Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

‘You mean he got pissed and fell out of the saddle?’ Stumps asked, managing to maintain a straight face. Before the pair of believers could fall upon him with their bile, Titus returned.

‘Whatever it is, shut up, and let’s go.’

We followed him, tramping through a gap in the fort’s defences, and into our temporary new home.

As we went, I cast my eyes to the river.

My escape.

The most menial and least desirable jobs in the legions fell to the newest troops, and so I found myself with Micon and Cnaeus, the two boy soldiers who were ten years my junior. The age mattered not, only that the veterans in the section considered the three of us outsiders, and so we were handed the burdensome task of erecting the section’s tent, while the veterans used their javelins to spit chickens that Titus had sourced from the locals.

Out of earshot from the sweats, the youngest members of the section were unsure how to behave around me. Yes, I was an outcast like them, but for different reasons. Micon’s head might have been full of air, but I could see that Cnaeus was an astute youth. He watched my practised motions in setting up the campaign tent, the gears of his mind evidently clicking. What did he see? A veteran, or a man who was simply used to working with his hands?

I felt the unspoken questions, but I had no desire to answer them. Talk leads to friendship, and I didn’t need friends. I didn’t want them. Why? Because friends die, and you live. It’s the cruellest joke in the world, and I had had it played upon me enough times that I was sick of the punchline.

No, I’d grown used to living within my own mind. Sometimes I didn’t like what was in there, but it was familiar, and familiarity was always comfortable, no matter how disturbing.

I stood back, my good eye appraising the construction of waxed goat-hide. Titus would find no legitimate fault in it, but he sauntered over to try, lips greasy from the chicken in his hand.

‘The lines aren’t tight enough.’ The big man gestured, using a chicken bone to point out a rope under perfect tension. ‘Here.’ He handed me a pick from a basket of engineering instruments. ‘We need a shit-pit. Chicken’s delicious, but it won’t want to stay inside forever.’

I kept my face neutral, but an image swam into my mind of the pick ploughing down between Titus’s amused eyes. I savoured it a little too long.

‘Try it.’ He smiled, knowing what was going on inside my bruised skull.

I did not, but instead walked away to complete the task. The weight of the pick felt good in my hands. My muscles ached, and I welcomed that pain as I brought each swing hard into the dirt, picturing the smashed skulls of Titus, Moonface, Rufus, Stumps and that hideous bastard Chickenhead. At a moment like this, I knew it was best not to fight it. Just let the anger take over. I brought the pick down, over and over, picturing other faces. Other men I yearned to kill. Before I had worked my way through all that hate, the pit was deep enough to hold the shit of the entire army.

Bile spent, I felt the familiar hollowness. I made my way back to the section’s tent. They’d held back no food for me, as I knew they would not. I was too exhausted, too beyond caring, to make my own, and so I collapsed on to the dirt, spurning my bedroll. Around me, the men of the section snored on, for once silent and oblivious to the stranger in their midst.

I closed my eyes, and within moments fell into my own black void.

I woke to a kick in the ribs.

Titus, of course.

‘You’re waking half of Germany,’ he told me.

The lump looked prepared to deal me another kick, perhaps expecting that I wouldn’t have taken kindly to his methods of waking me, and so my words took him aback. ‘Thank you,’ I told him, meaning it.

I wasn’t thanking him because he’d kicked me in my chain-mail coat rather than my exposed head, but because he had broken me out of something that I could not escape myself.

I knew that I’d been screaming.

‘There’s a spirit in him,’ I heard Moonface whisper to Titus, deep-rooted fear in his voice.

The section commander ignored the superstitious soldier, keeping his eyes fixed on my own. ‘Get out to the rampart and take over watch from the young one. Maybe the rest of us can get some sleep.’

I made my weary muscles move. There was no way that I could sleep again now, and I would not want to in any case. The nightmare had taken as much of a toll on me as the march, and I felt empty, my bones grinding against joints, pestles in mortars.

Picking up my arms, I found Cnaeus on the rampart; the keen young soldier challenged me with the first part of the night’s watchword. ‘Three.’

‘Bears,’ I answered, completing the security measure.

‘It’s an inn,’ Cnaeus told me, not that I had asked. ‘All the sweats go there.’

‘I see.’

It was the longest conversation I’d ever had with him, but even that small exchange was enough to spur him on towards comradeship. Bollocks.

‘I heard screams. Did they wake you?’ he probed cautiously, having no idea it was my own nightmares that had curdled his blood.

‘They did,’ I answered, turning my gaze out into the black of the night, and hoping that would be an end to it.

‘It’s been quiet,’ Cnaeus pushed on. ‘Haven’t seen a thing.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ I replied, offhand. I noticed Cnaeus sagging a little at the implied criticism. ‘None of us would. This is their land.’ I pulled at the armour on my chest. ‘And they’re not weighed down with this. They can slip around like ghosts.’

I instantly regretted using that last word, and we fell into a void of silence which the young soldier hesitated to climb out of. Eventually, he found the nerve to try.

‘They say you’re a ghost,’ he offered to the darkness.

‘And how many ghosts do you see standing shagging sentry duty?’ I asked, tired. Tired of the conversation. Tired of the life.

‘Where did you soldier, before?’ he asked, pushing his luck.

A push too far.

‘Go get some rest,’ I told him, betraying a tone that was used to giving orders, and having them obeyed.

He did as he was bid, leaving me to stare into the darkness.

It beckoned me. I could slip away tonight. It would be two hours until I was relieved. Maybe Pavo would check the lines, but he didn’t strike me as the sort.

But no. Not tonight. The nightmare had drained me. I wanted only to look into the black.

In the morning, we set to work on the bridge.

The river was the width of five horses standing nose to tail, a dark silver in the late summer. Hollowed banks betrayed its winter savagery, but now the current was lazy, the river’s floor smooth. Birds darted along the water, snatching at insects. The treeline of the southern bank was alive with their song and chatter.

My hobnailed sandals felt their way along the silt, searching for a firm footing. I was stripped to my loincloth, the water slapping gently under my chin. Titus, much taller, had his head well clear, his eyes inspecting the bonds of the wooden pontoon bridge.

‘Worked on bridges before?’ the section commander asked me.

I shrugged, then realized the motion would have been hidden by the river’s murky water. ‘No,’ I answered, flatly.

‘Then how you learn to do that?’ Titus pushed, pointing at a lashing between timbers.

It was time for a barb.

‘It’s tying rope. Any idiot can do it.’ It was obvious who I was implying was the idiot, and Titus cast sharp glances to the river’s banks and bridge. Half the century were present, many stripped down to their tunics or less, all engaged in the bridge’s maintenance. The other sections of the century, fully armoured, were pushed further out as a protective screen. One set of prying eyes was one set too many for what Titus had in mind, and I smiled as he forced his anger down into his thick chest.