Spartacus by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Author:Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781904598565
Publisher: Birlinn

Winter in Nola

[i]

NOLA was stormed by the Gaulish advance-guard of the Free Legions. Castus hurled wave after wave of attackers upon it, and took it after great slaughter. But with its seizure the southern half of the peninsula, which Kleon and the Thracian designed to make a great slave state, was now defended by two strong towns. Nuceria was strongly garrisoned, but the body of the slave-horde quartered in Nola.

It was a bitter winter. None but velites and such light troops might move while it lasted, and throughout the months of inaction the slaves might have sunk in a placid torpor, but for the ceaseless urging of Spartacus and the eunuch Greek. These knew that unless the horde was welded into an army, the consuls would destroy them in the spring. For now, and at last, the Republic was aroused. The Wolf had wakened on her hills, and was crying her packs to defence. It was even told that a great shipment of timber had been sent for to the Sardinian forests: to make crosses for the captured slaves.

So drilling and training in weapon-play went on unceasingly under the walls, despite the bitter winds from the north. The furnaces glowed unceasingly, while hastae and pila were hammered and sharpened in preparation for the spring. Kleon even conceived the idea of the construction of rams and catapults for the taking of the southern cities still unmolested by the slaves. That idea might never have passed to fulfilment, but that the slave-horde was joined in Nola by a Greek named Hiketas, neither slave nor freedman, but an Argive noble. He brought with him his sister, Eradne, with whom he lived in incest. Traversing the roads from Rome, he offered his services to the staring eunuch.

‘This is the slave-army,’ Kleon said, with a cold distrust. ‘You are of the Masters.’

The young Greek laughed; and yawned daintily, eating a comfit from a silver box. ‘I am tired of this life of Masters and slaves. Your slave-bands offer diversion. So I and Eradne would join them.’ He waved a negligent hand at the tall, slight figure clad as a man, who had ridden with him to the Nola guardhouse. Kleon said: ‘She is your woman?’

‘She is my sister, and we live in incest.’ The young Greek ate another comfit, and dusted his hands. ‘But we’ve no ambition to live in this guardhouse, unless your Strategos rejects our help. In that case we’ve another plan to follow.’

‘What is that?’ Kleon asked.

‘To charter a boat in Sicily and sail west through the Pillars to the Outer Seas. I’d put to the test this tale of old Plato’s that the Western Isle was really sunk.’

Kleon thought of Titul and smiled on him bleakly. And then thought: ‘You may join the Free Legions if you will. But I’ll set a guard to watch you and your woman.’

Hiketas raised plucked eyebrows in his painted face. ‘Set a legion, if you’ll sleep better of nights.’ And then, as he was led through Nola, broke from his half-captivity to gesture at the single ram in the market-place.

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