Free Spartacus by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

saddle, but the other two pressed on untiring.
    Still holding south, they held by the banks of a river for many pace miles, on a ragged via terrena fringed with rushes. Once or twice they sighted boats: once, in a forest clearing a gang of slaves at work. Still they rode undetected.
    Sleep came and went before the eyes of Kleon. Now and again he would jerk to a vague wakefulness: once dreamt himself again at sea with the pirate ships of Thoritos. In a clear moment he spoke to the others.
    â€˜We’ve surely missed the track. They cannot have passed this way.’
    The giant eased the pace of his horse, a great white stallion. He turned his face. It was the Gladiator Spartacus.
    â€˜They passed this way.’ He rode for a little looking at the track they followed. ‘See.’
    Kleon for a moment saw something in the path ere his horse was beyond it. Then weariness fogged his eyes, sick of the jest and the plan he had planned.
    â€˜What was it?’
    The third rider, still muffled in abolla, answered him:
    â€˜A slinger’s pellet.’
    The speaker pushed back the hood of the abolla then, for the day promised heat. It showed the young-old face of Elpinice, weariness-pinched, her gaze on the riding Gladiator.
    The three rode south.
    The slave-horde had passed that way. But at legionary’s pace they must have passed, for there was no sign of them. They had set out silently as soon as night fell, under the leadership of Castus and Gannicus and Crixus, with the little company of Eastern men commanded by the Jew ben Sanballat. The three had remained behind to patrol the watch-fires and deceive the watching Romans.
    Few of the slaves, stealing away in the darkness in long files, realized that they left the Strategos himself behind. Several of the leaders even did not know. Some said two Italian shepherds, men well acquainted with the country, remained. But Elpinice was the second, and Kleon, moved by the plan of his humour, the third. Riding now, he cursed that impulse. Would they never halt?
    Yet this at last they did, at an open and deserted horreum, away from the river track and with the Lucanian mountains looming in view. Beyond the horreum itself, through a fence of osiers, the steadings of a farm loomed. Though no smoke arose and it also seemed deserted, they did not approach. Instead, Spartacus hobbled the horses in the shelter of the overhanging eaves of the building; Elpinice disappeared. Kleon staggered inside.
    The floor was thick with the chaff-winnowings of many a harvest. In one corner mouldered a heap of straw. To the Greek eunuch it seemed he would never reach that straw. Lying on it, it seemed he had slept but a moment when a hand shook him.
    â€˜Time to ride south again.’
    [ii]
    He rose and followed the Gladiator out of doors. The sun was again low in the sky. The great white stallion stood tail-switching, snuffling at the necks of the other horses. Elpinice squatted near. In front of her was a heap of olives and a goat-milk cheese, at which she hacked with the dagger that had cut the tribune’s throat. She pushed a handful of olives towards the eunuch.
    â€˜Where did you get the food?’ he asked.
    â€˜At the farm while you slept. It is deserted, so I stole the cheese and olives.’
    Kleon looked at her in cold puzzlement. ‘Didn’t you also sleep?’
    â€˜Like the dead – after Spartacus awoke.’
    The Gladiator stood unhelmeted by the open door, staring into the sunset peace with his dark, blank eyes. The wind moved the strands of his great beard. The stallion ceased to snuffle at the necks of the other horses and thrust its muzzle into the hand of its new master. Spartacus did not move. And to the woman who looked at him there came back again a memory of those faces in stone on the terraces of the Violet City. She ceased to eat, sitting still and clasping her knees.
    The eunuch glanced from one to the other – the slave bed-woman of a