Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

A stretcher was formed from a blanket and javelins. Our progress had already been slow; now we were moving like thick lava. I felt men looking at me. I wanted to punch them. When I thought that I wouldn’t be overheard, I told this to Marcus.

On any other day, he would have laughed. ‘You’re the hero of the Eighth, Corvus. They’re watching to see how you behave. They’re looking to take their lead from you.’

It was late into the afternoon when our luck finally turned. The arm of the missing soldier had bled into the dirt, and in that blood, a rebel had trodden. ‘They went up there, sir,’ our lead man said. There wasn’t much of a trail, but it was enough. They were ahead of us.

Marcus looked across the ravine – its side was cloaked in trees. I knew what he was thinking, but the day was growing short, and our progress had been shorter. ‘Keep following the trail,’ he told the lead man, and we began to work our way upwards into the mountain, towards the higher ground, the path ahead of us a winding goat trail that led between grey, ominous rocks.

I didn’t like it. Neither did Marcus. ‘Shields up at the front.’

We were prepared. This ground ahead of us was perfect for an ambush, and our eyes burned into those rocks as we sought out the first sign of our enemy. We were ready. If the rebels were to our front, then we would take their arrows on shield, and storm their positions with sword.

They knew that.

That’s why they hit us in the rear.

Screams overlapped. ‘Enemy rear!’ Panic in every note. ‘Enemy – shit! I’m hit!’

‘All-round defence!’ Marcus shouted as he took off running down the trail and towards the point of the attack. I followed as men turned their shields outwards, overlapping where they could, crouching behind their individual bastions to avoid sniping arrows.

I saw quickly that the two rear men of the column were down. They had been placed further back to warn of such attacks. In their deaths, they had done so. That was a soldier’s sacrifice.

‘Sir,’ a handsome soldier pointed out to Marcus, ‘he’s not dead! He’s still alive, sir! I can get him!’

Marcus didn’t have chance to tell the man to stand fast – he was already on his feet and moving. The enemy let him reach his dying comrade before putting a shaft into his lower back.

The scream shook the mountains.

The brave soldier fell across the body of the man he had tried to save, struck down by a hidden killer amongst the rocks.

‘You fucking cowards!’ someone cried with desperate fury.

‘Sir, he’s still alive!’ said another – the same words as the man who now writhed with an arrow in his kidneys. I realized then the enemy’s game. They wanted to suck the men out of formation. Out from the cover of our shields.

Marcus saw it too. Dozens of nervous eyes were looking to my brother for his leadership.

He was not found wanting. ‘Hold! Hold. No man moves unless I order it. We’ll form testudo and move as one to get them. Century, form testudo!’

Shield banged against shield as the infantrymen established the famed formation. Now there was protection to all flanks, and above.

At least, there should have been.

Beneath the shields, I saw fury flash over my friend’s face. The formation was ragged and gapped, and through no fault of his men. The trail had seen to it. Still, there was no better way. ‘At the half-step, march!’

It only took a half-dozen paces to recognize that movements created on the parade square – and used to victory on plain and in siege – would not work on a mountainside. ‘Man down!’ a voice called quickly. ‘He’s dead, sir!’

Holes in the formation opened as rock twisted and turned the shields on the narrow trail. Another man cried out.

‘Halt!’ Marcus shouted. ‘Halt! Down on your knees and hold formation!’ An arrow thumped into a shield. Like this, we were safe. Beneath our protection the air was stifling. Heat. Dust. Dread for a comrade – his moans continued. The soldier with the shaft in his back lived on, and lived in pain.

‘He’s trying to crawl to us, sir!’ a man in the lead file shouted. ‘He’s not far, sir!’

But he was far enough. Marcus’s face was dark as he gave the order. ‘We hold formation here. If we move, they’ll keep picking us off.’

A long pause. The discipline of the legion told the men to shut their mouths, and obey. Their hearts told them to save their friend. Marcus knew as much. ‘If you want to live to bring vengeance for our brothers, then hold! We can’t avenge them if we’re dead!’

The wounded soldier kept crawling. His closest friends began to shout encouragement. Urging him on. Begging him to reach the shields. He was close enough for us to see the agony in his eyes when the enemy put a shaft between his shoulder blades. His handsome face dropped into the dirt. Curses flew at the rocks. Shields shook.

We stayed in formation.

‘Marcus,’ I whispered in my brother’s ear, ‘what are we waiting for?’

His answer was numb, and yet, full of violence. ‘Night.’

Darkness takes the valley. The ravine becomes a grave, filled with the black dirt of night.

‘I’m going out,’ Marcus tells me.

‘Where?’

Where else? To find the bowmen that killed his men.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No.’ No? ‘I’m not ordering you, brother,’ he explains. ‘You’re not under my command, but these men are, and if I don’t come back, then I need you to lead them back to the cohort.’

I know he’s saying this because he loves me. I hate it all the same. ‘Let me go instead.’

His hand squeezes my arm. ‘Those are my men lying out there.’

I think of what he’s saying. I think of Priscus. Then of Varo and Octavius. If they fell, would I let another take my place in the hunt to find their killers?

‘Just come back,’ I tell him.

Marcus asks for volunteers. Every man in the century begs for the chance to spill blood. He picks three of the best, and then they are gone: a whisper in the darkness; the promise of death. Like the men kneeling in the dirt beside me, my part in the play is reduced to praying that the blood runs from my enemy, and not from my brother.

We keep a 50 per cent watch. Half of the century awake, half asleep. No one actually sleeps. Long into the night we hear a scream. No way to know who. There is no accent to raw pain.

In the dawn, four shapes come out of the grey. They are carrying something in their hands. They throw them on to the rock and dirt.

Three heads.

I look into the face of my oldest friend. I look for the signs of the child who wore a smile from ear to ear. Instead, I see the cold eyes of a killer.

‘Collect our dead,’ he tells his men. ‘We’re moving out.’

There are no more attacks. Marcus was ordered to clear the ravine, and he has done so. Three enemy dead. The cost: six Roman dead, and two wounded.

‘This is no way to fight a war,’ my brother tells me.

We find the Sixth Cohort at the site of another fortified village. For a moment, I wonder if maybe the last two nights and a day were a nightmare, the scene is so familiar. Huts burn. The screams of the raped cry out. A half-dozen legionaries wait with eternal patience to fill holes in the dirt – or, more accurately, be buried beneath stones. The mountain soil is too hard to dig.

Marcus leaves the century outside the village. He tells them to see to their arms and armour. He sends some men to find water. I walk beside him as he looks for the cohort commander to make his report. Though I wished he had been spared it, I am proud of my brother. I can see the way that his men look at him now. They trust him. He is a true leader. A true soldier. What I always knew him to be.