Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

But he was not. There was only the section, and me.

‘Just do it, boy,’ I heard myself say. ‘It will make the rest easier.’ I wanted to console him, certain now that this would not be our last taste of death in the forest.

‘Who asked you?’ Rufus flared.

I said nothing.

‘Do it,’ Titus ordered again.

Cnaeus raised the blade. He closed his eyes.

Then he was sent sprawling to the floor by Chickenhead’s shoulder. In the same movement, the veteran drove his dagger up through the prisoner’s chin and into his brain.

He died without a murmur, but not without terror. Piss dripped on to Chickenhead’s feet.

‘We don’t have time for this,’ he spat, stepping back as he pulled the blade free. Blood cascaded across the German boy’s thin chest.

‘Remember whose section this is,’ Titus rumbled, stepping forward to dwarf the veteran.

Chickenhead met his stare. ‘I remember whose it was. ’

The words struck Titus. He hit back with threats. ‘The boys need to learn. Maybe I’ll teach them on that rat of yours,’ he sneered, gesturing to the pouch that contained his kitten and which now hung across Chickenhead’s back.

‘You’ll eat a fucking blade if you touch him,’ the veteran pushed through clenched teeth, and I had no doubt that he would kill the man if he did harm Lupus.

‘Back off, the pair of you.’ Rufus pushed his way between them and faced Titus. ‘You want to teach the boys? How about you teach them some fucking leadership? Some fucking discipline?’ His face was the same violent red as his hair.

Titus turned away. ‘Get your kit together. Take what you want from theirs. I’m having a piss, and then we move off.’

Sullen, angry and shaking with adrenaline, the members of the section split to riffle the enemy packs. Behind them, as Titus’s urine splashed against the forest floor, Moonface’s blade bit into the neck of the German corpse. Chickenhead and Rufus looked up, but said nothing – the boy was dead, and Moonface, their friend, was scared.

He tried to cover it by placing the severed head on a log. ‘For his mates.’ He grinned, though his eyes were filled with tears.

We moved on.

We emerged from the forest far from our own century, and Rufus was forced to dodge a javelin thrown by a nervous legionary – the pathetic attempt earning the young soldier the good-natured contempt of his comrades. Having received directions from a pinch-faced officer, we followed Titus towards the head of the winding snake of troops.

As we went, I saw that Stumps was not the only wounded soldier in the column. We passed perhaps a dozen, and I noticed strike marks on several shields. Clearly, the army had not gone unmolested in our absence, though the damage appeared to be minor, a fleabite to a lion.

‘What took you so long?’ Pavo greeted Titus. The big man tossed him the severed finger in answer; Pavo caught the digit out of reflex, and inspected the flesh with his standard scowl.

‘Found your screening troops,’ Titus explained as Pavo let the finger fall into the dirt.

‘Old news. Column’s been getting harassed the last hour.’

‘Harassed?’

‘Hit-and-run attacks. Nothing too heavy. None on our own century.’ Pavo shrugged, a little disappointed. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked Stumps, noticing the bloody dressing.

‘Heroic stuff,’ the wounded man proclaimed, jutting out his chin. ‘Should be a Gold Crown in it for me, and double pay.’

‘You’ve got more chance of getting gangrene, and cashing in on your funeral fund.’ Pavo smiled slyly before sauntering away to the head of the century.

‘Shit me, now even that stuck-up bastard’s taking the piss,’ Stumps lamented.

We took our place in the century’s order of march. The staccato nature of the advance had only increased since entering the forest, and doubled under the Germans’ hit-and-run attacks. We passed the evidence of these skirmishes over the course of the next few hours: perhaps two dozen German dead, all stripped of their valuables.

‘We haven’t lost anyone,’ Cnaeus noted of the bodies, his relief causing him to think aloud. Moonface pounced on the chance to chastise him for his naivety.

‘We don’t leave our own like the goat-shagging scum do. They’ll go on to carts, and get a proper Roman burial once we reach the forts.’

‘We left that auxiliary in the forest,’ Cnaeus mumbled.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, do we have enough carts for that?’ Cnaeus asked dubiously.

‘Of course!’ Moonface was full of the confidence and bravado of a people who had conquered half the world. ‘It takes ten Germans to kill a Roman soldier. Just look what happened today.’

‘We were lucky,’ Chickenhead grumbled. ‘It could have easily gone the other way.’

Moonface rolled his eyes, and the conversation died.

I was troubled, and I suspected Chickenhead was irritable for the same reason. Looking up between the high branches, the clouds were becoming low, dark and menacing.

‘Hope we make camp before that breaks,’ the veteran whispered to his feline companion.

We didn’t. That afternoon, the skies split without warning. There was no patter of rain, growing to a storm, only a sudden deluge that poured on to the heads of the column with a ferocity that would shame the most berserk of German spearmen.

Titus broke formation to ask Pavo for the wax covers that would stop the hide of the shields from absorbing water, but returned only with a scowl. ‘They’re all in the baggage train.’

‘I’ll go for them,’ Rufus offered eagerly.

‘Forget it. It’s at the back of the column. Even if we get them brought up, it’ll be too late.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ Rufus pressed.

‘I said forget it. It’s too late.’

He was right, and in no time the shields were twice their original weight. With a German ambush possible at any moment, slinging the burdens on to our backs was not an option; instead, biceps and shoulders burned with the effort of holding them in position, but it was not an unusual sensation – the army trained with doubly weighted arms and armour to prepare for just such a situation.

The forest track itself was simply a wide path through the trees that avoided the worst of the twisting gullies. Within moments of the deluge, it had become a quagmire. As sandalled feet churned the mud, it became evermore treacherous for the soldiers who followed on behind, and the sound of vicious curses grew in volume and intensity as tired soldiers floundered.

‘Why didn’t I join the navy?’ Stumps groaned as rain beat against his helmet.

‘Pavo’s coming,’ Moonface informed him. ‘Why don’t you ask for a transfer?’

‘Why’ve we stopped this time?’ Stumps asked instead.

‘Keep your eyes on the forest,’ Pavo snapped, and he was right to. With the darkness of the rain clouds, visibility had fallen. The fringes of the track were ripe for ambush, and a lax moment could be a soldier’s last.

Pavo fell in on Titus’s shoulder, his voice at a whisper that I strained to hear. ‘The bloody scouts have pissed off,’ he told the section commander. Why he was imparting this knowledge, I did not know, but from the exaggerated care in his words, I could guess. He was scared.

‘They’ve gone?’ Titus asked, eyebrows knotting. ‘The Germans?’

The handsome officer nodded, the crest of his helmet spraying water with the motion. ‘Felix, I suppose you should know, as you’re so friendly with them. The guides have gone. More of the screening troops, too.’

‘People don’t just vanish,’ Titus thought aloud over Pavo’s shoulder.

‘I said they’d pissed off, not vanished. Probably got no stomach for a fight. Shit, maybe they just don’t like the rain? Either way, they were supposed to be showing us the way through this bloody mess.’ He waved his arm at the forest. ‘So now we have to send our own scouting parties ahead, and make sure we’re on the right track.’