by Camilla Monk
“Don’t think about the war; think about the pay.” I tore my gaze away from a sobbing girl about my age to Vatluna’s contemplative frown. The sturdy bay mare he rode belonged to one of the Decurion’s men, but Luna had climbed on it first and asked if he could borrow it afterward. The young eques, whose biceps were barely thicker than Luna’s wrists, had predictably capitulated.
“One fifth of the loot is ours. The emperor is gonna make us rich,” Victrix concurred.
I shrugged. “But Clearchos gets to keep most of it, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His grip on the reins hardened, much like his voice. “You think he’s not being generous enough with us?”
“No. I don’t even know what our pay is,” I countered candidly.
“Then shut the fuck up.”
Not even an axe would have gotten through Victrix’s thick skull when his temper got the best of him. I kept to myself, until the pavement under our horse’s hooves became large marble slabs. A crowd of legionaries and mercenaries had gathered at the center of a vast square, which bore the scars of war. The basilica’s many windows continuously vomited puffs of dark smoke, and the columns supporting its portico were cracked. A pile of shattered marble sat in the middle of the place, which vaguely retained the shape of a horseman. Under the rubble, a painted head watched, helpless, as two soldiers hammered away at the two silvery moons framed by sigillaria leaves decorating its imperial crown.
The prisoners were being brought to the other end of the square, forming a compact crowd, a single being whose collective moan filled the air. Women and children had been separated from old men and captured soldiers. Under my armor, my skin flushed with a guilt that felt like a poisonous rash. If it weren’t for the sword I had stolen from a dead Lorian, I’d be just like them. Deep down, I knew I didn’t belong here with the winners—the predators. But I never wanted to be prey again.
“We’ll probably receive some slaves in reward,” Victrix stated casually, eyeing the mass of bodies like he’d have a market stall.
“I don’t need a slave,” I muttered.
“You could use one to wash your tunics.”
My spiteful reply was drowned by the blaring of trumpets across the square. First came the signum bearers, carrying big banners the color of the night sky, on which our two moons had been embroidered in silver thread. Between them, two branches of sigillaria interlaced and wrapped around each disc. In the cortege of horsemen that followed them, I recognized Clearchos first, leading the way among officers wearing the transverse indigo crest of the Western Legions atop their shiny golden helmets. On each side were red-faced legionaries whose cheeks puffed like balloons from blowing into long trumpets that curled around their shoulders, and behind them… I bent to my side to get a better look. Vatluna’s low whistle was a suitable companion to my own astonishment. An old, fat officer wearing armor that seemed entirely made of gold and a purple cloak rode on a chariot—with even more gold on it! A huge wheel of white feathers had been arranged behind him, like a pristine halo half a dozen feet wide.
“Who’s that?” I murmured.
“Lisius Sulpicius Spurius, Legate of the Thirteenth, Hand of Aus over the Southwestern Provinces.” Victrix recited, his voice softened by a similar flavor of awe.
“Did the feathers come from a real bird?”
Vatluna let out a deep laugh. “Hastius was right; you really were born yesterday. They’re from the train of a Moon pavo. Very rare. Costs more than my worthless skin.”
I didn’t dare ask him what sort of bird he called a pavo, for fear of making even more a fool of myself. I figured those must be gigantic birds to have feathers so big, at least three, maybe four times the size of a meleagris. Meanwhile, the trumpets had become silent while Spurius’s chariot stopped in the middle of the square, not far from the remains of the statue.
He raised his arms to the sky, palms splayed the same way Clearchos did when he gathered us in the pit to make a speech. The simple gesture sent a wave of excited cheers rolling across the square, from the throats of all his legionaries. Some of Clearchos’s men joined the ovation, but most of us just observed this other army like a mirror of ours, with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. Victrix crossed his arms, his jaw working in silent irritation—he’d probably prefer they acclaim Clearchos, whose clever stratagem had brought us all here and now.
“This is not our victory!” Spurius bellowed, dampening his men’s enthusiasm almost instantly. Confusion buzzed among the ranks, before he clenched his fists and told them, “This is Aus’s victory! Over the tyranny of injustice and evil!”
Like the heartbeat of a single immense beast, the soldiers chanted, “Aus! Aus! Aus!” And it felt like the thrum of their collective shout was drilling its way into my very bones and the ground under our horses was shaking.
Spurius waved his arms to silence the collective roar, and as it rolled back to a hubbub, I heard Victrix mutter, “No one cares about your fanatic shit. Tell us about the loot…”
From the majesty of his golden chariot, Spurius went on. “From this day forward, and for all eternity, Nyos is under Aus’s law. We follow his word and thrive in the safe cradle of his palm. He knows no ranks, knows no rich nor poor. He knows no senator, no prefect, and there are no slaves in his kingdom for all men, women, and children are equal in his eyes, and they are all part of him!”
That drew less ardent cheering—maybe because they figured they wouldn’t get any slaves then. Victrix snorted in annoyance, and Vatluna chuckled in his beard, as if he thought Spurius was a little deranged. I thought he made a lot of sense. Never in my life had I heard any man proclaim that we were all equal. Sure, we were citizens, but a woman was no man’s equal, and slaves had very little rights save for that not to be killed or maimed unjustly by their master, as per the law. And of course, all of us were little more than dirt under the fine sandals of the nobles and senators who lived in Loria. I waited for the rest of Spurius’s speech with bated breath.
“Bring forth the slaves!” he ordered.
There was some ruckus across the place as legionaries herded a terrified crowd away from the rest of the prisoners. Men and women, young and old, some mere children. Many of them wore rags, but others were clad in colorful silk dresses and tunics, and even jewels—those must have rich masters. They all cowed and looked down just like I used to; Spurius would never know how right he was to claim that we were all the same in his god’s eyes.
“Today, you are all free!” Spurius announced.
The slaves didn’t immediately react. They darted anxious looks at the soldiers around them, blinked through uncertain eyes.
“You are all free. Aus’s children are slaves to no one!” Spurius insisted, extending paternal hands to the group. “Come, come! Come and be anointed as free citizens.”
As he said this, a group of men I hadn’t noticed stepped out of the cortege, wearing simple linen togas over long-sleeved white tunics. They carried a wooden staff, whose end had been shaped into a lean hand—it wasn’t hard to recognize the hand of Aus that Spurius kept talking about. They walked to the slaves and spoke to them, embracing some, patting the children’s heads. Realization dawned on the adults’ faces—or rather the ones who wore rags, since the other, more fortunate slaves kept sending desperate looks to their former masters. Spurius noticed, and he chastised them, babbling something about how they’d have to walk their own path away from sin and excesses from now on. Soon they all scattered like rhagamuses, scurried away into the veins of the city. None of them cheered—they were probably all too aware of the dark glances the soldiers shot their way, thousands of frustrated and exhausted conquerors whose loot their legate had just freed.
Watching the slaves disappear behind doors and into dark alleys, Victrix voiced my thoughts with a glum, “Good luck.”
After they were gone, Spurius puffed his chest and turned his attentions to the captive citizens, swiping a ferocious gl
are at the disheveled, terrified lot of them. “Look at you!” he roared. “Merchants, politicians… whores!”
I sensed a stir in the crowd of soldiers and mercenaries, a feverish hunger. Victrix, too, seemed to tense in front of me, his posture shifting imperceptibly in the saddle, his narrowed gaze set on the prisoners. I recognized a side of him I hadn’t seen in weeks, one I’d rather forget. In Spurius’s venomous words, he and the others smelled blood and reward.
“But Aus is just!” Spurius said, in a somewhat steadier voice. “He is just and abhors bloodshed.”
Next to me, Vatluna’s big shoulders trembled from the effort to stifle a laugh, and a few soldiers, too, pursed quivering lips. All eyes went wide, though, when Spurius pointed a stern forefinger at the citizens and shouted, “All of you who do not bear the mark, you will go! With nothing but the clothes on your back and the shame in your hearts, you will walk east, return to the darkness, the corruption, the gangrene that engendered you all. Walk to your ruin, away from Aus’s realm, for he has forsaken you!” By the time he finished, he was red in the face, and sweating all over from his own rage.
I whispered to Victrix, “What’s the mark he’s talking about? Are they chasing away the entire city?”
Before Victrix could reply, it was Vatluna who bent on his saddle to explain with a hushed tone. “There’s a small community of children of Aus in Nyos. They tattoo the sole of their foot with his mark, a hand, or sometimes they paint it on a wall in their house, or even wear a pendant under their shirt. I don’t think the legionaries captured these ones.”
No such luck for the rest of the Nyseites who sacrificed to the old gods. Yet on their pale faces, disbelief battled relief. They would live, because the thirteenth’s legate was a strange old man who preferred to listen to his priests than his officers.
“The woman and children can go,” Spurius announced amidst a few shouts and whistles from furious soldiers—soon silenced by the threatening bark of their centurions.
But the men? I observed the bustle with tightly clenched fists. Something sounded too good about this. The legionaries gathered the women and their children in lines and tore off whatever jewelry they had left on them, hitting the ones who resisted. I closed my eyes, only to see a vision of Servilius flash behind my eyelids. His hands on me, slapping me when I tried to push him away. His hands, like theirs. My throat tightened. When a boy about my age tried to follow a woman—his mother? —the soldiers punched him hard, shoving him back with the rest of the men.
Spurius spoke, in an exalted breath. “All the men who have raised their sword against Aus himself will be let go after they’ve received the punishment of fifty strokes from the scourge!”
Across the square, many of the men panicked, trying in vain to escape the soldiers. One was speared before he could run away and collapsed half-dead at their feet. Someone in the crowd screamed. I fought back a shudder of horror. I’d never witnessed a scourging, but the memory of Victrix flogging Plescus raw came back to me. Looking back on it, I knew it could have been much direr, and Plescus had recovered afterward. But I had hated Victrix for that, and sitting behind him right now, I felt a pang of old fear stab at my gut. Scourging was infinitely worse: their skin would come off their back, and their flesh be torn off their bones, according to the stories I’d heard back at the camp.
Somewhere near us, a soldier coughed a chuckle. “There he is, our good old Spurius. Was wondering where the bastard had gone.”
His neighbor elbowed him hard and hissed, “Careful what you say if you don’t want to feel the sting of the scorpion too.”
The scorpion—a few men at the camp called it that, because sometimes the lictors in charge of inflicting the punishment would knot sharp iron hooks in the leather thongs, to better tear off the skin until it hung down the victim’s back in ribbons.
“Can they survive it?” I asked.
Victrix shrugged, his jaw tight. “Maybe the strongest will.” I feared Spurius’s announcement would fuel that darkest, vilest part of him, but there was no trace of joy on his features as the legionaries dragged away the wounded man who’d tried to escape. They chained him to one of the basilica’s cracked columns under the cheers of the western legionaries. The noise washed over me in waves, made my skin crawl and my ears hurt. It brought me back in the pit.
I stared down at my lap and the few cuts in my trousers, the stains of dried blood. The Lorian let out desperate wail when it started, a strange, brittle sound that barely sounded human.
Victrix knotted the reins around his fists and heeled the horse without warning. “I don’t care about any of that shit,” he spat. “Let’s get out of here.”
Vatluna nodded and maneuvered his horse through the crowd as well.
Whatever it was that made Victrix leave—his foul temper and restless nature, or perhaps something deeper, a sliver of humanity he concealed from all—I never knew, but I was grateful he did.
23
The screams of agony of the tortured Nyseites followed us well beyond the square, like a thrum under my temples that I could still feel when we trotted across the fallen Magnatura. The gate wouldn’t last long: several of our comrades were already busy hacking at the precious slab of everwood with tempered steel axes and mallets. Some just wanted a shard to remember this memorable victory or ornate the hilt of their sword; others stole larger chunks, probably to sell them.
Clearchos had stayed behind, to organize the distribution of the loot with Spurius and his officers while our legion set up camp by the Bride’s Lake’s shore, near a deserted village—only a handful of houses were protected by the mark of Aus, whose owners observed the methodical pillaging of their neighbor’s shops and homes from behind closed shutters.
Tents bloomed one after another in a field right outside the village, and one of them had already been installed with a familiar curtain of nacred shells. Outside the tent, girls hurried to tend to the less severe wounds, dabbing wine on shallow cuts and sewing back gashes. Among them, I caught the unmistakable green of Nerie’s tunic under a blood-stained apron. Within the borders of Gemina’s small queendom, he gave the orders, sending a lanky girl to fetch bandages while he inspected another’s work on a soldier’s brow. When he saw us, he wiped his hands on his apron and raced toward me.
“Irius brought him a few hours ago. He’s alive, but…” Sorrow flitted across his features. “Gemina took out the eye. There was nothing left to do.”
“Take us to him,” Vatluna requested, dismounting his horse.
We did the same and followed Nerie inside the tent. Today the scent of Gemina’s herbs and potion brought me no solace; it was overpowered by that of blood and the groans of countless wounded men whose pallets were crammed in tight rows in the narrow space. Gemina knelt to tend to the bandaged stump of a boy’s leg. Coming closer, I recognized Felus. Nerie paled, his hands looking even whiter against the scarlet splatter covering the apron he wore. His face buried in a straw-filled pillow, Felus let out a whimper of agony. The stump was high above the knee; he’d never stand again without a crutch.
My stomach heaved. I’d never liked the boy much, but I never wished that for him. He turned his head and our eyes met. I read the despair in his, and in a moment of striking clarity I realized that I had no right to pity Felus. It was someone like me who had done this to him, a raging beast, and maybe someday my own body would be broken, too, and I’d crawl somewhere to hide and die in shame.
Gemina looked up from the bloody bandage to study us. Her features were drawn with exhaustion, the underside of her eyes shadowed with bluish circles. “He’s in the back.” She sighed, waving to a prone form resting on another pallet in a corner of the tent. She noticed the wound on Victrix’s thigh. Her lips went tight. “Arrow?” she asked, her voice a notch cooler.
“I took it out. It didn’t go in very deep,” he snapped back, while Vatluna and I went to sit by Hastius’s side.
“Have one of the girls cle
an the wound and sew it up,” Gemina instructed. She took her mortar and pestle to grind some seeds, but her eyes wouldn’t leave Victrix, and I sensed anger in the brusque movements of her hands. Now was the worst possible time, but I wanted to speak to her alone, later, and ask about the priceless greaves I wore, and what was the problem between her and Victrix. But it could—and would—wait.
Undisturbed by the moans of agony coming from the man lying next to him, Hastius seemed asleep, his blind eye covered by bandages. The good one fluttered open, though, taking a bleary look at his surroundings. A faint smile stirred his lips, like an old habit he couldn’t get rid of. “Are we all dead?”
“Far as I know, I’m still alive,” Victrix called from behind our backs while Nerie cleaned the wound on his thigh with strong wine.
Hastius turned his head with a groan. “I’m blind in one eye, and the one that’s left is seeing you without trousers. This must be Tartarus, the realm of eternal torments.”
“Maybe.” I sighed, thinking of the men being scourged as we spoke. Spurius had said they’d be free to go, but none had passed the gate since.
“Why the sour mood, Silverlegs? You made it out of Nyos in one piece, and tonight you’ll be rich,” Hastius slurred.
Vatluna exhaled a deep chuckle. “He’s made the acquaintance of Aus. I don’t think he’s going to see the light, this one.”
“Ah.” Hastius stared up at the collections of snake molts and fragrant dried herbs hanging from the tent’s ceiling. “It is what it is. Best take our pay and look the other way. There’s no use trying to talk a man out of superstitio, much less a thousand.”
“Supersticio?”
His lips twitched. “All muscles, no brains…” There was no genuine bite to his statement, and it was true anyway; I welcomed it with a nonchalant shrug, allowing him to continue. “Supersticio is too much of a good thing. Too much love for the gods, too much fear of them… too much hatred for those who don’t believe.”