‘You are Legionary Varo?’ the legate asked of my brother.
‘Yes, sir!’
‘It’s a severe offence to lie to an officer…’ The aristocrat smiled as he delivered the well-worn line. ‘…Centurion.’ Varo’s promotion was confirmed. ‘Well deserved!’
‘Thank you, sir!’
‘I hear you’re the man who began the battle cry?’ the officer went on. ‘Fear the Eighth.’
For a second, Varo’s mask slipped. ‘I… I don’t remember, sir.’
‘He was, sir!’ someone shouted from the ranks, and the legate smiled.
‘They fear us all right, Centurion Varo,’ the officer told him, his tone earnest. ‘After that battle, they fear us, and I think that your cry is a fitting challenge for this legion. When we face our enemy, “Fear the Eighth” will be our call.’
‘Thank you, sir!’
The cohort commander stepped in to avoid further embarrassment to his newest centurion. ‘Legionary Octavius?’ he asked of the parade. ‘Report.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Octavius answered, marching to the front of the formation.
The legate returned his salute. ‘I confirm your appointment to optio.’ The officer smiled proudly.
‘Thank you, sir!’
As Octavius marched back to the rear of the formation, I expected that the officers would leave. Maybe speak some words about glory, first.
I didn’t expect that they’d both look straight at me.
‘Legionary Corvus!’ the cohort commander ordered. ‘March out!’
Shit.
Stiff as a rock and red from the attention, I marched out to the front of the parade and saluted the legate.
‘Legionary Corvus reporting as ordered, sir!’
The commander of a butchered legion looked at me as though I were his firstborn son. ‘Legionary Corvus, your actions on the battlefield are in keeping with the highest traditions of this legion, and for your part in preventing our eagle from falling into enemy hands, I give you this.’
I followed his eyes. There was something in the cohort commander’s hands – a gold disc, engraved with the face of Jupiter. The legate took it from him and affixed it to my armour.
I was a decorated soldier.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I mumbled. What will Marcus think? I asked myself as I threw up a salute and prepared to fall back into the ranks.
‘Not yet,’ my cohort commander said quietly.
I stood rigid. What now? The legate had that look again: pride. Buckets of the bloody stuff.
‘Legionary Corvus, you saved our eagle in battle.’ Hook-nose spoke loudly enough so that everyone could hear. ‘You saved the eagle of the Eighth,’ he said with conviction, ‘and for that, it gives me great pleasure to honour you with this appointment: as the legion’s standard-bearer!’
Shit.
The cohort commander began the applause. It gave me moments to form a stumbling denial. ‘Sir,’ I began as it died away, ‘I… I just want to kill the enemy, sir.’
‘You’ll have plenty of chances to do that, standard-bearer.’ Hook-nose grinned like a hungry shark. ‘The rebels have had their turn. Now we go on the offensive.’
27
I looked at the bird on a stick. The sacred totem. The symbol of our legion. The only thing it stirred in me was memory. The feel of Brutus on my shoulder as I’d carried him from the pile of dead and dying, and back to the ranks of what seemed like our last stand.
Maybe that was the point, I realized. Maybe that was the idea behind the eagles. That a veteran would see, hear and feel those moments where he had fought and bled beside his brothers. With their sacrifice in mind, surely he would be more likely to offer his own in the glory of Rome, for what was that glory when it was broken down? It was brother fighting for brother. Comrade dying for comrade. The Empire’s borders would grow as a result of it, but on the battlefield, it was the kingdom of one’s friends that was a soldier’s concern.
‘Well, maybe not if you’re Marcus,’ I muttered to myself, thinking of how he’d probably be on his knees before the eagle now, and I wished that he was with me. Not so that I could see the pride on his face that his oldest friend carried one of the few eagles in the world, but so that I could make lewd jokes about his admiration, and cast accusations about where that bird would be nesting if he were left alone with it.
I folded my arms and let out a sigh of self-pity and boredom. Gods, I was bored. I was bored, and I was lonely. I wanted to be with my friends, but the role of standard-bearer was a solitary one. I’d already kept myself busy by shining the bloody bird until it blazed. Now I wanted to play dice. I wanted to drink. I wanted to fight.
I had tried to impress that later point on the legate to the point where my – now former – cohort commander’s scowl had threatened to grow its own fists. The appointment was not an offer for me to consider. I was being volun-told that I was to take this position, and that was that. I supposed that I wouldn’t be the last soldier to be handed a rank or task that he had neither asked for nor wanted, but that was scant consolation as I was left with nothing to do but think.
Brutus was on my mind often in the days that followed the battle and the regaining of my consciousness. Lulmire had brought no word, and so I assumed that the hard old bastard was clinging to life, or that his death had broken her so completely that she couldn’t bring herself to tell us. Of course, I could have investigated myself, but… but while there was no news, there was hope. Why seek out misery when it is so good at finding us?
Varo and Octavius had their hands full. Because of the heavy casualties suffered, the Fourth and Fifth Cohorts were being disbanded to bring the First and Second to full strength – the Third would remain at half – and so my friends were busy drilling their men in preparation for the coming battle. Where that would be, and when, I could only guess. What I did know was that there were two hundred thousand or more of the enemy under arms. Fearing that the intended target of the Danube invasion, King Marabodus, would break the treaty, turn the table, and invade across that river, Tiberius had been forced to leave a strong army in the north of the region. Even with his arrival in Pannonia, we would still be outnumbered.
‘Will they fight?’ was the question I heard when I was fortunate enough to be in the company of other soldiers. Will they fight, or will they take to the hills? The legions wanted a pitched battle on the plains. Something grand and glorious that could decide this war – sorry, domestic uprising – in a day.
I didn’t see such a thing as being likely. Brutus and Priscus had talked about the early campaigns in this region that had – supposedly – brought the Pannonians and Dalmatians to heel. Once the men of the region realized that they could not stand in open battle against Roman legions with anything less than a huge advantage in numbers, they took to harassing attacks. Brutus had told me that he had friends sent to clear the enemy from their mountain strongholds. He hadn’t seen many of them again.
Yes, ‘Will they fight?’ was the talk of the legion, but no one seemed to be asking why the enemy were fighting in the first place. Weeks ago, these men had been raised to fight for Rome. Why then had they turned their blades towards the Empire’s throat?
Some word of it came through the rumour mill. Seeing the strength of the region’s warriors assembled on the marshalling grounds, Bato – a local chieftain – had been moved to give the assembly a simple choice. ‘That we fight a war is inevitable,’ he was reported to have said to the mass of soldiery. ‘Either we die to expand Rome’s borders, or we fight to build our own! What would you have it be?’