Recruit camp, Cisalpine Gaul — Week 4
They had been in the camp for weeks. Four, maybe five. No one knew for sure. Time had become a sequence of marches, mud, clipped orders, and nights of silent pain. The body no longer complained—it simply obeyed.
Sextus felt his feet like wood, his shoulders like stone, and his back like a map of old bruises. And yet, he had learned to endure. Just like the others.
They had dug ditches, raised palisades, marched under heavy loads, dragged carts, cleaned latrines, and endured collective punishments for mistakes they hadn't always made.But they still hadn't held a sword. Not even a wooden one.
Until today.
Formation was called at dawn. An endless line of recruits, caked in dust, eyes sunken, skin burned by the sun. In front of them, for the first time since their arrival, appeared the centurion of their century.
He was a man with a hard face, beard precisely trimmed, and a scar that cut across his cheek as if someone had tried to erase his expression—and failed. His gaze was like a stone that judged you without speaking. His voice didn't shout. It sliced.
"You've survived the easiest part," he said, walking in front of them without looking any of them in the eye."You sleep little, eat poorly, bleed. You've learned to suffer. But you still don't know how to fight."
He stopped in front of Sextus. Said nothing. Just stared at him, as if measuring him.
"Starting today," he continued,"you will train with the rudis and the scutum. You will learn to kill without thinking, to defend without fear, to strike without mercy.Because the legion doesn't need men who think.It needs men who live long enough to obey."
He turned and raised one arm. Behind him appeared several veterans, their chests marked with old scars. They carried their wooden rudis swords like real weapons, and training scuta with edges chipped from countless blows.
One of them, older than the rest, raised his voice without ceremony:
"One by one. To the post. If you don't bleed… you go again."
The pali stood in rows—thick wooden posts driven into the ground, stained black where others had already struck. Sextus swallowed hard.They were no longer mud. No longer observers.Now it was their turn to be shaped.
"Let the forging begin," said the centurion.
Then came the first strike of rudis against wood.Dull. Firm. Final.