Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

‘We’re the Eighth Legion, you dickhead,’ the big man reminded him. ‘And I’d save your breath. This climb is going to be a lick. There’s a reason their army tried to fight its way through us instead of going over the mountains. There’s no secret paths here, just fucking hard ones.’

No one spoke much after that. Water was brought to us from the river, and my tongue finally peeled itself off the roof of my mouth. From countless night duties I could recognize the silhouettes of my comrades even in their battle dress, and I was not surprised to see Brutus with us in the dark, despite Priscus and Varo begging him to stay with the walking wounded.

‘Prepare to move,’ a voice said finally, the words passed on quietly as a whisper from man to man. All about me then I heard the hushed sounds of soldiers getting to their feet, piss pattering the ground, chain mail and kit being tested for silence and ‘comfort’. Then I heard the first sounds of our force moving away from the valley floor. Away from the ground we had soiled with blood and shit. Where the birds and beasts now feasted on friend and foe alike.

‘I love this job,’ I heard Octavius utter.

And then, in the black, we followed on as a snake of soldiers visible only in my mind. We followed on into the rock and the mountains.

We went on the attack.

One day, when I was barely a man, I had turned up bloodstained and breathless at Marcus’s family home, and asked him to run with me. That day and night we scaled ridges, traversed mountains, and ran so hard and long that my toenails began to come off, and I saw blood in my piss. I thought it was the hardest physical test that I would ever face.

I was wrong.

The moon this night favoured the rebels of the land, the slim light it cast doing little to illuminate our path through the jagged mountains. The climb was steep, the footing loose. Men tried not to swear and groan as their feet went from beneath them. Equipment in their hands, their faces ate rock and dirt. More than once I heard a man go rolling back down the steepest parts of the trail, sometimes crashing into others and taking them with him on their descent. I don’t know what happened to those men. If they broke bones, then they bit back their pain. I imagine that more than a few of them would be waking with bent limbs on a lonely mountainside.

If they lived.

For my own part, my chest fought a war against my chain mail as it heaved for every breath. My right knee throbbed from where I had slipped and driven it into a rock. I’d done it with such force, and ground my teeth so hard against the pain, that they too now ached. Already drained from combat, my limbs felt hollow, yet somehow as heavy as I had ever known them. The spot where I had hit my head in the town fire began to hurt once more, and the pain grew into a pounding that consumed my entire skull. I wanted to spit and curse fate, but there was not a single drop of moisture in my mouth, just the dirt of a dusty trail kicked up by a thousand pairs of feet. Never had my body felt more miserable. More wretched. I imagined that every man felt the same.

And yet we made it. We made the climb up a pass so steep that to fall was to die, and I am certain that some did. Shield tied off on my back, I used my javelin’s butt to dig in the dirt as I clawed rock with my left hand. I could feel blood on my palms. I could taste it when I licked my lips. I felt it in my eyes. The blood on my face wasn’t mine, and I knew in those moments that my life could be worse. That I could be the person who had bled on to me, now doubtless being pecked at by birds. Pulled apart by wolves. Yes, in my relatively short number of years, I had realized that life could always get worse.

But, as I reached the crest of the spine that ran between the valleys, I also knew that – in short moments at least – it could get better, too. When the ground became flat, I felt an exhilaration through my body that could only be matched by the joy of sex. I had left my smiles in another life, but I was content as I drew in deep lungfuls of cool air, and my muscles thanked me for the break in their punishment.

There was no talking at the top. A wind came over the ridge, not harsh, and against this backdrop could be heard the sound of the ragged breaths of the men who had climbed. The soldiers who had climbed, for surely this was the kind of feat that is only accomplished by the most desperate, or the most disciplined, and we were both.

We pushed on along the ridge. I could feel in the air that we wanted to drive forwards and close on the enemy, but this was no paved road, just a flatter goat trail, and so as the wind teased my face between my cheek-plates, and cooled the sweat that soaked my body, we stumbled on. We stumbled on, and then we began to stumble down. We were coming off the pass. Off the mountain. I looked into the night. Into the sky where I thought the horizon would be.

I saw a sliver of silver. A blade of the gods. And then, as we came out on to a plateau, I saw something else. It was below us, and as beautiful as it was frightening.

It was the campfires of an army.

Below us were the enemy. Above them, we waited like hungry eagles in the dark.

I looked back to the silver on the horizon. When dawn came, so would we. For many, darkness would quickly follow light.

No attempt was made to form centuries. We were on a narrow plateau on the mountainside, not a parade ground, and so the whispered orders that came around were simple: follow on to the low ground. Form up with whoever is near you. Wait for the order to advance, unless the enemy is alerted. If they wake, then attack. Kill for Rome. Kill for each other.

They were the kind of orders that I wanted.

Like the silhouettes of the men around me, I rested on my shield as we awaited the order to advance. It was an old soldier’s trick taught to me by Brutus. In such a position you could close your eyes and, fatigued as we were, slip into a shallow sleep. I was too tired to think about my past. Too tired to think about my future. I just closed my eyes and waited.

It was the sound of shuffling feet that let me know my rest was over. I was alert in an instant. At least, as alert as I could be following a day of battle and a night of climbing. But I was ready to follow. I was ready to kill, and I was so tired that I was certainly ready to die.

Like an upright corpse, I trod the dirt and gravel trail behind the man in front of me. His silhouette was huge.

Varo. Good. No better man to die alongside than him.

The fires below us numbered in their hundreds. They were an invitation to the afterlife, and we hurried towards it without conversation, but not without noise. I could hear the bump of shield. I could hear the drawing of breath. I could hear sandals on the rough mountainside. Hundreds of pairs of them, growing louder as fear began to grip us, and the inevitable quickening of the pace came – we just wanted it over with. We wanted to be in there, amongst the enemy. Enough of a night full of dark, and a head full of what ifs? Give us battle! Give us victory, or defeat!

Suddenly I was moving downhill at a jog-trot. The fires were getting closer. Still there was no shouting. No voices. It all seemed to be going so fast. They’d looked so far away, but it was a trick of the night. I could smell them, now. Smell the wood smoke of a sleeping enemy. I felt the movement ahead of me slow, and realized that I was no longer walking on harsh rock and dirt, but on the flat and greeting embrace of the plain. We were forming up, and I felt Varo’s shield hand grip me and pull me into a rank beside him.

I looked to my left and right. I felt the presence of the formed body of men around me. Somehow we had done it. Against nature, against the enemy, we had come through the night and now stood ranged in our ranks to visit death on his camp. There would be no withdrawal today. No more clever gambles of the legate’s. We would wait for the sliver of dawn’s light to become a spill. We would wait until we could see enough of our enemy to kill them, and then we would advance. By the time the sun slid over the horizon, I expected that we would all be dead, but maybe we would have won enough time for Tiberius to shut the door in the rebels’ face, and bar their way into Italy.