Varo didn’t look so certain. ‘You’d be all right killing Romans?’
Octavius shrugged. ‘They’re not my mates. And look. They rebelled against the Empire, didn’t they? How’s that any different to us fighting the auxiliaries?’
The big man was not convinced. ‘The auxiliaries aren’t citizens.’
‘The Emperor pays their bills.’
‘No. It’s not the same.’
‘Well, either way,’ the shorter man insisted, ‘if you turn against the Empire, you get what’s coming to you. They lost their citizenship when they sided with Pompey, Marc Anthony and all those other cunts.’
‘So you’d have fought for Caesar?’ Varo asked.
‘Of course.’
I break my silence. ‘You’d have fought for whoever your legion did,’ I told him. ‘Whoever the senator was that your legate decided to follow. Do you think you’d have had a say in that?’
‘I’d like to think so.’
‘And I’d like these mountains to be a beach, but it’s not going to happen, is it? We don’t get to make decisions, Octavius. Not the ones that change the world, anyway. When was the last time you chose something for yourself?’
My friend spat. ‘I’m choosing not to listen to you, you miserable twat.’
Varo laughed. It was the first time I’d heard him make that rumbling sound in days. I missed it. But then, I missed a lot of things.
‘I’m going to check on the sentries,’ he told us, getting to his feet and looking down from that great height as though he were our father; had he stepped into that paternal role when Priscus had fallen? ‘Cheer up, you two. We may not be able to choose much in life, Corvus, I’ll give you that, but we can choose our mates.’
Despite my stubbornness, I nodded at his words.
In that part of my life at least, I had chosen wisely.
Three days later I was told by a dispatch rider that I was to accompany him back to the legion’s headquarters on the plain – or rather the narrow strip of land that ran beside the snaking river. ‘What’s it about?’ I asked, but the soldier was no more privy to Hook-nose’s mind than I was.
I sought out my brothers. We were stained in sweat, but free of blood. The enemy had not discovered us, nor we them. I found Varo and Octavius at the head of the century. Behind their armoured figures, drawn in jagged lines of misery, stretched the peaks of the mountain range.
Varo saw me first. ‘Quite a view, isn’t it?’
Octavius wiped sweat from his eyes. ‘Pretty, from a distance. Talking of which, what’s up with you, Corvus? You look like Balius just took advantage of you.’
‘Hook-nose wants to see me.’
‘Smile then, you dickhead,’ Varo said, taking his own advice. ‘Get yourself some decent scoff at headquarters. Go and see Marcus.’
Marcus. When his cohort had been relieved and moved to the lower ground, I had told myself that I should be with my comrades in the mountains, and the place of most danger. Maybe that was the truth. Or maybe… maybe I hadn’t wanted to see the changes in my oldest friend. The smiling boy becoming the hollow-eyed killer.
Varo asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
He laughed. How could he be happy in this? He saw the question in my eyes. ‘I’ve got a sword on my hip and comrades by my side. Look at this view, Corvus. Look at it! Life is good, you dickhead. Life is good.’
I squinted. ‘You truly believe that?’
He put one of those thick arms over my shoulder. ‘We’re not lying on sofas getting wine poured down our throats by slaves, and I don’t suppose that we ever will be, but life could be worse. A lot worse.’
It could. And if I hadn’t already seen enough evidence of that in my life, then the legate would prove it to me.
‘Standard-bearer! Come.’ Hook-nose greeted me with a wave once I reached his headquarters on the valley floor. ‘I’ve had the eagle brought up from the rear.’
I felt my pulse quicken. ‘Battle, sir?’ I asked hastily, but the commander of the legion shook his head.
‘It’s time to visit the wounded.’
34
I walked with the eagle in my hand. To me the standard was Gallus, famed chicken of the Eighth. To others, it was a symbol of divine inspiration.
Men snapped to attention as they saw us come: a decorated soldier and a legion’s eagle, a potent combination to inspire pride in any legionary’s heart. I felt none myself – the gilded lump of metal on a stick just meant that I had my hands full, and that I couldn’t wipe the dripping sweat off my face – but while I might not have shared the emotions, I supposed that I understood them: the men’s pride in the eagle came from a desire to belong to something greater than themselves. It came from a desire to be proved worthy. To bring light to a dark world. Order to chaos. To walk amongst heroes. To be one yourself.
And how to do that?
By sacrificing all for the glory of Rome.
I smelt the results of such thinking long before I saw the hospital. It was the stench of conflict. Blood. Piss. Puke. Shit. Here on the valley floor, the reek of open wounds hung between the mountains like a curse. Up on the peaks, violent death waited, but down here, amongst the tents of the legion’s reserve, death lingered, toying with its victims through the suffering of others.
I walked with Hook-nose. The legate wanted to pay a visit to the steady trickle of wounded that were being sent back as a result of the enemy’s ambushes. There were sick men in the legion too, but we’d be giving their dwellings a wide berth. ‘You can’t catch an amputation,’ Hook-nose had said, wise enough to know that even the fittest legionary could fall down without so much as a touch. ‘Many of these men will be invalided out of the service now, if they survive,’ he’d then explained. ‘They need to know why.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It won’t be easy for them, standard-bearer, but they’ll take strength knowing that their suffering is for Rome.’
‘Yes, sir.’
We weren’t alone. A half-dozen officers and a section of guards walked with us through the heat; the valley’s air was as still as a tomb. That it was becoming one for so many soldiers was evidenced by the rows of graves freshly scratched into the dirt. The valley floor was hard here; the resting places of the dead were shallow. A fox or a dog had got at one of the fallen, a half-eaten hand protruding from the earth in friendly greeting.
‘Give that man some decency!’ Hook-nose growled at one of his officers. I looked behind me, and saw that the section of troops in our wake were amused by the macabre sight. One waved back to the corpse. He did so discreetly and behind his officers’ backs, a clandestine skill developed quickly by those in the ranks.
I didn’t blame the man for the act, nor feel any ill will towards him for it. I knew why these young soldiers were cracking whispered jokes and hiding sick smiles – they were scared. The stench of decay was becoming stronger, and with it came the moans of men who had found steel in their flesh. At some point in this campaign, the section of troops behind me would be ordered to tramp their way towards the sky, and to put their heads into the rebels’ noose in the mountains. They would face ambush. Disappearing sentries. The whisper of death in the night. I could see from the lack of lines on their faces that it was not something they’d already experienced. Here now was nervous fear. After the mountains, they would be painted with the look of those who had been driven beyond fatigue and emotion. I had seen it in the men of the Sixth Cohort when I had left Varo and Octavius and returned to the valley floor. Their eyes were hollow, as though they were seeing through me, and into the next life. Perhaps, when I made my discovery, I looked the same way.