Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

Justus rubbed a hand over his jagged face. He looked whipped from the news, a condemned man in the arena, but retelling what he had learned in the legion headquarters seemed to give him some sense of purpose and energy. I imagine that, as the storyteller, he momentarily felt disconnected from the entire situation, forgetting for a few blissful seconds that he was the one at the sharp end.

‘They were being raised for Tiberius’s campaign,’ Justus began. ‘A hundred thousand light infantry and cavalry to accompany him across the Danube. Only, I suppose, the general had forgotten one thing. This is a new province. Maybe Tiberius has a short memory, but the locals don’t. It’s less than twenty years since the last war here. You were there, weren’t you, Priscus?’

‘I caught the end of it,’ the veteran replied.

‘So you remember what happened then?’

Priscus took a deep inhalation of breath. Clearly, the cause of revolt was now becoming clear to him. ‘We sold their young men into slavery,’ he said quietly.

Justus nodded, and then spat. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time, didn’t it?’

‘Funny how a family holds a grudge when you take their sons and brothers and sell them off as animals,’ I said.

‘It’s a part of war.’ Varo shrugged, almost affronted that the defeated side should take it so personally.

‘Of course it is,’ Justus agreed. ‘But then so is revenge.’

We let those words sink in for a moment. My head still throbbed from my injury. My mouth was dry, and I tried to tell myself it was from a day of fighting fires, not fear.

‘So that’s what it’s all about?’ I asked the men. ‘Revenge?’

Justus worked his tongue around his gums, then sucked on a tooth. ‘Revenge. Power. Choice.’

‘Choice?’

‘Rumour mill says that the biggest tribe involved in all this are the Daesitatae. Their leader’s called Bato, and he put forward to the Dalmatians a simple choice, apparently. He said, “We’re going to fight a war, one way or another. Do you want to fight to expand Rome’s borders, or for your own homes?”’

There wasn’t much any of us could say to that, except: ‘How didn’t we see this coming?’

No one had any answer for Priscus. Varo looked at the mountains, as if expecting the enemy to swarm over them at any moment.

‘Did he really say that?’ he asked Justus.

The centurion nodded. ‘A couple of Romans who were there to oversee the raising of the auxiliaries saw the writing on the wall, and got out before heads began to roll.’

‘I imagine the rest of the liaison officers are dead?’ Priscus asked.

‘A good handful, military and civil. There’s more, too.’ Justus grimaced. ‘There was a settlement of retired veterans in the area. They’d been given farmland around there after they saw out their service.’

I didn’t need to be told how this story would end. Justus spelt it out anyway.

‘They’ve been butchered to a man.’

‘So what now?’ Priscus finally broke the silence. ‘We attack? We fall back?’

Justus shook his head.

‘The massacre of the veterans is the last enemy action that we know about,’ the centurion confided. ‘We’ve dispatched cavalry scouts into the plains, but for the mountains…’

He let his voice trail away. I watched as Priscus’s lips tightened in near pain, and Varo’s pulled into a sickly smile.

‘Let me guess,’ the big man snorted, ‘your next sentence contains the word volunteer .’

Our officer said nothing. Silence acknowledged the truth of Varo’s words. Volunteers to go into mountains that could kill a man through thirst and fatigue. That harboured murderers, brigands and wild beasts. And now, perhaps, were also refuge to an army of well-armed rebels.

I spoke. ‘I’ll go.’

What other choice was there?

I had begged for war since the moment I had joined the legion. Now was the time to fulfil that ambition, however bleak my prospects of survival.

‘I’ll go,’ I said again, meeting my centurion’s eye.

‘First Cohort’s sending men today.t men out already.’ The veteran shrugged, recognizing a dead man walking. ‘You’ve got a day to reconsider.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll go,’ I said, unblinking. ‘I want this.’

They were the truest words I had ever spoken.

Later that day, a patrol went up into the mountains.

One man came back.

He died before he could tell us what happened.

I didn’t know much about war, but one thing I was learning quickly was that pillars of smoke were not a good thing to see. From my vantage in the mountains, I saw them reach across the landscape like tendrils stretching upwards from a verdant sea floor.

Another lesson I had been taught was that words mattered. When our cohort had been gathered together before being marched towards the nearest mountain range, our commander had gone to pains to make us understand that this was a simple uprising. We were to refer to it as a local insurgency, and not a war. The troublemakers that had started fires and murdered soldiers should be thought of in the same vein as brigands, and thieves. They were criminals, and no army.

‘A hundred thousand criminals still sounds like an army to me,’ Varo had snorted as were dismissed.

I wished the big man and his solid presence was with me now, but I was alone with my section. I had been hasty in volunteering myself for scouting duty, giving little thought to the implications it would have for the seven men beneath my command. I had expected – I had wanted – to seek out the enemy alone, but Centurion Justus would have none of it, and so my section scaled a ridge ahead and to the left of where the century followed in the lower ground. Justus had also refused my suggestion that we leave our heavy kit with the main body of troops, and so we sweated and swore as we followed the narrow trail between rock and scree. I had long since tied my helmet off on my equipment, and it was all I could do to keep my gaze up and searching ahead for ambush, sun and fatigue beating my head down relentlessly.

I turned to look back at my seven charges. None had questioned my choice of route, or any other order. I knew there was a reason for that blind obedience other than their shortage of breath: they were scared of me. They knew of my reputation. I had never beaten a man under my command, but that was not out of any sensibility. The young soldiers I had led in the past had simply had the good sense to keep their mouths shut.

‘We’ll rest here,’ I told them, seeing a flash of relief pass over their faces.

‘Vitus. Severus. Take watch front and back,’ I ordered. They were the fittest of the seven, and I trusted them to keep a lookout while the others gathered their breath and gulped from skins. Whether they carried wine or water, I did not care. So long as they kept up. So long as they would fight.

I sat, grimacing as the hard edges of the ridge dug into my backside. There really was no comfortable way to sit in these jagged mountains, but I forbade my men to sit on their shields – who knew how that accumulated strain would affect their defence in battle? I didn’t want to die because someone’s arse was too precious to sit on.

I looked into the distance, and thought of Marcus. Where was he now? Surely Tiberius could not continue with his planned war? Surely he – and my greatest friend – would be returning with haste to the land that had burst into flame at their backs?

‘Section commander?’ one of the young men ventured carefully. His nickname was Gums, because that was mostly all that was in his mouth. He’d told me that his teeth had been kicked out by a horse, and I’d told him that I didn’t give a shit. He hadn’t tried to speak to me much after that, and now I could hear the nervous edge to his wet words.