Traitor Page 3

  I thought of what was to come. What was my next step? One thing I knew for certain was that it would be a lonely one. My brothers were gone. Must I continue to wade through their blood?

  Arminius would have had me fight beside the enemy. During the summer’s fighting in the mountains, he’d told me that I should take the pay chests of my legion, and my reputation, and join the rebels. He wanted me to stand against Rome.

  I could not.

  Not because I feared that city. Not because I thought the Empire any better than a curse. No, it was because I could not kill men like Brutus. Because I could not put my blade into the flesh of brothers.

  Rome was my enemy.

  Her soldiers were not.

  And so, what, then? Fall on my sword?

  No. Not here. This was never my home. I would go to Iadar. I would go to the place where Beatha was buried, and Octavius watched over her. I would go to the place of my beloved, and my brother.

  And then?

  And then I would watch the sun dance on the sea, and the birds ride in the air. I would listen to the wind. I would feel the warmth of the soil.

  And then I would join them.

  There were footsteps behind me. I half expected to see Arminius, but this was no prince. His name was Albus, a veteran of the legion, and regular guard to the pay chests and totem. It was a task rotated through the units, but Albus swapped duties to be here. To him, it was the highest honour and, like many with a fine record of service, his commanders granted him some freedoms that other soldiers would not receive.

  ‘Standard-bearer,’ Albus greeted me. He didn’t look like a soldier. His face was open and fair. I pictured him beneath an olive tree with children on his knee, but this man had killed gladly for Rome. ‘She never gets less beautiful, does she?’ He was talking about the eagle, of course. Touched by the emperor’s own hand. ‘When I see him I know that all the lads we lost this year are still with us, and always will be.’

  I saw how he was looking at me. He had ‘the look’. They all did. He believed he was standing in the presence of a hero of Rome.

  ‘I’m thinking about stealing the pay chests,’ I told him honestly.

  Albus laughed at the absurdity. ‘Buy yourself a nice villa and a hundred whores, eh, standard-bearer?’

  He could no more picture me taking this coin than he could the sun rising in the west. I am a hero. Heroes die for Rome. They do not steal from her.

  ‘It’s going to be a good one, isn’t it?’ Albus asked me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The campaign, standard-bearer. Probably too late in the year for it now, but when spring comes? No one will have seen anything like it. I can’t believe my luck that it’s gathering here, and that my children will get to see it.’

  I said nothing. He spoke anyway.

  ‘Three of them, now. We lost my first but the gods have been good. Three healthy children and a chance to march with Tiberius. That’s something isn’t it, standard-bearer?’

  ‘It is. Good night, Albus.’

  ‘Good night, standard-bearer. You go get some rest. We’ve got the watch from here.’

  His prideful smile was as wide as his face. There was no superiority in it. Just the simple satisfaction of an honourable duty done well.

  ‘Goodbye, Albus.’

  It was the last conversation I would have as a Roman soldier.

  * * *

  That night I left my keys and armour in my quarters as though I was going into town for a drink, then I packed a civilian tunic, a little food, and a small wooden horse that had belonged to one of my men. These, my grief and my reputation, were all that I would carry with me from this place.

  Beneath a canopy of stars, I deserted my legion.

  Chapter 5

  There was no difficulty in leaving the Eighth. I had made my decision on the mountain, surrounded by bodies and betrayal. I could not face Marcus again, and it was only a matter of time until his cohort was recalled to Siscia. And then what? He would kill me? I would kill him? I could not stay. I could not face him.

  And so I deserted.

  I did not run. I did not ride hard. There was no need for it. I simply walked out of the gate. Other soldiers were leaving too, visiting inns, friends or family.

  There were drunken soldiers coming in. Some were singing, others trying not to vomit. Soldiers are men of extremes in all things, because war is excess in all its forms. In battle, the mind and body are stretched beyond comprehension, and these men rise to that standard in the rest of their lives. They will be your best friend or your greatest enemy. They will live, or they will die. They will be sober, or they will drink. There is no in-between for the soldier.

  I would miss them.

  As I passed through the town’s streets I saw a scuffle – light infantry against heavy. I stopped to watch. There were happy memories for me here. The memory of brothers, and us against the world.

  Gods I missed them.

  The soldiers’ punches began to get tired, and sloppy. The guard force would be coming soon. The men knew it, and at some invisible, mutually agreed-upon signal they broke apart. They hauled their comrades to their feet. Draped arms over their friends’ shoulders, and grinned through bloody teeth.

  I watched them saunter away, and on to their next adventure, together.

  I would have to take mine alone.

  * * *

  I bought a horse for nearly double its worth, but paid the robbery no mind. I would have no need for coins. Let the stable owner treat his children, or his mistress.

  I left Siscia with the ghosts of fallen comrades on my shoulders. As soldiers we had been drilled to exhaustion, carrying and dragging each other until our shoulders burned in their sockets. With such training our bond grew as strong as our bodies, but the weight of that brotherhood settled more heavily on me now than ever.

  Would they be ashamed of me?

  I thought of this as I left the town and used the stars to guide myself west. I kept away from roads to avoid being seen, but the ground was mercifully level, at least for the time being. Still, I walked my horse. The moon was yet to rise, and I couldn’t risk his legs in an unseen rabbit hole, or on a rock. I wouldn’t reach the mountains until the early hours, and I needed to reach them before dawn. Every army has its deserters. Every army has its hounds that hunt them.

  As the hours slipped by, I thought of my brothers in arms.

  Like Brutus, Priscus was a true believer in Rome, but he was also a gentle man who would give his last coin to a hungry child. Would he understand why I was deserting?

  What of Octavius? He took nothing in life seriously. He’d think that this was a big joke.

  And Varo. Varo…

  Shame burned my face as I thought of him. I wasn’t there when he died. I wasn’t there to recover his body.

  Could he yet live?

  I knew that such thought was folly. Varo was as dead as the rest of them, and likely his end had been far worse – torture. Degradation. A passing from life unfit for the warrior and man that he was.

  My horse tensed between my legs.

  Something was wrong.

  He lifted his head up. This mount was new to me. I did not know him well enough to know what was on his mind.

  We stopped. We listened. I felt him ready.

  For what? Wolves?

  Yes. The human kind.

  There were voices on the night air.

  I looked to the sky. The moon was rising beyond the mountains, bright enough for me to see its scars. The plain was about to be illuminated by its light.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I was the standard-bearer of the Eighth Legion, alone, in the middle of the night. I didn’t have my armour, or helmet. I had a sword on one hip, a dagger on the other. I was known to my legion, but not the others – not by my looks, at least. If the men were mounted and fought for Rome, they were likely auxiliary soldiers. Was their Latin good enough for me to explain who I was? Would they even want to
listen? It was good sport to chase down a deserter. That was why they were here, no doubt.

  I swore beneath my breath. The end of the plain was now bright with moonlight. It crept closer and closer along the valley floor.

  Another voice.

  Not Latin.

  Rebels?

  There. I saw them. Four men. Mounted. Moving. Spaced apart. Was this a sweep?

  I heard them call.

  I heard a reply.

  There. Four more.

  I was in a net, and it was closing.

  No more time to think. The rising moon made my decision for me.

  I dug my heels hard into the horse’s flanks. He was stronger than I’d expected. Faster. I almost lost my grip as he bolted towards the moonlight. We raced for it at full speed. I could see the mountain’s flanks cloaked in woods. In there I stood a chance.

  They were shouting, now. Riding. Racing. Four of them on each flank, and no amateurs. They were not riding for where I was, but to where I would be.

  Into the moonlight. My mount could see its footing now, gaining confidence and speed.

  ‘Come on!’ I urged him.

  I heard calls to stop, in Latin. Accented. Ignored.

  ‘Come on!’

  I saw them well. Big men on big horses. In the moonlight they were as grim as titans. The thunder of hooves built. We drew closer.

  ‘Stop!’ they cried. ‘Stop!’

  I would not stop.

  The two groups of riders converged.

  Their net was closed.

  But I was ahead of it. Ahead by five lengths, no more.

  The trees were close. There was no way for me to control my horse. I had to put all my faith in him. A branch would be the end of me and so I pressed myself down onto his back, and into his neck. The stink of him filled my nostrils and then we were whipping through branches, stumbling, but going. Stumbling, but escaping.

  I chanced to turn my head and look back. The moon penetrated the canopy, but only a little. I did not see a pursuit. I did not hear one. I bid my horse to slow, then stop.

  I slid from his back. His flanks heaved. I thanked him, then pushed the point of my dagger into his thigh. Just enough that he jumped from me, and feared me. He’d saved my life. He deserved better than to follow me.

  I sat down and waited. I heard the riders calling to each other but their words were lost, and grew more faint.

  Silence, then the hoot of an owl. The fluttering wings of a bat. The forest breathed again.

  I stood, and continued my flight into the mountains.

  Chapter 6

  I found a trail, and through a break in the canopy I orientated myself to the stars and confirmed that I was heading west. I was still far from the savage mountains where the legion had fought and bled. Instead I crossed rolling hillside that grew steeper and sharper throughout the night. By the time the golden rays of dawn had fallen through the trees I was over fifteen miles from Siscia. I was sore, but I had been that way for months. Such is the lot of an infantryman at war.

  Sometime deep in the night I’d curled up in dense undergrowth and closed my eyes. After a fitful sleep that did little to revive me, I lay in the dirt and awaited the full arrival of day. Heat began to build. So too the chatter of birds, and insects. The woods were alive around me, indifferent to their guest. I did not hear or see anything that would make me believe that I was being followed.

  I dug out a small hollow in the earth and then stripped myself of my army tunic, burying it without ceremony. I pulled on a dark tunic that I’d bought on my return from Brutus’s home, and refastened my weapons at my waist.

  I looked down at myself. With a gladius on my hip I looked as much a soldier as before.

  I buried the blade and my military belts in the dirt, too. The dagger I would need, and I placed this in the small pack that held the toy horse and a little food.

  I was checking my surroundings when it hit me – a blinding flash of pain through my skull. For a moment I thought that I had been hit by a stone, or stung by a hornet, but in the next seconds I stopped thinking about anything else but the pain. It was a headache, I realised, but one unlike any I had ever experienced. When it retreated, it left me breathless.

  I had never been one for signs, or omens, but when I looked at the burial place of my soldier’s sword, I knew that I was being punished for deserting.

  So be it.

  I walked on.

  * * *

  I walked on through the morning. It was pleasant country. There was shade beneath the trees. The air was warm, but not stifling. There were birds, and there was birdsong.

  Of course, there could be enemies too, and I watched for these, but saw none. It struck me that there would be little reason for them to be here. I was twenty miles from the nearest legion. It would be a poor ambush that was set here, on this woodland trail, but I reminded myself that my first military action was against brigands, not rebels. Banditry was a part of life, and life had not stopped because Rome was at war. Rome was always at war.

  It was in the late afternoon that I saw them. There were meadows between the wood-cloaked hillsides, and they were crossing to the western end of one as I knelt, watching and waiting before crossing myself. It was a good sign that no one rode out to trap them in the open. Hard to judge who they were, but they moved slowly. Not soldiers. Nothing shone on them.

  I decided that this pair would be useful to me, and so I tailored my speed to stay far enough behind them that I could observe, unseen, as they crossed any more open ground. Watch to see if they spring traps that would otherwise ensnare me. I held too far back to notice much about them, though through their lack of pace, and awkward gait, I made at least one of them out to be injured, or infirm.

  My plan to use them as a shield worked far into the evening. It worked until I began to feel Beatha’s disapproval. What would she think of me, letting others walk into danger instead of protecting them from it? How could I ever face her until I became a man worthy of her love?

  I thought of calling out to them but decided against it. They would run. People always run.

  Instead I closed the ground to them. Before the next meadow, I would announce myself.

  We reached it when the sun was falling, and in their eyes.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I told them.

  They looked very afraid.

  They were an old man and his daughter. She had thick lips and a broad face. He had withered limbs but strong eyes. I saw in them that he was already resigned to die. She was not.

  ‘I’ll stab you in the balls,’ she promised. ‘Just leave us alone.’

  I held my empty hands up.

  ‘I mean you no harm. I just want to walk the road together.’ I had remembered the stories that my tutor Cynbel had taught me as a child. How the men of Greece were bound by a code to protect strangers on the road – even if it was against those who would usually be their allies.

  The old man watched me for a few breaths. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Corvus.’

  ‘Are you a deserter?’

  I opened my mouth, but could not speak. The words finally fell out. ‘I am.’

  ‘Are you armed, Corvus the Deserter?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘If you’re going to kill us, I ask that you make it quick.’

  ‘Father!’

  But he smiled. Confident that such a plan was not on my mind. He had seen something in me. ‘He’s not going to kill us,’ the old man promised his daughter. ‘Are you, Corvus?’

  * * *

  We shared some of the food from my pack, and talked. Jaro and his daughter Jolka had evaded the war so far, but knew that it was close.

  ‘I heard about the army in Siscia,’ the old man explained. ‘Even if we don’t get caught up in the fighting, what are we going to eat? They say Tiberius has brought more than fifty thousand men, and that means fifty thousand stomachs, and their horses. Who do you think’s getting fed first? Us, or the horses?’
r />   I said nothing.

  ‘The horses, that’s who. It’s always the same. You lot start the war, but you’re never the ones to go hungry, are you?’

  He said it genially enough, but Jolka took offence on my behalf. ‘I’m sure he didn’t start the war, father.’

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ the old man went on. ‘You stick a uniform on a bloke and girls forget that he’s just the same lump of flesh as any other man. Go all weak at the knees they do, and then what? He marches off and never comes back. He’s dead, and now she’s got a baby to raise on her own, and who’s she coming to for money then? Me, that’s who!’

  He shook his head. ‘It was different when I was young. People had respect. Even you bloody Romans had the decency to fight your wars against each other, and not bother us with it.’

  ‘I’m not a Roman,’ I explained. ‘I’m Dalmatian.’

  ‘Ha! And I’m the Emperor Augustus.’

  ‘I grew up in Iadar.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You did?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘As a Roman citizen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’re Roman,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Doesn’t make you a bad bloke. Why’d you desert then?’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘I had enough of war.’ I spoke honestly.

  ‘Well, that’s a good reason to desert,’ the old man confirmed. ‘Not much use in the army for a soldier who’s had enough of war. Are you going back to Iadar?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you’re going the right way. When we hit the river Una, follow it south, then strike west when you reach its source. That’ll land you right in Iadar.’

  I thanked Jaro for his directions, though I would not be heeding them. The Una was a wide and tumbling river that ran northwards before emptying into the Sava, with many settlements along its banks. I would be using the sun and the stars to strike south-west, through the mountains, and away from towns, villages and their many eyes.

  We walked on. I heard stories of distant cousins who had owed Jaro a coin, and distant politicians who had robbed him of his homeland.