Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

My breathing sounded as though it came from a terrified bull, and over the sound of these breaths I now heard the guttural challenges of the German tribesmen. They were confident in victory, and almost mocking in their war cries. To hear them so clearly, the rampart must be close.

Close enough that I could die here.

Our arrival was announced by the sound of stone striking hide as the Germans began to pelt the leading shields with slingshot and rocks. Men began to cry out, some from wounds but most to gain the confidence they needed to press forward into the storm.

I was one of them.

‘Fuck you!’ I screamed at no one and everyone. ‘Fuck you!’

Then, without warning, the formation came to a shuddering halt, and my nose pressed against the cold metal of Titus’s mail – the leading troops had reached the rampart.

‘Tools forward!’ came the order. ‘Tear it down! Get the fucking wall down!’

Under cover of the leading shields, men on their knees began to frantically hack at the withies that made up the wall, desperate to open us a hole through which we could push in, and engage the enemy.

But the Germans above them were not idle, and stones began to rain on to shields and skulls. Even strong arms would have struggled to hold off this hellish downpour, but weakened by fatigue, the leading troops had no chance, and as the rocks broke down the protection, German spears and javelins found Roman flesh. Screams echoed beneath the shields. The smell of piss and shit grew stronger.

‘Get us up there!’ I heard called again and again, finally realizing that the demand came from Chickenhead, spittle flying from his mouth.

‘More men on the tools!’ came Pavo’s shout, though I could see little of the man, or anything else, my entire vision taken up by Titus’s wide back. ‘Second Century, push up! Push up!’ he ordered, and we struggled to obey, moving in half-steps.

To my right, I saw the first of our wounded crawling back between the legs of their comrades, blood trailing in their wake. Others lay where they fell, skulls caved in from the rain of rocks, limbs twitching as their bodies gave up the fight.

The sound ahead was chaos now, screams and war cries, taunts and defiance. Somehow, orders cut through the madness, and our century was amongst those pressing through the ranks ahead, shields held aloft above our heads as we collected tools from the hands of the dead and dying.

‘Bring down the wall!’ Pavo called, and I saw it now through a tangle of legs and armour, the wood chipped from Roman tools and spattered with Roman blood. Shafts of light broke through the ceiling of shields as spear and stone poured down from above.

Into that carnage, we forged ahead.

Clarity of thought and action was lost. Adrenaline and fear took hold of my body. I shouted, but I could not say what. I do not know where the axe in my hand came from, only that I found myself on my knees, frantically swinging it into the wooden barricade ahead of me, splinters of wood thrown back into my face as my muscles burned with the effort.

While some of us struggled to break through, others attempted to fight back against those who assailed us from above. It was an impossible task; our javelins were shorter than the Germans’ spears, and any Roman brave enough to expose his body to take aim and throw was pierced by German steel before he could loose his own weapon.

And that was how I saw Chickenhead die.

Desperate to draw blood, the veteran had pushed away his neighbour’s shield, which was covering him from above, and was arcing his javelin back to throw when the first spear plunged down to hit him on the armour of his shoulders. The mail held, but a second speartip found flesh between shoulder and neck, driving deep into the veteran’s body. Blood spurted into the air as he cried out in anger and pain. Before Titus could pull his shield over our fallen comrade to protect him, a rock the size of a child’s torso came tumbling across the rampart and crushed Chickenhead’s helmet as if it were made of glass. In a heartbeat, the veteran had been reduced from our beloved comrade to a broken, mangled corpse.

‘Leave him!’ Titus ordered, seeing Stumps about to drop to Chickenhead’s side, his own safety forgotten. ‘Leave him! Pick up the tools! Get this fucking wall down!’

What choice did we have?

And so we struck the wood of the German defences with axe and pick. Like wild animals, we pulled at it with our bare hands until our fingernails tore away. Spear and javelin stabbed down from above, and the screams of the dying outsung the victorious war cries of those behind the wall.

How long the attack lasted for, I could not say. Once Chickenhead fell, I was barely conscious of my own part in it. There was the noise, the labour, the feeling of hot blood against my skin. In that scrum against the wall, time lost all meaning. There was no room for fear, only the most basic instinct to draw the next breath, and to live through the next second.

I did not hear the trumpets or orders that sounded the retreat. Likely I would have remained at the wall, hitting it pathetically with a blunt axe head until I was finished by a German spear, had Titus not dragged me from the carnage.

Somehow, I escaped the wall intact but for the most minor of injuries. Looking back, I could see that hundreds of our comrades had not been as fortunate – beneath the withies was a red carpet of fallen legionaries. This carpet seemed to rise and fall as the wounded tried to crawl to safety, but they would never be able to escape the Germans who now poured howling through the wall’s sally ports, determined to dispatch the injured and harass the retreat of those that still stood.

‘Jog-trot!’ came the order, relayed by voices hoarse from fear. ‘Jog-trot!’

I flashed my wild eyes about me. Chickenhead was gone, but the other members of the section somehow lived, their faces painted in gore and terror. As a unit now, we shuffled at a trot away from the wall, our muscles beyond fatigue, but carried on by adrenaline. As the German horde poured downhill towards us, the trot became a run, men pushing and shoving their way to escape.

The army was in danger of becoming a rabble. Retreat was becoming rout.

Prefect Caeonius recognized it, and knew that there was only one decision to make.

‘Halt!’ the centurions called, relaying our leader’s order. ‘Halt, you bastards! Form up! Form up! Battle formation!’

Somehow, discipline took hold, section commanders and veterans pulling their comrades to a stop, and pushing them into a formation that could face the onrushing tribesmen. They knew that it was our only chance now. A chance so pitiful that to do anything but prepare for the end was foolishly optimistic.

And so, with shaking muscles and panting lungs, we prepared to make our final stand beneath the legion’s eagles.

Our army was dying. The Empire was being brought to its knees. The rampart beneath the hill was thick with our dead, across which now streamed a mass of German warriors, flush with the sense of victory. All about us, the jaws of Arminius’s trap were slamming shut.

Suddenly, the irony of it all hit me like an arrow. I had walked a continent to escape war, and now here I stood, part of a colossal defeat that I knew would echo across the entire world. Despite the death around me, or more likely because of it, I suddenly choked out a laugh.

‘We’re fucked.’ I smiled at young Cnaeus beside me.

I knew it was a hollow smile. The smile of a man who had one foot in the earthly realm and one beyond. But, surrounded by death, I had the choice of laughing in its face, or shitting myself at its touch.

And so why not die with a smile on my face?