Hello, brave readers! Today, I bring you the second part of my latest story. A mystery awaits the Rose Legion in the Skyrakers; of course, the Commander and his old mentor need to get there without killing one another first. As always, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, and I hope you enjoy...
The Oath Of Mars, Part 2: Caravan
Asteria stood before Mars Gradivus, high priest of the god of war, her armor- what little of it was afforded to a pit fighter- banged and ripped, wounds freshly plugged by dried blood. The sun pounded down, and, caught by Gradivus' gilded Lorica, seemed to make him glow before his subjects. Rising from his seat in the private booth, he throws his arms wide.
"A valorous display, Asteria of Afri! Mars the Father smiles upon you!"
She stays silent, even as the people roared. All the dark-skinned woman does is look to the sky, calmly accepting the praise lavished unto her by the bloodthirsty crowds. A lion, a hippo, and a half dozen slaves lay around her.
As he looked down, a smile came to his lips. More glorious a fighter this land has never known.
A match for her father.
A warrior without equal.
A champion.
A suitable offering for his lord.
"Auggghh! What did you feed me, poison?! My head!"
The warden sat, head in hand, groaning. They were in a rickety little carriage, heading south for the Skyrakers.
"Remind me never to drink anything you give me again!"
"Never drink anythin' I give ye again."
"Quit shouting!"
They hit a bump on the dirt path and she shouts as if shot.
"Dammit! I'm walking!"
"Y'sure ye can?"
"O-of course I can!"
She rises, immediately stumbles to her side as the wagon shifts into a pothole, and falls out.
"Hah!"
"SHUT UP!"
After a few seconds of struggling in the mud, someone offers her a hand.
"Got you."
Taking it blindly, she's pulled up to her feet by the woman.
"...Th-thank you kindly."
"Don't tell me Garth's converted you, my dear? It's the devil's drink, you know."
"What-!"
Her head snaps up! Elizabeth!
"M-milady! It's you!"
"It's me. Never expected to see you stumbling out the back of a cart with a hangover."
The warden chuckles nervously, suddenly feeling much younger.
"This is a one-time thing, I swear. Never again, I tell you. And, well... A lot's changed."
"Yes. It has. Come, walk with me. It's a ways to the battleground yet."
Marius looks over his shoulder, eyes on the two women. Sighing and looking forwards once more, he strokes his colossal warhorse's flank affectionately.
"At least you're still on my team, Lamri."
The thing was an almost fantastically big slab of white muscle, cloaked in layers upon layers of silver-gilt barding and pink heraldry. He was convinced the lawbringer's warhorses had bulls somewhere down the family tree, with how large and tough they were. Of course, they had to be to haul a Lawbringer in full plate up and down the frontier without going swaybacked. Lashed to her side was the equally impressive length of pink and red metal he brought to bear in battle, the Rose. The Grand Master of the Lawbringers had awarded it to him personally for his role in the battle of Rosa Collis, and its striking image on the battlefield is what gave the Rose Legion its name. Why he decided to make it, and in turn, his legion's standards, mostly pink when roses are wholly red, is beyond him.
Rosa Collis. That distant memory. The siege where, just for one night, Chosen and Legion fought as one.
The battle that started his career, and paved the way to command over his own legion.
He can't help but think back to their 'conversation' last night.
'What was I to do?! Tell me that!'
'Do you not remember why yours is the ROSE legion?!'
'I didn't have a choice!'
'OF COURSE YOU DID!'
How dare she? She didn't have a damn clue what she was talking about. She was a peacekeeper. She walked around in the shadows slitting throats. What did she know about leading an army? Talk sense?! The Myreites weren't talking. He did all he could, ordered the retreat, but they blocked the way. He had no choice but to charge through. They were willing to kill them all. What did she want? For him to order his men to lay their swords down and die?
"Yer mumblin', boss."
"GAH!"
He almost falls off his horse. There Garth was, sitting just to his left, eyes level with his own courtesy of the cart he was riding on.
"Damn! Seeing you dredge yerself from the mud woulda been a fine spectacle!"
"Ser Brickender..."
"Jokin'! Jokin'! I'm with ye, boss. You've always treated me an' the rest a' th'boys right. Y'hear?"
Readjusting himself on Lamri's back, he sighs deeply.
"...Thank you, soldier. It's just..."
"That sneaky bint told you yer th'devil?"
"Yes. Something to that effect."
"Hah! Ye'd never think from lookin' at her- or hearin', for that- but she's an idealist, down t'her blood. And she hated that skelly-faced metal bitch somethin' fierce. That shitshow up north, right outta the brain of that crazy fucker, doesn't sit right with her. She doesn't want to be a part of it. And seein' you, her darling apprentice, that lovable rascal, the idealistic farmboy from the frontier, darn his socks, shine his axe, and march up north t'kill some mudwalkers? When she looks at that, she remembers that this IS the real world, and that she ain't gonna wake up one day with the shudders and pissed sheets."
Marius looks down and sighs.
"I just wish things were the way they used to be."
He shoots a quick glance at his ex-con friend.
"Excepting you, actually, I quite like how you've turned out. Less insane rambling."
"I know, righ'?! Turns out, the Myre root hooch I always used to make in the ole' still was mildly psychotropic. Poisonous, too! Had to be quit a' the stuff."
"Is... that so?"
"Ghosts? You think it's ghosts?"
"No! No! I don't think it's ghosts! That was hyperbole!"
The peacekeeper puts a hand to her mask.
"I'm just saying that whoever they are, the Iron Legion hasn't seen them before. Not in the whole of our history has a foreign army attacked from the south. Do you understand? The map just stops south of the Skyrakers."
"We truly have no idea what lies beyond?"
"Aside from historical record, no. And who knows what's changed south of the Mare Nostrum in all those centuries?"
"If we have to fight from both sides..."
"Yes. The Legions have always relied on their safe southern border in warfare. The very survival of our civilization would be at stake. Even more than it already is, of course."
She spit that last sentence out. Anxiously, the warden slows her pace, glancing at the bitter peacekeeper.
"...Milady. You know he did what he did to keep us safe? And the rest of the Legion? We were his friends. The most important things in the world to him."
"That's no excuse. Peace was possible. It was, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But we fucked it all up. And now? Everything's... changed. He's not the man I knew anymore. Colder. Where'd that idealistic young man who fought to save people go? And you... you're drinking!"
"You know, I am an adult, despite my youthful looks and upbeat personality, yes?"
"W-well... but-but that's... just not you! You shouldn't drink! It's unnatural! An-and Garth is... Well, he's doing a lot better, actually. What's up with that?"
"Ah, yes! Turns out, his attempt to make the roots of Myre trees into alcohol instead created a sort of 'poisonous ergot broth', as the doctor said. Simple mistake on his part."
"...Ah."
"What is that book you keep on flipping through, anyway?"
Elizabeth looks up, startled. They had found a new wagon, away from the Legion Commander, to rest their feet.
"Oh, this? It's... history."
"History?"
"Yes. Big history."
The warden cranes her neck, trying to see the contents of the battered little notepad.
"I mean... It is quite little, actually."
"This is a journal. Written by a soldier named Publius. I don't know how it came into the Peacekeeper's possessions, or how we've looked over it. Perhaps it's small size obfuscated it's titanic import."
"W-what? You speak as if you've found the Sangreal."
"I might as well have, dear. This... is the last record of the fall of the Empire."
"The Empire? My father always told me a great earthquake swallowed it up."
"One of the more fanciful theories, to be sure. Pure conjecture, but then, so is every other explanation. Until now. We've always assumed that the Legions arose from the Empire's remnants- more from hubris than anything- but it seems we were almost correct."
"Almost?"
"Yes. You see, it was not a slave revolt or a war with the Chosen that destroyed the empire, but an ideological schism within the very highest echelons of the government itself. A civil war. My good friend Publius fought for the rebels. He fought for Christiandom."
"What?!"
"Yes. We have a multitude of records detailing the intricate beliefs of the Empire, centered around a pantheon of many gods. But it seems that this faith felt threatened by the rise of a new religion, or, rather, the resurgence of an old one. Christians were fed to animals, burned alive, or lashed to crosses. The brutal subjugation lasted for decades, until a rebel faction overthrew the Emperor and exiled the loyalists who practiced the cultos to lands unknown. The rebels assumedly began to drift apart and form differing factions of their own, reclaiming the pre-cataclysm cultures their masters had forced them to abandon, eventually forgetting even their own origins- much of their historical record destroyed in the fighting, or 'tainted' by pagan belief. Those god-fearing rebels must have evolved over the centuries into the Legions of today."
"Astonishing! I could never have imagined such a thing to occur, much less be forgotten by history!"
"Few care for it as much as you or I, dear. I've examined it thoroughly, and it seems to be genuine. If it's a forgery, its the most skillfully crafted specimen I've ever seen."
"Have you read all of it?!"
"Well, yes, several times over. Why?"
"May I borrow it?"
"It's a war diary, not a novel. I doubt it will be as rousing a read as you think."
"Please?"
"I wasn't saying I wouldn't, you know..."
"Thank you very much, milady!"
Handing it to the eager Warden with a chuckle, the Peacekeeper turns to look out the back of the covered wagon. The sun was shining, birds sung happily through the trees. All was calm. For the first time in a long time, she had a smile on her face.
Almost seemed like old times.
"Why do you blokes get all the nice toys, anyway?! I'd like to get a crack at those bombs 'a yours!"
Laughing jubilantly, the Conqueror, his Commander, and several men at arms slammed their drinks back.
"Come on, Garth! You've already made yourself a eunuch with that flail of yours, so why go around asking to get your ass blown off, too?"
"Wot?! Do I sound like a soprano to you?"
"Come on! Give a borderline untrained conscript a mace on a string and tell him to swing it around? With all the knocks your boys've gone through, my mare's probably a bigger man than you are! ISN'T THAT RIGHT, LAMRI?!"
The horse, drinking from a small stream nearby, rears back and whinnies in response, sending the gathering of troops around the campfire into fits of uproarious and slightly drunken laughter.
"Well I ain't the one making all of us dress up in pink an' roses, aren't I?"
"And who's to say pink and roses aren't manly?! Name one feminine thing that's pink!"
"Flowers!"
"Only some of them!"
"And tell me one thing that's manly that's pink!"
"Raw meat!"
"An' what about roses, huh?!"
"You ever get a rose stalk stuck in your unmentionables, Garth? You won't think of them as dainty little flowers after that!"
"Hah, look at 'im jokin'! After all these years, I finally managed to get that stick out of your ass!"
And once again the gathering explodes. The two slam their tankards together, laughing with them. Knocking the decidedly non-poisonous ale back and calming down a bit, the Conqueror gesticulates vigorously at him with the other hand.
"Hey, who do you figure we're goin' up against at the Skyrakers, boss? The boys 'ave been asking me to bug ya 'bout it."
"I dunno, Garth. Elizabeth has her money on ghosts, though."
"Ghosts?!"
"But ghosts or no, I know one thing for certain!"
Gaze sweeping over the gathered soldiers, catching their attention, he grins wide.
"With men like yourselves, we'll KICK THEIR ASSES RIGHT BACK OVER THAT MOUNTAIN! HEAR HEAR!"
Raising his mug high, he roars.
"TO THE IRON! TO THE ROSE! TO THE LEGION!"
His men repeat the toast with similar vigor, cries of jubilation echoing through the woods. Laughing, Marius takes another swig, head momentarily inclined up, towards the clear night sky above. The stars twinkled up above, untarnished and wholly free of things like war, and grudges, and betrayal. And, he realized, in that moment, he felt free of them, too.
Almost seemed like old times.
Gradivus stood before his personal centuria, the hundred men assigned as his personal honor guard and task force, Gladius held high.
"My sons! For too long, our people have gone unchallenged! Our claws grow dull, our skin softens, our flesh becomes laden with fat! From the northlands of Olympus to the sunburned wastes of the south, we have conquered!"
He sweeps his other hand, clad in a heavy, gilded gauntlet with a caestus built into the knuckles, over the vast, yawning vista behind them.
"All that we see lies within our domain! But we are not yet without glory left to claim, for Mars has shown us the path! A new page in our history has been revealed to us! And whether you live as victors, or die with glory, the names scribed upon it shall be yours!"
The soldiers roared, groomed since birth as the newest blades of the Empire. They all had lived their whole lives waiting to die for so glorious a cause.
All, save one.
He shouted and clamored with the rest of them, but his eyes were cold, and hard.
"Even now, we prepare the hostia at Aquilus. The finest warriors of the gladiātōrēs are being brought to our temple there, and with their blood, we shall curry the favor of Mars!"
Yet more cheers.
'Yet more blood,' thought the dissenter in their midst.
"But the preparations are not yet complete. We need not merely the blood of our slaves, but the blood of our enemies! We march north, through Mar's Path, to find gifts for our god!"
Turning to face Olympus, Gradivus points his stout blade forward and roars. Before them, a yawning crack in the mountainside stands, disappearing into the clouds above, wide enough to lead an army through. A path, carved by his lord, for the newest conquest of the Empire.