He did not doubt that it would send a tickle of fear up the skin of Gellius' wrinkled back. The uproar would raise their morale even higher, and create unease in plenty of Roman bellies. Relishing the cries of nearly fifty thousand men, and the fact that he was their leader, Spartacus encouraged them with great waves of his arms. Most soldiers were too far away to know the reason for the uproar, but they didn't care. The clamor began to spread through Spartacus' host. "Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!" the men yelled, stamping their feet and hammering their weapons off their shields again. Something that no one can ever take away. "But we have something far better than roofs over our heads. A burst of ribald laughter met his comment. "We have no homes!" roared Pulcher, Spartacus' main armorer and one of his senior officers. "Is Aventianus right, lads? Or will Gellius chase us home with our tails between our legs?" He scanned the faces of those nearest him.
"That's what I want to hear." Spartacus had long since given up telling his men not to address him so. "Not a snowflake's chance in Hades, sir." "I see you, Aventianus! What hope have the Romans today, d'you think?"Īventianus grinned. One of the very first slaves to join us after we escaped from the ludus. Striding closer to his soldiers, Spartacus caught the eye of a broad-shouldered man whose pleasant face was marred by a purple scar on his left cheek. A Thracian warrior who fought for Rome, but who now leads an army of former slaves against it. He pictured the day a year and a half before when he'd been betrayed in his own village in Thrace and sold into slavery, his fate to die in an Italian gladiatorial arena. Thanks to their succession of victories, the majority of his men were now as well equipped as the heavily armed legionaries. Two months previously, all that had changed when they had ambushed the consul Lentulus in a defile to the south of their present position. They had never faced a large Roman army on open terrain, let alone a consular one of two legions. Yes, they had defeated the forces of three praetors, but those clashes had been won in the main by subterfuge. Until recently, his followers-the vast majority of them former slaves-had never fought a full-scale battle. They were eager, even desperate to begin the combat.
Their weapons smacked off their shields, challenging the Romans to fight. It oozed from their very stance and the way their lines were swaying back and forth. Even though he was some hundred paces from the center of his front ranks, he could feel his men's confidence.
Spartacus looked out over the flat ground at Gellius' legions, and then back at his own. THE APENNINE MOUNTAINS, NORTHEAST OF PISAE
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