Pennocrucium was dying.The fort that once rang with steel and Latin orders now lay quiet under a bruised evening sky. The last of the Roman banners hung in the wet like torn skin. The gold stitching dull and heavy with rain.
Fires in the watchtowers had burned down to ash. Barracks stood open. Doors unbarred.No sentries.No horn.No empire.Drax stood in the centre of the courtyard, gloved hands behind his back, cloak dark with rain.
He could still see where the eagle standard had stood, planted in the earth like a promise. He had bled beneath that symbol. Killed beneath it. Buried men beneath it.
Defended it long after others began to whisper that Rome no longer had the strength to defend itself.Now the standard lay in the mud.He let out a slow breath.
“This is how it ends,” he said quietly. “Not with fire. With retreat.”A few of his men were still with him. Not many. Veterans. The ones too loyal or too stubborn to walk away until ordered.
“Praefect,” Maren said, stepping to his side. Rain had plastered the boy’s hair to his face, and his jaw worked the way it always did . When he was circling fear and pretending not to feel it. “The last wagons are packed. They’re taking the southern road to Viroconium before dark.”
“Good,” Drax said. His voice stayed even. He didn’t look at his son. “They’ll be safer south.”Maren hesitated.
“What about us? Us.Not the cohort. Not the banner. Us.” Drax let the word settle in his chest.
“We’re not going south,” he said.Maren swallowed.
“Are we going after them?”
“No,” Drax said. “We’re going home.”The boy didn’t answer, but he understood. Drax saw it in the way the tension left his shoulders and something else took its place.
Not ease. Something older. Something like hunger.Thunder rolled low over the Chase.Beyond the walls, the land lay open and dark. The tree line a ragged edge against a sky. That hadn’t decided yet if it meant to rain or break clear. Mist gathered low over the fields in pale bands.
The air smelled of smoke from scattered farmsteads and peat fires. The smoke that drifted up on this night, every year, since before Rome ever named this place.
Spirit night.Nos Galan Gaeaf.The first night of winter. Drax looked north, toward the low hills and the mist and the deep-breathing dark of the land that raised him.
“Home,” he said.Then he walked into the new winter.
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To read more about Drax please see The Chronicles of Drax
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