‘Why don’t you amuse us all, Gafarn,’ I said.
‘I was merely telling Diana of how you were nearly married off to the Princess Axsen of Babylon.’
Gallia turned and looked at me but said nothing.
‘I’m sure Diana doesn’t want to know about things that have no bearing on the here and now,’ I said, slightly annoyed.
‘On the contrary, highness,’ said Gafarn, ‘taking all things into account, I would reason that getting captured by the Romans saved you from a worse fate.’
‘I was not going to marry the Princess of Babylon,’ I insisted. I glanced at Gallia. ‘The person I marry shall be my choice, and mine alone.’
‘Of course, highness,’ retorted Gafarn, ‘as long as your mother and father say so.’
‘Be quiet,’ I ordered.
We rode on in silence for a while before Gallia said to me. ‘What is she like?’
‘Who?’
‘The Princess of Babylon.’
I shrugged. ‘I do not know, I’ve never met her.’
‘She’s fat,’ said Gafarn. ‘Not beautiful like you, lady.’
‘Why should I care what she looks like?’ asked Gallia.
‘Just to reassure you, lady, that she is no rival to you.’
‘Is she a rival?’ queried Gallia, mischievously.
‘No, lady,’ he relied, ‘for Prince Pacorus has eyes only for you.’
I halted Remus and turned him to face Gafarn. ‘That’s enough, Gafarn. I don’t want to hear any more about the Princess Axsen.’
Gafarn nodded his head gravely. ‘Of course, highness.’
‘And you’re embarrassing the Lady Gallia,’ I added.
‘Really? I thought I was embarrassing you.’
The lighthearted mood was interrupted by a rider from Spartacus, who wished to see me. I found him under a beech tree sitting on the ground with Claudia. The army tramped by them, soldiers who looked like Romans marching six abreast and kept in line by slaves turned centurions wielding those wretched vine canes. I had to admit, though, that the army conducted itself in a professional manner, testimony to the leadership of Spartacus.
‘Apulia,’ he said to me.
‘Lord?’
‘Apulia, Pacorus. A region rich in olive farms and slaves. A runaway slave was brought to me earlier and he told me that he had been working on a large farm in Apulia and he gave me an idea. I want you to raid into the region and see if you can get us some recruits. We march to Metapontum, but cavalry is no use in a siege. Therefore, take your horse into Apulia and give the Romans a taste of what they have done to the lands of other peoples.’
‘You mean fire and sword,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Fat Romans make easy prey.’
And so it was that we rode into Apulia, nine hundred horsemen divided into three columns. I led the first, Nergal the second and Burebista the third. I left Godarz, Rhesus and the rest of the new recruits to the cavalry with the army, as I thought his knowledge would be useful to Spartacus, and I wanted to leave a cadre of horse behind because slaves were still coming in, even during our march.
Apulia, located along Italy’s eastern coast, was a strange land, very different from Lucania and Campania. It consisted mainly of flat land divided into huge agricultural estates. The towns in the area were few and poor. We bypassed one called Silvium on the Appian Way and struck north. Any villas we came across we burned and we released the slaves from their wretched barracks, which were invariably well away from where their masters lived. These were large, square stone buildings with thatched roofs that had small windows with grills in the walls for ventilation. Men, women and children were kept under lock and key and chained to each other during the hours of darkness, before being released in the morning to work another day under the lashes of the overseers in the fields. The latter, slaves themselves, earned their masters’ goodwill by administering brutality towards those in their charge. As their reward they were given their own accommodation, which was little more than a hovel next to the slave barracks. By such methods did a few Romans control the lives of thousands. One morning we came across a long column of slaves being herded to pick olives, the main crop of the region.
The morning was overcast and windless, and the only sounds that could be heard were the curses of the overseers and the crack of their lashes across scarred backs. At first the overseers thought that we were Roman cavalry and started to shove the slaves aside to make way for us, but I halted the column in front of them to block their route. We disabused them of the notion that we were their friends and freed the slaves, and as I was in a charitable mood I let the overseers go, though they were promptly killed on the spot by those they had formally terrorised.
Most of those liberated from the fields were told to head into Lucania, towards the port of Metapontum. I reasoned that even if the port had not fallen to Spartacus there would be thousands of his men in the countryside around it, and the slaves would run into them sooner or later. Most seemed happy to be free, though I noticed that some just stood there after the overseers had been killed, unsure what to do. Gallia told me that they had probably been slaves from childhood and had no concept of freedom. Others formed themselves into bands and declared that they would not be joining the ‘gladiator Spartacus’, but would take to the hills and live off the land instead. I doubted whether they would survive for more than three months before being hunted down and nailed to crosses. However, they were in the minority and as most slaves who worked the land were captives taken in war, I reckoned that Spartacus would be receiving thousands of valuable reinforcements from those freed by our raids.
Any towns that we neared shut their gates and their inhabitants cowered behind their walls, though as my column numbered only three hundred riders the fear that we struck into the enemy’s hearts was out of all proportion to our size. And thus it was that as we were riding near the town of Rubi, along deserted roads and empty fields, we came across the camp of a slave-hunting gang pitched near a field of giant olive trees, which must have been thirty feet high and had thick trunks. The gang saw us coming but barely acknowledged us, no doubt thinking that we were a Roman patrol. When we got nearer I could see that there was about a dozen gang members, unshaven, dressed in filthy tunics with an assortment of weapons dangling from their belts or in their hands. Their horses were tethered under an olive tree, with a cart and two mules also tied to it off to one side. Dangling from the cart was a collection of shackles and branding irons, the tools of their trade.