The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  Justin, walking with Gwytha and small Justin in the spring warmth, was among the first to see the grim grey beacon to the north. The baby, tucked in a shawl under his arm, was giggling and making futile grabs at Finn’s comical face as it rose, fringed in a feathering of grey whiskers, before his field of vision. Justin, watching the wolfhound’s leaping antics, followed his progress upward and stopped, caught by the billowing cloud on the northern horizon. Closer, as his vision narrowed, another cloud came into focus, and closer still, the barely discernible glow of yet another beacon fire beneath an even larger and more ominous billow of smoke.

  ‘Mithras, God!’ He dumped the baby in Gwytha’s startled arms and caught Finn by the collar. ‘Home, you, with your mistress! Gwytha, take the baby and get home! No, I’ll be there, I promise,’ he added as she started to protest. He flung himself away and went leaping down the slope to the road below.

  Gwytha, her protest cut short, saw the billowing black signal in the north. She caught up the baby and, whistling Finn to her heel, ran down the track to the town. Januaria met her at the door, big with news, but Gwytha shook her aside.

  ‘I have seen it. I must feed the child, but when I have done, come you and take him. Justin will be back tonight, before… before they march… I will wait for him.’

  ‘They will march?’ Januaria hovered in concern.

  ‘Yes, they will march. The Eagles will fly, as Justin would say, and the gods help us, they are so few.’

  ‘Oh, my lady…’ Januaria took the baby from her, her substantial bulk heaving with distress. ‘You shouldn’t be alone. Let me send for the Lady Felicia. She also…’

  Gwytha turned a white, distracted face toward the housekeeper. ‘Yes, she also has a parting to endure, but let it wait til morning. No,’ she added as Januaria looked likely to protest. ‘It will keep til morning. Justin has said he’ll be back, and he does not give his word lightly. And I expect Licinius will be looking for Felicia. Better that she find him than me.’

  She ran a hand lightly over the baby’s brow (he had gone to sleep in Januaria’s comforting embrace). ‘Take small Justin and put him to bed. He can eat later… and I will wake him when his father comes. Yes, wake him. It will do him no harm, and he will remember… remember…’ She trailed off and sat down to wait, huddled in the chair by the window.

  In the Praetorium, Felicia also sat and waited, curled up on a couch in the bright little bedroom of her private quarters. It was a cheerful room, with a painted wall on which a troop of dancers cavorted to the piping of a trio of small fauns, but this afternoon the dancers failed to lift her spirits as they usually did. Her father, she knew, was closeted with his senior staff in his office in the Principia, and it would be nightfall before he had a moment for her. As for Licinius, he might or might not come looking for her when he left the briefing.

  She rose and paced to the window. The whole camp was in an uproar, and she could see heads bobbing by past the garden wall, amid shouted orders and the tramp of marching feet. Despatch riders came and went from the Principia, and even Theodore in the kitchen was in what for him amounted to a tizzy.

  She waited until she saw a group of senior officers pass by in the twilight and then pulled her cloak around her shoulders. Her father was still sitting at his desk in the Principia when she got there. His face looked tired in the greying light, and older than she could remember ever seeing it.

  ‘Well, my dear, it’s come. There’s an allied war band of Picts and Brigantes heading south, with the Selgovae thrown in for good measure.’

  ‘But your reinforcements—’

  ‘Can’t wait for them. If we don’t stop this in the north it will be too late. They will have to catch up as best they can. I’m not leaving much of a garrison here, but enough for safety. I’ve put Centurion Hilarion in charge of it. He didn’t like it, of course, but I have to have someone reliable here. And his cohort’s among the least likely to give trouble under another commander. I’m taking most of it with me, needless to say.’ He paused and beckoned her to him, pulling her down on his lap the way he used to do when she was small. ‘Oh, Papa.’

  ‘Now listen to me, Felicia. I have made arrangements for you and the servants to be sent south if it seems necessary.’

  ‘Papa–’

  ‘I said, if it seems necessary, and I don’t think it will be. But if it is, you are to go – understood?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, Papa.’ She put her head down on his shoulder, and he hugged her to him for a moment.

  ‘Good. Now take yourself off home. At least we’ll have dinner together. I’ve given Centurion Corvus leave to spend the night with his wife. Somebody might as well enjoy himself tonight.’

  Outside, Hilarion said much the same thing as he stalked grumpily along beside Justin. ‘It certainly won’t be me! Left behind like a nursemaid – and my cohort marching without me.’

  ‘Well, I expect he’s left you bits of it,’ Justin said consolingly.

  ‘Very funny.’

  They stopped outside the officers’ quarters and Justin turned sober. ‘See here, Hilarion, I’m just as glad it’s you that’s commanding the garrison. There’s something I want to ask you.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘It’s Gwytha.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hilarion’s thin, freckled face looked uncomfortable and he fidgeted with the leather kilt of his harness tunic.

  ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to look after her.’

  ‘Justin—’

  ‘You’ve been a good friend to us ever since we married,’ Justin went on, ignoring the other man’s discomfort, ‘and I know how you feel about her.’

  ‘Justin, I never—’ Hilarion was obviously appalled.

  ‘No, you ass, I know you haven’t. Just – if something happens to me, see that she’s all right. Take her to my mother at Antium, or – anything else that seems appropriate to you.’ He reached out and hugged the other man to him, and then he was gone, heading down the road to the town gate.

  Hilarion stood looking after him a moment, his friendly countenance turned somber. Then he turned in the door to his own quarters, to work out the garrison duty of the handful of troops that would be left to him.

  By the time it was full dark, preparations for the march were well in train. The supply carts were loading, extra weapons were inventoried and checked out from the armory, and everywhere the centurions, the backbone of the Eagles, were checking and rechecking their fit-for-duty lists, and reporting upward to their cohort commanders and thence to the Primus Pilus, and finally the Legate. In the horse barns and the auxiliary barracks, the decurions of the cavalry and light troops were carrying out much the same procedure, as name after name was ticked off on the rosters, weapons were inspected, and last minute hitches either got round or rolled over. The machinery of the Army was in full swing, with the well-oiled precision that had carried the boundaries of the Empire farther and farther with each succeeding generation, and even the troublemakers seemed caught up in it for the moment.

  Cooks, armorers, supply masters, and clerks each fell neatly into his allotted slot, while the common legionary put a final polish to his helmet, removed the scarlet crest that was strictly for parade use, and executed a frantic search for the new pilum point he had meant to affix last week.

  The major excitement of the evening occurred when the senior surgeon of the Legion, supervising the loading of the hospital wagons by torchlight, leapt up to the top of one to tighten a strap that seemed faulty to him, leapt back down and, as his feet touched the ground, turned pale and fainted.

  ‘He what?’ The Legate flung himself off the couch, dropping his napkin in his half-finished plate, as the Optio made his breathless announcement from the doorway. Theodore hovered behind him, furious at the intrusion.

  ‘I regret, sir, that the gentleman felt the matter would not keep,’ he ventured as Aurelius Rufus stalked past him, yelling for his c
loak and helmet.

  ‘You’re damn right it won’t keep!’ He slammed his helmet down on his head, even its crest of eagle feathers apparently quivering with rage. ‘There’s a whole damn army of Britons heading this way, and my senior surgeon puts his knee out?’

  He reached the hospital to find Licinius, awake and glowering, propped up in bed with young Flavius applying a poultice to his knee. The surgeon winced as the hot linen was wrapped round his leg. ‘It won’t do any good, you young idiot. The only thing that helps is to stay off the damn thing. Get me a place in one of the hospital wagons and let me rest it for a few days and I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid – sir,’ Flavius replied grimly, tending to the poultice. ‘You aren’t going anywhere. I’ve told Octavian to get his gear together. He was in great good spirits over that, I can tell you. He hasn’t been on a campaign since he finished training.’

  ‘If you think,’ Licinius said, grimacing as Flavius gave a final tightening to the poultice and pushed a pin through the top layer, ‘that I am going to stay here like an old woman with arthritis while you and that ham-handed young butcher look after my Legion, you have another think coming!’

  ‘Drink this and shut up.’ Flavius handed him a pottery cup. ‘The Legate’s coming.’

  ‘Good! We’ll see whether he wants me left behind or not.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ an irritated voice said from the doorway, ‘but he doesn’t see much help for it. Can you walk on that thing?’

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That settles it. You!’ He motioned to Flavius. ‘Clear out. You’ve just been promoted – for the duration.’

  ‘It only needs a few more days, sir,’ Licinius said, as Flavius packed up his kit and left.

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought as much. Now see here – damn it, I need you! But I don’t need one more “wounded” to look after. You’ll be invalided out when we get back. Until then, you’ll have to manage the hospital for the garrison troops. I’ll leave you one orderly, and I hope to Hades you can tell him what to do if anyone gets sick. My daughter tells me this knee went out on you a month ago. Why didn’t you tell me then?’

  ‘I thought it would go back in, and it did.’

  ‘The more fool you. I leave you with one parting thought, surgeon: if my daughter decides to play Psyche to your Cupid, chase her home. It will be much more pleasant for you if I don’t have to do it when I get back.’ He pulled his cloak around him and his voice softened somewhat. ‘You young fool, I know you didn’t wish this on yourself, but you’ll have to pay for it all the same.’

  * * *

  Justin and Gwytha sat with the baby between them, indulgently watching him wave his fat hands and stare curiously about the lamp-lit atrium.

  ‘He’ll have grown out of all knowing by the time you get back,’ Gwytha said at last, slipping a hand into her husband’s.

  ‘Yes, you might even have hair by then, mightn’t you?’ Justin tickled the soft peach fuzz that covered his head, and the baby gurgled happily. ‘Son of mine, I think it’s time you were in bed.’ He scooped the baby up and deposited him in the cradle where he could be heard contentedly trying out new noises to himself. Justin came back and put his arm around Gwytha.

  ‘Taking it hard, love?’

  ‘This time I’m really afraid,’ she said. ‘I’ve prayed to every god I can think of to keep you safe. It’s that accursed cohort.’

  ‘Martius’s hard cases? They’re no prize certainly, but I think I’ve made some headway with them. They’ll do well enough,’ he added with a conviction he was far from feeling.

  Gwytha too was dubious, but she only said, as she snuggled closer and laid her head on his shoulder, ‘Then in that case, I think you’re being foolish about tonight.’

  The evening had been complicated by a fierce determination on Gwytha’s part that Justin should, if at all possible, leave her pregnant, and an equally strong determination on Justin’s that he should not. They had argued about it in whispers throughout most of dinner.

  ‘I don’t see what difference you think one more night will make anyway,’ she whispered now, running a small, coaxing hand up his knee, and Justin began to feel his emotions getting the better of his common sense.

  ‘If it won’t make any difference, why are you arguing?’ he said a little breathlessly.

  ‘Because I want you to love me,’ she breathed, almost in his ear, and the hand crept a little higher under his tunic. ‘It will have to last me a while, I’m thinking.’

  ‘And me, you know.’ He sighed and bent down to blow out the lamp, then stood up with his startled wife in his arms.

  ‘Put me down, you idiot!’ She laughed and pounded a small fist on his shoulder.

  ‘Certainly not.’ He caught her eyes with his in the moonlight and bent his head to kiss her, a long slow kiss that left them both shivering. ‘Come along then,’ he whispered, and turned through the dark doorway of the bedroom.

  But when he had stripped off her tunic and picked her up again, naked, to lay her on the bed, Justin spent a long time just running his hands over her body, breasts and thighs, her face and even her feet, as if he would memorize every line of her. And she in turn reached out her hands for all the old, familiar places… the hard muscles of his forearm, the white scar on his rib cage, the cowlick on his forehead where the brown hair waved wildly in three directions at once.

  Only after each had explored and remembered every inch of the other did he pull her into his arms and pin her to the bed beneath him with a grip so strong it startled her. She twisted under him, wrapping her strong slim legs about his back, and together they put a whole summer’s lovemaking into one spring night.

  * * *

  And then the morning came, as grey as twilight, with a blanket of fog that blotted out the world. Brave in scarlet and bronze, moving smartly to the sound of trumpets, and pitifully few, the column of the Legion turned its face to the north, and marched into the shifting mist.

  XVII

  The Road Through the Mist

  As they swung onto the Corstopitum road, Justin turned and surveyed his cohort, marching behind him in the steady twenty-mile-a-day tramp of the Legions, each man blindly following the one before him into the mist.

  Justin could see no more than the first few ranks, and the gleam of the cohort standard to his left. With Hilarion, and now Licinius left behind, he felt himself very much alone with what Owen Lucullus had termed Martius’s sharks. To the side of the road he could hear the clip-clop and jingle of the cavalry, and a voice, probably Owen’s, raised in song:

  Come you bold fellows, and join the Ar-mee—

  ‘Come on then, let’s have a little noise to chase the fog away.’ Justin joined in, and the men behind him picked up the chorus:

  To slaughter the Pict and the heathen Parsee—

  The sound swelled as the cohorts before and behind them picked up the song and sent it up and down the column. At its head, the Legate smiled as the song reached the First Cohort, and he too joined in, in a surprisingly booming baritone:

  And maybe, just maybe (the chances are small)

  But maybe you’ll rise to be Emperor of all!

  A loose stone skittered across the roadway and there was the clatter of a dropped pilum. ‘Friggin’ fog,’ a voice said distinctly in the pause between verses. With a whoop of laughter they caught up the second verse and roared it out cheerfully. By the time they reached an ominously deserted Isurium, they had worked their way through ‘The Courting of Claudia,’ ‘The Three-Day Hunt,’ and even an unspeakably rude little ditty about a cavalryman and his horse.

  They pushed past Isurium the first day and set off the next morning at semiquick march. It was a long road north, too long to make forced march the whole way, but the war band would have to be checked before it could reach the northern frontier forts. From the
second day, the Legate drove the column hard but he kept them carefully short of exhaustion.

  ‘Or so he says,’ Justin said, wearily massaging his calf muscles. ‘Me, I feel like I’d hired out for a horse.’ Feeling lonely with neither Licinius’s company nor Hilarion’s, he had sought out Owen Lucullus, and the two of them were lounging by a fire near the cavalry pickets.

  ‘Aye, there’ll be some sore backsides among my lads for a few days, I’m thinking,’ Owen said. ‘And Number Nine Troop’s still so winter soft you can practically see the boils growing.’

  ‘Well, they’ll have a long march to toughen up on.’ Justin heaved another branch onto the fire.

  The mist, which had come down again at nightfall, made each campfire, each group of lanterns, an entity unto itself. In one of these to the rear, Flavius was dispensing liniment and much the same advice to an assortment of leg cramps and saddle sores.

  ‘Ah, what do you know about long marches, young one?’ a grey-haired legionary grumbled, rubbing liniment into his calves. ‘Pah! This smells like horse piss! When you’ve been on as many marches as I have—’

  ‘When I’ve been on as many marches as you have, I’ll retire to private practice at Aquae Sulis,’ Flavius said cheerfully, ‘and make my fortune prescribing the baths to fat old ladies. And it’s supposed to smell like horse piss. It keeps old drunks like you from lubricating their insides with it as well.’

  There was a shout of laughter and the legionary retired, defeated. ‘Ha! You’ll do fine, young one,’ a voice called out. ‘You’ll do fine!’

  Flavius looked down at his hands in the misty light. ‘Dear god, I hope so.’

  In another little sphere cut from the fog by lantern light, Centurion Albinus echoed Flavius in his turn. Kneeling by the lantern, he dug a makeshift altar from the spring turf and pricked his finger over it. ‘Lord of Armies, grant me what is needful,’ he murmured. Then he picked up the lantern and went to wrestle once more with the demon whose current habitat was the Fourth Cohort.