The Gladiator (27 page)

The slave was an elderly man, stooped and frail-looking. He had long been conditioned to being silent and avoiding the eyes of his masters. Macro watched him for a moment, wondering what it must be like to live as a slave. He had been used to seeing them on the streets of Ostia and Rome as a child, and so had never really considered what it must mean to be one. Since then, he had spent long years in the army, where the slaves he had encountered had mostly been when he was off duty. There had also been a handful of occasions when he had seen proud enemy warriors taken captive, chained up and marched away into slavery. Indeed, he had profited from his share of such prisoners, and the money he had gained had rather obscured the fates of those who had thus enriched him.

As the slave finished serving and retired to stand still against the wall, Macro continued to examine him while he casually dipped a chunk of bread into the steaming bowl before him. It was tempting to ask the man what he thought of Ajax. And what he thought of the Romans and Greeks who were determined to defeat the rebel gladiator and his followers. If indeed he thought anything about them.

Macro paused. H o w could a slave not think about the revolt, when there was little other topic of conversation in the city? Could this slave, so taciturn, be harbouring deep hatred for his masters and a yearning to be part of the uprising? Might he be listening alertly to any conversation to which he was privy, and then wait for a chance to escape and reveal his information to Ajax? What if his plan was more treacherous still? It would not take much effort to procure sufficient poison to kill all three of those to whom he had just served their evening meal.

Macro glanced down at his stew with a look of suspicion. He lowered his bread, dripping with gravy from the stew, on to his platter and turned towards the slave.

‘You there, step closer.’

The slave started forward nervously, eyes flickering round the Romans lying on their couches around the table. Sempronius glanced at his daughter and Julia raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Macro wiped the smears of gravy from his lips. ‘Slave, you have heard the news about Prefect Marcellus’s defeat, I take it.’

The slave nodded quickly. ‘Do you take comfort from this news?’ ‘Master?’ ‘I asked you if you took comfort from the news. You’re a slave. So what is your view of the rebels’ victory? Do you rejoice at it?’ The slave glanced down and shook his head. ‘Look at me,’ Macro ordered, and the slave reluctantly raised his head enough to meet Macro’s gaze. ‘Surely you are on the side of those who would set you free? Well? Speak up, man.’

The slave’s anxiety was clear as he struggled to make a reply. Macro waited patiently, and at length the slave spoke. ‘Master, I want freedom. So do many slaves. But I have savings and I plan to buy my freedom one day. It is the only way for me. Those slaves who join Ajax may have their freedom now, but I think they must live in dread of being returned to slavery. That is not freedom. When I eventually have my freedom, I shall want to be free from fear as I am free from slavery.’ He paused, and looked round at his masters. ‘I have made my choice.Those who follow the gladiator have made theirs.’ He turned back to Macro. ‘Is that all, master?’

Macro thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Leave us.’ The slave bowed his head and backed away from the table. ‘He’s lying,’ Macro muttered. ‘Well, what did you expect?’ asked Sempronius. ‘A frank admission that he sympathises with Ajax? It was unfair to put him on the spot like that.’

‘Perhaps.’ Macro pushed his plate away.

‘I wonder how Cato is faring?’ Julia intervened. ‘He must have reached Alexandria by now. What do you think, Father?’

Sempronius thought a moment and then nodded. ‘I’d have thought so, provided all has gone well. Which I am sure it has,’ he added hurriedly, before dipping his spoon into the stew, fishing out a piece of meat and popping it into his mouth. At once, his face contorted in agony. Macro jumped to his feet and stepped towards the senator, glancing at the slave as he did so.

‘Sir! What’s the matter? Are you all right?’

Sempronius held up a hand to stay Macro and nodded. He swallowed, then reached for his wine to quench the pain in his mouth. ‘Damn, that stew’s hot!’

Macro let out a sigh of relief and returned to his couch. Julia was looking at him curiously as she delicately blew across her spoon. ‘What is up with you?’ ‘It’s nothing. I just thought . . . Never mind.’ Macro quickly changed the subject, with a forced smile. ‘I’d be willing to bet that Cato is even now sitting at a fine banquet with the Legate of Egypt, busy talking him out of his entire garrison. You know what he’s like.’

Julia smiled. Yes, he can be most persuasive.’ Sempronius frowned and Macro burst into laughter before he could stop himself. For a moment the senator continued frowning, then gave way to the impulse and joined in. With all the strain of the previous days and the grave concerns over the arrival of the slave army before the hastily repaired walls of Gortyna, it did both men good to laugh.When it had died away, Macro topped the other man’s cup up with wine and raised his own in a toast.

‘To Cato. May he prove big enough for a tribune’s boots, and return to us at the head of a great army’

‘I’ll drink to that.’

‘And me.’ Julia raised her cup. She took a sip and then spoke softly. ‘By the gods, I miss him so much.’

Macro nodded. He didn’t want to say anything for fear ofseeming to miss a comrade more than was properly acceptable. All the same, he mused, he would rather have Cato at his side as he prepared the hotch-potch of defences and defenders to face the enemy.

Sempronius drank from his cup and then set it down. ‘How are things coming along, Macro? Those new men proving to be of any use?’

‘They’re doing well enough. Most have managed to work out which end of a sword to hold. They’ll never make good soldiers, or even adequate ones, in whatever time we have available to us before the rebels decide to attack. I’ve appointed Centurion Micon to command them. It’ll give him a chance to redeem himself. All in all they won’t amount to much, but they’ll be better equipped than most of the slaves they’ll encounter.’

‘Although you can be sure that this man Ajax will have distributed the kit he recovered from the bodies of Marcellus and his men.’

‘That’s true,’ Macro conceded. ‘In which case, I give Centurion Micon’s lads no better than an even chance when it comes to a fight.’

Sempronius sighed wearily. ‘Not a great help, then.’ ‘I can only hope they prove me wrong.’ T h e conversation was interrupted by three distant blasts on a trumpet, the alarm signal that Macro had arranged. He rose quickly to his feet, followed by the others, and abandoned the meal as they made their way out of the administration building and across the acropolis to the tower above the main gate. Men were stumbling out of their barracks, kit in hand, and racing to their positions on the wall. Macro ran up the worn stone stairs and emerged on to the platform, hurrying across to the parapet. Below him the city sprawled across the plain. One of the men who had been on watch thrust his arm out towards the west.

‘Over there, sir.’

Macro shaded his eyes as he stared into the setting sun. At first the glare concealed the approaching enemy from sight. He was surprised that the rebels were coming from the west. Marcellus’s column had been massacred away to the east. Where had they been? he wondered. Then he dismissed the concern as his eyes began to pick out the details of the enemy marching across the plain towards the city. There were two columns, one making directly for Gortyna and the other angling to the south to march round the city and take up position to the west, Macro guessed.

‘Ajax has finally decided to take the bull by the horns.’

‘Yes,’ Sempronius replied, panting as he caught up. ‘So it seems. An apposite metaphor, by the way’

‘Really?’ Macro glanced at his superior.

‘This is the island where bull-leaping had its origins, Macro. In the old times, that was the phrase used to describe the moment when the acrobat was ready to face a charging bull and grabbed its horns at the last moment before somersaulting over the bull’s back.’

Macro stared at the senator for a moment. Cato was going to have a lot in common with his prospective father-in-law.The two of them were sure to spend many long winters’ evenings together swapping such useless nuggets of information. He sighed. ‘That’s fascinating, sir.’

Julia glanced sidelong and smiled at Macro as her father continued.

‘The trouble is that the metaphor is the wrong way round. It is we who are facing the bull, not Ajax. And I fear that unless we are all as nimble and determined as the proverbial acrobat, we are going to be ground into the dust by the first charge.’

Macro shook his head. ‘No, sir. I ain’t going down that easy. The rebels are just slaves. They lack training and there’s no question of them having any siege equipment. For the moment, we have the advantage.’

‘I hope you are right.’

They continued to watch as the slave army deployed around the city. T h e clouds of dust kicked up by their feet and the hooves and wheels of the sprawling baggage train filled the air with a warm orange haze. Sempronius told his daughter to remain on the acropolis while he and Macro made their way down to the city gate to inspect their opponents more closely. Macro made a hasty calculation of the size ofthe enemy force before the light made estimation too difficult. The slaves marched in loose bands of varying size, and here and there amongst them the rays of the setting sun gleamed off burnished helmets, armour and weapons.

‘There must be over twenty thousand of them, sir.’ Macro spoke quietly so that his words would not be overheard by the nearest sentry. ‘Maybe as many as thirty thousand.’

Sempronius puffed his cheeks out as he beheld the multitude settling around the city’s walls. ‘They would never believe this in Rome. An army of slaves? T h e idea is preposterous.’

‘Yet there it is, sir.’ ‘Quite.’ As they watched the slaves fall out of their columns and begin to make camp, a sudden movement caught Macro’s eye. He turned his head slightly to see a party of horsemen emerge from the slave host, trotting casually towards the city. Sempronius saw them a moment later and muttered, ‘Ajax?’

‘Who else?’

They watched as the party of riders reined in some distance beyond the range of any archers on the wall. A single man came forward. Thin and sinewy, he wore the scale armour vest of a Roman officer over a light blue tunic. One of the garrison’s handful of archers casually strung an arrow and began to take aim.

‘Lower that bow!’ Macro bellowed at him. ‘No one is to shoot without orders!’

The rider slowed his horse to a walk a short distance away and turned it to make his way along the wall, one hand resting on his hip as he surveyed the faces of the defenders with haughty disdain. Macro silently gave thanks that he had not yet given the order for the caltrops to be sown in the grass around the city. That was one surprise he most definitely wanted to save for the right moment.

‘General Ajax sends his greetings to his former masters!’ the rider called out in a clear, pleasant voice.

Sempronius turned to Macro with an amused expression.
‘General
Ajax? It seems the gladiator has aspirations.’

The slave called out to the defenders again.’The general wishes to speak with the man who calls himself the governor of the province, Senator Sempronius.’

Sempronius sniffed with irritation. Macro smiled. ‘And he’s well informed. I wonder what he wants to discuss?’

There was a moment ofsilence before Sempronius gave a resigned shrug. ‘There’s only way to find out.’

He turned away from the parapet and made for the stairs that led down to the gates.

Ajax, in the company of Kharim, watched the progress of his .envoy carefully. Chilo had proved himself brave enough since he had joined the small band of fugitives that had attached them-

selves to Ajax since the first days of the revolt. But there was a certain carelessness to his bravery that Ajax had noted during the very first skirmish they had fought with a Roman patrol. It was almost as if Chilo had no fear of death, even as he loved his new life, free from the terrible constraints of slavery. In the ranks of Ajax’s closest lieutenants, Chilo was clearly the most popular with the rest of the army. Chilo had been born free, the son of an Athenian merchant.When his father’s business partner disappeared with every last piece of silver just before the annual taxes were due to be paid, it had ruined the family. The tax collector, as was his right, had duly compelled the merchant to sell himself and his family into slavery. Chilo had been five at the time, and was separated from his family at the slave market when he was bought by a Roman official and sent to serve as a household slave on his estate in Crete.

All this Ajax had learned over the camp fire as he led his growing band of runaway slaves across the ruined province. But of his years of servitude Chilo had said little, and when he did speak of them his eyes burned with an intense hatred a sentiment that Ajax could readily understand. He had long since come to understand the difference between men who were born slaves and those who had become slaves. There was a degree of acceptance of their condition in the former. They had joined his army to be sure, and fought well enough, but the majority lacked the fanaticism of Chilo and the others who had borne slavery as a mark of shame. Every slight and injustice that they endured had burned its way into their souls. It was like a slow poison, Ajax had realised once, when reflecting on his own experience.

His father had commanded a small fleet of pirate ships that had defied the Roman navy for many years before they had finally been trapped and destroyed in a bay on the Illyrian coast. His father had paid the price for defying Rome by being crucified. Ajax and the others who had been captured were sold into slavery. It was ironic that he had been bought by the owner of a gladiator school and trained as a fighter, and now he was repaying his former masters for the skills he had learned in the arena by causing them as much suffering as possible. Every Roman he killed, every estate he sacked and every breath of free air that he drew slowly drained away the poison of slavery.