The top third of my shield disintegrated into splinters at another blow of the ax. I slung the shield at my Dacian with a yell. A tall man, burly under the red cloak he’d no doubt taken from some poor dead Roman. His eyes were black pits in the moonlight; all I could see was the gleam of his bared teeth in a thicket of dark beard as he came at me. I ducked the next swipe of the ax and flipped the gladius into my left hand.

I’d learned to fight as a Roman with my right hand, keeping in formation, keeping behind the shield, keeping in line. Short jabbing strokes; the point beats the edge; everything that had been drilled into me during legionary training. But the left hand had been trained by a barbarian, by Rome’s greatest gladiator who also happened to be my father. The left hand had made my first kill when I was thirteen years old. The left hand recognized no rules, fought in no formations. The point beats the edge, the right hand knew. Hell with that, the left hand thought.

I touched the amulet about my neck that my father had given me, and then I tore my sword across the Dacian’s chest in a stroke that would have ripped him open throat to belly if not for the mail. He staggered back a moment and I was leaping with him, roaring that his mother was a whore, that his father was a bucket of scum, that I’d kill him in pieces and piss on his bones. I chopped the crest off his stolen helmet, I stabbed through his knee and left him hobbling, I took half his shield off and half the fingers of the hand along with it. He dropped the ax, but he didn’t plead, just stared at me stoically, and he’d been brave so I took his life in one fast stroke through the neck.

He fell at the same time as the second legionary. I spun just in time to see the man cry out, a spear below the edge of his breastplate. He fell, driven back across the grass by the man in the lion skin to the edge of the solar disc, and as I came forward I realized there were just the two of us left. Me and Lion Skin, silver under the moonlight.

He turned and saw me at the same moment, the standard pole in one hand and his ax in the other. I held my sword out, advancing, and he retreated with careful steps. The eagle still gleamed over his head.

To my surprise, he spoke. “You’re the one who raised the alarm.” His Latin was good, barely accented. No wonder he’d been able to fool the sentries into thinking he was the Tenth’s aquilifer.