Still, they had followed me, and now they looked to me for orders. What would Marcus or Brutus do in such a situation? What would they say?
‘Good work,’ I told them, having no idea whether or not it was true. ‘Now let’s get back to camp.’
The gates were shut when we returned, but we were soon allowed in by the same old centurion who had sent us out. He eyed my dishevelled appearance, but made no comment on it.
‘You put that fire out?’ he asked me, jutting his vine cane in the direction of where a remnant of smoke hung lazily in the air.
‘I think it put itself out, sir,’ I admitted. ‘Building collapsed, and the flames didn’t make it across the alleyways.’
‘Any idea what it was?’
I shook my head. ‘Apartments and some kind of shop.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The square-jawed soldier in my charge spoke up. ‘It was a baker’s, sir.’
I bridled, and stared daggers at the man. I did not appreciate being made to look stupid in front of a superior. When we returned to the barracks, I’d put my fist through his stomach, the fat-headed prick.
‘A baker’s,’ the centurion mused, as if trying to convince himself of something. ‘So it could have been an accident…’
We both knew the flaw in that assumption. What chance was there of multiple accidents causing several fires across the town at the same time?
‘Easy place to start a fire, sir,’ I ventured. ‘If someone had a mind to.’
The officer nodded. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Legionary Corvus, sir.’
‘Second of the Second, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man nodded. ‘I had my lads put your kit by the wall.’ He pointed. ‘I’ve had a guard watching it, so it’s all there. Report back to your century, Corvus. I expect that we’re in for a long day.’
11
I collapsed on to my bunk like an empty wineskin, drained of everything that I had. I thought of the centurion at the west gate, and how he’d been wrong when he guessed that we were in for a long day.
We’d gone all night, too.
The light of dawn was creeping in through the bunk room’s window now as the young men of my section dropped on to their beds with satisfied moans. Within seconds they were oblivious to the world. I wanted to fall into that insensible slumber myself, but my mind would not be still. It replayed the events of the day and night, and each blurred recollection birthed questions. Truly, I was at a lost as to what I had witnessed.
I could recall it easily enough. Upon returning to the century we had been thrown quickly into a makeshift task force sent out to tackle further blazes. We had gone from fire to fire, at times acting as part of a bucket-passing chain, at others as grim-faced sentinels to hold back crying and angry civilians – there were some parts of the town that simply could not be saved. Homes and businesses were pulled down to starve the flames of fuel. Some smaller districts were completely condemned. Need I tell you that these were the poorer neighbourhoods? Need I tell you that an entire cohort was dispatched to secure the splendid villas that sat unmolested on the town’s highest hills?
But nobody said that life is fair. Certainly I had seen enough evidence of that in the past day. Entire families taken. Businesses and homes lost. Murder in the streets.
It was the murder that kept me awake now. The why of what I had seen. There was no doubting that the two off-duty soldiers I had come across had been killed intentionally: their throats had been opened into grotesque smiles. Violent death was a part of town life, but the coincidence of several fires occurring at once was already stretching my imagination. Murder atop of that? What was going on that I didn’t know? What madness had gripped the town? And was it over now that the final embers had been extinguished? Two cohorts patrolled and guarded the settlement against any resurgence of flame or bloodshed. We would relieve them at noon. The air was thick with more than simply soot. There was confusion. Fear. Accusation.
‘Bastard,’ I growled, knowing that sleep would elude me.
And so, despite my aching muscles and throbbing skull, I swung my feet on to the cold floor and went in search of my friends, and answers.
By the light of the coming dawn, I found Priscus and Varo leaning against the short wall that was the head of our barrack block. There was no sign of any other man, and deep snores rang from inside the bunk rooms, punctuated by the occasional coughing fit of a soldier clearing soot from his lungs.
‘What are you doing up?’ I asked my comrades.
‘The same as you, I imagine,’ Priscus answered. ‘You look like shit.’
I instinctively ran a hand over the back of my head. ‘Feel worse.’
There had been no time to talk before; the century had hastily formed and run out into the chaos – those who had been drunk were soon sober, having puked wine over their mail and feet – and now I told my friends all that had occurred from the first moment I’d heard the trumpets and screams, to the moment I had come to stand with them and watch the rising disc of a blood-red sun.
‘We saw bodies too,’ Varo grunted, pawing at his scarred chin. ‘And not dead from smoke. One had his guts hanging out.’
‘Soldiers?’
‘Civvies too.’
‘What’s going on?’
Varo shrugged his massive shoulders. Priscus kicked the dirt. ‘Justus has been called to HQ, so maybe we’ll find out.’
Justus was our centurion, and a thirst for knowledge explained why my two friends were waiting beside his quarters at the end of our block.
‘Maybe Octavius knows.’ Varo yawned. ‘And that’s why he can just sleep, the bastard.’
I smiled. Our comrade was a good soldier and a better friend, but he did not concern himself with such things as ‘why’. For the three of us standing in the dawn, it was something that pulled and nagged and never stopped. It wasn’t enough for us to simply react. We wanted to know the cause of our actions. We wanted to try and predict the next move in the game that was our life.
‘You two can get some sleep if you want,’ Priscus offered. ‘I’ll wake you up when Justus gets back.’
‘I won’t sleep.’ I knew it. Varo echoed the sentiment.
And so we waited. We waited as the sun climbed above the mountains to perch dominant and abrasive above the town and valley. We waited as the air warmed, and the cool night’s breeze died, to our discomfort. We waited as our eyelids – bright red and chafed with smoke – grew ever heavier. We waited and, eventually, we wished that we hadn’t.
What we would have paid for a few more hours of blissful ignorance.
Centurion Justus was white when we saw him. There was the slightest tremble in his hands, and a look of almost wild disbelief in his eyes.
Never a man to mince words, it was Varo who spoke first. ‘That bad, sir?’ was all that he said, and I felt my throat begin to tighten.
The officer simply nodded, then looked at each of us in turn. I felt as though he was trying to remember our faces, as one does when a family member is on their deathbed, and all hope is lost.
‘The auxiliaries have mutinied,’ he told us simply. ‘A hundred thousand of them.’