Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

‘Because that’s war.’

It was our war, and after two weeks of it, we were still only halfway between the cities of Siscia and Salona, trapped in the mountains like stale air. As we inched further south the mountains were becoming more angry, appearing as shark’s teeth turned up to the sky. Deadly, and vicious.

Hook-nose rotated his troops. My old cohort climbed to the east to replace the Seventh. The Sixth, and my brother, were similarly replaced. The change came after the legate had visited his troops in the heights. He wanted to know why progress was so slow, and so he went to see for himself. I expect that he went thinking he would find excuses and dragged feet. Instead he found heat, and ambush, and soldiers dragging the bodies of their friends as arrows from an unseen enemy tasted flesh.

Relief rolled over me when I’d discovered that my old ccohort would be taking to the heights in the east, and not the west. The Seventh had come under attack, but they’d suffered far less than Marcus’s cohort. For whatever reason, the enemy presence was stronger in that part of the region. Tribunes on the staff had concluded, because of the coordinated nature of attacks, that there was one enemy band operating there under a single command. Sometimes, in the night, assaults fell on different outposts or units at almost the same time. Often these attacks would last for no more than a few seconds – a couple of sentries killed; some supplies set ablaze – and then the enemy were gone, swallowed by night and the land that they called home.

I sat back against a slab of rock, Varo and Octavius either side of me. We had climbed all day. Balius had been returned to me, but I had turned down the saddle so that I could share the same hardship as my comrades. How could it be any other way? We were soldiers.

‘I feel like my lungs are still halfway down the hill,’ Octavius wheezed. ‘If these mountains are what we’re fighting for, then they can have them back. What use are they to us?’

There was no answer for him. Not a real one, anyway. ‘If we don’t control the mountains,’ Varo began, ‘then the officers back in Rome don’t get to colour in this part of the world on their maps.’

The time to worry about a soldier is when he is not complaining, and I knew that there was more to my friends’ grumbling. There were nerves in it. An edge of fear. These rocky slopes were death’s domain. Before the battle on the plain, we had stood in ranks of shining steel and watched and waited as our enemy advanced. There had been time for goodbyes. There had been time to prepare for the end. Here, a soldier could drop dead before his comrades’ eyes with an arrow in his throat as they sat down to share biscuits. A sentry duty could be a death sentence, the butchered soldier found days later, or never at all.

‘We were born fifty years too late,’ Octavius told us. ‘Imagine being in the battle lines of the civil war? None of this fucking around like goats in the mountains. Line against line, lads. Legion on legion.’

Varo didn’t look so certain. ‘You’d be all right killing Romans?’

Octavius shrugged. ‘They’re not my mates. And look. They rebelled against the Empire, didn’t they? How’s that any different to us fighting the auxiliaries?’

The big man was not convinced. ‘The auxiliaries aren’t citizens.’

‘The Emperor pays their bills.’

‘No. It’s not the same.’

‘Well, either way,’ the shorter man insisted, ‘if you turn against the Empire, you get what’s coming to you. They lost their citizenship when they sided with Pompey, Marc Anthony and all those other cunts.’

‘So you’d have fought for Caesar?’ Varo asked.

‘Of course.’

I break my silence. ‘You’d have fought for whoever your legion did,’ I told him. ‘Whoever the senator was that your legate decided to follow. Do you think you’d have had a say in that?’

‘I’d like to think so.’

‘And I’d like these mountains to be a beach, but it’s not going to happen, is it? We don’t get to make decisions, Octavius. Not the ones that change the world, anyway. When was the last time you chose something for yourself?’

My friend spat. ‘I’m choosing not to listen to you, you miserable twat.’

Varo laughed. It was the first time I’d heard him make that rumbling sound in days. I missed it. But then, I missed a lot of things.

‘I’m going to check on the sentries,’ he told us, getting to his feet and looking down from that great height as though he were our father; had he stepped into that paternal role when Priscus had fallen? ‘Cheer up, you two. We may not be able to choose much in life, Corvus, I’ll give you that, but we can choose our mates.’

Despite my stubbornness, I nodded at his words.

In that part of my life at least, I had chosen wisely.

Three days later I was told by a dispatch rider that I was to accompany him back to the legion’s headquarters on the plain – or rather the narrow strip of land that ran beside the snaking river. ‘What’s it about?’ I asked, but the soldier was no more privy to Hook-nose’s mind than I was.

I sought out my brothers. We were stained in sweat, but free of blood. The enemy had not discovered us, nor we them. I found Varo and Octavius at the head of the century. Behind their armoured figures, drawn in jagged lines of misery, stretched the peaks of the mountain range.

Varo saw me first. ‘Quite a view, isn’t it?’

Octavius wiped sweat from his eyes. ‘Pretty, from a distance. Talking of which, what’s up with you, Corvus? You look like Balius just took advantage of you.’

‘Hook-nose wants to see me.’

‘Smile then, you dickhead,’ Varo said, taking his own advice. ‘Get yourself some decent scoff at headquarters. Go and see Marcus.’

Marcus. When his cohort had been relieved and moved to the lower ground, I had told myself that I should be with my comrades in the mountains, and the place of most danger. Maybe that was the truth. Or maybe… maybe I hadn’t wanted to see the changes in my oldest friend. The smiling boy becoming the hollow-eyed killer.

Varo asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

He laughed. How could he be happy in this? He saw the question in my eyes. ‘I’ve got a sword on my hip and comrades by my side. Look at this view, Corvus. Look at it! Life is good, you dickhead. Life is good.’

I squinted. ‘You truly believe that?’

He put one of those thick arms over my shoulder. ‘We’re not lying on sofas getting wine poured down our throats by slaves, and I don’t suppose that we ever will be, but life could be worse. A lot worse.’

It could. And if I hadn’t already seen enough evidence of that in my life, then the legate would prove it to me.

‘Standard-bearer! Come.’ Hook-nose greeted me with a wave once I reached his headquarters on the valley floor. ‘I’ve had the eagle brought up from the rear.’

I felt my pulse quicken. ‘Battle, sir?’ I asked hastily, but the commander of the legion shook his head.

‘It’s time to visit the wounded.’

I walked with the eagle in my hand. To me the standard was Gallus, famed chicken of the Eighth. To others, it was a symbol of divine inspiration.

Men snapped to attention as they saw us come: a decorated soldier and a legion’s eagle, a potent combination to inspire pride in any legionary’s heart. I felt none myself – the gilded lump of metal on a stick just meant that I had my hands full, and that I couldn’t wipe the dripping sweat off my face – but while I might not have shared the emotions, I supposed that I understood them: the men’s pride in the eagle came from a desire to belong to something greater than themselves. It came from a desire to be proved worthy. To bring light to a dark world. Order to chaos. To walk amongst heroes. To be one yourself.