Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

The ringing in my ears grew louder, until it was all I could hear. My eyesight blurred, and then it vanished.

But somehow, I stayed upright.

Chickenhead. As my senses returned, I saw that the veteran had positioned himself behind me, a casual hand on the belt, and a shoulder against my back, enough to keep me straight. He’d done it so nonchalantly that, standing in tight formation as we were, none had noticed my near collapse.

‘Thank you,’ I managed, once my muscles would respond.

He leaned in close, so that his words were for my ears only. ‘Tonight, you get some bloody sleep. Scream all you want. You can’t stand in a battle line like this.’

A battle line. Would it come to that?

Perhaps Pavo read my thoughts and was going to give me the answer, because he now appeared from the head of the century. ‘Titus,’ he called with his usual frown. ‘Screening troops haven’t checked in with the legion commander.’

‘And?’ Titus countered, his patience in short supply.

‘And he wants you to find out what’s happened to them,’ Pavo replied, turning quickly on his heel to avoid follow-up questions.

‘Must be nice to have the legate ask for you personally.’ Stumps’s laugh would have been hollow, had it not been filled with sarcasm.

‘Strip off your kit,’ Titus ordered us. ‘Short swords only. Take off your helmet.’ He directed the final instruction to the younger soldiers, who looked confused.

‘You’ll need your hearing,’ Chickenhead explained as he slipped Lupus inside the cloth pouch that hung from his neck.

Moonface snorted. ‘Can’t you leave that thing here?’

‘I’d sooner leave you.’

‘Listen up,’ Titus rumbled, gathering the section about him. Now that danger seemed close at hand, any sign of his introverted reverie had vanished. Here was a man who knew that, in a fix, it took every scrap of sense, every sinew of muscle, to come through alive. ‘No more than ten feet between you. Keep low; try not to make a silhouette. If you see something, make sure you pass it along, but quietly! Keep the line intact.’

‘And if something happens?’ Stumps pressed, nervously licking his lips.

‘Then we’re probably fucked,’ Titus answered, with no trace of humour. ‘Maybe if you’re fast, you’ll make it back to the column. ’Course, then there’s the chance they’ll execute you for running.’

And with those words of encouragement ringing in our ears, we slipped off the track and into the long shadows of the forest.

Beneath the high branches of oaks and sycamores, the leaves still full and green from summer, the forest floor was thick with thriving plant life. Rivulets and gullies criss-crossed the fertile ground – perfect places from which an enemy could spring an ambush – but their random nature made it impossible to methodically search them from one end to the other.

‘Keep your spacings,’ Titus hissed to the section. We were only twenty yards into the forest, but already the combination of thick vegetation and steep-sided ditches was forcing the men to break formation. Sound seemed deadened by the trees, and yet the slightest crack of a fallen branch rang out like a ship hitting rocks.

I glanced to my left, seeing the wide form of Moonface’s head peering anxiously over the lip of a gulley. To my right, Titus was scowling hard. Perhaps he hoped the forest would bend to his whim, as did so many others, and part before him. Dappled light shone through the canopy, the sun painting shifting patterns across the men’s armour.

I was not uncomfortable in forests, nor a stranger to them in wartime. I knew that they were not a happy home for the Roman legionary, trained as he was to operate as part of an efficient, brutal killing machine. In situations like this, one had to become an individual, and to rely on the most basic of instincts. Sight would get you only so far in such dense vegetation. Sound, a sense so neglected by the heavy infantry, was your greatest ally here: a rustle when there was no wind; a clink of metal on metal; muted voices, such as Titus’s as he once again ordered the section to hold formation.

I slid down the bank of a dry stream bed, using my left hand to control my descent, my right holding the sword that I had dulled with mud prior to leaving the track. All but Moonface had followed my example, until Titus had ordered him to do the same.

‘Save your spit and polish for when we’re back in the fort,’ he’d growled.

I lay flat on the bank, peering ahead, working my eyesight methodically over what lay ahead of me – first the foreground, then the middle ground, and finally the far ground. Once I was satisfied – or as near satisfied as I could be – that there was no German spear waiting in my immediate path, I would resume my crouched advance, cover another short distance, and then repeat the process. No one, no matter how skilled, can concentrate on maintaining their own stealth while uncovering another’s, and all while on the move. It had to be broken down.

‘You move well,’ Titus whispered, joining me in the next gully and lying beside me.

I nodded. Now was not the time for unnecessary words. I put a finger to my lips, and Titus took that as a signal to hold up a hand. From the absence of rustling in the undergrowth, it seemed as though the section had successfully been brought to a halt.

Titus didn’t ask me why I held my tongue, or why I stared into the undergrowth like a hunting hound with a scent in its nostrils. He may not have known me, he may not have liked me, but he had seen enough of me to know that in situations like this my instincts were worth heeding.

‘Something shining,’ I told him finally, so quietly that I saw his thick eyebrows knot as he strained to hear.

‘Twenty yards, two knuckles to the right of the oak with the snapped lower branch,’ I answered the question in his eyes, and Titus held out his arm in the direction of the tree. Clenching his fist, he used the tree as a marker, and counted two of his scarred knuckles to the right of it. There, certain enough, something was shining, and nature is rarely responsible for such things.

Titus used the flat of his palm to urge me to stay in position, and moved out of the gully. For a big man, he moved well, light on his feet. Little wonder he was a good fighter. He returned swiftly from ordering the others to stay in position, then gestured that he and I should lie down at the bottom of the ditch. It was a good idea. The closer to the ground, the deader the sound of our necessary conversation – or at least, his imparting of orders.

‘You move us to it. I’ll be a few feet behind you. We get attacked, don’t hang around. Just put them down if you need to, then run.’

He must have seen the surprise in my eyes that he had bothered to contemplate my survival, should there be violence. The big man smiled, but offered no explanation. Perhaps he simply reasoned that he could outrun me, and that I’d do enough to distract any pursuit long enough for him to get clear. It was hard to feel optimistic about a man who had nearly killed me on our first meeting.

Titus rose, sitting back on his haunches, and waited for me to climb over the lip of the gully. Instead, I traversed ten feet along its length. I felt his gaze burning into my back, but he didn’t push for the explanation, which was a simple one – if someone had seen me slide into that ditch, then they’d be watching the same spot for me to re-emerge. I didn’t expect that a few feet would render me invisible, but perhaps it would be enough to force them to shuffle and thus betray their own position, giving me a few seconds to save my skin.

Out of the ditch now, I let my shoulders go loose, but my hand stayed firm about the pommel of my sword. I had my arm half-cocked, the point of the blade angled forward. If an attack came, I would get one chance to drive the iron home.