Thunder of the Gods

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‘Well now Tribune, are you still sure you wouldn’t rather be back in Antioch with your young friends?’

Gaius Vibius Varus looked down from his horse at the centurion marching alongside him with a quick smile, easy in his relationship with the older man despite their twenty-year age difference and the social gulf between them.

‘It’s a difficult choice you pose, First Spear. On the one hand, I could be lounging around drinking wine and watching exquisite young ladies oil each other up for my entertainment. On the other, here I am, breathing in the fart-laden dust of five hundred men’s boots.’

He paused for a moment, looking up at the sky and pursing his lips as if in thought. The cohort’s senior centurion grinned up at him, flicking away a vicious-looking fly that was hovering over his head with a practised sweep of his vine stick.

‘You forgot to mention the heat, the insects, the constant moaning of soldiers on the march, the occasional screams of abuse from my more vigorous centurions …’

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