Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

I tried to muster the courage to attack him with my own bare hands and teeth, but something in his grace held me rooted to the spot.

And then, with a few words, Arminius spilled my insides as well as any blade could have done.

‘I want you to join me. I want you to join me, Corvus.’

Corvus . He knew me – he knew me – and as the black closed in around my eyes, and the ringing built in my ears, I knew now that I had known him long before the sacred grove.

My vision swam, blurs of bodies and entrails stretched out across the ground, but these were not the men of the German legions. This was Pannonia. This was another life.

‘Corvus.’ Arminius spoke again, but I could no longer see the man, nor reply – my every sense was focused on the wall of blood that rushed towards me, thousands of corpses churning endlessly in the red froth, screams assailing me from their dead mouths.

I wanted to scream myself. I needed to.

But I couldn’t.

And so the wave of blood hit me, and I remembered it all.

I hadn’t lied when I told the section that my true name was Corvus. I hadn’t lied when I told them that I was a deserter. At that moment, with our leaders dead by their own hands, and staring at our own end in the morning, I had wanted to unburden myself fully to the comrades I had come to trust and love as brothers.

I had thought that I had done so.

Now, confronted by Arminius and my own name, the memories that I had pushed down into the blackest part of my soul came forth like an eruption, the force of it sending me to my knees. Acidic bile burned my throat as my body and mind ached to purge itself. I had once believed that the terrible things could never be forgotten, but I now saw that my mind, so damaged, had tried to save me like blood clotting a wound.

‘Corvus,’ I heard from somewhere, the scab tearing free.

I tried to lift my head. My vision swam as if I’d been kicked by a horse. I saw the form of bodies littering the ground by the hundreds. The details of their faces and uniforms were lost, but I saw the minutest things – the insects hopping on the gore. A woman’s golden hair dancing with the wind.

‘Corvus.’

The name stung me like a whip, because I knew now that Corvus was not an ordinary soldier who had, like so many others, tried to desert his legion during a time of war.

No. I , Corvus, was my legion. The rising star. The hero. The killer who had climbed from boy soldier to standard-bearer in only five years. I was the guardian of the legion’s eagle, its heart and soul. In Rome’s Eighth Legion, there was no man more admired, no warrior more feared, than Corvus.

Than me.

That was three years before I found myself at Arminius’s feet in a German forest. Since then, throughout the Danube legions, the name of Corvus had become a curse.

Because the hero became a traitor.

The reason was war, though it all began peacefully enough. I had never forgotten the early days of it. Like Germany, the province of Pannonia was on the fringe of the Empire, and as such its subjects wished to enjoy their own customs and traditions. They asked the Emperor of Rome for a degree of autonomy, but the rule of that demi-god and city was iron, and so peaceful request became bloody revolt. The citizens of the province were tired of being ground beneath the Roman heel, and Roman garrisons were attacked. Politicians were murdered.

The Eighth Legion, where I carried the proud eagle standard, formed a part of Rome’s response.

I remember how eagerly I awaited it. Like young Cnaeus, who had died at my feet, I ached to prove myself. Like Pavo, who had been trampled by a German horse, I yearned for glory. I had seen combat against bandits and brigands, but this was to be my first taste of war.

It was nothing but butchery.

Our mission to restore order saw us raze towns, enslaving the women and children and executing the men. After only a few days on campaign, I could no longer count in my mind the women I had seen raped, or the atrocities I had been a part of. My conscience was bloodied, and my blade more so. As standard-bearer, I was always in the eyes of my comrades. Respect and esteem meant all to me, and so I had slit the throats of elderly men as they knelt trembling in their own piss.

It was a mercy when our ‘enemy’ offered resistance and some kind of blood-letting that could be described as combat. I was at the front of every charge against the fortified positions, desperate to lose myself in the chaos. Soon I began to realize that I was hoping for an enemy spear to find its way through my armour and into my black heart.

None did, my work as a butcher continued, and so it was that I found myself within my campaign tent, resting on my knees, with the point of my short sword pushing between the junction of my ribcage.

I let my weight move forward, slowly, and felt the blade pierce skin. I held it there, savouring the balance of life and death. I knew that with one sudden movement I could end it all. I could remove myself from a world that had shown itself to care only for death and darkness. I could stop myself being a piece of that macabre machinery.

But I did not.

I did not, because I had already seen too much. I had already done too much. Before my death could come, there had to be some repentance. Some way to give peace to the men that I had killed.

I would find it.

The campaign continued. My search to bring balance was fruitless. Like a coward, I took to finding excuses to avoid the bloodshed. I explained to my commanders that, rather than be in the thick of the fighting, I wished to study it from a distance. My courage was famous by this point, my leaders eager to groom me for future appointments, and so it was that I found myself on the crest of a low-slung ridge, watching the town below as our troops pulled screaming families from their homes in the dawn’s light.

It was there that Arminius found me.

He wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, though there was no sign of his mount. His face was open and whimsical, as if the tortured screams of rape and murder below us were a prelude to a joke. The handsome man’s cavalry squadron was attached to my own legion, and I had seen him often. Often, and never comfortable with what was unfolding.

‘Corvus, sir,’ I greeted him.

‘Arminius.’ He offered his hand, man to man, forgetting rank and the privilege of noble birth. I took it, and in that moment I saw the confirmation in his eyes that he loathed this campaign as much as I did. Loathed an empire’s organization that relied on butchery to survive.

‘Those are our own citizens we’re killing,’ Arminius observed, his tone low. In the closest street, a man was being hacked apart by inexperienced boy soldiers. It was a bad death. A long one.

I turned my eyes from the sight, not in disgust but because I wanted to take the measure of this man before I uttered words that could condemn me to an end on the cross should he betray my trust.

I do not know how he gained my confidence, but it was given to him as easily as a babe loves its mother. Perhaps it was because I had developed such contempt for my own life that I no longer cared for its preservation. I simply needed to unburden my soul.

And so I spoke.

‘I can’t serve an empire that does this,’ I heard myself confess.

Arminius considered my words. Beneath us, the man in the street had ceased his screaming. Other citizens, found cowering in their hiding places, were beginning theirs.

‘I look to my own people,’ the German said, and gestured to the death in the town. ‘When they feel as though they deserve a voice in the running of the Empire that they are told they are a part of, will this be their reward? Will I be asked to carry my sword against those of my own blood?’