Sebastian

The midnight armor enwraps you like a snake- snug, scaled, skin made for shedding, like the hydra writhing while the hero flails. Your kerchief strangles your neck before you pull it loose. You bring your bow to a draw.

You strung the bow less than yesterday, in the shooting grounds, in the midnight silence and the torchlight, the wood bending backward like a gymnast on chalked hands, around your leg, like the Mercury caduceus. The carved feet were in point from the archer’s back as your shoulders worked and muscles stretched themselves and settled again as you pulled, pulled the string around, looped it, brought it out- stuck the wood in place and notched the arrow to sight the killing thing. The heat upon your neck was welcome then, like sunlight heating the chilled blood of serpent kin. The morning is like Hades, cold as death.

The frost will be coming from the north soon. The green plains where you are now, in the morning, stretch onwards as the string tightens. You are the reaper, and the Mauritanians beside you, fellow workmen for the day. Fellow killers, fellow soldiers, without the sin upon their hands. You’ve killed plebeians. You’ve killed patricians. You’ve killed assassins from the northern Gauls- slaves, men, even women, you've killed emperors with your aim. The emperor has ordered them now, to kill another thing- a man, or a dog- how should he be different from the rest? Still, you hesitate, as you put the bow before you, arrow beside your cheek, with the other seven men, blameless, beside you to shoot him in a squad into the tree he’s trapped against, hands bound above his head upon the winding limb.

He’s noble without his armor on, white skirt about his waist, like the statue of Apollo in the Pantheon. Like the statue of Diana in the city, he’s chaste as snow, pale, muscles tensing, then relaxing like a bull upon the altar. He’s in this mess for refusing such a thing, he’d rather be a bull than see one killed before that statue he resembles, rounded face, square built shoulders, hands, and sculpted arms and calves like a minor god, like a god being slaughtered, full defiant. His fattened abdomen betrays his strength, and scars upon his belly and hands, healed over- little things, from all the battles that he’s fought alongside you under the golden eagle’s claws. When he saved your hide. You saved his a couple times, but him more than you.

You’ve been ordered to kill a friend.

Your bow goes taught. The string stretches under your fingers like a snake coiling, about to strike. You’ve killed plebians. You’ve killed patricians. You’ve killed emperors sleeping in their bath.

You never miss. Your superiors praise you for this. You look past your draw.

Sebastian looks up at you. His hair is disheveled on his head, falling down to his brows up-knit that look past you, then up, toward heaven. The grey of the heath gives way to lighter things as the tree above him sways in the Boreas breeze, chilling your bones beneath your blackened shell yet your hand- practiced pious hand, remains steady. He's the one trembling, his jaw like stone, like marble, the trunk like hood upon his head, the fruit on the bitter roots, Cato’s son.

You hit him right below the heart, right in the ribs. He writhes. Your arrow is met by another ten that all stick him at once into the tree, sounding like scourges. The blood is heavy, like a cow still fat with young beneath a pontifex blade. You ate the cow, with the calf inside. The bull comes now, your fellow captain, tall and wide with a hide upon his arm. He stands beside you and nods his head. You walk forward, through the wettened ground, to the body, to examine it.

He’s a bloody mess now. The tree is stained with his red, painted unevenly for the rugged bark. The auburn leaves reign down like tributes in a triumph, fall on his head, the laurel drones in the wind, plays upon his tree bark hair, his lips pressed into the arbor over his bloodied shoulder and the smell like the oblate.

His ribcage moves.

The captain calls to ask. He's alive. He'll live. The breathing makes his body quiver. The burning arrows are all inside of him, espaliered there, alive. You turn to the captain.

You shake your head.

The others pack away their bows, solemn as the grey air; the pythons slink back into their lairs, put up in the leather with undone string. The hills are lightening in the dawning, their icy sweat embracing you with the dying dew. The grass is waving towards them, the archers, the black-clad captain, and you follow. The smell of blood rolls away to the flowers, like lilies at your feet, and the wettening, the verdant hands washing under your sandals as the dead things stick. The cow will be waiting, and the harvest, the bread ground down by the millstone, turning, and powder knead by hands to sweetness, honey, olive oil, covered in herbs and salivating tears- the barley, brown and cutting in the loaf and cake, the ruddy, roasted meat of the heifer- and the drink, the reddened sea, sour sweet sweat of trampled, beautiful skins from the countryside, making way into the city, to be drunk by royal lips and you alike.

Suddenly a songbird sounds, the song, like lightning breaking. Your hairs stand on end. The thunder follows its plea, and deafens over the lightening sky. You look back.

The dawn shines under the lone laurel tree. The man upon the tree is gone, the shadow covering him. The rain comes down, the northern wind racing to your face, and the cold kiss on your lips and knees.

Does anyone else notice him lift his head? You stiffen. His face sticks in your mind as the archers move away. He's looking at you with those Pallas eyes, in the dawnlight.

He will come back for you.