Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

‘Well, maybe not if you’re Marcus,’ I muttered to myself, thinking of how he’d probably be on his knees before the eagle now, and I wished that he was with me. Not so that I could see the pride on his face that his oldest friend carried one of the few eagles in the world, but so that I could make lewd jokes about his admiration, and cast accusations about where that bird would be nesting if he were left alone with it.

I folded my arms and let out a sigh of self-pity and boredom. Gods, I was bored. I was bored, and I was lonely. I wanted to be with my friends, but the role of standard-bearer was a solitary one. I’d already kept myself busy by shining the bloody bird until it blazed. Now I wanted to play dice. I wanted to drink. I wanted to fight.

I had tried to impress that later point on the legate to the point where my – now former – cohort commander’s scowl had threatened to grow its own fists. The appointment was not an offer for me to consider. I was being volun-told that I was to take this position, and that was that. I supposed that I wouldn’t be the last soldier to be handed a rank or task that he had neither asked for nor wanted, but that was scant consolation as I was left with nothing to do but think .

Brutus was on my mind often in the days that followed the battle and the regaining of my consciousness. Lulmire had brought no word, and so I assumed that the hard old bastard was clinging to life, or that his death had broken her so completely that she couldn’t bring herself to tell us. Of course, I could have investigated myself, but… but while there was no news, there was hope. Why seek out misery when it is so good at finding us?

Varo and Octavius had their hands full. Because of the heavy casualties suffered, the Fourth and Fifth Cohorts were being disbanded to bring the First and Second to full strength – the Third would remain at half – and so my friends were busy drilling their men in preparation for the coming battle. Where that would be, and when, I could only guess. What I did know was that there were two hundred thousand or more of the enemy under arms. Fearing that the intended target of the Danube invasion, King Marabodus, would break the treaty, turn the table, and invade across that river, Tiberius had been forced to leave a strong army in the north of the region. Even with his arrival in Pannonia, we would still be outnumbered.

‘Will they fight?’ was the question I heard when I was fortunate enough to be in the company of other soldiers. Will they fight, or will they take to the hills? The legions wanted a pitched battle on the plains. Something grand and glorious that could decide this war – sorry, domestic uprising – in a day.

I didn’t see such a thing as being likely. Brutus and Priscus had talked about the early campaigns in this region that had – supposedly – brought the Pannonians and Dalmatians to heel. Once the men of the region realized that they could not stand in open battle against Roman legions with anything less than a huge advantage in numbers, they took to harassing attacks. Brutus had told me that he had friends sent to clear the enemy from their mountain strongholds. He hadn’t seen many of them again.

Yes, ‘Will they fight?’ was the talk of the legion, but no one seemed to be asking why the enemy were fighting in the first place. Weeks ago, these men had been raised to fight for Rome. Why then had they turned their blades towards the Empire’s throat?

Some word of it came through the rumour mill. Seeing the strength of the region’s warriors assembled on the marshalling grounds, Bato – a local chieftain – had been moved to give the assembly a simple choice. ‘That we fight a war is inevitable,’ he was reported to have said to the mass of soldiery. ‘Either we die to expand Rome’s borders, or we fight to build our own! What would you have it be?’

Hard to argue with such a choice. Hard to argue with fighting against the men that had enslaved or killed your fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers, rather than serving them.

I was near alone in that opinion, of course. The few times I had ventured it I had been beaten down with pompous assertions about the glory of Rome, and the brazen cheek of the rebels for not appreciating what they were being given. I did not blame my comrades for this. Many of them were from Italy. I was not. I had been born and raised in Iader, on the Dalmatian coast. Yes, it was a Roman settlement, but no island is immune from the sea that washes around it. Many native Dalmatians had come from the hills and coastal villages to take advantage of what the town had to offer – a bustling forum and market. A harbour. Security, and order. I had many friends there, and had been raised speaking both Latin and the local tongue. There was no doubt in my mind now that the boys I had grown up playing soldiers with were now my enemy. They were my age, and so would have been the most likely to be pressed or volunteered into service. Then, at the marshalling grounds, willing or not, they would have been informed that their enemy was now Rome. The rumour was that Bato had offered the Dalmatians a choice, but in reality, I doubt the men holding spear and shield had any more say in the decision-making of their leaders than we did with ours. It was the lot of most men to obey and die. Very few got to make the choice over what those deaths would stand for.

I looked at the eagle again. Those hooded eyes. How many deaths had it witnessed? How many battles? How many triumphs? How many failures? Little of the latter, I supposed, or else she would be adorning a king’s hall now, and not my solitary companion.

‘I should give you a name,’ I thought out loud. ‘How about Gallus?’

Chicken.

The eagle looked back sternly but said nothing. I took that as approval.

I turned to my other companion, then. Hee held my left flank – the small wooden horse that had belonged to one of my section. I tried not to think about how its former owner had died, and instead wondered at what happiness this child’s toy had given him. It was a joyful mystery to me.

‘You can be Xanthus.’ One of the horses that drew the chariot of Achilles, a story that Marcus had repeated to me as a child until it was pouring out of my ears. So vivid was the memory that, for a moment, I thought I heard him speak.

‘Corvus!’ he shouted, running to me. ‘Corvus!’

No dream! My friend. My oldest, greatest friend. I sprang to my feet to embrace him, but I was too slow…

His face wide with awe, Marcus dropped to his knees in front of the eagle.

Before I could help myself, I began to laugh.

It was a long time before I was done suggesting the crude acts that Marcus could perform with the staff of Gallus, the legion’s eagle. As a child and a young man I was always trying to be a comedian, but those days had died when I had tramped on my father’s skull. Only Marcus could pull the jokes from me now. He was a window to my past. The parts that I wanted to remember, even with the pain that they caused me.

I hugged him so tightly that I thought his back would snap. ‘Gods, I have missed you.’

Marcus stood back from me. There were tears in his eyes. Tears on his cheeks. ‘I’m so proud of you, Corvus. Standard-bearer? Corvus, I’m so proud!’

‘Did you bring wine?’ I asked, uncomfortable with the adulation, even from him.

‘Forget the wine, brother, give me the stories!’

‘Wine,’ I insisted.

‘I’m taking a walk,’ I called to the sentries who were posted nearby – I wasn’t the only one charged with her protection. After all, I could hardly turn up in the latrines with the legion’s standard in my hand, could I?

‘These men are your friends?’ Marcus asked me as we walked away.