‘Spit it out.’
‘Shouldn’t we bury the dead? There’s a shallow over there we could dig out.’
Frustration gripped me. I looked at the mountains and ridges that ranged all about us. Varo was out there, but Octavius was at my feet. How could I leave him unburied for wolf, and vermin?
‘I need to find Varo and the others.’ I was speaking almost to myself.
‘Don’t hit me for saying this, but no one’s following you into these hills at night, Corvus. If you want to do right by your friends, see to Octavius. It’s what Varo would want, isn’t it?’
It was, and I knew with angry certainty that I would not survive hunting blindly in the mountains at night.
‘Fuck this place,’ I snarled, hurling a stone. ‘Fuck it.’
And then I buried my friend.
We started digging out the shallow depression that Iulius had pointed out. Before we were even a half-foot down, our tools struck sparks against solid rock.
‘This is no country worth fighting for,’ an Italian soldier growled.
Darkness was closing fast, and with it our flanking troops would be withdrawn to the main body of the legion along the snaking form of the valley’s river. We would have to bury our friends beneath stones.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told Octavius as I placed the final one over his face, his features mercifully hidden in the twilight. I don’t know how long I knelt there, until a friendly hand shook my shoulder.
Iulius. ‘We should go.’
He was right. Darkness had come. This land belonged to the enemy now, if it hadn’t always.
We stumbled our way back to the camp, and found wine.
Somewhere in the black, a man screamed.
38
They bring me before them in chains. I have climbed the mountain in such bondage. My wrists are red welts. My bare feet are cut to ribbons from the sharp stone.
I am on my knees. There are four of them before me.
I do not ask why I am here.
I know.
I knew it from the first moment that I looked into their dead eyes: Priscus. Octavius. Varo – yes, he is here. The screams in the night… how can I hope for the impossible?
And…
‘Beatha?’
Her stare cuts through me, a blade of ice. Where once there had been love and radiance, now there is only cold death.
‘Beatha…’
I look at my friends on the mountaintop. They have gone from the world that they knew. Failed by the one that they loved. The one that they gave themselves to. The one who failed them.
‘I’m sorry.’
My trial is silent. Their judgement is final.
My three comrades turn their backs, and walk away.
I have lost them to the mountains.
Only Beatha remains. With painful steel wrapped upon my limbs and grief wrapped about my heart, I stagger to my feet. My lips are silent, but my eyes beg. With bloody hands, I try to hold her.
She falls to ash in my hands.
When the mountain crumbles below me, I make not a sound.
I woke in silence. Felt as though I had run a marathon. The dream had drained me of every drop of strength, every ounce of meaning.
‘Varo is dead…’ I said to myself with quiet finality.
How can he not be?
My eyes adjusted to the darkness. My lonely campaign tent,weak moonlight shading the canvas.
I look for wine, but the skin is as empty as my hope. I wiped my eyes. They were dry. My tears have gone. I am numb. A carcass with a heartbeat.
I could change that.
I pushed myself up on to my knees. Pick up my sword from where it lies beside me. My actionssmooth and unhurried. No ceremony, just the deliberate motions of one who wishes to see a job done properly.
The edge of the blade catches the moonlight that leaks inside the canvas. I took the pommel in my hands, and turn the blade towards my naked chest. I feel it prick the flesh. The first drop of blood.
I know what I can do. I know what I must do. I am here before them on my knees, and now I prepare to pass judgement on myself – what other sentence can I receive but death? I have only to fall. Hit the hard ground, then bleed into it. Nourish the dead soil. The same soil that has swallowed my comrades.
I breathe deeply.
I hesitate.
Why?
I am afraid. I am afraid, yes.
Of death? No.
I am afraid of what they will say to me when I see them. I am afraid that I will only reveal myself to be a coward. I don’t deserve life, I am certain of this, but do I deserve the peace of death? Do I deserve their presence in the afterlife? Would they even look at me? Talk to me? I failed them. How can I face them as… this?
Beatha. How can I go to her when I have a blade in my hand, and strength in my body? What would she tell me to do? What would she counsel, guided by her great capacity for love, which was not reserved for me, but given freely to all people? She would not want me to abandon Marcus, despite what he is becoming in this war. With certainty, I realize that it is for precisely this reason that she would want me to remain – who else can turn Marcus back from darkness but his oldest friend? His brother? Who else will even try?
And then there are the innocent. The women. The children. The elderly. I am one man, not a god, and I can never change the face of war, but perhaps I can at least shield some from its deadly gaze? While I am alive, I can counsel restraint. Defend with my words those that I cannot guard with my shield. Beatha would love me for it. The others would understand. I am not turning on my legion. My empire. I am simply trying to be the best instrument of it that I can be.
I breathe out harshly. A warm breeze comes through the tent, and I think of Beatha’s kiss on my cheek. She is smiling, and I love her. She has given me purpose.
I lower my sword.
‘Up on your feet, you lazy tarts!’
He is Gripper, a squat centurion known for his tendency to grip his men by the throat. He is the man the legate has given me to search for Varo and the missing section.
‘You have a day,’ Hook-nose had told me, his eyes patient in his severe face.
‘Ready when you are, standard-bearer,’ Gripper tells me.
A nod is all I give him. Sunlight is fighting its battle for the horizon. I do not want to waste a breath.
We move out.
In the furnace heat of the valley floor we searched for the missing. We prayed for comrades. Expected bodies. Found nothing.
‘Not a fucking blood trail or anything,’ Gripper growled, looking as though he wanted to strangle the mountain. ‘It’s getting dark, standard-bearer.’
The night was coming, and hope was fleeing. The signs our best amateur scouts could find were muddled, and misleading. Three times we had come back to the same point. I had the feeling that we were being watched. Gripper thought it was more than that.
‘They’re fucking laughing at us.’
Maybe, but I couldn’t hear the humour, just the hammering of blood in my ears as a voice in my head told me Varo was gone. That voice was calm and reasonable. The voice that screamed at it to shut up was angry and heartbroken.
‘We need to go back, standard-bearer.’ Then the hard man apologized, and I could see that it wasn’t an action he relished. ‘I’m sorry. I wish we could keep looking, but…’
But men die in war, go missing in war, and a century couldn’t be put at risk to find nine men, not even when they were commanded by a soul like Varo.
‘Move your men out, centurion.’ I told him, and with those words, I felt as though I was the one to drop the axe on my comrade’s neck.
The officer hesitated. He sensed something in my demeanour. ‘And what will you do?’ he asked me.