It Is A Wind In the Heart Which Blows Hardest
‘I think . . . I think it is best that we march into the east, into the deep deserts, to the Euphrates. What this Ducenarius says may be right. I do not know. I do know that we are fallen behind. There is war and battle looming in the west but it is spreading like the heads of the Hydra. Where we move west is contentious. We all know that. We all share that divide. But we are here now and as this Felix points out the east is open. If we move towards the heartland of these Saraceni, the Bani Kalb, and the Bani Kindi and the Bani Lakhm, we can make them regret their scorn for us. If nothing else we redeem Roman honour. We can redeem our honour.’
He said those words haltingly, as if they were words he had said many times in the past by rote and exercise but now it was as if he had forgotten the scroll and was instead struggling to say them on his own for the first time. I remember seeing a slow burn in his eyes; a glint - that gleam in the lion’s eye as it sees its prey. He lifted his head then, scenting something, and I knew we all tensed deep inside that campaign tent. No one moved and the stillness was unnerving. Only that oily haze above all our heads rippled slowly as if alive and seemed to breath itself down upon us all. In the corners, the lamps flickered and gutted sending out those eternal shadows up and across the dim interior. Behind the Dux, the standards remained sheathed in darkness, only their outlines visible against the blood-red leather of the tent wall. Cassianus raised his head slowly, that dark Armenian countenance seeking something far beyond us, and in that stillness as we waited, only a faint fragment of a distant song drifted into us from the night. It was slight and fragmented but I heard the old song of my legion - the acanthus flower, the petals of faith and loyalty wrapping us all about, the tired honour of that which we could never escape . . . And then I saw Cassianus nod slightly as if finding what it was he was looking for.
He stood up then and for one moment glanced down at that ivory baton he held in one hand. He gazed at it and frowned. ‘This is a symbol of authority bestowed upon me by the emperor himself, may God preserve and protect him. It allows me supreme command here of the limes of Palaestinae and all the frontier troops tasked with defending that limitrophus. If we move east, I breach that mandate and can no longer hold this imperial baton. I overreach my authority.’ He turned then and gazed on Aemilianus still standing alone among us all. ‘If I turn over command of this fort to another then he may order us all into the east, across the deep deserts into the fertile lands and oases of the Saraceni, and we may all escape the charge of overstepping my authority. If I place aside this baton and relinquish my command, another may step up and assume authority over us. That man may send us where we need to go. This baton is not strong enough for that, I fear.’ All eyes were upon Aemilianus then - this palatine officer and bodyguard to Julian who had taken that awful blade into his side in a futile attempt to save his life. A man who had once stood higher than any of us had ever stood and was now condemned to the dregs of the exercitus, the border rabble no true Roman would ever desire to lead into battle. We watched him, this man who had but recently stood here under threat of humiliation and death, and we knew what is what that our Dux was proposing even before he uttered those fateful words. ‘I offer then to release this baton in the presence of the officers and commanders in Nasranum and propose Aemilianus lift another authority - one that allows him to take us all into the east where vengeance and honour lie. Redeem us, Aemilianus, and stand again above us all as you once did in the sacred comitatus of Julian himself . . .’
And Cassianus stood down from the dais then and kneeled before Aemilianus, proffering up the ivory baton in both hands.
The praepositus seemed to hesitate and for the first time I saw indecision war across that sun-ravaged faced. Aemilianus frowned deeply while smiling at the same time and it gave his face a curious indeterminate look. It was that old gentle smile he had but now it was mingled in with an odd imperial stare - as if something deep in him was awaking after a long sleep. I remembered him alone among his ragged men shouting out cede and how that authority in his voice held them all from collapse and rout. It was an autocratic voice and now there was arising in him something of that command even as the smile, that almost whimsical grin at the fate played upon him, was fading. A new face seemed to emerge from Aemilianus then - stern, controlled, one that caught all in the tent without relief or discrimination - and for one moment I had the absurd reflex to kneel before him.
And then he laughed - he laughed lightly and again it was that man who ordered no more than a few hundred numeri no better than thieves and murderers. He laughed as one laughs at a poor joke only to make the teller feel good.
‘No, Cassianus, no!’ He stepped forward then and reached down to raise the Dux up. ‘If our honour is to be redeemed it can only be under the man who lost it - or else what is the point? To you alone is given this burden, Armenian. Shoulder it and be an example to us all.’
‘But my authority -' he began to object.
‘Is to be extended.’ Aemilianus turned to us all then. ‘There is an old command now forgotten and nothing more than dust on the memory. An old title of Roman authority out here in the Syrian wastes. It fell a long time ago in blood and defeat and was forgotten. I offer it now to Cassianus with us all as signatories. Take up that baton, Cassianus, now no longer as Dux Palaestinae but instead as that old and disgraced Dux Ripae, he who once commanded the ancient river limes of the Euphrates. March east to regain that title for Rome and in doing so redeem us all - '
He knelt then and bowed his head, conferring authority on Cassianus. And we all knelt with him, into the dust and the black sand, as the light flickered over him. We knelt and bowed our heads, placing the helmets on the ground before us, we knelt and gave to him that command we all needed and that only he could take up.
A command once lost in battle and defeat; a command struck from the Notitia of Rome over a hundred years ago. The Dux of that river which bled like an open wound from Rome down into the heartland of the Persians themselves. We knelt and in doing so placed Cassianus over us as lord and master and, in the end, the protagonist of our fate.
He gazed on us all and then raised up that baton into the smoke and the shadows and darkness so that only its gold ends gleamed softly. He raised it up and mouthed a single phrase, tasting it, the unfamiliarity of it, its bitter yet warm feel in his mouth - ‘Dux Ripae’ - and in all our hearts we knew that in that phrase, inscribed deep in its very essence, lay another word which roiled now deep in his soul and that word was honour.
And we all shouted out three times Dux Ripae in response, as brothers, as comrades, as men whose only choice was into the east, the deserts, and that old river along whose banks so much blood, Roman and Saraceni and Sassanid, had been spilt in the past - the Euphrates, also known as the Dark River, the Water of Lamentation, and finally as the Last Crossing . . .
And so was born the Exercitus Euphratensis, the Army of the Euphrates, under Cassianus, that Armenian who was now tasting new words and savouring new feelings deep in his heart, the Commander of the River, that ancient title sunk in defeat and ignominy.
Aemilianus rose first among us once that last acclamation had died down and I saw that his old face was back now, all wreathed in that smile of his, the grey eyes gentle, mocking, even as he reached down and again marked that scar deep in his side. And I knew without needing to be told that he had won a victory over himself but little did I realise in that tent then just how seductive that song of command had been for him. He rose and smiled and again seemed only a poor officer - and no one who might have entered into that tent would have guessed that he had just refused an imperial command . . .
If I had known then what I was to find out later, how I might have urged him to accept.
Midnight had come and gone. Dawn was now a faint wash in the east heralding our fate. It was now the day before the Kalends of Sextilius and as all soldiers in the exercitus of Rome know this saw the sacred festival of the Rosalia Signorum - the blessing of the military standards.
Today would be the day we would re-dedicate those emblems of fate and discipline, garlanding them with roses, while we stood under a new command and swore to march into a new destiny . . .
Re: IB SAI AAR - The Nowhere Legion
Originally Posted by SeniorBataviaHorse
LEGIO V MACEDONICA
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Excellent post SBH, seems all ya'll Romans are heading into the east recently. I look forward to your updates on the matter, the Gods be with you.
.....Do you know indeed that the IV century is waiting for you?.....Don't you feel your mind slowly taken by the grim darkness of the Late Empire?.....Don't you see how you are lost in the shadows of the dying Empire?.....It's useless to hide yourself in RSII, the end is near, the Late Antiquity has now captured you, the time of the choices is coming: as Iulian will you build a new Pagan Roman Empire 
or will you conquer Persia like Alexander?.........Somnium Apostatae Iuliani is waiting for you, and you cannot escape, sooner or later you will find yourself like Felix trapped in these sands!........Muuaaaahhhhhh ahahahaha!!!.........
