The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘ Given of the god,

Given to the god,

Taken by the god in valour, honour and glory.

May you journey safely to your destination.’

I spoke from a platform built from the parts of six wrecked wagons. The XIIth legion stood in a semicircle around, with the fire filling the gap.

The unarmoured body of a man I had never known lay in front of me on a bier made from two shields strapped together. At my word, Tears and Macer lifted him slowly, and slid him on to a chute greased with tallow; Taurus had found the quarter-stores of the IVth almost untouched and had bent his ingenuity to the problem of disposing of the dead. The result would have honoured an emperor.

Released, the body shot down into the blistering heart of the fire. There was a pause before the reek of burning hair and flesh hit us, and the oily black smoke that followed. We stood in silence until it had died away to the brilliant flame that had been before.

Two other chutes stood around the fire. I spoke the wordsof leaving twice more, over one man from each cohort to stand for them all, and then the men began the appalling work of feeding their comrades to the flames.

I stepped back after a while and let others take my place. I had never seen the men of the sixth push ahead of each other to volunteer for a task, nor bend themselves to it with such alacrity. They did not sing as they worked, nor even chant, but they were a team, a true welded unit; the thing I had prayed for these past four years.

I stepped back, and took my helmet off and ran my fingers through my hair, feeling the sweat cold on the crown of my head. Tears came to stand beside me.

‘This could take all night,’ he said.

‘We’ll be done by midnight,’ I said, with a confidence that grew only from the men in front of me. ‘We’ll sleep and then go back.’ I turned round on my heel. ‘Where’s Horgias?’

‘He thought he saw something moving in the trees up there.’ Tears jerked a thumb over his shoulder, south, to where the bleak, black wall of the pass rose up from the desert. Stark winter trees covered it completely. In the firelit evening light, they were a black fur that could have hidden half an army.

I felt a prickle of danger on the back of my neck and turned fully to look at them. And that was when I saw what Horgias had seen: shadows of men shifting between the trees.

‘Tears! Sound the alert. They’re there. Call the first two centuries. Line on me.’

But even as I spoke, a clot of about fifty men were forming a line just below the last layer of trees — and to their left, a single pair stood on a small rocky outcrop, apart from the rest, directing, ordering: the officers.

Whoever’s leading them thinks like a Roman. This is exactly what you or I or Lupus would have done.

But Horgias or Lupus or I would not have sent fifty men against five hundred, not after a day with such successes asthis one, which meant there were more men hidden in the trees, waiting for orders from the two on their rock.

I tugged my helmet from under my arm and unscrewed the centurion’s plumes. Three twists, maybe four, and they were out. I handed them to Tears. ‘Form the men into a square, all of them. Lead them towards the rebels in the trees. Keep your shields up and hold the line. Get Taurus to hold the banners for you until Horgias comes back. If he does. Can you do that?’

‘Of course.’ He didn’t ask where I was going; he had seen what I had seen. ‘Stay safe.’ He pushed me into the dark.

The night was not quite dark. I ran over rough ground, stumbling on stones and the debris of the day’s battle. Near the trees, I came upon a small, round hand-shield about a foot across with an iron boss and a good leather front. Dropping my own, larger shield, I picked up the new one and slid it on to my left fist.

Ahead, trees held the western edge of the mountain and I reached them undetected, or so I hoped. The Hebrews were all watching Tears, who had donned my transverse crest and was putting on a display of formation skills that would have impressed even Corbulo. He had horns and banners showing clear in the light, and nearly five hundred men in a foursquare block, advancing slowly, to the beat of hilts on shields, towards the rabble at the tree line.

Among the twisted shadows of the trees, I squirmed forward on my belly with my gladius in one hand and the small circular shield in the other.

The two lines clashed to my left, and below. The backs of the officers were in front of me, up a short, steep, bouldered rise. I was a dozen paces away, and all of them uphill. But I could run uphill. How often had I done so in the Hawk mountains? In the gullies of the Lizard Pass? In Antioch in all the years of shame?

‘ For the Twelfth! ’

Running like a lunatic, I smashed the boss of my shield into the face of the officer on the left, and thrust my blade at the open neck of the second.

They stumbled, but neither fell, and came back fast as vipers, with blades hissing at my ears, at my calves, so that I must twist two ways at once to get my tiny shield against their weapons.

I heard the clash of iron on hide only once; the second sound was iron skidding on armour, and striking flesh. I felt the sting of a blade on my calf, but in my rage I did not care.

They were on either side of me, left and right. I bellowed and thrust out my fist-shield and hit the one on my left hard enough to knock him over. But that exposed my back to the one on my right and I felt a blow to the back of my head as I spun round and wrenched sideways and caught his blade on my own and slid it on, down, iron on iron until the hilts caught and I could wrench it up and twist… and fall back.

A lesser man would have lost his blade then. This one twisted free and sprang away and looked round for a shield. But even then he was watching me, waiting, with his head cocked, as if I might at any moment fall over, and I did not know why except that my head was ringing and blood from the wound on my calf was running down my left leg, oozing between my toes. I dared not look down.

He smiled at me through the almost-dark, a wide, mocking smile that drove away the last vestiges of my sanity and tipped me into a true blood-red battle-rage for only the second time in my life.

I threw my little disc-shield edge first at the grinning face in front of me, and hurled myself after it, which at least wiped away his smile and gave me time to bend down by the fallen man and pick up the sword he had dropped and stamp on his head as he tried to raise it, and feel his nose break and histeeth after, and then I was facing the one still standing, two swords to his one, and breathing thanks to Horgias who had made me practise with my dagger hand until I could use it as well as the other.

The Hebrew was good; in fact, he was exceptionally good. If we had been evenly matched, I would have lost; I will own that now to anyone. But we were not evenly matched, for I had the two swords to his one and it took less than four strokes, blade against blade, high to the head and then low to his legs, for me to find the weak line in his lead and cut his sword down with my right hand and slice in at the back of his right knee with my left.

He dropped like a sack to kneel on the rock, looking up at me in shocked surprise, as if his god had promised him a long life and only now did he see the lie.

I killed him as I had killed my first man so long ago in the forests of Tigranocerta: a single backhanded cut that opened the whole side of his neck and sprayed blood in a spectacular arc across the stone.

My rage died as he did, leaving me gasping. I caught my enemy as he fell and held him until the last life left his eyes and then laid his body on the rock with his blade flat on his chest as I would have left one of our own.

Only then did I discover that my head ached savagely, and that I could not stand as easily as I might, but must kneel there beside him a moment to catch my breath while the small battle, that had never properly started, wound to its close below.

Horgias found me.

‘It’s over. Demalion? Did you hear me? It’s over. The rabble lost heart when you killed the first of their leaders and fell apart completely at the second. I asked a man their names before I killed him. The elder was Jacob, one of thesons of Giora. His cousin is Daniel, who led the assault on us this morning. They came to see what their brethren had done and saw us weeping over our dead and thought they’d take advantage, but- Demalion?’ He shook my shoulder, I remember that. ‘ Demalion! Tears! Over here! Help me carry him.’