Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

I reached Balius, and swung myself into my horse’s saddle. I would go to Iader. I had run away a boy, and I would return a soldier. A killer.

But first I would say goodbye to a friend.

Alone and unafraid, I trotted Balius out to the shallow depression where I had buried Octavius beneath the stones.

They were gone.

So was he.

I dropped from Balius’s back and tied him to the skeleton of the tree. Then, blade in hand, I searched for my dead comrade.

I found him on a scree-slope. His decaying body had been hacked into pieces, and spread across the stone. Fat crows looked at me with lazy disdain.

I expected grief, then, but anger came in a charge of fire that consumed my entire being. I knew that the trick was a ruse of the enemy. That the need for decency would draw me into their trap. I didn’t care. I simply ran up the loose stones, screaming challenge.

‘Bastards! Bastards! Come and kill me, you bastards! Come and kill me! Come on, kill me!’ I raged at the mountains. I howled at the war. ‘ Come on! ’

But none came. The world around me was impassive. When the echoes of my fury died, the mountains mocked me with their silence.

Fire fled out of me, my spirit doused. I sank to my knees beside the butchered remains of one of my closest comrades. I wanted an arrow from the rocks. Instead I heard nothing but the flapping of a crow’s wings.

I waited a long time for the enemy to come, and then I began to pick up the pieces of my friend.

My cavalry escort met me at the edge of the camp. I sat astride Balius. My horse was loaded heavily but my eyes were empty.

‘I pulled some strings so that my men and I will escort you,’ Arminius informed me. ‘I thought that we should talk.’

But he didn’t say a lot after that. Nothing about my demeanour said that my encounter with the legate had gone well. Arminius could feel violence in me, too. All soldiers could. Not one had come within a javelin’s length of me since I had returned to the main body of the legion. They could smell danger, or maybe what Balius carried on his back.

We rode out. My mouth stayed shut. Arminius listened to the reports of his nimble scouts, and his eyes searched the valley around us like a hawk’s, but my own were picturing what lay ahead.

‘I spoke to the legate,’ he finally told me, trying to break our silence. That surprised me enough that I inclined my head to look at him. ‘I do not believe he’s someone who can be brought to our way of thinking.’

I gave a derisive snort. ‘No shit.’

The German was taken aback by my tone. The last time we had talked I had been deferential, but here was open hostility. I think he sensed that it was against the world, rather than himself.

‘How well do you know this port?’ he asked of our destination.

‘Well.’

‘Could we find allies there?’

I felt my grip tighten on Balius’s reins. ‘Allies for what, Prince Arminius?’ I asked him. ‘We’re two soldiers with madness in our minds. We are two men. Rome is Rome.’

The handsome bastard smiled. ‘Rome was built by two men, was it not? It can be rebuilt that way, too.’

I shook my head. ‘We’ve spent too much time in the mountains,’ I told him, fighting the infection of his smile. ‘The thin air’s ruined our brains.’

He winked. ‘Or has the elevation given us a clarity to see beyond the horizon?’

I snorted again. ‘This is going to be a long ride. Why don’t you save your charm, prince,’ I said carelessly, for what use was decorum when you had admitted to a desire to betray your orders? Your empire? ‘Tell me something about Germany.’ Tell me something to make me forget, if only for a moment.

Arminius grew in the saddle. Here was pride. ‘It’s the most beautiful place in the world, Corvus,’ he told me with certainty. ‘Wide rivers, good soil and forest as far as the eye can see.’

‘Forests?’ I asked him, pulling a face. I was a stranger to such things. Woods, certainly, but forests? The kind where darkness ruled, and wicked things preyed on those fools that ventured into their depths?

Arminius saw my discomfort, and laughed. ‘I have nothing to fear in forests. The gods of my people reside there. The spirits would greet me.’

‘And what about the bears?’

He shrugged his armoured shoulders. ‘I could make you a new hat.’

I laughed, the sound as coarse as the stone on the slopes about us. My own bearskin was bundled behind my saddle, but it wasn’t the hide that drew the flies, and kept all but the German officer from my side.

‘How did you come to be here?’ I asked him, not wanting to think of my own path.

‘My father is a chieftain. We pay homage to Rome, and he wanted me to learn Roman ways.’

‘So you’re not a Roman?’

Arminius scratched at his face where an insect had bitten him. ‘They bestowed citizenship on the nobles of my tribe.’ Then he gestured to his tall, formidable-looking troopers. ‘But these men? No. As auxiliaries, citizenship will be bestowed on them when they finish their service.’

I looked at the faces of his soldiers. They were grim and warlike, but there was a spark in their movement that was absent from Marcus’s comrades in the mountains. Was that inspiration Arminius?

‘These men don’t fight for Rome,’ I guessed. ‘They follow you.’

He was humble enough not to agree. Proud enough not to argue.

‘And where will you lead them?’ I asked.

It was a moment before he answered. ‘For now… Iader. I have another year of service to Rome on this frontier. Then I am to return home.’

‘To farm?’ I asked, knowing somehow that a peaceful life would make this man happy.

Arminius shook his head. ‘To fight. Like you, I was not born to farm, Corvus. We were born to carry a blade, and there is always someone to fight.’

I looked at my hands. Pictured the blood on them. ‘Perhaps we can change that?’ I wondered aloud, hearing the enormity of that task in the words.

Arminius smiled bravely. ‘Perhaps we can.’

The rest of our journey passed in near silence but for the breath of our horses and the tramp of their hooves on the hard-baked track. We saw no sign of the enemy.

‘We rarely do,’ Arminius had told me when I asked him about it.

I could understand why. They were frightening men, these Germans, and despite their size they were lightning and grace on their mounts.

That question was one of the few things that I did ask the prince. Many more enquiries burned inside me, but I saw a man in deep contemplation, and somehow sensed that his musings would benefit not just myself, but countless others. I had been in the presence of greatness before, and from Arminius came a feeling of calm and confidence. That, despite it all, things would work out for the best. That the chaos of the world would soon be put in check.

I shook my head to clear it of that grand idea. The burden on my horse was proof of the ridiculousness of such a fantasy. Then, with my load in mind, I turned to Arminius. ‘The town’s three miles further along this road.’

He sensed there was more. Raised his eyebrows.

‘I’ll meet you at the port.’

I had somewhere else to be. He didn’t ask where.

‘Do you want an escort?’ he said instead.

I shook my head. The harshness of the mountains had given way to rolling hills. I had blades on my hip, and a solid mount between my legs. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Arminius offered his hand, and looked at me with warmth. He knew that something painful was the cause of my diversion. ‘At the port, then.’

‘At the port.’

I dug my heels into Balius’s flanks, and we galloped towards the green hillsides, familiar places from my childhood. A time where battles had been fought with sticks and the dead picked themselves up from the ground.