Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 19

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In an orgy of hate, the slaves flung themselves on the legionaries, captured and wounded. A Roman, a centurion, who resisted was surrounded and torn piecemeal by a pack of Germans, with a wrenching of tearing flesh and a crackle of breaking bones. Coveting a helmet, Brennus the Gaul seized a prisoner and drew him aside, and attempted to rive the stout leathern bands from under the captive’s chin. They were clumsy to move and he drew his knife, sawing at them. The legionary screamed and writhed. The Gaul held with a vacant grin, still sawing with his knife while the screams went on. Then the other slaves saw that the Gaul was hacking off the captive’s head with his helmet, and screams of laughter arose. Pallid and filthy, denied the sun, denied the remembrance of wine or warmth, the slaves of the mines went mad in a lust of revenge, delighting in torments, bathing their arms to the shoulders in blood, tearing the entrails from still-living bodies. A pandemonium of howlings arose afresh from the battlefield a moment quieted. Then a murmur spread and Spartacus appeared.

He it was who had led the Gladiator charge and smitten Furius from the saddle. Now, he shouted aloud. The slaves stared their incomprehension and then, as he sprang among them, desisted from their torment of the legionaries, seeing that a God of madness had seized the Strategos. For all had sought or taken vengeance, and the strange Thracian Gladiator looked round about him at circlings of faces still fired in the heat of cruelty, saw Crixus himself unbend from thrusting a dagger in the heart of a legionary, saw Gannicus strapping bloodstained ocrea to his legs, saw Elpinice, who had charged with the Gladiators, cleaning her knife in the sand. She had cut the throat of the wounded tribune.

It was as though a dark cloud fell over the sun of their victory. All stared, Spartacus now silent, with strange, glazed look and heaving breast. Then they turned their gaze to the giant stallion which stood shivering beside him. Its nostrils were still in the grasp of his great fingers, and as the general of the slave-host groaned, his knuckles whitened and the stallion groaned beside him. And, because of that terrifying sound and sight, the slaves drew away from their prey, staring at man and stallion. Slowly his grasp relaxed and the Gladiator looked up in the eyes of the great beast he had held. Those near at hand cried out to Spartacus to beware, but he did not move, staring at the stallion. It heaved its head and snorted, and snorted with quivering nostrils between its knees till its white knees were spattered with a bloody foam. Then it raised its head and slowly, hesitatingly, made a step towards the Gladiator.

The leader of the slave-horde had found a mount.