Exiles of Arcadia: Legionnaire (2 page)

"This is what, dear Publius?"

Naso shook his head.

"This is naked tyranny?"

"No. Tiberius is not a tyrant. I never said that."

"Of course he is."

"...What?"

"Of course he's a tyrant, Publius. He means to rule." Naso stared at him, but Mathis simply re-strung the tablet-book and placed it neatly on the desk. "Not every despot is a villain, Senator. And not every oath is sacred. Ten years ago another man tried to make himself king. A barbarian. Where would you and I be right now if Tiberius had not seized power then?" Mathis reached beneath the desk to grasp something. Naso braced himself, suddenly aware that two soldiers were standing in the doorway behind him. "I am not troubled by accusations of tyranny, Senator. It is hypocrisy I cannot stand."

Mathis lifted a heavy purse and dropped it on the table. Naso recognized the ivory banker's mark that dangled from its drawstring. Until this morning, it had been buried in his garden. Fresh earth still clung to the leather. "No man will accept a coin with the dictator's face on it. That's what you said, isn't it?" Mathis whipped a dagger from his belt and sliced the drawstring, upending the bag. Coins of silver and gold bounced across the table. "No man, including you."

A silver denarius landed in Naso's lap. It was identical to an Arcadian coin in all ways but two: its metal was nearly twice as pure, and on the obverse, in place of the dictator's head, it depicted Gaius Marius Venator. Surrounding the stern face of the exile general was his motto:
Righteous, Vigilant, Relentless
.

Naso looked up to find Mathis glaring down at him. "Shall I recount for you
Cytheria's
real manifest? Swords. Shields. Spears. Armor." He ticked them off on his fingers. "All Arcadian legion issue. Where were they going, friend Publius? Show me how you perform your
sacred duty
."

Naso kept his hands on his knees. He could feel the sweat of his palms through the fabric of his leggings. "I do not answer to you. You have no legal authority." Again Mathis only stared at him. His eyes were the same gray as his tunic. "I will answer no more questions," Naso vowed.

Mathis smiled. "Of course you will, my dear Publius. You'll answer every one."
 

On the ceiling of Naso's study was a mural of the demigod Seapus, who stole knowledge from the gods and sold it to mankind. Rough hands closed around Naso's arms, and his chair toppled over as they dragged him from the room. On the ceiling, near the doorway, the mural showed the demigod's punishment: his father Jupiter, king of the heavens, staked Seapus down in the desert with his limbs stretched toward the four corners of the world. Wolves came nightly to feast on Seapus' immortal flesh; they were his father's pets.

Politically speaking, Marius Venator never lived up to his early promise. His heroism in battle and his eagerness to champion the cause of the people endeared him to the hearts of the lower classes and his faculty in playing upon their prejudice reaped early benefits. Marius became the embattled hero of the people, struggling against an entrenched and heartless nobility. Yet in painting himself the hero, he cast the senate, whose acceptance was his ultimate goal, in the role of villain.

–Marcus Falco,

The Life of Marius Venator

CITADEL

Primus scraped the razor along his jaw, shearing the modest stubble from his face. The razor had been his father’s, forgotten when he left the citadel to take charge of the mining camp. Likely it had been a spare, since Primus had found no brush or strop or soap in his father’s empty quarters. As he shaved, the men nearby mocked his diligence. Felix reminded him that ladies shaved their legs and not their faces. Lepus thought perhaps he’d mistaken a shadow on his lip for a beard. Primus ignored them, carefully feeling along his jaw-line for missed hairs because he owned no mirror.

Since he’d come of age, Primus had slept in the barracks. As the youngest soldier in his cohort, he was relegated to the lowest bunk at the far end of the hall. Before that he’d been in the children’s quarters, in a communal bedroom with the other boys whose parents were dead or absent. He was still proud–and a little frightened–to be living among the men. As Primus wrapped the blade in soft linen and put it back into his kit, he paused to touch the only other token that his father had left behind: it was a small stone painted with the portrait of a woman. She had high, arched eyebrows like Primus did, and a graceful nose that Primus thought he might share. She was his mother, he was sure. Why his father had left her behind, he could not say.
 

Marcus Seneca had left the citadel six years ago, when the camp at Silvermine was first built. He had not returned since. Primus had been only a boy when his father left, and the general had small time for him even then. So Primus had gotten to know the man in his absence, through his discarded treasures and the memories of others. He dropped the portrait stone back into the leather kit bag and yanked the drawstring tight.

When Primus emerged from the barracks, he found the world bathed in the grey light of pre-dawn, the clouds overhead not yet blushing. The barracks hall was a long narrow building of brick and mortar, one of fifty identical buildings laid out in a rough grid against the slope of a hill. At the crest of the hill stood the citadel; unlike the barracks, the citadel was built of tremendous granite slabs, and it was roofed by a wide and graceful dome.
 

Arcadians like Primus had built the barracks halls, but the citadel had stood for a thousand years. Whether it was originally meant as temple or fortress, Primus could not say. It was a broad, squat tower of unadorned granite, and if its walls had ever borne an inscription, the words were smoothed away by centuries of mist drifting downriver from the falls.
 

All the buildings on the hill were surrounded by a single high wall built of timber. Within this wall too was the martial field: a wide dirt yard that faced a kind of wooden stage, where the entire legion could muster with room to spare. The officers could observe from the stage as all six thousand soldiers passed in review, but today the stage was empty. The field held only a handful of men, dressed not in armor but in rough grey wool emblazoned with the Arcadian eagle. This was Primus’ destination as he emerged from his barracks.

When he reached the martial field, Primus saw that someone from his own cohort had beaten him there: Lepidus Sinta was a lanky, black haired youth and everyone called him “Lepus”—the hare. Lepus was nearly of an age with Primus; they’d been through their initiation ceremony together. Primus frowned at the memory.
 

They had set up an altar on the first floor of the citadel, a wide room crowded with pillars of thick granite. Primus remembered the red shadows thrown by the flickering torches and the way the smoke had stung his eyes and nostrils. The hierophant led them in their pledge. His voice was deep and sonorous, his face hidden beneath the shadows of his hood. They had sacrificed a shaggy highland cow, cutting its throat while the beast bellowed and tried to rise from the altar. Then the new soldiers were allowed to eat their fill of meat—a rare privilege. In exchange, they pledged two years of service to General Marius and they pledged the lives of all their enemies to the god of war. The high priest said: “Let their enemies be warned! Let them bury their gold, hide their women, build high their walls. These men are
legionarii
, and they will trample all who stand in their path!” Lepus had cheered along with the others, but Primus had been silent. He wondered who his enemies would be, and whether they would flee in fear as the priest had promised, or stay and fight, as he was now bound to do.

Lepus scowled companionably when Primus joined him on the martial field. “Last man to arrive again,” he observed. “What’s the matter, you don’t like freezing your balls off in the haunted forest?” A few of the men nearby chuckled. Primus smiled back. A single shrill whistle came from the edge of the martial field, and they hefted axes to their shoulders and formed up in a double column. They were bound for woodcutting duty: a regular task, since every single building in the camp, except the citadel, was heated from below both day and night. It was a blessed luxury in the frozen north, especially as the mist of the waterfall turned to blowing ice. But it meant that the Arcadians chewed through wood faster than a colony of termites.

As the woodcutting party marched off the martial field headed for the gate, they had to pass by the kitchens. As they passed, Primus inhaled deeply, trying to guess whether the afternoon’s bread would be coarse or sweet.
 
All grain was imported at the citadel, for the growing season was terribly short and wheat did not thrive in the acidic, rocky soil. Unfortunately, not all of the grain brought in from the coast was of equal quality. Sometimes the flour was fine, and the bakers made light sweet rolls whose texture was as airy as a cloud. Other days, they worked tough, chewy rolls out of coarse millet. Primus gazed at the stone walls of the kitchen, peering through the open door at the great clay ovens inside. It would be a coarse millet day, if his nose was any judge. He said as much to Lepus, who marched beside him.

“What’s this! A soldier, bored with hard bread and water? Don’t you know that Marius’ Dead Men love the taste of weevils in their biscuits? That’s where you get your protein. Or maybe I’ll just run down to the butcher and fetch us a cut of beef. How about you, Sextus? You want anything from the meat market?”
 

Sextus turned his head to look back at them as he marched. “Pork. I haven’t had good pork loin since we left Arcadia.”

“Forget pork,” Lepus returned. “I’d eat stewed boot-leather three meals a day, if I could only have a woman. You ever had a woman, Primus? No? Lucky you, then. You don’t know what you’re missing. For me and Sextus here, it’s torture every day.”

Sextus grunted his agreement. He was a bit older than Lepus, though not veteran enough to be excused from work detail. “First thing I’ll do when we go home, I’m going to fuck ten girls in a single day. Then I’ll sleep for a week.”

“Then pork?” Lepus asked.

Sextus chuckled. “Then pork. I’ll eat till I burst.”

“See, this is a real soldier.” Lepus nudged Primus with an elbow. “That’s how a real Arcadian does it, eh? First he fights, then he fucks, then he feasts. What do you know about any of that?”

Primus didn’t try to keep up with their banter. He just smiled as he listened, and wondered what it would really be like when they finally marched home. Sometimes, when they were gathered for parade, General Marius gave speeches from the wooden stage. He told them about Tiberius’ crimes against the Republic. He made them feel like the lucky ones, to have escaped from Arcadia before the tyrant seized power. Things back home grew worse every day, he said, and soon the people would rise up against Tiberius on their own. The general asked if they would let the people die bravely, fighting against the dictator, or if they would march south to help their fellows shake off the chains of tyranny.

After one of those speeches, Primus always felt like a warrior. But whenever the others spoke of going home, they joked about spoils and rapine and they bragged of slaves they would take and riches they would seize. Year after year they rehearsed their plunder in their minds, until it seemed that embroidering their dreams of conquest was their only pastime. Listening to them, Primus felt less and less like a hero. He often tried to remember the exact words of the general’s speech, to recall what had made him feel so proud to be a soldier. He never could get the words right though, and he never got the feeling back.

To avoid all the talk of plunder, normally Primus gravitated toward the oldest of the veterans. A few of the men in his cohort had been old soldiers even before the civil war broke out. When they spoke of returning home, they never talked about it like a conquest. The younger ones kept a respectful voice around them too. Lepus and Sextus would never brag about fucking ten women a day in front of Black Titus, who had a wife still living in Arcadia. Once, Primus had worked up the courage to ask Titus if he ever got letters from his wife, or sent her any.
 

“Not in ten years,” the old man had said. Black Titus was normally close-mouthed toward the younger men, though he tolerated Primus’ company. So Primus had not pressed the issue any further; he just sat beside the old man in silence. Yet his simple question worked like the pebble that began an avalanche. Titus began to speak of his wife and his home, and Primus learned how he’d come to lose them both.

“We were only together for three months before I enlisted. I hardly got to see her after that. When a man enlists he thinks he’s signing up for two years. But it never happens that way.” The old man was sitting on his bunk in the barracks. Primus was on the floor beside him. A game of dice was going on in the alley between the beds and men were crowded into the aisle, jostling each other as they watched the dice land, whispering lest they alert their commander to the game. Primus and Titus had both lost their money early and were watching the others. Titus’ face was lined, especially around the mouth, and there were bags beneath his eyes. His short, bristly hair was gray now, though everyone still called him Titus the Black. “Did they tell you that, boy? That you’d only have to serve two years?”

Primus nodded.

“Did you believe it?”
 

Primus only shrugged.

“I guess you wouldn’t. You grew up out here. Where would you even go in two years? But I believed it. When I signed on, I was seventeen years old. Just married. Maria’s father wanted me to join his laundry business. I just didn’t want to smell like piss all day. From the ammonia, I mean. Laundry is big business in the city—did you know that? The ammonia comes from public toilets. The clothes get white but the launderers carry the smell with them to dinner. So. After three months I ran out of excuses and it was ‘empty the piss-pots or join the army.’”