Chapter 19 - Watered Wine and Old Friends.
Once the boys awkwardly joined the formation they were quickly ordered to march. The conscripts around them marched silently, but there was an eager bounce to their steps as they marched. Ahead they could see another century marching the same direction towards the administrative section of the Mustering Grounds.
As they marched Palinus struggled with the urge to turn around and confront his childhood friend. He hadn’t seen Seline for months, and the pain in his chest reignited as they marched the same direction only arms length away but he was unable to turn to greet her.
“...Pal pal.” Her voice whispered from behind him, he struggled to hold in his emotions as her voice made the pain of the past months burn. “I’ve missed you so much…”
He heard her choke with emotion and he felt a warm tear rolling down his face.
“Get a room!” another female voice from behind Palinus said loudly, causing all the nearby conscripts in their century to shush them and ruining his chance to whisper back: I’ve missed you too.
Palinus recognised the second voice instantly and was deeply surprised to hear it, a raised eyebrow on Bruchts face beside him showing he shared the emotion. Palinus could understand how Seline would wind up joining the military, but Vesuvia was Magister Fredisians daughter and practically a princess of the 7th hill.
Marching awkwardly still, not quite used to the pace and standard of the actual military even in this training group, Palinus had to focus on what he was doing to avoid falling out of step, his mind burned with questions and his heart was beating in his chest, he choked a sob and tried to wipe a tear out of his eye without anyone noticing.
Eventually the limbo ended as they reached an enormous open air dining hall. Under the tiled roof hundreds of bench seats were filled with conscripts and soldiers eating. The dining area, despite not having walls, was filled with the noise of talking and eating.
As they were bustled along lines of servers into the area they were handed a plank of wood with a ceramic bowl and a cup. The line progressed swiftly as their cup was filled with a ladle of wine and the bowl was filled with a larger ladle of soup, they also got a handful of olives and a hunk of bread which they took to an empty row of bench seats.
The fluttering in his belly rose as they sat in their formation groups. He would be able to talk to Seline and his mind began to race as he considered what he would say to her. He had pushed his pain away for months, when he needed her support the most… she had vanished.
He was hurt.
They had made a plan to leave together.
But she had left without him. Or so he thought.
As his plank touched the table and as he met her green eyes his mind went blank.
“Oh, blessings to the hearth… it is so good to have some nice boys from the hill joining us!” Vesuvia enthusiastically greeted them, she spoke too loudly as she twirled and flicked her long light brown hair. “Eeevryone in the century is from the 2nd hill and they are just so booooring. Oh not you Augustus, you are a gem.”
She started talking and didn’t stop for a breath as Palinus and Seline stared at each other with Bruchts and Rufian politely grunting along as they ate with gusto.
“I… I thought you had left m-… I thought you had left.” Palinus said softly.
“That night…” Seline said breathlessly. “You left the dormitories.”
She took a moment to gather herself.
“I followed you.”
“No, you didn’t.” he countered, his voice rising and an edge of pain sent a flood of water to his eyes as tears began to fall unbidden. “I didn’t see you, and then you were gone! I looked for you.”
“I did. I followed you into the backways… but I lost you.” She struggled with the memory as a fresh tear came to her face. “I found a rift, and there were bodies...”
Her voice hardened and she shook her head.
“I thought you were...one of them. So, I went to look...and I got too close.” She had a sad look on her face. “I wanted to come back, but they wouldn’t let me.”
She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“For a while, they thought it was me. Just another savage Silvanian witch… of course they just blamed me and threw me in the holding cells.”
Her eyes burnt fiercely.
“It was weeks. Weeks with a bench and a bucket. Then all of a sudden the Censor came and got me out.”
The smile on her face took him aback.
“Did he do the tests?” Palinus asked weakly, unsure how to react to the news that the friend he thought was free and living large was held captive for weeks.
“Oh yes,” Shge laughed again. “That was fun, but Marius said I’d see you again soon and I guess he was right. So here we are…”
Palinus didn’t know what to say so he took a spoonful of the soup.
“I’m sorry.” She said, “I’m sorry we didn’t leave sooner. I didn’t listen then.”
Her eyes had an expression of pity. It hurt more than the memories.
“I thought… I’m s-... Never mind.” He said firmly, “You didn’t leave on purpose, and once we are finished with this ‘Prima Disciplina’ nonsense, we will be on our way out of the capital!”
“Too right!” Rufian chimed in with his cup of wine in the air.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“Sit Saluti!” Vesuvia added boisterously, raising her cup.
Palinus responded with a raised cup and took a swig. The wine was watered and sour.
----------------------------------------
Drinking bad wine watered down was the most minor of the discomforts of the Prima Disciplina.
The boys struggled with the schedule of the training.
They were up before dawn and marched around as a big group most of the time. Wherever they went, they needed to rush from place to place with scarcely any time for essentials like going to the bathroom and when they did get time to themselves they were always surrounded by conscripts trying to do the same thing.
For all the rushing they did, it didn’t matter. They still got yelled at constantly. Even worse, there was no point to the rushing or yelling. They almost always got where they needed to go and had to sit around waiting for something to happen.
The days blurred with a quickly familiar pattern.
At the start of the day they marched to a training ground and exercised until they could barely stand before they had breakfast.
Then they had training where they practised marching and weapons drills until their brains melted and their feet and arms felt like they were about to fall off.
After lunch, that was always the same bland but filling soup, they would attend lessons.
All of the lectures followed a particular style where a soldier shouted facts at them and punctuated their sentences by slapping a rod of wood at notes prewritten on large albumstone tablets. When the rod wasn’t slapping the tablet, it was slapping the conscripts.
In their first lecture they learnt about the structure of the Erulean Over-Legion and that this structure was loosely also used by the Under-Legion and Auxilia. They found out that the little group they marched with was called a decio made up of ten soldiers, every decio is commanded by the next rank up from a legionnaire called a decurion. A century was made of ten decios.
Palinus was able to follow the lecture up until this point. Ten tens make a hundred, got it. Easy. A part of his brain unconsciously filled in the details of the next step, 10 hundreds would neatly make a thousand, right? No, that would be stupid!
Each legion in the Over-Legion was different and that they had two to ten cohorts of three to five centuries. Then they all had a support cohort, or multiple cohorts, that weren’t always ranked as legionnaires and could serve a myriad of functions from siege magic to cavalry. Palinus listened to the lecturer drone through the structure of the twenty odd Over-Legions and he was nearly asleep as the soldier finished. He had gone on to explain that the Under-Legion broke all the rules and that they weren’t worth explaining, he was even more dismissive as he summed up the Auxilia organisation as a disorganised rabble that was a disrespectful mockery of the Over-Legion.
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
Palinus wasn’t sure when he had nodded off but the feeling of the wooden rod hitting him over the shoulder swiftly roused him. He jerked his head up to see grizzled decurion lecturing them channelling an ars down his arm to the rod in his hand still standing by the large tablet at the lectern. Palinus was not the only one struck by the ars as he heard the noise of the rod striking echoed through the forum with a snort or a startled shriek accompanying the blow as it woke a conscript.
“You need to know this to avoid a flogging!” The soldier lecturing them stated, “It is not my skin that will suffer the lash and I don’t speak for my own edification.”
“You DO NOT salute a non-commissioned officer:
Decarion - commands a decario
Cornicem - handles signalling and messages for a century
Signifer - carries the icon of the century, manages the war chest, pay and supplies
Tessarius - manages the watch and is the third in command of a century
Aquilifer - carries the Aquila which is a banner, or the equivalent emblem of the legion ”
Starting with the red plume that he had on his helmet that marked him as a Decarion the lecturer explained how the different ranks could be identified. The NCOs were generally marked by something relating to their function and did not have ostentatious armour.
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
Another round of the rod striking conscripts was channelled by the decarion, this time Palinus was awake and avoided getting hit.
“You ALWAYS salute a commissioned officer:
Optio - Second in command of a century
Centurion - Commands a century
Primus pilus, the first spear- Commands the first century of the Legion
Tribunus angusticlavii - One to six tribunes shared command of the cohorts
Praefectus castrorum, the camp prefect - Third in charge of a Legion and commander of the first cohort
Tribunus laticlavius, the broad striped tribune - Second in command of a legion and generally a younger man learning to take command.
Legatus - The legate commands the Legion.”
The Decurion explained the means to identify each rank as he ran through the commissioned officers.
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
*WHACK*
Another round of blows struck at the conscripts.
“If they have a white plume or cloak, with fancy armour. You’d better bloody salute.” He summed up simply. “The fancier the armour or the taller the plume, the faster you're going to want to salute… and if someone is walking around with a white robe you’d best salute so hard you make your heart skip a beat. Understood!”
“Understood Decarion!” The more switched on in the class repeated.
-rstood Decarion!” and the stragglers caught up.
After the afternoon lessons they would do more training until it was time for dinner.
Then they would return to their bunks and sleep until it was time to do it all again.
----------------------------------------
The training itself was focused on mind numbing repetition of marching drills, weapon skills or tactical formations. Learning the commands and the intricate dances of turning and marching as a unit or the way to hold a spear or gladius while maintaining a shield wall required ridiculous repetition and attention.
“When are we EVER going to have to turn in a perfectly even wheel on the battlefield. It is so stupid…”
Rufian complained endlessly that that was the sort of thing only the Over-Legion cared about and that marching around in circles in a perfect formation was pointless in a rift. He was deep into a rant about the pointlessness of their drilling that day when he was overheard by Centurion Armiger walking through the hallway of the barracks.
The entire century was turned out of their bunks to stand outside in the dark to hear the dressing down.
“You would never make the cut for the Over Legion you piss stain.” Armiger yelled. “You practise the formations of the Legion so that you can learn what a REAL soldier looks like. If we are deployed to extract you from a rift in hostile territory you need to be able to join the century seamlessly under fire.”
Turning to the century he yelled.
“You can thank Conscript Ramirus for the additional practice this evening later.”
After an additional hour of marching the century were happy to let Rufian know how much they appreciated it. The bruises were so bad Rufian couldn’t move properly but the Centurion refused to allow the boys to take him to the infirmary.
“That would be a waste.” Centurion Armiger chuckled evilly.
The next day they found out why.