Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

Putting my eye to a gap in the material, I saw that one was Arminius, relaxed yet commanding. The man facing him was a bundle of nervous, bitter energy, encased in the body of a centurion, identifiable by the transverse crest of his helmet, which shone with the sun. A striking figure, this was evidently my new commander. Though Arminius was senior to him, it was a rank outside of the centurion’s own chain of command, and I wondered what Arminius had over this man that allowed him to pull his strings.

With a sinking feeling, I realized that it was a question I’d have time to contemplate. I was held only within a structure of hide, but with the sentries at the flap, and with Arminius and the centurion a few paces away, I may as well have been imprisoned in one of Rome’s deepest dungeons.

With nothing else for it, I reached for the wine.

At the beginning of summer, the town of Minden had been populated by a few hundred members of the Cherusci tribe, the German people who swore fealty to Arminius’s noble family. As he had done in the previous two years’ campaigning seasons, the governor of Rome’s German provinces, an aristocrat by the name of Varus, marched three of his five legions from their stone-walled bases on the Rhine, and paraded them in supplicant territories to impress German enemies and allies alike. On Arminius’s advice, the governor had chosen Minden as the location for this year’s summer camp, turning it into a temporary tented city for twenty thousand soldiers.

Minden had been a small town when the Roman army had encamped on its doorstep. It was still a small town now, but one with a disproportionately high level of prostitutes per capita. Some were locals, keen to take advantage of the business that had fallen, and now lay grinding, in their laps. Others had dogged the army from its winter bases on the Rhine, followers of the eagles as much as any soldier in the ranks. They were not alone, being accompanied by musicians, magicians, thieves and the unsanctioned families of the soldiery – it was forbidden for legionaries to marry, but commanders chose to turn a blind eye so long as the union caused them no headache.

To cater for the literal thirst of the troops, every other hovel in Minden had styled itself as an inn, while those that did not were used to lock away the innocence of the town’s young women.

I was told all of this by my new centurion, Pavo. He was young for that rank, which suggested that he was either extremely capable, or well connected. He carried himself with confidence, as befitted his rank and handsome looks, but his contemptuous eyes betrayed a man consumed by bitterness.

Our journey through the German camp had begun in silence, Pavo taking charge of me as one would a stray dog, with rapid hand gestures and grunts. I walked on his shoulder, playing the part of the lost, but I caught the slightest twists in his neck as he contemplated his charge. He was intrigued by me, and so, as we approached the main encampment of the army and the town of Minden, he had buttered me up with talk of the settlement and that summer’s campaign.

There had been no campaign, was the thrust of it. Governor Varus had brought the three legions from the western Rhine in a show of force intended to keep the quarrelsome German tribes in their place, but instead of marching the length and breadth of the territories, Varus had been content to pitch his tents and hold court at Minden, accepting tribute from the loyal tribes and turning a blind eye to those who remained absent. From my own experience, I knew that there were some amongst the Germans who were doing more than merely ignoring the Roman presence.

‘So what now, sir?’ I asked the officer.

‘You say something?’ he asked, his mind clearly drifting.

I nodded respectfully and repeated my question.

‘Now?’ he grumbled. ‘Now we pack our kit and march back to the Rhine. A whole bloody year without any plunder.’

Plunder. So that was his weakness. Pavo was either greedy, debt-ridden or, more than likely, both. Could this be the source of Arminius’s influence over him?

Now that I had finally opened my mouth, Pavo put on his best smile to set me at ease. ‘I heard about the grove, and the men they sacrificed,’ he told me, feigning sympathy.

I wasn’t surprised. Soldiers gossip like fishwives, and doubtless the tale had already spread across the army.

‘Now, you arriving on your own, it’s going to raise questions.’ He stopped at this, putting a comradely hand on my shoulder. ‘You don’t need to worry about any of that, all right? You have a problem, you come to see me.’

I nodded thanks, and we fell back into step. Evidently, this man felt that I had some kind of connection with Arminius. I wondered about the prince’s interest myself, but I could only place it as intrigue in the mind of a benevolent leader.

We entered the camp through the open wooden gate. There were sentries on the archway above it. Earthen ramparts, topped with a fence of stakes, ran from either side. The grass of the turf had knitted, indicating that what should have been a temporary camp had indeed stood in position for months.

Through the gate, and the camp followed the familiar plan of all Roman encampments. An open road ran unobstructed through its centre, from the northern gate to the southern. In the centre of the camp was located the headquarters buildings, likely where the governor would be residing. The soldiers were tented in the same manner as they were broken down into units of battle: legions into cohorts, cohorts by centuries and centuries by sections. It was Roman logic, and the legion’s discipline, at its best. I had never stepped foot inside this encampment before, but from the turns we made into the neat, tented alleyways, I knew exactly where we were heading: the quartermaster’s, better known in the ranks as the QM.

The man himself stood behind a long wooden counter, its surface scuffed by the kit of thousands of soldiers. He was built like a slab of marble, his skin pale and blotched by birthmarks. In my life, I have found that those born ugly tend to extremes of either joviality or anger.

‘What the fuck do you want, Pavo?’

The quartermaster inclined towards the latter disposition.

‘Kit him out,’ Pavo told the man, jabbing his thumb towards me.

‘I’ve not been told we got anyone new coming in,’ the big lump growled. ‘Who is he?’ he pushed, talking as if I were not standing a mere two feet away from him.

‘He’s one of mine. Kit him, and we can sort out the rest later.’

‘Humph. Stores is for storing.’ The corpulent quartermaster uttered what was undoubtedly his mantra, but started to reach for equipment behind the counter of his storeroom none the less.

‘Titus been back?’ Pavo asked the man as the pile of equipment began to grow in front of him.

‘This morning. You see him before I do, make sure he comes to see me. Way things are going around here, could be a scrap on soon, and if he dies without cutting me in, I’ll skull-fuck his rotting corpse.’

Pavo ignored the threat of defiling bodies to pick up on the first thing the quartermaster had mentioned. ‘What scrap? The governor’s packing up. We’re going back to the Rhine forts.’

‘He was, but things are changing. Bodies are piling up, and in some nasty ways. Yesterday, group of engineers scouting a bridge – hacked down to a man. Some nasty shit in the forests, too. The goat-fucking savages burned them alive, the bastards. I’ve gotta sort out the funeral rites, as if I don’t have enough to be getting on with.’

I tried not to swallow, but I needn’t have worried. The quartermaster had forgotten I was there; his words were for Pavo only. For his part, the centurion mastered what must have been an overwhelming urge to look my way.