Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

One by one, officers stood and reported on their butcher’s bill. The legates of the three legions were the first to present; their casualties were light, and mostly walking wounded.

‘Slingshot has accounted for most of our injured,’ the legate of the Nineteenth observed. ‘We tried raising shields at first, but they saw that meant we couldn’t return our javelins, and they moved in with spearmen. We lost a few men that way, so now my centurions are ordering the shields kept down. Better the slingshot than the spears. Besides’ – he smiled proudly – ‘it’s not as if my men are ever without black eyes.’

The losses amongst the auxiliary troops had been higher, but a few units accounted for the majority of the number. One had been reduced to half of its four hundred effectives. These had been the lead troops of the army’s flank screens, and I thought of the men we had found, butchered and positioned like trophies, and wondered where they came from. Regardless, they had died far from home.

‘I’ve heard stories from the vanguard.’ Varus swallowed, addressing the hollow-eyed auxiliary officer. ‘What happened to your men?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ His tone was flat. Almost lifeless. ‘They just vanished.’

The direst news came from the commander of the army’s baggage train, a colourful veteran whose left arm had been lost on campaign many years ago.

‘It’s the fucking artillery pieces, sir, ’scuse my fucking language, sir. It was bad enough goin’ with it how it was, but now that the fucking rain – ’scuse my language, sir – has started, we might as well be tryin’ to pull a bull from out a virgin’s cunt – ’scuse my language, sir.’

‘Thank you for your report, centurion.’ Varus smiled politely, but his eyes betrayed his aversion to barrack-room language.

‘It’s not just the mud, sir,’ the man added. ‘Track’s narrow, and we’re strung out across half of fucking Germany – ’scuse my language, sir. If they break through in even one place, burn a few carts, then we’ll be blocked up like my arse after the feast of Saturnalia – ’scuse my language, sir.’

After what had been an inauspicious beginning to the orders group, the eccentric centurion’s language – or rather the governor’s evident discomfort with it – helped to clear the air in the tent. Invested in Arminius as I was myself, it had become almost natural to assume that all the others were of the same mind, but now, as the assembled officers began to discuss strategy for the army’s next move, it became evident that this was not the case.

The legate of the Seventeenth Legion got to his feet. He was a tall, hard-looking man, with a hooded brow and sharp nose that gave his face the look of a hawk. He was also my own legion’s commander, though he would know as little of me as did any other officer present, save Caeonius and Pavo, who knew only what I had led them to believe.

‘Governor Varus,’ the man began, with the diplomacy becoming of a member of Rome’s senatorial class. ‘Prince Arminius is an excellent warrior, and a loyal friend. I hope that he is well, and that he can join us on the battlefield soon, to share in our glory.

‘However, should the Cherusci, for any reason, fail to arrive, then we should not consider this a blow. True, Arminius may well bring eight thousand warriors with him, but we are seventeen thousand, and an elite. It is not for lack of numbers that the enemy has harassed us today, but because we have been hampered by terrain. I would urge, governor, that we make haste to clear these forests, so that we may persecute the enemy in open battle.’

There was a murmur of agreement about the tent. The feeling was that the column had received a bloody nose that day, nothing more. No man was in any doubt that when the army cleared into favourable terrain – and could march in battle formation – the Germans would be forced to flee, or die. Even Varus himself was nodding at the sentiment. If not for his friendship with Arminius, then perhaps he would have agreed to break camp at daybreak and press northwards, but the bonds between governor and prince ran deep.

‘The rains will not break tomorrow, and so we shall remain in this camp. Arminius, should he live, shall have one day to join us. Consider, gentlemen, that his scouts offer us the most efficient route from out of this torrid forest.’

Mention of the scouts triggered an alarm in my mind. I dismissed it as a natural concern that Berengar and his men might fall foul of their fellow Germans before they could reach their prince and kinsmen.

‘Very well, sir,’ the legate assented. ‘May I suggest that we use tomorrow as an opportunity to reconnoitre routes, should we have to scout our own way north? The engineers also tell me that the rain and the winds will have brought down obstructions on to the tracks. We can take this time to clear them, in preparation for our advance.’

‘Yes, very good. Your legion can see to it? It will be hot work, I imagine.’

‘My men are not afraid of hard work, or German spears, governor,’ the legate assured him, before gesturing towards the seated men behind him. ‘Centurion Pavo has volunteered to lead the work party.’

I could almost see Pavo’s shoulders snap back at the mention of his name. Whether this was out of pride, or surprise, I could not tell.

Varus’s eyes passed briefly over the handsome centurion. ‘Is that so? Good man,’ he offered placidly, already moving on to the next in the order of business. ‘Now, the camp followers.’

I stopped listening. Instead, I watched Pavo.

Where there had been a solid, implacable statue of a soldier, now there were the smallest signs of anxiety. Slight ticks: the quick pull of his nose; the roll of the shoulders. His face was turned from me, but I could see another’s well enough – the legate’s.

He was looking in Pavo’s direction, a thin smile beneath his hooked nose, and that smile turned my blood to ice because it was not the smile of a proud commander to a brave subordinate, but that of a victor to the vanquished.

With the clarity born of a long relationship with revenge, I knew in my bones what that meant.

Our century had been condemned to death.

I remained in the tent for the duration of the orders, glad of every moment out of the hammering rain and the rising winds that snatched at the canvas, but I paid little attention to the talk of guard rotations and stores. Instead, my mind turned in circles, wondering why the legate could want Pavo dead. Had the ambitious centurion, in fact, volunteered, and placed his own head in the noose? Or was he as unwitting in this as his suppressed – but visible – display of anxiety would lead me to believe?

I got no answers as we trudged across the greasy ground of the encampment. Pavo’s head was down, his pace as driving as the rain.

I trailed a few feet behind and, as I hadn’t been dismissed, followed him to his tent. There, I stopped outside the flaps that he pulled violently apart, the waxed hide doing little to suppress the scream of rage and frustration he let out once he was within.

‘Cunt!’

I heard what I imagined was his helmet being thrown, then kicked repeatedly.

‘Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!’

The outburst was over as quickly as it began, the only sound coming from the rain that bounced from the tent’s canvas and the steel of my helmet. I coughed to make my presence known, having to repeat the action several times before Pavo registered it above the downpour.

‘Why the fuck are you still here?’ he snarled from within the tent, doubtless embarrassed.

‘You haven’t dismissed me, sir.’

‘Fine. You’re dismissed. You may as well go and tell the others the good news,’ he concluded with vicious sarcasm.