‘Your first?’
I nodded. ‘Then another two.’
The lump grinned, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘If you didn’t kill anyone before you joined up, how did you know that you’d like it?’ Growing up a big lad in a big city, Varo had come to violence early.
I said nothing, and looked at the lifeless corpse at my feet. Had I enjoyed killing him? I certainly hadn’t hated it. Looking at the body caused no emotion in me, either good or bad. I was simply numb. In the moment of killing him, all that had existed was rage, and the desire to protect Brutus.
‘We walked into a trap here.’ Octavius shrugged, looking at the steep-sided hills and rocky outcrops that scorned our well-drilled tactics. ‘We’re lucky we’re all not like Fano.’
‘That’s because this lot are nothing but criminals,’ Varo scoffed, grabbing my kill by the hair and dragging him towards a hut; the dusty ground was streaked red in their wake. ‘Not warriors. Just thieves. This was a tavern brawl on a mountainside, lads. It meant nothing.’
It meant something to Fano.
‘He’s dead,’ Priscus told us after we’d put the last of the Pannonian bodies inside the hovels, and set them alight.
‘What about Brutus?’ I asked.
Priscus said nothing. Varo put a hand on my shoulder.
‘You did well today,’ the older soldier told me.
‘What about Brutus?’
The veterans looked at me with patient eyes.
‘You did well, Corvus,’ Priscus said. ‘Let’s get that blood cleaned off you.’
And then he led me away from the smoke, from the shit and from the bodies. He led me away from the place where I killed for the first time. Where I lost a comrade for the first time. Where I fought like a dog in a pit for the first time.
Had I known what was to become of my life, I would have lain down and stayed with the dead.
PART ONE
1
Five years later
There was a rumour of war.
It was a breathless rumour, carried by merchants, spread by whores and whispered by slaves.
It was a guarded rumour, hushed by officers, denied by diplomats and savoured by soldiers.
Savoured by us, because it was a rumour of our war.
‘We need to celebrate,’ Varo declared, the slur in his speech announcing that the big man’s celebrations had begun hours ago.
‘I’m not objecting.’ Priscus shrugged. ‘Octavius?’
‘I’m up for it. Can’t take it with us, can we? If it’s time to die, then I want to leave some rich whores behind. What do you say, Corvus?’
What did I say? Not a lot. I was known for my temper, not my tongue, and my head was full of war. I didn’t want rumour, I wanted battle. Real battle, against a real enemy.
‘He’s got that look again.’ Varo pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘Brooding bastard.’
‘I’m thinking,’ I replied.
‘About what?’
‘How long it would take to dig a grave for your fat arse.’
My companions laughed, and the thinnest of smiles crept on to my face. Octavius saw it and feigned falling from his stool.
‘Did you see that, lads? Did you see that? A little more and I’d have worried his face was going to tear in half.’
‘Makes a change from worrying about your arsehole tearing.’
‘Gods.’ Priscus shook his head. ‘You really are in a good mood. What’s up?’
I shrugged as if it were obvious. As if there could be no better explanation for smiles, laughter and an excited anticipation for tomorrow.
‘War,’ I told them. ‘Our war.’
We walked into the town with puffed-out chests and raised voices. We were confident bastards, soldiers in our prime. In the years since I had first killed, my friends and I had grown into new positions, but we had not been separated. We each commanded a section in the Second Century of the Second Cohort of the Eighth Legion, which we whittled down to the Second of the Second of the Eighth when talking to those in the know – soldiers and camp followers alike. The century of eighty soldiers was our family, the cohort our village, and the legion our tribe. Priscus, Varo and Octavius were my brothers, and we formed a tight band. Not without pride: we knew that we were good soldiers. The opportunity to fight in a war had eluded all of us except our oldest comrade Priscus, but, none the less, we were trusted by our commanders and respected by our fellow legionaries. When battle did come – as it seemed that it soon must – we knew that other men would look to us when it was time to hold the line, or lead the charge.
‘It’ll be Tiberius who commands the army,’ said Priscus as we negotiated the town’s streets, the white walls reflecting the sun into our narrowed eyes. Like many settlements across the Empire, this town had sprung up alongside a fort built to house a legion, the site strategically chosen to best support the imposition of Roman law and order on to a new dominion. The province of Pannonia was a recent addition to the Empire, and Priscus had fought as a boy soldier in the final months of the campaign to claim it. We loved and looked up to him for it.
‘He’s a great general,’ Priscus went on, still referring to Tiberius, careful to step over a pile of horse dung on the dirt street.
‘What makes him any different?’ Octavius asked, his eyes trailing a slave girl who walked by with her master.
‘Well, he loves us for a start,’ the older man mused. ‘He’s not like other aristocrats. He walks and rides with his men. He eats at the table with them.’
‘I don’t care where he eats,’ Varo put in. ‘He can feast with the shithouse rats as far as I’m concerned, just so long as he wins.’
‘He does that,’ Priscus confirmed with the confidence of a man who had seen that victory first hand.
Personally, I knew little of Tiberius, and nor did I care. What I did know was that the general had proven himself in battle, that he had at first been a stepson to the Emperor Augustus, but a few years ago had been adopted as a true son in order to provide Augustus with legitimate heirs. Men such as Priscus, who had served under the general, and so had some bond of shared valour, seemed to to follow the developments in his life with some interest, as these pieces of information slowly and surely made their way out from Rome, via both official and unofficial channels. For the majority of the soldiery, however, our biggest concern in times of peace was not who would govern over us, so long as they were paying us. If the pay chests arrived on time and brimming, we cared little whose face was stamped into the coin.
‘Today’s on you,’ I told Octavius, with such thoughts in mind. ‘You owe me for the other night.’
A scowl crossed his handsome face. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘Exactly. You were shitfaced and kept dropping your drinks. I probably had to buy three for every one you managed to get into your mouth.’
Priscus and Varo laughed at the memory, and Octavius shrugged, admitting his likely guilt.
‘Home sweet home,’ said Varo then, grinning as he spotted ahead of us the vines that marked out the Black Sheep Inn, favoured watering hole of our brotherhood and the cohort at large.
‘All right, lads!’ a veteran greeted us by the door. ‘Heard the news?’
Varo held up his huge hands in protest. ‘I told your wife already: it’s not mine.’
The old soldier laughed, and the tang of the wine on his breath slapped me in the face and made my nose wrinkle. ‘Not that, you prick. The news about the war! Tiberius is coming, and he’s going to gather the biggest army in a generation!’