‘Rumour mill.’
‘Ten legions, my arse.’ Varo shook his head. ‘Priscus?’
‘I don’t think it will be that size,’ the oldest and wisest of us decided.
‘The size of ten legions, or Varo’s arse?’ Octavius smirked.
Priscus laughed; then he continued: ‘There comes a point where an army gets too big, and its size becomes its weakness, making it too hard for the commander to control. Communication is difficult. Manoeuvres get sloppy. Gaps open for the enemy to exploit. Think of wielding a sword. You wouldn’t want one a mile long, would you?’
‘Speak for yourself.’ Octavius grinned, grabbing his crotch.
I laughed with the others. The promise of campaign ran through my veins like fire. I was happy. There had been joy in my life before – no, bliss! – but to think on it caused me nothing but the darkest rage, and so I pressed those memories down into the pit of my soul as if I were drowning a thrashing beast.
‘What was that?’ I asked, because the eyes of my friends were expectantly upon me. I had drifted from their conversation and into the wandering river of my thoughts.
Priscus shook his head. He knew what I was like. ‘I said, we were thinking about going to see him. Are you all right with that?’
I knew who he was, and why they were asking me.
I shrugged. ‘Of course I am.’
I wasn’t.
‘All right,’ said Priscus. ‘Let’s go.’
Priscus rapped his knuckles against the wooden door. We were in the town’s warren of narrow streets, the space made claustrophobic by Varo’s bulk. It was not the most desirable neighbourhood, downwind of the legion’s fort and in lower ground that was prone to flash flooding during the heavy rainfall of the harsh winter. Detachments of soldiers patrolled the streets to prevent crime, which was often violent and sometimes deadly, and a grubby young boy seemed to mistake us for one of these as we waited for the door to be opened.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, looking up with awe at Varo, the titan among us. ‘Some boys stole my bread. Can you help me get it back?’
The big man grinned. ‘No. No handouts, you little shit. You want something in life, go and take it yourself.’
The urchin’s shoulders dropped at the words. Priscus looked at his friend with narrow eyes. ‘I’ll remember that the next time you need bailing out. Here,’ he said to the lad after reaching inside a slit in his belt and removing a small coin. ‘Go buy yourself some food.’
He tossed it to the lad, who dropped it in his excitement, and had to retrieve it from a dirty gutter.
‘You shouldn’t do that.’ Varo shook his head. ‘People don’t learn that way.’
‘It’s my money,’ Priscus replied, before knocking again at the door. ‘Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.’
I felt a surge of relief at that notion, but then instantly became ashamed because of it. I turned to Priscus to suggest we leave, but at that moment the door opened, and I looked into the grey eyes of a man whose life I had once thought that I’d saved.
Brutus.
‘Lads!’ exclaimed the veteran. ‘Come on in. What a nice surprise!’
I hung back as the others moved forwards to greet the bearded man who stood in the doorway. I fought not to look at the left arm that hung limp and useless by his side.
‘How are you, Corvus?’ He beamed at me when the others had moved inside.
‘Good. I’m good. You?’
‘Never better.’
I followed my former section commander inside the tiny building. The space was Spartan: a bed in the corner and a chest beside it, atop which rested the shining helmet that Brutus had worn as a soldier, before wounds had driven him from the ranks. Wounds that I should have prevented.
‘Go out the back,’ Brutus insisted, and our troop followed the light of the sun, and stepped into a common area shared with Brutus’s neighbours. There was a woman there, dark-haired and a decade younger that Brutus. She smiled to see us.
‘Good to see you, Lulmire.’ Priscus grinned back at her. ‘How’s Brutus behaving?’
‘Very good,’ she answered, her Latin thick with a local accent.
‘Do us a favour, darling,’ Brutus asked. ‘Can you go get us some wine, please?’
‘No need for that.’ Varo shook his head. ‘Brought some along. Here, try this piss.’
He held out the skin to Brutus, who took a long pull and then smacked his lips dramatically. ‘I detect a hint of goat. Fine stuff.’
He held the wine out to Priscus, and the skin passed from hand to hand as we arranged ourselves in the small courtyard, leaning back against the walls or sitting on wooden stools bleached pale by the sun.
‘There’s a war coming,’ Priscus said simply to his old comrade.
Brutus nodded, and for a moment I caught a flash of sadness in his grey eyes. ‘I wish I was coming with you,’ he said, confirming what I had seen. The words struck me like a blow, and suddenly I felt claustrophobic in the small space.
‘What have you heard?’ Varo asked.
Brutus pulled at his beard. There was white in the corners of it. He must have been forty by now. Had he come away from that mountainside uninjured, he would have been into his second enlistment of twenty years. Brutus had been a loyal soldier, and dreamed of becoming one of the few men chosen to bear the legion’s eagle standard. A dream that had been denied when we were ambushed, and I was too slow in coming to his aid.
‘King Marabodus is a powerful bastard,’ he began, with more touching of the beard. ‘He’ll be able to bring a big army to bear, but from what I hear, Tiberius isn’t messing around either. It’s going to be the greatest army any of us will have ever seen. At least five legions, and as many troops again in auxiliary units.’
Varo whistled – it was some force. At full strength a Roman legion stood at five thousand men. If what Brutus said about the auxiliaries was true, then Tiberius would ride at the head of fifty thousand soldiers.
Brutus acknowledged the fact with a solemn nod of his head before continuing. ‘They’ve already started levying units from the locals here in Pannonia, and in Dalmatia.’
I sat up at that news, though it shouldn’t have surprised me. Dalmatia had once been my home, a place only colonized by the Empire a couple of generations past. All peoples within the province were considered Roman subjects, and answerable to Rome’s laws, but only a few held the title of citizen. I had inherited my title from my father, which was why I could serve in the legions, rather than the auxiliary units that were now being raised. For those men, citizenship would be an award for completion of their twenty-five years’ service.
Of course, they’d have to survive it first.
‘What do you think the war will be like?’ Octavius asked of the most salted veteran we knew. Like myself, Octavius’s experience was limited to the solitary skirmish in the mountains. Brutus had marched on campaign even before Priscus had stood beside him.
‘It’ll be different to what I saw back then,’ the veteran acknowledged. ‘For us, it was always hard to bring them to battle. It was a case of sweeps, and blocking forces. Pushing them into our traps, and most of the time failing. Just one ravine or pass was enough for them to escape, and they knew the land because it was their own.’
I’d heard it all before, and yet I hung on every word of war. It was what I dreamed of. What I needed to be a part of.
‘Every time we did get the better of them we thought that would be it, but then they’d spring back up, rebellion after rebellion. I got lucky, and on the odd occasion they did choose to stand in the plains, I was there. I stood in the ranks. I…’