Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 17

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The Senate had despatched Publius Varinus, with nine thousand men, to retrieve the shameful defeat of the Battle of the Lake and free the land from the threat of another servile war. Varinus, a tall, melancholy man weighted down with debts and the caprices of a young and unvirtuous wife, went forth slowly and reluctantly, and took the southwards road.

Presently he was in a land that another army seemed to have devastated. Houses stood looted and roofless, with the smoke still curling from the charred beams and starving dogs snuffling amid the ruins; farms were deserted, the storehouses sacked, gates open and herds straying untended. For the slaves, deserting to join the Gladiator revolt, had maimed or mutilated that which they could not carry away. Cattle, slashed and hamstrung, lowed amidst the hills; mill-dams had been raised and vineyards flooded; the statues of the Gods overturned or defaced with filth. And, seeing these things, the heart of Varinus kindled to a slow anger, and he forgot his debts and the lovers of his wife.

With him, as his legate, rode Furius, a young man who had lately served in Iberia with Pompeius, and before that had wandered many years in Greek lands, and more eastwards still, through Asia to the Persian kingdom. His slim figure was enclosed in a breastplate of silver, sewn on a leather coat. Ocrea of the same metal were bound on his legs. He wore a Greek helmet with a horsehair crest, and rode carelessly a great stallion from Cisalpine Gaul, white, with a bristling mane and red-rimmed eyes and over-ready hooves, as the legionaries knew.

Beside him, dropping vindictively, rode Varinus, unadorned and in plain armour. Behind, rank on rank, marched the legionaries, short brown men bearing the Samnite shield and the Spanish sword, adopted by the Republic after Cannae’s rout. On each legionary’s back five stakes were strapped to erect on the palisades of the nightly camps.

It was bright weather. The great southwards track that left the Appian Way grew thick in dust, so that Furius, cursing, maintained he would rather march with a company of scavengers. He had little respect for Varinus, who was no soldier.

‘Scavengers we are,’ said Varinus, looking at him sourly, ‘and on no holiday jaunt. If you cared so much for soldiering you’d have done better to stay in Iberia.’

But Furius yawned. ‘The Gods—the dear, old smutty Gods!—forbid. I’m no more a goat than a scavenger. Clambering Iberian mountains in pursuit of the unscrubbed savage wearies me. Given flat country, the chasing of runaway slaves should yield twice the sport.’

‘It was the slaves who did the chasing at the Battle of the Lake.’

‘So Clodius said. For a fat man, how he must have run! He was puffing even when he arrived in Rome, thirty pace miles from the battlefield. If it can be called a field. They say he is still hiding in the baths, afraid to return to his wife, though freely forgiven by the Senate. The man is no more than a slave himself.’

But Varinus answered nothing, himself knowing the affliction of a lawless wife. Furius glanced at him contemptuously and then rode on singing, for his was a gay heart. On the road they came on a party of women slaves deserted in the flight of their menfolk to join the Gladiators. One of these women Furius singled out and ordered to be carried along for himself. The rest, with a great roar of laughter, were caught and distributed among the marching troops. Varinus rode frowning.

So in this way they marched south for the space of three days. On the morning of the third they were stayed by the velites falling back. Light-armed Iberians, these soldiers had been scouting in advance. Several had pushed forward many leagues and now brought the news that the Gladiators, reinforced by many slaves from the farms, were still encamped near the Lake where Clodius was routed. Learning of the nature of the ground, Varinus made his plan, and Furius agreed to it, contemptuously and indifferently.

Taking the half-legion the legate would make a detour and come up behind the slave horde. Yet he was not to attack immediately: rather, rigorously to avoid an open engagement. Meanwhile, the praetor would delay for a day and then advance with his legion and offer battle. The legate’s half-legion could then cut off the fleeing slaves at the hither side of the marsh.

So they agreed, and Furius rode off gaily at the head of his three thousand, the while Varinus encamped for that night, for now he believed he held the Gladiators in a cleft stick. With Furius went the female slave, a Gaul, whom he had allotted to himself. He carried her across his saddle and sang for her Eastern songs. Small and lithe, she lay rigid and listened, being afraid. But when the legate kissed her, she returned his kisses.

Seeing these things, the tribune and centurions, grey, scarred men, shook their heads. Things were differently managed in the great campaigns: the women captives, when they’d given their pleasure, had their throats cut or were sold as slaves. For Furius to carry a woman on his saddle shocked and angered the half-legion.

So Furius guessed, and cared nothing. For he came of a great family and the Senate was friendly to him. Moreover, he believed that he himself could defeat the Gladiators and their allies, and so win credit from Varinus.

With this thought, he marched throughout the night, spite the grumbling of the heavy-laden legionaries. Once or twice in the night-march he meditated ridding himself of the girl, then relented, for she was desirable. At dawn he halted under the spurs of a mountain, and three of his scouts fell back to report: The Gladiators still held their camp, they were less than a league away.

Three of the scouts had not returned: but Furius was carelessly unanxious. Summoning his officers, he told them to halt the legionaries and feed them. In an hour they would march on the Gladiators’ camp.

One centurion, a young, coarse-featured Lucanian, protested against the short time of halt. But as he spoke a curious thing happened. His eyes and mouth opened very widely, as though stricken with a wild surprise. Then he swayed and gurgled blood while the others stared. There was an arrow in his throat.

The bucinae blew. Furius looked about him, coolly. Nothing. No one. The mountain reared in wild crags above them, deserted, sun-glimmering. Cattle lowed. A lark was singing high in the white heat. The bowman was nowhere to be seen.

Then, from a distant ledge, the legate saw an unhelmeted head cautiously projected. At the same moment a shower of arrows whistled down on the half-legion. Some stuck quivering in the ground; some rang on iron helmets like hail; each pierced through the eye by chance missiles, the screams of two legionaries came to Furius. But the majority of the legionaries, accustomed to barbarian warfare, unslung the great Samnite shields and held them ready for another volley, and jested on the death-screams of their fellows.

Furius called up from the rear two centuries of Iberians. It was his intention to set them storming the mountain spurs and so drive out the archers. But before this could be executed, there came from round the mountain base the noise of a thunderous trampling; it grew to a rhythmic beat that shook the earth. Then a herd of maddened cattle, propelled with shouts and spear-thrusts, and leaping from ledge to ledge of the mountain-base, poured like an avalanche on the halted legion.

The legionaries stared and howled and beat their shields; too late: in an instant, with curses and laughter, they broke and scattered before the lowing, maddened charge. Like rushing water either side of a rock the herd split before the neighing stallion of Furius, which wheeled and lashed at the beasts with iron hooves. Quieting his mount, the legate suddenly grew tense and shouted unheeded orders.

For, low-bent, half-concealed in the dust, in and out among the leaping beasts raced companies of half-naked slaves. Howling like wolves they raced, and in a moment, wielding clubs and axes, fell on the legionaries. Two of them sprang on the legate, one a great Thracian, one a starved Bithynian.

It was too late for Furius to draw his sword: he thrust his dagger into the Thracian and the man rolled under the stallion’s feet which pranced him to a bloody pulp. But the Bithynian, foot on stirrup, clung to the legate’s left side and struck at him again and again with a sliver of sharpened stone. Each blow dented the legate’s armour, and, try how he would, he could not come at the man because of the burden of the Gaulish girl. Then one of the centurions, leaping amidst the cattle, came to the rescue and slew the Bithynian with a blow that tore open the thin brown throat, and drenched the girl in blood.

Then Furius looked about him.

The herd had passed in dust and noise, though here and there a hamstrung beast strove to rise from the ground. The legionaries, scattered and taken by surprise, were falling back before the desperate attack of the slaves. Loud above the din rose the wailing ‘Hui! Hui!’ of the Thracians. Then the tribune caused a bucina to blow, and the soldiers, cursing and fighting, fell into rank.

Furius spurred the white stallion back, broke bloodily through the onset of the slaves, and in a moment was again at the head of his men. He tossed the girl to the ground, drew his sword, and slung his shield on his left arm. In front of him a man, drawing back, whirled a great sling in his arm. Something sang through the air and Furius reeled as the stone glanced from his silver helmet. But behind him an Iberian, bending his bow, pierced the slinger through the throat.

Over a hundred of the Romans were down. The slave attack seemed to falter a moment, and then was pressed with redoubled fury. Half-armed men flung themselves on to the Roman swords. Transfixed, a slave would seize his assailant by the throat and seek to strangle him. Others charged yelling, and then, at the final moment, hurled themselves to the ground and grasped the feet of the soldiers. By this means many legionaries were dragged down and despatched by the blows of knives driven through their armour.

Cursing, Furius thrust and thrust, but contemptuously, for the slave-reek offended him. Half clad, half armed, it was evident that the slaves could not long keep the field. Jesting, the legionaries smote and smote with pilum and sword till their assailants reeled back in the beginning of rout.

Abruptly, from the mountains a horn blew wildly. At that sound panic seemed to fall on the slaves. With yells they turned and fled, and after them, Furius on his stallion in the van of the pursuit, swept the legionaries. The stream of flight swung round the mountain-base a full hundred yards; and then, for the second time, the horn blew. Furius found the tribune clinging to his stirrup.

‘Back, back, Legate! Look to your right!’

Looked Furius, and strove to rein in the stallion; looked the other Romans, and strove to wheel to the right in ranks. But it was too late, and the order too scattered in the pursuit. The body of three hundred Gladiators, fully armoured, and armed with the long Etruscan hastae, smote through the disordered Roman line like the blow of a gigantic fist, then turned and smote again. At that even the veterans among the legionaries knew themselves lost, and, smiting their way out of the press of battle, fled northwards.

Furius was hurled from his stallion and killed by a giant Gladiator wielding an axe: he grasped the stallion by the nostrils and clove down Furius in one blow; the Gladiators roared at the sight. The tribune was down, and within five minutes rout as complete as that which had overtaken Clodius at the Battle of the Lake fell on the half-legion of Furius. The aquila of the three thousand was captured and torn from its pole and smashed in the mud. Then the din and the dust died off as the sun stood at noon.