Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

His animal instinct honed through adrenaline, he felt my gaze and looked my way. I saw no recognition in his eyes, only death. My stomach lurched at the sight of it.

Suddenly I realized that the skirmish was over. One minute we had been besieged by enemies, the next we were alone, the only Germans we could see the dead and dying. Titus hunted these men one by one, taking great pains to prolong their suffering.

I could hear battle still raging in the trees beyond us, but the distance had grown. We were in danger of being separated from the army.

‘Titus,’ I called. ‘We have to get back to the century.’

I was ignored.

Slowly, as if approaching a hungry lion, I stalked towards him. I held a German sword in my hand, ready to bring it up and defend myself should the big man strike, but Titus was too engrossed in his task to notice my presence. On his knees, the veteran was pressing his thumbs into the eyes of a wounded spearman.

The man’s screams cut through my core.

‘Titus!’ I called, louder this time. ‘Fucking look at me!’

He did, and my bones froze as if winter had come. He was a beast. Nothing in his eyes was human.

‘Titus,’ I managed to murmur.

The killer then got to his feet, leaving his victim groaning in agony and clutching at a destroyed face. I looked at Titus’s hands, seeing the viscous fluids dripping from his thumbs.

‘Gods,’ I managed again, tasting bile in my mouth. ‘Leave him. We have to get back to the others.’

As Titus looked me up and down, I was gripped by fear. I knew that, if he chose to do so, this hate-filled animal could kill me within moments.

Instead, he spoke. ‘Rufus is dead,’ he told me in a voice of stone.

‘I know,’ I answered. ‘We need to get back to the section, and look to the others.’

He seemed to consider my words, even turning his head in the direction of the sound of battle, but when he spoke again, I knew that he would not be rushed from the site of his friend’s body – not when there were still German wounded lying scattered in the mud.

‘Rufus is dead,’ he said again, and then set to torturing his enemies.

Titus took his time in killing the German wounded. A few were lucky, too far gone to offer the man any sense of sport in his retribution, and these he dispatched quickly by blade. The conscious were not so fortunate, and died in agony, Titus beating them to death with stones, or choking the life from them with his gnarled hands.

I didn’t see most of it: I turned my back – for our own safety, rather than from unease. The sounds of fighting could still be heard, but the trees and the storm made it impossible to guess at what distance – I didn’t want to be surprised by a rush of German reinforcements heading to the battle. Then, as the last German took his final gasp, I became aware of a new sound.

Crying.

I turned, seeing Titus sitting back on his heels, his killer’s bloodied hands tight over his face as his body was racked with sobs. I turned my eyes back to the trees, not wanting to linger on his grief, but unwilling to leave him alone in the forest. Consumed by misery as he was, I was certain that he would not survive without me.

I was wrong. As quickly as the flood had come, the well of Titus’s tears dried. The sobs lasted for mere seconds, and then, with the silence of a predator, he pushed his huge form to its feet and stared in my direction.

Tracts of tears had cut through the blood on his face. His eyes empty of all emotion, Titus looked like some creature of nightmare.

He looked as I had appeared to Arminius.

‘We need to find the column.’ He spoke as if the dawn’s bloodshed had never happened and his closest friend were still drawing breath.

Surprised by his about-turn, I cast an involuntary look at the deadfall that had crushed Rufus’s mutilated corpse.

‘Rufus is dead.’ Titus spoke coldly, and I recognized in the tone a man who had spent all sentiment, and was now reduced to an empty vessel.

‘We need to find the column,’ he repeated, cocking his head at the sound of battle. ‘Rufus is dead.’

And so we left our comrade to the forest.

The forest floor was littered with the dead and dying, Roman and German spread beneath the trees like decaying apples. When the storm’s winds finally abated, flocks of crows would feast, but for now, the bodies lay unmolested in the tangles of undergrowth.

The clash of sword on shield was a constant echo as we made our way back towards the column, the dead our signposts towards our comrades, who I hoped yet lived. Titus seemed solely focused on finding yet more enemies to slay.

‘Soldier,’ I heard through the wind, the word a desperate plea. ‘Soldier!’

I found the source, a veteran of our own legion, not long for this world. I took in the man’s sorry state, recognizing that he had been left for dead at the bottom of a water-filled ditch. Somehow, he had found the strength to crawl to the trench’s top before his reserves had finally run out. His guts were spread beneath him.

‘Please,’ he grunted through clenched teeth, gesturing at a blade in his hand. ‘I can’t.’

Meeting the man’s blood-red eyes, I stepped forward. The hand that I placed on his shoulder was more to steady myself than he. Then, before I had a chance to rethink my action, I drove my dagger into the veteran’s heart. I felt him shudder, crimson running from his lips as his red-raw eyes rolled back into their sockets.

I turned my head away from the man I had killed. Titus was looking at me. He made no comment. He simply walked into the trees.

And so I staggered on behind him.

I do not know how many of the fallen we passed in the forest, nor how long we wandered. I know only that I hastened two more of our own on to their ancestors, their dying stares seared into my own eyes, a mix of pathetic gratitude that the pain would end and dreadful fear of the unknown beyond.

‘The column,’ Titus grunted with no visible relief. Only when he slapped me hard across the face did I realize that I had not seen our soldiers through the trees because my own eyes were filled with pitiable tears.

Titus called out to the nearest troops. They were not engaged by the enemy, and shuffled slowly along the dirt of a narrow track, wild eyes searching the forest for the next ambush.

‘Your cohort’s up ahead,’ a veteran told us. He had taken command after both his century’s centurion and optio had been killed during a few minutes’ combat. ‘What’s left of it,’ he added, spitting on a German corpse.

Titus used his bulk to forge us a path ahead through the column, though the body of men had long since ceased to bear a resemblance to the proud formation that had marched out of the summer encampment at Minden. More and more, the army was becoming a group of frightened men who huddled beside their comrades as they headed into a storm of wind, rain and spears. I had seen an army coming apart at the seams before, and I knew that once the thread of discipline was pulled, there was little to stop the unravelling. Unless we cleared the forest, I was certain that the Germans would kill us with a thousand cuts.

With such dark thoughts in my mind, I almost lost myself to tears when I heard a familiar voice call along the trail.

‘Titus! Titus!’

I turned with the big man, and there I saw Stumps.

He was alone.

‘Where are the others?’ Titus demanded.

Stumps didn’t answer at first. Instead, he embraced his friend and, without hesitation, myself. ‘Further up the column,’ he then explained. ‘I came back to try and find more javelins.’ He swallowed. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Rufus is.’ Titus spoke tonelessly.