by R. W. Peake
My life on our farm was getting worse, just as Valeria and I had feared. Without the buffer of my sister, my father’s abuse, verbally at least, increased dramatically. He still would not touch me, and as I grew stronger and harder, the chance of that became more remote every day. I sometimes think that my contempt for him would have been much less if he had at least shown the courage to strike me, but his cowardice was complete, and it never happened. I would be less than honest if I were to not mention that I did give him cause; every week would see me become more insolent to his face, which of course only made the situation worse. But by then, after what I had learned from Valeria, my heart had been hardened and I would never have considered giving in, although I had yet to confront him with what I knew. I may have been large and strong, but he was still my father and the paterfamilias and obedience is strongly ingrained in the Roman people. It may make us great, but it has its price as well. Phocas tried his best to interpose, and it succeeded as far as the physical abuse; rarely a week passed where my father did not apply a rod to his back, which he bore without any complaint, at least to Lucius’ face. It only served to fuel my hatred of Lucius, along with my contempt for him, because I knew that what he was doing was beating me, not Phocas; he just didn’t have the courage. I should have been wise enough to cease in baiting Lucius, since he kept taking it out on Phocas, but when have the words wisdom and teenager ever gone together in the same sentence? Unless your name is Octavian, who proved to have a very wise head on his shoulders indeed, but again, that is for later.
Once we had satisfied Cyclops with our work with the gladius, he began sparring sessions with Vibius and me. The first session he bade us to pick up our arms and motioned that we both come at him, as he stood there with his own weapon and holding one of the scuta. Looking at each other, Vibius and I grinned, arriving at the same thought simultaneously. This would be our revenge on all the things that Cyclops had forced on us, all the insults, the bruises, everything. Now would be the moment of our revenge. Not saying a word to each other, we somehow knew to work in opposite directions, Vibius going towards the side where Cyclops held the scutum, with me heading towards the opposite side, watching his gladius, which he held closely to his side at the ready position. We approached slowly; we may have been confident, but we also respected Cyclops, who had proven in the last months that he knew what he was about. Keeping my feet the proper width apart, I shuffled towards him, watching Vibius out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to make a move that I would match. Vibius went wide, so that he was almost perpendicular to Cyclops before suddenly lunging forward with a shout, signaling me to begin my attack. I lunged forward as well, although I was slightly behind, having moved a bit more slowly. As we both lunged, Cyclops, instead of retreating as we had expected, took a sudden step forward and towards Vibius, who was now a little behind him on his left. This moved him away from Vibius’ blade, while at the same time, Cyclops whirled his scutum and bashed Vibius hard on his left shoulder with the scuta’s boss, the metal protuberance in the center. Vibius went flying, which by reflex, I watched, while Cyclops, in a move that I do not think I even saw, leaped the few feet between us and, before I knew what was happening, smacked me hard in the solar plexus with his gladius. The blow knocked me to my knees, forcing me to drop my own blade to clutch my stomach and gasp for air. Before Vibius could regain his feet, Cyclops moved to his side and did the same thing, jabbing him in the breadbasket and dropping him back prone on the ground, where he lay, retching violently. Cyclops stood, waiting for us to gather our wits, barely out of breath, his scutum grounded. He twirled the gladius as if it were a stick. Slowly pulling myself to my feet, I glared at him with murder in my eyes and heart, while he looked placidly at me with his good eye. Vibius was a bit slower to recover, rubbing his stomach and his shoulder at the same time, but soon enough, he was standing as well.
“Well?” I demanded, knowing that he would not mince words.
I was surprised when he said, “Not bad, actually. You were right to work as a team. That, more than anything, is the secret of our success in battle. We work as a unit, and the unit is composed of two-man teams that work in concert. You understood that immediately, but your inexperience showed.”
I was nonplussed; I had expected scorn, but he genuinely seemed to think that we had done a decent job for our first attempt.
“So where did we go wrong?” I asked, mollified by his words.
“You came at me separately, not as a team. That allowed me to dispatch each of you, as long as I moved quickly and decisively enough.”
I thought for a moment; that seemed to defy common sense, but I slowly began to see what he was talking about.
Continuing, he said, “What would I have done if you had come at me from the same side? What could I have done if you had come at me on the same side? One of you I could defend against, but the instant I do that, it leaves me vulnerable to the attack of the other. I only have one scutum, but as long as you come at me so that I can employ both my weapons at the same time on one of you, it evens my odds.”
Once explained, I saw the sense of this, because to this point, I had only seen the scutum as a strictly defensive weapon.
As if he sensed my thoughts, Cyclops continued, “Your scutum is both a defense and a weapon. This,” he pointed to the boss, “is there precisely so that you use it as I employed it. It's as much of a weapon as it is for defense.”
With that, and taking what he had told us, we attacked again, but both of us approached from the same side, shoulder to shoulder. This time, when we closed, Cyclops did the unexpected. Leaping to Vibius’ left side, he smashed his scutum directly into him, putting his weight behind it. Vibius flew into me, knocking him down, and forcing me to stagger backwards, which Cyclops used to his advantage, smacking Vibius in the gut yet again on his way down. Before I could regain my balance, Cyclops was on top of me, swinging the gladius in a short arc, smashing into my stomach once more and knocking me flat. Resuming his waiting position, the only consolation I had was that he seemed to be breathing a bit heavier.
Climbing to my feet, I asked wearily, “So what did we do wrong this time?”
“You were too close together,” he said instantly. “All I had to do was to knock Vibius down and the same was bound to happen with you. I chose to attack Vibius’ side because he was smaller,” he said matter-of-factly. This did not please Vibius, but it was the truth, no matter how brutal. “And trust me, when given the choice of attacking you or attacking Vibius first, no matter who you face, they're always going to choose Vibius first.”
He turned to Vibius and pointed his gladius. “That means that you have to be exceptionally skillful, Vibius. You'll be considered the weak link. But,” he turned to face both of us, “that also means you can use it to your advantage.” He shook his head. “Of course, that’s assuming that you'll be standing side by side in the line.” Continuing, he said, “When you go to enlist, they'll tell you to select a friend that will be your counterpart. Each of you will watch the other’s back; you'll hold the other’s wills, you'll be responsible for his safety. When that moment comes, you need to choose each other, because that will give you the most out of what I'm teaching you.”
This made eminent sense to both of us, and we readily agreed. We knew already that we were friends for life, that nothing would come between us. What little we knew then.
It took a couple of weeks, but we were finally able to defeat Cyclops, and it was a great day for Vibius and me. Once we did that, only then did he turn us loose on him one on one. I would watch as he thrashed Vibius, and Vibius would watch as he did the same to me. I wish I could say that I was the first to finally best him, but that would not be true. One day, Vibius, taking a page from Cyclops’ own book of tricks, got his scutum inside of Cyclops’ and wrenched it from Cyclops’ grasp. Even then, it took Vibius some time to score a killing blow, which was signified by the blotch of red paint that Cyclops coated on the tip and first few inches
of the gladius. Finally, Vibius just wore him down and managed to jab his gladius into Cyclops’ chest when he was not quick enough to bring his own up to parry Vibius’ thrust. We both whooped in triumph and I yelled just as loudly as if I had been the one that made the kill, happy both for Vibius and for the event itself. Cyclops took it gracefully, seemingly as happy for us as we were, hard as it was to imagine for me.
Whatever the truth, he got to his feet and clapped Vibius on the back, saying, “Well done, Vibius. You may survive your first battle yet.”
It took me a couple more days before I was able to defeat Cyclops; one problem of my size was that I could not move as quickly as Vibius could, although the force behind my blows was stronger. Still, Cyclops said that I moved very well despite my size, and this rare praise made me feel much better. Finally, he deemed us ready to go after each other, which we did with gusto. I had no end of trouble trying to corner Vibius so that I could bring my superior strength to bear, and he was more dexterous in his use of the scutum than I was, causing several bruises all over my upper body. My biggest problem was giving in to frustration and impatience, but slowly, I began to get his measure and learn his tendencies. For instance, he would dip his scutum slightly just before launching an attack; once I learned that, I was able to counter his attack with one of my own, often catching him off-balance. However, he was devilishly quick to recover at all times, so I quickly learned that once on the attack in such a case, I had to continue pressing forward. Slowly, over a measure of days, I was able to get to a point where I beat him six times out of ten, which was the best I was ever able to do against him, at least back then. Cyclops, for his part, would merely stand watching us circle each other, making quiet comments about our position, or chastise us for an error. It was in this manner that we learned one of the most basic skills of the Legionary.
Once Cyclops had deemed us well enough trained in the gladius, he introduced us to the pilum. Because of the fragility of the regular pilum, with its soft metal shaft that is designed to bend on contact with whatever it hits, we only worked with the practice pila, which are somewhat heavier because of their stouter metal shaft. It took some time to get accustomed to the proper way to throw it so that the point would imbed, or at least strike what we were aiming at. For some reason, I had more trouble mastering it than Vibius did; perhaps it was my greater height, but to this day, it is the weakest of my skills, although I eventually became passably fair at throwing it.
While our bodies had become accustomed to the strain and stress of the loricae, the scutum and the gladius, throwing the pilum used different muscles and, after the first day, we could barely lift our throwing arms. But that did not concern Cyclops the next day, when he had us continue where we left off, throwing at the stakes, which had become scarred and battered from our previous training. After a week, we were both able to hit the stake most of the time from a distance of thirty paces, whereupon Cyclops immediately had us move ten paces back. After three or four weeks, we were very accurate from a number of distances, although Vibius was much better at it than I was. If I would hit the target eight out of ten times, Vibius never missed, and he was just as accurate at the longer ranges. Since, by this time, I had gotten the upper hand, albeit a slight one, in our training with the gladius, his supremacy in this did his confidence a world of good. And it irritated me to no end, I must confess; I am nothing if not extremely competitive, and the fact that in my view that Vibius liked to gloat a little too much about it did not help matters. All the way back to the town, where I would leave him to continue on to my farm, he would chatter about it like a bird, using every excuse to bring it up in conversation, particularly around Juno.
Ah, Juno. The source of the first falling out between Vibius and me. As the months passed and turned into years, by the time I was fifteen and Vibius sixteen, Juno was blossoming, from a mud-spattered urchin to what, in our eyes, was the image of Aphrodite. I think that must be the way all of us remember our first love, or lust, as the case may be. Juno was always waiting for us to come back from Cyclops’, hanging by the forum where her father was a baker, selling his daily allotment of bread. I cannot actually name the day or time that she sprang up before us as a woman, and not just a somewhat tiresome girl who hung on our every word, no matter how flattering it may have been. But it seemed to happen to Vibius and me simultaneously, and it was somewhere around the time we had started working with the pila, because that is my first conscious memory of her as a woman. Vibius had done exceptionally well that day, and was crowing about it, as he was wont to do, while I was growing more irritated by the moment. By the time we got to the town and approached the forum, I was in a sour mood, which immediately got blacker on the appearance of Juno. Vibius waved to her and she came skipping over to us, and perhaps it was the fact that underneath her shift, things were bouncing about that I had never noticed bouncing before. I glanced over at Vibius, and I caught the same look I suspected I had on my own face, a mixture of surprise and…something else. Unbidden, I felt a heat in my groin, which immediately made its way to my cheeks, and I felt flushed and unsteady in a way that I had not experienced much at that point.
Juno seemed oblivious, teasing us, “So how many Carthaginians did you big, bad Legionaries slay today?”
Vibius immediately used that as an excuse to brag about how he had bested me with the pila, causing me to snap, “That may be true today, but we'll see how things play out tomorrow.”
“And tomorrow, I'll still be better than you,” Vibius mocked, oblivious to my growing anger.
Juno turned to me, her eyes wide with feigned surprise, since this had been the same story for the last few days, and I knew that my rejoinder was becoming weaker every time I said it.
“Again, Titus? Vibius beat you again?”
Smiling, she reached out and grabbed Vibius’ bicep, squeezing it, gasping and cooing as if she were touching the right arm of Mars himself. My anger was growing by the second, and I could feel it building in me, but did not know how to stop it.
“Well, I can still take you with the gladius,” I declared.
“That may be true, but you'll never get close enough to me to use it before I'd turn you into a pin cushion.”
Growling, I took a step towards him, his face showing surprise and alarm for the first time as he looked into my eyes and saw how truly angry I was. “It looks like I’m close enough now, eh?”
Scrambling backward, he tripped over a loose stone, falling on his backside, and I broke out into a harsh laugh. “Not so mighty now, are we, Vibius?”
Vibius scrambled to his feet and charged me, fists swinging wildly. I must say I was surprised and he caught me with a right fist on my cheek, which snapped my head back. I realized that I was not the only one who had gotten stronger with all the exercise that Cyclops had put us through, but it still was not enough to do more than make my head move. With a roar of rage, I grabbed Vibius by his tunic with my left hand, picking him up as if he was made of straw and threw him against a wall of one of the buildings surrounding the forum. By this point, everyone had stopped conducting their business, most of them grinning at the sight of the two of us fighting. Life in a small town is boring and people will look at anything out of the ordinary as a source of entertainment. A fight was a perfect excuse to stop working to watch. Vibius thudded against the building, sliding down to a sitting position, shaking his head to clear it as I walked towards him, still at the height of my anger. Juno stepped in front of me, putting her hand on my chest, her eyes wide with fright.
“Please, Titus! I didn't mean to start a fight between you. It was my fault, not Vibius’, truly! You should be angry with me, not him.”
That deflated me instantly, and her words cut me as if they were made of knives. She was taking his side! I suddenly felt as if I could not breathe, as my chest constricted, and I could feel unwanted tears threatening to well up and unman me. There was nothing that could have hurt me worse than this, and it was at that moment that I
realized that I loved Juno, or at least thought I did. After all, what does a fifteen-year-old truly know of love? Regardless, my anger dissipated, but I was still not willing to do anything like apologize.
Through clenched teeth, I muttered, “Fine. I'll go home and you two can stay here together. I’m sure it’s what you want anyway.”
Without waiting for a reply, I turned heel and pushed my way through the crowd, my size and anger enough to keep anyone from saying something unwise.
I cooled off on the walk home so that by the time I got back to our farm, I was more sad and heartbroken than anything else. The fact that I held feelings for Juno had come to me as a complete surprise; I had always seen her as just another child like us, but somewhere along the way, things had changed. Coupled with that was a sense of shame in the way I had behaved towards Vibius. Truly, he was not to blame for the way Juno felt. After all, he had not done anything any different than I had, and I realized that I was in the wrong. Yet, I was as stubborn as most teenage lads are, and I did not know how to get out of my predicament without losing what was more important to me than anything, my dignitas. Even then, I had a very clear picture of who I was and who I wanted to be, and such doings as I had perpetrated at the forum were beneath me, but I could not decide which the worst fate was: apologizing or not saying anything. If I were to apologize, while it would smooth things over with Juno and, more importantly, Vibius, it would be an admission that I had done wrong, which would damage my dignitas. However, if I did not apologize, I would be bothered because deep down, I knew I was wrong. So, I did nothing. I did not leave the farm the next day, nor the day after that, nor the day after that. Finally, Phocas came to me as I sat brooding on Lucius’ stone wall, looking down the road towards town.