PANTERA - Sara Reinke

SARA REINKECHAPTER ONE“Pantera, what are you doing? Come on, the tuguriaare this way.”Abdes was still unaccustomed to this unfamiliarbeckon, the Roman name the army had given him six monthsearlier. He rarely heard it at the training camp east of MountCarmel in the province of Galilee. Most times, the centurionswho served as his task masters settled for calling him “you,there” as they clapped him with their vine canes or lashes.“Hadad above and below, Pantera, come on,” said hisbarrack mate, a young man he knew only by the Romancognomen Opilio. Opilio had another name, of course; likeAbdes, he was Phoenician, and “Opilio” had been assigned tohim, as “Pantera” had to Abdes upon his enlistment. Nomatter the indignities or abuses heaped upon them in thepretense of their training, however, Opilio had never mademention of any given name other than this. He took fiercepride in his newly found Roman citizenship; a pride Abdes didnot quite understand or share.Even now, on their first venture beyond the walls andditches of their training camp and into the nearby city ofSepphoris, Opilio demonstrated his pride. While Abdes wore apair of drably colored, overlapping tunics lashed about hiswaist with a girdle, Opilio wore a bright red, knee-length tunicthat marked him as a Roman recruit. Abdes wore a simplescarf wrapped about his head to protect him from the sun;Opilio wore the dented, scraped helmet he had been providedas if it was the crested helm of a Praetorian Guard. Abdes wasnearly mortified to be seen with him.4