The crowd bellowed its approval, the men jumping up and down and punching the air, the women screeching and shaking their bared breasts. After a moment the crowd took up a chant, more and more people joining in until it was booming around the amphitheater:
Though Varro looked on the point of unconsciousness, his face broke into a smile.
“I may be mistaken, but I think they favor you,” he said drily.
X
As the medicus applied a herb poultice to the deep gash in Varro’s arm, the big Roman winced. Lying on the slab on the other side of the room, Crixus let out a contemptuous snort.
“Does Crixus have something to share?” Varro asked pointedly.
“A true gladiator does not whimper at pain, like infant with grazed knee. He bears it proudly, embraces it,” Crixus replied.
“Do you embrace yours while howling like wolf at night’s moon, keeping us all from sleep?”
Sitting on the stone ledge that ran along the back wall, Agron, the elder of the two German brothers, sniggered. His body had been slashed in a dozen places, the skin swollen and purple around the coarse black stitches that had been used to seal the wounds. His right hand was a fat white glove, his three middle fingers, which had been stamped on and broken by his opponent during the games, bound tightly together. He had numerous other cuts and bruises on his body-but his injuries were minor in comparison to his brother’s.
Like Crixus, Duro was stretched out on a slab. However, the younger and smaller of the two brothers was unconscious, which for the moment was undoubtedly a mercy. He had been stabbed twice in the groin, once in the thigh, and once in the shoulder. He had lost a great deal of blood, and for an hour or two his life had hung in the balance. But the medicus had staunched and stitched his wounds, and fed him beef broth to restore his blood and a concoction of healing herbs in hot water. Now his previously irregular heart had resumed its normal rhythm and he was sleeping peacefully.
Crixus narrowed his eyes at the German, and then at Varro.
“I hold no account of sounds made while in the grip of fever. If you stood as injured from battle in the arena you too would find world between waking and sleep one absent reason.”
“Fortunate I do not stand as such. This ludus could not endure both of us shrieking as women.”
This time Agron laughed out loud, and then instantly seemed to regret it, his bandaged hand going to a particularly long and ragged wound in his belly as his face twisted into a moue of pain.
The medicus, who was grinding various herbs into a paste using a mortar and pestle, looked round at him with a sour expression.
“Keep to yourself idiot, lest you wish to undo good tending already done.”
Agron acknowledged the scrawny man with a wave and a grimace, and then settled back against the wall with a deep groaning sigh.
Crixus glanced at him, and with a less combative tone to his voice, he muttered, “It fills heart with sorrow to see the brotherhood reduced. To state the truth of it.”
“It is always difficult to witness a brother’s fall,” Doctore said, entering the room with Spartacus close behind, “but the few victories gained today provide proof that the gladiators favored by the scarred fiend Mantilus are not absent weaknesses.”
Crixus frowned.
“Mantilus is the man Tetraides believed creature of Hades?”
Spartacus nodded.
“Not only Tetraides believes it.”
“And what does the new Champion of Capua believe?” There was a challenge to Crixus’s voice, as there almost always was when he spoke to Spartacus.
Spartacus glanced at him. He was here to be examined by the medicus, one of whose tasks it was to ensure that any cuts or grazes picked up in the arena were clean of dirt and free from inflammation. The Thracian sat on a stone bench as the medicus hovered around him, applying a white paste from his pestle to one or two minor wounds.
“In things other than evil spirits,” Spartacus said.
“You have laid eyes on this Mantilus?”
Spartacus nodded.
“Once. His attempt to unsettle was not successful.”
“This was at the games?” Crixus said.
“In the villa.”
Crixus looked surprised.
“He has been here?”
“He accompanied Hieronymus to feast honoring Crassus’s arrival in Capua,” Varro explained. “Lurking by his master’s side like shadow.”
“A shadow,” Crixus murmured, looking thoughtful.
“Like the apparition your eyes claimed to see in this ludus on that very night,” the medicus cackled.
Crixus scowled at him.
Narrowing his eyes at the medicus, Oenomaus said, “Of what do you speak?”
With undisguised relish the medicus replied, “Crixus roused me from slumber to claim witnessing of shadow moving past doorway.”
“It was no shadow,” Crixus growled. “It was a man. As real as you or I.”
“Yet I could find no such intruder,” the medicus said. “And the gate was locked, as always.”
“Why did you not speak of it before?” Oenomaus asked Crixus.
Crixus glared at the medicus.
“Could I have, absent ridicule upon the hearing of it? I lie feverish of late, senses absent. The gods fill head with all manner of visions. You would have called this another such.”
“Perhaps it was,” Spartacus suggested.
“No,” Crixus barked. “Mind was sound and thoughts clear.”
“And yet the gate was locked,” Varro said, and shrugged. “A deception of light perhaps?”
Crixus shook his head stubbornly.
“I am certain of what I saw.”
Spartacus lay on his bunk, unmoving, staring up at the ceiling. Yellow light lapped the rough stone, giving the illusion that it was drawing in air and breathing it out again, like something alive. However, it was not this that he was staring at. His thoughts were turned inward, mulling over the events of the past few weeks. Suddenly he sat up and crossed to the door.
“Doctore,” he shouted, pounding on the thick, coarsely hewn wood. “Doctore.”
There was the clump of hobnails on the other side of the door, and the snarling voice of a house- guard.
“Silence.”
Spartacus ignored him.
“Doctore,” he shouted again.
“Still your tongue or-”
“You will do nothing,” interrupted Oenomaus’s rich, deep voice. “Open door.”
There was a moment’s pause, in which Spartacus imagined the guard staring in defiance, and Doctore staring back, his eyes like chips of ice, his gaze implacable. Then there was a muttered curse and the jangle of keys, followed by a scrape of metal in the lock. Next moment the door swung open and Oenomaus stepped into the cell.
