Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘Well, seeing as you did such a good job, you can retie the rest of the sections.’

‘I’ve been in here for hours,’ I protested, not wanting him to know that I’d got what I wanted.

‘Are you refusing to obey an order?’ he asked with glee, knowing that such a refusal would give him a legitimate reason for putting me in my place.

Anger was so easily manipulated.

‘No.’

‘There’s a good boy.’ He took hold of the bridge and hauled his big frame out of the water, the muscles of his back bunching beneath the scarred skin.

The work was harder alone, but that was how I wanted it. This way, I was able to secrete rope beneath the timbers. Rope that would bind a few planks together and take me along the river. All I had to do was slip away from my next sentry duty.

I saw Titus join the rest of the section. They were on the southern bank, stacking the rotting timbers that we’d replaced that morning. No orders had been given as to what to do with the surplus beams, and Titus had considered how best to turn them into a profit.

‘I’ll talk to the auxiliaries later,’ he’d told the other veterans of his group. ‘We’ll get a cart from them – have to cut them in, of course – and try the local farms.’

‘But it’s rotting?’ Moonface had observed.

‘That’s why we’re gonna paint the stuff,’ Titus had told him, as if speaking to a child.

‘What about Pavo?’ Rufus asked his friend.

‘That arsehole will do as he’s told.’ Titus’s words dripped scorn for the century’s leader. It would all have been very interesting, if only I were staying.

As I got back to work, the rope chewing at the puffy skin of my hands, I felt Titus’s eyes on me often. I didn’t know for sure why he hated me, and wanted me gone, but I had my suspicions.

Titus, quite clearly, was involved in some business outside the legion. As he wasn’t permitted to conduct any other kind of work, that meant it was black market, and so Titus knew secrets, kept secrets, and recognized when others were doing the same. He recognized that I was doing the same, and a last thing Titus wanted was attention drawn to the section and his own dark dealings. If an accident could befall me, then he would be all the happier. If it could not, then he simply needed to ride me to the point where I would snap, and give him justified reason for killing me in self-defence. These things happened in the ranks. Titus and the witnesses would say their piece, there would be a lot of head-shaking and tutting from the officers, and there the matter would end, with my body in a shallow grave, a spadeful of lime for company.

Titus needn’t have worried. I would save him that bother.

I strained hard at the rope to close the knot. The labour kept me warm in the water, but my hands had pruned, the wet skin coming apart with the work. I watched the droplets of blood fall into the water, to be quickly carried away by the current. They mesmerized me. One after another. Drip after drip. I swallowed, suddenly nauseous.

I did not know why my stomach felt as if it were rising into my throat, or why my head throbbed as if there were an army inside, besieging the walls of my skull. I only knew that I had had this feeling before, during my long journey.

Fuck. Perhaps I was dying?

I closed my eyes, squeezed them tight, willing the sickness to go away. It wouldn’t, and so I went back to my task with vigour, attempting to fill my mind with the actions, willing nothing to enter my body but the feel of the rope in my hands.

Eventually it worked, but the thumping in my chest did not subside. Something was wrong. I became aware of another sensation.

It was one I was well used to, developed since childhood and honed on the far side of the Empire.

I sensed eyes on me.

It wasn’t Titus. It wasn’t any of the section, consumed as they were by their stacking of timber.

Then who? What? Something had changed. I would stake my life on this sense. I had staked my life on it, and I was still drawing breath.

It was out there, an indicator of combat – the presence of the abnormal. The absence of the normal.

Fuck. The birdsong, in the southern treeline.

It was gone.

The German spearmen spewed out of the greenery a moment later, a dozen of them, their war cry bouncing across the water.

One second there had been order, the Roman troops bustling like ants over the bridge and their tasks. Now, as savages screamed murder, there was chaos.

Soldiers, stripped of weapons and armour, raced for the fort’s safety on the northern side of the bridge as a trumpeter blew a series of desperate, ragged notes.

What had happened to the outpost of sentries, I had no idea, but neither did I care. My chance had arrived! I just had to swim with the current. I would be clear, and there would be no pursuit. Pavo would assume I’d died in the assault.

But something, perhaps a primal sense of retribution, made me look back to where the section had been stacking timbers. Maybe I wanted to see Titus die. Maybe.

Instead, I saw the big man pull his section together, marshalling them behind the stack of timbers. Their weaponry out of reach, he was urging them to pick up tools to defend themselves.

The Germans had reached the bridge now, their spears plunging into the backs of the few Romans who had been too slow to outrun them or throw themselves into the water. One of these fleeing men, eyes wide in terror, screamed into my face as he waded through the neck-high waters. ‘Move, you stupid bastard! Move!’

But I didn’t move. I watched men squirming on the end of the German spears. Spears that were between the section and the bridge. My section – my section? – were the only troops on the southern bank now, while on the north a squad of armoured Romans had appeared to block off the bridge. The German spearmen, bare-chested and bearded, showed no intent to take on this new force, but turned their attention to the men sheltering behind the timber.

They came with a roar, blood up and sensing easy prey. The section, picks and axes in hand, waited to greet them, but the longer spears of the Germans would surely make it a one-way fight.

Then, speartips split seconds from plunging into flesh, the German charge was halted as Titus, bellowing like a boar, hurled one of the timbers into the onrushing men. It tumbled end over end, striking one in the head, knocking the long spears down into the dirt.

‘Leg it! Fucking leg it!’ Stumps shrieked, and the section followed his charge to the bridge and freedom. They passed the Germans close enough to spit on them, but Titus’s action had bought them inches to escape and, in battle, an inch was enough. They would survive. All of them.

If only Cnaeus had followed.

But he was young, desperate to be accepted by his comrades and to prove himself a warrior. As the others thundered over the bridge, their hobnailed feet inches from my head, Cnaeus stooped to pick up a discarded javelin and shield, and turned back to face his enemy.

Four of the Germans had stopped to haul up their comrade, knocked senseless by Titus’s timber. Another three were busy picking over corpses for loot, convinced that the Romans on the northern bank would hold their position. That left four, and at these spear warriors, hard-looking men all, Cnaeus charged.

He had courage. The young ones always do. Courage, and enough stupidity to break the banks of the river. Perhaps, as he made his assault, he realized as much, but by then it was too late. Stupid bastard. Stupid, stupid bastard.

I couldn’t watch him die.

I pulled myself out of the water, my eyes on a German who had pushed himself ahead of his comrades, doubtless as young and eager to prove himself as Cnaeus. They came together in a clash, spear on Roman shield, javelin on German. My stomach lurched at a noise I had heard magnified a thousandfold.