Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

Scouting parties. So that was why he was in a sharing mood. I knew what was coming now. So did Titus.

‘Not us,’ he declared flatly.

‘It’s from the legion command—’

‘Legion commander, my arse,’ Titus snorted. ‘You just want me out of the picture.’

‘Are you saying you won’t go?’ Pavo straightened his shoulders.

Titus’s nostrils flared: a bull in uniform. Eventually he pushed the words out from between gritted teeth. ‘’Course I’ll go. Don’t have a fucking choice, do I?’

And as Titus had no choice but to follow the orders of the centurion, so the section had no choice but to follow the big man to the head of the column. Only Stumps, owing to his wound, was offered the chance to remain behind, but he refused, cloaking his loyalty to his comrades with a joke.

‘If I’m not along for the party, then maybe one of you will have to take a turn getting hurt, and I can’t bear the thought of seeing your fat mothers wailing at your graveside.’

At the head of the column, similar groups to our own were receiving orders as they were sent out ahead. One of the army’s engineers, squat and tough, made his way over to us.

‘I’m Lucius,’ he greeted Titus. ‘If you boys can keep me alive while I assess the route, then I’d be much obliged to you.’ The old veteran smiled.

We pushed out into the forest, but unlike the morning, we were not alone: we caught sight of the other sections to our flanks. The rain continued unabated, dampening sound as well as our persons, and making it safe to talk despite our position.

‘This isn’t as bad as I expected.’ Stumps grinned. ‘Kind of nice, actually, not to be stopping and starting every two minutes, and slipping about in the mud.’

‘You must have lost more blood than I thought,’ Titus grunted, unused to hearing Stumps in anything but a pessimistic mood.

‘Missing the desert?’ Rufus asked his friend.

‘Never. Soaked in this, or soaked in sweat. At least rain stops – eventually.’

Lucius spoke up, his engineer’s eye on the widening track ahead of us. ‘This is promising. Been used recently, too.’ He pointed to the ground and, with the others, I saw the unmistakable mark of hoof prints. ‘The German scouts, I imagine,’ the short man surmised.

‘Your mates ran out on us.’ Moonface addressed me, an edge of accusation to his tone. ‘You can stick them in our uniform, but a barbarian is still a bloody barbarian.’

I declined to comment, having no wish for an argument. If anything, I partly agreed with his sentiment. I had seen whole cohorts abandon their pledge to Rome; the offer of citizenship was not a potion that could cure all evils. As for Berengar and his men being my friends? No. He was indebted to me, but we were not friends. How could we be? We had never got drunk together. Fought together. Shared stories of lost loves, family, our hopes and dreams. No, I could no sooner call him that than I could these soldiers standing about me. I was at the head of a column of twenty thousand, but I was alone, and that realization caused my mind to wander to a time when I had been surrounded by friends – comrades who knew me better than my own mother did. Comrades who were now nothing but dust and bone.

Those melancholy thoughts, together with the rain hammering the lip of my helmet, made me bow my head, so that I was within killing range of his javelin before I saw him – but neither the man, nor his weapon, could do harm to anyone, now.

‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ Stumps uttered beside me. Behind him, Cnaeus sank to one knee, his vomit splattering the forest floor with the rain.

Titus, fearless, walked forward. After taking a few steadying breaths, I went with him.

The man was a Roman soldier, his features waxen and grey, blond hair darkened from the rain.

‘Batavian auxiliary,’ Titus guessed. ‘Ever see anything like this?’

I shook my head, the scene causing me to forget to protest that I had not served before. ‘Not like this,’ I answered, choking back the rising bile in my throat, and it was the truth. I had seen all kinds of unimaginably cruel acts, but this was a first: the soldier had been draped over a fallen log and his javelin forced into his anus.

‘Are you OK?’ Titus asked, and I nodded, spitting to clear the acidic tang from my throat.

‘Shit. There’s nothing these goat-fuckers won’t do,’ he snarled. ‘They gutted him, too.’

‘Maybe he was dead before they did it,’ I offered, seeking any consolation, no matter how trivial.

He shrugged, clearly unconvinced. ‘Maybe.’

‘There’s more over here,’ Rufus called from further along the track.

We found four altogether, all butchered and positioned with barbarism that touched on the artistic.

‘They need to pay for this!’ Moonface growled as he paced back and forth, teetering between collapse and anger. ‘Chickenhead, you soft cunt! This is what happens when you show them mercy. This is what happens. They need to pay!’

‘They will,’ Titus calmed him, his tone firm and unmerciful.

‘They need to pay!’ the aggrieved soldier shouted again, his white face more ashen than ever. ‘Are you listening, Chickenhead, you fucked-up old cunt?’

‘They will,’ Titus promised once more. Chickenhead let the words wash over him. Lupus was his only concern.

Officers appeared, to inspect the sight. With them came the news that the column had experienced several more, and heavier, attacks. Lucius the engineer said that he would oversee the collection of the bodies, as he was temporarily at a loose end – a good track had been discovered, and it led to open ground.

‘Open ground.’ Titus grimaced happily as he spoke the words, and as the rain bounced from his wide, armoured shoulders, the section commander’s face twisted into a mask that promised murder. I took in the sight of this brutal warrior, and could not help but feel a moment of sympathy for our enemies.

‘Give us a battle,’ he prayed.

There was no gradual thinning of forest as we made our way to the open ground. One minute there was the thick, oppressive canopy; the next, nothing between us and the black skies but rain. It hit us with ferocity, but we welcomed its cold touch, anxious to be on ground where we could set our battle lines and dominate our enemies.

If only they would oblige us.

Chickenhead snorted. ‘They’d have to be idiots to attack us out here.’

Behind us, still deep in the forest, the clash of arms and armour echoed through the drumming rain.

‘Hear that?’ Moonface said. ‘They’re not letting up. Bet it’s fun in the baggage train.’

‘Want to draw blood while they still can. They’ll have to face us eventually,’ Titus asserted, clearly still desperate for vengeance. Beside him, his friend Rufus looked pale with nerves. ‘What’s up with you?’ the big man pressed.

‘Nothing. Just cold.’

Orders came that the army would establish a marching camp in the open ground within which to lick its wounds and take stock of the situation. Our own century formed part of the guard, a three-deep line of men stamping their feet and rolling their shoulders to ward off the chilling effects of the rain. Behind us, surrounded on all sides by the flesh and armour of soldiers, work parties began the labour of erecting the earthen rampart and waxed-skin shelters.

‘Missing a lot of tents by the looks of it,’ Moonface observed. ‘Told you the baggage train would get smashed.’

‘So we’ll share fucking tents,’ Rufus snapped. The out-of-character outburst was enough to still further conversation.

Standing in the rearmost rank of the century, desperate to escape the elements and my thoughts, I attempted to shut off my mind, focusing on the patter of rain on my helmet and nothing more. The sleepless night and day of spiking adrenaline had taken their toll and, despite the cold, I soon slipped into a trance-like state. It wasn’t quite sleep, but the veteran’s trick would keep me upright a little longer.