Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

Cnaeus held his own, strong legs braced. As I ran I collected a pick in my right hand, putting my momentum into the swing as I tossed it; the tool took the second German in the chest, enough of a blow to discourage him from the fight, and then I was on Cnaeus’s shoulder, pushing him forward, smelling the wine-soaked breath of the German on the other side of the shield, his own comrades doubtless moving to take us in the sides.

‘Keep pushing!’ I shouted into the boy’s ear, and rolled left, surprising the man who had drawn a dagger and was aiming to plunge it into the exposed neck of my comrade. Comrade!

My hand grabbed the tribesman’s as he shouted something into my face that I could not understand. I used my mouth to better effect, sinking my teeth into the bridge of his nose, feeling the bristles of his beard rub at my lips. I tore away. Most of the nose came with me. Blood pooled down the face as he howled in agony, thinking of the pain, not his dagger, allowing me better command of his fist; I twisted the blade towards its owner. At the same time I drove my knee up into his groin – his body sagged with the blow – before my left hand gripped his lank hair, pulling him towards the blade. I felt it bite, pulled him onwards, and the steel found a soft spot between bone. When he stopped struggling I chanced to look down, and saw that the blade was buried in the side of his head.

Of the other combatants, there was little sign. At my own intervention the armoured troops had been ordered forward, and the spearmen had fled, leaving their doomed friend locked in my embrace.

For the second time in a week, I found myself drenched in another man’s blood, and with open-mouthed Romans staring at me as though I were a phantom.

‘What?’ I shouted at the closest soldier, who took a step back at my hostility.

He was right to. I wanted only to kill.

It was the big man, Titus, who realized I was now a danger to my own side as much as I had been to the enemy.

‘Felix.’ He spoke to me from behind. ‘Felix.’ He had to say it again, the name still alien to me.

‘What?’ I screamed, turning so hard on my heel that it pulled the dagger free from the dead man’s skull.

And then I saw what – a pick handle.

Titus slammed it down.

Titus brought the pick handle down and across, driving it into my stomach, and the wind from my lungs. I sagged, the dagger dropping to the wooden boards of the bridge. Before I could recover, he threw me like a child into the river.

Gagging as I was from the blow, I sucked in a deep mouthful of water and liquid blocked my throat and nose. I was only vaguely aware of something splashing down beside me, gripping my jaw and hitting my back. Water and bile coughed up to run over my chin.

‘Felix,’ Titus said to me, holding my head as if in a vice. ‘I had to do it. You had a murdering look.’

Not now. Now I was simply drained. Hands gripped me from above, hauling me back on to the timbers. I lay flat on my back, panting. My head lolled on the boards, and I saw the dead face of the German a few paces away, the bristly beard I had felt against my skin now thick with his clogging blood.

Soldiers were standing about him, prodding with their sandals. They were the younger men, eager for their first look at a slain enemy. At the far end of the bridge, legionaries on their knees spoke final words to comrades who had died spitted on German spears.

It hadn’t been a battle. It hadn’t even been a skirmish. But for those who died, it had been enough.

It had been enough for Cnaeus, too. The young soldier came over to me now, a wobble in his step, knees ready to give. On his cheek, he had a speck of vomit missed by the back of his hand.

‘Thanks,’ he told me. I waved him away, angry.

Pavo had arrived, and cast a look of annoyance at the dead German.

‘How the fuck did they get by our sentries?’

The answer came later. I was inside the fort, leaning back against my shield, a wineskin in my hand. Pavo’s exchange with me had been short, but he’d excused me from duties for the rest of the day.

Two carts rolled inside the low ramparts, four Romans in each. A section, their throats slit. Their own weapons had gone, as had their armour, but doubtless they would have been unbloodied. Clearly, these men had been surprised, gathered and then butchered like cattle.

Amongst the bodies was a veteran, grey temples, open eyes staring up at a cloudless sky. Titus saw him, and let out a cry of fury. ‘You stupid arsehole, Macro! You stupid fucking arsehole!’

Chickenhead followed my look. My actions on the bridge had not won me acceptance by any means, but they had earned me a weary kind of tolerance.

‘Comrades in the desert war,’ he told me, as if that explained everything.

To a veteran, it did.

The camp was quiet that night. Here and there was a muffled sob from one of the younger soldiers who had lost a friend, but the overriding sense within the troops was that of simmering anger. They had lost eleven comrades, and none of those deaths could offer the consolation, however tenuous, that the men had died in combat, facing their enemies. Three had been skewered like trout in a stream. Eight had their throats opened, doubtless while they had knelt. From my own look as the carts had passed, I could see evidence that at least one had shat himself.

Soldiers needed to find nobility in death, but today they had suffered death for death’s sake. It did not make for a happy group.

Titus talked to no one. The death of his old comrade had hit him hard, and he barely moved, eyes fixed on the dagger he had driven into the ground.

Moonface had offered prayer, endless prayer, petitioning the gods and his ancestors for their aid in bringing vengeance on the foe. Stumps, pessimistic at the best of times, had predicted doom for all, until the usually quiet Rufus had snapped, telling him that he’d slit Stumps’s throat himself unless he shut his fucking face. Only Chickenhead retained his usual character, finding comfort in the companionship of his faithful kitten.

We buried them in the morning. Simple graves, a little downriver. Titus, and other veterans, promised that they’d come back for their comrades and see them enshrined on the Roman side of the Rhine in a mausoleum befitting their service. While the auxiliaries held the fort, the graves were safe enough, but men feared they would be desecrated if no Roman forces were present.

And desecration was popular that day. I do not know who was responsible – not our own section – but the German I had killed did not survive the night intact. His body was hacked apart and fed to the four pigs that the auxiliaries raised within the fort. It didn’t matter to me. He was an enemy, he had tried to kill me, and now he was lining a pig’s stomach. At least he had control over part of that destiny, which is more than many people can ask for.

Once the bodies had been placed in the grave, a comrade spoke on behalf of each soldier. As in all of the army, a soldier’s relationships were closest within his own section, but links grew throughout the century and legion, particularly for those men who had served the longest. Some would be on their second twenty-year enlistment, and now, as he moved to the graves to speak on behalf of his friend Macro, I learned that Titus was one of these ‘two-timers’.

They had served together as boy soldiers in the desert provinces of Judaea and Syria, a hit-and-run war against an unseen enemy, the conditions as hostile as the people. During one skirmish, Macro had broken ranks, fighting his way on to a rooftop where he was able to bombard the enemy spearmen with tiles. That quick thinking had forced the locals to give ground, enabling the Romans to regroup, and doubtless saving many of their lives. For his actions, Titus’s friend had been awarded the Gold Crown. At the end of their enlistment they had departed the desert, and each other’s companionship, with sadness – a sadness only matched by the joy of being reunited when both men had come to the Rhine to follow the eagles once more. Why there was a break in Titus’s service he did not say, but I could make my own assumptions on that. If I was right, then it would not do to press him on the subject.