Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘Straw,’ I said simply.

The cart went on its way, soon clear of the town, and the quartermaster, face twisted in anger, stomped off in the opposite direction.

‘Moonface,’ Titus called to the veteran. ‘Take over from him.’ He gestured towards me. ‘You. Let’s take a walk.’

It was a short walk into a narrow alleyway off the main street. From the drying vomit on the dirt, it seemed there was an inn nearby.

‘What did you see?’ Titus asked me again.

‘Straw,’ I told him, straight-faced.

He seemed content with that, but if he believed in the silence of a man he had beaten, he must have had better reason to do so than my word.

‘Twelve,’ he finally told me, smiling slightly. There was guile there, and more than a little smugness.

The conversation had broken ranks, and I had no idea why, or to where. My face told him as much.

‘That bloke, the one with the birthmarks, he’s the quartermaster,’ he told me, beginning his explanation, ‘and a bent bastard. Sells the straw, like you saw. But you know what he’s really good at?’

I shook my head.

‘Keeping records. He’s really good at that, because he’s a quartermaster, and this is the Roman army, so you better be bloody good at keeping records.’

Now I had a horrible feeling that I knew where he was going. My fingers twitched, involuntarily, towards my dagger.

‘The quartermaster, he doesn’t just issue sandals and javelins. He’s got other responsibilities, and one of those is putting dead boys in holes. That meant getting the names of your mates from the forest, so they could get a proper burial. They came from the First Legion, so that’s where he had to send for his answers. When he got them, I asked him about these comrades of yours. You know, the ones you can’t remember?’

The movement of my fingers was no longer involuntary. I’d have to kill this big bastard.

‘I lost a friend the other day. A good one. We went through it together. He was a good fucking man. Seeing him coming in on that cart, with his throat torn open like he was nothing more than an animal—’

He stopped. He was picturing his comrade, and struggling.

‘Since then, every time I close my eyes, I see that. I don’t know if it’s revenge I want, or what, but I want something . Now, you ? You come out of a forest with twelve bodies, twelve comrades. You scream in your sleep every night, and I wonder if, maybe, you really are that fucked up that you can’t remember it at all.’

This was the point. He was either going to let it go, or force me to kill him.

‘Twelve.’ He repeated the number again. ‘That’s how many they recorded as sent from the First Legion, to join up here as casualty replacements. Guess how many bodies the quartermaster put into holes?’

I didn’t, and so he answered for me.

‘Twelve.’ Titus looked me up and down, but it was intrigue in his eyes, not malice. ‘So where did you come from?’

And there it was.

I looked for an opening. The neck? He was too tall. The groin, then? Yes. I’d go for his groin, and the artery within.

‘So, I’ve got straw, and you’ve got problems counting.’ He was almost smiling now. ‘Embarrassing for us both, if these things came out.’

He was offering me a truce, but I wasn’t about to take it. I was waiting for the second his guard lowered, just enough, and then I’d ram the dagger into his groin, and I’d be gone, on the run, and probably dead before the day was out. Fuck it. Better to die with a fighting chance than to have them come for me in my sleep. I’d seen crucifixion. I wouldn’t suffer that fate.

Movement came from the end of the alleyway, and Titus turned his head to see it. Here was my chance. My fingers gripped the dagger, but the words kept the blade in its scabbard.

‘Uncle Titus!’ It was Rufus’s boys, their ruddy faces alive with excitement. ‘Uncle Titus!’ they called again, unaware that they had just saved the man’s life, and probably mine into the bargain.

‘What is it?’ he called back.

‘We found a dead man!’

The boys were wrong. They hadn’t found a dead man.

They’d found three.

They were in a pile of manure; a stiff arm had been uncovered by a scratching dog. The sullen beast now watched us, protesting with a feeble growl at being denied its dinner.

‘Shit way to go,’ Stumps snorted to himself. The others ignored the pun.

‘Dig him out,’ Titus ordered, looking at me. ‘Moon, go and get Pavo.’

The grave of dung was shallow, and I decided that the quickest way to extract the body from shit was not to dig, but to pull, and so I took a hold of the stiff wrist – still warm, thanks to the manure – felt for purchase with my sandals, and tugged backwards. The body began to slip out, face down, the dirtied red neck-tie marking the corpse as a soldier. Though short, the man was heavy, and by the time he slithered out like a newborn I was breathing hard. When Titus put his sandal to the body, and rolled him on to his back, I almost stopped breathing altogether. My drinking companion from the inn. The man who had known my secret. A corpse, his throat opened with a gash that was the same livid red as his features.

‘There’s another,’ I heard Stumps say, despite the beating of blood against my temples.

I knew the identity before he was pulled from the filth and dumped without ceremony alongside his comrade. The silver hair was stained brown from pig shit.

I felt light-headed, washed over with relief, but with a deep, foreboding instinct that told me a greater sin had been committed to save me from my own. Why, I did not know. When the third body was discovered, the questions that seared my skull threatened to overwhelm me.

Pavo arrived then, giving me a sidelong look, doubtless wondering why I – the veteran he knew me to be – was so pale at the sight of a few bodies. He turned his gaze to the final corpse to be dragged from the dung.

‘A centurion,’ he noted when Stumps produced the vine cane that was a symbol of the officer’s authority.

‘Stumps. Search them,’ Titus ordered.

‘They’re covered in shit. Get one of the young lads to do it,’ he protested.

‘They don’t know what they’re doing,’ he explained, before grunting impatiently: ‘Forget it. I’ll do it myself.’

Expert hands patted down the bodies, checking all the hidden areas where a pouch of coins could be concealed. He found nothing. Even the soldiers’ belts had been taken, doubtless for the silver plates that marked them out as veterans.

‘Robbed and dumped here,’ Titus concluded to Pavo.

The centurion nodded. ‘Come up behind them, slit their throats, take their loot, and shove them in the shit. Probably a bunch of auxiliaries,’ he concluded.

He sent for a cart, happy with his conclusion and eager to hand the stiffs over to the care of the quartermaster’s department. As the bodies were loaded on, the open eyes of the shorter veteran seemed to burn bright with hate for me. I couldn’t meet the look and banged against the cart as I turned away, but if Titus noticed, he made no comment.

‘Get back to your checkpoint,’ Pavo ordered, and the section did so, the bodies soon forgotten. Crime and death were a part of life on the frontier.

Stumps cast his eyes over the manure. ‘I mean, really, getting your throat ripped open so someone can have a few more drinks? That’s no soldier’s death.’

The sweats muttered agreement, and shrugged. What else was there to say?

As the day’s light began to fade, the late-summer sky a ribbon of pink against the thatch of the town’s hovels, we were replaced at the checkpoint by another section. These soldiers grumbled, sour at being denied a night at the inns. But one of their sweats grinned at our veterans. ‘Hopefully we can shake down some of the locals, make up for it tomorrow night.’