Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘Titus.’ The wind carried his words to us. ‘Your section with me. We’re pushing out a hundred yards beyond the rampart. If there’re any Germans probing the lines, then it’s kill or capture. I’ll make the decision on the ground. Nobody acts unless I do.’

I expected our section commander to make some protest, but Titus’s grim face didn’t change as he drew his short sword, and I realized that he was eager to spill blood.

We followed Pavo in silence, the storm dampening any sound that our footfalls or equipment could make. Perhaps I should have been frightened to leave the camp’s rampart, but I wasn’t. The exertions of the night had drained me to a point where I was beyond caring about my own life and death. I could almost welcome the chance to die on an enemy spear, rather than under torture from my own comrades. If death was anything close to sleep, then it would be bliss.

‘Down,’ Pavo hissed and, following his example, the section prostrated itself in the soaking grass.

Even in such a miserable position, sleep fought to overwhelm me. To resist, I dragged my fingernails across my cheeks until the skin broke. I pushed at my eyes until I felt the socket wall. None of it helped. I just wanted to sleep.

Just one hour’s fucking sleep.

Instead, I lay there. I do not know how long we were in that drenched position, with the chill of the earth rising through my sinewy flesh to shake the marrow in my bones, but when we stood, my joints groaned and clicked as if I were a man of a hundred. I heard a puppy-like whimper from Micon; the wretched boy soldier was on the edge of breakdown, his mind and body stretched to their limits.

At least so he thought. I knew from experience that there was always more punishment that a human being could endure. His mind might break, but the body would go on, and I was equally certain that we would find such trials with the dawn.

‘Back,’ Pavo ordered with another hiss, satisfied that there were no enemy lurking in our sector.

I was not so convinced. Given the weight of the downpour and the howl of the winds, I felt it would have been possible for an army to pass within ten yards of us and remain undetected, but it was not my decision to make, and I followed our leader back through the darkness.

Another weary century had taken up position on the rampart, and challenged us half-heartedly with the night’s watchword. Pavo answered, and as we were allowed through, he stood atop the earthworks to count each man in as he passed, and ensure that we were all accounted for.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Titus grunted, offended, but Pavo continued.

And he was right to, because we were one man short.

Someone had been left with the enemy.

‘It’s Rufus,’ Titus said immediately, without needing to look over the faces of his section.

Pavo’s own was hidden in the darkness, but from the suppressed anger in his words, I could imagine the handsome face twisted into a snarl.

‘Where is he, Titus?’

‘The baggage train,’ he answered curtly.

‘Why?’

‘His family’s there.’

‘Gods,’ Pavo groaned. ‘He brought his bloody family into this fucking mess?’

‘Yes, Pavo, he brought his bloody family,’ Titus answered, growing hot.

‘And you let him?’

‘I had no fucking idea, but it’s done now, and if we’re about to abandon the baggage train, then I’m not going to stop him seeing his family.’

‘It’s your job to stop him,’ Pavo hissed. ‘You’re his section commander, and he’s a bastard-deserter.’

The final word was too much for Titus. His arm shot out like an arrow, gripping Pavo by his mail and making as if to lift him by the throat.

To give him his credit, the centurion kept a remarkable kind of calm. ‘Moon,’ he said, his words measured, ‘What’s the punishment for attacking a superior officer?’

‘Death,’ Moonface answered after a moment.

From the venom in his next words, Titus could not have cared less. His face loomed within an inch of Pavo’s. ‘I put my sword through eight Roman soldiers tonight, you pompous piece of shit, because the governor was going to leave them to be gutted and tortured by the bastard goat-fuckers, so don’t you go telling me that one man looking after his family will make any difference to this cunting army!’

Titus’s heated admission left the section and centurion open-mouthed. Deep down I had known Titus had carried out mercy killings within the tent, but hearing the confirmation made my knees shake and my bowels loose, for there was no more harrowing act than taking the life of a comrade, no matter how justified.

‘You did that?’ Pavo asked finally.

‘Of course I fucking did.’ Titus’s voice was as flat and as hard as his iron sword. ‘What choice did I have?’

Gently, Pavo pushed Titus’s hand away from his throat. After a moment, the big man allowed it to be moved.

‘You had none,’ Pavo agreed heavily. ‘But I can’t let Rufus desert, Titus. Do you think he’s the only one with a family in the baggage train? If it gets out that he’s gone with no repercussions, then the century will be down to twenty men by dawn.’

‘So say you dispatched him on a task,’ Titus offered, as neutral as it was possible for the hard man to be. ‘Do that, Pavo, and I wipe your debt clean. You hear that?’ he asked the section. ‘The centurion’s debt to me is wiped clean. Write him off as one of the badly wounded, and I’ll write off what you owe me. If we’re going to die out here, then let Rufus die with his family.’

It seemed like an age before Pavo replied, after turning the possibilities over in his mind. Finally, he addressed his words to the section as a whole.

‘Rufus was killed tonight on sentry duty. His body could not be recovered. If anyone ever speaks differently, then I’ll gut them myself.’

‘You’re finally sounding like a leader.’ Titus’s words were heavy with bile. Then he smirked. ‘Now fuck off.’

Pavo’s temper flared at the words, but he had accepted a bribe to overlook desertion and was in no position to assert his authority.

I watched the silhouette of his tall figure and shorn-crested helmet stalk away into the darkness, thinking of the complexities of the man. Within the space of the day I had seen him be a heroic and natural leader in battle, an ambitious and remorseful man in private, and a greedy and unscrupulous commander in the face of debts. He was not a man I could ever trust, but when the century formed up before dawn and marched into the forest, that is exactly what I’d have to do.

Until then, I was left to shiver in the darkness.

I was alone in the trees. It was dark, and yet I could see every detail: the branches, withered and decayed; the ground, red and violent.

‘What are you doing here?’ I called out, knowing that I was being watched, and knowing by whom.

They gave me no answer.

I staggered on into the trees, desperate to find the forest’s end. The stink of decaying flesh made me retch. The ground groaned in agony with each of my steps.

‘Shut up!’ I hissed, knowing there were souls trapped beneath the muck. ‘Shut up!’

They would not.

Feathers began to fall from the sky. They were black, caked in burned blood.

‘Get out of my head!’ I screamed.

The dark feathers clung to me like insects. I wiped at them with frantic hands.

‘Get out of my head!’ I screamed again as the rain began to pour. A rain of blood. It ran into my eyes and beneath my armour. It covered me.

It was too much. I wept.

Then, through my tears, I heard the laugh. A laugh that I knew so well. ‘Marcus?’ I croaked.

A harsh voice greeted me from the depths of the blood forest. ‘Coward.’