Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

We find the cohort commander in the middle of the village. A handful of soldiers are with him. On their knees in front of him are ‘the enemy’. Two dozen. Children and old men. The only males of fighting edge are butchered meat on their walls. The women are being raped.

‘They could never stand,’ I say to Marcus. ‘Why did they fight?’

I assume that they had a choice.

He doesn’t answer. Instead he makes his report. The cohort commander looks over the gore on my friend, but makes no further comment. No one has clean hands up here.

The commander of five hundred turns his attention to me. I see his expression, and despair of it. He’s looking at ‘the hero of the Eighth’.

‘Standard-bearer. We’ve been talking to these supporters of the rebels.’ He gestures to the old men. Black eyes. Thick lips. I think he’ll want my help, then. Through Marcus, maybe he knows that we both speak Dalmatian.

The commander does want my help, but not like that. He grabs a village elder by the hair, and drags him towards me. ‘If I’d known you were coming I would have waited for you before attacking, standard-bearer. It would have been an honour. As it is, well, at least you can have a chance to spill enemy blood.’

I look from him to the trembling white-haired man on his knees. Perhaps I am mistaken?

I am not.

‘The miserable bastards aren’t talking. If they were to help me catch the cowards who are killing my men in the dark, then maybe I would be inclined to show mercy.’ I could see in his eyes that any such clemency had since fled. ‘Open the throat of one,’ he tells me, ‘and maybe the others will open their mouths.’

I hear the sound of steel as a blade is drawn from its scabbard.

My own.

I look down at the man who has been condemned. Even his eyes are shaking. His old, red eyes. ‘Talk,’ I tell him in Dalmatian. ‘Where are the rebels hiding? Where do they get their supplies? Who is supporting them? Talk! ’

No talk. Just a plaintive whimper. His spirit has fled. He is already broken by the threat of what is to come.

‘You see what I mean?’ the cohort commander says. ‘No reasoning with these mountain cretins. Open him up, standard-bearer.’

I look about me. The scent of death has drawn dozens of hard faces. Do they see my doubt? Is that why they look at me? Have they come to see the mettle of the hero of the Eighth? I can feel the man’s shaking through his hair. I move the blade to his throat. I feel something hot against my feet, but it is not blood. He is pissing himself. Nobody laughs. The mountain has drained them of their appreciation of comedy. Here, their only entertainment is death. I should look to Marcus. I just need a sign. A single look. An acknowledgement that what I am about to do is pointless, and savage, and wrong. I don’t know why I feel this way – I have never shied from killing man or beast – but the old man’s fear is even more pitiful than the most idiot sheep.

I turn to face my friend. There is no emotion on his face. He simply nods.

With that simple motion, he decides both the old man’s fate, and my own.

I cut.

The old man bled to death at my feet. He left the world in spasms, the screams of his kin making a symphony of his death. I thought of Centurion Justus. How he had told me that such barbarity against the enemy was a necessity to see our own men through alive. As I looked around the assembly of soldiers’ faces, I saw no condemnation in their eyes. I had butchered an animal, and nothing more.

‘Will you talk now?’ the cohort commander asked the others.

They would not, and so they screamed instead.

‘Maybe they had nothing to say?’ I asked Marcus.

‘What does it matter?’

Maybe it didn’t.

We sought out wood ash. Marcus wanted to clean his armour. I wondered if he was doing it to be rid of the memory of the people who had painted it. I was wrong, of course. ‘I feel like a soldier again,’ he told me once he was the cleanest legionary on the mountainside.

We didn’t speak much after that. We were too tired for words, and among true friends – brothers – words are decoration. Simply being in each other’s presence is enough.

But I had other friends. Other brothers. ‘I need to go and see them,’ I told Marcus, though it broke my heart.

He nodded. He tried to make it easier. ‘We’ll be held in reserve for a while. No more clearances like that.’

I wasn’t easily fooled. ‘You told me you do them all the time.’

A week ago, he would have smiled. ‘There’s cavalry coming.’

A dozen mounts. We walked to them. ‘Why so many?’ we asked a trooper.

‘Too many dispatch riders going missing.’

‘Can he get a ride down with you?’ Marcus asked. ‘He’s the standard-bearer.’

‘Of course.’

I turned to look at my friend. I wanted to know why he wanted rid of me.

But I saw the answer behind him. His century. The burden of command was heavy enough. He did not need the weight of carrying his friend into danger, too.

‘I should get back to my men,’ he said, and I saw the pain that the words caused him.

‘You should.’ I wanted to say more, but as every soldier learns, goodbyes are only tolerable when they’re short. ‘Keep your shield up,’ I said, ‘and move fast.’

‘The same to you, brother.’

I pulled my friend close. After the ravine, I knew that his men would understand. ‘Don’t fucking die, Marcus,’ I threatened into his ear. ‘Don’t you dare fucking die.’

I stood back, and watched as my brother walked away to his soldiers.

I never saw that man again.

I found Varo and Octavius in the valley. They were bored by their own mission. Worried by my absence. They asked me questions, and I told them lies.

‘See much action?’

‘No.’

‘Kill anyone?’

‘No.’

Varo looked at my feet. I’d tried to scrub them in the river, but the material was still stained by the old man’s piss and blood. He knew that I was full of shit. ‘Rumour mill says the Sixth cleared a couple of fortified villages?’

I was caught in a truth, and so I told him about stone walls, dead soldiers and raped women.

The big man shrugged. ‘That’s war.’

Now that I had opened my mouth, I realized that I was troubled, and that his simple answer was not enough. ‘I grew up a hundred miles from here,’ I explained to myself as much as to my comrades, ‘and if my father wasn’t a Roman citizen, then I wouldn’t be either. I’d have been drafted into the auxiliary cohorts, I’d have been told we were rebelling against Rome, and now I’d be your enemy.’

‘Be thankful that you’re not then.’ Octavius smiled, ripping off a fart.

‘It doesn’t bother you?’ I asked with irritation at my friend’s breezy attitude. ‘Those men in the villages, maybe they had family with our enemy, but they weren’t the enemy. They weren’t picking up a shield and a sword.’

Octavius raised his hands. ‘So? What are you getting at, Corvus?’

‘ So? So why did they have to die? They weren’t a threat to Rome.’

Varo shook his thick head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Why doesn’t it?’ I demanded, hoping to understand it all. Hoping to sit with the same certain peace as my comrades. ‘Tell me why, Varo. Tell me why we’re killing the same people that we were protecting a few weeks ago. Tell me why the dead that I’m seeing are old men, women and children. Tell me why the people that I grew up with are now my enemy. Please. I need to know. Fucking tell me.’

The lump looked at me as though I was an idiot. I suppose that I was.