The man trailed off, and I saw the look of awe pass over his face with the memory. Recalling the moment, he suddenly looked ten years younger.
‘We fucking slaughtered them on the plains, and we thought it would be done then, but they took to the mountains. I had friends in the centuries that we sent after them…’ Brutus remembered. He wasn’t smiling now. ‘I never saw most of them again.’
We were all silent. What was Brutus seeing in his mind in those quiet moments?
‘Your war will be different,’ our friend finally concluded with sadness. Sadness, I imagined, because he would not be a part of it. ‘The lands of the Marcomanni lie on the plains north of the Danube and they are vast. There’ll be a great battle, maybe a couple, but that will be it. Be happy, lads. Yours will be a glorious war. You won’t be ambushed in death traps in the mountains. You’ll face your enemy down, and crush them. You’ll push Rome’s borders further than ever. They’ll talk about this campaign for hundreds of years.’
And that’s when he said it.
‘It kills me that I’m not coming with you.’
The words were like a sword in my guts. I looked at my hands in shame. It was my fault that this born warrior would be denied shared glory with his comrades. I opened my mouth to speak.
But nothing came out.
‘Let’s get a drink,’ Varo suggested. ‘Let’s toast our war.’
The other men stood, grinning like feral dogs with the scent of meat in their nostrils. Brutus led for the door, and smiled.
‘A drink with the boys sounds fucking good.’
We drank, and we listened. Brutus told stories, and we lapped up the blood of the enemy dead like a cat with milk. When he spoke of the loss of a comrade, it was always in terms of the highest honour and glory. Brutus was a true servant of Rome, and nothing in his eyes was more to be celebrated than death in combat on behalf of the Empire.
‘You’re quiet?’ Octavius noticed of me.
‘Just trying to stay out of trouble,’ I told him, which was true enough. Marcus had found a way of keeping me from throwing my fists around at the local inns – he’d put the idea in my head that I could miss the coming war if I was sanctioned, or imprisoned, and such a thought had scared me into good behaviour. As much as I wanted to throw a punch at the strangers around me, and lose myself to rage, I made myself wait and be patient for the true delirium of combat.
‘We’ll walk you home,’ Priscus eventually told Brutus.
Of course, it was more of a stumble, and twice Octavius had to stop to puke. The second time, Varo kicked him in the arse and sent the younger man head first into a ditch. The rest of us had been near death with laughter.
But we weren’t laughing now.
‘I always thought this would be my war,’ Brutus confided as we neared his home. ‘I knew it would come one day. It had to. You just have to look back, and see how the wars fall over time, pushing out the borders. The Empire’s like a snake, and it has to shed its skin and grow a new one. All my career I dreamed I would be the one to carry the eagle when that day came but…’ He shook his head. ‘Gods, to have it all end because of some sheep-shagger in the mountains?’ He spat.
‘Life can be cruel,’ Priscus allowed.
Brutus shook his head, as if convincing himself otherwise. ‘No, no. Life is good, my friends. I’m just being a sour old bastard. I had a good sixteen years in the legion. I saw war, if only for a little, and I love my wife. I’m happy.’
We’d reached his door. The veteran stopped on the threshold. ‘Come see me before you go,’ he made us promise.
Afterwards, we were silent as we walked back towards camp. Silent until we saw a dark shape whimpering at the edge of the street.
It was the child whom Priscus had gifted with a coin. His face was battered and bloody, his young nose spread across it. He had been robbed. He recognized us, and ran away.
Varo snorted. ‘You see where kindness gets you?’ he told his friend. ‘You’ve got to be hard, Priscus. With what’s coming, it won’t pay to have any weakness. We look out for our own, and no one else.’
For a moment, Priscus said nothing. ‘We could all be dead soon, couldn’t we?’ he finally ventured.
No one replied. We knew it was true, but each man fancied himself immortal – it would be others that died, not us.
‘We could,’ Priscus insisted. ‘So let’s enjoy ourselves while we can.’
Varo raised a thick eyebrow. ‘What do you have in mind?’
4
It was to a brothel that Priscus led us. As we approached the doorway, the smell of sweat and sickly perfume assaulted my nostrils. I slowed my pace, and watched as a soldier stumbled out of the building with a wide grin.
‘Have fun stirring my stew, lads!’
‘Piss off, you dickhead,’ Varo rumbled, and the man chortled to himself as he made his way up the street. Usually, I would have used the stranger’s words as reason to flatten his face, but Marcus’s caution was still fresh in my ears.
‘Coming in or not?’ Varo asked me, Priscus and Octavius having already disappeared from view.
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied, coming to a stop in the street.
‘Gods.’ The big man shook his head. ‘Five years and I’ve never seen you with a woman. No wonder you’re so bloody angry.’
‘I’m not angry,’ I lied.
‘They’ve got lads if you’re feeling Greek?’ he offered helpfully.
I reached up to grasp my friend’s shoulder, and bid him a good night. ‘I’m just going to head back to camp. Check on my section.’
‘Your section will be out having fun, you idiot, but suit yourself.’ Varo turned and ducked beneath the doorway. Within a moment he had a whore in each arm. His was a ferocious appetite in all things.
I turned on my heel and began the walk back to the fort. It wasn’t from any sensibility that I refused the invitation – my friends were free to spend their coin as they liked, and the whores were free to take it – but the presence of the women made me uncomfortable. A legion of Rome was an all-male affair, of course, and within the ranks it was easier for me to avoid the reminders of what I had left behind. The scent of perfume. Dark hair cascading over narrow shoulders. A woman’s laughter. These were all things that reminded me of a past life. All things that reminded me of her.
But just by trying to avoid them I had acknowledged the memories, and now there was no escaping the tendrils that grasped at me from the deepest recesses of my mind. By trying to run from the ghosts of my life I had given them form, and now they fought to be heard. Fought to be remembered.
I gave in, and let them take me.
I’d been staring for hours.
‘What are you looking at?’ the man asked me.
I turned back from the window.
‘Nothing,’ I lied, facing my tutor.
His name was Cynbel. He was a Briton with hair as fiery as his eyes, and I liked him. I liked him because he had a funny accent, a sharp wit and a head full of wisdom. I liked him because, though my family’s slave, he talked to me as if he were my equal, and not a dog, in the way the other slaves did. I might have only been a child but I was old enough to know that I admired him, and beyond all that, I was deeply grateful to the man. More grateful than he could ever imagine.
And I could never tell him why.
Now I frowned. ‘I don’t want to do maths.’
‘Well, that’s what your father wants.’
‘Tell me a story instead,’ I asked, forcing myself to move away from the window, and the secret that had kept me staring.
Cynbel knew me well enough to know when he was about to fight a losing battle, and I knew my tutor well enough to recognize when he was on the edge of capitulation. The truth was, Cynbel loved a story as much as I did. I was young, but I was perceptive. My father said that it was something I had inherited from my mother.