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
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. “
“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.
“You seem sure of it.”
“I have been told.”
She nodded, thoughtfully.
“Is there any hope?” she asked.
“None,” Spartacus said.
“You are honest.”
“This is no time for deception.”
“You speak true. But they will remember me anyway. If you show me how to fight.”
Varro snorted contemptuously in the corner.
“Me?” Spartacus said. “I should offer advice to a woman of the Getae?”
“I am already dead,” she said. “Show me how to take a Roman lion with me, purely for spite.”
Spartacus recalled the many lessons of Oenomaus, and spoke as his trainer would have done.
“You are not unarmed,” he said. “You have your chains. You have the sun and the folly of your opponents. You have the sand and dust of the arena floor.”
As he spoke, he realized that his audience had grown. The woman’s fellow convicts now stood attentively before the bars that divided them, listening to his every word.
“Any small thing can be used as a weapon. The arena is kept clear of stones, but look for what may have been left by those that came before you. Bones. Nails. Splinters.”
She nodded.
“Understand, too,” Spartacus continued, “that you are going to die. Nothing will change that.”
The slaves grimly met his gaze.
“We knew,” she said. “Inside ourselves, we knew that we would never make it far. But it was better to be free, if only for those moments.”
“Then you will be free again,” Spartacus said. “You will be free for the time it takes for the lions to eat you.”
“We will fight,” she said.
“Fortuna be with you,” Spartacus replied.
The heavy door to the arena swung open, and several armored guards came in. They unbolted the door to the neighbouring cell, prodding at the chained slaves, herding them toward the light.
The woman looked at Spartacus as she was ushered from the cell, calling out to him as she and her fellow convicts were taken on their last journey.
“Remember me,” she said. “Remember I was free for a few moments.”
“Who are you?” he called after her.
“I am Medea!” she called. “What is your name,
“My name is…” he began, but the great door had slammed shut.
“She killed a Roman,” Varro said quietly. “A Roman like me.”
“I have killed many,” Spartacus responded with a shrug. “As have you!”
“All the same,” Varro said. “My opponents volunteered or paid for crimes past. Hers did not.”
The wind drew the stench swiftly over to the balcony. There was none of the modest cedar wood and Asian spices of the recent funeral. Instead, Lucretia’s nose caught a whiff of seared flesh and singed hair, with the distinctive tang of cheap lamp oil.
The novelty had worn off for the crowd. In the first throes of the burning, there were cheers at the screams and pleadings, and gasps of excitement as certain articles of clothing seemed more flammable than others. There were jeers and mock gasps at the most colorful of curses yelled at the watching Romans by some of the older slaves, but as the fires rendered them first inarticulate, and the fumes rendered them unconscious, there was nothing to see but a series of burning carcasses.
“You would think this rabble would crave the sight of justice done,” Batiatus murmured,
“It
