The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  Galt, alone in the storeroom, looked from one still face to the other. The sun was falling fast in the sky, the shadows lengthening and then fading again as the mist came creeping in around the walls of Inchtuthil. Outside there was silence where the Roman Army of the Eagles lay still in the alleyways and buildings of the fort. To the south, the rest of the Ninth Hispana lay still also, brought down in ones and twos among the trees. Already the carrion birds picked clean their bones, and the wild grasses grew up between them. In the hillside passes of the Painted People and among the broken walls of Inchtuthil, the lost Legion of the Hispana slept.

  Galt stood up, fighting off the weariness that seemed to soak into his bones. He pulled the pin from the bronze ring brooch in his cloak and stood looking at it for a moment. Then he pinned it to his kilt and shook out the cloak. He took the dead centurion of the Eagles and slid his body with surprising gentleness to the floor. He put the Roman’s sword between his hands and laid his shield, still bright with its jagged thunderbolts and its owner’s name and rank, across his chest. And over all he laid his cloak.

  He slipped the High King’s own cloak from beneath his body and wrapped it around him. And, bearing the shrouded form in his arms, he stepped through the doorway into the light of the setting sun. Before him lay a desolation of broken, twisted shields and broken bodies. The harper and his burden made their way down the alleyway to the inner gate. The sun slipped behind the hills, and as it did, a mouse scuttled out across his path, busy on its own importance. Already the forest was reclaiming its own.

  Epilogue

  Eburacum

  The commander of the Victrix detachment flung himself down on his bed in the officers’ quarters at Eburacum and stared grimly at the ceiling. He had just spent a bad morning in the Principia with Governor Falco and the few remaining officers of the Ninth’s garrison at Eburacum, and guilt by association had hung heavy in the air.

  They had finally made the Channel crossing with the grudging consent and Cassandra-like warnings of the Gesoriacum port commander, and they had had Ahriman’s own time of it, too. By the time they reached port, rumors were already flying, and the Victrix commander had collected as many extra troops as he could detach or steal from the southern garrisons and made a forced march north. They knew, even before they reached Eburacum, that they had come too late. But it wasn’t until he had been ushered into Centurion Hilarion’s quarters that the full horror of what had happened was borne in on him.

  The garrison commander looked like a man who had been walking in a nightmare, his thin, freckled face fine-drawn and aged beyond its years. He offered the Victrix officer some wine and told him what the scouts had found.

  ‘I sent them out when the northern forts began to hear stories that seemed bad enough to pass on back to me. I wish now I didn’t know.’ He stared at his wine and then pushed it away from him. ‘I wish I could get drunk.’

  The young centurion posted to the Ninth to replace Cassius had also heard the story, and he had gotten drunk, which was a mistake, because the Governor arrived the next day, and he was forced to go on parade with an almost terminal hangover. On the other hand, anything was better than wondering whether, if he had held the Fifth Cohort, the Legion too might have held.

  The Governor posted the grim details to the Senate and set about pulling the Victrix detachment and the remnants of the Ninth into a force capable of dealing with the Britons who would undoubtedly come howling down about their ears all too soon.

  But Galt, who also had his scouts about, saw the well-oiled precision of the Victrix, and used it to force his peace on Brendan and Dergdian.

  ‘The old Caesar left his Eagles to fend for themselves here,’ he told the allied Council, ‘but the new one will not.’ The king’s ring winked on his finger in the firelight. ‘The time for hosting is past. We have destroyed a Legion of the Eagles, yes, but disgraced it also, and that Rome will not forget.’

  ‘What do you propose?’ Conor asked quietly. (‘No, friend, I’ll not oppose you,’ he had told Galt as they stood watching the High King’s funeral pyre flame against the sky. ‘And I am no killer of babes. I begin to think the kingship no great bargain after all. I would not walk in your shoes just now, certainly.’)

  ‘We must make a peace now, while we are strong,’ Galt went on. ‘Peace with better terms than we could gain defeated.’

  ‘You would simply hand it all on a plate to Rome?’ Brendan asked.

  Branwen came forward then, from her place at Council as the mother of the young king. ‘No,’ she said quietly, and the sorrow in her face stopped the words in their mouths. ‘We would save it if we could.’

  And so the thing was done (although Dergdian left the Council early, and they knew that he was an ally no longer), and the one bright spot in Governor Falco’s world was the arrival of a delegation to talk peace. He proved both his wisdom and Galt’s by setting reasonable terms, and for once diplomacy had its day.

  But no amount of diplomacy could ease away the horror of the lost Hispana, and he was not overly surprised when the word came from the Senate. He read the letter grimly, dismissed its bearer, and sent the Optio to summon the Victrix and the remnants of the Ninth.

  The Victrix commander found he did not care to dwell on that meeting, and concentrated instead on the problems of the moment. When the rest of the Sixth arrived, the Legate of the Victrix would take over, and he wished him joy of it. In the meantime, he had on his hands an army that was having nightmares, and, the gods help him, Aurelius Rufus’s household slaves and his daughter to deal with. So far, the young lady had been as sweetly cooperative as an Army mule.

  Licinius, sitting bleakly in his hospital office with his leg propped on a cushion, was of much the same mind.

  After the Legion marched out, Felicia had come to the hospital almost every day and made herself useful, fetching and carrying and attending to such cases on morning sick parade as were not of an intimate nature. She worked briskly and cheerfully, a voluminous apron tied over her gown and her hair pulled back out of her way in a knot on her neck, and Licinius found her presence comforting… too comforting. He would miss her even more because of these slow, peaceful days, when the Legion marched back and the Legate sent him packing.

  And then they learned that the Legion wasn’t going to march back, and he and Hilarion had sat up all night together in the hospital, trying to shut out their horror and their loss. In the morning Hilarion had steeled himself and gone to Gwytha and Felicia with the news.

  How Gwytha had taken it Licinius didn’t know, and Hilarion had not told him. He should have gone to her himself, he knew, but he did not, sitting instead in his empty office alone with his grief, staring at the chair that Justin used to lounge in with his long legs propped on the surgeon’s desk. Licinius poured a full measure of wine into one of the green glass cups, and set the second cup rim-down on the edge of the desk in bitter memory of other days.

  Felicia found him still sitting there when, escaping from the hysterical weeping of Calpurnia and Theodore, she trudged up the road from the Praetorium. She thought at first that he was engaged in drinking himself into oblivion, then saw that the wine was untouched.

  ‘I have no comfort to offer,’ she said softly, ‘except my own need of it.’

  He looked up at her slowly, seeming to take in her presence for the first time. ‘There is none,’ he said.

  ‘Then we must be each other’s.’ Her eyes were red but she held her voice steady.

  ‘Truly I am sorry.’ He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘But I have nothing to offer you. I’m being invalided out. I suppose I’ll take what little pension I have due me and try to learn farming… they say there’s good land to be had in the south… and I’ve no mind to spend my life treating rich men’s gout. And you will go back to your family and that will be an end of it. It will be better for both of us if we stay away from each other until then.’

  Then she had dropped her brick. ‘Licinius, I’m not
leaving.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind!’

  ‘I’d be out of my mind if I let myself be packed off to Rome to live with my aunt! And so I’ve told that young snirp from the Victrix – he may have my father’s fort now, but he doesn’t rule me!’

  ‘My dear, no one could rule you,’ Licinius said tiredly. ‘Not even your father.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it my way,’ she said sweetly, and he choked. She knelt beside his chair and gripped him hard by the shoulders. ‘Licinius, listen to me – I grew up with the Army. How do you really think I’d do in Rome? And where have I to go but to you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Damn you! I am sick to death of being made unhappy for my own good! I have lost my father, my friends, and my home. All that I have left that I love is you – and now you tell me I’m to kiss you good-bye because you are so pigheaded you’d rather be honorable than happy. Well, I’ll wish you joy of your damned honor while I’m reading to my aunt after dinner and fetching her stole and trying not to hear the whispers about ‘poor Rufus’s daughter – his Legion disgraced itself, you know.’ I might even stick it out six months before I killed myself, but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you did the honorable thing. I hope it keeps you warm at night!’ She turned on her heel and stalked out.

  That was yesterday, and he hadn’t seen her since, although he’d heard on the camp grapevine that she had told the Victrix commander she would go and stay with Centurion Corvus’s widow if he was in such a hurry to move into the Praetorium; adding, however, that the only way he would get her on a ship for Rome was bound hand and foot like a slave, and she didn’t think her influential aunt would care to receive her in that condition. Whereupon she had slammed the door, smacking it hard into his big toe.

  Licinius sighed and reached for his cloak. If she slammed the door on him too, he’d turn the little demon over his knee.

  * * *

  ‘And so we’ve all been given our postings,’ Hilarion said, staring at the floor. ‘All within Britain too – they don’t want any of us running around loose elsewhere.’

  He had given Gwytha a few days alone with her private grief and then, remembering Justin’s parting request, had come hesitantly to see her again. Her face, which, when he had seen her last, had been torn by a pain that seemed almost physical, was tired and without expression now, as if the light had gone out in it before the whirlwind of her grief. But she welcomed him warmly enough and listened as he described that last brutal briefing by the Governor.

  ‘Licinius and Felicia have made terms with each other, I think,’ he added. ‘There will be something left for them at least.’

  ‘And where do you go?’

  ‘They’ve shipped me to the Second Augusta at Isca. To the Tenth Cohort,’ he said with a grimace. ‘I’m surprised they let me have that.’

  ‘And the Legion is broken?’

  ‘Broken and stripped of honors. Even the damned number is being retired. You’ll never see another Ninth Legion Anything in this Army.’

  ‘Legions have been rebuilt before.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he said bitterly. ‘They don’t want it back. It’s an embarrassment and a disgrace to them, and they don’t want to hear of it again ever. May they rot! They’re as much to blame as anyone. They could have seen this coming and stopped it!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why they wish to forget it as soon as possible. Rome is like that, I find.’ Her tone was bitter but there was life in it, and he thought he saw a flash of the old Gwytha. But it tore at his heart to see her come to life only in bitterness.

  She put a hand on his. ‘Don’t grieve for me, Hilarion. I will be all right, I promise you.’

  Her first wild sorrow had almost overwhelmed her, but she had fought it down with the grim determination of necessity, and after two days she had emerged from its grasp with a cold ache in her heart and the ability to see life as it was.

  ‘Will the Eagles go north again?’ she asked after a moment.

  ‘As soon as we’ve troops enough to give the Picts a good fright, we’ll take a column to Inchtuthil to bury our dead. Or so they say – myself, I think they’ll just bury the Legion and have done with it. They’ll be fighting the Picts soon enough anyway.’

  She thought of Justin, lying cold and alone in that deserted place, and the ache gripped her unendurably for a moment. But Justin was dead, and past caring, and no amount of funeral prayers could bring him back. She picked up small Justin and set him on her knee, finding comfort in his warm baby embrace. ‘What of the Legion’s Eagle?’ she asked. They would be trying to get it back, she knew, even though there would be no Legion to carry it.

  ‘The Picts have it, I suppose,’ Hilarion said. ‘They walked out of the Council when the Brigantes started talking peace. Rumor has it that they collected the Eagle on their way. The new regent, who appears to have been the king’s brother-in-blood or some such, was furious, but he doesn’t want a war with the Picts any more than he wants one with us. I don’t know what brought him around to this enlightened viewpoint, but I’m grateful for it.’

  ‘And how long will this new peace last, do you think?’

  ‘Only until Rome forgets about Britain again and starts to drain off its troops. But we’ll have it with us for a while yet, in the south anyway. The Victrix will be busy with the Picts this summer.’ Gwytha stared out the window, where a light spring rain was whispering in the apple tree, while the nymphs and dolphins danced in frozen gaiety behind her. ‘I have written to Justin’s mother. Poor woman, it will be hard for her. He was her only child, you know… and to hear it from me. But I had to tell her. It would be too cruel to let the Army do it.’

  ‘Will you go to her?’ Hilarion asked.

  ‘No, I think not. She will ask me, I think, for the babe’s sake, and perhaps I will take him to her for a visit… she is his grandmother. But no. I expect I will have to go back to my own people after all.’

  Finn padded into the room and nudged her arm with his muzzle. She scratched his head and hugged the big dog to her. ‘Poor fellow, you know he’s gone, don’t you?’ He whined and licked her face and then paced away again, making a circuit of the house, his face puzzled and anxious. ‘He knows,’ she said. ‘Poor old boy. And I have no comfort to offer him either.’

  Hilarion sighed, looking miserably at the floor, and knowing that never in all his life would he measure up to Justin in either of their eyes. ‘Gwytha?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  She looked at him kindly and he took a deep breath. ‘When you married Justin it was because you had to, and I was glad for you both when it turned to love. Do you think the same thing might happen again?’

  ‘What?’ She looked abstractedly at him.

  ‘Need you go back to your people? I couldn’t bear to think of you alone. Couldn’t you come with me instead?’ That got her attention, and he hurried on while she stared at him. ‘I won’t amount to much, you know. None of us that are left will. But there’ll be enough, and I’d take good care of you and small Justin.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind another man’s babe?’ she asked then. ‘I – it may be there is another on the way.’

  ‘Gwytha, Justin was my friend. If there is another babe of his, I could only be glad. And all the more reason for you to come to me,’ he went on, grasping this added argument.

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Hilarion, are you being noble?’

  ‘No!’ he said, revolted. ‘I’m trying to tell you I love you. Probably as much as you loved Justin.’

  ‘And you’d saddle yourself with a wife who might not ever feel that way about you?’

  ‘It seems to me that maybe that is a kind of love that can be given just once,’ he said. ‘How could I be angry that you didn’t give it again to me? Many people have married again after such a love and found some kind of contentment. I could give you that at least, I think.’

  ‘And you would be content with that?’

  ‘If need
be. But I am not Justin, and you are fond of me, I think. Perhaps you could learn a different sort of love for me.’

  ‘Perhaps I could. But I don’t know yet. Hilarion dear, you’re taking a risk. Do you really want to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t press this on you so soon after… so soon… but it’s now or never. I’ll be posted to the south in a few more days, and you’ll go back to your people – and – Gwytha, I want you and the baby.’

  ‘And maybe they don’t?’ She smiled ruefully and took his hand. ‘Perhaps you are right. I am of the Roman world now. Best that I stay in it.’

  * * *

  The Sixth Legion Victrix marched into Eburacum, standards shining and trumpets singing them on their way, with their own gilded Eagle bright against the sky. And shortly thereafter, the last unwelcome reminders of the Ninth marched out.

  To one side, ready to fall in as the ragtag column passed, Licinius and Hilarion waited, with Gwytha and Felicia beside them, while the dogs lay, tongues lolling, at their ponies’ feet. In a mule-drawn wagon Januaria sat cuddling small Justin, while in a second wagon Theodore and Calpurnia sat rigidly, their bright, frightened gaze fixed on the road ahead.

  Hilarion was in uniform, but Licinius was a dark-haired stranger in a civilian tunic. His instrument case still hung from his belt, and he ran his fingers along it unconsciously until Felicia sidled her pony over to his and took his hand.

  Hilarion looked anxiously at Gwytha, but she laid a light, reassuring hand on his arm and smoothed, for his sake, the pain from her face. The remnants of his cohort, bound for postings that would scatter them as widely as a handful of flung pebbles, paused as they passed to salute their former commander, and then they were swallowed up by the column… the Ninth Legion Hispana, marching together one last time, so far as the first fork in the road.