That made Marcellus frown, recalling that his father’s greatest attribute, as a soldier, was his ability as a quartermaster. ‘If we supply them properly, they won’t have to.’
Tullius nodded but said nothing. He was not about to tell the tribune that he, too, was a mite soft, nor that he thought him a smug young bastard, who knew little or nothing about life in the army.
The primus pilus, Spurius Labenius, was on the rampart, looking north, when Aquila walked up behind him. The older man did not turn round, so Aquila joined him, gazing at the distant, moonlit mountains. He wanted to speak, to ask this wel-decorated soldier about his past and it was not just their differing rank that stopped him. It was almost as if Labenius was lost in some silent prayer, holding himself rigid, his breath forcibly contained. Eventually the shoulders eased and the rush of air through his nostrils indicated that he had relaxed. He spoke, his voice deep and sad.
‘Those mountains hold the bones of a lot of legionaries.’ He turned and looked at Aquila, his eyes resting on the young man’s hair, growing again after the shaving he had endured when he enlisted. ‘Not just there, mind. I’ve been in the legions for over twenty years. Sometimes I think I’ve buried more men than I’ve led in battle.’
Aquila was reminded of Didius Flaccus; the man who took him to Sicily had, too, been a centurion, hard and battle-scarred, yet forced to beg for work from Cassius Barbinus when his service was complete. Twenty years of service to Rome had earned Didius Flaccus only enough for a constrained life; no luxuries or a young wife to warm his bed, just more toil. Yet fate had taken him past Dabo’s place on his journey south, and having had command of Clodius, it was he who had told Aquila of his adopted father’s death at Thralaxas.
For all his rough nature, Flaccus had been good to Aquila, though it was painful now to recall the way he ignored the truth, shutting his eyes to the cruelty visited upon the slaves the older man was working to death. Such blindness had made it a happy time; the spearing of Toger meant the others Flaccus had recruited from the gutters of Rome respected him. He had become a man rather than a boy, and had even had in the girl Phoebe his own Greek concubine. What would have happened to him if, on the day he and Flaccus rode to Messina to meet with Cassius Barbinus, he had not seen Gadoric near-dead on a crucifix? What he had seen was the way Flaccus had died, a victim of the very slaves he had previously tyrannised.
‘And still only a centurion?’ said Aquila, unsure of who he was referring to, the ex-soldier who had seen him grow to manhood, or this serving one standing next to him. ‘Not much for such a dedicated life.’
Labenius, when he replied, seemed resigned rather than angry, which he was entitled to be considering what this youngster had said severely breached the bounds of discipline. ‘Was a time I would have flogged any man who addressed me like that.’
Aquila turned and looked at the older man, the moonlight catching the decorations that covered the front of his breastplate, plus the gold torque on his arm. Labenius had won six civic crowns, the second highest honour in the legions, given only to a soldier who saved the life of a Roman citizen in battle and held his ground all day. The light also picked up the gleam of tears in his old eyes.
‘Why not now?’
‘Who knows, perhaps it’s the presence of those mountains and the souls of the departed.’
‘Would that make you answer my question about your rank, too?’
Labenius looked him up and down, his eyes taking in the charm at his neck, glinting in the moonlight against the background of his dark red tunic. He wondered if the boy knew how much his trinket had been a subject of discussion amongst the junior officers.
‘I’ve watched you, Aquila Terentius.’
‘I’m surprised you know my name.’
‘Don’t be!’ replied Labenius with a touch of asperity. ‘I marked you out the day you joined up.’
‘Why?’
Labenius looked north again. ‘We fought Celts all the time when I was your age, took the whole of the northern plain off them and made the tribes subject to Rome.’
‘But not the mountains?’
‘There are tribes to the north that see those mountains as their defence. They’re different men, taller and stronger, who believe that the way to happiness is to die in battle, so they come south, through the passes, helped by the mountain men, to burn and destroy. I fought against them with the general’s father, Aulus Cornelius, before he was consul.’
‘Did you win?’
‘We took back the mountain passes, but I don’t think we won, not against those men from the north. I think when they’d had enough they just went home.’
‘And I remind you of them?’
‘I don’t suppose that I’m the first to remark on it,’ replied Labenius, looking at him again. ‘And that thing at your throat isn’t Roman.’ His voice took on a different, more serious tone. ‘But it’s not just that. Young as you are, you’re a fighter. You’ve got scars that only a man who’s soldiered carries, yet you’re just old enough to be in the legions. Where did someone like you fight, Aquila? You say you’re from round Aprilium. Not with hair like that, you’re not. Was it up in the north, among the bones of dead Romans?’
‘No.’
His voice grew angry, but it had a hurt tone as well. ‘My two sons are buried up there, Aquila Terentius, killed by men who looked just like you.’
‘I was wondering why, with all your decorations, you’re not in command of an army?’
‘I was born poor, lad, that’s why. Perhaps my sons, if they’d lived, would have had the luck to rise to a higher class.’
‘I’m told that if you win the civic crown, patrician senators stand up in your presence.’
‘It costs them nothing to do that, boy.’
‘So being brave gains you little. You still have to be voted in?’
‘Why are you asking?’ growled Labenius.
Aquila had been thinking about this for days, ever since the arrival of Marcellus Falerius. He had recalled seeing the primus pilus salute the new tribune with stiff formality. The image, added to the old centurion’s question, which he had to answer, finally crystallised his thoughts and made him realise the true source of his distemper.
‘I don’t want to end up as nothing.’
The word shocked Labenius. ‘Nothing!’
‘I look at a tribune like Marcellus Falerius, with his father’s wealth and his famous name. Why is he where he is, and I am just a legionary? Why will he command armies, while I will require his vote to command cohorts?’
‘Are you so sure you’ll command men at all?’
The question took him back to Sicily again, to the army he had helped Gadoric to build, to the runaway slaves he had led and the skirmishes he had fought against his own people. ‘I have already, Labenius. I won’t say where, but it’s not in those mountains, and I shall again. You have risen through your courage, yet that is still not enough. I was hoping that you could tell me what else I need?’
‘You’re an insolent pup, boy, and you don’t deserve an answer.’
Aquila pointed to the mountains. ‘What would you have said to your sons, Spurius Labenius, if they’d asked you the same question?’
The older man’s head dropped and his voice had tears in it again. ‘I would have said it’s no good just being brave, you have to be lucky too.’
‘In what way?’ asked Aquila, ignoring the pain he had engendered in the old man’s memory.
‘Money helps, that and someone powerful who holds you in such high regard he’ll adopt you.’
He put his hand on Labenius’s shoulder, which was shaking slightly. ‘I’ve been adopted once already. That is sufficient for any man.’
Aquila did not see the rope, but he heard it whistle past his ear and saw the effect as it slid over Labenius’s head. The old centurion jerked forward as the noose tightened, his breastplate pressed against the sharp spikes on the low rampart and Aquila had his sword out in a second. He could see the shadowy figures, each with a line hooked round the stakes, hauling themselves up to attack, but he ignored them. The huge shout, used to raise the alarm, seemed to add force to his sword arm as the weapon slashed down, parting the rope that held the centurion’s neck. The shout did alert the guards, but that would do these two precious little good. Their enemies, using animal hides to blunt the spikes, were pouring over the ramparts. Aquila hauled Labenius upright and spun
