“What will you do if you the Legion falls?” asked one of his men one evening. It was a strange question, intimate. The sort of query born from sleepless nights of guard duty, drowsy hours spent watching the fire and the stars and the snoring bodies of your brethren. The sort of question that Vulpes typically had no patience for, but tonight, perhaps in his boredom, it intrigued him.
“The Legion will not fall,” he replied.
“No, of course not. The Bull is strong. But what if? What if the Bull’s great life force drained out? What if its hooves stopped thumping?”
Vulpes’ job was to imagine hypotheticals, act them out so that they would not surprise him should they become realities. He was not one to enjoy mulling over what-if’s in his daily life. Speculation was the game of children, or frightened men.
He sighed and cast his gaze to the inky sky, where the constellations galloped across the blackness and winked silver down at them. Ordinarily he would dismiss the soldier, rankle him with accusations of treason, of low morale. But tonight he could muster any venom onto his tongue; tonight he was burdened with the weight of a long, tiring campaign, exhausted from days marching, from meager supplies.
“I would fight for it with my last breath,” he said at last. “If the Legion falls, then so will I.”
But the soldier was relentless. “What if you’re not there? What if you’re away? What if it falls, and you survive?”
Vulpes traced the winking stars across the crow-feather heavens. What if Caesar was shot, and he was away? What if Lanius was gored, and he was out gambling? What if Flagstaff was razed, and his wife was escorted out, and his family and children and home were dropped right into the teeth of the Bear, just like that? He clutched at these uncertainties, searched for reason in their tangled threads. The soldier eyed him curiously. His silence intrigued him.
“I don’t know,” Vulpes said at last.
But what if, he thought, the Legion fell, and you simply walked away?