Fabius became centurion on a date he was never able to pin down. He, like the 79 other men in his centuria, had only a vague idea of their legion’s location on Earth.
Pannonia Minor, maybe? Much of the scuttlebutt that trickled down the complex chain of command said they had pierced through enough of Illyria to technically be in Dacia or Thrace. There were no signposts or stele in any language (not that Fabius could make sense of the Latin script), only the gray-green fallow field and the trees standing distant to the north and the south.
Out somewhere east or west were elements of the Macedonian home army, their commander said.
He was a boni, a Good Man, with consuls in the earlier branches of family and clan. Fabius hardly saw him except at the eye of a storm of Equestrians whether in battle or camp. Through the grapevine Fabius knew that the man was approaching the end of his term as consul and had the “eagle’s look” around him.
For the legionnaire that meant he was looking for a late triumph; the most dangerous kind of man to hold imperium over you.
Word was: he had not said a word to a man outside his tight retinue about where he was taking the legion. The only explanation given was that they were part of the greater expedition against the Antigonid usurpers.
—-
A fortnight ago the maniple’s standard bearer and another, older veteran with no commission came to Fabius. He was occupied with thumbing through the amphora shards marked with his name.
Aemilius had the wolf pelt from his helmet wrapped around himself against the Pannonian evening frost. He pulled at the knot and set it across Fabius’ hunched shoulders.
Fabius had not noticed his fire’s death. Looking up, he coughed at the smoke and shifted away from the wind. Some of the shards fell from his grasp into the grass.
Milvius, the unranked veteran, handed him an end of bread that gleamed with gray-brown salt fish. Fabius had not eaten in a day-and-a-half, not since his nomination to centurion.
They sat on either side of him, the way they would when they were all unranked veterans. Aemilius almost said something, Fabius could see his teeth revealed behind lips even in the guttering torchlight.
You want something, he said to both of them.
Milvius rubbed the fishhook-shaped scar that ran from his left ear to nostril, left from a campaign in Segesta. “Can you tell us where we’re headed?”
I’ve been centurion hardly for a day. Fabius bit and chewed. And you want me to find out what Quintus couldn’t for a whole season?
The whole maniple had liked Quintus, a straw-chewing provincial from the South with a good sword technique and an adept ability for getting all of them to do what he ordered. They learned of their chainmail’s susceptibility when a falx cleaved his shoulder diagonally, severing sword arm and clipping the leather bandings. Fabius heard the armor falling into disassembled sheets even before Quntus’ limb or corpse fell against their feet.
“Quintus was a good officer, but none of us were fooled that was anything approaching intelligent, right? But we all know you’re different,” Aemilius said.
