The wind howled maddeningly about his head, whipped the tattered blood-crusted cloak about his shoulders angrily, and whistled like all of Pluto’s shades through the iced gore-caked boots strapped about his ankles. But the separate, higher, icy wind above the dark hulk of the mountain behind and above them, moaned like nothing ever heard back across the Mare Atlantum, moaned as if Jupiter above had been smashed in the balls by some Breton god. In essence, he had to admit, that is what had happened.

Thirteen hill forts into their accursed hunt, and still they had not got their hands on the screaming, scheming bitch that had cursed Vespasian, and by extension, every man of Legio II Augustus. She had howled her curses from the bloody banks of the stream that ringed Hill Fort Seven. He found himself wondering what the name of that place might have been in the native tongue, and then brought himself from the wind and fatigue-induced trance.

He shook himself, permitting his anger to warm him in this deathly cold gale. Seven days past he had been detached from the First Cohort by Vespasian himself, with ten men and the vexing Greek, to pursue the sixty or more Breton dogs that had gathered about the accursed women, those but a fraction of the thousand or more who had sold their life at Hill Fort Twenty to pave her way to freedom with their bodies.

On the mountain above, Titus was surely dead by now, guarding the descent. The horde of locals would soon be upon them.

He pointed with his rod down to the rocky shore where the woman—a small indistinct figure, wrapped and borne as she was like a coddled babe by her long-haired fur-clad handlers—was even then being put aboard a wind-tossed boat that would only accommodate her and half of her ten remaining followers. Those who would remain were already preparing to die on the water-lashed rocks and pebbles below. As he pointed, he slapped the slight womanly shoulder to his right with his callused hand, battle-worn and cracked like dried mud after these seven days of pursuit, in winter, a winter that had suddenly come upon them unannounced. He noted absently that he did not sound himself, sounded already dead, “Greek, can you calculate or divine their landfall so that we might follow in that other boat up the way, or must we rush them, and swim if need be?”

The large voice boomed from the small man, “I am not named ‘Greek’ Centurian, but Plutarch. And I cannot read the will of the gods without a sacrifice. You had me waste the last of my falcons divining the ascent of this damned mountain. Now the sea! What am I to befriend Neptune for you now, after you spat in his eye from the mountaintop above?”

He heard a cry above, which was noted by Felix to his right, on the other side of the vexing Greek priest, who seemed a whore to every god in butt-poking Olympus. Virtius cared for no gods other than Mars and his father Jupiter, who were, likely as not, to spit in the dust while your throat was slit in the end. He spit again into what the Greek had called ‘the Breathe of Neptune’. “I curse that butt-poking fisherman of a damned second-rank god and piss in his drink.”

The little Greek just moaned while Felix nodded to the remaining four legionnaires to be ready for a rush from above, a place that could not be seen in the morning mist as it whipped around the base of the mountain like a dancing girl’s skirt.

Virtius steeled himself and gave the nod to Felix that he had given so many times before, as he gave up on beseeching the Greek on behalf of the gods, which he had done for no other reason than to placate his superstitious men. But even they had grown weary of this ‘Egyptian load of metaphysical crap” and that ‘Greek bit of superior wisdom’, and what have you.

His voice seemed his again as he bellowed above the wind, feeling the tear in his abdomen below his heart from heaving that last big-assed Breton off the heights, “Men—brothers—I, Virtius Manipes, Priest of this shit temple, in this shit place, in this shit land, on behalf of your shit shades, hereby beseech Mars, the only god in heaven likely to give a shit about our shit lives!”

The sound of Felix’s gladius whistling up from its vagina could scarce be heard among the windy dirge, but the whipsaw sound of that willow-switch of a Greek neck being cleaved, separating that ceaselessly yammering head from the white-cloaked body that had borne it for these past seven days—so much to his ire—sounded like justice in the Morning of the World!

As the men’s eyes widened, and Felix held the startled looking head gloomily aloft so that Virtius had to look up at it like it was some fancy masked Greek oracle, Virtius barked a question to the head in his best line-of-drill tone, “Oh Greek shade, tell me, do we take the spare boat—and maybe get rundown in the process by those hairy bastards above—or do we cast our bones with that slut Fortune and try and stop this accursed boat before it gets a sail up?”

The men chuckled, with old Hasti grinning with his five remaining teeth, as Felix—his old mail smashed into his upper arm so brutally by some Breton shield that links were as yet imbedded in the flesh—played along and twisted the dripping head this was and that, to face each boat, separated as they were by two bow shots. Felix then brought the men to a roaring laughter with his imitation of the Greek priest. Felix, the most muscular, and deepest voiced standard-bearer in the legions, intoned, “Oh dear me Centurian, I lost my little phallus and don’t have anything to comfort my soft hand. Perhaps I should ask old Neptune!”

With that Felix hurled the prissy Greek head over a stone’s throw. As the men cheered, Virtius bellowed, “And Neptune saysssssssss…”

After two long heartbeats and uncounted Ss the head plummeted into the sea, a little closer to the spare boat than the one on which the accursed screamer was being loaded. Virtius pointed with his rod at the spare boat, which was looking pretty beat up as it bobbed against the crude stone and rope tie-up post, “…the spare boat men!”

Off they ran, in a diagonal descent along the steep mountainside, toward the pebble-paved beach, with Breton sling stones from above beginning to fall among them. They laughed as they ran, like boys at play rather than like men on their last day.

He woke from his nightmare—the slippery mountain down to the wind-soaked rock shore nightmare—again. Since last Thanksgiving, right before he got fired, that damned nightmare had been awaiting him every time it got cold outside. He hated wintertime, especially cold windy nights like this. This was only his first month being out on the street, since the hospital people told him he wasn’t crazy anymore, and it was going to be the death of him.

He did not even know where he was—some house-lined road with no cars—just windy snow dust blowing into his face. He was afraid that he would not be able to move his legs, as he could not feel the toes of his feet. He pushed up from the sidewalk where he had his back to the telephone pole and heard his knees crack.

Then the door on the bar across the street opened—the bar they wouldn’t let him in because he could only afford to buy ginger ale. Two men, big hairy biker guys, had this woman between them, an older lady he thought, but it was hard to tell. They had a leather jacket draped over her head as they led her to their pickup truck in the whipping winter wind.

There was a loose half brick at his feet that he had not previously noticed. He reached down and picked it up. As he rose and began walking quickly across the street toward the pickup he noticed that they were hurrying up, shoving her into that truck that was about to take her away.

The lady that fired him was getting away again!

“No!”, he yelled, but it sounded like it joined with the whipping wind around him and then rose above on the icy whirlwind to moan with the deeper drone above, up in the sky where THEY watched him!

The big one looked at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was, because it sounded gggreat when the brick smashed into his big biker face and sent him reeling back into the passenger side of the truck bed. The second smash missed, denting in the side of the truck with a bone chilling scrapping sound as the big guy slid under the blow.

“I will not be denied woman!”

The moaning unseen sky above seemed to turn that into wind too as he raised the brick in his battle-worn hand, cracked like mud after these seven days on the streets, in winter…