Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘Hey, boss,’ Stumps called to Pavo, who was passing by. ‘How long do we have to keep him with us?’ He jabbed his stubby fingers towards me. ‘He’s bad luck.’

Pavo ignored the soldier, turning instead to Titus. ‘Titus, if I get one more question about this from your section, I swear I will dry-fuck you all with this bastard javelin.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Titus replied absently to Pavo’s back, before resuming his conversation with Rufus. The subject, I was sure, would be me. Choosing to ignore it, I watched instead as the centurion made his way to the head of the short column, the size of which drew derision from the more salted soldiers.

‘This isn’t a bloody war,’ Chickenhead complained, speaking through a mouthful of hardtack biscuit.

‘Oh, here we go.’ Stumps laughed, before pretending to stifle a yawn. ‘Time for the story ’bout how Chickenhead and General Drusus beat a million Germans and saved the Empire.’

At the head of the column, Pavo was conversing with a cavalry soldier. The mounted troopers acted as the army’s messengers, and I was more interested to know what orders we were receiving than to listen to another round of endless bickering between the two veterans.

‘I didn’t say there was a million, did I?’ Chickenhead retorted, the skin of his neck flapping earnestly. ‘When did I ever say that? Go on!’

From a cloth sack slung about Chickenhead’s chest, the kitten, Lupus, poked his head out at the consternation and raised voices.

‘Get your tunic out your arse, mate, I was only having a laugh with you,’ Stumps protested, wiping at his face. ‘No need to go spitting your scoff all over me.’

‘I’d like to hear about Drusus,’ the section’s youngest soldier, Cnaeus, put in, with the eagerness of youth.

I knew of Drusus, and that he was a legendary commander who had led the legions in Germany almost twenty years before, defeating the tribes in huge, bloody battles. Battles that Chickenhead had evidently been a part of, but now refused to be drawn on.

‘No. Not now. Ask Stumps about the time he broke his arm in camp, and cried like a little bitch.’

‘Oh, fuck off, you grumpy shit,’ the accused man snapped.

Titus interceded before Chickenhead could follow with his next insult. ‘Shut up. Pavo’s had his orders.’

I let my eyes wander back to the head of the column. The left lid was still half closed, but my vision had returned well enough for me to see the cavalry soldier spurring his mount away.

‘Prepare to move!’ Pavo called, and a ripple passed along the line as men hauled themselves to their feet, the sentries from outside of the main body rejoining their sections. I made an effort to get to my feet faster than the others; childishly, I was desperate to show them that the beating had taken no toll. Titus must have suffered enough of his own hidings to know that I was bluffing, and grinned.

‘Ready for another few miles?’ He asked the question to the section, but his eyes met only mine. ‘Only another eight until we make the fort.’

I refused to give him the pleasure of a rise. We were out of camp now, just eighty men, and I needed only to bide my time, and wait for a chance to present itself. My service with these soldiers would be short-lived.

Chickenhead was unable to hide his own feelings quite so well, and clucked in disgust at the tiny column ahead of him. ‘When Drusus took us east, you couldn’t see from one end of the army to the other.’

‘Probably because you were sleeping, as usual, you lazy twat.’ Stumps laughed, but the exchange was cut short as Pavo’s voice rang out across the German countryside.

‘Century, by the left, quick march!’

I stepped off as one with the other men, embracing the pain in my legs and savouring every mile. I endeavoured to lose myself in the tramp of hobnails against dirt, my eyes fixed on the bundled pack ahead of me. Each step carried me away from what I had left behind. I could only hope that, over the distant horizon, I would find a new beginning, away from war, pain and death .

I laughed.

The march was not an enjoyable experience for me. Not because of the agony of my muscles, or the eye that began weeping again as kicked-up dust clogged the corners, but because of the reason I had crossed a continent alone. The reason that I wanted to be away from these soldiers while they were still soldiers and not brothers.

It was my secret. The dark infection that gnawed its way through my core.

I drove the heels of my palms into my eyes, focusing on the pain and little else. Eventually, the darkness faded.

We arrived at the fort with a few hours of daylight to spare, having pushed the pace beyond the regular marching speed. From my own experience of officers, I expected that came down to Pavo being in a sour temper. He certainly had that look about him: what should have been a handsome face twisted into a sullen snarl. He’d likely pushed the pace hard, willing some man to fall out and give him the excuse to vent his spleen, but though a few had faltered, none had crumbled, and now our column drew level with the River Lippe.

‘They call this a fort?’ Moonface spat in derision.

He had a point. The outpost was little more than a shin-high earthen rampart, with a tangle of withies forming a barricade along the top. There were no towers to speak of, and the outline of sentries was visible behind the makeshift barricade. From the shape of their oval shields, these guards appeared to be Roman auxiliary troopers, men recruited from provinces under Roman control, but not themselves citizens of the Empire. That title would be bestowed upon them should they survive the twenty years of their enlistment. A quarter cohort of these auxiliary infantry, some hunderd and twenty-five men, held this bastion beside the waters of the River Lippe.

Moonface grimaced, unable to resist a further insult. ‘They couldn’t keep a German’s fart out with that barricade.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Titus countered, stifling a yawn. ‘That wood’s as tough as your mum’s tits. Bastard to try and break through. It’ll take the wind out of any attack.’

‘It wouldn’t stop disciplined troops,’ Moonface snorted, unable to back down, but not willing to confront the bigger man about the insult to his mother’s bosom.

Chickenhead smirked. ‘Well, what a good thing I don’t see any around.’

‘Century!’ Pavo called from the head of the column. ‘Halt!’ The halt was ragged, doing its best to prove the veteran’s point. ‘Section commanders on me!’

Titus acknowledged Pavo’s call with a grunt, and trudged wearily in the centurion’s direction.

‘We’ve spent all summer on our arses,’ Chickenhead mused, returning to his subject. ‘We’re the rabble around here, not the Germans. It’s bloody embarrassing.’

‘Oh, tell it to your old mate Drusus,’ Stumps teased.

‘I think he’s buried somewhere along this river, isn’t he?’ Rufus mused in his usual hushed tones.

‘He is,’ Chickenhead answered with a reverence that made him forget Stumps’s jibe. ‘At the fort of Aliso.’

I listened to that piece of information with some interest. As a boy, yearning to be at war, stories of the campaigns of Drusus had rung in my ears.

‘Didn’t he fall from his horse?’ the youngster Cnaeus asked, hoping to be included in the conversation between veterans.

‘Why are you talking, you snot-faced shit?’ Moonface snapped, but Chickenhead was keen to talk on the subject of his esteemed former commander.

‘He did. No foe could take him in battle, and the gods were anxious for his company,’ he said, head nodding vehemently. Moonface, if nothing a servant of the gods, added his own violent head movements.