The battle line was horror. Pure horror. But I was lost to it. No time to think. No time to do anything but gnash my teeth and fight for every second of life. I didn’t even know that the battle was no longer being fought in the shadows of campfires but in the growing light of dawn. I didn’t know that the skies were now the same slate grey as Brutus’s eyes, and in that light, the enemy now found a reason to fight for something greater than defence, and survival.
They saw the eagle of the Eighth.
I felt a hand wrench me back. ‘Rotate! Rotate!’
I stumbled back as Octavius took my place. Held above the heads of our men I saw the gilded standard of our legion, the enemy swarming towards it like ants on to a carcass. The eagle was a symbol of the Roman Empire that they had rebelled against, and they wanted it. They knew the pain that its loss would cause. The news would carry across the world. Even the Emperor himself would be struck a blow. The eagle had come from his divine hand, and now it was coming close to falling into the paws of the men who had told him ‘no!’
‘Protect the eagle!’ a centurion growled. ‘Protect the—’ His words cut off as a spear tore through his throat.
I looked wildly about me. Varo was doing the same.
Shit. He looked worried. ‘They’re rolling up our flanks!’
Our extended line was no match for the number of the enemy. They were outflanking us, their numbers allowing them to bypass our fighting front which was held engaged. Soon, they would fall on the unprotected backs of our legion. Then we would die.
‘Form square!’ came the order, our legion command having seen the same. ‘Pull in the flanks! Form square! Form square!’
Thousands of hours of drill and discipline is what kept men obeying the orders, and moving as one unit – albeit a battered and scarred one. Centurion Justus – now dead on the plain – had pushed us in our every free hour at the fort, and in those actions he now saved the lives of others. As the flanks fell back under control the enemy were held at bay, though only just. The Eighth was reduced to a bloody square of embattled brotherhood, and against these four walls of flesh and iron the enemy seethed.
‘Get the wounded in the centre!’ Priscus yelled. ‘Get the wounded back! Get them back!’
Some were dragged. Others crawled. Maybe it was one of these men that caused two beleaguered soldiers to trip backwards, opening a gap in the front rank. It was only there for a second, but in battle a second is enough, and into this cavity now poured the elite of the enemy’s troops. The professionals. One look at their hard faces was enough to know that these were the bastards who had lived a life of violence long before Rome had tried and failed to bring them to her standard. Now here they came, shouting and killing, tearing into our ranks like a serrated blade.
Our unified front was broken.
The enemy were everywhere.
It was over.
24
Chaos.
Pure bloody chaos.
The enemy had broken through one side of the square, and this put them at the backs of the other walls of flesh. Some of those men turned, others didn’t, but any hope at cohesion was now lost. Walls of shield and battered ranks began to fall apart into knots of desperate soldiers and individual melees. This was a legion on its knees – we were just awaiting the killing blow.
I looked for my friends. I wanted to die with them. I wanted them to know that I had been with them until the end. A true comrade. A true brother.
Instead I saw the eagle. The standard-bearer was long dead. A soldier streaked in blood, arm ruined from combat, stood holding the totem in his place.
‘Brutus!’
I tried to run to him. I tried, but this was battle. Instead I had to cut my way towards him like a man clearing thick brush, my swings wicked and evil. So single-minded was I that only the shield drill of a fellow legionary kept my blade from his throat.
Chaos.
And in the middle of the screams and the stink, my friend with his hand on the eagle. He couldn’t even defend himself, the idiot. He was at the centre of a feeble last stand of about a dozen men, about which the enemy snapped and lunged like angry wolves. One firm rush and they would carry the standard away. They would lose men to do it, and they knew that, but once they overcame that fear then the eagle would be gone. I couldn’t have given two shits about that if it didn’t spell death for my friend. Something had to be done.
It was Priscus who did it.
‘With me! With me!’ He saw his oldest comrade in danger. He saw our personal tragedy, and our legion’s disaster. He saw the end, and he charged towards it without a backwards step.
I followed. I was on his shoulder. That was how I saw the spear push out of his back. That was how I saw my friend – my teacher, my brother – spitted like game.
I screamed. I roared. I had no time to mourn him, then. The enemy were in my face, and so I killed for him instead. Like wildfire I danced amongst them spreading death, hacking with my sword, biting with my teeth. My fury bought me inches, and in this space I turned to find my brothers. Priscus was on his back, the shaft of the spear held upright in his lifeless body. There was a man beside him on his knees. It was Brutus. The eagle was in his hand. I knocked a young rebel aside with my shield, and covered my comrade with it.
‘Fear the Eighth!’ I heard a voice boom, and I felt the presence around us as soldiers fought to buy the eagle’s salvation. There was nothing to be done for Priscus.
‘He’s dead!’ Brutus shouted in my face, his grey eyes wild.
‘Come on!’ I yelled back. ‘We need to move!’
‘I can’t!’
‘He’s dead! We have to move!’
Brutus shook his head, and looked down. He was on his knees because a blade had torn open the front of his thigh. Muscle and sinew smiled back at me through the gaping wound.
I wasted no time in dropping my sword and shield, hauling my friend on to my shoulder like an unruly child. ‘I’ll carry you!’ I promised.
‘The eagle!’ Brutus pleaded.
Fuck the eagle. His life was my concern, and so I took my first step.
My knees almost buckled. I had a man more than my own size on my shoulder, and my body had been continually punished for almost an entire day and night.
I stumbled again. ‘Fuck!’ On instinct I reached out to steady myself. My hand bumped against wood, and I grabbed at it. For a horrible second, I thought that I was bracing myself against the spear lodged into Priscus.
I wasn’t.
I was holding the eagle of the Eighth. The famed totem. A symbol of Rome’s glory.
And now my walking stick.
Holding Brutus over my left shoulder, I used the eagle to brace with my right hand. My head was forced down by the bulk of my comrade, but I saw enough of a red blur ahead of us to recognize our lines – or what was left of them. In my ear, I heard the scream of men and steel as someone fought a rearguard to protect us. I don’t know how far I stumbled – twice almost dropping Brutus as a dying man grasped at my feet – but at some point he was pulled from my shoulders, and my knees finally gave way.
‘Protect the eagle!’ someone shouted.
‘Fear the Eighth!’ another roared.
I was trying to push myself up from the bloody ground – trying to die on my feet – when darkness took me.
PART TWO
25
I awoke in a field of bones. Tens of thousands of them. White, and gleaming.