Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

I nodded. As standard-bearer, the legion’s coffers would come under my watch. Like the eagle’s security, I would not be expected to carry out such tasks single-handedly, but it was yet another burden that I wished to be rid of.

‘I want to come with you,’ I told my comrades. ‘I don’t want to be carrying a fucking stick around with the headquarters staff while you’re fighting.’

‘Fighting?’ Octavius laughed. ‘Didn’t you hear? There’re no rebels where we’re going, Corvus. This is just a pleasant stroll in the country.’

‘Be quiet, you dickhead,’ Varo rumbled, in no mood for jokes. ‘Corvus, I’m not going to say no to having you close by when things get ugly.’

‘You think they will?’

He shrugged his thick shoulders as though the answer was obvious. I suppose that it was. ‘It’s war.’

‘Domestic uprising,’ Octavius corrected.

‘Shut up. Now listen, Corvus. The legate likes you, right?’

‘Loves me.’

‘So use that. Tell him that you want to keep going up the ranks. Tell him that you want to learn all about leading, and war. Maybe that way you won’t be stuck in the rear. It’s not like there’s going to be a battle line for you to stand in with the eagle.’

‘More than that,’ Octavius added, latching on to the idea, ‘tell him that with all these narrow mountain passes and stuff, what’s the point in risking the eagle? We all know there’s no big battle coming. Why risk it falling into enemy hands in some skirmish?’

I could see that Varo liked that notion. So did I. ‘I’ll try.’

And I did.

‘You’re a fiery bastard, standard-bearer,’ Hook-nose told me. ‘I knew that I’d made the right choice with you. I think those are all excellent ideas. No point imperilling the eagle unnecessarily, is there? We’ll leave her under the watch of the Tenth Cohort.

I tried not to show my relief.

‘Some people have a nose for battle,’ the legate went on, evidently believing I was one of them. ‘You go where you see fit. This will be the first action for most of the men in the legion. They need leadership, and they need inspiration.’ His eyes burned into mine. Evidently, I was the latter. ‘Move around my legion, Corvus. Find the fight, and inspire my men. Show them what it means to be a hero of Rome.’

I didn’t feel much like a hero when I sought out Marcus that night. Rather, I felt like a child.

‘What’s on your mind?’ my friend asked me. ‘Brutus?’ he asked insightfully.

I nodded. No word had come. No question had been sent. ‘I should go and see him.’ But I knew that I wouldn’t. Twice I’d been too slow to save his life.

I didn’t have long with Marcus. As second in command of his century, he needed to be checking and double-checking his troops before we marched out with the dawn.

‘I can’t wait for this,’ he told me. It wasn’t the great battle that would have been the invasion across the Danube, but it was something at least. Something my friend had wanted all his life.

The goodbye was no easier the second time. ‘At least this time I can come and find you,’ I promised.

His smile threatened to light up the night. ‘Imagine that, brother. You and I side by side, shield by shield, and with an enemy to our front.’

What can I say? That did sound good. The only thing that could be better would be returning to a time when war was a child’s game to me, and nothing more. A time when I had dreamed of Rome, and her, and nothing else.

But those days were gone.

Blood, then. War. ‘It does sound good,’ I told my brother, and I embraced him. ‘I’ll see you in the mountains.’

I walked beside Varo. In my hand was the bridle of a dark, thick-set, good-tempered pony. I called the creature Balius, the second of Achilles’ horses. Xanthus rested inside my pack. I wondered what my friend would say if he knew I was carrying a child’s toy on the clearance operation.

‘This is shit,’ he muttered instead.

This was our sweep south to flush out and kill any rebels between Tiberius’s main base inland, and the coast. We were five days in, and so far, the only enemies confronted had been the scorching heat and the hateful terrain. I was with my old cohort, and we were in the low land, so much as it was, an abandoned valley running beneath the peaks of scarred mountainsides. On those peaks and reaches moved the Sixth and Seventh Cohorts. Somewhere to the west of me, Marcus would be sweating and panting for Rome.

‘This is shit,’ Varo insisted again, his words low enough so that only I could hear, though I knew the words were intended for himself. At times a soldier needs a battle cry. At others, he simply needs to voice his frustration. Varo was far from the only one doing so.

The Roman soldier is trained to be able to cover twenty miles a day in full kit. Therefore, five days into our operation, we should have covered a hundred miles, and be halfway to the coast.

We’d made less than twenty.

The reason was the terrain, of course. There were no paved roads, but even so, in the valley, we could have pushed on at an aggressive pace. The problem was that in doing so, we would outstrip our comrades in the mountains. If there were rebels ahead of us, then we would be placing our head in the noose. For those of us in the low ground, much of the day was spent static as the hard-pressed scouts and messengers raced between the limbs of the legion to maintain as much cohesion as possible.

‘Here we go again,’ Varo said to me. Up ahead, the soldiers of the century ahead were beginning to stop. The action rippled down the line. The newly minted centurion turned to his men. ‘One Section, push out sentries on the left flank. Two Section on the right. The rest of you, get on your arses and take your helmets off.’ Varo turned to me. ‘No point having the lads’ heads cooking.’ He was a good leader.

‘Hotter than Sol’s balls,’ I agreed, thinking of the sun god, and happy with my decision to let my horse carry my helmet and bearskin.

I looked at the mountains either side of us. They were brutes, their lower slopes a carpet of sharp-looking trees. Everything in this region looked tough. No wonder Hook-nose was proceeding with caution.

‘Do you think we’ll see one?’ Varo asked as he wiped a layer of sweat and dust from his face, hundreds of pairs of feet having kicked up the dirt trail. ‘A rebel?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly. The few villages we had come across had been abandoned some time ago. Even if the enemy did not have a force ahead of us, it was hard to believe that the huge number of rebels would not have dispatched spies and scouts to watch the movements of one of Tiberius’s legions.

‘Everyone’s going to know we’re coming,’ Varo grumbled.

Maybe, but I knew that this land was not a unified region like Roman Italy. It was a place of tribes and chiefs who looked to themselves first. ‘If a chief at one end of the valley has a feud with the chief at the other end, he’d probably be happy to let us at them,’ I explained to my friend. ‘They know we won’t be staying in the valley, and once we go, and his competition’s dead, then who’s to stop him taking the new grazing lands?’

Varo snorted. ‘No honour.’

‘It’s the game, I suppose,’ I said, thinking of how Tiberius had been threatening to destroy the Marcomanni across the Danube before rebellion had brought him back. Now, that German tribe had been paid handsomely to behave. ‘The chiefs here, they just play it at a smaller level.’

‘No honour,’ Varo said again.

Ahead of us, movement was rippling down the line. Men were getting to their feet. The sentries were returning to the column. Varo pulled on his helmet. ‘Prepare to move,’ he said to his soldiers.