Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 20

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By mid-afternoon the slaves had marched away, all marching in ordered companies in imitation of the iron-clad Gladiators. Laden with weapons and armour, they marched with great carrion-birds already a cloud overhead. The Roman dead were left unburied, the Roman wounded that survived unharmed. But the dead of the slaves Spartacus buried in a great mound; thereon was heaped a pile of stones and at the foot the fragments of the broken aquila strewn for a memory. Into far years that cairn survived, long after the name of the battle was lost, and all that they did and suffered there.

At nightfall Varinus’ legion came up and heard the news from such of the wounded as still lived. Thereat Varinus cursed coldly his dead legate, Furius, with regret that he had not lived to meet torment in the hands of the Gladiators or the mines-slaves. Then he desecrated the mound of the slaves, left his wounded to care for themselves, and pressed on all that evening in pursuit of Spartacus.

But he was too late to come up with the horde that had routed Furius. By the falling of dusk, in sight of the marsh, he was aware of lines of entrenchments and the burning of watch fires. The slave-leader had left behind him the Gauls to entrench the camp while he fell on Furius.

Cursing, Varinus gave orders to camp for the night. The legionaries dug hasty earthworks against a surprise attack, then lay down and slept in weariness under the deepening frosts of Spring.

And at length it drew near to dawn.