‘It was a walking stick, Brutus,’ I insisted, more harshly than I should have done, but despite my words the dying man kept smiling. I knew then that in his mind I had risked death to protect the standard, and that meant more to him than having his own life saved.
‘I held it for a while,’ he said proudly, his pale face shining with the honour. ‘I held the fucking eagle, boys. I held an eagle in battle!’
My comrades smiled. Varo patted his old friend on his good leg. ‘Yes you did, mate.’
‘Was it everything you thought it would be?’ I heard myself ask. There was acid there. Why?
Because Priscus had died, of course. He had died charging to save a piece of metal and wood. Yes, Brutus was the one holding the bastard thing, but I knew my comrades, and there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t give to uphold the nobility of the legion. The loss of the standard would have been a worse fate for them than their own ends.
‘It was everything I thought it would be,’ Brutus confirmed, and I could see the smile in his eyes.
‘But you’re dying.’ I said it bluntly, but it still cut me.
Brutus recognized my pain, and I don’t know if I ever saw him look more honest, or happy. ‘I held an eagle in battle, Corvus,’ he explained. ‘What would I have been in life after that? I love Lulmire, but life after battle? Life after comrades? I carried an eagle against an enemy of Rome! I was always going to die after that, one way or another, don’t you see? This way, it just gets done a little quicker.’
I had nothing to say back to him. My friend was choked on honour and glory. If Marcus were here, I expect he would have cried tears of pure pride. Not I. I saw only that Brutus was leaving this world.
There was a long moment of silence that weighed heavy with my sorrow.
‘Well, you know how to light a room…’ Octavius smirked. ‘Can we just get pissed now?’
There were coughs of laughter. ‘Let’s do that,’ Varo agreed heartily. He poured wine into the cups; then he tipped more on to the room’s tiles. ‘Fuck the doctor.’ He smiled. ‘This is for our comrades.’
Brutus held up his cup. ‘To Priscus.’
We drank to our friend. We drank to our comrades. Twice Octavius left to bring us more jugs. He was quick.
‘Lulmire’s here,’ Brutus told us. ‘But she knows I need some time with the lads.’ We all knew what that meant. Time to say goodbyes. Brutus sniffed at his wine. ‘Just do me a favour, will you, boys? When I do my final fall-out, toast me with something better than this goat’s piss, will you?’
Varo snorted. ‘We’re just waiting for you to hurry up and die before we break out the good stuff.’
We laughed. Hard not to with that much wine in the belly. Hard not to when so many of your force was killed, and you still draw breath – for the moment, at least. Brutus was soon for the afterlife, but I did not doubt that we would see him there before too long. Even with the arrival of Tiberius and his army, there were still two hundred thousand rebels to kill.
Octavius said as much.
‘You’re going to be busy boys,’ Brutus agreed.
There was a hushed knock on the door. ‘If it’s that doctor I’m gonna throw his kids on a fire,’ Varo growled, but it was Lulmire.
Brutus smiled to see his wife. She had fresh dressings in her hand. ‘I think this means our time’s at an end, boys.’
Varo looked at me. ‘Can you walk?’
The wine in my head told me yes. The wine in my limbs told me no. I stumbled.
My comrades caught me. ‘We can carry you between the two of us,’ Octavius assured me with the can-do attitude of a drunk.
I turned to Brutus. I didn’t want to say goodbye, and so I didn’t.
‘I will see you again,’ I told him. He went to speak, but I silenced him with a look. ‘You told me once that you wouldn’t die without saying goodbye,’ I insisted. ‘That still stands, Brutus. It still stands.’
Then, before he could speak, I turned my back on grief.
26
As promised, my brothers carried me from the town to camp. They set me down in my bed, and when I woke in the morning, I wished that I hadn’t.
I was alone. A few days ago, this room had been home to seven other soldiers. Seven young men under my command. All gone now. All dead. I thought of Gums. How he had pleaded for life. How his eyeball had dangled on his cheek.
I took a deep breath. The air was warm but my skin was cold and bumped. I stood. My body held. No ache in my skull. No more than I would expect after drinking, anyway.
I looked at the seven empty beds. Where were those boys now? Buried, or gnawed at by animals where they had fallen? Were they with the gods? Their families?
Something caught my eye. It rested at the head of one of the bunks. I picked it up. Held the dainty thing in my calloused hands. It was a horse carved from wood. It was worn. Ancient-looking. Instinct told me that it was the childhood toy of one of the boys who had died under my command, left in the safety of the barracks to await his return, too precious to be risked on a battlefield.
I looked into the creature’s carved eyes. ‘He’s not coming back.’
I wanted to be heartless, then. To show indifference. I thought about hurling the thing out of the window, or throwing it into the hearth of our stove, ready for winter. I wanted to show myself that the deaths of the seven young men I was supposed to lead had not affected me. That I was an island amidst the flow of misery that was washing over our legion.
But I could not. Instead I placed the toy at the head of my own bunk.
I had been looking at it for a long time when the call for assembly was sounded.
In armour polished by my comrades, I stood outside the barrack block with what was left of our century. Where there had been eighty, there were now thirty-five. Another dozen of our comrades were in the hospital. Some were expected to return. Others had lost limbs to the bone-saw.
Varo stood at the front of the formation in the place that Centurion Justus had held, and Priscus after him. Both men had died for their leadership. To the rear of our thinned ranks Octavius stood in the position of optio. I begrudged neither man their rank. Station was not something that I sought. They had stepped up as others fell, and I simply wanted to fight. That desire was as strong in me as ever, I realized. There was too much to think of, otherwise.
‘Century!’ Varo boomed in his deep bass. ‘Atten-shun!’
Our sandals stamped down in unison. Something about having been in battle – having fought and bled as the Eighth – had pushed us further into becoming one mind and body.
I had no idea why the parade had been called, and there had been no time to ask my brothers, but now the reason for it marched across the front of our formation and returned the salute of my friend. It was our cohort commander, his left arm bandaged, and with him was a man I would never have expected to see at such a pathetic assembly of soldiers.
He was our legion commander, known to us as Hook-nose – it stood as sharp as a reaping scythe beneath his scarred brow.
The legate turned to look over the bedraggled century. Was that sorrow that I saw in his narrow eyes? Love?
Maybe. It was certainly pride. ‘Men’ – his chest swelled as he began – ‘yesterday, I spoke with you as a legion’ – so I had missed that, thank the gods – ‘but today I wanted to see you like this. I wanted to see the family that bore such heroes.
‘We have faced dark days, but from darkness come the greatest shining glories.’
I had no idea what Hook-nose was talking about. I let my eyes flick to Varo. His soldier’s mask was in place. Impassive. Stoic. It looked over the heads of the men in front of him. He had done so on the battlefield, while I’d let my own eyes drop to the horrors at my feet.