‘Bah!’ Batiatus snarled, his congenial expression morphing in an instant into one of stormy-faced wrath. ‘Your damned requests never change, do they?! Why can’t you bloody be like Viridovix here, eh?! He takes the wine and women I offer him with gratitude, as a good slave should! Or even Crixus, as bloody strange as he is! At least he’s obedient and grateful! Yet you, you with your accursed attitude, you spurn my gifts and demand the impossible of me! Jupiter take your cock! I’d have you flogged and thrown in the underground cells for a few days for your insolence, if I thought it would have any effect on you. Mark my words though, General: one more act of such defiance and I will throw you in the dungeon. Bah, well you’ll get nothing from me tonight then. I spit on your victories in the arena! You’re my property, you ungrateful street mutt! Everything you are you owe to me, and yet you retain this damned attitude of disobedience and insolence! I’ve almost lost my patience with you, almost…’
The General kept his head bowed and remained silent through this exchange, and when it was over, he offered no response. Viridovix quickly jumped in to prevent the situation from escalating further.
‘Master, was there something you wanted to discuss with us? I do not mean to interrupt you, of course, and I am eternally grateful for the gifts you bestow upon me, for I am not worthy of them…’
Batiatus’s stormy face lightened a bit at Viridovix’s flattery, and he cleared his throat before turning to talk to him.
‘Aye, aye. I have some important visitors coming to the villa tonight who wish to meet you two.’
‘Visitors, master?’
‘Yes. Senators, in fact. Men of very high rank. They were impressed by your recent victories and wish to see a demonstration of your fighting techniques. You will entertain us over dinner, all three of you. After that, Viridovix, Domitia’s House of Pleasures awaits you. You, Crixus, can sit and get drunk on your own, as is your wont. And you, General, bah, well you can go and sulk by yourself in your cell for all I care.’
‘I will do whatever my master orders with regards to these men. Hail Batiatus!’ Viridovix cried.
Crixus did not speak, but he did salute Batiatus stiffly and formally, staring straight ahead with a hollow-eyed stare as he did.
‘That’s it my champions, that’s what I like to hear, that’s what I like to see!’ Batiatus cried with a broad, proud grin.
He then, however, turned to the General and scowled darkly, his eyes cold and hard as winter icicles.
‘You’d best not show any of your damned insolence at this dinner, or so help me you’ll not see daylight for a year,’ he growled. ‘I’ll throw you into those cells until the flesh rots from your bones and your eyeballs fall out! Do you understand, slave?! Your arena victories be damned, I say. That’s right, fuck your victories! Don’t you dare bring that attitude of yours into my villa later, don’t you fucking dare!’
‘Yes Master,’ the General murmured, almost choking on the words as they crawled from between his lips.
‘Good, good. Know your place, slave. It is better for everyone that way. Oh, and Viridovix, there is one more thing.’
‘Yes master?’
‘There is a new gladiator coming into your cells tomorrow. He’s been in the dungeon for the past three days, as is standard procedure here. He’s a Thracian prisoner that Lucius Sertorius recently acquired for our ludus, and unfortunately he is just as surly and defiant as you were when you first came here. I’d like you to show him the ropes before dinner, maybe give him a bit of a talking to … You know, some advice on the virtues of obedience, as you have learned so well during your time here.’
‘Certainly master. I will make sure his defiance is broken.’
‘Yes, yes. Feel free to beat him if you must. Just take care not to damage him too badly. I expect him to start his training and conditioning the day after tomorrow at sunrise.’
‘Master, pray tell, what is the new recruit’s name?’
‘I believe he is called … Spartacus. Yes, yes, that’s it. Spartacus.’
38
BATIATUS
August, 73BC. Batiatus’s Ludus
‘You’re short,’ Viridovix remarked with a sneer.
The man named Spartacus, a stocky and relatively hairless man with common and unobtrusive features, glared at Viridovix with wrath-blazing eyes. These eyes, deep set and small, were eyes that never rested; always they darted from this object to that, analysing, scrutinising. His face was one that would have been quick to disappear in the blur of a passing crowd; his features were hard and masculine, but not strikingly so, and they seemed to straddle the line between angular and soft quite comfortably. A skew nose and a profusion of scars around the rims of his eyes, and the fact that one ear had a large chunk torn out of it, marked him as an individual with a propensity for fighting, but in the arrangement of his features there was nothing brutish or coarse; indeed, there was a subdued refinement and quiet dignity evident in his visage. His rocky muscles, while not as intimidatingly large as some of the gladiators’, bore testament to resilient qualities of strength and endurance.
‘And what of it?’ Spartacus snarled hotly in retaliation.
Viridovix answered the man’s aggression with a mocking grin.
‘A short gladiator doesn’t have particularly good reach, so you won’t stand much of a chance against a man with a foot or two’s better reach than yours. And what’s that tattoo on your hand? An eagle, eh? Look, General, this one used to be in a Roman auxiliary unit! He must be a deserter or a thief! A coward is what he is, I’ll wager. He won’t last two seconds on the sands of the arena.’
‘Who
