I cursed fate at that moment. Had I not run to the legions in search of war, I could have remained in Iader and had it come to me. True, I was a citizen, but which recruiter ever cared for the truth? I could have volunteered and put myself in an auxiliary cohort, and at this moment I would be marching to the very war that I was being denied in the legions! I was under no illusion that I had enlisted into the Eighth for anything other than my own selfish desires. I left honour and eagles to Brutus and Marcus, and men of their mould. All I had wanted, and still wanted, was to fight, and by running in search of war I had missed it.
I stamped against the wall once more. ‘Bastard!’
Of course, I knew in my raging heart that there was no way I could ever have remained in Iader. Not after the anger had consumed me, and I had beat my broad-chested father down as if he were a toddler. Not after I had brought my sandals down on to his face, and seen the broken teeth shatter from his mouth. Not after I had been caught in the act of savagery by his slaves, and been forced to escape over the garden’s walls. Not after I had run to the one person I had left – Marcus – and confessed to him that I was at least an attempted murderer, and of my own father no less. If he died, and I were caught, then my fate would be grisly: sewn up into a leather sack along with dogs and cats and tossed into the water, where drowning would be a welcome relief after the panic-stricken animals had bitten and clawed me to ruin in their attempt to escape the leather tomb.
I rubbed at my eyes again. Marcus’s face that day was as clear to me now as if he were sitting on the end of my bed. I remembered how he had looked at the bloodstains on my toga. How he had seen me desperate, ragged, wild and grief-stricken. He was already a soldier, home in Iader on leave, and perhaps that was why he was able to deliver his words with such calm detachment.
‘What can I do?’ is all he had asked.
‘Run with me?’ I’d said.
We ran.
My heart thumped as I recalled that day. How we had broken into the hills like hares before a hound. How the heat had baked us as we climbed higher, leaving behind the skeletal trees and following rugged trails that wound between jagged rocks. Thirst and fatigue were our enemies, but fear was a strong ally, and it drove us on into the darkness, and beyond. It was dawn when I had finally collapsed, and began to weep.
It was only then that Marcus had asked me, ‘Why?’
I got up from my bunk in the barracks, and fetched a wineskin from beneath my bed. I would drink myself into oblivion. I pulled hard at the skin like a newborn at the teat, greedy to forget.
‘You fucking bastard,’ I swore, thinking of my father, and regretting only that I had not had a moment longer to slit open the cunt’s throat. ‘You fucking bastard,’ I snarled again, this time because I had drained the wine, and could not find another skin. Knowing that I could be punished severely for leaving the barracks that I had been confined to, I dropped back heavily on to my bunk, and uttered a prayer that one of my section would return soon so that I could dispatch him to a merchant’s.
Then, movement caught my attention.
It was a fly on the ceiling. My eyes followed the creature as it crawled and hopped on the concrete. It was trapped, unable to navigate, incapable of working out the simple puzzle of the open window through which a warm breeze was blowing. The concrete was barren, and the fly would toil against its surface until it expired.
I watched it for hours.
Initially I was cheering the creature, encouraging it to find its freedom as I was denied my own. The window was there, so close, fully open! Go!
Then, as time wore on, I began to resent it. I began to hate it. How could a creature be so stupid? How could it not see the opportunity? How—
It was then that I smelt the smoke. Not the ever-present camp smells of cooking, but the thick noxious type that came from burning timber and plaster.
‘Stand to!’ someone shouted from outside, ‘Stand to!’ and I leaped from my bed as I had been trained to do, automatically pulling on my armour.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked no one and everyone. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
It was then that I heard the trumpets.
It was then that I heard the screams.
9
Fully armed and armoured, I ran into the sunlight.
The scream came again.
It was long and mournful, almost animal-like in its raw torment. If not for one simple reason, I would have believed the sound was coming from a badly slaughtered beast.
But animals do not cry for help, and those words punctuated the screams like cold nails.
I looked about me. Just under a dozen other men from my century were stumbling wide-eyed from their barrack rooms, the broke and the boring who had remained in camp while others went into the town to drink and fuck. They were all young, members of the last draft from Italy. Their gaze picked me out as a ‘veteran’ of the unit, and looked to me for guidance.
Seeing clouds of black smoke beginning to drift across the sky, and hearing the cries of alarm from the other parts of camp, I could only think of one order to give. Something Brutus had told me were the only two words a real leader needed to know.
‘Follow me.’
I broke off at a sprint, my shield banging against my arm and shoulder, cheek-plates rubbing against my face. I did not turn to check on the progress of those behind me. I simply put my head down and ran to our cohort’s assembly point at the western gate.
I pulled up thirty yards short, and looked at my surroundings. Beyond the wall, somewhere in the town, thick columns of noxious smoke were disfiguring the bright blue canvas of sky. I heard rather than saw the panting figures that had followed me come to a stop at my back. At the gate, men of that day’s guard ran on to the battlements. There was perhaps a century’s worth of them, and I sought out the transverse crest of their centurion.
He found me first.
‘You!’ I heard from my left. ‘What unit?’
I turned and saw the officer. He was an older man, probably into his second enlistment, and if he feared the distant screams and smoke, he didn’t show it. His eyes displayed only anger that order had been broken.
‘Second of the Second, sir.’ I saluted.
‘These men with you?’ he asked with a sweep of his vine cane – a symbol of his rank – indicating the young soldiers behind me.
‘They are, sir.’
The centurion paused then, and seemed to take me in for a moment. He looked at the battlements, at the smoke beyond, and then spat.
‘I can’t take my guard force off the walls until I’m relieved by a tribune,’ he explained, and I could see how his soldier’s mind was struggling to balance the need to follow orders at all costs, with the very real problem that was spreading beyond the walls.
‘The fires,’ the centurion went on, ‘they could be out of control by the time a tribune gets here. Take your men and do what you can. Dump your equipment here and go. We’ll be behind you as soon we can.’
It doesn’t do to hesitate in carrying out any order, but in this instance I had already come to the same conclusion as the officer, and I was dumping my shield and stripping my armour before the words had left his mouth. The young soldiers in my charge followed suit.
‘Not your swords!’ I told them. There were still screams in the town, and something inside my gut told me that there was more at work here than flame.
It was the position of the pillars of smoke, I realized. They were spread across the town. If this were an accident, then they would be raging outwards from one location. As it was, I could make out at least a half-dozen of the sooty columns rising menacingly beyond the wall.