Blood, then. War. ‘It does sound good,’ I told my brother, and I embraced him. ‘I’ll see you in the mountains.’
30
I walked beside Varo. In my hand was the bridle of a dark, thick-set, good-tempered pony. I called the creature Balius, the second of Achilles’ horses. Xanthus rested inside my pack. I wondered what my friend would say if he knew I was carrying a child’s toy on the clearance operation.
‘This is shit,’ he muttered instead.
This was our sweep south to flush out and kill any rebels between Tiberius’s main base inland, and the coast. We were five days in, and so far, the only enemies confronted had been the scorching heat and the hateful terrain. I was with my old cohort, and we were in the low land, so much as it was, an abandoned valley running beneath the peaks of scarred mountainsides. On those peaks and reaches moved the Sixth and Seventh Cohorts. Somewhere to the west of me, Marcus would be sweating and panting for Rome.
‘This is shit,’ Varo insisted again, his words low enough so that only I could hear, though I knew the words were intended for himself. At times a soldier needs a battle cry. At others, he simply needs to voice his frustration. Varo was far from the only one doing so.
The Roman soldier is trained to be able to cover twenty miles a day in full kit. Therefore, five days into our operation, we should have covered a hundred miles, and be halfway to the coast.
We’d made less than twenty.
The reason was the terrain, of course. There were no paved roads, but even so, in the valley, we could have pushed on at an aggressive pace. The problem was that in doing so, we would outstrip our comrades in the mountains. If there were rebels ahead of us, then we would be placing our head in the noose. For those of us in the low ground, much of the day was spent static as the hard-pressed scouts and messengers raced between the limbs of the legion to maintain as much cohesion as possible.
‘Here we go again,’ Varo said to me. Up ahead, the soldiers of the century ahead were beginning to stop. The action rippled down the line. The newly minted centurion turned to his men. ‘One Section, push out sentries on the left flank. Two Section on the right. The rest of you, get on your arses and take your helmets off.’ Varo turned to me. ‘No point having the lads’ heads cooking.’ He was a good leader.
‘Hotter than Sol’s balls,’ I agreed, thinking of the sun god, and happy with my decision to let my horse carry my helmet and bearskin.
I looked at the mountains either side of us. They were brutes, their lower slopes a carpet of sharp-looking trees. Everything in this region looked tough. No wonder Hook-nose was proceeding with caution.
‘Do you think we’ll see one?’ Varo asked as he wiped a layer of sweat and dust from his face, hundreds of pairs of feet having kicked up the dirt trail. ‘A rebel?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly. The few villages we had come across had been abandoned some time ago. Even if the enemy did not have a force ahead of us, it was hard to believe that the huge number of rebels would not have dispatched spies and scouts to watch the movements of one of Tiberius’s legions.
‘Everyone’s going to know we’re coming,’ Varo grumbled.
Maybe, but I knew that this land was not a unified region like Roman Italy. It was a place of tribes and chiefs who looked to themselves first. ‘If a chief at one end of the valley has a feud with the chief at the other end, he’d probably be happy to let us at them,’ I explained to my friend. ‘They know we won’t be staying in the valley, and once we go, and his competition’s dead, then who’s to stop him taking the new grazing lands?’
Varo snorted. ‘No honour.’
‘It’s the game, I suppose,’ I said, thinking of how Tiberius had been threatening to destroy the Marcomanni across the Danube before rebellion had brought him back. Now, that German tribe had been paid handsomely to behave. ‘The chiefs here, they just play it at a smaller level.’
‘No honour,’ Varo said again.
Ahead of us, movement was rippling down the line. Men were getting to their feet. The sentries were returning to the column. Varo pulled on his helmet. ‘Prepare to move,’ he said to his soldiers.
We inched onwards.
I stayed with my old century that night. In the darkness we heard wolves. On one mountain we saw flame. Not a lot of it. A single dwelling was the guess.
‘You should check in with Hook-nose,’ Octavius warned me. ‘I know he loves you, but he’ll be forgetting your face. Officers have short memories.’
Varo chewed through a mouth of biscuit. ‘He’s right.’
And so the next morning I pulled myself into the saddle, and rode Balius to the headquarters group that was placed between my old cohort and the First. I had ridden as a child but I was long out of practice, and so our pace was a gentle meander beside the long line of sullen troops, each man fighting his own battle with boredom. I saw a few look at me. I saw a few talk. Some even waved. I was known now, I realized. Known as the man who had saved the legion’s eagle.
The headquarters group was easy enough to find. Recognizing that the progress of his legion would need to be painstaking, Hook-nose had taken to setting up in a tented position twice a day, rather than being constantly on the move. It made him easier to find for his dispatch riders, and I saw one of these wiry men rein in his beast now, before throwing himself nimbly from its back. A slave came forward to take the reins, and the man ran in the direction of our legion command.
I pressed my heels into Balius’s flank – such haste could only mean the enemy.
I brought my horse to a stop next to the dispatch rider’s own. I wanted his news, but I did not want to face the legate and risk being held in headquarters or sent on some other task. Sure enough, the rider soon reappeared – he would be taking orders back in the direction that he’d come.
‘Comrade, what’s happening?’ I asked.
There was white foam on his lips, and dirt on his face – he’d had a hard ride. ‘Sixth Cohort came across a fortified village.’
Marcus. ‘Did they attack?’
‘They were preparing to when I left.’
Without thinking, I offered a prayer for my friend. ‘You’re going back?’
The man nodded.
‘I’ll come with you.’
The cavalryman looked at me, and didn’t see a horseman. ‘It’s a tough ride…’
It didn’t matter. ‘Lead the way,’ I said evenly. ‘My brother’s up there.’
Poor Balius. He suffered on that climb. On the narrow paths of dirt and rock. The trail was steep and angry, but there was no time for me to see to my horse. Instead I had to look to my own survival. We were but two men, and the rocky outcrops that littered the heights begged for ambushes to be laid. I could only pray that the Sixth had been diligent in sweeping the heights. I tried not to think about how easy it would be for the enemy to slip back in; these mountains were their homes.
I didn’t need the dispatch rider to tell me that we were getting close. Three black smudges over the ridge did that. I took confidence from the sight. If buildings were burning, it meant that our men had made it inside the fortified village. Still, there would be a butcher’s bill to pay for that accomplishment. What would I do if Marcus were among the dead? I had always known that my greatest friend could become a casualty of war, but until the dispatch rider had confirmed that Marcus’s cohort was going into a fight I hadn’t known. It had just been a rumour of fear before. Now its talons were deep in my guts.
What would I do if he were dead? Maybe just ride on into the mountains until I found a rebel polite enough to kill me, too. I didn’t want to leave Varo, Octavius and, if he still lived, Brutus, but life without Marcus seemed so… pointless.