Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

Surprise the enemy.

Kill the enemy.

We reached the hut. There was no door in the entrance, simply a mass of heavy sacking. I waited against the wall, and heard the sound of soft snoring from within. I looked back to where we had come from. Fifty yards away, the low wall and the dead dog were becoming clearly visible, one section of men studded along its length as a reserve. I looked at each of the four huts, and saw the same thing at each – a knot of Roman soldiers tight-faced with anticipation. My centurion caught my eye, and nodded, the movement exaggerated by the crest on his helmet. I looked at Gums beside me, and motioned to our shields. Gently, we placed them against the stone of the hut – they would be nothing but an encumbrance for what was to come.

Then, after a final glance at our officer, I held my breath in my chest, took hold of the cloth sacking of the doorway, and pulled it quickly aside.

The warmth and smell of half a dozen sleeping figures hit me immediately. I tried to pull the sacking totally free of its hanging place to clear a killing lane, but the material snagged on my javelin, and immediately I went from a soldier committed a fluid and perfect operation, to becoming as trapped and useless as a gladiator caught in the fishing net of a retiarius.

‘Bastard!’ I blurted from frustration. ‘Gums, push through!’

The young soldier barged by me as I thrashed and swore, expecting at any moment to be gaffed like a netted trout. Only a few seconds had passed since my last glance at Centurion Justus, but now the high-pitched screams of women and children shattered what had been left of the night.

‘Shut up!’ I heard Gums scream.

Somehow, at that moment, I wrenched myself free of my self-imposed captivity and stumbled fully into the hut. The motion was violent and I tripped. I saw a blur of startled and terrorized faces, and then I was on the floor.

‘Are you hurt?’ I heard Gums shout at me.

Was I hurt?

I pushed myself on to my hands and knees, rage pounding in my temples that my actions had been so ignoble. So laughable.

Was I fucking hurt?

‘I’m fine!’ I snapped, and looked at the cowering figures that had pushed themselves into the corner of the hut like bleating sheep.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ I yelled at them, further enraged.

Their crying redoubled, and I cursed fate. There was no one to fight in here. There were nothing but women and their disgusting snot-faced children. Not for a moment did I consider that, had there been one half-capable fighter in the room, I would have been found dead and tangled in the door’s sacking by my friends.

‘Get them outside,’ I growled.

The point of Gums’s shaking javelin did the rest, and I stepped outside to a valley full of shrieks.

‘Shut up!’ someone else was shouting. ‘Shut up!’

They wouldn’t.

They screeched. They cried. They begged. There were two dozen of them, maybe more. Women. Children. A handful of trembling old men. I saw one of these try to stand in supplication. A fist sent him to the ground. Surrounded by the wolves of the legion, the press of bodies formed a pathetic huddle on the cold earth.

‘Double-check the huts,’ Justus ordered. ‘The rebels must be hiding.’

‘Either that or they slipped away,’ a veteran agreed, but I had faith in the positioning of our blocking forces, and there was no sound of a clash from higher in the valley.

‘They must be hiding,’ I repeated to my men. ‘Get back in and search the hut. Pull it apart. Go.’

The dwellings of the terrified villagers were small and spartan. It wasn’t long before we knew that our empty hands would remain that way.

Justus cursed, and balled his fists. I met Varo’s eyes for the first time that morning. He looked angry, and gave a sad shake of his head.

We’d missed them.

‘Not a single fighting-age male, sir,’ I said, approaching my centurion.

A thought of the villagers’ possible innocence entered my mind. I had been so eager to fight that I had not entertained the notion that this village had been anything other than a base for insurgents. Now, however, the truth seemed to be revealing itself. These were women, children and old men. There were no rebels here. I said as much to my commander.

‘Exactly.’ Justus smiled sickly. ‘They’ve already gone. They’re probably the ones that burned that farm yesterday.’

He looked at the elderly men, then. One of them met his gaze, marking himself out as the village elder. Justus motioned him to his feet.

‘Where are all your young men?’ Justus asked in Latin.

The man shrugged apologetically. It was no surprise that he didn’t speak the Roman tongue. Even now that they were under the Empire, there was little need for it in the mountains.

‘I’m from the coast, sir,’ I offered my centurion. ‘I think I’ll have enough of a common tongue to get by.’

Justus shrugged, and I took that as my permission to continue.

‘Where are your young men?’ I asked in the language I had learned when playing on the streets of Iader.

‘Gone to war.’ The elder spoke quickly. ‘For Rome.’

I told Justus as much.

The officer thought on it a moment; then he stared at the elder in contempt. ‘Which means they’re now rebels.’ The man could not understand the words, but he shrank back at the tone in which they were delivered. ‘Ask him if he knows that they have become enemies of Rome.’

I did.

He didn’t.

‘Sir!’ a soldier of Varo’s section then called out. ‘Sir, over here!’

Justus moved. I followed.

The inquisitive soldier had been searching the grounds beyond the huts. Beneath the earth, hidden underneath turf-coated slats of wood, he had found a store of barrels. Varo prised them open. Grain. Salted meat. Wine.

‘Planning a party?’ Justus asked the elder.

There was no need for a translation. The man’s eyes had grown fearful when the store was discovered. A punch from Justus was all that was needed to convince him that things were about to turn ugly.

‘Please,’ the elder said to me. ‘We have to hide our stores. We need them to survive the winter!’

‘Why would you hide them?’ Justus spat back as I translated.

‘Because the rebels will take them,’ the man admitted.

Justus sneered with triumph. ‘So you do know about the revolt?’

The old man was trapped, and he knew it.

‘They came demanding our sons. They came demanding our supplies. Our boys had already left to go to war for Rome. The food we had hidden when they left.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we have no one to protect it.’

He was right about that.

‘Those supplies belong to Rome.’ Justus smirked, turning to find a runner. ‘Call in the other sections. We’re going to load up here, and return to base.’

The runner saluted, and took off.

Again the old man didn’t recognize the words, but comprehended every one.

‘Please,’ he tried with me, ‘we will starve.’

Justus asked me what he said. I told him. He asked that I translate his reply. As I did, an ugly smile played out over the centurion’s face.

I didn’t consider the words at the time. I didn’t consider that I was delivering a sentence on the villagers’ lives. I simply listened to my commander’s words, and repeated them.

‘You won’t starve,’ I said on behalf of a great empire. ‘As you are all enemies of Rome, you will be taken as slaves.’

The man blinked several times before the dreadful word fell from his mouth. ‘ Slaves? ’

I nodded, feeling neither guilt nor pleasure in the fact.

‘But… but we are subjects of Rome! Loyal subjects! Our sons serve Rome!’

Justus looked at me to translate. I shrugged. The centurion pushed me for an answer. I gave it.