Chapter One
We mutinied when we reached the ocean.
We'd been riding for fifty one days, three companies of us with half a legion
and two troops of Roman auxiliaries to guard us. We left Aquincum late
in July, and rode through the heat of August: the dust and the flies were appalling.
Most of the army bases where we stopped along the way didn't have
proper supplies laid up for such a large body of men, as nobody had sent messages
telling them to do so; of what they did have, the Roman troops took the
best for themselves, leaving us sour barley soup and coarse black bread. We
weren't used to the diet, and it made us ill. The hooves of our horses wore
down on the paved Roman roads, and the beasts went lame. The Romans refused
to give us leather to make horse sandals, so we cut up the leather bindings
of our wagon awnings. Then, early in September when we left the Rhine
and turned west into Gaul, it began to rain, and the water ran through the
loose awnings and soaked ever ...
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