way he could, by bringing this primus
“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
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.
“Wait!” a voice said from the doorway. Charon, boatman of the River Styx, stood in the half-light, his hands lifting to his face to remove the skull mask, revealing the wizened head of an old man beneath it.
The slave waited, the meat cleaver poised to fall.
“The lion skins are worth good coin, boy,” the man said. “Do not cut them up. Skin them later.”
Wordlessly, the boy nodded and picked up the tongs once more. The man who had been Charon hung his long dark robes on a peg, next to the mask. He surveyed the chamber with his hands on his hips, observing the long task ahead.
“I want this room clear by tomorrow,” he said. “Lions skinned and separated-teeth, too, if you can. Best cuts from the horse. We feed the dogs tonight.”
There was a low groan from the floor. The boy peered at the battered, savaged form that had once been a man.
“This one lives,” he said, his voice still in the process of breaking, his accent redolent of the coasts of Sardinia.
“Always the way,” Charon sighed, snatching up a long knife from the wall.
“Please…” whispered a voice from the floor. “Help me.”
“What do we do?” the Sardinian boy asked.
Charon peered down at a ruin of a man, his features ravened by lion’s teeth, one eye seemingly gone, his arm dangling limp and bloody, his chest rent by long, deep claw marks to the bone. Even as he breathed, blood seeped from his wounds and dripped through the grate in viscous, dwindling cascades.
Charon handed the slave the knife.
“Do you yet nurse dreams of fighting in the primus?” he asked.
The boy nodded, hopefully.
“Then here marks the commencement of your training,” Charon said. “Kill your first man.”
“Wait,” pleaded the weak voice from the floor. “Show mercy… mercy…”
“Mercy this is,” Charon said flatly. “Well, boy, hurry up.”
The boy moved forward and leaned over the wounded man. He then drew his knife across the man’s throat, spraying them both with a jet of further blood, filling the chamber with an agonised choking noise that went on and on.
“You must press deeper,” Charon said calmly. “That is not a killing wound. Here. Give me the knife.”
Charon took the wet blade from his apprentice, and grabbing the curly hair of his victim firmly in his left fist, he drew the knife hard across the wounded throat in a vigorous sawing motion. A trembling, bloody hand clutched momentarily at the apprentice, but sank to the floor, limp and unmoving.
Charon dropped the head to the floor.
The Sardinian boy made as if to say something, but Charon silenced him with an upraised hand. He listened, intently, in the dripping darkness.
“Do you hear it?” he asked.
Through the drips, through the trickles, there was another noise: a labored, shivering breath.
“Another is alive,” the boy said.
“For but a few moments longer,” Charon said. “Bring the knife. I will show you how to hit the heart.”
The boy clambered over the dead horse to reach Charon, who had found his prey among the lions.
“This one might survive, doctore,” the boy suggested.
Charon looked at him glumly in the half-light.
“I cannot be medicus. With luck and prayer and the greatest of herbs. With careful cosmetics to hide the worst of the wounds. With help to walk on those broken limbs. He might survive. Will you pay for him?”
The boy stammered, unsure.
“I am but a slave, I merely meant- ”
“He is already dead,” Charon said. “We are here to remind him of it.”
He held out the blade once more, and gestured at a space on the chest as it rose and fell.
