The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Eleven

To take three men along the narrow goat path at the back of the mountain had been difficult, but not impossible. To take an entire century along there would have been impossible and we didn’t try.

Lupus led the main party along the broad trail that linked all the century camps. The crushed snow was blue now in the late afternoon shadows, and freezing to ruts that made walking hard. He had us group into our tent-units and run at a jog-trot, with a distance of no more than twenty paces between each group.

In full armour, carrying our supplies of food and water, our mattocks, our mess kit — everything — we could walk twenty miles a day, forty if we were forced to double time. That evening, we wore our armour, but no helmets; carried no shields, but only our swords and daggers, wound around with fleece. We wound more wool on our forearms to act as shields, and kept our heads warm with the felt caps we had made in the harshest of the weather. Travelling light like this, even in the dark, I had no doubt that we could march the eight miles to the enemy camp before midnight; certainly that was our goal.

Syrion and I ran with Lupus at the head of the main group because we knew where the enemy units were waiting in ambush. Horgias, setting off earlier, had taken the other four men of our unit along the goat track, promising to reach the ambush places ahead of us.

We reached the first of their camps around time for the evening meal. It was nestled in trees, lower down towards the snow line than I think was legal, but they’d been there for over two months and Silvanus had not made them move it.

Their tents were set tight together in a square with branches across them to keep the snow off. A large fire was kept lit in the centre, and the men bunched around it, lightly armoured as we were, but with helmets on. They were still, silent, waiting. The fire’s light blinded them to movement in the shadows as we backed away thirty feet.

There, I knelt in the snow beneath the first rank of trees and gave the call of the owl which was our signal for every man to halt where he stood. We waited a moment and heard Horgias call back, except that his call was not so much an owl as a man trying to sound like a wolf, and failing.

The men around the fire were expecting some such. Hearing it, they jeered amongst themselves and, gathering their weapons, rushed up towards the place where Horgias had seen eight men lying in ambush.

What they would have found there, if all had gone according to plan, was eight men bound and gagged, each one with the sign of the wolf carved on to the leather of his armour straps as a reminder of who had taken them.

We didn’t stay to find out, but passed their camp at a dead run, and all were safely beyond it long before the main mass of the enemy returned carrying their newly freed comrades to the fire to warm away their frostbite.

They didn’t send anybody after us. I don’t know whatHorgias whispered in the ears of the fallen IVth as he tied the rawhide knots, but it was enough to frighten them into stillness, at least for the first part of the night.

We continued on, running into the changing light. To our left, the sun slid down until it pierced itself on the mountain’s highest spikes, spilling bloody light down the snow and leaving a long purple bruise along the ridge.

At the same time, the moon rose on our right, one day off full. It cast silver across the snow and ice, almost as bright as day, so that we could see our way as well as before.

The first century of the IVth had come this same route on a night of no moon, when the clouds sat on the ground and spilled snow waist deep in places. My respect for them grew greater, not less, as we travelled along the same path, even when Horgias and Tears and the other men tied the third enemy unit and whooped their wolf call high above the mountain as they carried on ahead of us.

Cadus was waiting for us on the path as we approached the last camp before our target, dressed in mountain clothes with none of the regalia of the parade ground, except that he carried his helmet under his arm, the plume crisping in the night air.

Under the moon’s light, his hair seemed paler than I remembered it, strung through with silver, and his skin had the tight translucence we had shared in Hyrcania, when the cold pulled our flesh hard about our bones.

Lupus ordered a halt in good order ten paces away and went forward to greet him. After three paces, he said, ‘Demalion. Follow,’ and walked on.

‘You brought all your men,’ Cadus said, as we approached. No greeting, no clashing salute, no officers’ exchange of gossip. ‘None left to guard your camp.’

Lupus lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘We disabled three units on the way. Our entire century therefore faces sevenunits of the best men in the Fourth legion. I decided it was worth the risk.’

‘All or nothing.’

‘I didn’t come here to fail.’

‘No.’ Cadus ran his tongue round his teeth, thinking. They were of a height, he and Lupus, and both mountain-fit, but in all other respects they were as different as the moon from the sun. Cadus was a big, broad man, and given to laughter. He was not laughing now, while lean-faced Lupus, by his own standards, was vibrating with a kind of wild joy.

Cadus said, ‘Do you need help?’

‘Of course. And of course I cannot accept any. They will have us all flogged if we break the rules. Centurions will not be exempted.’

‘That may be their aim,’ Cadus said slowly. His gaze was fixed on Lupus’ face. They stood a moment, each lost in the other’s thought. It came to me then that the only centurion of the two legions who did not hate Lupus was Cadus, and that I should have noticed that before now.

At length, Lupus said, ‘They set ambushes above the first three enemy encampments, and I have no doubt that if we had not… disabled them they would have endeavoured to drive us down into the camps for the men there to take us prisoner. It could be, therefore, that we may drive some men of the Fourth in your direction. If they were to stumble into your camp, might you find it acceptable to take them prisoner?’

Lupus’ eyes were wide with pretended innocence. In response, Cadus grinned in a way I’d come to know in Hyrcania.

‘I’ll set men in a chain along the route. If they run past us, we’ll take them.’ He clapped Lupus’ arm. ‘Good luck. Your men are good. If you make it, you’ll have broken the Fourth; they won’t try anything else in the last half-month before we go back to camp. Not at this end of the mountain, anyway.’

Lupus half turned, and then wheeled back again. ‘It may be that I have read this wrongly, and that they do wish to destroy our camp. If your men would make themselves ready to block their passing, I would be grateful. I’ll send Demalion back to you if it seems such a thing is likely. That does not, I believe, contravene the rules as we were given them.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Cadus agreed, which might have been true by the letter of our temporary law, but was decidedly not true to its spirit. ‘But we shall keep this conversation between us three. And Demalion, if he comes, will be returning for treatment of a wound, not to bring news of an attack.’

‘Agreed.’ Lupus looked at me; they both did.

‘Agreed,’ I said, and followed Lupus back to our lines, grinning like a fool.

We smelled the mules before we saw them; a ripe, warm scent of old hay and urine and steaming dung that left me aching to go in amongst them and run my hands under their manes to heat my fingers, as I had done as a child on the coldest days of herd-watch. I thought I knew about cold, then.

With their smell like a wall before us, we inched round the last corner to the final enemy camp on our bellies, with our faces pressed to the ice.

It was as well we were already down, for the camp built by the first century of the first cohort of the IVth legion was not like all the others, a huddle of tents with an earth rampart about, set in a vestige of shelter.

Here, at the northernmost end of the Hawk range, the men had made the mountains their ally, setting their camp with its back in a natural corner, so that the northern and western flanks were solid rock with peaks that stretched up to scrape the stars.

On the southern and eastern sides, the Blues had not grubbed in the frozen ground to throw up an earth rampartas we had done, but had built walls of stone, setting each one against the others without mortar, but solidly, so that it would have taken far more than one night to pull them down.

The only gate faced southeast, on a scree slope so that any attackers must come uphill with uncertain footing and face an opening scarcely wide enough for two to go through; a nightmare to assault, and easily guarded from the inside.

The mule stockade was fenced with logs set lengthways and kept in place by posts hammered into the ground. It stood at the southwestern edge of the camp. If there were men inside, we could not see them. In fact, we could see no men at all; as far as we could tell, all the remaining seven units of their century remained in the main compound, hidden behind the wall’s height, huddled in their tents — unless they had also spent the past two months building themselves proper barrack rooms; nothing seemed impossible.

Whatever it was, they had built themselves a camp to match the legionary fortress down below. And we had placed ourselves at war with them.

I lay face down in the snow and felt no cold. Blood hammered in my ears at the promise of action. I turned my cheek sideways and saw Lupus at my side.

‘We could climb over the wall,’ I said, ‘if Horgias has remembered what you said and gives us the diversion we need.’

‘He’s remembered,’ Lupus said. ‘Look.’

I looked, and saw what Lupus had seen and bit my lip to keep silent, for Horgias had stripped to the waist and was wearing trews in the Parthian style that made him look even more the barbarian.

Blue-skinned with cold, he was sliding like a snake down the edge of the rock that was one wall of the stockade. I watched as he paused beneath the stacked lumber that kept the mules safe, saw him delay a moment, working in theshelter made by his naked form, then rise and throw what he had made.

He had made fire from the fire-pot at his belt and the wads of pitched straw we had woven in the afternoon, so that it might take the flame and hold it, and spread it in the mules’ fodder.

In the stockade, a man shouted once: an order. I heard the sing of swords from their sheaths, many swords, and the dull ache in the air that comes from a mass of men moving to one purpose. Forgetting myself, I gripped Lupus’ arm, and he did not prise my fingers free, but murmured, ‘Steady, there… steady,’ as if I were a startled horse. I had never heard his voice so mild. He said, ‘If Tears and the others-’

‘ There! ’ I pointed to where Tears had appeared high on the stockade wall — a half-naked Tears, just like Horgias, except that he did not look like a barbarian; he was Apollo himself come amongst us. I had not seen how much he had grown in our time in the mountains, but saw it now, for he must have scaled the sheer rock that guarded the back of the camp and the mules’ stockade, and jumped down from there to run along the wall of stacked logs, and hurl his own fire deep inside.

The fires caught and flared. What had been in shadow was cast in flaring flamelight and Tears was part of it. I saw his head go up as he went from secrecy to full display, saw him twist a moment, looking down to where Horgias must have been, then stand straight and take a breath and give voice to the long, looping wolf-call that was our sign.

Horgias had deliberately mutilated it. Tears called it now better than I have ever heard; truly, he was a wolf.

As they would at a wolf, the men of the IVth threw rocks at him, careless of the injunction not to injure another. I saw Tears laugh, once, head thrown back, and then he leapt down to join Horgias and the other three, for all of themwere clustered at the stockade now, all with their blades out, crashing them against the wood, making enough noise to sound as if they were half a century.

Making noise enough for an entire cohort, the IVth sallied out against them. In their eight-man units, they charged from the stockade and the camp gate, their armour bright in the leering flames.

‘Run! Run now! Horgias! Tears! In the name of all the gods, run!’

I spoke it into the snow, silently, but they did run. Laughing still, with Horgias at his one side and Proclion, the mountain ox, at the other, Tears took off like a hunted deer, sprinting back along a wide track that led away from the stockade, and then cut up towards the mountain peak. Hard on his heels, a horde of men coursed after him, dark and baying; the hounds of a hellish master sent to bring him down. Not one of them looked back at where we lay, nor stayed to protect their base camp.

‘Go!’ Lupus jabbed at my arm, but I was already moving, sprinting forward in a spray of ice and snow, hurling myself down across the scree slope and up to the open gate to the enemy compound.

I skidded the last paces and threw myself at the solid rock as much to keep from falling as to gain admittance. My shoulder crashed against the stone. I clung to it, pressing my face to the thin-grown moss, drawing in the iced air and with it the scent of recent cooking, of roasted meat, of barley, of warmth and camp and home. To the door’s other side, Syrion mirrored me. He drew his gladius; mine was already drawn, although I didn’t remember doing it. Their woollen covers made them fat in the moonlight.

I cast a glance back. Our fourth, fifth and sixth units were nearly on us. The second and third had gone with Lupus to the mule stockade, to take the mules and as much fodder aseach man could carry. The seventh through to the tenth were holding off, ready to cover our escape. Syrion jerked his head at the opening.

‘Ready?’

I nodded.

‘Go!’

Shoulder to shoulder, we burst through the narrow gate, blades held forward like clubs. Four men waited for us, two on each side. I tripped the first, smashed the hilt of my gladius into the face of the second, bent and clubbed the fallen man on the side of his skull and stood, ready for the next.

There was no next: Lupus had trained us well and we had beaten our first true opponents in hand to hand combat. Not bad for a horse-trader’s second son who had never wanted to fight. Exhilarated, I caught Syrion’s fierce grin and returned it, then saw his eyes widen, and his lips form a silent whistle as he turned on his heel, and looked about.

What he saw was worth more than a whistle.

We had come into a small, warm compound, overshadowed by the mountain, so that it felt like a covered market, or a high cave: the IVth had, indeed, forsaken tents and built houses for each of the ten units, and one smaller, set back against the other wall, for the centurion.

I tried to remember him, this centurion; a thick-set man with a bull’s neck, a sharp nose and a head of glossy curls much too like the images of the Emperor Nero for comfort. Gaius Hostilius Liccaius, I thought, but wasn’t sure.

The houses seemed empty, which could not be: one of them had to hold Polydeuces and I did not believe they would have left him unguarded.

The plan was to find him before the IVth realized their mistake and came back from the wild hunt on which they had been lured. A dozen of our men joined us and more were pouring in through the gate, sent by Lupus who washolding guard outside against a renewed attack. I gestured two of the incomers to tie the men we had disabled and then waved the rest on; they fanned out and approached each hut in pairs.

Syrion and I took the first hut on the wall side of the compound. It was empty, although a brazier glowing in the centre showed two rows of four beds with hides and furs atop them, still crumpled as if newly vacated. The air smelled of harness oil and newly honed blades and the sweat of men waiting for war; I had come to know what that smelled like now, having been amongst it all day.

We left that hut and found the next as empty, and the next. Approaching the fourth, I heard the sound of a man’s muffled grunt, through wool, or linen, or another man’s clamped hand.

Syrion heard it too. He flung his hand up for caution, and we took more care to enter this hut together, hard, low, crouching down against the possibility of men with blades at the door.

They were not at the door. A half-unit of four stood in a line across the hut, with their beds pushed behind them, making a wall. And behind that, Polydeuces was stuck head first into a ruck of furs and hides, like a rabbit seeking its hole.

‘Here! Fourth hut, wall line. Reds to me!’ I called aloud over my shoulder; no point in secrecy now. The men of the IVth heard the same running feet as we did and knew what was coming.

Their leader was a small, wiry man with his lower face unshaved, which made him look like a haggard weasel. He spat an order in Latin and I, used to Greek, was slow to understand it, so that when they came at us, bunched in a boar’s snout formation, two in front, two a little behind at the wings, I might have fallen to them but that my body actedfaster than my mind, and I rolled sideways and down, below the level of their barely padded blades, and flung myself in a lengthways roll along the floor.

I had seen Pantera do something similar one night when we… never mind, it was in Hyrcania and we were in no real danger. Not as now, when these men had murder in their eyes and were not remotely afraid of dying under their centurion’s lash if they killed us.

Rolling, I toppled them. They fell in a clutter of stamping, cursing limbs. I bunched my legs under me and thrust upright, slamming my padded blade randomly at a calf, a heel, an elbow, as they came within reach. I felt a blow slice past my head and ducked under and slashed back, and struck out at the same time with my left hand at a shadow on that side and by the gods’ luck it wasn’t Syrion but one of the IVth who went down, choking, for I had caught his larynx and robbed him of breath. I saw another to my right and kicked at his groin, then brought my blade round in a full circular swing, straight for the great vessels of his neck.

‘Stop!’

My gladius stopped, a hand’s breadth from his throat. Even padded, it would have killed him. He stared up at me in mortal terror, and then looked past me with gratitude to Syrion, who had grabbed my arm, and was pulling me back.

‘We’re taking our man,’ he said. ‘If you let us go, we’ll leave you here. Try to stop us, and we’ll take you with us. You know what that means.’

They did, but still they did not stand and spread their arms and wave us past. ‘Our centurion will flog us if we let you go and we are not injured,’ said the leader, the unshaved weasel.

‘Tie them,’ I said. ‘Cut the bed hides for ropes. They can’t stop us if they’re bound. We don’t have to take them with us. Just do it now, while there’s time. We have more to do here.’

‘But…’ Syrion caught my eye, puzzled, and then with slow comprehension. His smile grew like the rising sun, warm on his face. ‘The Fox has nursed his plan to life?’

I grinned back. I was feeling more alive than I had for years, drunk on danger and the promise of success. ‘Get the rabbit out of his hole and safely on his way and I’ll tell you.’

The rabbit — Polydeuces — was warm and uninjured, if you forget the breaking of his pride. I sent him with the tenth unit who had waited outside to cover our retreat. They were men I knew by sight and hearing, but not by the colour of their souls; I had no idea if I could rely on them to guard my back in a tight corner. I told them to get him back to our camp if they could, or, if not, to stop with Cadus and ask for shelter there.

Outside, with Syrion at my side, I gathered the rest of our men.

‘Our orders are to return now with the rabbit,’ I said. ‘But I have a different idea. Anyone who wishes not to be a party to it may leave now.’

‘What idea?’ someone asked from the back.

‘One that might get us flogged, but will set the Fourth back for ever. Your choice. Go or stay. I won’t say it until you’ve decided.’

Those that stayed did so, I think, for Syrion. We stood in darkness, with a nearby brazier glowing red. The tinted light caught him from behind, casting him in liquid bronze. He had thrown his cloak back and was standing square with his arms folded, so that he was the very image of a Gaulish chieftain, ready for the ultimate battle. It was a sight to strengthen the weakest heart, but even so, we lost two units. We watched them go, and did not mourn their loss.

I turned in a circle on one heel, thinking.

‘Demalion?’ Syrion was at my side. ‘What are we doing?’

‘The first century of the first cohort has charge of the legion’s Eagle. We’re going to find it and take it,’ I said. ‘It’s the equivalent of taking a man, but nobody will be flogged for it.’

‘They’ll be flogged for losing it,’ Syrion said cheerfully, ‘all of them.’

And someone else, from the back, ‘We can’t steal their Eagle!’

‘Can’t we?’ I felt their eyes on me, and saw their startled looks, and knew that, in that moment, I looked like Lupus. Just then, it was a compliment.

I walked past them all. ‘We only need to hold it hostage, and see what they’ll offer for its return. But we have to find it first. Shall we look and see?’

There was only one place a legion would keep its Eagle. We broke down the wooden door — they had built a wooden door, and barred it! — to the centurion’s hut on the far side of the compound. Inside, a brazier was glowing orange, the colour a smith would use to harden a blade. It had not long been abandoned; its heat thickened our breath after the biting cold outside, and wrought the scent of cedar from the wooden walls.

A glance showed us the contents of the hut. The bed was lifted off the floor, with the legs planted in bowls of water to keep vermin away, and set beside it on the wall was a shelf for the small things a man might take on campaign: a small hand knife with a bronze handle shaped in the likeness of a wren; a pouch of gemstones, still rough from the ground; a ring set with turquoise, and a dolphin etched on it; a scroll, half read: Xenophon, On Hunting.

In the corner was a cupboard, also bolted. I broke open the lock with the hilt of my gladius, and found inside a small shrine to Jupiter Best and Greatest, and another to the bull god, beloved of the Sassanids, and behind both, proppedagainst the back wall, the flag-standard of the century with the open hand and medallions, and to the other side the Eagle of the IVth.

So much power in so small a thing. My heart tripped over. I had never seen a god, nor thought I might see one. I had never seen the emperor, to whom we renewed our oath each January. I had never even seen the governor of Syria, except at a distance from the parade ground. But daily I gave homage to our Eagle, watched its gilded wings glimmer in the rising sun as we said our prayers and renewed our oaths.

So, now, did this Eagle glimmer; its eyes gazed at us, and held us frozen. To see it was to feel the pride of our legion take hold of my heart and squeeze it tight, and I realized then how proud I was to be with the men around me, all of them, men with red armbands, men of the XIIth: my brothers.

I reached for the oakwood shaft, and stopped. Only the bravest of men carried the Eagle, for to them was drawn every enemy eye; every enemy archer and spearman tried to kill them. They were foremost in battle, and had to fight and yet keep the Eagle upright. To do such a thing was the epitome of honour. And to steal it was its opposite.

‘They took Polydeuces,’ Syrion said softly, from my side. ‘There was no honour in that, either.’

I took a breath, tasted the cedarwood and incense of the shrines, felt the touch of the gods; both Jupiter and Mithras were martial, both valued valour above all else, neither was inclined to weakness.

‘Take the furs from his bed,’ I said tightly. ‘Cover the Eagle. We’ll take only that, and leave the standard. They’ll know why.’

A bulge-eyed youth of the sixth unit looked at me and opened his mouth. ‘Don’t ask,’ I said, but Syrion, who hadmore pity and patience than I had at that moment, said, ‘It shows we didn’t care enough about their century to take their standard; we only needed to dishonour their legion.’

It was done. I carried the Eagle; I could not ask it of another man, even Syrion, particularly Syrion, who carried the sixth century’s standard with such honour. With a swathe of bear fur warming my chest, and the shaft pressed hard on my shoulder, we ran from the centurion’s house.

Some of the other huts were burning; our men had tipped the braziers on to the beds as they left. Greasy flames peeped from doorways and smoke slewed after, rising sluggishly to hover in a thick wad less than an arm’s breadth above the rooftops.

We cleared the gate in a dozen strides. The path lay ahead of us, and safety with Cadus, or the long march home. To our right, the mule stockade was empty, the wall of mule scent gone, and in its place the reek of smoke, and some blood. The entrance was churned snow, but inside men still fought. I heard a cry, just one, high and hoarse, like a gull on the sea shore, and knew the throat that made it.

‘That’s Lupus! The Fourth have come back and found him.’ I had thought him gone ahead of us, and cursed myself for not knowing better.

I thrust the Eagle at the goggle-eyed youth. His name was Kalendinus, but I learned that only later. At the time, I simply took his arms and folded them around the Eagle, with the shaft angled back over his shoulder. ‘Get this to the first of our camps along the path,’ I said. ‘Guard it with your life and tell Centurion Cadus that I said you were to do so.’ I gave him more orders, secretly, that the others didn’t hear, then said, aloud, ‘The rest of you go with him, except Syrion, who comes with me.’

I was a clerk and a courier, not even the flag-bearer that Syrion was; I was the conscript who most hated being in thelegion. But in spite of these things, or perhaps because of them, they listened as if I were the camp prefect, and left, running along the trail of our departing mules like a pack of schoolboys let loose from a lesson.