I pointed my sword at the eagle, blood still roaring in my ears. “Give her back,” I panted. “And the lion skin. They’re not yours.”

“The skin is mine. I speared the lion when I was twelve years old. My first kill.”

Something clicked inside my head. An aquilifer wasn’t the only man who wore a lion skin. I thought of the rumors I’d heard, rumors of a man ten feet tall who led armies against Rome and hid horns and a tail beneath a lion skin. “… You’re him. You’re the Dacian king.”

He stared at me, impassive. He was taller than I, which didn’t happen often, and he had a short black beard, a full mouth, an unyielding blade of a nose. The lion’s coarse mane mixed with his own coarse black hair, and the lion’s claws crossed over a broad chest. The eagle screamed silently overhead. My eagle, held in this lion’s paw.

“They said you went east,” I blurted.

He grunted. “I would have.”

“There must have been easier ways to get out!” But even as I said it, I wondered. An aquilifer went anywhere he pleased. The guards at Old Sarm’s gates would have taken one look at the eagle and maybe not bothered looking at the face under the lion skin as they waved the aquilifer through. He could have taken horses from the camp, stowed the eagle away, and ridden fast to Ranisstorium or anywhere else to renew his fight.

Not that the Tenth would have been part of that fight. A legion that lost its eagle was disgraced past any measure of redemption.

I raised my sword again, pointing at the eagle. “Give her back, and I’ll kill you fast.”

“Kings don’t die fast,” he said wearily. “They get marched back to Rome in chains, and then they die in your arenas. What do you call it, when you kill men there—the games?”

A tendril of uneasiness uncoiled in my stomach, and I pushed it down. “Give her back.”

He moved back again with the same care, taking a step up without looking onto the moon-bleached stone of the solar disc. “Stay back,” he said as I lunged forward. His ax was poised not at me, but over the eagle as he lowered the standard pole. “I can hack it to bits before you get near me.”

“Why?” I spat. “You’re finished.”

“More than you know.” He smiled, and I saw the effort it took. “But you took something of mine, didn’t you?”

I looked at the smoking fortress behind him. “I didn’t do that. I’m just—here. With the rest of my legion.”

“Why?”

“Why what? I get orders, and I march. It’s not complicated.”

“Do you even know my name?”