The Sword of Revenge (44 page)

Gadoric ignored the Roman cavalry. He raised himself in the saddle, one hand on the horse’s neck and the rest of his body weight held by his knees. It was stunning horsemanship and he seemed to tower over the men coming at him. Just as they converged he threw his spear, aiming it over their heads at the solitary horseman behind them, but the man was too far away, so it was defiant rather than effective. The Roman spears, cast at close range, took him in the exposed chest, piercing his decorated leather armour, but the weight of his charge carried him on and he burst, still upright, through the line of attackers like a maddened boar. The horse, which had also taken a spear, faltered, but Gadoric hauled on the reins to keep its head up, using his other hand to pull out his sword. Marcellus heard the shout as it filled the valley, not a shout of pain, but a high-pitched war cry, emitted from the throat of a fatally wounded Celtic warrior.

The man he was trying to reach spun his horse awkwardly, attempting to flee as the Celt broke the Roman line. Sheer speed carried Gadoric on and he closed on his quarry, but Marcellus saw the shoulders slip as they came abreast, saw the upraised sword slip from the warrior’s hand. The huge body slid sideways at the same time that his animal’s forelegs gave way and both horse and rider crashed to the ground, the sound of breaking wood quite audible in the evening air as the weight of the falling horseman snapped the spear shafts still embedded in his chest. A great cloud of dust billowed up in the air as both horse and rider slithered along the hard earth, grinding to a halt, the animal twitching wildly, the warrior totally still.

Marcellus kicked his own horse and rode up, like everyone else, eager to examine the body. Porcius was looking down at the corpse unhappily, but the stranger, who had approached cautiously, was smiling, his sallow-complexioned face lined with pleasure. The prematurely grey hair took the dying sun, seeming to shine. He pulled his head back, filled his mouth and with an over-elaborate gesture spat on the corpse of the dead Gadoric.

‘We’ll take the body back to the camp,’ said Porcius.

‘No,’ snapped the stranger. ‘Leave him here. Let the vultures feed on his bones.’

‘He deserves better,’ Porcius replied.

‘Does he, Roman? I say you leave him here.’

Porcius’s voice took on a hard edge. ‘Why should I listen to you?’

The cloak was thrown back, to reveal armour every bit as gorgeous as that of the man who had just died. ‘I can’t see it will help in the negotiations or please your legate, Titus Cornelius, if you choose to insult the new leader of the slave army.’

The man laughed, a high-pitched cackle which echoed off the surrounding hills, then with a mocking air, he bowed low in the saddle.

Aquila’s pony had tried, but eventually he had had to dismount and run, leaving it, legs splayed and chest heaving half a league from the spot where Gadoric had ridden into the trap. He heard the war cry loud and clear, knowing as he did that he was too late to intervene, but he ran on nevertheless. The silence made him stop in the trees, and breathing heavily he walked carefully to the edge. The ring of horsemen was still, looking inwards, so Gadoric was in there, dead: there was no way his friend would have allowed himself to be taken alive. He heard the orders for the cavalry to form up, watched as the ring broke and horsemen fell into formation. Three people still sat over the inert body, easily identifiable by the finely wrought armour. One was a Roman officer, the other a youth who looked about his own age, but it was the third man that took his attention.
The silver grey hair on that sallow-complexioned face was unmistakable. So was the voice.

‘Well, Porcius Catus, will you and this young man consent to accompany me back to Agrigentum? After all, it is fitting that a general should have an escort.’

The head went back and the man let out that slightly mad laugh, the same one Aquila had heard when Pentheus had buried Flaccus in six feet of golden grain.

Hypolitas and Pentheus, with four of the other leaders, left by one of the smaller city gates and made their way through the Roman lines with just the occasional creak of harness as evidence of their passing. The legionaries slipped into the city through the same gate, spreading out quickly, house to house, to take and disarm the slave army in manageable groups. Titus, with a small escort, made his way to the square before the palace, there to coordinate the actions of his men, while Marcellus, fretting and impatient, waited with Cholon and his father outside the city till the outcome of the operation was certain. No amount of pleading had gained him a place on such a dangerous enterprise.

Men died, Roman and slave, despite Titus’s attempts at a peaceful takeover, but he was successful. The slaves greeted the dawn in a city controlled by Roman soldiers, while the bulk of
their forces, camped on the plain or holding the river lines to the east and west, found that their refuge, the city of Agrigentum, had been taken from them. Worse for their morale was the news that Gadoric was dead: that their leaders, in return for personal safety, had sold them back into bondage. Even against the smaller numbers of Romans, whatever hope they had seemed to crumble, for they lacked the heart to put up a proper fight.

Cholon stood by the main landward gate of Agrigentum as the recaptured slaves were marched out. He recognised one face, that of the man who had greeted him at the very spot the day he arrived; then he had been happy, a mite cocky, his eyes full of hope and laughter, now those same eyes took in the figure of the Greek in a different way. They had lost all expression, as though the man behind them had ceased to exist, was in fact a mere shell, not human. Two young boys stumbled along beside him, his sons by the likeness. One carried the same lacklustre expression as his father but the other son looked at Cholon with such spirited loathing that the Greek had to steady himself to avoid taking a step back.

‘You will have the thanks of the Senate for this, Lucius Falerius,’ said the governor. ‘A magnificent result, without blood or financial loss.’

‘Just as long as we have a harvest I’ll be happy. As for the thanks of the Senate, I fear that will be
muted when I introduce a statute to protect the working conditions of the slaves.’

The governor, Silvanus, did not want to talk about that, lest by words he became associated with such a dangerous decree. ‘You sail today?’

‘I sail tomorrow. That pompous windbag, Hypolitas, sails today.’

‘I thought you would depart together.’

‘I cannot abide another day with that man,’ snapped Lucius. ‘How he ever came to lead this revolt escapes me. Anyone with half a brain would run a mile from such a creature. As for the others, the so-called leaders, they’re no more than a bunch of peasants, for all their stolen Greek finery. Mutton dressed as lamb.’

Marcellus felt the same as his father; having been exposed to the Palmyran Greek for the entire journey across Sicily, he found his wheedling tone and constant self-regard offensive. He could not know that the fire that had made his words so effective was gone. Only one Roman had ever heard him address a crowd, or listened to him expound the cause of liberty in hushed tones, his hands weaving a spell.

Aquila would be immune now; the arrangements Hypolitas had made with Lucius Falerius Nerva, which were the talk of the island, meant that no one cared about him any more. He did not wait to see
the slave army brought back to their farms in chains; he built a pyre for Gadoric, burnt his friend’s body with proper honour, then rode across the island, ahead of Lucius’s party, to Messana. There he took working passage on a small trading ship to Italy and he was waiting in Rhegnum when they landed. A crowd had gathered to see this spectacle, since every boat that put into the port had foretold the event.

His anger, so close to being madness, nearly boiled over when he saw the fine clothes they wore, worse still was the litter waiting to take them to their new home and the escort of cavalry provided by the praetor. They attracted crowds wherever they went, so trailing the party presented no difficulty; it was like a royal progress on the busy road through Brutium, Lucania and on, to the upland Samnite city of Beneventum, which stood at the centre of Italy, surrounded by high mountains.

Their villa overlooked a fast-flowing river, standing on a rocky promontory, affording fine views over the city on the opposite bank. The escort departed to be replaced by a smaller number of locally recruited guards. Hypolitas was ecstatic, standing on his terrace, knowing life would be good, knowing he would no longer have to obey the dictates of other men, and if he had to suffer the company of Pentheus and his like, who seemed incapable of thought, could not read or write,
whose sole intent, as they had travelled towards this place, seemed to be the best way to fill the villa with wine and women, that was a small price to pay for a man who, at best, had never occupied any accommodation better than a small square room shared with other household slaves.

He turned from the terrace, looking at the spacious bedchamber that was now his. There were other rooms, a private bath-house for his use alone, a study, and a grand atrium in which he could receive guests. The local magistrates would come, as would the leading citizens of the Samnite state, after all, the King of the Slaves was famous. He would hold banquets that would be the talk of the city, build a library that local scholars would come to consult, engage in learned discussion with philosophers and perhaps write a treatise that would, when he was dead, keep the name Hypolitas alive for future generations.

The local Samnite guards were dumbfounded, for they had heard nothing in the night. Every bedchamber had the same names on the walls, written in blood, but they meant nothing to these men. Who were Gadoric and Flaccus and Phoebe? And what did it mean, that drawing of an eagle in flight? The only thing in Hypolitas’s bedchamber, apart from that and the bloody signatures, was a crushed walnut shell on the floor of the terrace.
They found the bodies over the next few days as they were washed up on the rock-strewn banks of the rushing mountain river, well downstream. Four of them had died through having their throats cut, including Hypolitas, who had also lost his tongue.

The grey-haired one who had been known as Pentheus was different. The skin had been flayed from his back, his face was a hollow pulp and they had neither the time nor the inclination to search for his missing hands and feet.

EPILOGUE

The news of the murder of Hypolitas and the others reached Lucius Falerius fifty leagues north of Neapolis, where he had stopped his journey to rest. Titus had gone ahead, to take his news to the Senate, something that would raise his name in the public mind and aid his bid in the forthcoming elections for the praetorship, which would, in turn, provide a route to the command of armies. Marcellus, naturally, had stayed with his father, using the time to visit the nearby shrine of the Sybil at Cumae, one-time home to another, who had made Tarquinus Superbus squirm to get hold of only part of her predictions.

Lucius was on the mend; the conclusion of events in Sicily and weeks in a static camp had raised his spirits and allowed his body to recover. Not that such a thing allowed for any softening in his rigid
interpretation of right and wrong. His response to the news from Beneventum was entirely lacking in sympathy. ‘Whoever did this had the best interests of the Roman treasury at heart, don’t you think, and I cannot believe the world will mourn for the likes of Hypolitas.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Marcellus, with a look that Lucius understood.

His father ignored the implications of the look, that perhaps he had sent the assassins; his mind was on other things. Given this bloodless success in Sicily, Lucius was probably more potent now than he had ever been, so he would probably find it easy to push his reforms through the centuries, which would secure the power of the
Optimates
and consign the
Populares
and their madcap ideas to the scrap heap. After that he might retire; one more speech to the Senate would suffice, to say his farewells and watch as the tears of hypocrisy flowed. His son was pushing a scroll towards him that he could not really be bothered to read.

‘You saw the Sybil?’ he asked quickly.

‘Heard more than saw,’ Marcellus replied, dropping the scroll on the desk. He tried to keep the unhappiness out of his voice, talking quickly to cover it up. ‘She hangs in a wicker cage, in a huge cavern, high above the heads of those who visit. I think they have it there so that her voice echoes off the walls to increase the effect of her prophecies.’

‘And did she prophesy for you, Marcellus?’

‘She did not, father. All I got, for my overgenerous donation to the Temple of
Apollo
, was a single sentence telling me that I would inherit everything I needed to secure my future from my father, who had secured the past for me.’

‘By name?’ asked his father.

Marcellus nodded. ‘The priests must have some method of telling the Sybil whom she’s addressing.’