Spartacus: Swords and Ashes Read online

  Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

  J. M. Clements

  J. M. Clements

  Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

  I

  THE IDES OF SEPTEMBER

  He picked up a fruit knife and tapped gently on the side of a goblet. The sound barely traveled at all through the noise around him. Raucous laughter rolled over girlish giggling, the drums and pipes of the band, and the clash of finger cymbals from one of the few dancers still standing.

  Pelorus climbed unsteadily to his feet, using the table for support, blocking the diners’ view of the two-horned crest of his house, which hung on the wall behind him. His fingers clutched at the wine-stained tablecloth, snagging and dragging several dishes toward him. A lamp clattered to the floor, bouncing into the shallow atrium pool, where it joined several floating dishes, apples, animal bones and a partially submerged, half-eaten bunch of grapes. The lamp sputtered and died, leaving a tail of fading smoke and an ever-growing film of oil on the surface of the pool.

  “Friends…! Romans…! I entreat you! Silence for but a moment or two,” Pelorus called, half laughing. Someone in the shadows told him to fuck off, and there was more merriment all around.

  Pelorus wrapped his fingers around the stem of the goblet, forming a crude hammer with which to bang on the table. He brought it down three times with the practiced aim of a man who knew how to smash things up. Red wine dregs shot across the table, adding to the stains.

  “Still your tongues! Every one of you!” he shouted.

  And then there was something close to silence.

  “Gratitude,” he began, “for honoring the House of Pelorus with your presence here today, before each of us had consumed too much wine for sense to be made!”

  Cheers issued forth from half a dozen diners, and there was polite applause from the women in the room whose hands were not otherwise busy.

  “And though wine abounds-” cheers again- “be certain to sample the services of the House of the Winged Cock, flavors sweeter even than what fills cup.”

  One diner in particular greeted the news with great enthusiasm, half rising to his feet from his couch, tripping and landing on his knees in the shallow pool. Water sloshed over the opposite abutment, while the others laughed and pelted him with grapes.

  “Valgus!” Pelorus laughed. “Caius Quinctius Valgus! We shall have to free you from wet attire!” More cheers followed as Valgus’s lady companion tugged at his sodden toga, deftly disrobing him in the manner of one well used to such endeavors.

  “Welcome, Valgus, old fool,” Pelorus said. “Welcome Marcus Porcius, and other dear friends from Pompeii. Welcome, too, guests who have journeyed from Baiae and Puteoli. Welcome good Timarchides, fixer infamous. Your presence here at the table is well deserved and long overdue! I trust you will find the house of Marcus Pelorus most hospitable!”

  Pelorus paused, basking in the glow of approbation, watching in the light of the flickering lamps as his guests hollered their thanks. He glowed with their love and then held out his hands in a plea for silence once more.

  “We are here for celebration of a day of great fortune for our society of Campanian investors. The noblest among us, Gaius Verres, departs Neapolis in but a few days, to take up a post well deserved as governor… Yes, governor! Of all Sicilia!”

  Cheers erupted once more.

  “To eternal good fortune, and an abundance of coin!”

  Pelorus raised his goblet, which had been discreetly refilled, and dropped a stream of wine into the atrium pool. The diners watched in respectful silence as their host invoked the sacred spirits, and offered due homage to the unseen gods.

  “I offer this libation in fervent hope of safe travel for our good friend Verres, as he departs Neapolis aboard ship. May his governorship bear fruit of prosperity for his house and for the good people of Sicilia… Those poor, poor bastards!”

  The loudest cheers of all shook the walls, drifting into the Neapolitan night sky.

  “Gentleman, I give you Gaius Verres, our worthy representative in Sicilia!”

  The garden erupted with cries of “VERR-ES! VERR-ES! VERR-ES!” which soon petered out as heads peered around the gathering.

  “Wherever the fuck he has gone!” Pelorus giggled, lifting the tablecloth experimentally, and finding nothing.

  “I care not!” Caius Valgus yelled. “Matters of greater import plead diversion!” And he pointed down in glee at the woman on her knees before him in the atrium pool, her head bobbing enthusiastically between his legs.

  Gaius Verres heard people chanting his name, and then the sound of the band striking up once more. The party would have to go on without him as he explored the darker recesses of the house of Pelorus.

  Rooms not intended for the celebration were sparsely lit by solitary oil lamps, and many had already sputtered out. The household slaves had other duties, and the party had already far over-run the length of the average taper.

  He could hear the woman sneaking up on him, if one could call it sneaking when there were bells on her ankles.

  “Verres,” she stage-whispered down the hall. “Verres? Do you hide from me?”

  He ignored her and lifted his lamp. The room was bare, but for a small shrine to household gods, and a wooden sword hanging from the wall. Verres shook his head and sighed.

  “Where lies the adventure, Pelorus, you cock?” he muttered to himself. The ankle-bells tinkled closer with exaggerated steps, and Verres was suddenly enveloped in a sheer scarf of Syrian silk.

  “Whose cock?” she asked.

  “I was not addressing you,” Verres said impatiently.

  “Maybe you are not one for conversation,” she said, her voice lilting with the hint of a Pompeiian accent.

  “I do not desire your company, woman…”

  “Successa. I am called Successa.”

  “As you say.” Verres pushed the scarf aside and continued to the next room, fast enough to risk putting out his lamp with the breeze of his passage.

  “Successa is my name,” she almost sang it, “Successa is my nature.”

  “I am certain many find that true.”

  “Why not come close and discover its truth for yourself, Governor Verres?”

  “My tastes lie in other achievements.”

  “But good Pelorus wills it so.”

  “Leave me and fuck him, then.”

  With surprising strength, Successa grabbed the governor-designate and pinned him to the wall. Verres dropped the lamp in surprise, dashing its contents into the floor mosaic in a sudden lattice of gentle flames. Successa pressed her hot mouth onto his, her tongue probing, her arms pulling his head closer. She pressed her breasts against him and locked one leg around his calf.

  Verres twisted his head away.

  “Sample my wares but once, Verres,” she insisted, “and your cock will never seek another resting place.”

  “Leave me be, woman.”

  Verres pushed her away. His eyes widened as he saw what he was looking for: a staircase down half a floor to the lower level of the house.

  “Pelorus’s purse is heavy with coin. And I am tasked with lightening both purse and cock,” Successa insisted.

  She watched in bafflement as Verres gingerly descended the stairs. The former flash of brighter light from the broken lamp was almost fading; the burning oil on the floor already reduced to low simmers of dying blue, the door to the lower level almost entirely hidden in shadow.

  “That portal offers path to cells where slaves reside,” Successa said disdainfully. “You will discover nothing there of worth.”

  Verres ignored her and lifted the latch, opening onto a corridor of roughly assembled brick. Torches, not lamps, flickered every te
n paces. He snatched up a fresh brand, and lit it from a sputtering stub in a wall-bracket, waiting patiently as the flames licked around the tar-soaked rags until they hissed into fiery life.

  Successa pulled the ankle-bells from her feet and followed.

  “Gladiators and slaves,” she whispered. “Middens and storerooms. Is that what kind of man you are, Verres?”

  Verres smiled to himself in the half-light.

  “Do you seek the company of women at all?” Successa mused.

  Verres snorted.

  “Accept, Successa, that my interest simply does not lie with you. My meaning is not to offend.”

  “Am I too old? Too forward?”

  They walked past barred alcoves, each containing one or two dozing male bodies. Some weary heads lifted, only to fall again as Verres passed. Scattered wine flasks in each cell attested to a low-rent copy of the celebrations upstairs.

  “I have learned many things,” Successa continued. “In Cyprus, the birthplace of the goddess of love. In Egypt, origin of many dark arts of the bedchamber.” She frowned at the complete lack of effect she seemed to be having. “In Rome itself, where no true man could resist these thighs…” she added petulantly.

  “I simply seek something different,” he murmured.

  “I can be different.”

  Verres had stopped outside one of the cells.

  “Now that,” he said appreciatively. “That is different.”

  The cell was entirely bare, lacking wine or the remains of any supper. Inside was merely a rough covering of sackcloth, drawn over a prone, shapely form. She was already awake, dark eyes glinting in the torchlight.

  “Is she a gladiator?” Successa asked.

  “Do not be a fool,” Verres replied. “Pelorus does not deal solely in gladiators, nor does he tender all coin for spending. This, he locks away as treasure.”

  The woman in the cage stared back at him impassively, without fear. Verres lifted the slate by the entrance, reading five letters scratched onto it.

  “Medea?” he said. “An ill-fated name for such a little mouse.”

  She clutched the sackcloth against her chest, not carefully enough to hide a shapely breast and pointed nipple. She drew her legs toward her, as if recoiling from the light.

  “There is no place to run, little mouse,” Verres breathed.

  The woman in the cell shook her head in denial, as if willing Verres to disappear, in vain. There was something on her face, like the tendrils of a plant, or matted hair. It was difficult to see in the half-light.

  “Suddenly she is coy,” Successa observed with a sniff.

  “As well she might be,” Verres smirked, handing Successa the torch.

  “She is nothing,” Successa said disdainfully. “Why trouble yourself with earth when you can be grasped by the thighs of the heavens?”

  Slowly, ceremoniously, Verres unhooked the lock that lay open in the metal loop, and lifted the bolt that kept the cell door closed. He slid it slowly along its loops with a scraping of dry, old metal.

  “Temptation enough for most men,” he said to Successa, tugging at his belt. “But one is never closer to the heavens than when one does the taking.”

  He let his tunic fall to the ground, looking faintly ludicrous in nothing but his sandals. His left hand snaked between his own legs, rubbing gently at his hardening member. His right hand tugged at the heavy cell door, which creaked open on protesting hinges.

  “I am a woman valued many times higher than her,” Successa protested.

  “I do not desire two women,” Verres chuckled. “Not this night at least.”

  “Why do you seek to make your life difficult?” Successa said, scowling. “She will fight you.”

  “That is my very hope,” Verres whispered, moving slowly, deliberately toward the trembling figure.

  The woman named as Medea backed further into her corner, her eyes wide with fear, her back meeting unyielding brick.

  “You cannot escape from me, little mouse,” Verres said. He leaned forward and grabbed her hair in his fist. “So show me what you have to offer.”

  He dragged her to her feet, the sackcloth falling away to display her naked body. Successa gasped in surprise as she caught sight of a network of regular scarring, at tattoos and swirls, incisions rubbed with colored dirt. The entire left-hand side of the prisoner’s body was a work of savage, Scythian artifice, slashed with a thousand knives in careful patterns, or pricked with dyed needles. The woman raised her head in the light, to display a similar pattern across one side of her face-fang-shaped zigzags across her cheek, and red ochre tendrils reaching across her face and forehead.

  “What a work of art you are,” Verres breathed admiringly. “A priestess, perhaps. A seer? A valued woman among your tribe, I am sure of it. Highly regarded. Greatly esteemed. And now… here you are. Naked before me.”

  Successa stared in wonder at the patterns on the woman’s body, a world away from the gentle rouges or pinched cheeks of the Roman lady. It was an entire cosmology of symbols and sigils, executed with the barbaric angles and daubs of the primitive peoples of the Euxine Sea. But Verres barely glanced at Medea’s decorations. His hands saw no ink. They cupped and caressed the taut, nervous woman’s body like any other.

  “Rape is the Roman way,” Verres said in Medea’s ear. “Do you know that, little Medea? We have taken our women this way since before Rome was a city.”

  Medea’s dark eyes stared unblinking into his, unfathomable. Verres felt her breath on his mouth. His hard cock bumped against the soft flesh of her stomach, leaving a gleaming trail like a snail. His free hand caressed her hip, traveling up to the curve of her breast, his fingers circling a hard nipple.

  “I see you are excited, little Medea,” Verres said with some surprise. “What about me excites you, I wonder…?”

  Medea’s glance darted to the doorway, where Successa the courtesan stood impatiently.

  Successa let out an involuntary sigh of exasperation.

  “If your company is paid for, Successa, then remain here and observe!” Verres said. “The idea of an audience amuses me.”

  “I am at your command, Verres,” Successa said, trying in vain to hide a hurt tone.

  “Then I command you to witness,” Verres said, smiling. “See how a true Roman man imposes his virtue upon the lower races. Watch and lea-”

  Verres was cut off mid-sentence as Medea kneed him hard in the groin.

  As Verres gasped in pain and surprise, his grip loosed on her hair. He folded on himself, grasping at his bruised gonads, only for his face to come into contact with Medea’s knee, forced down onto it by her hands. Verres let out an involuntary yell, keeling over onto the cell floor, but Medea had already forgotten him. Naked, she sprinted straight for the doorway, where Successa watched, frozen in surprise.

  Medea grabbed Successa by the throat, her free hand clawing forward at the woman’s eyes. They spun through half a turn, until Medea kicked Successa away, back into the cell, simultaneously propelling herself out through the doorway and into the corridor.

  Verres was struggling to his feet as Successa landed on top of him, sending both Romans back to the floor in a groaning heap. Successa’s dropped torch landed on her expensive, figure-hugging gown, smearing it with viscous, sticky pitch, already burning in multicolored flames.

  Medea ran down the corridor, her shadow leaping large on the walls in the light of the newly kindled fires. The shrieks of the burning woman drowned out any other sounds in the enclosed space, but Medea remained focused. She paused momentarily, lost, and then looked at the scuffmarks in the sand left by the feet of her tormentors.

  Medea began to sprint along the route they had taken, only to skid to a halt before another cell.

  A man spoke to her, in a language she did not know.

  She turned to look at him, and he rattled the bars of his cage for effect.

  He said something else, but all Medea heard were spits and coughs of Aramaic.

&nb
sp; He tried Greek instead, broken Greek, with Latin smeared upon it like dirt.

  “Not slave! Not slave! Free Medea free?”

  Medea smiled with only half her mouth, grabbing the bolt that held the door closed and shoving it aside. She did not even stop to open the door, darting instead to the next cell, and the next, pulling away the opened locks, and slamming their bolts aside.

  The occupant of the first cell gleefully shoved open his prison and stumbled into the hallway. The hellish light from Medea’s old cell had rapidly diminished, the noise of the woman’s shrieks now reduced to whining sobs. The acrid smell of burnt hair drifted into the corridor on a pall of invisible smoke.

  “Fucking painted bitch!” roared the voice of the Roman from somewhere within.

  Medea peered up at the man she had just freed. He looked back at her expectantly.

  “Vhat?” he said carefully, his Latin still slurred and unkempt. “Now vhat?”

  Behind him, several other freed gladiators stumbled into the gloomy corridor, some still bleary-eyed, others alert and ready for action.

  Medea gestured toward the staircase up to the atrium.

  She chose her words carefully, as best she could.

  “Kill them,” she said. “Kill them all.”

  The band was in full sway, the drummer beating a rhythm like that of a galley slave master. Valgus was on top of a woman in the shallow atrium pool, thrusting into her in time to the music. Timarchides lay back on his couch, cradling the head of the girl who fellated him. Marcus Porcius humped his woman like a dog, grunting and wheezing as he clutched her haunches.

  Pelorus lolled smugly on his couch, watching with a contented smile as the Gallic whore ground herself against him. He reached up to tug on her braided red hair, and was faintly disappointed when it came off in his hand. He cast the wig aside with a grumble and concentrated instead on kneading her small breasts.

  Medea came out through the band, pitching the pipers into the pool, kicking the drummer headfirst onto his drum. The music came to an immediate stop, with only the cymbals playing on, clashing three last times as they bashed into the wall, each other, and then the ground. One spun momentarily like a dropped plate, coming to a swift and silent halt.