The Legion

'Fuck!' Cato yelled, attempting to sit bolt upright. His eyes were wide open and he glared at the surgeon. 'Bastard!' He head-butted the other man on the cheek.

Macro thrust him back down. 'Easy, lad! He's just tending your injury.'

Cato turned his gaze to Macro with a dazed expression. He nodded and gritted his teeth. 'All right. Go on, then.'

The surgeon rubbed his cheek and then turned his attention back to Cato's shoulder. He pressed his fingers into the discoloured flesh and Macro felt his friend go as tense as a length of timber as he stared straight up, focusing on fighting the agony of his examination. The surgeon thoroughly examined the shoulder and then eased himself back with a satisfied nod.

'Some bad bruising but no broken bones. It'll hurt like hell for some days and you'll need to keep it strapped up, but there should be no lasting effects. I understand you took a blow to the head as well.'

Cato frowned, trying to remember.

'It's common not to recall the incident. How do you feel?'

'Not good.' Cato swallowed and winced. 'Head hurts. Still feel a bit dazed… I can recall the attack. Then a spear in the air. Then nothing.'

'Well, that's fine,' the surgeon concluded with a reassuring pat of Cato's hand. 'At least your brain's not been scrambled.'

Macro shrugged. 'Can't say that I'd notice much difference…'

The surgeon stood up. 'I want you to rest. Until the dizziness has passed. Then you can get back on your feet. The shoulder's going to be painful for several days, and stiff. Better keep it in a sling. Other than that, I'd say you have had a lucky escape, sir. Just try to stay out of the path of spears, javelins and arrows from now on, eh?'

Macro gave him a droll look and then turned his attention back to Cato as the surgeon left the stable. For a moment neither man spoke, then Macro cleared his throat self-consciously. 'I suppose I should thank you.'

'Thank me?'

Macro frowned. 'Of course. You saved me from that spear.'

'I did?'

'You don't remember it then?'

Cato closed his eyes briefly and then shook his head.

'All right,' said Macro eagerly. 'Forget about it. I'd better go. The legate will want to know what to do next. You stay here and rest, eh?'

He turned and strode across to the entrance to the stable.

'Macro…' Cato called weakly.

The centurion turned and looked back.

'Whatever I did, you'd have done the same for me,' Cato said. 'If you'd been standing in my place.'

'True, but I wouldn't have ended up here.' Macro chuckled. 'I'm not lanky like you. If I'd pushed you aside, the bloody spear would have missed me by a mile. Now do as the surgeon said and get some rest.' He left the stable and gestured to Hamedes to follow him.

The legate was sitting on a crude table outside the ruins of a peasant's hut when Macro found him. His staff officers and the centurions from Macro's cohort and the auxiliaries were gathered about him in the loom cast by an oil lamp, waiting. Another of the legion's surgeons had just finished suturing a small gash on the legate's forearm and began to apply a dressing as Aurelius addressed Macro over the surgeon's shoulder.

'Good of you to finally join us.'

'I was seeing to the senior tribune, sir,' Macro replied with a hint of bitterness. 'He was struck by a spear during the attack.'

'How bad is the wound?' Aurelius asked with a trace of anxiety.

'He was lucky, sir. The tribune's a bit battered but he'll recover.'

'Good, we need every man.' Aurelius nodded down towards the dressing being tied round his arm. 'I took a wound myself. An arrow tore open my arm.'

The surgeon glanced up with a surprised expression and shook his head as he finished tying off the ends of the dressing. He straightened up and stood off a respectful distance. 'It's only a flesh wound, sir. But I'd advise you to keep it clean all the same.'

Aurelius nodded and waved the surgeon away. He smiled warmly at Macro. 'A bloody business that first attack, eh? I came forward to watch your progress from the breach. That's when I was wounded.'

He gestured proudly at the dressing with his other hand. Macro did not miss the tone of elation in his voice – the elation of a man who has finally received his first wound after many years of peaceful service without the least chance to prove himself as a soldier.

'Still,' the legate went on, 'it's only a brief setback. We'll take the place with the next attack. I'm certain of it.'

Macro regarded his superior thoughtfully. Aurelius was in a dangerously cheerful mood. Macro had served in the legions long enough to know the symptoms. Having survived an injury, even one as slight as being grazed by an arrow, Aurelius felt invulnerable. He had nothing to prove to his men. He had bled on the battlefield and had earned his right to order them to continue the fight, whatever the cost. The effect would wear off in a few hours, Macro knew. That was the usual experience of having survived a near miss. Cold rationality would soon moderate the legate's sudden zeal for battle. The trick of it would be restraining the man's urge to fight until the proper measures could be taken for the next assault on the temple.

'We'll take it all right, sir,' Macro agreed. 'The moment we've made our preparations.'

'Preparations?'

'Of course, sir. We need to bring forward the bolt throwers to cover the assault at close range. If we knock some loopholes through the curtain wall, the bolt throwers can easily pick off the enemy archers without exposing our crews. Also, we should make sure that any escape routes from the temple are covered.' Macro nodded towards Hamedes. 'The lad here used to be a priest. He knows the layout of the temple. He visited it only recently. Isn't that right?'

Hamedes nodded nervously in front of the legion's senior officers. 'Yes, sir.'

'So tell us what you know,' Macro continued. 'How many exits does the place have?'

Hamedes collected his thoughts as best he could before he replied. 'There's the main entrance between the largest pair of pylons. The doors there are huge, sir. Several inches thick. Even then, there's a small courtyard in front of that with another gate. Besides the main entrance, there are two entrances on either side of the main temple. The one we attacked earlier, and another on the opposite side. They are bound to have fortified that as well, sir.'

'Well, there is only one way to be certain,' Aurelius responded testily. 'I want you to go and see. Report back to Centurion Macro the moment you return.'

Hamedes glanced at Macro who nodded subtly. Hamedes swallowed and bowed his head. 'As you command, sir.'

He walked hesitantly towards the temple and was soon swallowed up in the darkness. Aurelius turned back to Macro. 'While Cato is out of action you are my second-in-command. You're an experienced soldier, so we'll do as you suggest. Get the bolt throwers forward. Do whatever else you have to to make sure the next attack succeeds. Is that clear?'

'Yes, sir.' Macro nodded.

'And make certain there is no way for the enemy to escape. I want them all killed or captured.' Aurelius reached a hand up to touch his brow. 'Now, I must rest. My wound has weakened me. Wake me the instant we are ready to launch the second assault.'

As the night wore on and a hunter's moon rose low on the horizon, the sound of the Romans' preparations carried clearly to the defenders of the temple: the steady pounding of the outer wall as the legionaries gouged holes out of the mud bricks, and the sawing of wood and hammering of nails as they laboured by the light of some fires out of sight behind a mound two hundred yards back from the curtain wall. From the top of the pylon Ajax could just glimpse some of the legionaries at work and guessed that they would be making new assault ramps and, in all probability, a ram as well. If the first failed, then the latter would surely smash down the roughly constructed barricade. Once that happened, nothing could stop the Romans forcing their way into the temple and crushing the defenders.