Legionary

Chapter 20

A doorstop of bread thumped onto Pavo’s plate. He traced a slow glance up to the cook who had provided him with the baked monolith.

‘You’ve excelled yourself again, I see.’

The cook grimaced and slapped his fist on the counter. ‘Move along,’ he hissed.

Pavo dropped his gaze and moved on with a snigger. The next cook behind the counter waited patiently with a pitifully thin strip of cheese in his hands.

‘Give him some special sauce to go on it, Cyrus,’ the first cook cackled. The second cook started brutally horking up the contents of his throat.

Pavo sighed, nodded and moved on, cheese-free. Laden with a not-so-hearty dinner, he moved along the meal-line to the wine barrels, where a queue was beginning to form. It had been a killer of a day, with another all-terrain forced march, then a gruelling session of combat training and camp construction. His limbs were still wiry but the muscles were now like gnarled rope, and despite all the pain and fatigue, he had never felt so fit. More than this, in his mind he felt so different; a real will not just to survive, but also to live. Being a freedman was good. Hard but good.

He rested his back and head on the stock of empty wine barrels, closing his eyes, waiting for the queue to crawl along. Then a voice came to his attention above the rabble, almost as if it was inside his head.

‘We’re being recruited soon, so you might not get another chance,’ the voice said. ‘If you’re going to take him down tonight — and you know what’ll happen if you don’t — you’ll need my help,’ the voice continued. ‘And we need to take down that cocky bastard, Sura, too.’

Pavo’s heart leapt and his eyes blinked open. He looked along the queue — nothing. The voice seemed to be coming from inside the wine barrels? Turning, he traced the echo of the voices; then he saw it — through the gap in the barrel-stack he just made out two shadowy forms huddled in the darkness of the corner. Spurius and Festus.

‘Tchoh!’ Spurius spat, his eyes darting around the canteen at the swarm of recruits. ‘Will you keep a lid on it? We’ll talk about this later.’

Pavo felt his veins ice over as he broke from the queue. Where was Sura? His eyes shot around the mess hall. All around him, recruits were intermingled with legionaries, heckling, babbling and hooting with laughter — not a care in the world it seemed. His heartbeat tripled until at last he spotted his friend chewing happily on a piece of solid bread. Pavo tried to stroll casually to the table. He slid into the bench facing Sura.

‘I thought you were getting a kicking from the cooks…’ Sura trailed off and his brow wrinkled. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘We’ve got to get out of the fort tonight — or we’re dead.’