‘It’s Tiberius,’ I heard a young man whisper.
‘Silence in the ranks,’ a veteran voice growled.
The rider paced his horse before the formation. He seemed to grow in the saddle, as if the sight of armoured files before him nurtured his martial soul. The horse stamped and its muscles quivered, nostrils flaring as the beast recognized the charged air of the parade square. Finally, its master deigned to speak. His voice and manner reminded me of a proud oak. Powerful yet patient. Magnificent and immovable.
‘I am Marcus Valerius Messalinus. Governor of Pannonia, and servant of Rome.’
He paused then, and stood in his stirrups, voice rising with his height. ‘I am also the luckiest man alive,’ he declared, ‘because I will be leading you warriors to war!’
There was no holding back the cheer that burst from every part of my body. With thousands of others, I let loose a feral roar of pure ecstasy. There was no longer any doubt – we were going to war! – and relief and excitement coursed through my body like lava.
‘The rumours are true!’ Messalinus went on, after our centurions had called a dozen times for quiet. Now, we listened intently to the man who was a general in rank by virtue of his position in society, which was neither truly a civil post, nor a military one, but demanded time and talent in both. ‘Tiberius is assembling an invasion force south of the Danube,’ he told us. ‘It will comprise five legions, and more than twice as many men again in auxiliary cohorts! At this moment we are raising a hundred thousand men from Dalmatia and here, in Pannonia! Our enemy is King Marabodus, who is soon to give up his lands, his women and his treasures to you men of the Eighth Legion! What do you say to that?’
What did we say? There were promises and threats to our enemy within the cheers, but mostly we roared like animals in the arena. We had been given the scent of our prey, and we were bloodthirsty beasts intent on killing. Now, we simply needed to be released from our cage.
The governor might have had some final words, but they were drowned by the din of the legion, and this time not even the calls of our centurions could hold back our fervour. I watched impressed as our general made his steed rear in an act of martial showmanship, then raced her from the parade ground, and our sight – Messalinus had done his job. His hounds were ready for the hunt.
We were ready to kill.
Never have I known such a feeling of purpose as we were marched from the parade square and back to our cohort’s section of camp. Our centurions and optios barked at us to hold back on the pace, but I could hear the excitement in their own voices. Every man among us wanted to reach our barracks as quickly as possible so that we could fall out and find our friends. This was a moment of shared glory, and we had yet to even take to a battlefield! What must it feel like to conquer an enemy? I felt as though every part of my body was made of feathers. All the doubts, anger and resentment in my mind were gone. I could almost sing with pure joy.
And then, someone did!
‘Oh, how I am fed up with Egypt, the land of sin, and pox, and shame…’
Within a moment, the familiar marching song, brought back from when the legion had been posted in the East, spread through the cohort like wildfire in Rome.
‘Where I lost my good reputation, and only the army’s to blame!
Oh, bury me out in the desert, where the hawks may pick at my bones,
With a couple of wineskins beside me, so I won’t be so very alone!’
And so it went, verse after verse, song after song, a legion reciting the tales and traditions handed down from soldier to soldier, from campaign to campaign. By the time that we were finally called to a halt outside our barracks, I could not have been more proud to have been a soldier of the Eighth Legion soldier had I hatched from an egg laid by our eagle.
‘Cohort!’ First Century’s centurion bellowed. ‘Fallllllll out!’
The simple right turn was carried out with pride and precision. A split second later, men were running and bumping into one another as they greedily sought out their closest comrades.
Octavius was the first friend that I found, and we embraced like long-lost brothers. As we broke apart, I noticed there were tears in his eyes. Tears of pure joy.
‘We’re going to war,’ he announced as though he had just birthed his first son.
Varo found us a moment later. Then Priscus. There were jumbled words, and promises, and bluster, and bravado. There was laughing, and singing, and handshakes, and happiness.
My life had taught me to be wary of such bliss.
I should have listened.
6
The augur of the storm was inconspicuous, a simple dispatch rider who rode to the fort’s headquarters that night. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but our sentence had been delivered in the darkness, and in the morning, our cohort stumbled out with sore heads, oblivious to the executioner’s axe that was poised above our necks.
Blind to what was to come, the atmosphere on parade was growing thick with excited anticipation, and not even our officers made much of an effort to kill the eager chatter in the ranks.
Then, when our cohort commander appeared, no man needed to be told to hold his silence. The officer’s demeanour did all the talking needed. Usually a man of proud bearing and vigour, he stepped forth before our ranks like a victim of plague.
At the sight of the veteran’s distress, I knew what was coming before the fatal words fell from his lips.
‘We’re not going.’
The statement hung over the assembly like a curse, dark and venomous. In seconds I went from elation at the prospect of war to feeling as though the very essence of my body was being pulled from my bones.
‘The legion commander got the word last night,’ our leader explained against the mournful silence. ‘Orders came from Tiberius himself. Cohort’s One to Five are staying here. Six to Ten will march out with the governor and join Tiberius.’
No one spoke. No one moved.
‘The legion commander wants you to take pride in knowing that the Eighth Legion will still be represented on this campaign, and that the glory won by the Sixth to Tenth Cohorts will be shared amongst us who remain here. Glory for one soldier of the Eighth is glory for all.’
He tried. He really tried, but his words were as empty and grey as ash. We all knew the reality. Why else would my stomach feel cold and knotted? Why else were my fingers trembling? Why else did I want to scream out in rage that it could not be so?
This was supposed to be my time. My war.
I thought of Marcus then. As second in command of a century in the Sixth Cohort, he would still be going to war. His dream would be realized. I should have been happy and proud for my brother, but I felt only bile and bitter resentment.
‘This is fucking bollocks,’ I spat, unable to help myself.
‘Silence in the ranks!’
‘Why us, sir?’ another voice called plaintively, soon to be followed by others before the officers could hush them.
‘They should draw lots, sir!’
‘We’re the best cohort in the legion, sir!’
‘Sir, please, speak with them, sir!’
‘SILENCE!’ the commander bellowed, his grey face now lined with anger as well as grief. ‘It’s done!’ he boomed. ‘Done! These are orders from Tiberius himself, and we are soldiers! We follow orders, not our own desires! It is only because I recognize your yearning to serve the Empire in war that I do not punish every single one of you for daring to question these commands, but they are orders and they will be obeyed, do you understand me? Do you understand me?’