Legionary

Chapter 58

The gentle bleating of a distant mountain goat filtered into the stone hall where the bulk of the legion had set up their beds for the previous night — a cramped but sheltered dorm. An amber sliver of sunlight explored the hall through the cracks in the rotting shutters as the morning sun began to peek over the hills to the east. The men of the legion lay in a thick sleep, and the morning buccina call roused barely half of them. What precious sleep they had managed had been rudely interrupted by the briefly terrifying and coarse braying of a straggle of pack mules, the few who had lagged behind before the Huns fell on the main mule train and had subsequently wandered to the hilltop. After much swearing and grasping for weapons, the legionaries managed to forgive the petrified animals, who brought with them a pair of prefabricated ballista parts and bolts, a handful of tents and a pack of salted meat.

Gallus rolled his legs out of his hastily arranged cot — a pile of foliage and his cloak. His body screamed of the previous day’s battle. He hobbled to his tunic and threw it on along with his boots, which burned into his raw, blistered feet. As the rest of the legion rose, he shuffled to the barrel of grimy water in the centre of the hall and scooped a double handful of it, lashing it across his face. It jolted him as if it had washed over his heart and he gasped, running the remaining liquid through his hair. He slipped on his mail vest — stinking of dried blood — and then looked around at the still slumbering numbers and grimaced.

‘Make haste, ladies! Have you forgotten the situation we are in?’ He boomed. ‘I want you out there and alert right bloody now!’ The centurion’s voice worked like a thousand buccinas and suddenly the shuffling legionaries became sprightlier and those asleep were jolted from their cots.

He fastened his sword belt and then slid on his horsehair crest helmet. Buckling his cloak he visualised the iron shutters closing in again. These men need you to lead them, he repeated to himself as he strode out into the courtyard of the fort. Already, those that remained of the first cohort were all present as far as he could tell. He gave them nothing but a firm nod. Zosimus, Avitus and Quadratus waited on him at the front, the trio looked haggard and even grumpier than usual for an early morning, but they were there for him, and that was what mattered. He gathered them into a small circle.

‘We are safe from the south side,’ he nodded to the edge of the fort overhanging the sheer drop, ‘so that’s in our favour at least. Harvest whatever timber we can find — get us set up with ballistae on the walls,’ he pointed to the northeast and northwest corners of the mossy bulwark penning them in. ‘Catapults, rocks, anything we can cobble together and fire down their throats, we do it.’

‘Sounds good, sir.’ Zosimus grunted.

‘Quadratus — how did the watch go?’ Gallus turned to the Gaul.

‘Quiet — too quiet. They’re all around us down there and they’ve men to spare, to say the least.’

Gallus thought of Felix. Defeat crawled across his mind, but he pushed it firmly to the side. ‘Then there’ll be all the more for us before reinforcements come!’ The three optios smiled, and Gallus allowed his eyes to sparkle wryly.

Finally, the three cohorts and the auxiliaries were formed up. Gallus eyed the ranks and suddenly felt more alone than he ever had. Barely a thousand men stood before him. Many of those hobbled on crutches and those who stood freely wore bandages or coughed roughly, spitting blood into the dirt.

‘I hope you’re all feeling refreshed, because last night may well have been your last rest for quite some time. We are safe for the very short term up here, but if you haven’t noticed, there are no cattle or olive groves up here for us to feast on. In short, we’ve got to make what we have last.’ Gallus paused for a moment. ‘As you all well know, we lost a lot of our brothers yesterday.’ A solemn silence hung in the air as the wind whipped up dust around the legion. ‘We’re short on men and we’re short on food, but when it comes to Roman endurance and cold, hard skill with sharpened iron — we are kings!’ Gallus paced evenly in front of the legion. ‘A detachment has been sent out to call for a relief force. I’m talking of true Romans here, not of the treacherous whoresons down there, willing to sell their honour to animals.’ The legion rumbled in exhausted agreement. ‘But let these animals come,’ Gallus whipped his hands up to either side. ‘Let them come, for we will be waiting, like a lion waits on its prey. For the empire, men…for the empire!’

Suddenly, the air was alive with the hoarse cries of the thousand. Punching the air, rattling swords on shields.

‘Cut down what timber you can find, we need artillery, we need arrows and bolts. Pile rocks on the battlements, find urns that we can heat sand in and pour from the walls. I want you to busy yourselves today by building this place into a real Roman fort — to be a testudo for us to defend until a relief force comes.’ Gallus heard the words if a relief force comes echo in his head as he spoke, but simply acknowledged it and showed his stiff jaw to the legion as they broke up to set about their tasks.

‘Is this really all there are left?’ Avitus sighed when the cohorts were out of earshot. ‘A thousand men against twenty times that. Sir, you know we don’t stand a chance, don’t you?’

‘We can’t win, Avitus, fair enough. But we don’t have to. The relief force is our lucky dice.’ Gallus saw the unconvinced gurn the three new optios wore, and dropped the rhetoric. ‘Okay, it’s looking bleak, but those men need to believe,’ he swept a hand back over the tattered legion. ‘Stay with me, men, I need you.’