Virgil was a year from retirement, a languid old age plowing his farm field by day and plowing his farm wife by night; no more killing, no more vagina screaming at swordpoint; or moaning the false sighs of the Corinthian come-along girl. Virgil was no mules’ ball sack like Hasti who had planned on dying in the Legion—and had gotten his wish on that far bank, across that dreary cursed sea, just yesterday.

When Virgil and Hasti joined back in the reign of Augustus they were all virtue and vigor; Hasti the fastest in the lines and Virgil the most tireless. For Ostian wharf rats they were thought to have done well for themselves. From the start they had declared separate paths. Hasti wanted to stay in the legion forever—to die bashing in some barbarian head in his old age. When Virgil had objected, making his case that such a course was an affront to the bitch-goddess Fortune, Hasti would wave him off with his full-toothed grin, “No Virgil, the legions spent a hundred years of bad luck under Varus up in Germany—those unlucky bastards are still jamming the doorway to Dust—a favorable road is ours!”

He thought now of Hasti, no teeth at all, and as unlucky as they come, slipping on a stone in his final battle. It seemed now that their paths had never diverged, and never would. The mist dripped from his nose and pooled in his eyes, his beard matted with blood, mud and salt, as he spoke to the sky, where he dearly hoped Hasti’s shade had flown when those barbarian bastards lifted his head yesterday. “Here’s hoping Dust’s gate is still jammed old boy…A bunch of figs in the sun perhaps as we wait on Pluto’s dread boatman.”

A day’s and a night’s haul up from the sea at double-time, over Felix’s broad back, had been all he could take of being a burden, of slowing the best Legionary that had ever marched. “A day to the man,” he had thought over and over again as he bounced along on the back of the best. Since Vespasian had detached them to chase down that screaming bitch who had cursed them—even shrunken the penis of the ten youngest men of the legion it was said, with some vile doom; something nastier and more ancient than the prissy druids prancing in their groves could ever conjure—they had followed Virtius Maniples in his grinding pursuit of Her—Her! And they, in their wretched turn, had been pursued, harried by locals every step of the way.

“What a misty dread day to die,” he said into the sky.

“Whatever squalor-dog of a god rules this land can suck my penis! You could not sell bread in my uncle’s tenement you cold sweating louse of a earth crawler!”

They had departed a while ago, but it was as if he could still feel Virtius’ hand on his shoulder, could still feel the echo of his approving word. “You are a steel shard festering in enemy guts, brother. Mars honors you. Mars worships you in his speculum, yearns for the old days when he might have died in battle.”

Virtius, his centurian, who had chosen him among the ten who had been chosen from among the five hundred of the First Cohort, had a way of inspiring a legionary even when he was long gone. And so Virgil honored him.

“I am your man Mars! Let these barbarian mud gods cough up what they will!”

The shrill challenge of his voice rose into the sky and also soaked into the snow-blanketed evergreens all along the unnatural forest road they had trod up from the sea; a path of pine needles seemingly sprinkled by an insane gardener; a road unpaved, unmade, where trees seemingly feared to grow according to the whim of some terrible will. Mars went with the legions—was always there to hear. But, he sensed, something else heard as well, something famished and eager to answer.

His leg was well beyond ache. Virtius had set him up nicely, splinting it up after he had that unlucky step off the Breton boat that snapped the bone below the knee.

He leaned on his scutum as he grasped his gladius, his pilum useless to a broken-legged man and borne now by Felix, who had promised to kill two with it, one for each of them.

His voice was a whisper now, a savage evocation of an unseen enemy, sure now as he was that the gods had been duly addressed.

“What treads you up from the sea road unnatural? Has Jupiter’s spiteful brother coughed up some sour spittle to curse me?”