Free Spartacus by Howard Fast Page A

your commander has waited this long, he can wait a while longer.”

    The eyes of the young man narrowed, but he kept his voice pleasant and observed, “That’s for him to say.”

    “You feed the horse first?”

    The young officer smiled and nodded. “Come along,” he said.

    “I’m not in your damned legion!”

    “You’re in a legion encampment.”

    They faced it out for a moment; then Batiatus shrugged, decided that there was no point in continuing the argument there in that needle-like rain, wrapped his wet cloak around him, and followed what he characterized as a dirty little patrician snotnose—but to himself, thinking too that, after all, he had seen more blood run in a single afternoon than this whelp, whose mother’s milk was scarcely dry on his lips, had seen in all his fancy military career. But think what he might, the fat man remained as a small butcher in a slaughterhouse—his only comfort being a knowledge that he was not entirely apart from the forces which had brought the legions to this place.

    He followed the young man down the broad central avenue of the encampment, looking curiously from side to side at the dirty, mud-stained tents, good enough as roofs but open in front, and at the soldiers who sprawled on their grass beds, talking, swearing, singing and throwing dice or knuckle-bones. They were hard, clean-shaven, olive-skinned Italian peasants for the most part. Some of the tents had little stoves, but generally they took the cold as they took the heat, as they took the endless drill and the merciless discipline, the weak among them dying quickly, the tough ones becoming tougher and tougher, steel and whalebone attached to a small, efficient knife, which had become the most dreadful instrument of mass destruction ever known.

    Directly in the center of the camp, at an intersection of two lines stretched between the four corners, stood the general’s pavilion, the praetorium , which was merely a large tent divided into two sections or rooms. The flaps of this tent were closed, and on either side of the entrance stood a sentry, each of whom carried a long, slender dress spear instead of the heavy and murderous pilum , and a light, circular buckler and curved knife in the Thracean style, instead of the regular massive shield and Spanish shortsword. They wore white woolen cloaks which were sodden with rain, and stood as if they were carved from stone, the rain running from their helmets, their clothes and their weapons. For some reason this impressed Batiatus more than anything else he had seen. He was pleased when flesh did more than flesh was calculated to do, and this pleased him.

    As they approached, the sentries saluted and then held the flaps aside. Batiatus and the young officer passed through, into the dim light of the tent, and Batiatus found himself in a room forty feet in width and some twenty in depth, the front half of the praetorium . Its only furnishings consisted of a long wooden table with a dozen folding stools set around it. At one end of the table, elbows upon it, staring at a map that was spread out in front of him, sat the commander in chief, Marcus Licinius Crassus.

    Crassus rose as Batiatus and the officer entered, and the fat man was pleased to note how readily the general walked forward, giving him his hand in greeting.

    “Lentulus Batiatus—of Capua? I imagine so.”

    Batiatus nodded and shook hands. This general was really very personable, with fine, strong manly features and nothing condescending about him. “I’m happy to meet you, sir,” said Batiatus.

    “You’ve come a long way, and very decently, and very good of you too, I’m sure, and you’re wet and hungry and tired.”

    He said this with concern and a certain misgiving, which put Batiatus at his ease; the young officer, however, continued to regard the fat man as superciliously as before. If Batiatus had been more sensitive he would have realized that both attitudes were equally