Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘They forced them down on to their knees here,’ Arminius concluded. ‘Then slit their throats.’

‘Why didn’t they call out?’ Pavo asked, almost to himself.

‘That close to death, maybe a man becomes a sheep. Maybe he hopes that if he does as he’s bid, then the end won’t come to him.’ Something in his voice betrayed the prince’s first-hand knowledge of such affairs. I had seen enough myself to know that he was right.

‘What now?’ the centurion asked, observing the ants that trudged through the red slime.

‘Now,’ Arminius told him, ‘I will ride to Minden. Governor Varus needs to hear the news that the Angrivarii, or at least part of that tribe, have taken up arms. Then? Then, Pavo, I am not so sure.’

‘Varus doesn’t want a war, does he?’ Pavo asked with disappointment.

Arminius shook his head. ‘It may be that he has no choice.’ He turned to me then, as warm and beguiling ever. ‘It’s good to see you restored to yourself, Felix. Walk with me,’ he offered, and then grinned as he took in my swollen eye. ‘You should be careful what you bump into.’

We stepped towards the river’s banks. The water rolled by lazily, undisturbed by the rumour of war.

‘Tell me what you think?’ the prince asked me.

‘Of what, sir?’ I looked over my shoulder, because I felt eyes on me. They belonged to Titus, and I imagined his mind ticking as his huge frame leaned back against the fort’s wall.

‘Your friend?’ Arminius smiled, looking again at my bruised eye. I shrugged, and he went on: ‘Tell me what you think of the tribes. The trouble. The governor.’

‘I know nothing about Governor Varus,’ I confessed. ‘The tribes?’ I shook my head in sadness. ‘You said that the chieftains wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds them, but if enough of the tribe want to bite, then the chieftain can either face the legions, or his own people.’

Arminius nodded slowly at my words.

‘You only kill Roman soldiers if you want a war, sir,’ I concluded. ‘One way or another, this season or the next, they’ll get their wish.’

‘Is that what experience has taught you?’ he pushed, his eyes on the river’s calm waters.

I bit back my first answer.

‘It’s what common sense tells me. And history. Somewhere, there is always war. It seems as though it is Germany’s time to suffer.’

‘Or Rome’s,’ Arminius countered with a sad shake of his head.

I shrugged. Rome had become such an irrepressible force on the world that it was hard to imagine her military might failing to conquer any foe. Year after year, the Empire’s borders continued to expand across the world like spilled ink on paper.

‘I fear that the army underestimates their foe, Felix,’ Arminius told me. ‘The German tribes are fierce warriors. Should it come to it, they will not easily be beaten.’

‘Better that they lose quickly. At least then the suffering is shorter.’

‘There are more kinds of suffering than battle wounds and death, Felix. Many of them worse,’ the prince mused. Then Arminius came to a standstill. He gazed with reverence across the lush green countryside. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked me.

‘It is.’ It was.

With a sad sigh, Arminius placed his hand on my shoulder. When he looked at me, blazing blue eyes biting into mine, his words sparked a fire in my gut.

‘Then we shall have to fight for it. Side by side.’

And with those words, I knew that I would die for him.

Arminius galloped away with his men shortly after, leaving the spearman that Titus had felled with the timber prone in the dirt. Titus pissed on the corpse, spat on the mangled face, and then the pigs were fed.

They ate noisily, squealing in delight at their unexpected windfall. Stumps watched them with a snort of angry laughter, addressing the hunched forms of his fellow veterans. ‘Well, someone’s come out of this trip happy.’

The next morning, a cavalry trooper arrived with a message for Pavo. The centurion called his section commanders together, and they, in turn, broke the news to us.

‘Prepare to move,’ Titus explained sourly. He was still sullen from the loss of his old comrade. ‘They’re gathering the legions at Minden. We’re marching.’

‘Where?’ The question blurted from several mouths.

Nobody knew, but we saw the signs of the army’s departure a long time before we reached Minden. Herds of cattle, sheep and goat were being driven towards the camp, the farmers hoping to get what they could for the beasts before the hungry mouths of the soldiers were on the opposite banks of the Rhine. The century marched through the shit of these animals, along roads built by the sweat and ingenuity of the legions. Many Germans might have resented the Roman presence, a few seemed to contest it, but none would rail against the roads and bridges that the eagles laid in their wake.

At times, the century would be pushed aside on these packed roads, the hooves of a cavalry mount thundering by. Titus and the other sweats would call out to these troopers for news. If the messenger was not in too much of a hurry, or if Titus should happen to have a wineskin in his hand, then they would rein in their steeds, coming to a walking pace beside us. In this fashion, we heard fragments of what lay ahead for the legions.

It appeared as though Governor Varus had changed his plans, and the army would not move back to the Rhine via the string of forts along the River Lippe, where the legions could be kept resupplied by boats. Instead, the army was to head north, into the lands of the Angrivarii, the tribe that had assaulted our century at the bridge; it looked as though Arminius’s message to Varus had got through.

The prospect of some limited campaigning raised the spirits of the troops, and there was a notable surge in the pace of the march. Perhaps this would be a chance to strike back at the people responsible for the murder – for that was what it was – at the river. For men like Pavo, it offered the scent of the elusive plunder.

I was buoyed by the news myself – north! A plan of action began to form, and I felt myself pushing the pace of the man ahead of me, willing him on towards the camp and the information that I wanted.

‘If we’re not following the river, resupply is going to be a pain in the arse,’ Titus mused.

Little that I knew of the man, I suspected I knew enough to recognize that he was smelling some opportunity for profit.

‘That’s a cohort up ahead,’ Chickenhead said, his veteran’s eye picking up a sizeable force of soldiers by the dust kicked up in their wake. A cohort was made up of six centuries, slightly under five hundred men, and was a considerable fighting unit.

‘Why are they going south?’ Stumps asked, giving voice to my own thoughts.

There were no answers for us, and as we neared Minden, we saw several other detachments, all considerable in size, heading south from Minden and away from the intended direction of Varus’s thrust against the Angrivarii.

‘Maybe the messengers were wrong?’ Stumps queried, but he knew as well as the rest of us that those men would be the best informed in the army.

The late-summer day was warm, and by the time we arrived at the camp gates our faces were dirty brown with dust, rivers of sweat running along our spines and down into the cracks of our arses. I felt good after a week of legionary rations nourishing my body. I must have been the only man in the camp to be glad of the hardtack biscuits, but after months of living on insects, berries and whatever unfortunate animal I could trap, the tough mouthfuls felt like an emperor’s banquet, and energized my muscles.

Within the fort, huge areas had been emptied where cohorts had packed away their tents and marched out. We soon learned the reason for this exodus. Titus called out to a familiar face and the veteran fell in alongside us, expressing his relief to know that Titus was not amongst the dead of the bridge before telling us of the troop movements.