My lungs began to move again as I heard a hand on the door. It opened inwards.
My brother, so noble, so perfect. I, a wretched creature of stains and torn skin.
I embraced him. I wanted to weep. I wanted to tell him everything, but the words choked in my mouth. Too much to say.
‘What can I do?’ he asked me.
‘Run with me, brother.’
We ran.
I woke with weak sun on my face.
Dawn.
I lifted my head from the helmet that was my pillow, and looked about me. My sleep had been deep, if not troubled. The First Cohort, whom we had joined in the night, had already stirred. In the dark I had asked for Marcus, but my friend had been dispatched to clear a village further west with two other centuries.
I tried to work up enough moisture in my mouth to spit. It felt as though our legion had become caught in a cruel circle that continued to feed itself. Where was the battle? Where was the enemy? Nowhere. Instead there was nothing but the seemingly endless loop of climb, search, descend, and the gods grant that each grinding turn of that wheel was free of ambush and dead friends.
A soldier had been watching me. His face was young, but his eyes belonged to a man at the end of his life. I nodded assent for him to approach.
He knew me. Knew of me. ‘Standard-bearer?’
‘Yes?’
A flicker of something passed over his face. Pride? ‘I saw you at the battle of the night and day,’ he told me. ‘I saw you save the eagle.’
I rubbed at my face. Thick stubble there. I needed to shave. ‘They need to come up with a better name for that fucking battle,’ I told the lad.
‘I’ll think of one,’ the soldier promised.
I looked him up and down. His tunic and armour hung off his slight frame. ‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, standard-bearer.’
I noticed blood on his tunic. He saw. ‘The enemy’s, standard-bearer.’
I searched for something that sounded like the kind of thing the inspirational standard-bearer would say. ‘A good kill?’
He hesitated. ‘No, sir.’ Licked his teeth. ‘A woman.’
‘Women can be enemies too,’ I offered.
‘Yes.’ But I could see in his face that the death at his hand was born of butchery, not battle – if there was even a difference there. Whether under the gaze of generals and eagles, or that of a sixteen-year-old boy soldier shitting his pants, the result was the same. Blood in the soil. Blood on the hands.
‘You should shave,’ I told him with a smile. There wasn’t a hair on his childlike face.
Something twitched at the corner of his lips, then. I could see that he wanted to say the same to me. ‘I know,’ I told him, feeling at the dark stubble on my gaunt cheeks. I took out my razor. It was dull. Every hair clung as stubbornly to my throat as we did to the mountains.
The young lad was still watching me.
‘What’s your name?’
He hesitated. I lowered the razor.
‘… Scipio.’
Named for one of Rome’s greatest generals. I smiled as I wiped the blade against my tunic. ‘Do you intend to follow in his footsteps?’
Scipio shrugged, and looked around us at the savage peaks. ‘At least the enemy can’t bring elephants up here, sir.’
‘That’s what they said about the Alps,’ I replied, teasing him. I scraped my throat again. ‘You should get back to your century, Scipio. I expect we’ll be moving out soon.’
But he didn’t leave. He needed to know. Some life had come into his tired eyes. Some purpose. With a look, I gave him permission to give voice to his question.
‘What was it like?’ the boy asked. ‘Carrying the eagle in battle, sir?’
There it was. The question in every young man’s heart. The thirst for glory, honour and meaning.
There was already enough desolation in this campaign. I couldn’t bring myself to trample on the fire that burned in the boy’s heart.
‘Glorious,’ I told him, allying myself with the emperor, the senators, the recruiters, and the old and bold soldiery who saw out their active service far from any battlefield. ‘It was glorious,’ I told him, perpetuating a myth as old as time.
He left then, smiling, and behind him I saw the price of lies.
There was a column coming into the makeshift camp, and there was a killer at its head. His face was as hard as the stone at his feet, a baleful grimace stretching skin baked almost black. Amongst his company of soldiers his armour burned brightest, but it was the killer’s eyes that seared like the open maw of a volcano. He was a terrifying sight to behold, hate encased in chain mail.
It broke my heart to see him, because this man was my brother.
‘Marcus.’ I greeted him hesitantly, having watched the officer fall out the hard, gaunt men of his command – the Barbers, who were growing infamous in the legion for their ruthlessness.
‘Corvus,’ he replied.
There was no embrace. No more words. It was as though I was talking to a corpse, and my heart wrenched to see such a change in a man who had been so quick to emotion.
Two soldiers approached. They dumped stained sacking at my brother’s feet.
‘Help me with these,’ Marcus said.
I hoisted one. It wasn’t heavy, but the smell was rank and oppressive. I knew what I was carrying.
We walked in silence, I a half-pace behind him. So many questions in my mind, but I found my lips sewn shut. Did I really want the answers?
‘Hard patrol?’ I finally asked. Stupid question.
‘Yes.’
‘I spoke to your cohort commander in the valley,’ I tried. ‘He’s very proud of you.’
Nothing.
‘As am I.’
Nothing.
‘Sir!’ Marcus called.
The commander of the First Cohort. Eyes rimmed with dark bags. A skeleton in armour.
‘Centurion. How many have you brought me?’
Marcus dropped his bag, then bid that I do the same. I took a step back to save my feet from what I knew was coming. Marcus emptied the sacks, and nine heads rolled into the hard dirt.
The cohort commander trapped one with his foot. ‘Good work,’ he told his man.
I looked at that good work. Three young men, one old man, three women, two children.
‘Rest up,’ the commander told his man, kicking one of the heads down the slope as he walked away.
Maybe Marcus felt my eyes, then. Maybe he felt my doubt.
‘What would you like me to say, Corvus?’ He spoke in a tone I had never heard from him before, slow moving but as deadly as lava. ‘We’re at war.’
I said nothing. Marcus turned to the collection of trophies at our feet. His words were for me, but he stared into dead eyes as he spoke.
‘Do you think I’m enjoying it? I’m doing this to keep my men alive.’ He looked at me, then. ‘I’m doing this for Rome.’
There was savagery in his eyes. I wanted to step back. Instead I told him, ‘I know.’
Marcus laughed. A laugh so full of anger and misery that it sounded like a mortal wound. ‘What do you know about war, Corvus?’ he chided me. ‘Where have you been? How is it down in the valley?’
My pride bristled at the words. Before I knew it my mouth was open, and I was growling. ‘I stood in battle lines before you, brother. You’ve had a hard time, I know’ – I pointed at the skulls – ‘but do not mistake this for war.’
Marcus’s smile was a grimace. He folded his arms, those limbs scraped bloody by the rock of the mountain. ‘No, Corvus,’ he lectured me, ‘it is you who are mistaken.
‘This is war.’ He kicked one of the heads. ‘Not the battles. Not the glory. It is the willingness to do what is necessary. It is attrition. It is evil against evil, where only the most wicked will survive.’ He stepped closer to me then. His hostility was such that I almost went for my sword. ‘I will not see my men die.’