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  He was standing along with all the able-bodied personnel on the farm, waiting for his father to handout assignments. Alerio eyed the thrashing racks and screens, shovels and bags. If given a choice, he’d rather not be there. Because of the collective nature of thrashing, the people assigned to the racks made small talk and bad jokes from sunup to sundown.

  His other option was on the collecting crew. They followed the harvesters picking up armloads of hacked down stalks and placing them in the wagons. When a wagon was full, a handler guided the mule to the thrashing area. The work was hard on the back muscles but the collectors rotated walking the mules and wagons to the racks. They’d get a little rest while the wagon was unloaded. Alerio figured he could do the work, but it was up to his father. So, he waited.

  A big hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around to see who owned it.

  “You ready, little man?” Sergeant Egidius asked.

  “Ready for what, Optio?” Alerio replied.

  Egidius placed a sickle in the boy’s hand.

  “You’re with me on harvesting duty,” the Legion NCO advised him. “I explained to your father that I needed someone who could keep up with me. He asked me who and I said you. Are you ready?”

  The harvesters were the first line attackers. They operated out front cutting stalks as fast as the slowest cutter allowed. Cut too fast and your work went to waste as your stalks lay on the ground absorbing moisture. Cut too slow and you held up the entire operation as the advancing line waited for you to catch up.

  “Cut low and keep up,” Egidius advised. “But, most of all remember - When hard work has to be done, do it with good humor and a song. Defending a shield wall, breaching a barbarian hoard, digging a ditch or harvesting grain, it’s all the same. Hard work.”

  “Yes, Optio,” Alerio replied.

  Chapter 5 - The Grain Field

  The next morning a line of tall men and one boy stood at the edge of the field. As the sun broke over the horizon, a whistle sounded, sickles swung and tall stalks of grain fell to the ground. The harvest had begun.

  Alerio’s hand was sweating and his right arm cramped. He switched the sickle to his left hand and kept chopping at the stalks. While not thick, the grain plants were plentiful and each cut dropped a bunch. At one point he staggered from exhaustion but Egidius reached out and steadied him.

  “This is hard work, lad,” the Sergeant advised him. “What do we do?”

  “Thank the Goddess Ceres for the opportunity to sweat in her name,” Alerio replied.

  “I think she’ll take that offering,” Egidius said. Then he began to chant:

  Up each day to the rising sun,

  work all day til the work is done,

  sound off, one-two, one-two, three, four.

  Sickle in hand and a field ahead,

  going to chop all day til I’m dead,

  sound off, one-two, one-two, three, four.

  I’m a mighty man and can’t be beat

  mounds of stalks laying around my feet

  sound off, one-two, one-two, three, four.

  On the second round of the chant, Alerio added his voice. By the fourth rendition, men on the line were chanting along with the Optio. When the sun reached overhead, food was delivered. They walked off the line and collected thick sandwiches.

  “Hard work,” Optio Egidius stated.

  “Time for jokes and singing,” Alerio replied.

  His face was covered in pollen and dirt. Sweat had long ago dried them in a pattern of streaks. Yet, the most pronounced feature was the smile on his young face.

  Former Optio Sisera arrived and began walking the cut. From time to time he stopped and called a cutter over. After pointing out stalks chopped off too high, he moved over to inspect another row. High cuts were a waste as the stalks, after thrashing, were used as animal feed. A stalk cut too high meant less feed per row. Sisera barely looked in Alerio’s direction.

  “Is something wrong?” the boy asked Egidius. “Father didn’t come over.”

  “Right now, he’s not your father,” the Sergeant advised him. “He’s in command of the harvest. I’ve seen him like that before. Strolling around in the midst of a savage hoard, calmly directing his Legionaries. The last time I saw him, he was bleeding and fighting off a bunch of barbarians. Between strikes, he issued corrections to reform the battle line.”

  “So, him ignoring me is a good thing?” Alerio asked.

  “Sure. If he’d come over it would be to yell at us about high cuts,” Egidius assured him. “When Optio Sisera is working it’s best not to draw his attention.”

  Alerio had seen the medals, the letters of commendation, and the weapon’s stash, but he’d never really thought about his father fighting in a battle. He didn’t have long to ponder the thought. Egidius lightly tapped him with a fist.

  “We’re wasting a perfectly good day,” the Optio said as he pulled Alerio to his feet. “That grain isn’t going to harvest itself.”

  “Up each day to the rising sun, work all day til the work is done, sound off, one-two, one-two, three, four,” Alerio chanted as he marched to the edge of the tall grain stalks.

  Egidius cringed and added his voice. He sang louder, as much to mask the lad’s rough singing, as to motivate the other cutters.

  Chapter 6 - The Great Room

  Three weeks later, former Optio Sisera and Centurion Efrem were huddled around a table. While Sisera had run the harvest operation, Efrem had been in charge of accounting with the village’s grain commission.

  “You mean to tell me we produced more grain and feed stalk than the bigger farms?” Sisera questioned.

  “That’s correct Optio,” the Centurion assured him. “I checked their books. It seems your homestead is tops when it comes to cashing in. I overheard a number of farmers complaining about your choice location.”

  “Choice location?” Alerio’s father spit out the words. “Haven’t they noticed the stone walls around my property. Where do they think they came from? The sky? No, my son, my staff and I dug the rocks out one by one.”

  “Easy there Sisera,” the Centurion said attempting to calm the farmer. “They don’t have the experience with farming that you do.”

  “You mean like having fish shipped in. Grinding them up with manure and spreading it over the fields,” Sisera replied. “Or, rotating the crops to rest the soil in sections.”

  “Yes, how did you learn that?” Sergeant Egidius asked from across the room.

  Alerio and the Optio had been discussing fighting tactics. They’d barely paid any attention to the conversation until Sisera raised his voice.

  It didn’t seem as if the retired Optio would answer, so Egidius asked again, “How did you learn about fish and crop rotation? The boy should know.”

  “During the western campaign there was a big battle,” Sisera said. His eyes looked at something beyond the walls of the room and his voice dropped as if the memory was hard to relate. “The battlefield had been a collection of farms. From the stunted crops, I could see the soil was poorer than the farmers working it. We met the barbarians in those fields. We stomped the crops and watered the soil with the blood and bones of Legionaries and savages. Then we retired to our winter quarters.”

  “How did that teach you about farming?” Alerio asked his father.

  “In the spring, we marched by the fields but no farmers remained to plant them,” Sisera reported. “But grass grew. Thick and tall, almost as if it had been planted by farmers. The next year, a group of families moved in and planted crops. The crops, where the soil had been so poor the farmers were starving, filled sacks with grain only two years later. Bone, blood and rest were the difference.”

  “Your father thought and talked about that all winter,” Optio Egidius said. “We were ready to bury him in those fields by spring.”

  “Good thing you didn’t,” the Centurion remarked. “It was that summer when the steady Optio Sisera saved our lives.”

  “What, my father sav
ed your lives?” Alerio asked excitedly. “How? Where?”

  “When you’re older,” his father assured him. “Now it’s time for you to turn in.”

  “Alerio. I understand you’ve had some trouble with three boys in the village,” Centurion Efrem said catching the boy before he left. “If you do tomorrow, look on top of the fourth board on the right grain storage building. I left you something.”

  Chapter 7 - The Cooperative Village

  The time off from classes for the harvest hadn’t change Alerio’s physique. He was still tall and thin with a gangly gait and prone to tripping over his own feet. If anything, the hours of work with the sword and the sickle gave him the appearance of being underweight.

  His appearance didn’t disturb the three boys waiting for him at the grain storage building. One blocked the alley while the other two spread out so he couldn’t escape by going around the structures.

  “Your father cheated and it’s going to cost the other farmers,” one sneered. “What have you brought me?”

  Alerio looked from one boy to the other, then at the base of the right storage building. He counted up four boards. As he thought about what the Centurion had placed there, one of the boys closed in on him. The first lesson from the Centurion had been about footwork. It’s hard to grab or hit a moving target.

  A soft scraping sound behind him identified one of the boys sneaking up. Alerio waited for the shove that would send him tumbling forward or backward to the ground. When the boy in front reached out, Alerio slapped his hands away, danced to the side, and yanked at the boy’s arm. Caught by surprise, the boy tumbled forward. The two boys ended up grabbing each other.

  “That’s sweet,” Alerio teased. “Harvest season is the time for love.”

  While the two boys attempted to untangle their limbs, the third boy ran at him. In the past, Alerio would have panicked and froze in place making an easy target. This time he reached out, grabbed an outstretched arm, and pulled while stepping swiftly to the side. The boy’s momentum propelled him into the other two. The three fell to the ground. Alerio ran down the alley to the safety of the school building.

  In the afternoon, he didn’t see the boys on his way home. He was at the villa before he remembered the present hidden on the storage building.

  Chapter 8 - The Bully’s Turn

  After dinner, while his father and his friends sat talking, Alerio went behind the shed and beat on the post. Between strikes, he danced patterns. For the first time, he understood the purpose of movement in a fight. And, he understood the purpose of keeping level headed and singing. With a steady rhythm, his practice became more intense and more focused.

  In the morning, he dressed and jogged to the storage building. Waiting for him were the three boys and a man.

  “You there, fish farmer,” the man yelled. Then he turned to one of the boys, and inquired. “Is this the one who attacked you?”

  The boy nodded shyly and replied, “Yes, Dad. We were just hanging out when he came up and demanded our money.”

  “What have you got to say for yourself,” the man demanded. “You owe my boy five coppers.”

  Alerio was stunned. For a year, the boys had beaten and robbed him. Now they were accusing him of being a thief? It was all he could do in the face of the absurd accusation, he laughed.

  The man took a step forward while asking, “Are you laughing at me? I’ll give you something to laugh at.”

  His hand clamped down on Alerio’s shoulder and his fingers dug painfully into the muscles. Alerio bent his knees attempting to retreat down and away from the pressure. The hand followed maintaining the painful clamp for a few seconds.

  Suddenly, the pain ended and the farmer lay sprawled on the ground about five feet away. Standing over him was Sergeant Egidius.

  “We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” Egidius suggested.

  “What’s the easy way?” asked the farmer.

  “I beat you and you bleed,” the Optio replied.

  “What’s the hard way?” the man asked with a hint of terror in his voice.

  “I beat you and you bleed,” the Optio said with a smile.

  “I don’t see the difference,” the confused man admitted.

  “Oh, there’s not. But my old Optio said to always give a man a choice in his punishment,” Egidius explained. “It helps get him invested in the consequences of his actions.”

  With the final word, the Sergeant punched the man in the nose. As the farmer reached to cover his bleeding nostrils, Egidius jerked him to his feet.

  “Do you like little boys?” Egidius asked as he sank his fingers into the back of the man’s thick neck. “How about big boys? We like to play too.”

  The man shuddered as the fingers closed in and the muscles yielded. He blinked trying to separate the words, from the action causing him pain, and the blood streaming down his face.

  Alerio watched fascinated. Optio Egidius hadn’t lost his temper. Instead, he talked and destroyed the confused man in just a few moves.

  “Listen closely,” Egidius said. “This summer, I’ll be passing through this village with eighty, blood thirsty, heavy infantrymen. If anything happens to Alerio or the Sisera farm, I’ll bring my Century to your estate and guess what?”

  “Is this another choice?” sniffled the man as he coughed up a mouth full of blood.

  “Not this time,” Optio Egidius promised dropping his voice. For the first time, he sounded threatening. “I’ll come to your farm. I’ll kill you and your entire family. Your slaves and your livestock. And as your villa burns to the ground, I’ll drink your best wine in salute.”

  “You can’t,” the man began but Egidius buried his knuckles wrist deep in the man’s stomach.

  “I can and I will,” the Optio stated. “Now get out of my sight before I change my mind about waiting till summer.”

  The man supported by the boys limped away.

  “Thank you, Optio,” Alerio acknowledged.

  “What did you learn?” inquired the Optio.

  “Stay calm, think ahead, keep your enemy off balance and use economy of motion,” Alerio replied. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Overwhelming violence,” Egidius added. “Don’t give the enemy a chance to attack or counter.”

  The Sergeant walked to the corner of the grain storage building and plucked a carved stick from between the boards. With a smile on his face, he took the trail back towards the Sisera farm. Alerio watched the Legion NCO for a long time before he turned and headed to the school house.

  Chapter 9 - The Collection Town

  Four years later, Alerio Sisera’s frame hadn’t grown much taller. All the growth was horizontal. Where his back had been slender and boyish, it now pushed his tunic out as if he were hiding wings under the fabric. His arms and legs, once thin and reedy, were thick with no fat to hide the underlying muscles. After several long harvesting seasons, Centurion Efrem and Optio Egidius had trained the farm lad to be an expert with the gladius and a talented tactician. On top of the skills, he was fast, athletic and had a short fuse.

  Last year, he’d invited the three tormentors to a duel. Three against one with swords, knives, or javelins, whichever weapon they chose. Wisely, none of the three young men showed up at the appointed time or place.

  Alerio Sisera and four friends hitched a ride on the community’s grain wagons. It was a four-day trip to the nearest major collection town. While the commission would sell the farmers’ grain, Alerio and his companions would do some gambling and drinking. And maybe take in a show, if they got around to it. The grain wagons were scheduled to return to the village after a three-day layover. They’d be filled with goods for the homesteads and five hungover teens.

  Day one was spent at the better pubs. By day two, the quality of drinking establishments had gone downhill drastically. Sometime in the early hours of day three, Alerio and friends staggered into a less than savory pub.

  The desperate came in two varieties: the dangerous or
the despondent. The despondent were all huddled like sheep, clustered in the center of the common room, or crowded around games of chance. All drugged or drunk, not all present except for their pathetic bodies. Their will gone and their minds broken.

  The solo dangerous lurked around the edges to the rear of the gamblers, seeking a loose pouch or an easy mark. The more ambitious of the dangerous stayed in the shadows along the walls waiting and watching for wealthier victims. They had banded together in gangs and preferred planning and scheming their crimes. Unless an obvious target wandered into their territory.

  When the five country lads walked in, one gang took note. The boys were singing a drinking song they’d picked up at a better place.

  Can the Magistrate grant me an audience?

  Said the old woman, on the gallows’ door

  For the Judge is all blind

  My old man, all the time

  Drinks the darkest red wine

  And that’s why, he’s dead on the floor…

  Can the Magistrate grant me an audience?

  Said the old woman, on the gallows’ door

  For the Judge, should relent

  My old man, never paid rent

  Our coin on drink he spent

  And that’s why, he’s dead on the floor…

  Can the Magistrate grant me an audience?

  Said the old woman, on the gallows’ door

  For the Judge should be sacked

  My old man, knifed in the back

  Cause’ he winked at a lass

  And that’s why, he’s dead on the floor…

  Can the Magistrate grant me an audience?

  Said the old woman, on the gallows’ door

  For the Judge, failed to note

  My old man, gambled our goat

  And lost my wool red coat

  And that’s why, he’s dead on the floor…