The Last Plutarch

by Tom O'Donnell

  “Why do the Plutarchs even care how many savages are out there? With the turrets on the wall, no army could ever penetrate Panchaea,” Dominus said during a midday meal in the barracks.

  “Ozymandias did,” Meric said. “Besides, it’s the duty of the faithful to be tested in the Wildlands.”

  We shouldn’t question the Plutarchs, he almost added, but Swan came to mind, and he didn’t want to risk raising the issue with Dominus.

  “Spoken like a true legionnaire, Meric, but you don’t have to remind me. I’m just wondering about the Plutarchs’ motives–privately, as it were. You don’t think they’re getting anything out of this campaign?”

  It was a sensitive issue, more than a little heretical.

  “The Plutarchs serve Panchaea, just as we do,” Meric said, spearing his food with a fork.

  Dominus looked at him thoughtfully, lapsing into silence.

  Even Dominus had no doubt who would emerge victorious from the campaign, however. The new legionnaires drilled daily. Each was in the best shape of their life. An equal number of veterans would accompany them. Together, who could stand against them?

  “You should see us,” Meric told his mother and brother over a late meal at his family’s farm. He’d been living in the barracks, but the campaign was to begin soon, and the legionnaires were allowed to visit their families. Reed stared at him wide-eyed, eager for information.

  “When my penta forms up–”

  “Your what?” Reed asked.

  “Pentacrus. Each century is split into five twenty-man groups, and each group is a leg for the century to stand on. Pentacrus–five legs. If a few get kicked out, we’re still standing, right?

  “Right,” Reed said.

  “Like I was saying, when my penta takes formation beyond the wall, it’s an amazing sight. The sunlight is blinding when it hits our blades. It’s not like it is here in the Fog. And when a whole century gathers? Godsblood–”

  “Meric, don’t curse at the table,” Matron Adams said.

  “Sorry, mother. But it’s something to see. Nothing can stand against us. Nothing. I doubt any savage will even dare to … show their face.”

  Meric faltered, remembering the eyes in the forest. He’d half-convinced himself it had been his imagination–but no, a pair of wild grass-green eyes had spotted him from a shadowy recess.

  “Meric, I’m sure it’s all very exciting. But be careful out there. Don’t risk your life needlessly. Promise me,” Matron Adams said, an uncharacteristic quaver in her voice. Meric looked down at his food. She must’ve been thinking of his father, who’d died fighting in the Wildlands. It seemed almost merciful that Anwa Babi had eaten those memories. He wondered how exactly it had happened. Perhaps an ambush during reconnaissance. Certainly if his father had seen the force Meric was heading out with, he would have formed the same opinion as his son.

  “I’ll be fine, mother. Really,” Meric said.

  “Promise me, Meric.”

  “I promise.”

  “Your father and I always believed you were meant for something special. It is not your destiny to die in the Wildlands,” she said. A sheet of tears were held in check behind her eyes. Meric found it hard to look at her.

  “Bring me back something,” Reed said, smiling suddenly, breaking the tension.

  “Like what?” Meric asked.

  “Something from the Wildlands. Anything. Even if it’s just a rock.”

  Meric laughed.

  “A rock? A rock? How about … the head of Trajan himself!” he said, seizing Reed in a headlock.

  *

  On the morning of their departure, all four centuries were arrayed in disciplined rows northeast of the city. Their poison-caps had been installed over their teeth. Meric had trouble not tonguing his. It was amazing how close death lay; how easy it would be to cross that line.

  Thrace had been named Legate for the new campaign. He would lead Meric’s half of the legion. Vitruvio, the Legate Minor, would lead Dominus’s half. Serving under each Legate were two Centurions, one for each hundred-man century, and under each Centurion were five Decurions–the commanders of the twenty-man pentas. Having excelled in training and placed first in atomblade duels (and, he liked to think, because he’d shown undying loyalty to the Plutarchs), Meric was appointed to the rank of Decurion. Broad-shouldered Horus was one of the men in his pentacrus. Avigon, the wiry dueler, had also made Decurion. He and Meric would each lead twenty men into battle.

  Priests moved among them, blessing the troops. Hadric towered over all, silver armor gleaming, standing out from the sea of matte gray fogplate. Meric bowed his head as the Priests passed. His stomach fluttered. He was hyper-alert despite the early hour. He’d bid Dominus farewell in an overcrowded spirithouse the night before.

  Steam hissed from the legion’s rear. A six-wheeled steamcar rolled out of Panchaea, a Priest in the driver’s seat. Twelve of the vehicles emerged in all. They lined up behind the centuries, carrying food and supplies.

  “Marching formations,” Thrace shouted, his battle-voice carrying like thunder. The Centurions echoed the order. Meric’s heart leapt. He was part of something bigger and better than himself. Each century fell into a long column with two men abreast. It was hard to imagine so many men in one battle.

  Invincible, he thought again.

  A horn blew, and Thrace led them forward into the trees, steamcars hissing at the rear. Meric glanced back. The Obelisk speared the sky further south, watching them with its windowless white façade, the omniscient sentinel of a dead age.

  Others too have walked that path, the Obelisk seemed to say, momentarily dulling his euphoria.

  Then they entered the forest, and the sky was made of leaves. Birds twittered. Woodland creatures fled in bursts of underbrush. Predators slunk away unseen, leaving only footprints and droppings as evidence of their existence. A remnant of Meric’s old fears lingered, but the difference between that first outing and this one was astounding. Had he really been so afraid of the forest? As something big lumbered away out of sight, cracking branches, he thought: the forest was afraid of him.

  The trees east of the clearing were sparser than north and west–a necessity for the vehicles. On the ghost of an old road, the legion turned north. The ancients had forged the road from thousands of hexagonal plates. Weathering had since buried it in dirt and debris. Roots had dislodged the plates here and there, revealing strange cables and rusted metal tubes running beneath. At an intersection with several smaller roads–broken and encroached upon by trees–Thrace’s half of the legion curved northwest. Vitruvio’s turned east. For the first time in his life, Meric lost sight of the Fog.

  Now we’re truly in the wild.

  *

  “Before God gave us Panchaea, men ruled the world from this city,” Gnost said.

  The veteran gave Meric a learned look. He’d been marching in a parallel position within the more experienced century. Gnost and others had removed their helmets. It was early summer, and although the inner lining of his suit was designed to wick away sweat, draining it into a rubber balloon, Meric felt he was being slowly cooked inside his armor. Still, he’d been reluctant to remove his helmet. Not only was it a minor breach of soldierly propriety, but they’d be exposed to the sun, risking eventual madness. After many of the veterans had tilted their helmets back to perch on their brows, however, Meric had relented and done the same.

  “What city?” Meric asked.

  Gnost stomped the ground with his boots.

  “We’re walking all over it, dec,” he said.

  “How do you know that?” Meric asked.

  “You learn things,” Gnost said, waving as if to shoo a fly.

  “How was it destroyed?” Horus asked, eyes like saucers. Meric was glad to have the big man in his pentacrus. Horus had proven his endurance during the Noose, singing his way through the night, voice hoarse, muscles still firing. He wasn’t too bright, however.

  Gnost opened his mouth, but it was
Pindar, a wiry veteran, who answered.

  “The Smiting, how else, fogbrain?” Pindar asked. Glancing back and seeing the size of the younger soldier, he did a double-take. “Godsblood, boy, which of your parents was the beastmaster?”

  “Huh? My father. How’d you know?” Horus asked, face full of guileless surprise.

  “One of ‘em had to fuck the ox.”

  Horus’s face turned beet-red. It didn’t help that Horus’s father actually was a beastmaster.

  “Not to worry, boy. Pindar has his own animal genes,” Gnost said.

  “How’s that?” Pindar asked.

  “Aren’t you descended from a long line of asses?”

  Horus laughed long and hard. Pindar scowled.

  “Godsblood, what is that?” Meric hissed.

  They were passing the ruins of an enormous stone cathedral. Towers and arched windows soared above the trees. Steep gables were topped with crosses. Colored glass had emptied from an elaborate circular window. Statues of monstrous creatures crumbled on the ground around it.

  “Old heathen cathedral. Place of demons, they say,” Pindar said.

  “You’re full of Fog,” Horus said.

  “Am I? Trundle on inside, ox-brain. Knew a man who tried it once. Never came back.”

  “What savages the ancients must’ve been to have built such places,” Meric said.

  “Their holy places are eerie, true, but I imagine some of the ancients weren’t so different from us,” Gnost said.

  “Of course they were,” Meric said, frowning. “God made the Fog and sent the worthy to live in Panchaea. Anyone left was a godless savage.”

  Gnost raised an eyebrow and muttered something. He looked down his nose at the back of the legionnaire in front of him with the air of one who’d decided on silence over unappreciated wisdom.

  “What?” Meric prompted.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Gnost said.

  “What were you going to say?”

  Gnost cleared his throat and looked over.

  “It’s just that even some of the savages are not entirely savage.”

  The newer troops stared at him.

  “What do you mean?” Meric asked.

  “Listen, I’ve worked recon, I’ve been out to enemy encampments. It’s hard to get past their scouts, but it happens. Frost–he’s the best at slipping past. Once he’s in the shadows in recon armor, your eyes slide right over him. If not for that, we’d never get by. Even their young know the forest better than us. But I’ve been right to the enemy’s doorstep, like I said. And I’ve never seen ‘em sacrificing women or summoning demons.”

  “What did you see then?” Horus asked.

  Meric wasn’t sure he wanted to know. It would be easier to kill savages if he never thought of them as human.

  “Cooking, talking, laughing, all kinds of things. Not so different from something you might see in Panchaea. Except for the Fog, of course. And the clothes. The savages wear no more than the weather calls for. Make love right out in the open too, at times.”

  “Like animals,” Meric said.

  “There’s something bestial in their nature, I’ll give you that–but without the Fog, without the Plutarchs, would we be so different?” Gnost asked.

  “Of course we would,” Meric said, outraged. “Listen, you’ve been to the beastmasters’ menagerie, haven’t you? You look in on the wolves, they’re playing or sleeping. The pups look cute and innocent. But drop in less steaks than there are wolves and you’ll see their true colors come right out,” Meric said.

  “Bah. You may have a point there, dec, but savage blood is still red when you spill it. They’ll come painted and snarling like the spawn of Ozymandias, but afterwards, when they’re moaning in the dirt with their guts in their hands, the fear in their eyes is all too human. You’ll see, dec. You’ll see.”

  There was nothing Meric could say to that. Gnost’s words had been more somber than he’d intended, however. A minute later he tempered them with:

  “Course, that doesn’t mean you should spare your blade. They won’t spare theirs. Just don’t be afraid to know them as they are. That way you can steel yourselves for what must be done.”

  When Gnost was out of earshot, the newer legionnaires muttered among themselves.

  “He’s fogging us. The savages are sun-mad–everyone knows that. We’ve got armor to protect us, but what have they got?” Meric asked. He lowered his helmet again despite the heat.

  “Maybe they stay in the shade,” Horus said.

  “Their whole lives? We’ve spent time in the sun, but not like they have. It may not happen as fast as the Priests say, but I’m sure if you’re out here long enough, the sun will have its effect. Everyone says so. Gnost is full of it.”

  The tail-end of the legion was passing the cathedral when the Legate called a halt. Three Priests from the steamcars exited in front of the ruined cathedral, drew a prayer-circle on the ground, and recited incantations. Inside the circle they placed a holy artifact.

  “Spirit-detector,” Pindar said, the bored veterans again drawing close to Meric’s group.

  “Pindar’s showing his lineage again. That’s a holy relic,” Gnost said.

  “For what?” Meric asked.

  “Plutarch business,” Gnost said, shrugging.

  Suddenly the artifact glowed bright white.

  “They found one. Well ain’t that something? Good thing you didn’t go into the ruins, ox-brain,” Pindar remarked. Horus grimaced.

  “Does that happen often?” Meric asked.

  “Almost never,” Gnost said.

  The Priests gave thanks to God and the Plutarchs. The relic was then buried just off the road, with brush scattered to hide the uprooted soil. The legion moved on.

  *

  For ten days, the journey was every bit the adventure Meric had hoped it would be. They pushed through thick forest while the sounds of wild beasts echoed on all sides. They trudged through mud and waist-high grasses. They turned west. At the Great River, north of a long gorge, the steamcars pulled up their bulbous wheels and ferried the troops across. They might’ve headed west straight out of Panchaea, but the terrain there was too broken and wild for the steamcars to pass. West of the river, they scoured low hills, finding abandoned camps and cabins and huts and farms–but no savages. Here and there, the Priests set up “spirit-detectors.” Never again did one glow white, however.

  The world grew more colorful each day. In Panchaea, the Fog rendered everything gray, but here the trees and rocks and sky were drenched with light, painted in hues almost too vivid to be real. Meric wouldn’t have admitted it, but the savages lived in a beautiful land. The vast outdoors, although still something to fear, inspired a certain reverence. No wonder Swan liked trees. There was a beauty in them Meric had never appreciated. And perhaps that was one of the ways in which the Wildlands tested the faithful: the heathen places were not without appeal.

  Not all of the legionnaires had such a great time. Horus supplemented his dinner with a batch of wild mushrooms. Within the hour he was dizzy, nauseous and unable to walk without retching.

  “You done it now, ox-brain,” Pindar said, laughing gleefully when the source of Horus’s ailment was discovered.

  “Whitecrown caps,” Gnost said with a touch of pity.

  “I thought we could eat those,” Meric said, thinking back to his training.

  “No way, dec. They look a lot like Pietop ‘shrooms, which are safe. See here? That’s a whitecrown,” Gnost said, prodding one with his foot. “You don’t want to eat those. Make you sick as a dog.”

  Meric examined the mushroom in greater detail, then crushed it beneath his boot. Horus had to be put aboard a steamcar, where he moaned and vomited for the remainder of the evening.

  In a clearing the next day, they found a herd of six black mammoths, their tusks as tall as a man, their enormous shaggy heads watching warily.

  “See more of them each campaign,” Gnost said. “My father was a legionnaire
. Counted himself lucky if he saw one of those beasts. My grandfather claimed there were none at all in his time.”

  “So where’d they come from?” Meric asked.

  “Ask the Plutarchs,” Gnost said, meaning he had no idea.

  “Azoza,” Pindar said, looking back.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Not where. Who. A wild demon in the mountains to the west. Covered in fur with three eyes and tusks. He was a captain of Ozymandias, but he fled before the Siege. He steals wild women with long black hair and impregnates them, but instead of having a baby, they lay an egg, and from the eggs hatch the pups of these big bastards.”

  “You’re fogging us,” Meric said.

  “It’s true, dec! Happened to a girl in a pillowhouse I know. Well, a girl the other girls know. She snuck out of Panchaea to meet her lover, but Azoza snatched her up and had his way with her. Nine days later, she laid an egg.”

  “Nine days?” Horus asked, on the mend from the whitecrown caps.

  “Nine days, yes. Spirit-children quicken especially fast.”

  “Pindar, the answer with you is always ‘demons,’” Gnost said, shaking his head.

  “‘Cause I seen too many, Gnost! Why do you think my hair’s going gray?”

  They spotted other animals, though more often they found only tracks. Once, they found the carcass of an enormous beast. It was three meters long, furless, with a massive skull. There was much speculation about demons. However, a friend of Gnost’s told them it was nothing but an oversized lion, likely skinned by savages. Even then, many said if it wasn’t a demon, it was probably killed by one, because what else could bring down such a beast? Remembering his promise to Reed, Meric cut off one of the beast’s claws and tucked it into his armor. Reed would think the world of it. That night, they made fires and cut runes into the dirt around their camp to ward off evil spirits.

  Then it rained.