A man on horseback approached. ‘I’m looking for the standard-bearer,’ a harsh voice asked.
‘Over here.’
The rider reined in before me. I could smell the stink of his horse. Sweat, and leather. His accent was unmistakably Italian. Not one of Arminius’s Germans. A dispatch rider, I guessed. ‘Standard-bearer, I have a message for you.’
I felt my teeth clench and stomach tighten. No word that this man carried could be good for me.
‘What is it?’
‘You have a comrade,’ he said, almost as a question. I was not ready for what came next. ‘Brutus? I was asked to send word from his wife.’
My stomach churned. Brutus?
I forced myself to be flat. To be steel. ‘He’s dead?’
The horse tried to pull away. Maybe it sensed my unease. My capability for violence. The rider tugged back on her reins as he answered. ‘I don’t know,’ he told me honestly. ‘She says that you must come back with the eagle.’
‘That’s it?’ Come back with the eagle? ‘What about Brutus? What word from him?’
The horse trampled the ground. It was as anxious to move on as the rider. ‘I don’t know, sir. Would you like me to carry word back?’
‘No,’ I said after a moment. ‘Thank you.’
The rider turned and left, leaving me with questions.
Come back with the eagle? Why? Why? Was she simply wishing me good fortune, or did Brutus live? Was he dying? Did he wish to see the totem before he died? Or was he already in the next life, and Lulmire simply wanted him to be honoured by the eagle visiting his grave?
I snarled. I wanted to be angry, but the truth was that sending messages via the dispatch rider was an uneasy affair. Words had to be passed from mouth to mouth. Messages must be simple. Even then, they could be forgotten. At least her message was clear: Come back with the eagle.
Come back to Brutus, dead or alive.
I sensed movement, then. Someone was coming along the lines. I heard words in the darkness. ‘Remember your training,’ an aristocratic voice was saying. ‘Kill the bastards, boys. Kill them for Rome.’
‘The legate,’ Centurion Paulus whispered beside me, and I could hear a grin in his tone. ‘I’d recognize the silhouette of that nose anywhere.’
‘Men,’ the commander of the legion greeted us. ‘All ready?’
‘All ready, sir.’
I saw Hook-nose turn in the saddle as he attempted to look over his force hidden in the mirk of night. ‘Stealth won’t do us much use given that they appear to already be on high alert up there, but I’ll take every inch of advantage in war,’ he said. ‘Standard-bearer, you’ll march with the First Century.’
‘Yes, sir.’ There was no other place for the eagle to be. It couldn’t inspire men if it cowered behind their backs.
‘Commander, if your cohort is prepared, proceed and march them out to the forming-up point.’
‘Oh, we’re ready, sir,’ the soldier promised with feral purpose. ‘Tenth Cohort, by the centre, quick march!’
We stepped off into darkness. Beside me, Paulus chuckled happily. ‘Oh, I do love my fucking job.’
The pace slowed as we broke from the track in the valley floor and took the trail that led into the mountains. There was the occasional voice of a section leader or centurion in the gloom, but for the most part the cohort advanced as the disciplined professionals that they were – silently, and with deadly intent.
I was glad when we began our upward climb. The footing could snag an unwary man, and so it needed all of my concentration to keep myself and Gallus upright. Focusing on putting one foot in front of the other left me with little time to think about anything other than the sweat that trickled from inside my helmet and into my tired eyes. My hair itched, my gut was soured from too much wine and my knees hurt, but it was all preferable to thinking about what my father had said.
‘See yourself through the battle,’ I told myself repeatedly. ‘Live, if you want answers. Die if you don’t.’
A simple choice.
We marched. We climbed. Above us, black sky was giving way to slate grey. Eyes now long accustomed to the gloom sought out the jagged fangs of the other peaks that surrounded us.
‘Not much further, sir,’ I heard a scout tell the commander of the Tenth. Then, ‘We’re here, sir.’
‘Form battle lines,’ the officer ordered immediately and, as the word was passed, his men began to move seamlessly into position.
‘We trained hard for this,’ their leader said, pride in his voice. ‘You will fight beside me, standard-bearer?’
A curt nod of my head. ‘I will.’
I felt a hand on my tired shoulder. ‘It will be my greatest honour.’
We fell into silence as the centuries shuffled into formation as best as they could on the mountainside. It was impossible to see our full position, but we had been briefed on it – we were on a slope two hundred yards wide, five hundred yards beneath the enemy hill fort. The way ahead of us was clear but for the occasional rocky outcrop – our formations should hold well until we reached the wall of stone. It was ten feet high, but we had a plan. A plan where men would die, but in the rivers of their blood others would be carried to victory. I had no doubt that by noon the field would belong to Hook-nose and the Eighth. It was what was to come after that truly terrified me.
I looked up the slope for distraction, hopeful to see what awaited us. I saw only forbidding black peaks, rising like hungry titans in the darkness.
Behind and about me, I noticed that all was near silent save for the splash of piss and spit on rock as men relieved themselves of fear and bad luck – the Tenth Cohort were ready. On the opposite slope, the fort between us, the Sixth and Seventh should now be in their own positions.
There was nothing to do but wait for dawn.
Wait for death.
The hot light of day crept over the mountains with hesitation, as though it was aware of what was to come, and wished to play no part in savagery. But, like the men who were soon to die, the light could not change nature. It could not change what had always been. Night then day. Peace then war. Like the hours in which we slept, peace was only ever a temporary truce. War was never far away. The idea of lasting peace was a fantasy. A wishful thought that there could, and would, be a final reckoning. A decisive campaign that would establish dominance and hierarchy once and for all.
We were about to prove how stupid such notions were.
I looked up the slope before me. It was steep. Steep enough that my lungs burned just to look at it. And across that obstacle in itself was the wall, an ugly scar of slate on the mountainside. It was too dark to see the men that doubtless stood sentinel there, but light enough to see that many of the men around me would soon fall.
I looked at their leader, Paulus. He was not much older than thirty. He didn’t have the old eyes of the mountains. His look was eager. Hungry. He wanted this fight.
He felt my gaze, and my question – what do you think?
The centurion shrugged his armoured soldiers. ‘I’ve seen worse places to die.’
A year ago, perhaps I would have laughed.
I put out my hand. ‘Good luck.’
‘Good luck.’
I chanced to look over my shoulder at the ranks about me. Young faces. Old faces. Scared faces. Excited faces. Pale faces. Flushed faces. No man the same, yet all a part of the whole. The body. The entity that would creep up this hillside to visit death in the dawn.
And what of those who stood against us? Now came the first cries of panic. The men on the walls had spent their nights dreaming of lovers, of family and of terrors. When the morning light revealed the latter, the defenders of the hill fort began to shout with dread.