#tl;dr : literally...together...we are stronger...WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS!!!!!

[meadowlarksabove]

Tales from Arizona 3/??

A decanus learns about the death of his son and it puts everything into perspective. (Notes: Hortensius is Gabban's decanus previously featured in the first TfA story. For reasons implied in this story, Hortensius renounced his birth name to better fit into the Legion, which is why it's never used or mentioned here. His son's birth name is used because 'Florus' wasn't chosen by his son, but a romanization forced upon them.)

(PLEASE LOOK AT TRIGGER WARNINGS IN THE TAGS!!)

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…It is with great pain that I have learned of the death of your son. Of all the hardships in building our great empire, chiefest is the loss of great men such as your son. There is no consolation one can offer a father when he has lost their true and rightful heir. Let yourself, at least, be relieved in knowing that every man who gives their life for the Legion lives forever in honor. Do well by his memory, tend to your duties, and do as is right of a man in rebuilding your family- 

Decanus Hortensius raised a hand to the courier before they could recite the rest of the message. Whatever had flashed before the eyes of the warrior, whether sharp or gruesome, had been enough to forewarn the messenger of their great emotion. Without another word, they placed the letter onto the war table and hastily left the tent. Everything thereafter was silent, none of the decanii scheduled to meet with Hortensius could be admitted into his tent without incurring the clearest offense. The soldiers were also forbidden from passing the flap without the expressed approval of their master. In only a matter of hours the entirety of the camp knew something terrible had happened, as a dark and oppressive cloud seemed to shadow their spirits on an otherwise sunny day. Many wondered and looked over their shoulders, thinking rightly that death had given its news. They shivered to think what would become of them, as loss rarely tempered but instead inflamed a man’s character. 

Hours passed and none had seen their decanus save for his closest in command who imparted orders in his absence. While Hortensius had never inspired tenderness in any of his men, they respected his leadership and wisdom, and greatly depended on his fortitude. To see him detained by whatever had stricken him was enough cause for worry. On the other hand, it meant their plans of quitting Phoenix were temporarily put on hold. Though they were eager for their next battle, they had gotten little to no rest in the past month of their campaign and were grateful for even a day of no traveling. Still, their rest had come at an unspeakable cost, and none of them felt any real pleasure for it. They looked at his tent wearily and thought he would burst through the camp hot with rage, ready to ease his pain by spreading misery. Yet nothing came through the flap but a sad and unfortunate quiet. 

Quiet was exactly all the decanus could bear. For the rest of that day he had sat at his table and invariably taken the letter in his hands, only to let go of it when it had lingered too long between his fingers. The message, delicately scrawled across the paper, was useless to a man who’d never learned how to read or write. Yet he understood the truth of its account and of the tragedy he was now forced to face head on. His son, Florus- No, let them be named in his heart by their true name! He was in his right, now more than ever, to remember them by the name he and his wife had given them at birth. Aster, his one and only son, was dead. Aster, who had only been nineteen years old, was dead. 

The thought of his son’s age sent him into another fit. Though no tears welled up in his tired eyes, he felt his lungs swell to the point of making it impossible for him to breathe. He gasped for air, just as his body turned stiff and cold. He was like a dying man himself, lamenting the loss of someone just at the cusp of manhood. But would he have suffered less if his son had died any younger, or older? Would it have made any sense to cry less at the loss of an infant or a middle aged man? Yet his having died at nineteen felt at the moment like the greatest injustice of all, a sentence only thought up in nightmares. They had survived the coming of the Legion into their territory, survived the aftermath of their shameful surrender, survived battles forced upon them by their captors, only to die before he’d been given the honor of a title. However, would they really have wanted such an empty gesture?

Aster, how they must have hated fighting for the bull. Ever since Caesar had drawn them all into his ranks, they had always looked wretched and full of rage. Though that same anger had inadvertently served them at war, in peace it would have only festered and grown into an even greater poison. Hortensius had seen the disdain in his son’s eyes when all of their tribesmen relinquished their arms, as if to say they would never be so easily tamed or made a dog of. His son, he knew, had been a struggle for other decanii, and an even bigger terror towards their peers. No crack of the whip or glaring branding iron could have broken his will. He admonished his son’s behavior in the face of his superiors, but in his heart he praised them with all the spirit a father could give. Though he had long stopped believing in the fall of the Legion, he believed his Aster was capable of attaining real freedom. 

Death at the height of war wasn’t freedom, however. He couldn’t pretend to think his son’s spirit were any less enraged than they were in life, or think them satisfied with having given their life for a cause so against their own. Survival had been their way of fighting against the odds, the fact they’d lived after every fight, every punishment, had been a foil to the Legion’s wishes. But death had put a stop to that. Death had freed his son’s decanus of a “bad seed”, one less “wildling” to worry about when there were many like Cicero or Vulpes to contend with. Hortensius struggled to keep thinking in this way. If Aster’s dying had done even a single person of the Legion a modicum of good, then he’d have to count his son’s death a shameful one. Another failure. 

What had been the point in their surrender anyway? Decanus Hortensius moved to his bed as if lost in a haze, and looked up at the red burlap ceiling of his tent. He thought back to their last night as a free tribe, and on the words of their elders. There was rebellion in survival, if they held on long enough they would someday outlive the red flames of the Legion. Though the bulls were strong, stronger still was the good in the rest of the world. Hortensius had understood the wisdom in their message then, but years spent in the service of beasts had weakened his resolve to the point of finding the good as well as the evil in it. To win they would have to be patient, and with that resolve they had survived and shown themselves stronger than any of the weapons turned against them. But how deep were the scars, and how lasting! The youths of his people were reduced to pawns, and the best of his generation were made into war criminals like himself. Pillagers, raiders, scourges of the earth. People he’d known for years were newly made strangers under the influence of starvation, thirst and oppression. So many had forgotten their old names in favor of appeasing the census dogs that patrolled the streets and kept tabs on all the annexed tribes. It was harder now, more than ever, to remember why they had actually chosen to live.

Aster, you see me now from your place in the Far Away. Can’t you tell me what you know? 

The tears finally came as he tried to think of his Aster standing beside the spirits of his father and grandfather. They would have to guide his son in whatever he had failed. Even in the Far Away they would have to be raised, and he was glad they had found themselves once more in the company of their heroes. Though strangely enough, the image of that blessed meeting remained foggy in his mind, as if drowned into obscurity by the sheer force of his weeping. His body seemed to refuse it like a bad herb. Instead, his thoughts shot in the opposite direction, and where his son had stood were now the children fallen into rank in his encampment. 

Tribeless, parentless, with no hope of a better tomorrow, these were the children the red armies had spat out from the corpses of worthier people. They were miserable creatures with newly given names they could hardly pronounce for themselves. He’d never seen children in the service of war before joining the Legion, and could scarcely provide the heartlessness it took to train them. Hortensius avoided looking at them, in fact, and delegated that charge as often as he could to the rest of his command. But even his ignorance of their presence couldn’t save him from the painful sight of their bodies, or the knowledge that he had played a role in their demise. For every cog in the machine, no matter how small, was implicated in the disposal of these children. 

Then as he imagined them in Aster’s place, he feared they would tell his son of his negligence and of his shirking responsibility. It was to Decanus Hortensius they were assigned and not his second in command. But how could a man be a father and a guide to children he hadn’t sired? They were strange, frightening even, and fragile in ways that depressed his heart. None of them were ready to face violence on the battlefield, and those who’d survived up to this point had done it through chance alone. Despite what the Legion would have everyone believe, weapons were made out of metal, not brittled flesh.

Though was that enough to justify abandoning his post? They, like his son, had been someone’s heir once. 

In a way, Hortensius had denied these children of fatherly guidance, and as sick recompense he was denied a son. No longer would he be a real father to anyone, he would refuse to produce an heir and pretend infertility if questioned. Make another son? (For them to die? For them to pointlessly toil like these children?) It was out of the realm of possibility, he’d had his chance and with it he paid for his own crimes. He’d taken his position as decanus and his responsibilities to the soldiers entirely for granted. To his son, he’d shown himself a coward on the day of their surrender, and to these children he’d revealed himself an incompetent leader. This had been his comeuppance for forgetting the wisdom of his elders and faltering where he should have ardently rebelled. 

Everything was suddenly so clear. Hortensius began to understand why he saw these children in the place of his son. He had marked these boys as strangers out of the bounds of his past tribe. But where was his tribe now? A powerless people, scattered throughout the entire state of Arizona, their name an illicit whisper in the dark. How could he pretend to hold himself in higher regard than the orphans left behind in the bull’s passing? Wasn’t he also tribeless, parentless, with no hope of a better tomorrow? He’d blinded himself to the fact that all children were everyone’s charge, that no baby had cried any different to his own. Why hadn’t he seen this before? He wept into the coarse fabric of his cot and clenched his fists until they drew blood. The elders had told them to survive, but not alone. 

Aster shouldn’t have had to die for him to learn this lesson. It shouldn’t have come this far, yet he would work the rest of his life if it meant making amends for his cruelty. If his son watched him from the Far Away, then he wouldn’t give them any more cause for shame or disappointment. To the boys in his encampment, he owed a lifetime of service. They should survive long enough to see what his son couldn’t. 

The fall of the Legion couldn’t be enjoyed from the seat of death, only by living could they feel the retribution from a life rotted with grief. They will survive. From the strongest to the weakest, they will all survive. He swore by the blood under his nails and the persistence of his beating heart, that he would see every one of them alive and strong enough to fight. Even strong enough to turn against the hands that trained them.