"Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Fourth Cohort of Gauls, Second Legion." "Come to relieve the command." "Lutorius Drusillus Salinator, acting senior officer." "Where's the garrison commander?" "He left this morning, sir." "Couldn't wait to get away." "Duty roster and the keys to the pay chest." "No paymaster?" "We're too small a garrison." "Unfortunately, that job falls to you." "As you probably noticed, we've had a little trouble with the latrines, but we have someone working on it." "Unsuccessfully." "So far." "This your first command, sir?" "It is." "What made you choose Britain?" "You have family connections, I believe." "No." "I've noticed the fort." "It's in a poor state of repair." "We'll need to do something about that." "Yes, sir." "Move, soldiers!" "Move, move, move!" "Get in line, soldier!" "You, fall in!" "Our new commander, Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Where's our newly- minted commander?" "Probably unpacking his rule book." "You mark my words." "Marcus Aquila is tainted." "Well, you know who his father was." "The man who lost The Eagle of The Ninth." "Not to mention 5,000 men." "That was a little absentminded." "I heard he asked to be sent here." "To this shithole?" "Yeah." "I'm telling you." "I've marched with the Eagles 23 years." "I know a bad omen when I see one." "The boy's a bad omen." "Mithras, lord of light, please help me, father of our fathers." "Help me lead my men well." "Do not let me dishonor my legion." "Please help me regain my family's honor." "Dig it deep, boys!" "Your lives depend on these defenses!" "Move those poles over there." "You must be accurate with your striking!" "Power, speed and accuracy!" "Just been told the grain delivery hasn't arrived." "I want you to send out a patrol to investigate." "I wouldn't worry, sir." "One day late, it's nothing here." "Well, it is to me." "Send out the patrol." "Believe me, sir, too dangerous." "We've had reports of a Druid roaming the villages." "Right now, I would not send out a patrol." "The men, they need to eat, too." "Patrol, forward march!" "Left, right, left." "Wake Lutorius." "Yes, sir." "Did you hear that?" "Sir?" "I hope the patrol's all right." "Seems I may have got you up for nothing." "What did you hear?" "It's cattle, most likely." "There." "That." "Did you hear it?" "Damn the dark." "Should I call the men to arms?" "If it's only cattle, they won't thank you." "Better angry than dead." "Call them out." "But in silence." "Yes, sir." "Soldier, wake up." "Bloody helmets." "Come on, come on." "Move, move, move." "Hold the line!" "Legion, hold your positions!" "Hold your positions!" "Bring me a torch!" "Hold steady!" "Hold your line!" "Centurion, hold the cohort!" "It's coming out!" "Sir." "Well done, sir." "Well done, sir." "Sir." "Light of the sun be with you, brother." "Many more of us would be lying there, sir." "Is there any sign of the patrol?" "Sir!" "I'm not leaving them to die." "Muster 50 of the reserves and hold them at the gate." "Sir, let me lead them." "It was my decision to send out the patrol." "It's my responsibility to bring them back." "Muster the men." "Move it!" "Move it!" "Prepare for battle." "Mithras, lord of light, father of our fathers, let me not bring misfortune to my legion." "Mithras, lord of light, father of our fathers, accept whatever sacrifice that I may not bring misfortune to my legion." "On my command, we form testudo!" "Ready!" "Open the gates!" "Legion, double time, march!" "Testudo, form!" "Move forward!" "Move forward!" "Move forward!" "Advance!" "Defensive circle, forward!" "Hold the circle!" "Hold the circle!" "Hold the circle!" "Tighten the circle!" "Hold the circle!" "Here, cut the others free." "Hold the circle!" "Hold!" "Close the circle!" "Fall back!" "Fall back!" "Run!" "Charge!" "Run!" "Run!" "Father, where are you, Father?" "Father?" "Rest now." "Lie still." "Still." "Where am I?" "You're still in Britain." "Calleva." "Calleva?" "Your fort surgeon had you transferred here." "200 leagues in a mule cart." "With your wound, it's a wonder you didn't die." "I'm your uncle on your father's side, Aquila." "No, these are not the best circumstances under which to meet, but assume you're gonna live, so we'll have plenty of time to make your acquaintance." "Now, please lie still." "The patient must rest." "I hope the medicine he's gonna give you does you some good." "It smells repellent." "Like one of his farts." "My men." "What happened to my men?" "Your men were saved." "Thanks to your effort." "Rest now." "Marcus?" "Marcus?" "You have a visitor." "Lutorius." "Sir." "The men have been asking after you." "And how are they?" "Anxious to know how their commander fares." "You have some news for my nephew?" "Yes." "Sorry." "We have received word from Rome." "For holding the fort under extreme duress, the Fourth Cohort of Gauls has been awarded the gilded laurel." "From today, their standard will carry its first wreath." "Tell the men I could not be more proud." "That's not all, sir." "They've awarded you a military armilla for conspicuous gallantry." "And an honorable discharge because of your wounds." "The citation reads, "'Honor and faithfulness. "'" "Honor and faithfulness." "May I be the first to offer my congratulations?" "It was good of you to come so far." "Sir." "Thank you, Lutorius." "Stephanos." "Leave him." "There's no medicine for that." "Run!" "Ease him down." "Careful." "Gently." "Fun." "Go, little guy, go!" "What was my father like?" "Your father?" "Your father was a perfect Roman, and everything that that implies." "The man who lost The Eagle was the perfect Roman?" "How The Eagle was lost, no one knows." "But if your father died defending it, he died honorably." "That's what we tell ourselves." "But what if he didn't?" "What?" "What if he was a coward and ran?" "And now a fight to the death!" "It's a slave." "A gladiator and a slave's never a fair contest." "Never!" "Come on." "Come on." "Fight." "Fight!" "There's bravery." "He's going to give himself his death." "Come on, fight." "Look at that." "Look at that." "Go!" "Come on, come on, go!" "Fight!" "Fight." "Fight him!" "Fight, slave." "Get up and fight." "Get up." "Fight." "Come on." "Kill him!" "Kill him!" "Kill!" "Kill!" "Kill!" "Kill him!" "Life." "Life!" "Life!" "Come on, let him live." "Come on, get your thumbs up!" "Come on, you fools!" "Life!" "All of you, life!" "Let him live." "Get your thumbs up!" "Get your thumbs up!" "Life!" "Come on, you fools!" "Get your thumbs up!" "Life!" "Come on!" "Let him live!" "Now, that I was not expecting." "Why did you save him?" "Stephanos!" "I decided Stephanos is too old to serve two masters." "I bought you your own body slave." "I don't need my own slave." "Marcus." "I should have been consulted." "Yeah, well, you weren't." "Slave!" "His name's Esca." "I've no use for you." "I had no wish to be bought." "You should have run." "My uncle wouldn't have stopped you." "You saved my life." "I have a debt of honor to you now." "Against your wish." "No man should ever beg for his life." "You didn't." "I did, on your behalf." "And I meant nothing by it." "I am a son of the Brigantes, who never broke his word." "My father's dagger is my bond." "I hate everything you stand for." "Everything you are." "But you saved me." "And for that, I must serve you." "Who searched this wound?" "The surgeon at the fort." "Was he drunk?" "I've never seen such a mess." "You must have been in constant pain." "Sent him 200 leagues in a mule cart." "Nearly killed him." "I'm gonna have to re-open it." "There's still metal in there." "Well, if it's got to be done, let him do it, right?" "It'll be over before you know it." "I have the best knives in the business." "Some wine." "Ready?" "Ready." "You can go." "No!" "I'm gonna need the slave to hold you down." "Can't my uncle do it?" "Me?" "No." "No, I've grown to hate the sight of blood." "Especially the blood of someone I'm quite fond of." "Be strong." "Quickly now." "Hold him down." "Put your weight on him, slave!" "Harder!" "Take a deep breath." "When I say, "'Now,"' let it out." "Now!" "Did I shame myself?" "Thank you." "There he is." "Spear!" "Now!" "Cut him off!" "Cut him off!" "As I remember it, he seemed pretty fond of you." "Marcus." "May I present my nephew, Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Claudius Marcellus, my old friend, and the esteemed Legate of the Sixth Legion." "Your uncle's an old sparring partner." "Tribune Servius Placidus." "An indispensable member of my staff." "Pleasure." "Supper's ready." "Boiled eggs and fish." "Don't all rush at once." "If it was my choice, I'd be a soldier all my life." "However, my father will insist I go into politics." "Have we met before?" "Your name sounds familiar." "I doubt it." "The Tribune's Club, in Rome?" "No, I was only a Cohort Centurion." "Ah, right, I remember now." "Flavius Aquila." "Your father marched with the Eagles, too, did he not?" "He commanded the First Cohort of the Ninth." "Of course." "The Ninth." "Every Roman remembers the Ninth." "Talking of the Ninth, there's been rumor recently along the wall." "Rumors." "Rumors!" "Britain's full of nothing but rumors." "They say The Eagle's been seen receiving divine honors in some tribal temple in the far north." "An Eagle in the hands of the Painted People." "A potent weapon." "One has to wonder how any Roman could let it go." "If this were to be true, surely we should act." "Well, what would Rome say?" "Eagle lost, honor lost." "Honor lost, all lost." "Rome would love to get The Eagle back, but politics being politics, no senator's gonna risk thousands of lives on a tainted legion." "My hands are tied." "Not if you sent one man." "North of the wall?" "No Roman could survive up there." "Has anyone ever tried?" "No, and that's the point, militarily." "To try would be to fail." "How do you know?" "One man can hide where an army can't." "No one would even know he was there." "It's too risky." "Quite right." "The loss of the Ninth was humiliating enough without adding another pointless death." "Marcus." "Marcus." "You can't let the likes of him do this to you." "He has no notion of how you and I have lived our lives." "Ever since I can remember," "all I've ever wanted to be was a soldier, like my father." "I know." "I can still see him now, riding away for the last time." "I can still feel how proud I was." "My father," "Centurion of the First Cohort of the Ninth Legion." "Can you imagine anything more magnificent than to be a soldier and to serve Rome with courage and faithfulness?" "But you did, son." "For what?" "For what?" "An honorable discharge?" "That is fate." "That's in the hands of the gods." "When I made Centurion, they asked me where I wanted to be posted." "I knew the answer before they had even asked it." "Britain." "Britain." "This is where my father lost The Eagle." "This is where I was gonna win so much glory that no Roman would ever dare bring up his name again." "What do I do now?" "What do I do?" "I sit and I listen to some silk-ass politician's son piss on our family's name!" "I will not sit in some villa for the rest of my days, rotting and remembering." "If I can't win back my family's honor by being a soldier," "then I'll do it by finding the lost Eagle." "You can't." "No Roman can survive north of the wall alone." "You can't." "Then I'll take Esca." "I can use his knowledge." "He speaks the language." "Esca?" "Why not?" "Because he's a Briton." "He may not be from north of the wall, but he's a Briton." "And he will slit your throat the minute you're alone." "He wouldn't do that." "How do you know?" "He gave me his word!" "His word?" "He's a slave!" "He says what he says and he does what he does because he has to." "Once you're beyond the territories..." "If I'm wrong, then I'll die." "And that's how it should be." "Where are you headed?" "North." "Didn't they tell you this is the end of the world?" "Just open the gate, soldier." "See you in the afterlife, Roman." "Who did this?" "Rogue warriors." "You know, sometimes," "I dream that I'll find my father alive up here." "That he survived in some hidden place." "Is that why you're here?" "To find your father?" "No." "We're here to find The Eagle." "How can a piece of metal mean so much to you?" "The Eagle is not a piece of metal." "The Eagle is Rome." "It's a symbol of our honor." "Every victory." "Every achievement." "Wherever The Eagle is, we can say that Rome did that." "You wouldn't understand." "How could you?" "My father was Cunoval, bearer of the Blue War Shield of the Brigantes." "Lord of 500 spears." "Seven years ago, you took our lands and we rose against you." "My father and two brothers died." "My mother, also." "My father killed her before the legionaries broke through." "He knew what they would do to her." "She knelt in front of him and he slit her throat." "Rome also did that." "The Highlands." "Which way?" "It's up to you." "Five thousand men can disappear in a single glen." "There are thousands of glens." "We could search for months and still find nothing." "North." "Whoever we meet, let me do the talking." "If they find out you're a Roman, they'll kill you." "And me." "Don't look." "There's three rogue warriors behind you across the river." "How many behind me?" "I don't see anyone." "They're there." "Are you ready?" "Next time, don't hesitate." "Stay back." "He remembers seeing the legion march north, but they never came back this way." "He must know more than that." "He says not." "Ask him again." "No." "What are you doing?" "Stay back!" "Enough!" "Enough." "No more games." "No more lies." "Ask him where the legion went." "Ask him!" "Come on." "Kill him!" "Kill him." "Do it now!" "Chin-strap scar." "Only a Roman helmet does that." "He's a legionary." "What's your name?" "I'm called Guern." "My name is Lucius Caius Metellus." "First Cohort of the Ninth Legion." "How have you survived up here for so long?" "My tribe is called the Selgovae." "They took me in, made me one of their own." "I have a woman, two sons." "My life is here now." "I don't trust him." "He's a deserter." "We don't know that." "He's still a Roman." "He was a Roman when he ran." "I don't know what your father's orders were," "but all I know" "is that we had it coming." "Why did they have to come north?" "There's nothing here worth taking." "Couldn't they have been satisfied with what they had?" "They always have to punish and push on looking for more conquests, more territories, more wars." "Just tell me what happened." "When the order came for the Ninth to march north, it was autumn." "The worst weather they'd had in years." "For weeks we marched." "No sign of them." "Suddenly they just appeared out of the mist." "We could hear them, picking the men off at the back, one by one." "Finally, we just stopped trying to find open ground and we turned and faced them." "Those last few days of the Legion," "I've never been so frightened." "We fought back-to-back." "No sleep." "Pissing where we stood." "They came at us like animals." "This is the killing ground." "All the northern tribes were here." "But the worst were the Painted Warriors of the Seal People." "They hacked the feet off the dead so their souls couldn't walk into the afterlife." "They used those stones as altars to kill the officers." "They ripped their hearts out while they were still alive." "We could hear them being sacrificed." "My father?" "What happened to him?" "The last time I saw your father, he was surrounded by the warriors of the Seal People." "Did he die fighting?" "I don't know." "I ran before the end." "A lot of us did." "You coward." "No." "You weren't here." "You don't know what it was like." "Who has The Eagle?" "They say the Seal People have it." "How do I find them?" "He knows." "He's Brigantes." "They fought here." "You always knew that place existed, didn't you?" "We've wasted weeks searching, and all this time you could have told me." "Your tribe was there." "And they butchered my father's men like dogs!" "Your father came to kill!" "He came to punish us 'cause we would not bow to the name of Rome!" "Yes, I'd heard of this place." "To me and to all my people, it is the place of heroes." "How dare you?" "You're still my slave!" "And you'd be dead in a ditch without me!" "I saved your miserable life!" "No!" "What's happening?" "No!" "Esca?" "Esca?" "Esca!" "Esca!" "Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Marcus Flavius Aquila." "Esca, what's happening?" "You're my slave." "Kneel!" "Get on your knees!" "Do it!" "When I get the chance," "I will kill you." "Marcus." "Marcus!" "It's time." "We have to do this now." "It's our only chance." "While they sleep." "I thought I'd lost you." "Quickly." "There's no time now." "Let's go." "We have to go now." "Where'd you get my father's ring?" "What did he say?" "We have to go." "Esca?" "Esca." "If he wakes them, we're dead." "And you know it." "He has no reason to protect us." "Do you trust me?" "He won't betray us." "Come on!" "Come on, boy." "How many days to the wall?" "If we ride hard, four, maybe five." "They'll never catch us on foot." "Have you seen them run?" "You're wounded." "Why didn't you say?" "It's nothing." "It's your bad leg." "Sit down." "We don't have time." "Just sit down." "In the cave, the chief, what did he say?" "Come on, there's no time right now." "They're coming." "Half a day behind." "The wind always lies." "No fires." "It's too risky." "I'm not eating that." "I'm not a savage." "Then die a Roman." "You've lost a lot of blood." "You need to keep your strength up." "Eat." "It's time to go." "They can take shortcuts that the horses can't." "Come on." "Keep going." "Come on!" "Come on!" "No!" "We need to stick to the river." "They'll double back soon enough." "Rest." "We can't." "You need to rest!" "Marcus." "You need to rest." "Come on." "I can't go on." "Yes, you can." "You just need to rest." "Take The Eagle." "If you find horses, come back." "If not, just keep south." "Make sure this gets back to Rome." "I'm not leaving you here." "Do not dishonor me." "Take it." "I came this far with you." "I won't leave you now." "Esca," "I order you." "Take it." "I swore an oath of honor never to abandon you." "If you want me to leave, set me free." "Give me my freedom." "You're free." "You're free, my friend." "Take it." "No." "I will return." "Legion, halt!" "Your father's legionaries." "You were wrong." "The dead can live." "My shame would not allow me to tell you this before, but I watched your father die." "Whatever anyone tells you, he was not a coward." "He stood his ground to the very end." "I saw it." "The last Roman to hold The Eagle was your father." "The order, sir." "You've honored my father's memory enough." "You don't have to do this." "No." "When I ran from your father" "I ran from myself." "Give the order, sir." "Prepare to defend The Eagle!" "Esca!" "Out swords!" "Let us remember the men who fought and died in the name of honor." "Romans and Britons." "My father and yours." "Fathers, brothers," "sons," "may peace and honor follow you." "May you know no more strife." "May your souls take flight and soar with The Eagle of The Ninth." "For my father." "My dear boy." "I congratulate you." "Rome congratulates you." "And your family's good name is restored." "The Senate will want to re-form the Ninth." "Perhaps they can reward you with its command." "However did you do it?" "With only a slave to help you." "He's not a slave!" "And he knows more about honor and freedom than you ever will." "So what now?" "You decide."