Testimony

[water damage, indecipherable]

...morass made for poor travel, as my men quickly found out.

The wains and wagons were the first to become grounded in the mires, sinking with a sickening wet squelch as they fell further into the muck. Many were left behind. We could not risk waiting to recover them, nor their crews.

“I don’t like the look of this, Legatus.” First Spear Vylax had whined, not for the first time. How a man such as he had gained that prestigious posting I still question to this day. Regardless, he was there when it happened. We both saw. Never forgot.

The commander was at the head of the column, furthest from danger and quickest to quail. My cohort, the illustrious 1st Cohort Fulminata, was the most formidable rank of men I had come to command over my long service to the Republic. They were battle-hardened and rigorously drilled, aptly provisioned and well-equipped. The savages, by all accounts, could never match have matched them in skill of the mortal arts. Or so I had foolishly thought.

With the trouble at Isca, I had fallen out of favour with the imperator, and by extension the men of the 1st Cohort also suffered. As penance, we became the last to receive rations, our requests for equipped fell on deaf ears, and we were given the honour of rearguard for our strategic withdrawal from this godless land.

It behooves me to state that Mars was shaming us, for our failure to gain victories, or a perceived cowardice in the face of those foul, naked savages, I could not tell you. I am not afraid to share what I know to be true- there was no cowardice on my part. I will describe everything that happened during the withdrawal. I shall claim outrageous things, but consider what I have to say. What really happened, by Iupiter I swear it, I do not fear what people will say, for I know the truth.

[water damage]

….ar will rot in hell. He did not see what lay in the morass.

But I am overexciting myself. I will explain. For two days First Spear Ghedorix writhed and screamed until he succumbed to a bloating sickness, still alive, but looking very much a corpse pulled from a river. A number of scouts vanished. The camp prefect put it down to night raids, which I was inclined to believe. I appealed to the imperator to make a new First Centurion from my roster of likely men.

I was denied. The messenger bearing that stinging rebuke was the man the imperator had chosen, Stylax, that brusque fool.

My woe multiplied in the following days. We lost the wains. Four units of cavalry. All my Gallic archers. The breadstores were looted and four men were crucified for trying to kill their commanding centurion. And worse things came thereon. We received reports of shadows in the sky, pale viscid serpents moving in the latrines, and bestial things dragging men from tents.

To see is to believe, and what I saw that night was no fever dream or fancy thought up by one of my men. It was real enough to kill, as we discovered that one night, when we lured it to a corpse in a tent and proceeded to surround it with fire and pila. It died like any other beast of the land, albeit to grievous cost to our supply train when a rogue fire broke out.

A great chimera of a creature, with a hound’s lean body, but a rat’s pointed head and mouth full of black fangs sprung out of shoulders like an ape. Its legs were bare, and taloned like a hawk. Hirsute, the beast was covered in a mangy pelt most unlike I’d ever seen of the menageries of Africa. Wiry like a brush, the spines were thick as a finger and poisonous besides.

Morale was lost then, men deserted- the true cowards in the ranks- and then he sent word from the van, with the order to discipline my men.

In a moment of weakness, I rode to the imperator’s tent and placed the mutilated beast on the war-table for all the officer’s to see. I held some hope that evidence of our night terrors would make them see! But I got nothing for my impudence but looks of horror and a public trial, with him presiding over all as my judge, my condemner. I was stripped of my rank, my honour, and my respect. Hoping that was the end of it, I returned to the rearguard to make the necessary arrangem[ents]-

[fragment lost]

… that I was a coward and must learn courage the only surefire way there was- by facing it naked. I was stripped, of course, to complete my punishment. Tied alongside me on a matching post was the bothersome First Spear Valus Vylax, whom had complained of the smell that my gruesome trophy had left in the tent. Thus he became my brother in bondage.

The rearguard moved on before daybreak, leaving us two repudiates to face the dawn alone.

It came, and at the end of that cold day came colder night. The second daylight found us cold to the bone. They appeared as though zephyrs, some errant messengers of the gods. But those facing us were cruel-eyed. The warband spoke only the snarling tongue of that land. They laughed at us, prodded our manhoods with their spears, and smacked our arses and faces. Then laughed some more.

Our salvation came with the woman, the one called Budd, who spoke a little of the civilized Latin and bid her fellows to cut us down. We were fed and clothed. For a time, it seemed like we were following the trail of the legion, and would soon find succour on the landings along the channel. We did not know where they were taking us. Had we the sun or stars to guide us, we would have known. But in that dread land the clouds never broke nor fled, and we didn’t see the sun or stars for weeks.

They marched us. It was a comfortable captivity, for they gave us vittles every day and warm broth by night, washed down some with the thick brown liquor that passed as wine. The garments they gave us were crude, the usual coverings of the island savages. I did not utter complaint, for the rags of the natives were fur-lined and warm, and I had had a bellyful of nakedness. By Iupiter I will admit, even the women, despite our trouble communicating, were very accommodating. During the travel, I had had four of them, the prettiest one being a redheaded slip with a name most unpronounceable, at first. All thoughts of returning to the legion seemed foolish. Why couldn’t I stay here? The weather was atrocious, but the women more than made up for that in their pleasant mien.

The one time First Spear was less impressed. He blustered and cursed at the slightest inconvenience. He wore the savage’s garb with a vehement disapproval, refused to eat the fare and liquor, and even rebuffed the women that tried to lay with him. He soon earned the ire of the warband. After a time, he decided that he could palate the drink, and would scoff it readily whenever offered a skin. He was a belabour when drunk. The man could not be reasoned with, loud and threatening, refusing to accept his place as captive, swearing to all the gods that the legion will return to wreak a terrible vengeance on the natives. His wild rantings were met by mutterings and angry eyes. If the warleader Budd understood what he said, she gave no sign.

A month into our captivity, I was laughing and walking free alongside my favourite redhead. Vylax was tied hand to hand to feet, with a dirty rag in his mouth and two swollen eyes. If one walked near him, he would only eye them coldly and let loose a muffled string of curses. He did not concern me then. I focused on learning the tongue of the people I walked with, and with the redhead at my side I soon learned some of their tongue very easily. I found myself adopting their ways, liming their hair with them, taking ice-water baths in tarns with the men and women alike, even learning to wield the stout spear that they used.

All that came to an end, like all good things will.

North, northwest, and north again. The lowlands ceded to valleys, which gradually rose to jagged-topped mountains, dark cliffs that climbed either side of you like falling into the jaws of some monster wolf. In the lands to the south, there had been great forests of the great limbed grandfathers and riverside mourners and bone-white fellows that all marched in frozen procession, all looking on with the indolent thoughts of the tree-folk. But in the cold grey country, they thinned, and even in the summer-tide seemed feebler than their lowland kin, until only the hardiest of gnarled beldams remained to cling to the cliffs and crags.

I had never seen such a land. Stone, stone everywhere, with so much water. And it rained too, downpours interspersed with drizzle and storms of stinging deluge and angry thunderheads. On those days we halted our travel to rest, taking shelter in the great tarred-hide huts the people could erect and disassemble in a flash. In the shadow of a great fanged peak we hid… [water damage, indecipherable] …skies and a keen-eyed youth in the warband called Drystan told an exhilarating tale of the Promised Son. It was that night that my little redhead, whose name was Esyllt, told me she was with child.

I was distraught. This new life suddenly felt the captivity that it had originally been. Madness, that is all I can say, writing these words after all is done. What would have happened had I stayed? It is folly to think of such, of roads not travelled and deeds undone. It is said that the weaver can see the pattern of the thread before she has woven it be. I have no such ability to see the roads that I may have walked. I will accept what happened. But I do not like it. I never will.

The warband I had travelled and laughed and lay with no longer seemed the fast friends I had made, but the same savages that had stalked my cohort and killed my men and dragged them screaming from their tents. They appeared no different then than the beast I had displayed for the imperator. I felt almost a beast myself having lay with them. I had to return to the legion. Before it was too late. Before I was left alone with the barbarians. Left to die. Left to rot.

Allies were needed. I hesitated to release the bound Vylax, but it seemed a beggar’s choice. Despite all the hate he bore them, they had given him a tarred-hide shelter of his own. Deep into a blustering night, I found him, alone and whittling a piece of wood. A queer habit he had formed in captivity, but one he could do proficiently even with bound limbs. He glowered at my approach, and muffled something, laughing a dry wheeze at his own stifled wit. Barbarian. I could not let any slight he might sling harm me. I needed him, a countryman I would not choose otherwise, yet a brother in arms and legion regardless.

He sat in silence while I explained what I planned to do. Not one curse, one evil look, or sign of ill-luck. Vylax sat there in silence, the blubber candle at his elbow painting his ascetic features into an ashen death mask. It took a long time, that talking, and longer still waiting for a response from the once First Spear.

Nothing. His response was only to straighten his back and look me in the eye. Then he tossed the piece of wood at me. My woaded hands missed it in the half-light, and it fell into my lap. It was an eagle. Then came the sound of mad cackling, loud enough that I thought he would wake the giants of the earth.

We packed nothing. It was a hard-going travail, with no supplies and with Vylax being bound for so long he had developed a bent-neck and crippled gait. On and on, rain and sun and wind, we left the warband behind us, taking shelter in hollow crags, under hardscrabble trees, eating wild berries and shoots. When we lacked crags and trees altogether, we hunkered down and used our own bodies to keep the worst of the weather of us. Not that it accomplished much. We were sodden and freezing, starving with the little food we managed to forage. It was not enough. We both knew it. But looking at Vylax, by that time a veritable mute, I could tell that he was dogged. He would not return to the safety of the natives as a slave. But it was not enough.

Two days. That was all it took them. We were squatting in a river trying to tickle trout from the rocks, when we heard the harsh laughter. Then Vylax screamed. A spear sprouted from his ankle, something white sticking out of the meat of his leg. He collapsed into the water, the dark red mixing with the scum. From the riverbank, the band had assembled. Budd bid me rejoin them, or suffer from the refusal. I meekly met with my red woman, who looked at me with a viper’s gaze as she gently caressed her stomach. I looked to Vylax, seeing two of the warband help him from the river and carry him to the bank. Isyllt pulled my hand to rest on her still flat stomach. From somewhere within, I felt a quickening.

My second captivity was a harsher one. I lay with Isyllt at night, but under the judgment of day I bore a rope about my neck. The trust had been broken, after all, and I was a foreigner again, suspect and surveilled. Budd was distant. She had smiled at me before, especially when I lay with her, but now she had only frowns for me. Something troubled her.

By Iupiter, I wish I had… [fragment torn, lost]

…he came thereafter. The one from the trees. The Wild One. He spoke in a different tongue to the warband. It was melodic and sonorous, not like theirs. When Budd spoke to him, he would look at me with eyes that burned like coals... [fragment lost]

…questions, questions, questions. Ceaseless and implacable. He was unlike any man I had known. I could not guess his age, for he had grey hairs among the raven-black mane and beard, yet his voice seemed youthful and his movements were quick. He seemed to be able to know my words before I had said them. Questions. My mind became a haze, the days and nights blending into a twixt-light. Voices came and went. I heard Budd and Isyllt, Drystan once and even Vylax, but they were all twisted and contorted. Questions. Others some ways off strange voices would mimic them and berate me. I wept.

After a time even that seemed to end. There was only the Wild One then. His face mostly shadowed by the grey hood, yet his long beard could be seen, and his eyes, yes, his eyes most of all. They poured into me and I found myself before him naked and afraid, my secrets and shames brought forth until all I wanted was to surrender myself to him, mind and body- [fragment destroyed]

…ar screaming, his voice filled with an insane laughter, wracked in pain. He told them I… [water damage, indecipherable]

…shadows. I could not… [fragment lost]

…away from the… [fragment lost]

…voice, chanting. Tell him we… [indecipherable] …a burning hatred and a passionate love for this man. Terrible and wise and old, very old. He told me of the Promised Son. Of the promises of the father and son's mantle and the prophecies of blood and a return to the old true ways. I wept and embraced every word, enraptured as though my some godman. He came to me- [fragment torn, lost]

…someone following. A boat, easily repaired… [water damage, indecipherable]

...feel him. I see… [water damage, lost]

ITEM: JC-3561-4684-2347-2B

COLLECTION: The Sublime Gaius Julius Cæsar Collection

CATEGORY: Apocryphal, Litany, Blasphemy

SUMMARY: A testimony of a Legate, late Roman Republic era.

Property of his High Holiness the Pope of Rome and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.