Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

With those words, the centurion took his leave.

‘Obstacles up ahead!’ came the calls from several voices, and the body of men shuddered as the march across the open ground ended and the battle group’s vanguard entered the forest. Obstructions would no longer be cleared from the army’s path, and each man clambered up and over the fallen trees as best as he could. This opened up holes in the formation and destroyed any chance of cohesive movement, but the forest had already proven that to attempt such unity was fruitless.

‘Help each other,’ Titus ordered as we came across our first fallen tree trunk. Fresh and fit, we could have leaped across it while burdened with a full load of equipment, but drained and bruised, we crossed the obstacle like a gaggle of aged spinsters.

And yet progress was good. The blanket of fog lay thick on the ground, but my mind was attuned to movement in such conditions, and I reckoned that we were making good distance, while still under some cover of darkness.

I was not the only man to sense it, and a murmur of encouragement rippled through the ranks as men dared to believe that we had passed through the thickest parts of the forests, and that maybe today would offer us the chance to hold our formations, and dare the Germans to attack us in open battle.

The Germans… they were not idle as we fled, and in the distance came the first sounds of steel on steel. The challenge of war cries. The screams of the dying.

‘They’re attacking the rearguard,’ Stumps thought aloud.

If that were true, then Arminius was not content to bleed the army slowly to death in the forest. No matter if it was a harassing attack, he was facing us openly.

‘He has all the cavalry, doesn’t he?’ a voice asked.

It was young Cnaeus. In a matter of days, the boy soldier had gone from a student of war to an academic. He knew that without our own cavalry to beat off the attacks, the German horsemen would be free to swoop on to our formations of infantry, picking them off with javelin and spear. It seemed that now, whether in the forest or in the open, Arminius would hold the advantage.

Still, the attacks in the open seemed brazen from a man who had been so calculating in his every move. Why would he give up the advantage of the forest now? Why were his troops attacking our rear in numbers, when they could far more easily bleed us from our flanks in the trees? This was their homeland, their turf. Our nearest sanctuary was days away, even without the need to fight our way there.

Then, as the fog began to lift, we were given our answer.

‘What is that?’ Stumps asked, squinting at a thick smudge that ran below a crest on the horizon. ‘Battle formations? Are they goin’ to stand against us?’

‘No,’ young Cnaeus replied, his youthful eyes sharp. ‘It’s a wall.’

And as the fog burned away, and we marched ever closer, I saw that the boy soldier was right.

It was the final piece of the trap. Arminius had built a wall, and if we were to have any hope of escape, then we would have to cross it.

The skirmishes of the forest were over.

Battle was upon us.

The rampart ran along the lowest slope of a crest, below which was the track that the battle group would have to follow to avoid marshlands to the east and thick forest to the west. Once again, Arminius had shown his guile, and instead of placing his defensive works directly across the line of the Roman advance, he had placed it at an oblique angle that would allow the tribesmen to pelt our units with stone, javelin and spear should we try to manoeuvre by it. The wall was constructed from intertwined withies – strong and flexible willow stems – and into this barricade Arminius had included sally ports from which his men would be able to rush down and exploit any breach in the flanks of our bedraggled battle groups.

‘The bastard built this weeks ago,’ Stumps observed, and no one argued with him. Considering the scale and the quality of the works, there was no doubt that Arminius’s treachery had been planned long ago. Through guile and deceit, he had led Varus’s army to its place of execution, and this rampart was the chopping block on which the legions must lay down their necks.

‘We can’t march past it,’ I thought aloud. ‘With the high ground they can pick us apart. They’ll hit us with missiles and harassing attacks until we break; and when we do, Arminius will have his shock troops ready to smash into that gap and tear us apart. Once we break, it’s all over.’

Titus considered my words, and showed his agreement by spitting. ‘Hit-and-run with these bastards is over. It’s a frontal assault on that thing, and clear them out from behind it.’

At the head of the battle group, Prefect Caeonius came to the same conclusion. What other choice was there? His orders reached us through Pavo moments later.

‘We’re going in testudo !’ Pavo called, adrenaline raising his voice an octave. ‘Keep your shields tight! Hold together! When we break through, hold formation and we’ll slaughter these goat-fucking cunts!’

His words were met with little enthusiasm. Only Stumps seemed to smile. ‘All fucking campaign, all I’ve heard is “wait till we get to fight them in formation”.’ The man cackled manically. ‘Well, here’s your chance, boys! It’s hold on to your nuts, and straight up the guts! What a fucking riot!’ he concluded, spitting for luck.

Looking around me, I saw that the morning’s fog was nothing more than a whisper now. The German wall and rampart were stark against the slope, the shape of men visible as they climbed its heights to taunt us. All around me, tired red eyes peered out from beneath the steel peaks of helmets. Other sets of eyes were squeezed shut, while below them cracked lips moved frantically in desperate prayer. I caught the smell of shit, and knew that more men would paint their thighs before we ever reached the walls.

We waited like this for the order to advance. Who knows how long we stood for? I have heard some soldiers say that in battle, time becomes a blur. For others, the wait was stretched out as if into infinity. Some suffered it in silence, while others beat at their armour and chanted mantras or promises. No one man was like another in his preparation for or experience of combat, yet each action was born of the same reason – the terror of the unknown.

The terror of death.

‘Battle group!’ the order came. ‘Form testudo !’

The sound was like a thunderclap as men on the outside of the formation overlapped their shields by their sides, while those in the centre raised them overhead with tired arms. At once we were cast into darkness, thin slits of grey light doing little to illuminate our gaunt faces. The stink of sweat, breath and infected wounds filled my nostrils.

‘Come on, you fuckers,’ I heard Stumps curse. ‘Let’s go. Let’s fucking go. Straight up the guts! Woo!’

He was answered by a trumpet note, and the formation of shields lurched forward at a slow march, footing insecure thanks to the darkness and slippery ground.

Knowing that every step carried us closer to the enemy, men became more vocal now, promising death to the enemy or begging to be delivered from it themselves. For others such as I, now was the time for deep, ragged breaths as we sought to control shaking limbs.

Fuck, I was scared.

I didn’t want to die, but I knew that every step carried me towards that likely fate. All I could hope was that it would be quick. Please, if it should come, let it be quick.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Is it too late to run?

Of course it was. Run, and the Germans would have me as a grotesque plaything, as they did Rufus. Did I want to die with my cock and balls stuffed into my mouth? No. If I was going to go, then better it be over in a burst of adrenaline and chaos.