Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

‘Time to make widows and orphans, lads!’ Justus shouted as he moved to take his place in the front rank. It was all the speech that he gave, and all that was needed. We knew that to run was to die. They had cavalry, and we had none worth speaking of. If we stood we had a chance. A chance, and not a good one.

But fuck it. Nobody lives forever, and this was what I had wanted since I ran to the legions: a javelin in my hand, a sword on my hip, and an enemy to kill.

I spat.

They charged.

Ten seconds from contact.

‘Javelins!’ Justus roared, and with every other man I repeated the order, and arched back to throw.

‘Loose!’

I put all of my strength into the throw, and lost sight of my shaft as it merged in the sky with more than a thousand others, a steel-tipped storm of death that now slammed into the charging enemy like a raging wave against a harbour, tearing men down to die trampled beneath the charging mass that came behind them. Screams began to puncture the challenging roar, but still they came.

Seven seconds.

I judged that there was time for one more wave of javelins. I pulled my second from its place in the ground as Justus gave the order.

‘Javelins! Loose!’

Another wave of killing, this time close enough for me to register the quickest of details in the rushing madness: men dropping to their knees with javelins in their guts; others struggling to pull the shafts free from their oval shields.

Three seconds.

‘Draw swords!’

Mine scraped from its scabbard as I pulled my shield close to me like a lover. Above its rim, I saw a wall of death approaching – wild eyes, open mouths, terror. I don’t know if Justus gave any further orders. I could hear nothing but the roar of the coming stampede.

One second.

As they rushed the last yards towards me, I realized I was screaming as loudly as they were.

Shit. So I was scared.

Contact.

The shock of the impact sent a spike of pain through my entire body, and almost knocked me from my feet. Only the shield of the soldier behind me kept me upright, and then I was pushing forwards against the resistance, ramming my sword back and forth. Into what I did not know, but I felt something hot and slippery on my hands, I felt breath on my face, spit in my eyes, and heard screams in my ears.

Then, in that moment, I got what I had wanted since the day my previous life had ended.

I ceased to think.

When a soldier tells you every intimate detail of combat in a battle of this size, he is lying. The crush of army against army is no work of art, but a mess of paint spilled in the dirt. It is screaming. It is cursing. It is crying. It is burning muscles, choked breath and sweat. It is blood, it is shit and it is murder. It is every sense heightened, bludgeoned and broken. Time is meaningless. There is no space, only a vision of wide eyes, spurting blood and gaping wounds. Only when the two forces pull apart do you realize that you’re still alive. Only then do you realize what has been done. What you have inflicted.

What you have suffered.

How long it took for us to reach that moment I could not tell you. One moment there was an enemy in my face, and my sword was heavy with the weight of a falling body. The next, I was looking at the retreating backs of an army.

I fell to my knees, and puked.

A hand gripped me by the shoulder. ‘Are you injured?’

Varo.

‘I… I don’t know,’ I confessed.

Varo was. I thought I saw the white of bone on his forearm.

‘The others?’ I asked as Varo pulled me gruffly to my feet, and looked me over for wounds.

‘Octavius and Priscus are all right,’ he told me. ‘Brutus too.’

For the first time, I began to take in the carnage around me. It was if hands were being removed from my eyes. A thick line of bodies ran like a tidemark of seaweed and debris on a beach. I almost stumbled as I recognized the damage wrought on my own century.

‘We’ve lost over twenty,’ Varo confirmed. ‘You and a couple of others are about all that’s left of the front rank.’

‘Justus?’ I forced myself to ask.

Varo pointed with his bloodied sword. The centurion lay on his back, throat torn open, his arms cut to ribbons. Our optio lay dead a few yards away from him, doubtless having rushed forwards to assume command.

‘Priscus has the century,’ my friend informed me, slapping me across the head to regain my attention. ‘Come on, we’re falling back. They’re feeding other centuries up for the next attack.’

The next attack? Hadn’t we beaten them?

I looked across the field, then. The enemy still clung to the valley like a curse. They had pulled out of javelin range, and as men dragged or carried their wounded and screaming from the field, others paced in front of their ranks, doubtless demanding courage and metal from their comrades.

‘Help me with him.’ Varo spoke sharply, seeing one of our own move in what I had assumed was a tangle of the dead.

Gums. A soldier from my section. Something had cut across his face. One eye looked at me in wild panic. The other dangled broken on his cheek.

‘Section commander,’ he pleaded, ‘please, I don’t want to die.’

‘You’re not going to die,’ I said automatically.

‘Come on. We’ve got to get back behind the other century and re-form,’ Varo pressed me, and I realized that the army was giving ground so that the mounds of dead would become an obstacle for the enemy’s next charge.

I looked down at Gums. His hands were pressed to where a bulge of intestine erupted from his stomach.

‘I don’t want to die,’ he repeated weakly.

‘Shut up and hold your guts in,’ Varo growled. Then, putting one hand under the shoulder of his armour, and holding our shields in the other, we dragged the boy to safety. He cried out in pain, and I saw the men of the fresh century swallow their nerves as we passed through their ranks. Finally we were clear, and at the rear of the battle lines.

‘I want my mother,’ Gums pleaded.

He got Brutus instead. The old sweat looked at me with near pity before turning his attention to the boy I knew to be dying. ‘Steady now, lad. It’s just a flesh wound. You’ll be fine.’

‘Second of the Second!’ Priscus began to call. ‘Form up on me! Form up! Form up! Quickly!’

I did not look again at the devastation that was Gums’s face. I could not stand the pleading in his one eye. I knew that he would see the truth on my face – that he would never see his mother again. That he would die on this blood-soaked field.

I looked at Brutus. A nod between us was all that we had, needed or wanted.

I ran to join Priscus.

I ran to await death.

I heard, rather than saw, the enemy’s second assault. My view of it was restricted to the backs of the century that stood to our front. I watched their legs shake as they awaited the charge. I watched them loose javelins as well as their bowels. I watched their ranks spasm as a deafening crash of shield on shield rang across the valley.

I smelt it too. Open guts, open arses and the metallic stink of blood.

I looked to my left and right. Suddenly, I realized I had been in a daze since my own clash with the enemy. Where the fuck were my section? I knew that Gums was dying, maybe already dead. What of the others? I arched and craned. For the first time I saw Octavius. He was looking at the sky, as though he were wishing himself anywhere but this field.

‘Three Section, report!’ I shouted. ‘Form on the left of me!’

I called again. I waited.

It was Priscus who came to me.

We grabbed the back of each other’s helmets, and rested the steel of our brows against one another.