The lean shadow stopped on the far side of the desk. Its owner moved himself deliberately into my field of view. ‘Aulus Aurelius Lupus, centurion of the first century, the second cohort.’ He placed his palms on the table and used them as props, to bring himself closer to me. ‘You, I understand, are my clerk, possibly my courier. Can you wield a sword on horseback?’
‘I can.’ My voice was as dry as his; drier. I looked up and, for a panicked moment, imagined myself desiccated to the point of the man opposite me; to see him was to think of summer dust, of plums gone to prunes too hard to eat, of toads caught out of water and drawn down to their hard, flat skins.
His face clung to his skull in a series of hollows, the opposite of the fleshy, almond-eyed Hyrcanian faces that I had grown used to. His hair was uniformly grey, not peppered like many men of his age, but as if he had once washed it in iron-water and the colour had set fast. His eyes were the same flat, iron hue and they searched me from my heels to my head.
‘Your name?’
‘Demalion.’
He ran his tongue round his teeth and I saw the purple tip of it slip between his lips, like a lizard’s. ‘Your tunic,’ he said, at length, ‘appears to be red. Why?’
Because we were going to set a fashion, and call ourselves the Bloody Legion. With more courage, that’s what I would have said. But I read no humour in those grey eyes and my courage failed me.
‘It’s dyed with madder,’ I said.
One wire-drawn eyebrow arced up. His flat eyes grew harder, and flatter. ‘Then undye it. The men of my centurywear wool in winter, linen in summer. Not dyed. Your armour also is not… standard.’
‘It’s all I have.’ Truth lent desperation to my voice, so that he could hear it. Cadus and I were not completely stupid; we had bought other tunics, but already the shining mail shirt was my love and I had bought nothing to replace it. In the legions, men wear what they have, and are glad of it. I saw his eye go to the helmet I held under my arm, to the new design that men coveted, even in Rome. I said, ‘I have a good horse and two mules and will care for them myself.’
Lupus gave no answer, but walked past me to the door. I did not turn. From the threshold, he said, ‘You are billeted with the first unit, first century, second cohort, behind the workshop at the northern quarter. They, too, are late; they arrived three days ago. Ask for Syrion; he will assign your bunk and your stables. Your men’ — his voice clipped Cadus — ‘have quarters east of them. The Fourth Scythians have the southern side of the camp. Isodorus is your second in command unless or until you appoint another. He will, I am sure, find you a groom.’
So began our trip through Hades at the hands of the XIIth legion.
Chapter Eight
Raphana legionary camp, November, AD 57
‘Wake up! Get up, you idiots! Get out of bed! We’re under attack! Run! Run! Run! ’
I erupted out of the bunk, reaching for my dagger, my sword, my sandals before I had even woken. In the dark about me, seven other men did the same, shuffling swiftly in small circles, taking care not to bump into one another, not out of courtesy or fear of another man’s touch but because any untoward clumsiness made us slower and speed was everything.
In the past six months, I had learned to fasten sandals, belt and dagger faster than I would ever have believed possible. Whatever the heat, I slept in my tunic, after a time when I had been forced to fast-march naked into the mountains and back with my sword-belt chafing holes in my waist because I had dressed too slowly.
Now I was in full kit before the shouts that had woken us had faded away: tunic, sandals, and my godforsaken mail shirt, which might have taken one tenth of the time to clean compared to the ring-on-leather kind but took ten times aslong to get into; a fact I had not considered in the calm of the armourer’s shop in the spring.
My now battered gladius was strapped in place at my right side with a newly fashioned baldric across my shoulder attached to the tip of the sheath to hold it in place. I had found at the cost of a cracked rib what happened if it moved while I was negotiating a steep rock face. My dagger hung at my left side. At the door, I picked up my square-edged legionary shield, decorated now with the crossed thunderbolts of the XIIth legion, and a javelin.
This night, newly, I also picked up a stake of the same length as the javelin, with a fire-hardened tip and a flat iron plate nailed to the hub end, to keep the wood from splitting when it was hammered into the ground.
The stake was an integral part of the plan Cadus and I had developed back in Hyrcania at Pantera’s behest when he had told us to design a defence against cavalry.
Cadus’ men had demonstrated it before the camp prefect only four days before. His cohort was good and his century was easily the best in the legion. They would not have matched even the half-trained men of our old legion, the Vth Macedonica, but I was careful not to say that now: my new legion might have been universally despised, but the two people who could not criticize it on pain of ‘accidents’ that led to broken bones or worse were Cadus and me.
I wrenched open the door. Six men ran out. In the dark, I felt the seventh touch my arm.
‘Demalion? I can’t find my sword.’ That was Tears, the Cretan youth who had come to us too young, and wept for three months. We hadn’t called him Heraclides since the end of the first half-month. These days, he didn’t weep any more than anyone else did, but his voice was lighter, as if he had not yet found the ground with his feet.
‘Syrion will have it.’ Syrion was our flag-bearer, and Lupus’second in command, a quiet man, a font of steady strength. The rest of us respected him for the fortitude with which he bore a role that nobody wanted. The flag-bearer was the first focus of any enemy attack; even in our play-practice with the IVth, we had learned that. Syrion earned twice the basic pay, and was welcome to every silver piece of it.
I found Tears’ gladius in the safe place under Syrion’s bunk. We were last in the room. I dragged Tears with me even as he struggled to finish tying his belt. ‘Come on! Or we’ll be last out.’
‘But if we’re under attack, that won’t matter, will it? There won’t be a parade line.’
‘Idiot!’ I cuffed him, and kept pulling. ‘We’re not under attack. Nobody’s stupid enough to attack a legionary camp. Not even ours. This is a drill. I’ll lay a denarius on it.’
‘Done!’
Together, we ran into the parade ground. Exactly as I had feared, we were last out, but while I expected to stand in line under massed torches and have Lupus beat us in public for our tardiness, or the failure to polish our armour — he could find rust where no human eye could see it — or sandals tied awry, or any one of the thousand other things that a man might get wrong who had dressed in absolute dark… instead, we joined a heaving sea of running men, of the IVth as well as the XIIth, all streaming down the Via Praetoria and through the gate. Ahead, a horn blared five notes, sounding the call to defence of the camp.
‘It is an attack,’ Tears said, running. ‘Who’s insane enough to storm a legionary encampment?’
‘Vologases? Maybe he’s trying to take Syria for the Parthian empire while Corbulo is safe in Armenia.’
‘But it’s beyond the fighting season. Nobody fights after the rains start.’
‘Vologases does,’ I said grimly. I was still holding on toTears’ elbow, trying to see in the torch-studded dark so that I could find Syrion, or Horgias, Polydeuces — he was not the Rabbit then — Sarapammon, Rufus, Proclion, the remaining men in my unit. Attack or not, I knew the sting of Lupus’ vine stick too well to risk their being in place before us.
‘Northwest.’ I hauled Tears with me. ‘The second cohort is supposed to gather northwest of the gate. The others will be there.’
‘But they’re not.’ He pulled me round, spinning on my heel. ‘They’re by the engineers’ workshop. Look.’