Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

Maybe I would, but I could see that he’d take that punch without complaint. He’d still be there for me. Like all brothers, we had bloodied each other’s noses before. ‘Just fucking say it,’ I growled. Did I want to hear it?

‘You have to let her go.’

Yes.

But how? Better to ask the sun to rise in the west and set in the east than to ask a man to forgive, and forget.

‘Fuck off, Marcus,’ I growled, though my words were weaker than my anger.

Did he just fucking smile?

‘Brother, listen. Look , and listen . We have what we always wanted!’ he said, gesturing at his century. ‘We’re soldiers, brother! Soldiers at war!’

I snorted, and shook my head. I loved this bastard, but he was wrong. So wrong. I wanted to embrace him for that foolishness, but I couldn’t do such a thing in front of his command. Instead I tapped the sword on my hip. ‘This is what you always wanted, Marcus,’ I told him. ‘ You. ’

I had wanted her. Nothing but her.

Maybe I would have told him that again, if I hadn’t heard the sentry’s call: ‘Runners coming in!’

The two lithe men were soaked in sweat. One spoke, bringing breathless word from the main body of the cohort: ‘You’re ordered to clear a ravine that runs to the west, sir. The scouts saw movement there. I’m to show you the way, and he’ll take word back to the cohort commander that you got the order, sir.’

Marcus looked the two men over. ‘What century are you?’

‘Fourth.’

‘Anyone know these two?’ he asked of his own command. Only when a handful confirmed that they did was Marcus satisfied as to their identity. He would not be drawn into a trap by the enemy posing as our own runners.

‘You’re a cunning bastard,’ I told him as the scouts led off.

‘You can go back to the main cohort if you want?’ he offered, ignoring the compliment. ‘The runner can lead you. This is likely to be a wild goose chase, brother. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve done this kind of thing since we started in Siscia, and we’ve never found a thing.’

I shook my head. ‘If you do find something, then I want to be beside you when it happens.’

Marcus smiled. He knew that I wanted to protect him.

I smiled back. I wanted to kill.

The floor of the ravine was a narrow, malicious bastard that caused a man to stumble over half-buried rock as soon as he raised his eyes from the dirt. The sides of the pass were no more than a hundred yards apart, and rose sharply upwards from the rock-strewn ground. Here and there, copses of hardy trees had grown in tight fists, and it was in such an area that one of the cohort’s scouts had seen movement. ‘Sun shining off metal,’ he’d said.

‘Which copse was it?’ Marcus had asked the runner.

‘They didn’t tell me, sir.’

And so we searched them all, at least at first. A few footprints were found in the dust, and a keen-eyed soldier spotted the hind leg bone of a hare which had been exposed to flame, though we saw nothing of a fire, or the men who had lit it. Instead we found steeper ravine walls, and slow progress.

Marcus called a break for his men to take some shade in the lee of a rocky outcrop. After posting sentries on the track, he joined me and shook his head. ‘We can’t clear every copse,’ he’d decided. ‘I hate not being thorough, brother, but the cohort could be waiting on us. Look down there.’ He pointed – the ravine was beginning to twist through the mountain towards the west, an ugly scar. ‘We’ll make that turn, see what we have in front and then—’

My friend’s words cut off and his eyes went wide as an arrow pierced the air between us, slashing by with angry hiss. ‘Get down!’ Marcus shouted, pushing me. ‘Cover! Cover!’ he yelled at his men. A second arrow found its target before they could obey. Somebody screamed in pain. ‘Shields!’ Marcus barked. ‘Shields!’

His men scrambled to follow the order. They were mostly young, this century of my friend’s. Very few out of their twenties. Their eyes were wild and searching.

Thwack. A third arrow dug into a shield. Crack. A fourth hit a rock.

There was no fifth.

Marcus was looking at the trees. ‘They’re in there,’ he told me through gritted teeth.

I put my hand on my friend’s shoulder, and shook my head. ‘They’re gone,’ I said. I don’t know how I knew that. I just knew, and so I stood up. Maybe I just wanted to be wrong.

No arrows came at me.

Marcus stood quickly beside me, and in that moment I was hit by remorse. I had endangered my friend, I realized. How could a centurion – even an acting one – take cover while another man stood exposed?

I felt terrible, but if Marcus was angry with me, he showed no sign. ‘ Cowards. ’ My brother swore, staring at the hiding place of the enemy with such heat that I thought the trees might burst into flame; then he called, ‘Section commanders! Report!’

One casualty – an arrow in the shoulder. No way to send him back to the rear. Not from here. ‘Bring in the sentries,’ Marcus ordered.

Those men came gratefully back to their comrades. No one wanted to face an attack alone.

‘Sir,’ a section commander called to Marcus, nerves tickling at his eyes, ‘we’re one short.’

‘Where the fuck is he?’ Marcus demanded. ‘This is not the time to be sneaking off for a quiet place to shit.’

‘I’ll find him sir.’ And the sentry’s section commander took his other men to look.

They came back empty-handed.

I looked at Marcus, and saw the realization settle in my friend’s stomach. It was a hard thing to watch, as though part of the soul I had known as a child was cut away and discarded as offal. When Marcus uttered his next words, I knew that he had hardened as a man. ‘We can’t spend any more time looking for him. Prepare to move out. Double sentries day and night from this point.’

Thinking of the missing man, something grabbed at my guts. I had thought that we were professional killers. Now, I realized, we were like the baker, or butcher. While each worked with food, neither could do the other’s job. War amongst the slopes and rocks was a different occupation than the one that we’d been trained for.

Up here in the mountains, we were the amateurs.

We came across the missing sentry later that day.

We found his head first. Then his feet. They’d been placed on the track, lonely but for the flies.

‘They took his sandals,’ Marcus noted.

We pushed along the track. Body parts of what had been a soldier decorated the route. Goading. Taunting. After the feet came the lower legs, then the upper. His cock and balls lay on a hot slab of rock. His naked torso was propped invitingly on an outcrop.

‘No,’ Marcus told his men when they begged permission to retrieve the pieces of their comrade – he could smell a trap.

Inside the ravine, our bodies began to cook along with our tempers. The heat was fierce. The outside of my body was soaked, while the inside of my mouth as dry as a desert. I wanted to complain, but I would not shame Marcus in front of his men.

Yet I already carried shame that day. I would admit it to none but myself, but the toil of heat and armour caused me more distress than the gruesome adornment of the trail – I had not known the man. Never even looked him in the eyes. What I saw of him was in pieces, and though I pitied the soldier, I pitied myself more – I was miserable, angry and had no one to fight.

Twice more the arrows came. Both times we saw nothing but the shafts in our shields, and a dead soldier on his back.

‘Carry him.’ Marcus ordered – he would not hand the enemy more ornaments.