At least, there should have been.
Beneath the shields, I saw fury flash over my friend’s face. The formation was ragged and gapped, and through no fault of his men. The trail had seen to it. Still, there was no better way. ‘At the half-step, march!’
It only took a half-dozen paces to recognize that movements created on the parade square – and used to victory on plain and in siege – would not work on a mountainside. ‘Man down!’ a voice called quickly. ‘He’s dead, sir!’
Holes in the formation opened as rock twisted and turned the shields on the narrow trail. Another man cried out.
‘Halt!’ Marcus shouted. ‘Halt! Down on your knees and hold formation!’ An arrow thumped into a shield. Like this, we were safe. Beneath our protection the air was stifling. Heat. Dust. Dread for a comrade – his moans continued. The soldier with the shaft in his back lived on, and lived in pain.
‘He’s trying to crawl to us, sir!’ a man in the lead file shouted. ‘He’s not far, sir!’
But he was far enough. Marcus’s face was dark as he gave the order. ‘We hold formation here. If we move, they’ll keep picking us off.’
A long pause. The discipline of the legion told the men to shut their mouths, and obey. Their hearts told them to save their friend. Marcus knew as much. ‘If you want to live to bring vengeance for our brothers, then hold! We can’t avenge them if we’re dead!’
The wounded soldier kept crawling. His closest friends began to shout encouragement. Urging him on. Begging him to reach the shields. He was close enough for us to see the agony in his eyes when the enemy put a shaft between his shoulder blades. His handsome face dropped into the dirt. Curses flew at the rocks. Shields shook.
We stayed in formation.
‘Marcus,’ I whispered in my brother’s ear, ‘what are we waiting for?’
His answer was numb, and yet, full of violence. ‘Night.’
32
Darkness takes the valley. The ravine becomes a grave, filled with the black dirt of night.
‘I’m going out,’ Marcus tells me.
‘Where?’
Where else? To find the bowmen that killed his men.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No.’ No? ‘I’m not ordering you, brother,’ he explains. ‘You’re not under my command, but these men are, and if I don’t come back, then I need you to lead them back to the cohort.’
I know he’s saying this because he loves me. I hate it all the same. ‘Let me go instead.’
His hand squeezes my arm. ‘Those are my men lying out there.’
I think of what he’s saying. I think of Priscus. Then of Varo and Octavius. If they fell, would I let another take my place in the hunt to find their killers?
‘Just come back,’ I tell him.
Marcus asks for volunteers. Every man in the century begs for the chance to spill blood. He picks three of the best, and then they are gone: a whisper in the darkness; the promise of death. Like the men kneeling in the dirt beside me, my part in the play is reduced to praying that the blood runs from my enemy, and not from my brother.
We keep a 50 per cent watch. Half of the century awake, half asleep. No one actually sleeps. Long into the night we hear a scream. No way to know who. There is no accent to raw pain.
In the dawn, four shapes come out of the grey. They are carrying something in their hands. They throw them on to the rock and dirt.
Three heads.
I look into the face of my oldest friend. I look for the signs of the child who wore a smile from ear to ear. Instead, I see the cold eyes of a killer.
‘Collect our dead,’ he tells his men. ‘We’re moving out.’
There are no more attacks. Marcus was ordered to clear the ravine, and he has done so. Three enemy dead. The cost: six Roman dead, and two wounded.
‘This is no way to fight a war,’ my brother tells me.
We find the Sixth Cohort at the site of another fortified village. For a moment, I wonder if maybe the last two nights and a day were a nightmare, the scene is so familiar. Huts burn. The screams of the raped cry out. A half-dozen legionaries wait with eternal patience to fill holes in the dirt – or, more accurately, be buried beneath stones. The mountain soil is too hard to dig.
Marcus leaves the century outside the village. He tells them to see to their arms and armour. He sends some men to find water. I walk beside him as he looks for the cohort commander to make his report. Though I wished he had been spared it, I am proud of my brother. I can see the way that his men look at him now. They trust him. He is a true leader. A true soldier. What I always knew him to be.
We find the cohort commander in the middle of the village. A handful of soldiers are with him. On their knees in front of him are ‘the enemy’. Two dozen. Children and old men. The only males of fighting edge are butchered meat on their walls. The women are being raped.
‘They could never stand,’ I say to Marcus. ‘Why did they fight?’
I assume that they had a choice.
He doesn’t answer. Instead he makes his report. The cohort commander looks over the gore on my friend, but makes no further comment. No one has clean hands up here.
The commander of five hundred turns his attention to me. I see his expression, and despair of it. He’s looking at ‘the hero of the Eighth’.
‘Standard-bearer. We’ve been talking to these supporters of the rebels.’ He gestures to the old men. Black eyes. Thick lips. I think he’ll want my help, then. Through Marcus, maybe he knows that we both speak Dalmatian.
The commander does want my help, but not like that. He grabs a village elder by the hair, and drags him towards me. ‘If I’d known you were coming I would have waited for you before attacking, standard-bearer. It would have been an honour. As it is, well, at least you can have a chance to spill enemy blood.’
I look from him to the trembling white-haired man on his knees. Perhaps I am mistaken?
I am not.
‘The miserable bastards aren’t talking. If they were to help me catch the cowards who are killing my men in the dark, then maybe I would be inclined to show mercy.’ I could see in his eyes that any such clemency had since fled. ‘Open the throat of one,’ he tells me, ‘and maybe the others will open their mouths.’
I hear the sound of steel as a blade is drawn from its scabbard.
My own.
I look down at the man who has been condemned. Even his eyes are shaking. His old, red eyes. ‘Talk,’ I tell him in Dalmatian. ‘Where are the rebels hiding? Where do they get their supplies? Who is supporting them? Talk!’
No talk. Just a plaintive whimper. His spirit has fled. He is already broken by the threat of what is to come.
‘You see what I mean?’ the cohort commander says. ‘No reasoning with these mountain cretins. Open him up, standard-bearer.’
I look about me. The scent of death has drawn dozens of hard faces. Do they see my doubt? Is that why they look at me? Have they come to see the mettle of the hero of the Eighth? I can feel the man’s shaking through his hair. I move the blade to his throat. I feel something hot against my feet, but it is not blood. He is pissing himself. Nobody laughs. The mountain has drained them of their appreciation of comedy. Here, their only entertainment is death. I should look to Marcus. I just need a sign. A single look. An acknowledgement that what I am about to do is pointless, and savage, and wrong. I don’t know why I feel this way – I have never shied from killing man or beast – but the old man’s fear is even more pitiful than the most idiot sheep.
I turn to face my friend. There is no emotion on his face. He simply nods.