Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

I reached the end of the names. There were a lot of them.

But no Marcus.

I fixed the clerk with a stare. I noticed a slight tremble in his hand. His was a war of words, not warriors. He knew who I was. My temper had been a topic of conversation through the rumour mill long before my stand with the eagle.

‘I’m looking for my friend,’ I said, trying and failing to appear amicable. ‘Are these up to date?’

‘As much as they can be, standard-bearer,’ he offered. ‘These names here’ – he pointed to the bottom of the list – ‘came in this morning with the dispatch riders.’ He was trying to be helpful. ‘May I ask the name of who you’re looking for? Maybe I—’

I snapped Marcus’s details out of my mouth. Name, rank, unit. After a moment, I saw the stylus-scribbler’s eyebrows raise. Then he began to quickly leaf through dispatches. ‘Here,’ he said triumphantly, as though he were handing me the head of the enemy general.

I looked at it. ‘A promotion list?’

‘From General Tiberius, standard-bearer. Your friend’s promotion to centurion has been confirmed.’

I handed the paper back. Marcus, now the centurion he had always wanted to be.

I thought then of the man that he had replaced. The grizzled soldier had been injured in the face on the day that Marcus had first drawn blood. How long ago?

I asked about the officer who had entrusted Marcus with his men. His wards. His sons, and brothers.

The clerk’s face paled. ‘He died of his wounds, standard-bearer. Infection.’

‘You remember him?’ I asked impressed, yet suspicious.

The ink-stained man nodded gravely. ‘Every one,’ he said after a moment.

The clerk’s squinted eyes told me that it was the truth. Like all of us, the mountains ensured that this man had a burden to bear.

I put a hand on his shoulder. It was the kind of thing Marcus would do, but what I said came from my own heart.

‘Good.’

I sought out the Sixth Cohort, and found their commander washing in the shallow river. He was naked, and his tanned arms and shins looked as though they were attached to the wrong torso, so white was his skin.

‘Standard-bearer,’ he greeted me. ‘Not the baths, but it’ll do.’

I exchanged the minimum of pleasantries, and then asked after my brother. Despite the absence of Marcus’s name from the list of casualties, I still felt my stomach knot. It would hardly be the first time a bureaucrat had made a mistake.

‘Marcus? Alive and well,’ his commander informed me, and I felt relief wash out of me like a flood. That cavity was, however, soon filled with guilt – I hadn’t seen my friend for weeks, and I needed only to look at the scarred and bruised flesh of the bathing men to know that those weeks had been a tale of breaking backs and broken blades.

‘Is he here?’ I asked the officer, meaning the valley floor.

He scooped water on to his lined face before he answered me. ‘Seconded to the First Cohort. They needed an additional century. They asked for my best, so I gave them Marcus.’

Pride is no small thing, even in the face of danger – especially in the face of danger – and I felt it well in me now. Marcus, my brother, requested from amongst his peers. I had to see him. How had I let it go so long? Damn my fear. He was closer to me than blood. War could not change that. War would not change that.

I bent down to the stream and scooped a handful of the blissful water into my mouth. I knew that I was about to be thirsty for a long time.

‘Where is he?’

I went into the mountains in search of ‘the Barbers’. That’s what Marcus’s century were calling themselves now, my guide informed me. He was of the same cohort.

‘This boss said that every century needed a name along with its number,’ the soldier informed me, referring to the cohort commander whom I’d talked to at the river.

‘A name?’

‘That’s right, standard-bearer. The boss’s only rule was that it had to be something aggressive and warlike.’

I pulled a face. ‘What’s aggressive and warlike about the Barbers?’

The soldier grinned at me – I recognized it as an expression that one gives to a man who is not a party to an inside joke.

We joined a resupply column forming up in the lowest reaches of the slopes. Pack animals and burdened men. Slaves. Both were the property of the legions. Where had they come from? A dozen shades of skin, a dozen tones of hair, all united by the same expression in their eyes: hopelessness. I looked at the men who now ordered them into a ramshackle column – tidy ranks would not survive the first hundred yards of track. The armour of these soldiers had been scrubbed in the valley, but there was no getting the dirt from their lined faces. Even after a short respite, their eyes were grey and lifeless. Gone were the songs. Gone were the jokes. The mountain had leached humour away, breaking the spirit of the soldiers as certainly as their slaves had been broken to the whim of their owners. The mountains were our masters. Slaves of Rome, slaves of war, slaves to the sharp-toothed leviathan that seemed intent on devouring us all, piece by piece.

‘Lovely day for it, isn’t it?’ a toothless soldier asked me, his spirit endowed with greater strength than most.

‘Lovely day,’ I made myself reply. I was the fucking standard-bearer after all.

A rippling order. ‘Prepare to move.’

A rippling movement. ‘Move.’

Like a wounded caterpillar, the column lurched forwards, and upwards.

One foot in front of the other. Feel the loose stone give. Feel the creak in your knee. The stab in your ankle. Feel the hot sweat that stings your eyeballs, those empty orbs scratched by dust and drained by stress. Try and keep your head on a swivel. Try and scan the rocks. Try and think about how you will react if you get attacked from that position. Try and think about how you will cover and withdraw the casualties if you get hit from there.

Try not to think about why you are here.

Try not to think about when, and how you will leave it.

Try not to think about how you came to be here in the first place.

‘Standard-bearer?’ The toothless soldier. ‘We’re gonna catch our breath here, if that’s all right with you?’

Here was a collection of half-torn-down hovels. I could smell goat shit, and rot.

‘Bit on the stinky side, isn’t it?’ the old soldier asked me as he sucked on a dry biscuit.

‘Here.’ I offered him some wine. It was good. Very good. The legate had given it to me himself.

The man’s eyes lit up as he drank it. ‘Take another pull,’ I offered, but the soldier handed it back.

‘Can’t deprive a man of his luxuries up here, standard-bearer, but thank you. I’ll get this lot moving again just as soon as everyone’s had time to put something down their necks, and drop their arses.’

Following his own advice, the man moved away and dropped to his haunches; the biscuit was still in his mouth. I thought of the rigorous standards enforced upon me as a child – eating and the use of the toilet as regimented as any other part of my schooling – and I almost smiled. Only the stench of death kept my lips tight.

I found them in the closest hovel. Their skin was black, and bloated. In parts it moved. Creatures smaller than my thumbnail were the masters of death’s domain, and here was a feast worthy of whatever hellish gods had spawned them. There were four bodies. All naked. All rotting.

None with their heads.

The answer to that mystery was found as we passed through the gate out of what had been a village. The heads sat atop a wall, eyeless and maggot-ridden. Some joker had arranged them so that each pair were kissing.