Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

His skin had the same grey complexion as the man who’d expired beside me on the hospital floor. ‘I’m getting better at dying,’ Brutus croaked.

The pain in my head was receding. The pain in my heart was growing. I tried to swing my legs from my bed so that I could stand by my comrade’s side. Instead, weak as a newborn foal, I collapsed heavily on to the floor, taking a jug of water with me. ‘ Shit! ’

I heard a door opening. Rough hands gripped me by the shoulders and legs, placing me on the edge of the bed like a child.

‘You’re alive,’ I said when I saw their faces.

Varo and Octavius. ‘We’re alive,’ said the big man.

‘But not Priscus…’

They looked solemn. Varo spoke. ‘Not Priscus.’ He didn’t give voice to the other truth in the room – that Brutus seemed likely to join him soon.

Octavius looked uncomfortable, and ran a hand over his head. I noticed the fresh scars where blades had nipped his flesh. Then he said what all soldiers say when they need to find their courage: ‘I’ll go get us something to drink.’

‘What happened?’ I asked Varo.

He told me. He told me of how he had found me amongst the hundreds of casualties. He told me about his threats. How he had held one of the doctor’s children hostage until he had cleaned and sewn the deep wound on Brutus’s thigh. ‘There wasn’t much he could do for you,’ Varo explained. ‘You’ve just been flat out. He said you’d either wake up, or you wouldn’t. Even if you did, he said you’d probably be an idiot. More of one, anyway. How’s your head?’

It hurt, but I could live with hurt, rather than singing pain. ‘Better.’

‘You must have got knocked out,’ Varo guessed. ‘A swinging arm. Flat of a blade. Who knows? I lost sight of you in the fighting, and the stretcher parties put you in with the worst cases. Those that didn’t die on the field.’

I had a question. ‘Why aren’t we all dead?’

It was Brutus who answered me. His smile was a bright line in his ashen face. ‘ Tiberius came .’

Or more accurately, Varo explained, Tiberius and his army had come close enough so that the rebels knew their entry to Italy would be blocked, and that by continuing to engage our force they risked a bigger army falling on their rear. Instead they had chosen flight, and retreated back through the same plain where we had first faced them.

‘We did enough,’ Varo said proudly. ‘We did enough to hold them, and keep them from Italy.’

But at what cost?

My friend looked at the floor. Of the two and a half thousand men who had taken the field in the plain, little over twelve hundred remained alive, and of them, hundreds were injured. He went on to list the men known to us personally who had perished, most revered amongst them Priscus and Centurion Justus. ‘I wish he’d hurry up with that fucking wine,’ Varo simmered.

Octavius arrived moments later. Varo grabbed a cup and drank as though he’d just wandered out of the desert.

‘Here,’ Octavius said to me, passing me my own. I motioned that he should give it to Brutus.

‘You first,’ the old soldier insisted. ‘You saved my life, Corvus. Again. ’

I needed that drink, then. Like Varo, I threw it back in one. It was clear from his skin that if I had saved Brutus, then it was only for a matter of days. ‘How long since the battle?’

‘Two days,’ Octavius said. ‘You were out a long time. Do you even remember what happened?’

‘You saved my life,’ Brutus said sharply. ‘And you saved the eagle!’

I’d forgotten about that fucking stick.

I snorted. I had never been one for the customs of the legion – save for the tradition of violence – and they knew as much. ‘I needed something to brace myself,’ I told them honestly.

Varo believed me and laughed, but Brutus shook his head.

‘You saved the eagle.’

‘It was a walking stick, Brutus,’ I insisted, more harshly than I should have done, but despite my words the dying man kept smiling. I knew then that in his mind I had risked death to protect the standard, and that meant more to him than having his own life saved.

‘I held it for a while,’ he said proudly, his pale face shining with the honour. ‘I held the fucking eagle, boys. I held an eagle in battle!’

My comrades smiled. Varo patted his old friend on his good leg. ‘Yes you did, mate.’

‘Was it everything you thought it would be?’ I heard myself ask. There was acid there. Why?

Because Priscus had died, of course. He had died charging to save a piece of metal and wood. Yes, Brutus was the one holding the bastard thing, but I knew my comrades, and there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t give to uphold the nobility of the legion. The loss of the standard would have been a worse fate for them than their own ends.

‘It was everything I thought it would be,’ Brutus confirmed, and I could see the smile in his eyes.

‘But you’re dying.’ I said it bluntly, but it still cut me.

Brutus recognized my pain, and I don’t know if I ever saw him look more honest, or happy. ‘ I held an eagle in battle, Corvus, ’ he explained. ‘What would I have been in life after that? I love Lulmire, but life after battle? Life after comrades? I carried an eagle against an enemy of Rome! I was always going to die after that, one way or another, don’t you see? This way, it just gets done a little quicker.’

I had nothing to say back to him. My friend was choked on honour and glory. If Marcus were here, I expect he would have cried tears of pure pride. Not I. I saw only that Brutus was leaving this world.

There was a long moment of silence that weighed heavy with my sorrow.

‘Well, you know how to light a room…’ Octavius smirked. ‘Can we just get pissed now?’

There were coughs of laughter. ‘Let’s do that,’ Varo agreed heartily. He poured wine into the cups; then he tipped more on to the room’s tiles. ‘Fuck the doctor.’ He smiled. ‘This is for our comrades.’

Brutus held up his cup. ‘To Priscus.’

We drank to our friend. We drank to our comrades. Twice Octavius left to bring us more jugs. He was quick.

‘Lulmire’s here,’ Brutus told us. ‘But she knows I need some time with the lads.’ We all knew what that meant. Time to say goodbyes. Brutus sniffed at his wine. ‘Just do me a favour, will you, boys? When I do my final fall-out, toast me with something better than this goat’s piss, will you?’

Varo snorted. ‘We’re just waiting for you to hurry up and die before we break out the good stuff.’

We laughed. Hard not to with that much wine in the belly. Hard not to when so many of your force was killed, and you still draw breath – for the moment, at least. Brutus was soon for the afterlife, but I did not doubt that we would see him there before too long. Even with the arrival of Tiberius and his army, there were still two hundred thousand rebels to kill.

Octavius said as much.

‘You’re going to be busy boys,’ Brutus agreed.

There was a hushed knock on the door. ‘If it’s that doctor I’m gonna throw his kids on a fire,’ Varo growled, but it was Lulmire.

Brutus smiled to see his wife. She had fresh dressings in her hand. ‘I think this means our time’s at an end, boys.’

Varo looked at me. ‘Can you walk?’

The wine in my head told me yes. The wine in my limbs told me no. I stumbled.

My comrades caught me. ‘We can carry you between the two of us,’ Octavius assured me with the can-do attitude of a drunk.

I turned to Brutus. I didn’t want to say goodbye, and so I didn’t.

‘I will see you again,’ I told him. He went to speak, but I silenced him with a look. ‘You told me once that you wouldn’t die without saying goodbye,’ I insisted. ‘That still stands, Brutus. It still stands.’