Traitor

To Dave

Part One

Chapter 1

It is better to die in darkness.

Better you don’t witness the open wound. Better you don’t see the pumping blood. Better you don’t recognise the lie in your mate’s face when he tells you: ‘You’ll be all right.’

Such empty promises lay all around me on the mountainside. With the dawn we had come, Rome’s blade, and we had slit the throat of those who had dared to defy the world’s greatest empire.

The soldiers of the Eighth Legion had taken the hill and the small fort on top of it for the glory of Rome. I could see that glory now. Smell it. It stank of piss, and guts, and smoke, and fear.

It was not the silent place you might imagine. No, there was noise all around me. The laughter of those who had cheated death. The wails of those who awaited it. The pleas, the prayers, the praise. Battle does not treat every man equally. This day had been the making of some. Torture for others. Many would look back on it with smiles. Others would not look back at all.

And what of me?

On this mountain and others like it I had killed while wearing the armour of the legions, but I had not fought for Rome. First, I had fought for brothers, and this day I had fought for answers – though they were answers that I did not want to hear. Marcus, my oldest friend, had been advancing on the fort along the opposite slope. I needed to find him in the chaos. The blood. I needed to know the truth of one death – a death from our past – before I met my own.

Knowledge of Marcus’s betrayal had ridden with me here from our hometown on the coast, but the acceptance of his act had not. Rather, there was hope. Just the thought of what he had done to Beatha ripped my spirit in two, but I had hoped that some contrition or plea for mercy on his part would allow me to forgive him, my friend, my brother.

He had offered neither.

Instead, he had vengeance, but had seen in my heart that I wanted my friend back more.

And so, he had struck.

‘You were never my brother.’

My hope had departed with him. My passion for war, a flame that had burned brightly since the murder of my beloved Beatha six years ago, was extinguished. I had yearned for combat and the chance to lose myself in battle, but that fire had gutted me.

I was feared. I was known. I was Corvus the killer. Corvus, hero of the Eighth Legion… or so men thought. In truth, I was no more than the ash that climbed above this battlefield.

‘Standard-bearer?’

I barely heard the words. My eyes were on the eagle that I had carried onto the fort’s low walls. It was as battered and bloody as I was. I called him Gallus – famed chicken of the Eighth – but Gallus had never approved of the joke, and a silver eye peered back at me from beneath its gilded, gore-covered hood.

‘Standard-bearer?’

Why was he looking at me like that?

‘Standard-bearer?’ Silence, and then… ‘she’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

I turned. What sight did I make? My head was covered by a thick, bloodied bearskin that ran down over my shoulders. My own hide was dark from the sun, my eyes rimmed black from war. The muscles of my arms and legs were scarred and knotted like the ropes of the port city where I had grown up, and dreamed of Rome. Dreamed of Beatha.

But I was not that child now. I was a vision of war itself. A sight to behold, even to a fellow killer.

‘It was an honour to fight beside you today,’ the man told me.

I became aware that I was being watched, not just by this man, but by others. Such is the lot of a hero. I had to find my legs. I had to find words.

‘Paulus.’

He was a centurion. A good one. He was a stranger to me before the dawn. By the time that the sun was atop the mountain, we had stood beside each other in the front rank. Faced death as boulders had been released towards us, leaving bloody red smears through our files. Drill and discipline had carried the day. Roman shields on shoulders had provided the ramp into the enemy’s home. Then, on the wall, it was us who had done the killing. Thoughts of that slaughter returned to me now.

‘You saved my life,’ I told Paulus.

It was true. My mind fixed upon finding Marcus, I had almost fallen to a rebel blade in my back. Paulus had struck first. Without him, I would not have the answers that I had now. Painful answers, yes, but ones that I needed to hear.

Paulus’s face was thin. Before the fight, he’d looked hungry for battle. Now, he had an appetite for something else.

‘There’s wine and whores down in the valley, standard-bearer.’ He was ready for them. ‘I’ve already sent most of my lads back down with the slaves that we’ve taken. Another cohort is going to finish up destroying this place. Would you join us for a drink? It would be an honour for the lads.’

‘The honour is all mine.’ That was the kind of thing that a standard-bearer would say, and so I said it. I was too numb to feel otherwise. I moved as a ghost. The blade of betrayal had left me hollow.

A final look at the bodies all around me. The broken promises. I would be the only dead man who walked down from this mountain.

The senior centurion stepped forwards, and offered me his hand.

‘For Rome!’ Paulus shouted. ‘For the Eighth Legion!’

There was wine in his hand. More of it on his chin, and breath, and tunic.

The roar of battle is loud, but the din of drunken soldiers is forever a contender.

‘To victory!’ a veteran shouted.

Toasts, libations, cheers and song. Somewhere in the valley, the enemy who had survived the day were roped together, spending their first terrified night as slaves. The women would be raped. The men would be beaten, or worse. It had been a frustrating war – a deadly game of hide and seek where the only winners were the maggots that fed on the dead. In such conflict, the unseen enemy was gladly tortured when they were finally caught, and made flesh.

I watched the soldiers drink. They drank, and laughed, and cursed – even wept. No man is the same in how he celebrates survival, except for the fact that he does celebrate. Perhaps a prayer. Perhaps a whore. Perhaps a proclamation: ‘I wasn’t scared!’

One after another they came to me. They came to see the eagle. By virtue of being the man who carries it, and with my past deeds mistaken for valour, these soldiers were eager to talk to me. The young ones, and the old.

‘Standard-bearer! I was in the front rank with you! Did you see me?’

‘Standard-bearer! It was an honour!’

‘Standard-bearer, how many did you kill?’

I should have been grateful that I was known for actions, not words. A nod was usually enough. A sentiment. ‘You did your comrades proud.’

There were ghosts here, of course, the spirits of the men who left their blood and gore on a mountainside far from home. But victory is a powerful antidote for grief. ‘Yes,’ we said, ‘they died, but they died for something.’ The soldier with guts on his feet, crying for his mother: he died a noble death. He died for the glory of Rome.

‘Everything all right, standard-bearer?’

Yes. No. There were ghosts here. Ghosts that would not leave me. Beatha. My fallen comrades; Priscus, Octavius and Varo – they hadn’t even left us his body. They were ghosts. Ghosts of the valley. Ghosts of the mountains.

As was my brother. I thought I’d lost Marcus to the reality of war. The truth was that I had never known him. War hadn’t made him a killer. He was born that way, and I had been too stupid to see it. Years ago, when Beatha was killed, I mistakenly ran to the legions for vengeance, turning my blade on brigands and rebels. People who had no fight against me, until I came into their homes and made one. The true villain lay unpunished, and I had done nothing but take my own misery, and spread the flaming embers of it across Pannonia.

‘Standard-bearer. Everything all right?’

‘Too much wine.’

‘Your cup’s full.’

‘I think I will retire.’

I moved. They saw me going. All of them.

Paulus stood on a cart. ‘Three cheers for the standard-bearer!’

The roars crashed against me. I could barely stand.

‘Too much wine,’ I said again.

I left the victors.

The ghosts came with me.

Chapter 2

The legion was on the move. Part of it, at least: the Tenth Cohort was to return to base, while the others would continue to hold supply lines open for Rome, and closed to the enemy.

My actions were automatic. Practised. Muscle memory. I rode with the headquarters element, Gallus in my hand. My mind was in the past; my lips were sealed. This went unnoticed by the staff officers who rode close to me. I was given the job of carrying the eagle because I proved my worth in fighting. I was not expected to think, or give counsel. That role was filled by noble men with noble bearing. They were members of Rome’s ruling class, elite by birth. Though I was a citizen of Rome, I would rarely be welcomed inside of their homes, and never welcomed inside of their daughters. Rome was a hierarchy, and on that ladder, I ranked closer to the people that I killed than the people who told me to go and kill them.

The current of the war was carrying me to Siscia. There, an army led by Tiberius awaited. He was the heir to Emperor Augustus. That meant little to me. I had never met either one of them, and that Tiberius was heir to the region’s rebellion meant little more. It was Tiberius who would crush the same rebel armies that he had himself raised to fight for Rome, barely six months ago. He was a father killing a son, a very Roman act. Romulus and Remus themselves were cast into a river by their father, Mars. No doubt the god of war would be pleased with what was happening here in these mountains.

Rome had asked too much of its new subjects in this region. A generation ago, during the conquest, it had taken the fighting men as slaves. This year, when it had asked the sons of those very prisoners to fight for Rome, they had instead turned their arms on those who had made animals of their fathers. The people who lay butchered across Pannonia had been subjects of Rome, and under her protection. They’d had a voice, and a future, so long as it was the same voice and future decreed by the Empire.

It had not been, and so they had to die.

This did not sit well with me, nor with Arminius. He was a German prince that served Rome with his cavalry, but he did so with a heavy heart. As a man of principle, and a lover of freedoms, he saw this war for what it was. I didn’t have the mind of a prince, or the words of a noble, but what I had done in the name of Rome just felt so…

Wrong.

I knew that war was as natural to man as breathing, but in our towns we imposed laws that forbade citizens to kill each other in the streets, so why could we not do so on a grander scale? Why did it seem that our first and last answer was blood?

I had tried to talk to my commanders about my misgivings, but I was famed for fighting, not thinking, and they had dismissed me as a simpleton. I was there to carry an eagle and thrust a sword. Only those with nobility and breeding knew what it took to govern Rome and her subjects. I was just there to kill who they told me to.

I had thought of taking my own life.

I had come close, the sword point to my chest. I had only to fall forwards, but I had brought so much misery to the world, how could I leave it and face Beatha in the afterlife? Surely she would want me to right some of my many wrongs…

But how?

Arminius knew that I wanted more. That I needed an act of contrition. He would have me join the rebels. He would have me take them the legion’s coin, and a legionary’s skill.

But could I?

Could I pick up arms against the men who had fought with me on this hillside, or in the valley outside Siscia, when we had routed an enemy ten times our number? That day I had used an eagle for support as I carried my wounded brother, and men had mistaken me for a hero who gave a shit about the glory of Rome. That day had taken me from the ranks, and elevated me to a position I neither cared about, nor had asked for.

I had never seen Tiberius, nor stood in the presence of an emperor. I had never set foot in Rome, though I had ended many lives in her name.

No more. I’d killed my last man on that mountainside. I was letting myself be carried along with the legion, letting myself drift, because in Siscia there was something I had to do.

Then, perhaps, I could free myself of the curse that had been my life as a soldier.

‘Sir!’

Three riders were closing. They reined in close to the commander, a stern-faced tribune. The flanks of the horses heaved. The scouts’ eyes were wide.

The last time I’d seen them, they had been four.

‘Make your report,’ they were told.

‘There’s a ford up ahead, sir.’ And I knew what would be coming next. ‘The enemy are holding it.’

The river ran red.

The commanders of the Tenth Cohort had decided on a simple plan to dislodge the enemy from the opposite side of the river: they would cross it, and kill them.

‘Sirs,’ I had suggested, ‘maybe we could find another place to cross.’

‘You think we should flank them?’ One of the younger tribunes had asked.

‘No, sir, I think we should avoid them.’

The staff officers had believed I was making a joke, and laughed. ‘Send the Seventh Century,’ their leader had ordered. ‘They didn’t get much of a taste at the hill fort. This fight belongs to them.’

And the Seventh Century had gone, ready, and willing, and smiling, and snarling.

Now they were dying. Now they were dead. There were no bodies floating in the river – the weight of their chainmail saw to that – but the life blood of many a soldier had spilled, and would now nourish the land of their enemy.

‘I want to get up there,’ Paulus grunted beside me. It was the fifth time he’d said it. Ever since the first shouts and clash of steel had carried back to us, the senior centurion of the Tenth had wanted to get into the fight.

The enemy force holding the ford was a small one, no more than a hundred men, but the river was deep, and they could keep a narrow front. As well as the spears of the rebels, the men fighting in the waters had to deal with the plunging fire of archers on higher ground.

‘How many do you think we’ve lost?’ Paulus asked me, then answered his own question. ‘We must have twenty lads down. The tribune needs to push another century in. The rebels are only standing because they can’t see the whole cohort. They’ll run if they do.’

I nodded but said nothing. Like so much of this land, the ford was in a winding valley that obscured vision for more than a hundred paces.

‘He should cram everyone up to the river. That will show them.’

I didn’t answer. Instead I looked up at the sides of the valley, and the shrubs and trees that covered the hillsides. I judged the tribune’s caution to be worthy. There was nothing to say that the ford was not bait in a trap.

‘Have the hillsides been cleared?’ I asked.

Paulus nodded, then shrugged when I said nothing. ‘I’ll send another patrol.’

He walked over to the tribune, and my eyes fell on the backs of the men who were fighting for their lives in the river. I was too far away to see their faces, but I could hear the screams and the shouts. The enemy still held the bank.

Paulus returned. He was smiling.

‘Ready for some fun?’

I had decided at the hill fort that I had killed my last man for Rome, but I could no more say that openly than I could spit on the altar of the gods. Frustrated with the lack of progress, the tribune had told Paulus to take forty men and cross the river higher up, so that we might flank the enemy. As I had been the one to suggest this course of action earlier, it was naturally assumed that I would want to be a part of leading it.

‘Drop your shields,’ Paulus told the men who were now forming around him. ‘Armour too. Keep your helmets on and bring a javelin. Standard-bearer, are you coming?’

That question was because I had not moved to strip my armour. ‘I should stay with the eagle.’

Paulus nodded, as though I knew my duty well, but then he smiled. ‘It’ll be safe enough with the rest of the cohort. Come on, our men are dying.’

There was no heat in his words. They were simple fact, yet they burned me all the same. I had turned my back on killing, but could I also turn it on my comrades?

No.

And so I was running with Paulus and his forty men. He led us up one slope, into trees, and shrubs. Already my lungs were heaving. Paulus was the oldest man in the group, but he set a savage pace. He was a hound with blood in its nostrils.

‘Down here, men!’

I could no longer see the fight but the sound of it still carried to us. We were on the top of a high crag. The water of the river was far below us. There was no way to be sure of its depth.

Paulus jumped anyway.

He disappeared from sight, then surfaced two heartbeats later.

‘Come!’ he shouted, and his men followed with glee. They were smiling. Some were laughing.

I was one of the last to jump. I did not fear for my own life, but I did for anyone who would challenge me. I didn’t want to kill, but was I ready to lie down and die?

I jumped. Took a breath. Hit the water hard. It was warm, but this was no friendly embrace. I came up coughing, choking, and swimming. Hands of comrades reached down to pull me up the bank.

‘Come on, standard-bearer!’ A young soldier was grinning. ‘Let’s kill the bastards!’

Paulus took a javelin from one of his men. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

And then he was leading his hungry troop towards the ford, and the high ground of the archers.

Paulus crested the ridge. An arrow zipped by his head. They’d been ready for us, and one of our men dropped to the floor with a shaft quivering in his face.

‘Kill them!’ Paulus roared. He threw his javelin. I heard a scream.

And then I was running with the rest of them. My teeth were gritted. My sword was sheathed. I heard a wet slap and a grunt of air as another soldier was hit. I knelt beside him. There was an arrow in his heart, and no life in his eyes.

‘Kill them!’ Paulus demanded. ‘Kill them all!’

But I could not. I would not. Instead I moved between the dead and the dying.

A rebel with a gushing leg wound – he would be dead in moments.

A Roman with a hole in his guts – he might last for days.

There was fear in the eyes of some, acceptance in the gaze of others.

‘Standard-bearer!’ one man gasped. ‘Will you wait with me while I die?’

He was older than me. A true veteran. He had seen and given enough death to know that he could not survive his wound. Ropes of intestine pushed out of the gash in his stomach. He panted, and bit down against the pain. That I was with him gave him comfort. Not because I was a fellow man, but because I was a symbol of our legion. A symbol of Rome.

I could see that he wanted to speak. He wanted to die well.

But the pain was too great.

I held his hand. He gripped it with brutal force.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told him, because I was not the hero he thought I was.

His breaths became short, shallow and rapid.

By the time he’d died, the ford had been cleared. It had become just another skirmish in a war without end.

Chapter 3

The legion spilled me out in Siscia, a town on the confluence of two deep rivers. In the distance there were mountains, but here there were plains wide enough to encamp an army. Many legions had gathered. Auxiliary units, too. They were all visitors – the army that Tiberius had intended for war against a king in the north, but that he must now turn against his own subjects. Before Rome’s borders could be expanded, dissent within the Empire must be crushed.

After seeing to Gallus and my horse, I left camp and went deep into the town. I heard the clanging of iron and steel. It almost sounded like war, but the noise was just a blacksmith doing battle with his forge. I stopped, and looked at the sparks. The man felt my eyes.

‘Help you, sir?’ His Latin was poor. He believed this was why I did not reply. He asked again. He did not know what I was thinking. What I was plotting. ‘Sir?’

‘Yes,’ I answered in the local dialect. ‘You can help me.’

And as he did I wandered the town. The streets were thick with men and voices. Proud Romans, flame-haired Gauls and broad-chested Germans. Some spoke Latin, but all laughed in their own language. Soldiers from across an empire were gathered here. If they felt hesitation at what was to come, and who they were to fight, then they hid it well. Rather, they slapped each other on the shoulders, grabbed the arses of slave girls, and tried to drink a town dry.

There were places like this wherever borders met, wherever armies gathered, and men spoke of the great deeds they would soon perform. It was hard to call this place the calm before a storm, as there was nothing calm about the army’s drinking. Better to think of it as a man’s roar for courage before diving deep into an angry sea.

I returned to the blacksmith. He had what I needed. What Arminius wanted. It was insurance, and I deposited it beneath a loose floorboard in the camp, and thought of what I must do next, because I had come to Siscia for a reason. For a promise.

And I would keep it.

Before the battle on the mountain, I had received word from the beloved wife of a dearest comrade, Brutus. He had been my first section commander when I joined the legions. I’d had my first taste of war by his side, though it was a taste that left him near crippled, and I had never forgiven myself for not being faster that day. It was Brutus who had always wanted to be the standard-bearer. It was he who should be carrying the eagle now.

The message I had received from Lulmire, his wife, had been cryptic.

‘She said that you must come back with the eagle,’ the dispatch rider had said. Nothing more than that. I assumed that it meant that Brutus was dead.

Though invalided from service years ago, he had come to the battlefield when half of our legion faced down a rebel force marching on Italia, but it had cost my friend a second wound. He had come to the aid of the eagle, and even held it for a moment before he was cut down in the vicious fighting. I had been trying to pull Brutus from the carnage when I stumbled, and reached out to steady myself. My hand had grasped the eagle. That became my walking stick, and all mistook necessity for gallantry – I had been given a new rank, and Brutus had been given a death sentence. He was over forty years old, and I did not expect him to survive a wound so inviting for the putrefaction that claimed the lives of so many.

My old comrade was a believer in Rome. A worshipper of the legions. I expected that his dying wish would be that I plant the eagle by his tomb, no matter how briefly. First I needed to know where my friend’s ashes would be buried, and so I pushed deeper into the town, into the poor neighbourhoods where the locals and invalided veterans lived tightly together.

I found his door, but not my courage – until I heard the words from Lulmire’s lips, there was still hope for him. Brutus could still be alive…

How he would have loved to have seen this army. This gathering of might and majesty.

I let out a breath and a rare prayer – not only for my friend, but that the sight of Tiberius’s massive force would be enough to end the war without need for battle. Enough men had died, and now I prepared myself to say my goodbye to another.

I knocked on the door.

It opened.

I should have known that he would be waiting for me.

I stared into a hard face. My hands trembled.

And then I smiled.

‘You’re not dead!’

‘I’m a killer, that’s why.’ Brutus grinned. ‘Killers don’t die so easily.’

I threw my arms around him. It was meant as an embrace, but we nearly went to the floor.

‘Careful!’ my old