Spartacus: Blood And Sand !new! Page

He pointed toward the city. “There is a horse trader two streets east. He owes me a favor from my fighting days. He will take you to the mountains. Go. Be the storm Batiatus feared.”

Batiatus lunged. Pelorus, with the slow, economical grace of a man who had dodged death forty-seven times, sidestepped. He used his stump to hook Batiatus’s wrist and his good hand to drive the little whittling knife—the one he’d been sharpening for ten years—up under the lanista’s chin. spartacus: blood and sand

But this story is not of them. It is of a ghost who walked among them. He pointed toward the city

“You are his heart,” Pelorus said, nodding toward the cell where Spartacus lay. “Batiatus knows this. He will use it. He will break it.” He will take you to the mountains

“No,” Pelorus said, tossing the purse to Sura’s killer—he did not yet know she was dead. “I am the one who opens the gates.”

The story of Pelorus was a story Batiatus liked to tell guests during lavish dinners, a cautionary tale seasoned with profit. “He was my father’s greatest investment,” Batiatus would say, swirling wine. “A net and trident fighter from Crete. Won forty-seven bouts. Forty-seven! The mob adored him. He was Insutribilis —the Unbroken.”