Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth (33 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
N
INE

WE WERE EIGHT
hundred; all that was left of the XIIth legion, not including the cavalry. Cadus had begged to be allowed to stay, but he was the only surviving officer of the cavalry and Gallus had ordered him to lead his men safely through the pass.

And so we were left, we veterans who had lived through the humiliation of Raphana, and those who had joined us since, and we were not divided now; only by thinking hard could we remember that we had not always been as brothers.

I don’t think any man amongst us begrudged those who were leaving. In that, if nothing else, it was like the battle at Lizard Pass, when we counted ourselves lucky to be allowed to face Vologases’ cataphracts while others fled. This time, though, we intended that those who left us must get clear away, and so we threw ourselves into the deception.

Taurus organized five hundred men in groups of four to forage for firewood, noisily. The rest of us built fires, lit them, stood around them, spoke quietly, laughed, cooked and shared a meal, then passed on to the next one and did the same again, all with our standards in the centre; not so close to any fire that they might be counted, but close
enough
for the Eagle to catch the light of a dozen fires and be burnished by them, so that it hung over us, suspended in the black night, casting its own light back down on our helms and our armour as we moved and talked and moved again. None of us slept.

I found Tears just before daybreak; or rather, I allowed myself to go to him, when I had not through the night. He was sitting on an upturned shield with his knees hugged to his chin. He said nothing as I came near, only shifted a little by his fire as if to make space in a crowd and handed me a new-baked oatcake, hot and steaming, scorched a little at the edges, as I liked it, so that I could taste fire and corn and the melting sweetness at its heart, where the dough was still soft.

I had the Parthian war bow with me, slung over my shoulder. He had still not seen me shoot it, not properly; he had always been too busy.

‘Have you any arrows for that?’ he asked.

‘None.’ I unhooked it and held it balanced on my open palms. ‘I could burn it. The wood’s strong and true. It would hold a flame a long time.’

‘No, you couldn’t.’ His smile flashed and was gone. ‘If you were going to do that, you’d have done it half a night ago, when the cold began to bite. Let someone find it. A good bow deserves to be used.’

‘Even against us?’

‘It won’t be against us. We’ll be dead. We won’t care, and I don’t think the bow will care either. You’ve killed enough with it to balance your side of the scales. It can help another man to do the same.’

‘Maybe.’ Firelight rippled the white wood in colours of amber, copper and bronze. I watched it a while, seeing the glyphs on the inner face march up the length of the body to the curved horn tips and back again. I still had no idea what they said.

Presently, I put it away and we sat in silence, watching the flames and each other until Horgias and Taurus came to stir the embers of a fire nearby and we joined them, to lay on more wood. When, shortly after, Macer joined us, and then Lupus, we felt complete.

Taurus, too, had made oatcakes, which we shared, along with those from Tears’ fire, as if it were a god’s day, to celebrate.

I had two in my hands, and was steaming myself in their scent, when Macer lifted from his tunic a small fired pot the size of a hen’s egg, with honey bees marked in scored lines round the sides.

‘I have this,’ he said, and we all looked at him, for the shyness with which he had said it; Macer had never been a shy man.

‘Honey?’ Tears laughed. ‘Have you carried that all the way from Antioch, just for this?’

‘Further than that.’ Macer was grinning like a fool. ‘I brought it from Moesia when I was ordered to leave the Seventh. I thought that if I ever had occasion to share it, I would know I was a man of the Twelfth at last.’

He stopped smiling. ‘In Antioch, I thought I would die of old age and never have reason to open this. Many times these last days, I have feared I might die with it still in my tunic when we should have had it already.’

He held the jar on the flat of his palm, near the fire. It was sealed with dark red wax that stood in a blob over the top surface and ran down in uneven runnels about the bees. With all eyes on him, he drew his knife and cracked it open, and the smell of honey drenched us, like the smell of waxed bowstrings, multiplied a thousandfold.

As a priest at a sacrifice, Macer used his knife to lift a nugget of comb from the pot. He offered it to Lupus, then a second to me, then Horgias, Tears and Taurus. Last, he helped himself and spread it on his oatcake.

‘There was just enough,’ he said. ‘Some god guided us to this; just us.’ He raised his head. I had never seen his eyes so clear, so set in their purpose. Macer the Mournful had gone in the night and a new man inhabited his skin. ‘I would help to hold the Eagle,’ he said. ‘If you will permit me?’

‘Every man will hold the Eagle,’ Lupus said, ‘All eight hundred of us. It’s the only order: that we die before it is taken. But if you wish to be shield-man to Horgias’ shield-man, you are free to do so.’ He stood, a little stiff from the cold. ‘We’d best make ready. I can see you all by more than firelight. And if I can see you, the Hebrews will soon see how few of us there are here. It won’t take long. By noon, it should all be over.’

I stood at the heart of the increasing crowd who gathered about the standards and there was a sense of quiet competence as we fastened buckles and checked the grips on our blades. There was none of the fire, the zeal, the heroism-in-waiting that had attended us at the Lizard Pass when we faced the King of Kings’ army; just a job to be done and then peace at the end of it.

Day was coming on us more strongly with every heartbeat. The sky was heavy with the scent of rain, and a low, thick cloud held the valley walls, hovering just above our heads. We knew that it had been sent by the gods to aid our subterfuge; for a long time after true dawn we were still no more than helmets flashing in the mist, swords and shields scraping into position and units of men muttering amongst themselves, giving thanks to Jupiter, to Mithras, to Helios.

Lupus walked quietly among the men. ‘Hold the Eagle as long as you can. There is no other order.’ I heard his voice echoing back through the mist, over and over, impossible to tell its direction.

‘What will you do?’ He spoke in my ear. I jumped, and
snatched
away my sword, which had stabbed upward without my asking.

‘Fight,’ I said. ‘What else?’

‘Do you have your bow still?’

‘Yes. But I have no arrows.’ The bow lay near the fire where Tears had made his oatcakes. I reached down to pick it up and held it out to Lupus. ‘Do you want it?’

‘Regrettably, now is not the time for me to learn how to use a bow with true skill. But you have the skill. And I have a gift for you.’ From behind his back, Lupus brought a fistful of arrows. Even at a fast glance, I counted eight. In the grey light, their shafts were dark, almost black, and the feathers sullied, but still intact.

He read the question in my eyes and gave a brief, almost shy, shrug. ‘They’re from the bodies of the men you hit the other day. You and the others. I went back in the night and took them out. I thought you might have use for them.’

His brow rose as it always had, but there was an honesty in his eyes that stabbed me with sorrow for the first time since we had made our decision to stay.

‘I won’t waste them,’ I said, and heard the thickness in my own voice.

‘Good.’ He looked about us, frowning. ‘The mist is lifting.’ He took a sharp breath. ‘This is it.’

We were already in position; buckles fast, swords out, shields to hand. As one man, in stillness, we watched the mist thin and rise until, at last, we could see this place where we had chosen to die.

Wide and flat and shallow, we had come without knowing it to a bowl in the very foot of the pass. The path to freedom meandered up the mountainside before and rose steep and narrow behind, but here was the perfect battleground, a plate of turfed earth with little by way of boulders or rocky debris to hamper us.

The heights were hemmed about by winter trees, blowing ragged in the coming breeze, shading the grey hillside with copper. The scent was of dying fires, and oiled leather, and iron; the scent of any army in the morning; the scent of awaited death; a scent so peaceful, I could have lain down with that as my shroud, and slept.

And that was when the sun scraped through a finger’s width of mist and Helios cast a single ray, spear-straight, at our Eagle, washing it with living light, the breath of the gods.

Horgias took hold of the haft and raised it up so that it flew above us, our guardian and our care, ours to protect until death.

We cheered, how could we not? And so revealed how very few we were.

There was a moment’s raggedness, as the wind caught the last hurrahs and tore them to shreds. Then I caught a glint of sun on iron somewhere on the hill high to my left, and another along the valley, and another on the shoulder of the mountain to my right, and another, if I craned my head to look behind, along the pathway that led out of the valley, and another and another, as our enemies rose from the places in which they had been hidden, and so revealed how very many they were.

They began to group together, moving easily through the scrub and debris of the pass as if they knew each bush and rock. The first we saw were not the Roman-clad men we had faced before, but lean warriors in rough tunics belted in plain leather, bareheaded and barefoot, carrying long-spears, small shields and side swords. Each one carried a sling, and a pouch of lead shot over his shoulder.

They took stances above us on left and right, before and behind, and one among them put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, as a boy does to his goats.

What came then down the wide, meandering path that led from the east was not goats but men on horseback and on foot, men in mail and helmets, bearing shields and spears, men mounted on …

One man mounted on a Berber mare, milk white in her coat, with her mane down to her knees flowing black as a Parthian heart and she as beautiful as any living thing might be, with a long, loose-limbed walk that made my heart turn over and my eyes sting, so that I had to dash away tears with the back of my hand and even then I could not tear my eyes from her to see whom she bore.

‘There’s gold on his helmet,’ someone said nearby; Horgias, I think. ‘That’s the king.’

‘Demalion, is there any chance …?’ Lupus was still close by. His voice snapped me back into myself. The bow lay at my feet, but even as I eyed the distance, I knew there was no point in picking it up. ‘Too far,’ I said. ‘I’d only waste an arrow. But if he comes closer, I’ll take him.’

‘Take the ones near him, too,’ Tears said. ‘The giant with the axes near to his right is Parthian and on his left is a centurion, a traitor to Rome.’

‘But neither of those is giving the orders,’ Lupus said. ‘See to the right hand of the king, in the tunic and the red shoulder cloak, bearing only a shield and a sword? That’s the man they’re listening to. And he’s a Roman or I’m a Gaul.’

‘Are you not?’ Horgias eyed him in mock horror. ‘All those years and I thought you were one of us.’

‘So it’s Gaulish you are, is it?’ Taurus asked cheerfully. ‘Is that why you never told us?’

‘Horgias is no more Gaulish than I am,’ Tears said. ‘My bet is that his mother had a late night meeting with a Briton.’

‘Or a Dacian.’

‘Or a—’

Macer died, with a lead slingshot embedded in the bridge
of
his nose. He stayed upright a moment, caught in the tight press of men, then I stepped back, cradling him, and eased him to the ground.

When I stood up to the line again, I had the bow in my hand and an arrow nocked, ready to shoot. No one was laughing now. The ease and peace of the morning was gone with the mist, in its place an unyielding hardness and an urge to kill and keep on killing.

‘If I live,’ I said grimly, ‘I will kill the king and the men around him. Just let them come within range so I don’t waste the arrows.’

‘We shall keep you alive, then,’ Lupus said. ‘You can be the last one to hold the Eagle.’

Around me, Tears, Horgias and Taurus spoke their assent in their different ways. It was a pact sealed with Macer’s blood, heard by the gods who knew our standard and all who had died beneath it already.

Taking the Eagle with us, we began to march towards the oncoming army.

They offered us peace.

A small man with a huge nose stepped forward from their ranks, bearing a shield decorated with the eagle’s wings and thunderbolts of the XIVth Martia Victrix, which was renowned for its role in suppressing the revolt in Britain.

He raised a gladius high above his head. I thought both it and the shield stolen, until he spoke in the nasal tones of northern Italy and labelled himself undeniably Roman; three of them, then, at least: three traitors to Rome. I spat on the ground.

‘Men of the Twelfth!’ That voice carried over us all, hoarse as a crow’s. ‘You have served your masters valiantly, holding this place while they scurried for safety. Your fight is no longer theirs. There is no reason for you to die here in
a
forgotten valley. Join with us who fight for Menachem, the rightful king of Jerusalem. He honours us, as the Emperor Nero honours us, and as he will honour you!’

He was met by silence. I was not in the front rank, but I felt no move from them to answer him. Lupus was our leader. I glanced at him and down at my Parthian bow.

‘In range?’ Lupus asked, barely moving his lips.

‘Easily.’

The men around me stepped away a little. Seeing the movement, the Roman smiled and spread his hands in welcome, presenting all his mailed chest as a target.

I could have shot him in the chest, but I remembered Macer and aimed instead for his face. He fell, soundless, just as Macer had done.