Page 91 of Scorched Earth

Marcus glanced at Gibzen, remembering the moment he’d delivered Marcus the news of Agrippa’s desertion. “Yes. There’s not a girl on Reath he’d be willing to raise arms against us for. Servius, update the books.”

“That he’s dead doesn’t change that he left us for her.”

A prickle of gooseflesh broke over Marcus’s skin, and he looked to the skyline above Aracam, the black tower looming. “Change the books.”

“Will do,” Servius replied. “But on a more pressing note, what’s this gathering about?”

“Unity.” Marcus nudged his horse into a canter in the direction of the orderly ranks of the Thirty-Seventh forming up on the planes before Aracam. Arinoquian civilians outside the walls watched nervously, many of them hurrying inside the city, but Marcus paid them no mind as he glanced to the ridge where Titus’s pyre had stood, the young legatus now nothing more than an urn of ashes to be delivered to Celendrial. Yet in his mind’s eye, Marcus could see the black plume of smoke that had stained the air, smell the stink of burning flesh, and feel the pain of knowing he’d failed Titus as thoroughly as Titus had failed him.

He’d not make that mistake again.

The Thirty-Seventh was watching him as his attention turned once more to their ranks, and he called out, “At ease.”

Men glanced between each other, but then relaxed their stances, watching him with curiosity. Heeling his horse, he rode slowly between them, feeling his cloak billow out behind him as the wind rose. “The Senate has tasked us with a campaign far beyond the scope of anything we’ve undertaken before!” he shouted, allowing the wind to carry his voice. “We face an adversary of a strength Celendor has not faced since the dawn of the Empire. Never have we needed fortitude more than we do now, and yet the only reinforcement the Senate has sent us is the greenest legion in the Empire.”

The men shifted restlessly, none of this having been lost on them.

“Thirteen years old,” he said. “They’ve never seen real combat. Everything they know about battle is theoretical. Skirmishes fought on the plains before Lescendor with dulled blades and catapults filled with paint. Children who have only played at war, and yet here they are in the midst of the biggest campaign of the Empire’s history.”

He wove through the ranks, watching their faces, feeling the tension rise, then he shouted, “Little boys stand at our backs, my brothers! Soldiers whose faces won’t need a razor for years to come. Soldiers whose facesnever fucking willunless we teach them right.”

The legion collectively stiffened, his words not what they’d expected.

“We are the Thirty-Seventh!” His voice carried over their heads.“Undefeated champions of the Empire, and if we fell today, oh what glorious speeches would be given about all the things that we have done. Of the endless foes who have fallen beneath our feet, banners flapping and horns blaring triumphantly. Of how we never once fell back.” He took a breath, watching them watch him. “But it was not the men we are now who were cast into battle and blood, told to fight or die. It was little boys who’d only fought with dull blades and paint, who’d only played at war.”

Passing Servius, he took the Thirty-Seventh’s standard from his friend, hooking the base of it into his stirrup. Sunlight glinted off the gold, sending little beams of light bouncing off the armor of his men.

“You all know I’ve been in Celendrial,” he said. “Meeting with the Commandant. The Senate. The Consul. What you don’t know is that while there I encountered some oldfriendsof ours. The Twenty-Ninth.”

Faces soured, dozens of men spitting into the dirt at the mention of the legion that had been supposed to finish their training. The legion that had been the architects of the Thirty-Seventh’s misery for years.

“Do you remember life under Hostus’s command? Do you remember being tethered to them with apron strings of razor wire? What it was like to fear the teacher more than the enemy? Many would say that it was because of their methods that we are who we are, but I ask, how many of our brothers would stand among us today if not for thelessonsof the Twenty-Ninth?”

“Yaro!” someone shouted, but the dead legionnaire’s name was only the first, dozens more filling the air as the Thirty-Seventh screamed the names of those who’d died because of the older legion, every man present remembering their own personal suffering beneath the Twenty-Ninth’s fists.

“Our blood is on their hands!” he roared over their voices. “Will the Fifty-First’s be on ours?”

“No!” they screamed back at him, ranks abandoned as the men pressed around his horse. The animal’s eyes rolled in panic, but Marcus only checked the reins. “Who are we?”

“The Thirty-Seventh!”

The noise was deafening, his horse twisting in circles as he lifted the standard into the air. The dragon was the symbol of the empire they served, but the 37 it clutched in its talons? That number wastheirs.

Urging the horse forward, he led his legion back to their camp, his friends falling in alongside him.

“Well,” Servius said. “It’s been an age since you gave a speech that pretty. What was that all about?”

Marcus glanced back at the ridge, seeing imagined smoke rising black as night. “A different kind of legacy.”

33LYDIA

“I wish I’d fallen,” Baird groaned. “I wish I was a splatter on the rocks or crushed to pulp by blighters, because at least it would have been quick. Not this slow, miserable march toward death, like being cooked on a low-burning fire.”

“Quit complaining,” Agrippa answered. “The heat forestalled pursuit, and honestly, it’s not even that hot.”

It absolutelywasthat hot, and in Baird’s defense, he’d been tasked with carrying the bulk of the supplies that they’d retrieved from the underground storage room where she and Killian had hidden during the storm.

Lydia’s cheeks warmed as she thought of that moment, and she glanced at Killian, who walked to her left. His face was concealed by a length of fabric to block the sun, but it did nothing to block her imagination. It had been days since they’d fled the escarpment and into Anukastre, but the time had done nothing to diminish her memory of the feel of his hands on her naked skin or the feel of his lips pressed against hers. The weight of him on top of her as he’d held her down, his muscles like steel beneath her hands.