Spartacus Read Online Free Page B

twice lost their way, wandering up stark ravines or into canebrakes. By accident they stumbled upon the camp, nor did they know it the camp at first, for the fires were long dead, no sentries placed, no trench had been dug or stake-fence erected. The slaves were men from the Eastern world, and they slept under dripping sycamore trees, shivering, numbed in their dreams. But one was awake and he challenged them on the verge of the camp, in a whining, sibilant Latin.
    â€˜We’re slaves,’ said Kleon, peering at him in the dawn-gloom, ‘seeking freedom and empty bellies, not to mention a band of Gladiators.’
    The man held an axe in his hand. Now he came from under the dripping fronds and looked at Kleon with a frowning face. The Greek saw before him one stout and black-haired, with a curling beard and a curling nose, bright, scowling eyes as black as his hair. He was clad in an ill-fitting toga, edged with a senator’s fringe.
    â€˜If you seek empty bellies you’ve been misdirected, for these hogs are filled with the wine we looted. As for the Gladiators of Capua, they’ve surrendered at last, or so it’s said, betrayed by a Thracian who led them.’
    The eunuch shrugged. ‘Then we don’t seek the Gladiators. Couldn’t the fools find a leader other than a Thracian savage? And who is your leader here?’
    The bearded man scowled upon the morning. ‘I am the leader – may Jehovah give me wit. Half of these’ – he waved an arm at the dim groups huddled under the trees – ‘are Bithynians, newly-come from Brindisium and speaking no Latin. I and twenty household slaves of Crassus the Lean freed them, for we surprised their guards on the marsh and strangled them.’
    â€˜That was well. I am Kleon of Corinth, a Greek.’
    â€˜That’s ill, for I’ve no love of Greeks. I am Gershom of Kadesh, a Pharisee and a Jew.’
    In revolt against Jannaeus and his Hellenistic priests, Gershom ben Sanballat had twice raised the standards of the Hasidim, and twice had been defeated. But so dourly had he held his own in the mountains around Kadesh, that the King had been forced to grant him a pardon, and thereafter left him in peace. Gershom had retired to cultivating his farms and engrossing himself in the Ochian mysteries of the synagogue. These practices lost him his following. In two years’ time Jannaeus died and his widow Salome Alexandra reigned in Jerusalem. Among the first to fall was Gershom, secretly seized and sold into slavery in Syria, from there re-sold to Rome, from there re-sold to the household of Marcus Licinius Crassus. For less than a year a slave, his iron spirit was but faintly bent when he heard the news of the Gladiators’ revolt, and stirred his fellows to emulation. Now he fronted Kleon, unclean, a Greek, the old, strong Gentile hate in his face, that hate forgotten while he was a slave, stirring now to a flame from old embers.
    But also, the Greek had a strange attraction. The flame died down. Scowling, Gershom raised a hand to head and heart. Kleon responded, and they then touched hands, watched by Titul and the Ionians. But Gershom secretly cleansed his palm against his tunic, remembering that the touch of a Gentile was defilement.
    â€˜This is an Iberian,’ said Kleon, pointing to his company, ‘and these are Ionians.’
    â€˜There’s Greek wine under these cloths,’ said the Jew. ‘And unclean meat. Eat, if you’re hungry.’
    Titul and the Ionians squatted on the ground, and drank, and were warmed with the strong Greek wine, choking and gulping on the mouthfuls at first, being slaves unaccustomed to wine. Famished, they tore with their fingers at the roasted meat, Kleon eating but sparingly, hungered though he was. For even hunger in his mutilated body was only a faint ghost of the lusts he had known. Slave or free, that would alter never, and a moment that thought came twisting