“Father.”
“Son. Your mother said this is where I’d find you.” Ambeltrix wiped a sleeve over a sweaty brow.
“She used to find me here when I was avoiding chores.”
“Mind if I join you?” Ambeltrix asked.
Lucius released one of his arms to gesture to a patch of dappled sunlight dancing over bluebells. “Please.”
Grunts and curses accompanied his father dropping to the ground next to Lucius. “Don’t ever get old, boy. This body isn’t what it used to be.”
“You’re not that old.” The words left his mouth before he thought them over and remembered how old his father actually was.
Ambeltrix laughed ruefully. “I’m fifty-six, and a lot of those years were hard years. You’re going to have to help your old father off the ground when we’re done here.”
Lucius nodded even though he knew his father couldn’t see it as they both stared up at the clouds. The men’s steady breathing joined the gentle symphony of birds singing and squirrels scampering about in the trees above them. It was Ambeltrix who broke the silence.
“What brings you out here, boy?”
Lucius exhaled sharply through his nose. “I don’t know. I just needed to take a walk and get some fresh air. This is where I ended up.”
“I see.”
“It’s just—” Lucius tried to organize his feelings and put them into words.
“Not sure how to feel about being home?” Lucius’s father interrupted. “After being away at war?”
“I didn’t know what to expect when I got home. I don’t even know if it’s home anymore.”
“You’ll always have a place under our roof, boy, but I know what you mean. It felt the same way the first time I returned home.”
“After Mons Graupius?” Lucius asked, tipping his head to look at his father.
Ambeltrix nodded. “I’m not sure why I came home; my mother and father were no longer alive. I just needed to get out of Britannia for a while. I stayed with a cousin while I was here. I’d been away so long, the village of my birth felt more alien than the foreign land I’d been marching through for fifteen years. That’s when I started wandering around the countryside.”
“Is that when you met mother?” Lucius asked.
“Yes. Your mother was a fiery little thing when I met her. It wasn’t long after meeting her that this place started feeling like home again. Not like my parents’ home or my boyhood home, but a home to come back to when I was done with the legions…” He paused for a while as a pleasant breeze shifted through the meadow. “Then I received word of your birth. I’d thought about signing up for another tour before that trip home, but after I met your mother and knew you’d be waiting here with her, the end of my tour couldn’t arrive fast enough.”
Lucius had never heard his father talk about this aspect of his life and his experience with the auxilia. They’d talked plenty about the day-to-day life of being in the military. Ambeltrix’s and his friends’ anecdotes filled the years between his father’s return and Lucius’s departure for the legions. They’d never broached the emotional side of his father’s time serving in Roma’s war machine, although Lucius knew it had affected his father in profound ways. His father’s words now called up the memory of the time he’d walked outside late at night not long after his father returned home. He’d found his father sitting against the wall of their small home, drinking and crying in the moonlight.
They lay in silence, listening to the breeze rustle through the trees and the birds sing their spring songs until Lucius eventually broke the quiet. “It’s nothing like I thought it would be…”
“It never is. Nothing can prepare you for the first time you’re staring across a patch of dirt at someone who you’re about to try to kill. At someone who’s about to try to kill you. Neither of you are sure why you’re there, just that you’re following orders from someone important. He’s trying to protect his land. I’m there to earn my pay. I know I’m protecting my home, in a roundabout way. Some other bastard is holding the line here while I’m protecting his home over there.”
“I didn’t do anything to the Dacians. They didn’t do anything to me, but I sure killed a lot of them. They killed a lot of my comrades…” Lucius paused, trying to hold his emotions in check, tears running down his cheeks. “They killed my friend Cassius. He bled out in a cave while I held his hand.”
Ambeltrix reached out and squeezed Lucius’s arm for a moment. “Do you hate them now? The Dacians?”
Lucius shook his head. “I did for a while, but then we took Sarmizegetusa, and all the men and women we captured were gathered and marched out to the slave markets in Roma. Any hate I had for them died then. Even after, when one of them killed Cassius, I couldn’t rekindle that hate. We’d decimated an entire people, removed them from their birthplace, and sent them into slavery. Did you hate the Caledonians?”
“No,” Ambeltrix replied.
The men returned to the silence of the spring day. When the sun passed behind the clouds for a few minutes, Lucius shivered, goose flesh rising on his arms. As the sun reemerged and warmed him, he let his mind drift to a question that had been bothering him for a while.
“We were a free people once, weren’t we?” Lucius asked.
“We were. Before Caesar came.”
“If the Romans took our independence, why do we serve them now?”
Ambeltrix took in a deep breath and let it out as a slow sigh. “How many legions were there in Dacia?”
“About twelve.”
“How many auxilia?”
“A lot.”
“How many vexillations from other legions?”
“A lot.”
“So, 80,000? Maybe over 100,000 men marshaled to execute the will of Roma?” Ambeltrix paused for a moment. “All of Gaul could rise as one and not be able to win against that many professional soldiers. Besides, you could never unite all of Gaul and Belgica. Our men are spread throughout the empire in the legions and auxilia. How many of them will split from their Roman masters? How many units could be raised from all the colonies spread throughout the empire? Each of those colonies is filled with retired legionnaires who can be called up to fight Roma’s enemies if needed. Traianus has given Colonia status to Vetera. It’s Colonia Ulpia Traiana now.”
Lucius nodded. “I know; we saw the work as we marched to Noviomagus.”
“You. Me. We’re Roman citizens now. We’ve cast our lot in with Roma. Things are largely peaceful behind the borders. We are Romans for all intents and purposes. That, and the pay is good.”
