raised shield, and stuck fast. The weight of the trident dragged down Barca’s shield arm, and the Carthaginian fervently tried to shuck the dead weight as the Thracian launched his second attack.
Spartacus whirled the net around his head, feeling the strong pull of the round lead weights at its edges. He leaned forward and caught Barca’s head with the edge of the net, causing the hulking Carthaginian to yell out in pain and surprise. Barca held out his sword to block the net on its next swing, but Spartacus had stepped another two paces closer, causing his net to wrap around Barca’s sword. Barca pulled back, in an attempt to drag Spartacus and his net closer to him, only for Spartacus to let go of the net altogether.
Barca’s eyes widened in surprise. He lost his footing on the wet sand and mud, pitching backward and landing with a cry of expelled air on the soft sand. He scrambled to get back to his feet, but slipped a second time, while Spartacus grabbed the fallen trident. The Thracian jammed the business end of the trident-Barca’s impaled shield still attached-into the Carthaginian’s face, temporarily blinding him as Spartacus snatched up Barca’s fallen sword and-
“Stop!” Oenomaus’ voice rang through the courtyard.
Spartacus froze mid-action, ready to stab the sword down between the ribs of the man who had previously wielded it. The gladiators clapped politely, while Barca disdainfully scraped wet mud and sand off his body.
Barca stared silently, as if willing daggers to fall from the sky and stab Spartacus to death.
“Observe how circumstances can change. Barca fought with his weapons of habit, on ground he thought familiar. Spartacus fought with weapons unfamiliar, and…” even Oenomaus could not resist a smile, “did so in a manner most unorthodox. The change in terrain has served to his advantage.”
Oenomaus waited for his words to sink in, as the rain continued to spatter down upon the gathering of men. They stared back at him attentively, squinting as the water ran into their eyes.
“Enough,” Oenomaus declared. “To the baths, let oil replace rain.”
The gladiators trudged indoors, dawdling only insofar as seemed appropriate, determined to prove that nothing so ineffectual as mere rain could cause them to retreat. Oenomaus was last to leave the square, just as he was habitually the first to arrive there each morning.
“A moment, doctore,” Batiatus called, as the towering warrior descended the steps toward the steam room.
“Your will,” Oenomaus said. He stood, the water pooling at his feet, and waited for his master’s instruction.
“I require five men, in the best condition.”
“I will set to purpose,” Oenomaus replied. “But the next exhibition is not until-”
“Not for Capuan rabble,” Batiatus explained. “Those ungrateful vermin will have to wait their turn. A new audience awaits us, in Neapolis.”
“Ah,” Oenomaus said. “I have heard speak of the death of Pelorus.”
“Word would not travel so fast,” Batiatus muttered, “if I were to remove tongues with knife.”
“Older voices recalled days spent under roof of this ludus,” Oenomaus said. “They meant no malice in its telling.”
“No matter,” Batiatus said. “The men will be on cart tonight, and bound for Atella by mid-morning, and Neapolis by night.”
“Mercury would struggle to sprint such a course,” Oenomaus observed guardedly.
“I myself will be spending the next two days in cursed litter,” Batiatus scowled. “Find carter to add human cargo for extra coin.”
“I shall make preparations for us.”
“You will remain.”
“But-”
“You will train the men in preparation for exhibition here in Capua. Ashur will handle accounts in my absence.”
Oenomaus looked troubled.
“And Domina?”
“Lucretia?” Batiatus laughed. “The woman only wants the wants of her ‘friend.’ And her friend has business in Neapolis. Trust me, doctore, she makes preparation for departure as we speak!”
III
He dreamed of forests in snow, a sunset shot through with pink and bright orange that lingered on the ground, and icy trees, making the winter seem warm-until one touched it. He tramped through the trees in armor bought at a high price from Greek merchants. He was one of many Thracian warriors strung out through the forest like grazing deer, their breath lingering on the air like phantoms. Each man bore the round shield and crested helmet of a hoplite, with greaves and spear and leaf-shaped sword.
The Greeks avoided war in winter. They rarely fought on mountains. Their battles all so conveniently arranged when everyone was available to meet on the plains, and before the weather turned bad. Their armor similarly was seasonal, and with little thought of the uses to which it might be put to in cold, forbidding Thrace.
Buskins beneath the greaves kept much of the cold away from his legs. An animal skin, lashed tightly to his chest, kept snow at bay with its tawny fur. Only his hands felt the cold-barely able to grip the heavy spear as he advanced, just one warrior in the ragged line of Thracians, picking through the forest.
There was a howling. A distant, mournful howling like that of a wounded wolf. He knew what it was, and that it required hilltops and a strong breeze. He peered through the trees in search of a distant ridge, in time to catch the sight of a dragon’s head flashing bronze in the dying sunlight. It appeared above the hill, a long streamer-flag playing out behind it, more and more of its long metal neck becoming visible as its bearer reached the summit of the hill.
Another! There was a second dragon head-it, too, a decorative mounting on a long metal tube, held aloft by one of the bestial standard-bearers of the Getae. The winter wind gusted along the hilltop and into the dragon’s mouth, creating the mournful howling, extending the streamers out behind it almost horizontally.
Sura had warned him of a red serpent. Was this what she had meant?
He sniffed, the Thracian cold biting at his nostrils, and squinted at the standards on the hills. His fellow auxiliaries stared along with him, peering into the fading light, searching for archers. But there were only the twin metal standards and their characteristic sound… and a chariot, pulled by two horses.
“The leader of the Getae?” Bronton mused from close by, leaning on his lance.
“No,” he said. “See how the tattered dress flaps in the wind. See how the arms are raised in incantation, dripping with charms and bones and bracelets. It is one of their warrior-priestesses.”
The wind dipped, lessening the unearthly lament from the horns, affording the briefest of moments when a human voice could carry down from the hill. It was an unearthly, ululating cry, like the call of some mythical carrion bird. The priestess jumped from her chariot and danced on the hilltop, jerking to a music that only she could hear, stamping on the ground and calling down unseen retribution from the multicolored sky.
“Their spells will not save them,” Bronton muttered. It was at that moment that the axe hit him.
It clanged into the side of his Greek-made helmet, bouncing harmlessly off into the trees, but heralding a danger closer at hand than a mountain-top sorceress. Getae warriors leapt from behind trees, and out of holes in the ground, throwing off snowy cloaks in a sudden mist of white powder.
He watched as Bronton swung to meet the new assault, screamed a futile negation as Bronton’s spear caught on a tree-root, watched in melancholy slow-motion as the hulking warrior struggled, slowly, too slowly, to prepare himself to meet the Getae charge.
The soldier disappeared, engulfed beneath a wave of the animal skins and skull-masks of the wild Getae warriors. The Thracian line was stretched out too far. Its Greek armors were designed for a phalanx-a push-and- shove with locked shields on a notional Boeotian plain, far, too far, removed from this cold, chaotic day on the
