Free Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth by M. C. Scott Page A

the light of their many torches and spun it away to the dark.
    By ragged starts, the sounds of hammering ceased. We stood in silence, bunched behind our shields, helmets aglow under the bouncing flames of the wool-and-pitch torches.
    We were in the front and centre of the line; the place of dispensable men. I saw movement at my right and heard the trumpet’s blast. To give him credit, Munius Cattulinus might have been a sloppy clerk of clerks – in my role as clerk to the century I had had occasion to read his writing and it was as bad as I had feared – but he was an excellent signaller.
    The trumpet called clear and fine; eight strong notes.
    On the first note, we cast our javelins into the dark at an enemy we could not see and now knew did not exist, drew our swords and knelt.
    On the second note, the rank behind us cast their javelins, drew their swords and knelt.
    On the third note, the third rank cast their javelins, which was the point when we discovered that not all of the second rank had knelt yet; some were still struggling to draw their swords. Men shouted curses in the dark. Others cursed back, louder, so that, by the time the fourth note of the horn sounded, half the men were not sure if it was for them, and of those who did know not all were ready to rise and step to the right.
    The remaining four notes, which should have timed our four paces backwards, descended into progressively greater chaos. An officer shouted for order; Lupus, I think, but there’s a point when all angry men sound the same. As silence fell, we were a milling soup of disordered men, facing all directions but front.
    Syrion held our eight-man unit together by force of will and a carrying voice. We had not stepped fully to our right, because there was no room to do so, and when we tried to pace back we were stopped after two paces by the men behind. So we stood where we were, shields locked in a wall, with two rows of stakes in front of us, half of which were not sound, knowing that if Vologases’ cavalry rode out of the dark and charged at us now, we were dead men.
    By then, though, even the dullest amongst us had realized that the Parthians were not coming. I wished that they were; standing there in the dark with the horn’s blast dying in my ears, I thought it might be easier to face the fast-running anger of battle, the roar of death in my ears, the quick ending and release at last from this particular hell.
    Instead Lupus came at us, but, this once, he was not first of the sixty centurions to rake along the lines; this time he walked two paces behind the two first centurions – and Flavius Silvanus, the camp prefect.
    To us, it was as if the emperor himself walked out of the night. Nobody expected to see the tribunes or the governor, and even if they had turned out at the third watch of night they would not have been accorded any particular respect.
    But the camp prefect was as close to a god as we had. Silvanus had been with the XIIth since his first commission and had risen through the centurion ranks, elbowing men out of his way, writing letters to Rome, doing favours for progressive Syrian governors until he reached the place where he led the legion in all but name. He had power of life and death over every one of us, and we knew it.
    When he came to a halt and stood under the Eagle, we had to fight to keep our eyes forward, not to let them drift to him. When he raised his hand and the centurions began their walk down the line, we knew this was not the usual parade inspection, not even usual night manoeuvres; we just didn’t know what it was.
    Lupus stalked with his own particular gait. I remembered to breathe as he came close; I had been slammed in the solar plexus by his vine rod often enough by then for the crime of holding my breath.
    When I was with the Vth, I had not thought Cadus a particularly lenient centurion; there was not one man of the ten units under his command who had not felt the depth of his anger at one time