“Alexander, Pompey, and Julius Caesar laid waste whole cities time and again, and cut down many thousands of horse and foot in battle, but the hour came when they too passed away.”

-Marcus Aurelius

For six days since they had crossed over from Breton they had tread the snowstorm path of the wicked slut of Dust! As their number had grown fewer the snow had intensified. He remembered still, like it was yesterday but a life time ago the vision of poor Plutus, standing back long the rise, snowflakes trickling back toward him. Then the snowflakes over Plutus’ head seemed to miss their icy fellows and flew forward to fall on Aptus. He resented—even hated—the snow coming forward to fall on his shoulders mockingly as he looked over his shoulder at their good luck vagina in armor.

Poor Plutus when the snow ceased falling and the big barbarians closed with their monstrous hounds, swinging their massive mauls, thrusting with their roof beam spears. He took one of each though, a hound and a huntsmen, which is what they had come to call these silent shadows of theirs. Aptus had been proud of that Plutus…poor Plutus, unavenged Plutus!

Now he trudged along three paces behind Felix , shield on his back, snow and ice caking his every part, even crusting his cloak to the point where it no longer flapped in the wind that forever blew into their faces. The snow at his feet was ankle deep—ankle deep in late summer!

Curse you Bitch of Doom! If I close to grips you shall regret your spitting snow, your icy vexstorm.

Six hounds and six hunters walked on either side of them, had shadowed them like hungry fiends over hill, along ridge, through bile-festering bog, over upland heath, through shade-dense forests, and now up along the craggy trail, staying just beyond reach, shadowing him as the rear guard with maddening intensity. Even when they stopped to rest they stood off, and it kept snowing, only on them. This morning he had awakened standing against a rock under his shield, the weight of the heavy snow straining his neck, even as his enemies lounged on green grass under blue skies a pilum cast off.

But just now their barbaric shadows were placed in disorder by the narrow winding goat trail with a rock fall above and below. It frustrated a perfectionist soldier not to take advantage of this position—to let it pass by and for all he knew end up trudging another day or two through ice, eating nothing but snow, wondering like waifs trailing their whore mother’s promises of porridge out along some open meadow or sinking bog.

Aptus was losing his legendary lethal cool, was unwraveling; would soon no longer be his own masterful self. The man of consummate skill, the master of sword, shield, knife, dagger, club, even the ancient triarii spear, could not abide descending to Felix’s depth of madness. The Mad Signifier had his luck, his blessings from Mars, had been gifted with the strength of Hercules. Aptus had only his perfectly balanced skill set, which required a balanced mind. As the creeping claws of insanity inched up his spine from his now filthy trail-worn ass toward the base of his skull, seeking his nape in order to send that final, fateful doubt-drenched chill into his soul, he broke, broke ranks, broke faith; broke chain of command.

As he stopped at the base of the next winding hummock of a maddening goat trail he bellowed forward over the head of his signifier to Virtius, his stoic Centurian, “Centurian, I halt.”

The tireless figure of Felix stopped and turned as Virtius stopped without turning, up overhead, half way to the summit of this crack in a half-assed mountain’s buttocks. Felix was incredulous, “Hump a donkey in the ear Aptus. You know better.”

Ignoring Felix Aptus beseeched his commander, “Centurian, the island is said to be wider then Breton. We cannot possibly be near the other side. I am sick of these grinning boatmen and would lay them in the mud and set you free of their nagging presence. I am losing my edge. Let me avenge us while I may. If I still stand I shall come forward.”

The Centurian turned and looked back down at him, surveying the ground with a savagely practiced eye. Felix was standing in a five-by-five pace oval of turf ringed by rocks above to west and south, a jagged drop of ten paces to the north, and opened onto by a two pace wide path where Aptus now stood. The huntsmen and their hounds where bunching up below and behind with no angle from above, and too fearful of the woman’s curse to come at them from ahead.

Virtius took a mere moment to ascertain his position and then gave his order, “Stand and hold Roman. If a single mutt—man or hound—lives to follow my path I will flog you in the afterlife.”

Virtius then hit hand to heart and extended it in salute, “First Cohort and Vespasian, under Mars.”

The Centurian then about faced and continued up the trail into the driving snow, gray clouds above, and blue sky in the distance all around.

Felix came to him and grasped his shoulders, then took off his lion coif and fitted it to Aptus' helmet and shoulders. “There you go Perfect Post. When you slip up maybe this lion noggin will save you from a broken head like it did for me at Hill Fort Three.”

“Go rape a bitch for me Felix—then put her head on a stake for my shade.”

Felix jokingly jaunted off wiggling his hips and whistling, a maniac child in the body of Hercules that somehow once carried an eagle for Vespasian.

Forget the bitch rape friend, just survive—avenge my shade by living to be a crazy duck on another day...perhaps a day in the sun.