Because we were going on the attack.
It had struck us all as craven that our legion commander would spare our lives and allow the enemy to march on Italy – some men had even muttered that he should take his own life for his failure of command – but now it became clear that he had had a plan all along. Recognizing that his understrength legion could not hold the line forever, he had offered the enemy the open route that it craved. In doing so he had saved two-thirds of his force for an audacious roll of the dice – we would take to the goat trails of the mountain behind us, overhaul the enemy in the night, and fall on them in the dawn.
Simple.
Deadly.
And with almost no chance of success.
‘At least it is a chance,’ Varo offered, anxious to draw blood and rid himself of the sense of failure that clung to us all.
When darkness had claimed the valley we were pulled back into the small wood that had been at our back. Here, I discovered, the walking wounded would form a wall of shields at the front of the trees. The enemy would have scouts to watch our movements, and should they try and probe they needed to be met with challenge and javelin. The main body of the enemy, we were told, had advanced out of the valley, and encamped for the night. Our own scouts had brought this information, and these hard men would now be the ones to lead us along the mountain trails to outflank the rebels.
Octavius started laughing.
‘Keep the noise down.’ Brutus hissed.
He couldn’t, and so Varo hit him across the back of the helmet. ‘What’s so funny, you dickhead?’ he demanded, as quietly as it was possible for the big man to speak.
‘Are we the bad ones?’ Octavius asked back.
‘What?’
‘Are we the bad ones, here? You know, like in every story, there are good ones and bad ones. Are we the bad ones?’
Varo snorted. ‘We’re the good ones, you cock.’
‘Just wondering,’ Octavius replied, and though I could not see his smile, I could hear it, ‘because this all reminds me of something.’
Priscus asked him what.
‘Thermopylae,’ my friend enlightened us, referring to the famed last stand of the Spartans, a tale that all aspiring warriors relished.
‘There’ve been a lot of last stands,’ Varo grunted, clearly unhappy with how ours had gone.
‘I don’t mean that,’ Octavius told me. ‘I mean how the Persians got led through the mountain pass to come out behind the Greeks, and then beat them.’
‘Exactly,’ Varo said. ‘And we’ll do the same.’
‘That’s what I’m asking. Are we the bad ones? Are we the Persians?’ Octavius teased. ‘I think you’d look good with a pointy beard and a couple of young boys in your harem, Varo.’
‘We’re the Eighth Legion, you dickhead,’ the big man reminded him. ‘And I’d save your breath. This climb is going to be a lick. There’s a reason their army tried to fight its way through us instead of going over the mountains. There’s no secret paths here, just fucking hard ones.’
No one spoke much after that. Water was brought to us from the river, and my tongue finally peeled itself off the roof of my mouth. From countless night duties I could recognize the silhouettes of my comrades even in their battle dress, and I was not surprised to see Brutus with us in the dark, despite Priscus and Varo begging him to stay with the walking wounded.
‘Prepare to move,’ a voice said finally, the words passed on quietly as a whisper from man to man. All about me then I heard the hushed sounds of soldiers getting to their feet, piss pattering the ground, chain mail and kit being tested for silence and ‘comfort’. Then I heard the first sounds of our force moving away from the valley floor. Away from the ground we had soiled with blood and shit. Where the birds and beasts now feasted on friend and foe alike.
‘I love this job,’ I heard Octavius utter.
And then, in the black, we followed on as a snake of soldiers visible only in my mind. We followed on into the rock and the mountains.
We went on the attack.
22
One day, when I was barely a man, I had turned up bloodstained and breathless at Marcus’s family home, and asked him to run with me. That day and night we scaled ridges, traversed mountains, and ran so hard and long that my toenails began to come off, and I saw blood in my piss. I thought it was the hardest physical test that I would ever face.
I was wrong.
The moon this night favoured the rebels of the land, the slim light it cast doing little to illuminate our path through the jagged mountains. The climb was steep, the footing loose. Men tried not to swear and groan as their feet went from beneath them. Equipment in their hands, their faces ate rock and dirt. More than once I heard a man go rolling back down the steepest parts of the trail, sometimes crashing into others and taking them with him on their descent. I don’t know what happened to those men. If they broke bones, then they bit back their pain. I imagine that more than a few of them would be waking with bent limbs on a lonely mountainside.
If they lived.
For my own part, my chest fought a war against my chain mail as it heaved for every breath. My right knee throbbed from where I had slipped and driven it into a rock. I’d done it with such force, and ground my teeth so hard against the pain, that they too now ached. Already drained from combat, my limbs felt hollow, yet somehow as heavy as I had ever known them. The spot where I had hit my head in the town fire began to hurt once more, and the pain grew into a pounding that consumed my entire skull. I wanted to spit and curse fate, but there was not a single drop of moisture in my mouth, just the dirt of a dusty trail kicked up by a thousand pairs of feet. Never had my body felt more miserable. More wretched. I imagined that every man felt the same.
And yet we made it. We made the climb up a pass so steep that to fall was to die, and I am certain that some did. Shield tied off on my back, I used my javelin’s butt to dig in the dirt as I clawed rock with my left hand. I could feel blood on my palms. I could taste it when I licked my lips. I felt it in my eyes. The blood on my face wasn’t mine, and I knew in those moments that my life could be worse. That I could be the person who had bled on to me, now doubtless being pecked at by birds. Pulled apart by wolves. Yes, in my relatively short number of years, I had realized that life could always get worse.
But, as I reached the crest of the spine that ran between the valleys, I also knew that – in short moments at least – it could get better, too. When the ground became flat, I felt an exhilaration through my body that could only be matched by the joy of sex. I had left my smiles in another life, but I was content as I drew in deep lungfuls of cool air, and my muscles thanked me for the break in their punishment.
There was no talking at the top. A wind came over the ridge, not harsh, and against this backdrop could be heard the sound of the ragged breaths of the men who had climbed. The soldiers who had climbed, for surely this was the kind of feat that is only accomplished by the most desperate, or the most disciplined, and we were both.
We pushed on along the ridge. I could feel in the air that we wanted to drive forwards and close on the enemy, but this was no paved road, just a flatter goat trail, and so as the wind teased my face between my cheek-plates, and cooled the sweat that soaked my body, we stumbled on. We stumbled on, and then we began to stumble down. We were coming off the pass. Off the mountain. I looked into the night. Into the sky where I thought the horizon would be.
I saw a sliver of silver. A blade of the gods. And then, as we came out on to a plateau, I saw something else. It was below us, and as beautiful as it was frightening.