Fortune's Favorites (115 page)

She gasped, prepared for every contingency but that one. “I cannot tell him that! You must let him surrender!”

“No,” said Crassus, back still turned. His right hand moved, its fingers snapped. “Take her away, Marcus Mummius, and see her through our lines.”

It was some time later before Caesar could catch Crassus on his own, though he burned to discuss the interview.

“You handled it brilliantly,” he said. “She was so sure she would unsettle you.”

“Silly woman! My reports say she's a priestess of the Bessi, though I'd rather call her a witch. Most Romans are superstitious-I've noticed you are, Caesar!-but I am not. I believe in what I can see, and what I saw was a female of some slight intelligence who had got herself up as she imagined a gorgon might look.” He laughed spontaneously. “I remember being told that when he was a young man Sulla went to a party dressed as Medusa. On his head he wore a wig of living snakes, and he frightened the life out of everyone there. But you know, and I know, that it wasn't the snakes frightened the life out of anyone. It was-simply Sulla. Now if she had that quality, I might have quaked in my boots.”

“I agree. But she does have the second sight.”

“Many people have the second sight! I've known dear old grannies as dithery and fluffy as lambs who had the second sight, and grand-looking advocates you wouldn't think had a single corner of their minds that wasn't solid law. Anyway, what makes you think she has the second sight?”

“Because she came to the interview more frightened of you than you could ever have been of her.”

For a month the weather had been "set,” as the mother of Quintus Sertorius might have put it-nights well below freezing point, days not much warmer, blue skies, snow turned to ice underfoot. But after the Ides of March had gone there came a terrible storm which started as sleet and ended with snow piling up and up. Spartacus seized his chance.

Where the wall and ditch fused into the ravine closest to Scyllaeum-and the oldest of Crassus's veteran legions had its camp-the whole one hundred thousand Spartacani left alive hurled themselves into a frantic struggle to bridge the ditch and climb over the wall. Logs, stones, the dead bodies of humans and animals, even large pieces of loot were flung into the trench, heaped up to surmount the palisade. Like the shades of the dead the enormous mass of people rolled in wave after wave across this makeshift passage and fled into the teeth of the storm. No one opposed them; Crassus had sent the legion a message not to take up arms, but to remain quietly inside its camp.

Disorganized and haphazard, the flight unraveled what little structure the Spartacani host had owned beyond hope of knitting it up again. While the fighting men-better led and disciplined-floundered north on the Via Popillia with Spartacus, Castus and Gannicus, the bulk of the women, children, aged and noncombatants became so lost they entered the forests of Mount Sila; amid the tangles of low branches, rocks, undergrowth, most of them lay down and died, too cold and too hungry to struggle on. Those who did survive to see better weather came eventually upon Bruttian settlements, were recognized for what they were, and killed at once.

Not that the fate of this segment of the Spartacani held any interest for Marcus Licinius Crassus. When the snow began to lessen he struck camp and moved his eight legions out onto the Via Popillia in the wake of the Spartacani soldiers.

His progress was as plodding as an ox, for he was always methodical, always in possession of his general's wits. There was no use in chasing; cold, hunger and lack of real purpose would combine to slow the Spartacani down, as would the size of their army. Better to have the baggage train in the middle of the legionary column than run the risk of losing it. Sooner or later he would catch up.

His scouts, however, were very busy, very swift. As March ground to its end they reported to Crassus that the Spartacani, having reached the river Silarus, had divided into two forces. One, under Spartacus, had continued up the Via Popillia toward Campania, while the other, under Castus and Gannicus, had struck east up the valley of the middle Silarus.

“Good!” said Crassus. “We'll leave Spartacus alone for the moment and concentrate on getting rid of the two Samnites.”

The scouts then reported that Castus and Gannicus had not gone very far; they had encountered the prosperous little town of Volcei and were eating well for the first time in two months. No need to hurry!

When the four legions preceding Crassus's baggage train came up, Castus and Gannicus were too busy feasting to notice. The Spartacani had spread without making more than an apology for a camp on the foreshores of a little lake which at this time of the year contained sweet, potable water; by autumn the same locale would have held few charms. Behind the lake was a mountain. Crassus saw immediately what he had to do, and decided not to wait for the four legions which followed the baggage train.

“Pomptinus and Rufus, take twelve cohorts and sneak around the far side of the mountain. When you're in position, charge downhill. That will take you right into the middle of their-camp? As soon as I see you I'll attack from the front. We'll squash them between us like a beetle.”

The plan should have worked. It would have worked, except for the vagaries of chance the best scouts could not divine. For when they saw how much food Volcei could provide, Castus and Gannicus sent word to Spartacus to retrace his footsteps, join the revelry. Spartacus duly retraced his footsteps and appeared on the far side of the lake just as Crassus launched his attack. The men belonging to Castus and Gannicus bolted into the midst of the newcomers, and all the Spartacani promptly vanished.

Some generals would have clawed the air, but not Crassus. “Unfortunate. But eventually we'll succeed,” he said, unruffled.

A series of storms slowed everybody down. The armies of both sides lingered around the Silarus, though it appeared that it was now Spartacus's turn to leave the Via Popillia, while Castus and Gannicus used the road to march into Campania. Crassus lurked well in the rear, a fat spider bent on getting fatter. He too had decided to split his forces now that his eight legions were reunited; the baggage train, he knew, was safe. Two legions of infantry and all the cavalry were put under the command of Lucius Quinctius and Tremellius Scrofa, and ordered to be ready to follow whichever segment of Spartacani left the Via Popillia, while Crassus himself would pursue the segment on the road.

Like a millstone he ground on; as his legion was attached to the general's division, Caesar could only marvel at the absolute tenacity and method of this extraordinary man. At Eburum, not far north of the Silarus, he caught Castus and Gannicus at last, and annihilated their army. Thirty thousand died on the field, tricked and trapped; only a very few managed to slip through the Roman lines and flee inland to find Spartacus.

Greatest pleasure of all to every soldier in the victorious army was what Crassus discovered among the tumbled heaps of Spartacani baggage after the battle; the five eagles which had been taken when various Roman forces had been defeated, twenty-six cohort standards, and the fasces belonging to five praetors.

“Look at that!” cried Crassus, actually beaming. “Isn't it a wonderful sight?”

The general now displayed the fact that when he needed to, he could move very fast indeed. Word came from Lucius Quinctius that he and Scrofa had been ambushed-though without grievous losses-and that Spartacus was still nearby.

Crassus marched.

The grand undertaking had foundered. Left in the possession of Spartacus was the part of the army marching with him up to the sources of the Tanagrus River; that, and Aluso, and his son.

When his defeat of Quinctius and Scrofa proved indecisive because their cavalry-fleeter by far than infantry-mustered and allowed the Roman foot to withdraw, Spartacus made no move to leave the area. Three little towns had provided his men with ample food for the moment, but what the next valley and the one after that held, he no longer had any idea. It was approaching spring; granaries were low, no vegetables had yet formed and plumped after the hard winter, the hens were scrawny, and the pigs (crafty creatures!) had gone into hiding in the woods. An obnoxious local from Potentia, the closest town, had taken great pleasure in journeying out to see Spartacus in order to tell him that Varro Lucullus was expected any day to land in Brundisium from Macedonia, and that the Senate had ordered him to reinforce Crassus immediately.

“Your days are numbered, gladiator!” said the local with glee. “Rome is invincible!”

“I should cut your throat,” said the gladiator wearily.

“Go ahead! I expect you to! And I don't care!”

“Then I won't give you the satisfaction of a noble death. Just go home!”

Aluso was listening. After the fellow had taken himself off (very disappointed that his lifeblood had not streamed out upon the ground) she moved close to Spartacus and put her hand gently upon his arm.

“It finishes here,” she said.

“I know, woman.”

“I see you fall in battle, but I cannot see a death.”

“When I fall in battle I'll be dead.”

He was so very tired, and the catastrophe at Scyllaeum still haunted him. How could he look his men in the face knowing that it had been his own misguided carelessness which had ended in their being penned in by Crassus? The women and children were gone and he knew they would not reappear. They had all died from starvation somewhere in the wild Bruttian countryside.

With no idea whether what the man from Potentia had told him about Varro Lucullus was true or not, he knew that it cut him off from Brundisium nonetheless. Crassus controlled the Via Popillia; the news of Castus and Gannicus had reached him even before he ambushed Quinctius and Scrofa. Nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except one last battlefield. And he was glad, glad, glad.... Neither birth nor ability had tailored him for such an enormous responsibility, the lives and welfare of a whole people. He was just an ordinary Roman of Italian family who had been born on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and ought to have spent his life there alongside his father and his brother. Who did he think he was, to attempt to give birth to a new nation? Not noble enough, not educated enough, not grand enough. But there was some honor in dying a free man on a battlefield; he would never go back to a prison. Never.

When word came that Crassus and his army were approaching, he took Aluso and his son and put them in a wagon harnessed to six mules far enough away from where he intended to make his last stand to ensure that they would elude pursuit. He would have preferred that they leave immediately, but Aluso refused, saying she must wait for the outcome of the conflict. In the covered rear of the vehicle lay gold, silver, treasures, coin; a guarantee that his wife and child would prosper. That they might be killed he understood. Yet their fates were on the laps of the gods, and the gods had been passing strange.

Some forty thousand Spartacani formed up to meet Crassus. Spartacus made no speech to them before the battle, but they cheered him deafeningly as he rode down their ranks on beautiful dappled grey Batiatus. He took his place beneath the standard of his people-the leaping enameled fish of a Gaul's fighting helmet-turned in the saddle to raise both hands in the air, fists clenched, then slid out of the horse's saddle. His sword was in his right hand, the curved saber of a Thracian gladiator; he closed his eyes, raised it, and brought it down into Batiatus's neck. Blood sprayed and gushed, but the lovely creature made no protest. Like a sacrificial victim it went down on its knees, rolled over, died.

There. No need for a speech. To kill his beloved horse told his followers everything. Spartacus did not intend to leave the field alive; he had dispensed with his means of escape.

As battles went it was straight, uncomplicated, extremely bloody. Taking their example from Spartacus, most of his men fought until they dropped, some in death, some in utter exhaustion. Spartacus himself killed two centurions before an unknown in the struggling mass cut the hamstrings in one leg. Unable to stand, he fell to his knees, but fought on doggedly until a huge pile of bodies by his side tumbled over and buried him.

Fifteen thousand Spartacani survived to flee the field; six thousand went in the direction of Apulia, the rest south toward the Bruttian mountains.

“Over in just six months, and a winter campaign at that,” said Crassus to Caesar. “I've lost very few men all considered, and Spartacus is dead. Rome has her eagles and fasces back, and a lot of the plunder will prove impossible to return to its original owners: We'll all do quite well out of it.”

“There is a difficulty, Marcus Crassus,” said Caesar, who had been delegated to inspect the field for men still alive.

“Oh?”

“Spartacus. He isn't there.”

“Rubbish!” said Crassus, startled. “I saw him fall!”

“So did I. I even memorized exactly where the spot was. I can take you straight to it-in fact, come with me now and I will! But he isn't there, Marcus Crassus. He isn't there.”

“Odd!” The general huffed, pursed his lips, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, what does it really matter? His army's gone, that's the main thing. I can't celebrate a triumph over an enemy classified as slave. The Senate will give me an ovation, but it's not the same. Not the same!” He sighed. “What about his woman, the Thracian witch?”

“We haven't found her either, though we did round up quite a few camp followers who had huddled together out of the way. I questioned them about her-and found out that her name is Aluso-but they swore she had climbed into a red-hot, sizzling chariot drawn by fiery snakes and driven off into the sky.”

“Shades of Medea! I suppose that makes Spartacus Jason!” Crassus turned to walk with Caesar toward the heap of dead that had buried the fallen Spartacus. “I think somehow the pair of them got away. Don't you?”

“I'm sure they did,” said Caesar.

“Well, we'll have to scour the countryside for Spartacani anyway. They might come to light.”

Caesar made no reply. His own opinion was that they would never come to light. He was clever, the gladiator. Too clever to try to raise another army. Clever enough to become anonymous.