Hideaway Strath enumero

for now, the imperator bid queen @Toula goodbye and the same for his son @Cornelius.

he returned to where @Valiria had gone.

"@Aquillius has gone to the hinterlands. i am going to join him. your brother cornelius has chosen to stay in akashingo. but i must quit this desert."

his eyes invited her to come.

she would make her own choice.

days became nights became days. he marked progress by the stars. 

long ago he had lived in the hinterlands, and when the familiar ridge of the mountains showed at last against the lowland, he felt restored.

once the saints had lived here.

but he saw with a small cold quirk that his son had known where to step.

"i am here," he announced in a loud voice that evening, yellow eyes sweeping for the maddened young soldier. perhaps here in this solitude, he might heal.

The moon slid shocked eyes across a scene of violence that night. A bobcat, not quite a cub, but not quite an adolescent, had either starved enough to attempt its first hunt upon Aquillius, or had become too bold to live.

Ribs hung in the air like grasping fingers, quartered like a cow. Blood drenched the soft grasses, smeared across their surface, across the trees, dripping into pools, rivulets that ran down his face, down his chest, twining through the furs of his legs. He adjusted the idle grip he had on the thing’s skull, one ear twitching at the voice that rang through the newly tranquil valley. Aquillius sat the skull on a rock, leaving it to dry in the scorch of the sun before winter grasped the land.

He would mount a cat skull. To show no witch, no familiar, no darkling creature would be allowed here.

His.

No, theirs.

And it took you long enough. A playful jibe falling short in Aquillius’s deathly maw, smeared crimson as he stood like a wraith, enveloped in shadow.

perhaps not.

there his son stood, the son with the lookalike face and haunted eyes.

"your brother is staying in akashingo."

he glanced around the empty causeways. "villains once lived here. did they leave anything behind?"

rote, a general requesting a report.

familiar.

safe.

The news was delivered in a tone familiar.

Internally, Aquillius brimmed with dark humor. He even laughed a little, only a quick inhale then gone. Cornelius, no doubt, thought he was playing the hero, the gallant knight saving every little creature that cried help.

He would walk into the river with an adder on his back and ask it why it bit him in the center. He would stay in the desert trying to be a hero with the heathens, the hedonists and the vultures. It mattered little to Aquillius. 

A few gravesites. A garden, ravaged by time and weather. I’m not familiar with plantlife, so I’m not sure if it is helpful or poisons.

Delivered in that same, emotionless tone. Aquillius and his father were the same mirror, reflecting into infinity. Aquillius was everything Germanicus could have been, and Germanicus was everything Aquillius might be.

"very good. we will restart the gardens with what looks edible and set a perimeter for prey."

he moved deeper into the strath to explore the fall of rocks and the things described by his son. 

"do you wish to rebuild mereo?" he asked at length. "if not here, then another place?"

"or should we wander for all time," the eagle said next, voice dry.

Aquillius glanced over at his father with that remaining eye, glistening like a hearth.

It is secluded, here. It seems a place to build and train an army, without letting enemies know what you are doing. And, should the need arise, hunt witches before they did their nasty work.

Do you wish to roam forever, father? The eagle he remembered from his childhood seemed more grey, more tired now that he was actually looking.

Perhaps Germanicus was no longer suited for war. Aquillius wrapped his tongue around itself in his mouth. He did not wish to usurp the man he so idolized, but he also remembered when he was called off the witch woman, the slice of yellowed fangs through the air. He soured.

If Germanicus could no longer be ready to war, ready to kill, Aquillius would be Imperator.

"it seems wandering is my lot," germanicus murmured. "akashingo's queen has offered me imperator once more, this time directly beneath her hand as an army."

and while this was honorable, germanicus was as weary as his son believed. "i informed her if mereo returned, it would not have its roots in the desert."

silence now. the eagle did not wish to reveal his true selfishness; that he had considered marrying again, not for companionship as he had done now twice, but simply for the sake of creation once more.

but his children now were grown, ready to seek their own marital bliss. perhaps he should retire from all things and seek the peace of grandfathers eternal.

Keen-eyed Aquillius watched his father with all of the sharpness of a young hawk. Akashingo had offered him a boon, it seemed, but the man did not take it.

Good. He would have been wasted there. Aquillius looked forward again.

Little good can come from settling in a desert, if you do not know what you are doing. A pause, as Aquillius considered his next words.

What if..we had wanderers, like you. Ones who roamed with others in bands, keeping their skills sharp on varying terrain, accepting some jobs as they went. He knew of mercenaries, but this was a higher calling. A roving band of fully trained soldiers.

"there is precedent for it. that was how i traveled when i was younger than you are now."

"it is the role of auxillia. each band is specialized and beneath the order of a centurion, which now would be you and valiria."

germanicus did not want this and yet also he wished for it with such ferocity he felt living once more. "they report large movements to an imperator but are otherwise their own unit, with their own leadership and goals."

and the best soldiers were raised from birth knowing no more than their role and their centurion. but he did not think aquillius wished to marry at this time.