by Camilla Monk
Shortly before nightfall, I noticed that the crimson leaves and grass were getting scarce. Dark green undergrowth warred with the scarlet vegetation, crawled up the trunks and mottled the ground. By the time we reached the edge of the woods, that battle had been won. The scarlet woods were just a pinkish haze in the distance. The trail streaked across a heath where shrubs of crusamantes grew like weed, their smaller flowers lighting the path to the stone walls of a camp standing atop a low hill.
As the cart dragged us up the slope leading to a nail-studded gate, a rasp filtered through Nerie’s lips. “Are they going to execute us?”
“You’re a good medic. They won’t waste that skill,” I told him, steeling my voice with false confidence.
He scratched his nose with his chained hands, nearly tripping in the process. “But you?”
I shrugged. “I’m Silverlegs. No one can kill me.” Except Parthicus with his orichalcum blade, or anyone in these walls at the moment, I reminded myself with a bitter smile. I wasn’t afraid of death, not anymore, after having danced with it so often and so intimately. But they’d torture me for sure. Tear my flesh off and break my bones. Blind me maybe, like Parthicus had done to those soldiers in the Lacustra. Like Gemina in the cauldron. I saw her milky pupils again, heard her final wails in my head. I willed the horror chilling my bones away. Might as well stand tall as long as I could.
The cart stopped in a square courtyard where a small unit of legionaries was being assigned night-watch turns by their centurions. That tribune with the pockmarked cheeks had his horn-blower brought to the front of the convoy. The soldier blew a strident tune while a standard-bearer raised his crimson banner and yelled as loud as his bony throat would allow that Fifth Tribune of the Third Larthius Sigillius Pulchrus had captured the fiend from the Lacustra known as Silverlegs.
Stunned silence followed, troubled only by the chirping of a few grillis hiding in the dark. Nerie looked at me. They all did, soldiers young and old, whose friends I had killed maybe. Some frowned, others glared, all stared, until at the other end of the courtyard a pair of wooden doors slowly creaked open, and a gravelly voice barked for all to stand at attention for Legate Sertor Parthicus Secondius.
He walked to us, surrounded by a personal guard of six brawny praetorians, all wearing the Lorian red crest. I recognized the golden muscle cuirass with the gorgon head in its center, the snakes coiling in the metal. But this face was a stranger’s. He must have been ten years younger than the man I’d fought at the Castraviemna, with the same short blond hair and hazel eyes, but his straight nose was unbroken, and there was no scar on his face. It retained a vaguely youthful air, whereas Parthicus’s features had been a landscape creased deeply by sun, rain, and sorrow. The face of war.
That cleaner, fresher imitation of Parthicus gauged us, letting nothing on, save perhaps for a trace of easy contempt. “Interesting,” he said. His voice was different too; a little softer. What the hell?
“You’re not Parthicus,” I snapped, in case all those idiots around us hadn’t noticed yet.
Nerie’s eyes flitted between me and the newcomer in rising panic, asking questions I couldn’t answer.
The man’s lips quirked. “I’m the good-looking one in the family.” Family? A brother, maybe? That’d explain the name and resemblance. To his victorious officer, the young Parthicus said, “You have honored the Third. I will not forget it.”
On the tribune’s cuirass, polished silver phalerae jutted out in pride. He slammed his fist to his chest. “I will serve you to the death, sir.”
I suppressed an eye-roll. With his suspiciously clean armor and the sleek cream pelt thrown on his shoulders, that one looked everything but the sort of man who would remain at his commander’s side when the glimmer of the gold faded and there was only mud and death everywhere you looked.
The young Parthicus didn’t look impressed anyway. “Lock them up in the jail for now,” he ordered, narrowing his eyes at me. “Double the chains and guards for our esteemed guest.”
“Well, thanks,” I muttered. That earned me a swift punch to the gut from the tribune. I spit a glob of crimson drool that collected in the chin of my mask and trickled at the young Parthicus’s feet. He considered it, cocked an elegant eyebrow, and told his tribune. “Don’t draw any blood yet. And don’t touch his mask. I don’t want anything to spoil this present.”
A present? For who, the real Parthicus? I wasn’t given any time to ponder this as the Tribune uttered an obsequious, “Yes, sir,” before he turned to his men and yapped, “Take him away!”
Once it had been undone by one of the Lorians, the chain strapping me to the cart became a leash. So much for holding on to my damn pride. Nerie strained against his own bonds and called my name in vain as they dragged me away toward an iron gate leading down musty stone stairs. At the bottom, torches bathed a long corridor in a dull orange glow. Two rows of wooden doors stifled the sighs and moans seeking a way out of this subterranean hell, but they could do nothing to contain the stench of death and rotten straw. I took slow breaths, tried to block the world outside my mask. If I never saw the sun again, I’d try to remember it, bask in its rays in the sanctuary of my mind.
My feet were steady, but my escorts made a little show of forcing me, shoving me forward in a fruitless effort to make me stumble and fall. When I proved to have better balance than they expected, they dug their fingers in my biceps hard enough to make sure there’d be some bruising left later—but, of course, no blood…
As per their legate’s instructions, they demonstrated a luxury of precautions in riveting my chain to a large iron ring hanging from the wall of a blind and musty cell. A second pair of irons were brought, to secure my legs in the same fashion. They made sure both chains weren’t long enough for me to stand up and dropped my sorry ass on a bed of damp straw. After the door had slammed shut, I was left in complete darkness, listening to the echo of their footsteps as they took their post guarding the invincible Silverlegs…
I rested my head against cool stones and closed my eyes, summoning a sunny summer day behind my eyelids. I saw my father, reaping his crop on his two legs, and I had this strange, comforting thought that since I wouldn’t die in battle and find my way to Elysion, maybe I’d see him in the underworld after it was all over. I would tell him how I had missed him, that after being empty for so long since he’d died, I had tried to make a little room in my heart for new friends, but I had lost them all on my road down to hell.
•♦•
I dozed a little, long enough for my stomach to start growling. Pissed myself too, because my chains were too short to pull my pants down. I doubted anyone would care in these walls, though, where everything served to debase me further before my execution. Maybe the real Parthicus would attend, and he’d be pleased that I’d been reduced to a filthy, empty shell of my former self.
I wondered when they’d finally remove my mask and see. A shiver of disgust spilled in my gut. It was the only thing that scared me more than death, that they might touch me. Rape me. My head lolled against the wall as I blinked fully awake in the obscurity. I tapped the back of my skull once against the damp stones. I could do that… crack it myself and rob them of the pleasure to kill Silverlegs.
I banged my head again, but I couldn’t even find the courage to do it. Where was Silverleg’s all-consuming anger when I needed it? Sliding down against the wall, I let my mind drift to Nerie, who was probably sitting in the same hopeless hole, waiting for his fate like I was. Maybe I should have engaged that tribune’s cohort and died back there, under the sky, to give him a chance to escape. My chest swelled with guilt and regret, even as I admitted to myself that he’d have gotten caught just the same.
I kicked the soiled straw lining the ground in frustration, spitting a curse when the chains clanked and stopped my legs before they could extend completely. I’d go mad long before they killed me at this rate.
Somewhere beyond the four walls of my ce
ll, a lock clanked, followed by the complaint of rusty door hinges. Opening or closing? I blinked in the dark and focused every fiber of my being on the hammering of boots on the stone floor, the concert of low murmurs. The footsteps grew louder, closer. Coming for me?
The answer came with the fumbling and clicking of a key in my cell’s lock. I willed my heart to slow down in a shuddering breath, wrestled the fear squeezing my throat.
Light trickled around the edges of the door, then poured in as someone opened it wide. He stood in the doorway, a faceless shadow towering above a vanquished enemy. The torches’ flames gilded the hills and valleys of a golden cuirass, painted a tangle of writhing snakes. But this visitor carried inside my cell a scent of outdoors, leather, and horse. His shoulders were broader, his body perhaps a little heavier. He wasn’t the man who’d welcomed me to this fortress of despair.
When a second shadow risked a toe inside the cell behind him, he raised a hand. “Stand guard outside.” The voice was deep and weary, rough like the grit on the shores of Bride’s Lake.
The legionary chewed out an awkward protest. “Sir… It’d be best—”
“Outside.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said, stepping back to join a group of a dozen men crammed in the narrow corridor, and, I presumed, ready to draw if I so much as sneezed.
He had come in person, and I drew some twisted relief from seeing him standing before me. There would be no more waiting, no more pondering my fate. He took a step forward in my darkness. I coiled instinctively against the wall behind me when he knelt to be at eye level with me. I remembered his face, transfigured by fury during battle, but now those almost golden eyes studied me with a mixture of cold disdain and curiosity—the very same I had seen in his slick double’s gaze hours ago.
“At last we meet again, Silverlegs. I’ve been thinking about that mask all winter long,” he said, a mocking edge to his voice.
I straightened as much as my chains would allow. “I can’t say I gave much of a shit about you. I was busy bleeding your men like pigs.” I sounded like Victrix, and the realization that a part of him would always remain with me gave me strength.
A dry smile tugged at the corners of Parthicus’s mouth, that didn’t reach his eyes. “You certainly did. And yet that boy we found you with begs for your life.”
His words bit into my armor, denting it. Nerie wouldn’t give up on me even now, even when I was powerless to save him. I sucked in a pained breath, swallowed my pride with it. Hell, I’d even beg if it was any use. “Don’t listen to him. He’s the one you need alive. He’s a medic. He trained with our camp surgeon.” I couldn’t filter the irony out of my voice as I added. “You could use that kind of skill.”
Whatever emotion he ducked his head to conceal, I couldn’t tell. Light played along his jaw as it worked silently. He snorted a chuckle. “A point well made. There is honor even among mercenaries, after all.”
“Did you doubt it?”
His tone soured. “The wind carries rumors that you sparked a revolt in Palica and butchered the Overseer’s men. Am I mistaken in believing you betrayed Clearchos?”
The mere mention of his name reopened the wound inside me as if my stitched heart had been clawed open. I jerked against my chains, the rattling of iron in my ears a torture. “He’s the one who betrayed us! He sacrificed his own family to the Overseer for a fucking piece of land! He killed my friends!”
Parthicus didn’t budge, made no attempt to move away from my stench and the hate dripping from my words. He considered me in silence, with his gold-specked eyes that seem to read under my skin. He nodded once. “So, you, too, know what lies under the beds of flowers in Palica?”
“Yes,” I breathed. Gemina’s screams. Hastius’s, Luna’s, and Victrix’s blood. Irius’s guilt and Clearchos’s sins. Horror in every place Aus’s hand touched, in every place the Overseer touched.
His hand reached out for my mask then, without warning. I tried to crawl away, but the chains would let me retreat only so far, and I sat with my back to a damn wall. Parthicus leaned forward in a whiff of sweat and metal, wrapping his free hand around my neck to block my escape. His fingers tightened in warning. I could strain and shake my head; it would only delay the inevitable. I went rigid. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of a struggle as he undid the leather laces holding my mask in place.
He laid it in the straw, his pupils swelling and swallowing his irises as he inspected my chin, my lips, the oval of my jaw. Did he still remember the imprudent words I had spoken during our battle? His eyes widened a fraction as realization set in, and in that instant, I knew he hadn’t been lying when he’d said he had been thinking of me all winter long. He had come for this. To know whether he’d truly brushed death at the hands of a girl.
The hand holding my neck let go and dropped to my chest. Raw panic clawed at my gut when he felt for my breast band like Servilius once had. I rolled away with a war cry, only to bounce back sharply against those wretched chains. I curled up and drew my knees as close to my chest as my restraints would allow. “You don’t touch me,” I snarled. “No one does.”
Parthicus moved away and rose to his feet. He remained silent, studying me as if I were a text he couldn’t decipher. I waited for him to decide my fate, every shallow breath I took thunderous in my ears. After a short eternity, he sighed and ran a hand on the bristles covering his jaw. “Do you want revenge on Clearchos?”
I sat frozen as the meaning of his words sank in. “He’s alive?”
Parthicus shrugged one shoulder. “He survived a fire at the amphitheatron.”
The arena. I felt the sand, hot under my fingertips. Thousands of voices roared inside my skull. Run, Silverlegs! Run! Run!
Perhaps thinking I had misheard him, Parthicus insisted, “Fight for the First, and his head is yours if you can bring it to me.”
I was aware of every single vein pulsing in my body, of the whisper of blood in my ears. I could get out, in the sun, and fight more. More, until I either killed Clearchos or lost myself entirely to Silverlegs. I unfurled slowly, staring straight ahead at my cell’s open door. Outside, the torches’ flames cast the trembling shadows of Parthicus’s men on the walls. “How much do you pay?”
“Twenty sigli monthly, minus a deductible of four sigli for food and equipment.”
I bent forward to reach for my mask. I couldn’t put it back on with my shackled hands. Not yet. “Make that two hundred. Forget the deductible; I buy my own food and weapons.”
He crossed his arms, looking amused. But he didn’t laugh. Instead, he asked, “How old are you?”
“I’ll be seventeen in summer.” It was only after I had told him this that I realized how much this simple sentence meant. It was a promise of the life to come, that I’d been too quick to forfeit in the face of despair.
Parthicus nodded. “One hundred.”
“Two hundred,” I insisted, holding my head up high.
“One fifty, if you can prove to me that you’re worth that much.”
“Check your right side for that,” I retorted.
He barked a laugh. “One hundred and fifty sigli monthly, no deductible, twenty-five years’ term. Welcome to the First Legion, Silverlegs. By the time you leave my service—if you ever do—you’ll be my age.”
It took me some effort to wrestle the numbers around my head and conclude that Parthicus was forty-one—practically a graying senex. I smiled to myself; it seemed ludicrous that I might ever live to reach that age.
“One more thing,” I said, after one of his men entered the cell carrying a crowded set of keys.
He tilted his head, waiting for the rest.
“I want my greaves and my sword back.”
A note about homophobia in Silverlegs
Dear reader,
now that you’ve soldiered through 400 pages of misogynistic and homophobic drivel, I’d like to take a moment to discuss the latter in Silverlegs, which I’m a
ware might shock modern sensibility, or go against recent expectations in the realm of female-led fantasy.
I want to clarify that Silverlegs does not, in any manner, condone or glorify homophobia: it is meant as an exploration of the dynamics of a misogynistic and homophobic culture. Silverlegs borrows heavily from Ancient Roman culture, including its phallic obsession and exaltation of virile values. Contrary to later Christian views, Ancient Romans did not condemn homosexuality as a sinful pendant to heterosexuality, and thus a criminal deviation from God’s law. In Ancient Rome, the dichotomy lied between the active and passive partner, the penetrator versus the penetrated, the dominant versus the submissive, and, ultimately, the masculine versus the feminine.
For a Roman citizen, pederasty was no big deal, as long as he assumed the role of the active partner. The term mollis (meaning soft) that I use in Silverlegs is just one of the many ways to designate a passive gay partner, and evokes the image of a dainty, effeminate boy or man, as opposed to an ostensibly masculine one. Which brings me right back to systemic misogyny: it mattered not that a man be fiercely gay, what mattered was his good social standing, part of which was his uncontestable virility.
Here’s a famous example of how that worked: in the famous introductory line of Carmen 16, Catullus vociferates, “Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō”—I will sodomize you and face-fuck you. The words were meant as a (mock?) rape threat to Furius and Aurelius, two of his contemporaries who had the audacity to call his verses “molliculi”—meaning soft, tender, or delicate, and, by extension, effeminate. Yes, they basically called him a mollis to his face. Inflamed, Catullus publicly escalates the conflict with one of the crudest verses ever written in Latin, and a flamboyant—if not sincere—proclamation of his virile superiority. Oh, and by the way, Catullus and Furius were actually both gay, and Catullus’s lover, Juventius, even had an affair with Furius at some point.
To my modern ears, the anecdote reads like the first “U gay! / No, u gay!” ever recorded in history, and it is this toxic spirit I tried to recreate in Silverlegs: an environment infused with rampant misogyny, a two-thousand-year-old bro culture in which peer pressure reigns supreme, and one must dominate or risk being dominated.