Both guards’ eyes flared up with lightning veins of sudden rage at this interruption of their sordid amusement.
‘You! Fucking fresh meat, you’re dead!’ bellowed the guard who had been groping the girl. He shoved her away and grabbed his spear from the wall. ‘Pick up that platter you little slag, and feed these animals!’ he snarled, spittle flying from his mouth, with its thick crimson lips and crooked teeth.
‘Yes master,’ the girl replied demurely, her bottom lip quivering as she finally lost the battle against the flow of her tears, which began streaming liberally down her cheeks. Crixus focused his attention on her, staring at her with cool detachment as she picked up the platter, weeping softly.
‘You!’ the guard roared, pointing at Spartacus, ‘you’re sleeping in the fucking dungeon tonight, you are! Fucking cheeky son of a whore! You don’t never speak to us in that tone, you stupid Thracian fuck!’
Spartacus turned away, choking down the retort he so desperately wanted to scream out, his face drawn into a contorted scowl that spoke volumes of the bubbling indignation and frustration seething just beneath the membrane of his glowing-hot skin.
‘You shouldn’t piss off them guards,’ Oenomaus mumbled. ‘They don’t like it none too much. They’s allowed to put us in the dungeon for the night, you know. You shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Fuck the guards,’ Spartacus spat through gritted teeth, the muscles of his neck tight with barely suppressed fury as the veins in his temple bulged and throbbed. ‘They’re pigs! Slovenly, dim-witted, flabby pigs! Look at them, and look at us here. Just look at us! There are ten guards in this room, and thirty of us, all highly skilled fighters … and yet we cower like frightened sheep before them.’
The General was quick to reply, and tone was stern and cool.
‘They have armour, Spartacus. Armour and weapons. We have nothing. We’re in our loincloths, and we have nothing else. The only time we have weapons at our disposal is on the training ground, and there’s no way in or out of there once those gates are sealed.’
Spartacus would not hear it; he was adamant that a plan for freedom and revolt could be wrought. He shook his head and thumped a defiant fist on the floor.
‘All it would take would be for one of us to wrest a spear or sword from those guards! Just one of us to get a sword or spear in our hands, and it’d be a battle we could win.’
‘Do not talk of such things!’ the General hissed under his breath, leaning in closer to Spartacus, his eyes darting from side to side as a lash of panic licked its stinging heat all over his skin. ‘It is folly! Dangerous, dangerous folly! If anyone were to overhear what you just said, we’d all be crucified!’
Spartacus retained his air of surly rebelliousness and spoke loudly and brashly.
‘I’d rather be crucified than live like this.’
N’Jalabenadou leaned forward and gripped Spartacus by both shoulders, his dark fingers digging deeply into Spartacus’s olive-toned flesh. His eyes were bright white against his ebony face, betraying a panic that was welling up with alarming rapidity within him.
‘Have you seen a crucified man die, Spartacus?’ he asked, his fearful gaze boring right through Spartacus’s green eyes, trying with the intensity of his own emotion to seek out the grub in this man’s brain that was spreading the venom of rebellion, and wither it immediately. ‘Have you witnessed the prolonged agony? Have you?! And let me tell you, while you are dying they defile you, and when it’s finally over they leave your corpse out there for the crows to eat, for beggars to mock and for children to throw stones at. Is that how you wish to leave this world? Is that what you would leave behind of yourself when your soul crosses the Great River?’
Spartacus was undaunted by N’Jalabenadou’s intensity, and with firm but non-confrontational determination he removed the General’s hands from his shoulders before making his reply. His tone remained as clear, resolute and defiant as it had been throughout the entirety of this exchange.
‘When I make my bid for escape, I will succeed – or I will die in the attempt. There will be no surrender, no capture, no crucifixion. There will only be freedom … freedom or death in the attempt to escape. Those are the only two possible outcomes. I will fight the guards until I win, or until I draw my last breath.’
The General shot a worried glance at the closest guard, who was chewing on a fig with bovine repetitiveness and staring absentmindedly at a spot on the floor. Thankfully, it seemed that he had not heard a word Spartacus had said. There was another pair of eyes focused intently on them, however – Crixus’s. The General breathed a sigh of relief, for he knew the mute gladiator would not breathe a word of what he may have overheard to anyone, but he nonetheless retained his paranoia and leaned in close to Spartacus, speaking in a hushed and urgent tone.
‘Alone you cannot succeed. And how many of us would die in an attempt to take the weapons from the guards? Look around you. Just in this room there are ten of them, and outside there are another ten! If you, or even all three of us were to rise up, right now, perhaps we could get a sword off one of them. Maybe. But in that time the others will have come charging in and cut us to pieces.’
‘Why do they call you “the General”?’ Spartacus asked suddenly. ‘Why?’
N’Jalabenadou looked up and stared intently into Spartacus’s eyes for a few tension-fraught moments before replying.
‘I’ve told you before … I do not like speaking of my past.’
‘Humour me, this one time. I don’t need all of the details. Just tell us why.’
‘It’s coz nobody can pronounce his real name proper,’ Oenomaus interjected, grinning.
