He was watching me, waiting for some reaction. I was watching the hot, red heart of Syrion’s pyre, and not thinking at all of what might be ahead, only what was behind.
Dully, I said, ‘Will we have new recruits? Or men seconded from other legions?’
‘Some of each. Corbulo gave a number of relevant orders before we parted and this was among them: one third new conscripts; two thirds from other legions.’
‘Two thirds?’ That jerked me into the present. ‘But they’ll hate us,’ I said. ‘The men from the other legions. Nobody will volunteer to come to a legion that’s just surrendered to Parthia and walked its Eagle under the yoke. They’ll come to us as punishment from legions that want to be rid of them and they’ll loathe the ground we walk on.’
Lupus stared into the fire. He ran his tongue over his teeth, found a gap, explored it. ‘Syrion did well to leave when he did,’ he said quietly. He turned back to me, ‘Building the Twelfth again will be a nightmare that will make the past six months seem joyous in retrospect. But the only alternative is to let it die: to destroy the Eagle and join other legions where each of us will be one man amongst thousands and despised for ever. I will not let this happen. I will build this legion back up man by man with my own bare hands if I have to, but I would like to believe that I will have help.’ He raised his brow in a way that was so familiar, so real, so raw, I could have wept. ‘Knowing what we face, Demalion, will you help me? Will you be the core of the new sixth cohort? Or would you rather we took all the veterans into the first, and let the new men fill the rest?’
It was kind of him to ask, but I was bone weary in mind and soul as much as in body; too tired to think, too tired to make decisions that might mould my fate for the rest of my life. Other men made decisions and I acted on them; that was how my life ran. I had no wish to change it here and now.
Then, I said, ‘The sixth is our home.’ Which was true.
Lupus nodded. ‘That’s what I told Cadus and Crescens. The sixth is your home and you should remain there. I have proposed that Tears become the signaller; it’s time he grewinto himself. Horgias, of course, should bear the standard, although that will not stop him scouting when we have need of it. Each of them will need a new shield-man, but that can be arranged.’
He was watching me again, waiting for something, and I had nothing to give. For a fleeting moment, I had thought I was about to be given the standard of the sixth as mine to carry, and felt a stab of disappointment even as I rejoiced at Horgias’ good fortune. But I felt nothing cleanly, or with any power: too many men had died, and too few were left to care who held the god’s hand above their heads.
I felt Lupus’ gaze resting on me, steadily. I saluted, stone-faced. ‘Tears shall have the horn tonight,’ I said. ‘Unless you would prefer it sooner?’
His mouth twitched towards a smile and I thought perhaps I had been overly wooden. And he could fuck himself, frankly, because I didn’t care what he thought any more.
He was still smiling. I turned on my heel, ready to leave the fire and walk back to our cheerless, half-empty barracks.
Lupus stepped in front, blocking me. ‘Tonight will be perfectly adequate,’ he said. ‘And if you present yourself to the quartermaster immediately thereafter, you can requisition a staff. Usually, we would have a new one made for you, but under the circumstances…’ His voice drifted off.
I stared at him. ‘What staff?’
‘The vinewood staff of your new office. Did you think Tears and Horgias would vault over you so easily? You who broke the bridge across the river in the face of the Parthian archers?’
I hated that bridge. I dreamed of it nightly. ‘I should have left it where it was,’ I said stiffly. ‘Then we wouldn’t have had to lose a day rebuilding it.’
‘Even so…’ Lupus waited with the patience of a parent until I joined the facts to make a whole. Centurions held vinestaffs. Only centurions. And they outranked both signallers and standard-bearers.
‘I am to be centurion?’ I asked, at last. ‘Of what? Of whom?’
‘The first century of the sixth cohort of the Twelfth legion. Of course, you should have held the standard for some time before it, to know what it is to have the entire cohort move to your signal, but that can’t be helped. You’ll have to work doubly hard to keep control of the men who join you, for all the reasons we have already discussed, but I’m sure that, given the right leadership, they can be knocked into shape. And when they have been, the Twelfth will be whole again. Not what it was, but whole.’
‘What about you?’ I was near to panic, who had not felt it at all in the face of the Parthians. ‘Where will you be?’
‘On Corbulo’s orders, I will be camp prefect.’
Camp prefect. A station a man could hold until he was in his seventh decade, could he but hold his head high and his shield straight. Lupus had wanted that post all his legionary life and now, having got it, he spoke the words as if they were poison in his mouth.
Still, it was his, and if he was prefect, then someone else was not. ‘What of Cadus?’ I asked.
‘After this year’s campaigns against the Parthian light and heavy horse, General Corbulo reached the conclusion that each legion needs more cavalry of its own. Cadus is to be legate of a cavalry wing, in command of six hundred horse, plus whatever auxiliaries we can muster at any given time.’
I smiled at that, for the first time in months. ‘He’ll be good at that,’ I said. ‘In Hyrcania, he showed himself a natural horseman. And the Parthians taught us much of how they can be used in warfare.’
Lupus inclined his head. ‘That had been noted. Although he would have been an excellent camp prefect.’ He laid a hand on my arm, which was as shocking as anything else. ‘I know you’ll miss him, but this is the best we could do under the circumstances. I hoped you’d understand.’
I did understand. I understood that good men were dead, and that I was not one of them. I understood that I had just gained a promotion I had once not wanted and later had not dared to hope for. I understood that the years ahead might well be a hell of our own making, and that I had just agreed to do everything I could to rebuild the XIIth.
When Lupus left me and Tears came to take his place, I understood, in a wave of feeling, that I had Tears, too, and he was to stay at my side.
But, new soldier that I was, I understood at last what Cadus had been trying to tell me all along: that life and love and rank were not enough. To be whole in myself, I needed honour, and I had lost it, and could see no way to get it back.
III: Beth Horon, Judaea, November, AD 66
Chapter Twenty-Three
Four shameful years passed before the gods and a rabble of Hebrew revolutionaries granted us the chance to win our honour back.
In that time, exactly as Lupus had said, the XIIth was made up to strength by a mixture of conscripts and postings from other legions, with a small handful of young men who had actually volunteered. These last, oddly, were the hardest to handle, having dreamed of martial valour all their young lives and then found themselves in a legion that was universally despised.
That didn’t make the rest easy. The bulk of our new intake were veterans of over ten years’ standing culled from the VIth, VIIth and Xth legions. Greeks, Syrians and Germans for the most part, they were big men who bore big grudges and knew they had been sent to us only because their former legions wanted to be rid of them.
Every man of them had come to us loathing the XIIth for its reputation and four years in camp being reminded daily of our shame had soured them to a gut-blackening hatred. I kept control because I used my vine rod hard and early on the most obvious troublemakers, because I flogged men forthe least infringement of an order and twice had men tied to cartwheels and left outside the gates for two days and two nights.