The rocky terrain helped conceal their trail, but even then, they rode in circles, retraced their steps, moved on foot through wooded areas, and led the horses through every stream they could find. Only three or four slept at a time, and usually while they were riding. They just looped their reins through their belts to keep from falling over. Then they woke again without a sound, without a single word spoken among them. Xanthus had never seen such discipline.
In fact, none of the mercenaries spoke much at all, to Xanthus or to each other.
Except for Kanut.
Who couldn’t shut up.
For even one.
Single.
Minute.
“You see, birds are mercurial creatures,” he was saying. “Fiercely loyal. But give a falcon the wrong look, and she’ll bite. Hard. Maybe growl a bit while she’s at it.” He laughed and turned to Number Two. “Do you remember the gray one?”
Number Two, who’d been frowning all day, suddenly grinned. “I still have a scar from that one.”
“Exactly my point,” Kanut said, turning to Xanthus. “You always remember the bird who gave you your first scar.”
“What does that have to do with anything that you said before?” Xanthus asked with exasperation. He’d learned on the first day that ignoring Kanut only made him worse, but it was so difficult to take him seriously.
“My point,” Kanut said, “is that birds are like people.”
“Oh, of course,” Xanthus replied. “Except for the feathers, claws, beak, flight—”
“Don’t be pedantic, gladiator. I like you much more when you’re aloof and cold. Now, wolves are a different matter.”
Kanut droned on, and Xanthus found himself remembering the fight with the wolves in Ardea. He’d thought his heart had stopped when Attia fell and that gray body shuddered on top of her. He remembered knowing—instantly—that if she died, well, there wouldn’t really be much point to anything.
That same reasoning was why he now found himself on the road with mercenaries who wouldn’t speak and another who couldn’t stop: to keep Attia safe. Xanthus thought it might well be that everything he did in the future would be for her sake.
Kanut’s grating voice broke through his thoughts. “Tell me again how you defeated the Taurus.” He bit into an apple, chewing with noisy, wet smacks of his lips.
“I killed him,” Xanthus said.
“Obviously, gladiator. But how?” Kanut pressed.
“I sliced his head off.”
Kanut slapped his knee and laughed. “Brilliant! Is that how Spartacus killed his men?”
Xanthus rolled his eyes. Kanut wasn’t even trying to be coy about it anymore. His incessant questions about Xanthus were peppered with inquiries about Spartacus. He was no doubt trying to catch him off guard, hoping that Xanthus would release more information than he intended.
“No,” Xanthus said. “Spartacus beat the first man with his bare hands, remember?”
“Bare hands,” Kanut repeated with a nod and barely suppressed smile. “Rather impressive. And was his opponent armed?”
“To the teeth,” Xanthus said yet again. He glanced to the side just in time to see Number Two mouthing the words along with him. “At least one of you has been paying attention.”
“You’ve told us the same thing at least a dozen times now, gladiator,” Number Two said.
“Maybe that’s because you’ve asked the same question at least a dozen times now. It’s not my fault you can’t listen.”
“There is one question you haven’t answered,” Number Two said.
“And what is that?”
“How did you learn his name?”
“What?”
Number Two turned in his saddle to look at Xanthus. “Spartacus was mute, you said. Didn’t say a single word, correct? So how did you learn his name?”
Xanthus met the man’s challenging gaze full on. “You’d have to ask Timeus’s nephew. He was the one who introduced him at the arena.”
A charged silence passed between them, broken when Kanut laughed forcefully. “Oh, who cares? What is in a name? I’ve had plenty of names in the past few months alone.”
Number Two turned forward.
“I’m more concerned with what Spartacus is,” Kanut said. “A demon? A monkey? A frog?”
“All viable options,” Xanthus muttered.
“Or perhaps she was a giant, as the gladiator says.”
She.
Xanthus nearly fell off his horse, his hands involuntarily jerking on the reins for balance. The beast reared up with a loud noise of protest.
But neither the mercenaries nor Kanut nor his Number Two were paying attention to him, because in the distance, two scouts were racing back and waving their arms wildly.
Kanut translated. “Fido’s men. Follow me, gladiator!”
The mercenaries dispersed, spreading out in every direction. There was no time for questions.
Xanthus urged his horse into a gallop, following in Kanut’s wake as he scanned the horizon. The others had already disappeared, but dust rose just ahead.
Kanut saw it, too. He forced his horse into a sharp turn. They barely made it fifty yards before they saw the dust rise again. Kanut made another sharp turn, then another. But Fido’s men were coming at them from all sides. There was nowhere to go. Their horses trotted nervously as the men rode closer to them.
“Maybe you should lend me a sword,” Xanthus said.
“Maybe you should follow my lead.”
“Because that worked out so well for me just now?”
Kanut chuckled and raised his hands above his head as Fido’s men finally came into view.
“What the hell are you doing?” Xanthus growled.
Kanut smiled. “Surrendering.”
CHAPTER 19
Rory ran to the shutters, her small hands struggling with the latch. She and Attia were finally alone, and the child had been whispering about this all day.
“Hurry!” she said urgently, beckoning to Attia to come and help.
Attia reached over with a smile and let the shutters swing open.
Orange-tinted light filled the room, warming the air with the glow of the sunset. Rory’s giggle was a sound of pure delight, and she spread her arms wide.
“We almost missed it. Why don’t people do this all the time?” she asked, spinning in circles that made her sleeping-tunic swirl around her ankles.
“It’s different when you’re older.”
“I wish I could do this all day, not just at sunset.”
“You can’t do it for too long, Rory,” Attia said. “The sun will toast your skin brown and then what will your mother say?”
“She wouldn’t notice,” Rory said.
Attia couldn’t argue with that. Valeria so rarely made appearances anymore, not even at the evening meal. Attia doubted that she’d even seen her daughter since they left Rome. “What about your brother? He would certainly notice if you start to look like a raisin.”
Rory lowered her arms and her voice. “Lucius wouldn’t, either. He hasn’t come to visit me in so long. He used to tuck me in some nights. But I haven’t seen him in days and days. I wish I could tell him. I wish he could see me in the sun.”
Attia understood the affection that Rory had for her brother. In many ways, it seemed like he’d raised her more than Valeria had. But then again, Attia was grateful that Lucius hadn’t come to see his sister. The young man she’d seen that morning in the training yard with his glazed eyes and trembling hands was so different from the Lucius whose hands she’d bandaged in Rome. The attack on the camp—and what he’d been forced to do because of it—had changed him immensely.