garganus and stared across that sea which was yet to become the Adriatic. Below his feet was the camp of his Germans; and looking down at that camp, he yawned.

‘This business of commanding Germans is like milking aurochsen,' he said to the man by his side.

Brennus, lying flat on his belly, grinned. He was very content and filled with food, and blinked in the light, like a lizard. But the little tribune was wearied.

‘I wish Kleon would commence the march on Capua and send us word to join him. This business of chasing Apulian sheep for fresh mutton is as tame as a day in the old arena in company with a fat instructor.'

Brennus reflected. ‘When we capture Capua I'll ask Kleon for his share of the women we take. For he'll have no need of them.'

‘Nor Spartacus of you. He has little patience with bulls – even wild ones from the forests of Gaul.'

‘Gods!' said Brennus, ‘to hear it again – a wild aurochs herd bellow on the evening's edge!'

But Crixus had ceased to listen. He was shading his eyes in the sun. ‘A messenger.'

The man came scrambling up to their ledge, and halted, panting, and told his news. A minute thereafter and Crixus and Brennus had gained the camp, where already the Germans were arming in confusion. Pushing through them, Crixus reached his tent and commanded a bucina to blow and assemble the centurions. The wearied light had vanished from the eyes of the little tribune. He addressed the assembled Germans as a boy who planned to snare a fox.

‘Unless the Masters know these lands well, they're already in our hands.'

‘How?' asked a follower of Gannicus.

‘They can attack us only from the north, and think they have trapped us here. But we have the narrow pass into the mountains to the west. That they don't know, and will pay little heed to their rear. Now, we'll await them here, but send a messenger back through the pass, to ride to Nola and summon reinforcements. Then the Strategos will bring his legions and fall on the Masters from behind.'

In an hour a messenger was riding for Nola. All that evening he rode, making a wide detour to the south to avoid the Romans. He was a Gaul, one of Brennus' scouts, and spared neither himself nor his long-tailed mount. By midnight they heard him shouting outside the walls of Nola, and the Northern Gate was opened for him by Gershom's Bithynians.

One recognized him. ‘What news from Crixus?'

‘Good news,' the Gaul called, and rode into the winding alleys of the town.

At the house where the Strategos lodged a sleepy Thracian would have barred the way for the Gaul. ‘Spartacus sleeps.'

The Gaul showed his teeth. ‘We don't sleep in Apulia. Out of my way, horse-eater, or I'll damage the wall by beating your head against it.'

‘Of that we'll make test,' said Ialo, helpfully, and now fully waked. But as they glared at each other an inner door opened.

‘What is it?'

It was a woman, wrapped in a dark night-mantle, her hair a great shining cloak. Lavinia, the woman of Spartacus. Ialo glowered.

‘This pestiferous Gaul wants to awaken the Strategos. He says he comes from Apulia.'

Lavinia considered the splashed messenger. Then, disregarding the Thracian's grumbles, beckoned him into the inner room and closed the door. Unabashed, Ialo leant his head against a crack and listened. Beyond that inner room the Strategos slept in a closet.

Ialo heard the messenger speak the message of Crixus, hurriedly, for he thirsted for action, being young, and was in no mind to miss the coming battle below Garganus. He heard the woman promise to awaken Spartacus and deliver that message. He heard the hurried steps of the Gaul returning towards the door, and so hearing, himself hastily retreated to his seat and spear, and appeared to doze.

The Gaul was riding out of Nola just as the dawn came into the sky, bright, tremulous, tremendous, a shining dawn into which he rode. By early afternoon he had crossed the great Stone Way, and in a little was amongst the mountains. He might have reached Garganus by nightfull but for the fact that in a narrow defile he came suddenly on a band of Roman velites. At that sight he laughed, then unslung his axe and spurred forward his horse.

[iii]

An hour later Crixus heard of the nearing of the Roman scouts and that the main army of the consuls was rounding the far shoulder of Garganus. This he had anticipated, seeing its purpose to drive him back against the mountain-wall. To delay its advance, he sent two hundred slaves through the narrow corridor in the hills. These went under the command of Brennus and had orders to vex the Roman rear, but to make no disclosure of how they had gained an exit from the slaves' apparent trap.

Gellius and Arrius, cautious commanders, camped for the night and were setting up the usual entrenchments when they heard the slave chant come out of the darkness to their rear. A moment later a shower of arrows skimmed over the half-erected palisades, and, with the blowing of horns and the waving of long swords, a band of barbarian slaves attempted to storm the southwards dyke.

The legionaries, hastily dropping their picks, repelled the attack with ease. The slaves faded off into the darkness, still chanting. But they did not go far. Every now and then an arrow would wing out of the darkness around the camp, quivering in the beams of the consuls' tents, or striking down a legionary through some unguarded joint. This endured until Gellius, irritated, despatched a century of horse which routed the slaves from their position.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to pursue and exterminate them in the moonless night. The horsemen contented themselves with a wide patrol of the camp.

‘Where did this band come from?' wondered Arrius.

‘No doubt from stray raiding or foraging,' said Gellius. ‘We'll have many such bands to deal with after the killing of the Thracian tomorrow.'

And on that, in full armour, they lay down to rest till an hour before sunrise.

[iv]

All that night the armed Germans slept on edge under the shelter of Garganus. But Crixus did not sleep. He walked to and fro, hour after hour, awaiting news from the detachment of Brennus beyond the corridor. For he had arranged that Brennus, after an abortive attack on the Roman camp, should set out westwards, meet the slave reinforcements under Spartacus, and then return to bring the Germans news of these reinforcements.

But no Brennus came, and Crixus, despite his light heart, began to know anxiety. Once he went and watched the sea, and another time himself walked far up the corridor into the hills. But it was unwise to leave his Germans for long, and he speedily returned.

To ease his mind of the constant conflict of hope and surmise, he sat down in the deeper darkness that heralded the morning and began to whet his sword and polish the Greek helmet he wore. And in that hour, a great loneliness coming upon him, he sat with his head in his hands, thinking of the morrow.

His Gods were dim and he had no faith, nor even now realized the need of either. Only a wondering came on him that the blood should be so warm in his body and his fingers so swift and sure as they plied the whetstone. And tomorrow . . .

And for some reason he thought of the woman Elpinice, and, though with dim Gods, shivered in the early mist that rose round the sleeping camp. For perhaps her spirit was still in this ill land of Italy, following in the wake of the Free Legions still. What though it did? It would never harm him, as he never it. And so strong upon him did this imagining grow that he turned his head with a jerk in order that he might look in her face. Then he laughed, and wiped his forehead, and stood up; and below him, in darkness, heard the far sighing of the sea.

An hour before sunrise, while the earth was yet grey, and the soaring heights of Mount Garganus grey turning to gold, and so slowly to the hue of blood, Brennus came back through the pass alone.

‘There is no sign of Spartacus or the other legions.' And panted. ‘The Masters have broken camp. I ran all the way through the pass. They cannot be far off now.'

Then on Crixus there came a fine gaiety. And suddenly it seemed to him that the air was sweet and good; though he had never noticed such things before. And in that early-morning light there clung to his eyelids a fine web from the night-time mist; and the wonder of that on his eyelids was strange on his spirit for a moment. Then he called to the bucinator to sound.

The hoarse howl of the horn was answered by the shouts of the awakened Germans. From caverns and crannies, pits and lean-to's, they swarmed out, the slaves from the North, yellow-haired, most of them, though some were barbarians from a further land, furth of the great East rivers, sallow of skin, dark-haired, dark-skinned. They marshalled in hasty ranks, and Crixus mounted his horse and rode to and fro, from group to group, jesting, as was his manner.

And the Germans, beating their shields, sang the great bass war-songs of their tribes.

Soon arrows began to fall in their midst, and many lay down, while those with bows or slings endeavoured to return that arrowhail. Then the Romans, advancing evenly across open ground, opened to allow their horse to charge.

Remembering the inadequacy of the German long sword to face charging cavalry, Crixus sent the order from rank to rank that they thrust not at the riders but at the legs and bellies of the horses. But at the first sight of the Roman charge the tribes had instinctively prepared for this. The front rank of the Germans knelt on one knee, swords swinging low, the second stood crouching, whirling their blades; and these gleamed in the early light like the wheels of chariots driven through a ford. Then, with wild yells, they received the Roman charge.

It broke and fell back and came on again. At first the slaves had taken it with the bitten lips and uncertain hearts of slaves who fronted the attack of the Masters. But now the slow German blood began to stir, and they fought with a wild ferocity. Unavailing, leaving a heap of writhing horses, the cavalry drew off and Gellius advanced his legions.