Heart and Soul part V
Mortuus recovered quickly from his wounds following the battle for Kingman. He couldn't remember anything that happened after the rest of the Legion arrived. He woke up in a brahmin-skin tent on a hard cot with bandages all over his body. It was nearly a month after the battle. He didn't know it but he'd spent most of that time in a desperate struggle for life, attended by three slaves for hours on end. Although he received no special commendation for his actions, he had made the Legion proud. Caesar wasn't going to let a warrior as strong as him go to waste.
The surviving members of the contubernia he'd trained with the week before the battle came to visit him as soon as he was well enough to receive visitors. Kratos slapped him on the back, which caused an incredible amount of pain but he swallowed it and smiled. He really was happy to see friendly faces, as everyone he'd known (give or take a few slaves) for the past five years was dead. He could smell their corpses rotting in the wasteland sun, all along old Route 66.
"You've got a lot of slave fucking to catch up on!" Kratos joked, "You missed all the celebrating!"
The Legion had taken Kingman. It had been a three day battle. The Devines were the last to fall. Legion casualties were minimal, the greatest loss being the one-hundred and ten 'traitors,' who Caesar never intended to let live anyway. All the tribes of Kingman were either dead or enslaved. When Mortuus awoke the slaves were still being processed, the strong forced to pledge loyalty to Caesar and the weak broken into docile animals. The Legion had expanded their encampment to occupy all of Kingman. They'd destroyed the Route 66 Museum. Tore it apart and set it on fire. Afterwards, some of the local tribes had capitulated, but there were still some who resisted the Legion, and there were skirmishes on the outskirts of town daily.
"You had a hole in your middle so big I could put my fist in it," Reave exaggerated Mortuus' wound, but only just. It would've killed him if he were an older man. As it was the worst it'd do was leave a scar.
Reave was a ropey young man, only two years older than Mortuus. He was true Legion, a boy born to the Blackfoot tribe just before they were reformed by Caesar. Unbeknownst to the rest of the wasteland, however, the Blackfoot tribe had traditions they kept from Caesar, that were traded away in favor of his new order. Reave was inheritor to these traditions and he didn't even know it.
He was different. When the Legion expanded beyond the confines of a single tribe, others would call the young boy 'unsettling.' He knew things he couldn't. Saw truths that others didn't see. There had been at least one person like him in every generation of the Blackfoot tribe. They used to be cast out, banished to the wastes, but over the generations came to be viewed as shaman and mystics. They developed an elaborate and arcane culture that Reave was not privilege to. By the time his other-ness developed the tribe had been reorganized into Caesar's Legion and had little use for shaman and mystics, although Caesar did retain the use of the Blackfoot's spiritual leader to be his first Priestess of Mars. She couldn't reach Reave to tell him he was part of Blackfoot tradition.
His other-ness manifested itself all the same. The boys he trained with noticed it, as did the adults who trained him. He quickly gained a bad reputation for being a little too insightful, a little too observant. His inquisitive eyes were intimidating. He'd be quiet, uncomfortably quiet, until out of the blue he'd say something like, "He's hiding something," or, "They know something." Occasionally he seemed to know what was going to happen, like when he shielded himself from Tom Quell's exploding rifle and the other boys around all got torn up by the bits. That was how Kratos lost his eye, but Reave ducked out of the way just a little too fast, a little too aware of what was coming for it to simply be intuition.
His contubernia served with him for so long and knew him so well they let it go. They chalked up all the strange behavior to "Reave being Reave." Sometimes it even came in handy, like when he gave them the extra split-second warning that they were about to be ambushed by raiders. Kratos eventually came to trust Reave's hunches, even relied on them. Other contubernias might talk now and again about Reave and his strange, unsettling behavior, but among his own he was accepted and respected.
He was the one who invited Mortuus to train with the contubernia. The two young men had an instant connection, behaving as though they had known each other for years. They didn't even have to talk, they were so attuned to each other. They had their own secret language comprised of meaningful glances and smart gestures. It was as though they were brothers, despite looking totally opposite.
When the time came to return Mortuus to be sentenced with the rest of the Kingman Legionaries, Reave was the one to do it. None of the other men would dare. He also personally accompanied Mortuus, weak from battle, back to the fort when the Legion found him fending off an entire tribe.
Once he was awake it was only a few days until Mortuus was on his feet and training with Kratos' contubernia again. He was happy to be back in action. The time he'd spent in bed had atrophied his muscles, yet he was eager for the opportunity to rebuild his strength. Mortuus lived for the physical, fought to tame it and subject it to his will. For men like Reave, there seemed to be a limit to their physical prowess, but Mortuus had yet to find his, despite thorough searching. A month out of bed and he was larger than Kratos, who was not a small man. He continued to eat as much as he could, and as a bona-fide hero of the Legion he was allowed to eat a lot. With help from Reave he became a better fighter, too.
"Watch your opponent. They'll tell you everything you need to know," Reave told Mortuus as they sparred. In a way it was a continuation of Cracked-Glass' tutelage, although Reave couldn't possibly know that. Cracked-Glass, although he hadn't been made a legionary yet, had been killed along with most of the Kingman legionaries. As a child, he'd been killed quick, but he'd been killed all the same.
"Watch their eyes, watch their body. They'll let you know what they're going to do before they do it, and they'll let you know what you should do, too. You just need to know what to look for," Reave shifted fighting positions, mutated his stance again and again to demonstrate a variety of weaknesses and possible attacks. Mortuus picked up on some, to his surprise, but he was more impressed with the way Reave could imitate the styles of so many warriors so fast.
"See, someone who holds his arms like this is going to try to grab you," Reave demonstrated, "but they're favoring their right hand. Take out the right hand," Mortuus struck fast to lock Reave's hand, "and they'll fall like that," Reave smiled and snapped his free fingers.
"How do you do that?" asked Mortuus when he let Reave go.
"Trust me, when you've seen as much battle as me, you'll be able to do it too," Reave drank deeply from his canteen, "Besides, these are just demonstrations. Probably anybody you fight will be totally different. Hopefully you'll be able to catch them as fast as you caught me," he handed the canteen to Mortuus, who drank deep.
"When I fought, I didn't think about them. I just thought about me," Mortuus said after pausing for a moment. He watched the ground and thought about fighting the Devines.
"Most battles aren't like that," Reave said, "Caesar doesn't usually throw men away like that."
Reave looked down at the same spot Mortuus was focused on. Mortuus was worried that he could never be as good a warrior as Reave. Reave was worried because he knew he'd just lied to his best friend.
In general, though, Mortuus Anima's life was great. He felt free, in a way he hadn't for a long time. He'd accomplished something, he'd made a difference, and it affected his whole outlook. He stuck to the same routine as the other men, but it felt like a choice. He wasn't part of the Legion because he'd been sold as part of a political deal. He was part of the Legion because he wanted to be part of the Legion. There was no more Sir to order him around. He was Legion through and through.
