0.21 [Captain of Salt and Ash]

I watched my father burn to ash. The salt of the sea coated my tongue.

Fourteen years old. Too young to stand shoulder-to-shoulder within the ranks, to have been there to make a difference. Too old to ever forget the sight of him carried in on a bed of broken shields. Tears blurred my vision, smoke and sea breeze mingling unbearably on my senses. I refused to sob. The men bore it in grim silence, watching their captain and countless brothers burn to ash. I would do the same.

Captains led from the front. It was the way of the legions, the first virtue of the Republic. It was the first lesson that my father had taught me, and he had matched his words to action time and again in his service. The men of the fifth legion loved him for it. They moved mountains for him because of it.

And when he died and entered the great beyond, they followed him there too.

The mournful bellows of the legions’ war trumpets blanketed the camp, legionaries breathing their souls into their horns for the fallen captain and his men. Some men wept silent tears. Others stared vacantly into the flames, their minds still in the thick of the fight. Most, though. Most were simply grim.

“Dry your eyes, young Solus.”

Instinct moved me. I snapped to attention, dashing tears of grief, salt, and smoke from my eyes. A wave of sound swept through the ranks, hundreds of men slamming clenched fists to their hearts in respect. Belatedly, I did the same.

The general of the western front dropped a hand onto my shoulder, and I staggered under the weight of it. It was not a physical thing. It was his presence alone that nearly drove me to my knees. The general looked upon the mass funeral pyre, with my father at its center. There was sorrow in his eyes. But no tears.

“We don’t weep until the battle is won,” he told me. His resolve was a quiet thing. Yet it shook the earth beneath our feet. “Your father accepted death before defeat. It’s up to us to honor that resolve with action. Dry those eyes until we’ve swept his enemies into the sea.”

The words were for me, but they carried as easily as the war horns. Legionaries shouted and hammered their fists to their breast plates, slammed the butts of their spears against the earth. It was the nature of a Roman general to command unfaltering loyalty, but it was the providence of the man that led the western front to command devotion overwhelming. No man in the entire Republic was so beloved.

He turned me away from the pyre, away from the ash and salt, and urged me back to camp with his hand on my shoulder. I might as well have tried to resist the turning of the seasons.

“Your father was a fine husband to my niece, and a finer captain in my legions.” My great-uncle led me through the camp, with its weathered tents and siege materials. The earth beneath our feet had long been pounded to mud. “What I owed him, I now owe you. A boy your age needs a hand to guide you. I’ll have to suffice.”

He parted the command tent’s flap and ushered me in. Inside were men that appeared to be no older than my father, but possessed the bearing and scars of men far older preserved by cultivation. The logisticos of the western legions laid eyes upon me, and the pressure of their notice nearly drove me to my knees.

I grit my teeth and stood to attention, and though I had no breast plate to strike, I slammed a fist to my heart anyway. They eyed me appraisingly.

My great-uncle entered behind me, and those monsters rose and followed my example before the general of the west.

“At ease,” he said, allowing a legionnaire that had been waiting just inside the tent’s entrance to remove his heavy crimson cloak. He kept his armor, taking his place on a simple bench at the head of a wide sand table. The logisticos relaxed, retaking their seats and returning to their prior discussion.

One of them, though, glanced curiously at me. I hadn’t moved. Hadn’t dared to leave the position of attention.

“Gaius,” the logistico said. “Who is the boy?”

My great-uncle glanced back at me, and his expression made my heart clench in my chest. I’d mastered the tears. But the taste of sea salt and funeral ash remained.

“This is my nephew, Solus,” he said. “His father brought him here to show him how the virtuous men of Rome live. Now, I’ll teach him how to lead them.”

He gestured, and I joined him on the bench. The furthest western reaches of the Mediterranean were arrayed before us on the sand table, with all their armies. My eyes immediately sought out one set of pieces in particular. My great-uncle shook his head once.

“We have a long campaign ahead of us, nephew.” He pointed elsewhere. North.

“First we take the Gauls.”

“What is the primary quality that a man must have to lead?” my great-uncle asked me. It was a rhetorical question, like most he asked. His bright gray eyes swiveled across the field. Searching for something only he could see. “It is not strength alone. Neither is it wisdom. A man doesn’t need to be superior to those he leads in any particular manner, but for one.”

“What is that, uncle?” I asked dutifully, resisting the urge to roll my shoulders in the unfamiliar armor I’d been issued. Still too young to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the ranks, but neither could I ride at the general’s side in plain clothes.

“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true,” Gaius spoke. “It is the burden of the Republic to shed light on every shadowed nation. We are besieged on all sides by barbarian states. In circumstances like these, a man desires a guiding light above all else. To make that man believe you are someone worth following into the screaming hordes, someone worth dying alongside. Worth dying for. That is the minimum that you’ll need to lead.”

His eyes burned as he found what he had been looking for in the press of battle.

“Watch me,” he commanded, and urged his horse into a sprint.

The western legions were joined in vicious combat with the Gallic hordes. They had tried to hide behind the walls of their settlement, but Gaius’ officers had shattered them with cultivation that shook my senses. The barbarians that spilled out were massive, larger than all but the greatest of legionnaires, and far more numerous. Thousands upon thousands had come charging out of the walls, and then the buccinators among the legions had raised their trumpets and sounded the alarm as more came howling up the rear.

We were caught in the middle. The only way out was through. I watched the general of the west run his horse headlong into the fray, and I watched the disrupted ranks of the legions reform themselves, as if by magic, where he passed.

Shield walls slammed together. Century lines dug their heels into the mud and held, where before they had been pushed back. Legionnaires who had been shouting in anger and fear, or in simple exhilaration, went silent. Focused. Gaius shot through the lines like an arrow, and in his passing left them silent and dangerous as a knife.

He plunged that blade into the Gallic army’s screaming throat.

I gripped the gladius at my side tightly, aching to join them. Every fallen legionnaire was a life I could have saved. A father that would burn on the pyre because I hadn’t been there to cover him in the press. But I mastered the desire. I observed. And I promised myself that some day soon, I would be as my great-uncle was. The light that guided.

Gaius drove through the Gallic tides and found his mark. The general of the west met the Gallic king and their clash rocked me off my mount. I scrambled for the reins while the war horse reared up and screamed its defiance to heaven. Even the beasts gave their hearts for Gaius.

It was over as quickly as it had begun. The Gallic armies gave way like they were made of sand, a cascading retreat that started from both fronts and was soon spilling over to their furthest back lines. They were held up as precipitously by their king as the legions were by their general, and as Gaius drove the Gallic tyrant into the earth it was clear who stood greater among heaven and earth.

The legions let fly their eagle standards, clarion calls of war trumpets splitting the air. The Gallic king clutched a gaping wound in his side, and before the eyes of legionnaires and barbarians alike he slowly knelt.

Lightning struck the general of the west.

Horror stopped my heart. The bolt fell out of a clear blue sky, and was followed in the next instant by another. Then another. Dozens, in the blink of an eye. Hundreds. Barbarians caught too close were vaporized by the pillar of light. Legion shield walls were raised in turtle formation as the general’s men formed ranks against heaven.

After what seemed like an eternity and yet no time at all, the lightning storm ceased. At the epicenter of its destruction knelt the Gallic king, a smoking ruin of a man. Still alive, still kneeling, but only just.

Gaius sat tall on his horse. His pneuma unfurled like an eagle standard across the battlefield, and where it passed men fell to their knees. A rolling thunder of noise passed through the legion ranks, thousands of fists slamming to armored chests in salutes.

My legs shook with the urge to kneel. My basest instincts begged me to submit. But I stood tall and proud, a fist to my heart. And when my great-uncle looked back across the field at me, there was pride in his eyes.

From that day on, my path was set.

The general of the west returned home for his Triumph. The Gallic king was paraded around the great city, and for days Rome celebrated her favored son. It was a dizzying experience. I felt utterly out of place in the city that I had once so arrogantly prowled like a hunting cat.

My armor now felt more natural than the soft cloths and togas I’d worn as a boy. My blade was more familiar to my hand than any cup of wine.

When my great-uncle presented me with a girl and declared her to be my wife, I had no idea what to do with her. But I was my father’s son. I offered her my hand and she took it. Her skin was soft, the color of fresh cream. She looked coyly up at me through long lashes. I decided I didn’t like the schemes behind them.

So I pulled her tight to my chest and kissed her soundly. The men of the fifth legion cheered and laughed. When we parted her chestnut braids were disheveled, blue eyes startled.

“No games,” I told her. “And I’m yours.”

Slowly, she smiled.

I had just turned seventeen. The western front was a ruin. Crows blackened the skies and ash rolled like mist through the countryside. Where the enemy went, they burned and they salted.

“We have no choice,” my great-uncle said grimly. We were arrayed around the sand table, logisticos and officers of every legion gathered to hear the general speak. He moved ivory pieces through the sand, corralling a tide of obsidian stones. “Our internal conflicts have weakened us, and the enemy allows us no time to consolidate. We split them here and drive them into the sea, or we are lost.”

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Officers were given marching orders each in turn, slamming fists to hearts and striding out of the command tent to round up their men. The legions were weary. They were worn. But they were sons of Rome, and they would march until the fight was won.

Soon only the logisticos remained. Gaius spoke to them for hours about the lands that lay between us and the enemy, the advantages that could be manufactured for our forces along the way. I stood by his side all the while, eyes roving over the sand table. My armor was cold. Heavier than usual on my shoulders.

“What do you see, Solus?” he asked me, some time later.

“We outnumber them,” I said. My fist clenched.

“Yet they ravage us like crows.” He nodded, taking an ivory piece in hand that stood taller than the rest. He rolled it between his fingers, contemplating. “Wars are won in the hearts of the men fighting them. Men have to believe they can win. Triumphing against greater numbers builds that faith.” He didn’t explain what happened in the opposite case. He didn’t have to.

“These stories we’ve been hearing…”

“Don’t matter. Our objective is unchanged.” He waved a hand, dismissing the logisticos from the tent. When they had gone, he brought that hand down and divided the ivory legions. He set his piece with the western forces. “I’m entrusting the fifth legion to you.”

“You can’t!” It was an immediate response. Instinctive. The tyrant of the west raised an eyebrow at me. “Sir, I’m not ready. I’m not strong enough-”

“What have I told you?” Bright gray eyes burned. They measured me, the same way they had measured every enemy to fall at the Republic’s feet. “Strength alone is not what matters. You are my nephew, who has cultivated my own virtue. The men of the fifth legion love you as dearly as they loved your father. You will lead them.”

“Is there no one else?” I asked, a heavy weight in my stomach.

“None that I can spare. You will have advisors and logisticos, and three thousand shining Roman souls to carry you through. All you must do is show them the way.”

I inhaled deeply. My fist rapped against my breast plate.

“I won’t fail you, uncle.”

“Father,” he corrected me, smiling faintly at my confusion. From a fold in his robes he produced a roll of papyrus. He offered it to me. I unfurled the document, and read in growing disbelief.

It was a declaration of adoption.