Джерейнт Джонс - Legion

Pannonia: AD 1

I was watching my friend die.

He was slumped back against a slab of rock smeared red with his blood. Right hand held against the torn chain mail and flesh of his stomach, left arm hanging useless by his side. When he pressed against the spear-wound, dark liquid seeped between his weathered fingers.

I wanted to make him laugh before he left us. ‘You’re doing a shit job of dying, Brutus.’

‘Piss off,’ he tried to snarl, but his grey eyes were smiling.

Alone, we sheltered between rocks in an arid canyon between scorched mountainsides. The stink of smoke, blood and shit teased our nostrils – nearby a small village burned. From the sound of drawn-out screams, my friend was not the only one whose flesh had become a home for iron.

‘Haven’t you done this before?’ I tried to joke, desperate to show indifference to the desolation and his wretched state. Desperate to be the warrior that he had taught me to be.

The old soldier grimaced through what was usually a brilliant smile. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’

I wouldn’t have expected Brutus to say any different. Fifteen years a legionary, he was more than just my section commander. To me he was a friend, a teacher, and a father – or at least as close as I had to one.

‘I’m sorry,’ I confessed. Sorry because my soldier’s mask was slipping – my hands were shaking. I was scared.

He saw it and shrugged it away. It was as if his own matter of life and death was an afterthought, his sole attention given to the young soldier in his charge. ‘You saved my life.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re dying.’

‘Let’s not split hairs,’ the veteran wheezed, and his words caused us both to burst out in laughter. A brief moment of defiance against the absurdity of it all, before the angry red pain in his stomach gripped my friend once more, and he cursed every god that he could name.

‘Fuck off before you make me laugh again.’ He winced. ‘Go check on the others.’

‘I shouldn’t leave you.’

‘I’m still your section commander, lad. Do as I say.’

I held the man’s iron stare. I wanted to disobey him. I almost did, but then he grinned, and told me, ‘I won’t die without saying goodbye.’

It was a ludicrous thing to say, and yet I believed him. I stood and turned my back on my friend. I caught the eye of a knot of soldiers. Two were young, eyes wide with shock, but the others were solid, and I knew that they would see to the comfort of the veteran in our ranks. Then I left the sharp rocks where I had dragged my friend to safety, and moved out on to the canyon’s floor, guided to my half-century by the crackle and hiss of thatch as a mountain dwelling burned furiously. A few other huts stood unmolested for now, but they too would be ash before our withdrawal, of that I was certain. First they would be stacked with the dozen local dead, and I watched as Roman soldiers carried the leaking bodies of the enemy to their final resting place.

Enemy. It was such a trumped-up term, I knew. The people we had killed that day had been thieves and brigands, nothing more, but they had opposed the rule of Rome, and for that they had died. Some had even fallen to my own sword. They had been my first. I was a killer, I now realized. That morning I had just been…

Me.

I rubbed at my eyes. How had things changed so quickly in just a few hours? The day had begun with peace, a slither of orange light painting the mountaintops with such majesty that no man had spoken as we readied to march. The dawn which followed that natural splendour was cool, at least compared to the oppressive heat of the mountains in summer, and there was no clue in the air that the hours ahead would see blood, and guts, and shit, and screams. But then, as we shouldered our burdens and staggered up into the stony heights, our section had chanced upon the seemingly deserted camp of brigands operating in the area. We had been looking for them of course, but then we were always looking for outlaws, and never finding them. This was their homeland. These were their mountains. They floated in and out of the ravines like ghosts, and we blundered and sweated our way through the passes with the grace of elephants. Simply finding a recently used camp was cause for celebration, and none of us had expected that the mountain-people would be within miles of our small patrol of forty men, let alone a spear’s length.

That had changed when Brutus had led our eight-man section to look for water. Who knows why the brigands chose to make a stand that day? Maybe they were simply tired of running; maybe they hated the sight of our uniforms so much that they could no longer keep their blades sheathed. Whatever the reason, they fell upon us with spear and sword, and so unexpected was the ferocity that for a moment it had seemed as though we would be overwhelmed through sheer surprise and violence of action.

One man had saved us.

He reacted with such force and viciousness that he almost single-handedly beat back the enemy’s first attack. As others had stood wide-eyed and panicked, this soldier had been consumed instantly by a need to kill and maim, and it was with such reckless disregard for legion sword drill that he had even decapitated one bandit with a single wild swing of his blade. In the face of this battle-tyrant the enemy had lost all spirit and fled, but javelins had spitted their exposed backs like game, and now their bodies lay scattered and pathetic, the mountain’s insects swarming on their spilled blood and flesh. Taking in the scene of the carnage, I now wondered at the savage man who had turned the tide. The man who had welcomed the chance to kill. The man who had run to the legions in search of the promise of such brutal death.

I wondered about myself.

I was broken out of my painful thoughts when a hand landed on my shoulder, heavy as a bear’s paw. I turned and looked up into the face of my comrade Varo, his older features as blunt and forbidding as the terrain in which we had fought that day. ‘Come with me.’

I followed.

He led me to a legionary laid out on his back, stripped of his chain mail. Beside the wounded man, two soldiers offered water and comfort. One was Priscus, a kindly veteran with as many years’ service as Brutus. The other, Octavius, was a handsome youth who had come through training beside me. I looked at him, and saw that I wasn’t the only one with shaking hands.

I turned my eyes to the man in their midst. He was a young soldier of our section, Fano. He’d taken a spear-point in the initial attack. The Italian’s skin looked waxen and the colour of dried ash. He was nearer to death’s world than our own. I knew in that moment that he would die far from the coastal town that had given him his name. A town that he had spoken of with love, and pride. He would never see the sea again. He would never see his mother. Fano had told me that she had cried when he enlisted. How would she weep now?

‘Thought you would want to say goodbye,’ Priscus offered, ever wise.

‘Goodbye, Fano,’ was all that I said. What else was there?

Priscus looked at Varo, and motioned to Octavius and myself. ‘Take these two and put the rest of the bodies into the huts.’

We moved away. Varo sensed I had a question burning.

‘Why doesn’t he look to Brutus?’ I asked.

Varo made no reply. Instead he pointed to a young brigand who lay in a pool of dark blood. A handful of guts protruded from the dead man’s stomach. His eyes were open and staring at an empty blue sky.

‘Yours, wasn’t he?’ Varo asked me.