Geraint Jones - Blood Forest

An army was dying. An empire was being brought to its knees.

The soldier was at the heart of it, always had been, and though he was ignorant of the scale of the tragedy in which he found himself, he had seen enough of his comrades fall to come to the inevitable conclusion.

‘We’re fucked.’ He smiled at the man beside him.

It was a hollow smile. The Empire meant nothing to him. Enlightenment? Romanization? Fancy words for corpulent politicians. His world was the section, the mates on his shoulders. His world was the few feet to his front, seen over his shield’s lip.

‘Here they come!’ A centurion called the warning as a wave of men burst from the concealment of the trees.

They were big men, a head taller than the Romans, and their charge from the raised banks only made them look more like giants. The soldier noticed that these were fresh troops, unbloodied, their eyes still sparkling with life, not yet acknowledging the truth that they could die on this track.

‘Brace!’ the centurion called, and the soldier overlapped his shield with his neighbour’s, putting the weight of his body be­hind his front leg. His limbs were weakened yet they obeyed. He felt the slip of the mud beneath his sandals, and ground them in deeper, every inch of push and shove a matter of life and death.

The soldier caught his neighbour’s eye. Three days ago, this comrade had been a young warrior. Now the stubble of his unguarded throat had grown white.

Eyes back to the front: the Germans were a few paces away, their faces screaming, cursing, twisted by both hatred and the scent of victory.

They clashed. It was shield on shield, grinding, creaking, splintering. It was metal into flesh, the resistance of bone, suction as the blade was drawn free. It was gnashing teeth, spitting faces, eyes dead with resignation or ablaze with defiance.

It was battle.

Time became meaningless for the soldier; he measured life in breaths, and so he had no idea how many gore-soaked minutes passed before the line of Roman soldiers finally broke, the Germans pouring into the breach, the fight descending into a melee of individual skirmishes.

Warrior after warrior came at him. Most were a blur – cut, parry, thrust, move on – but some details were etched into his mind: a Roman staring quizzically at the stump of his arm, hacked off by a German axe; a woman, a whore from the baggage train, holding spearmen at bay with wild swings of her own staff; a mule, thrashing in agony, eyes bulging from its skull in terror. Brushstrokes of battle on a canvas of war.

‘Rally, rally, rally! Form on me! Form on me!’ The soldier heard the harsh call for order and saw the broken line of soldiers fighting their way to his side. He did not know it, but the barking voice had been his own. Like the well-drilled strokes of his sword arm, the soldier’s tongue had acted on its own initiative.

The small knot of men stood firm as the tide of German warriors swirled around them. Other groups of soldiers closed ranks, shields overlapped, swords and javelins held in shaking hands. The circling carrion birds watched as this stronghold of armoured men was besieged by a rolling sea of enemies.

A lull in the battle. Men still died, but the initial clash dissipated into a handful of skirmishes and the dispatching of wounded. Tortured cries for mothers rang out in every language of the Empire. The soldier knew battle, and he knew that this lull was an inhalation before further exertion. The fight was not over. The forest seemed to hold its own breath, waiting for the next move.

It came from the head of the track. Thunder. The thunder of hooves.

German cavalry charged forth, pouring into the narrow space between the trees, sweeping up Romans who had survived three days of horror only to die trampled beneath hooves or spitted on the end of cavalry spears.

The knots of men broke in the face of this force, discipline replaced by the animal instinct to flee. There might be safety in the trees. They might yet live…

Some men resisted this urge. Forced it down with clenched teeth. They were the backbone of the legion. ‘Get back, you cunts! Get back!’ the centurion called, only to be silenced as he disappeared beneath a trampling steed.

The soldier’s group split apart. Only a half-dozen stood with him now. The survivors of his own section: men who had slept, ate and shat together so often they were almost of the same organism. Their solidarity now bought them respite, for the cavalry mounts swerved around the unyielding shields, leaving the diehards to go in search of easier or more glorious prey.

And there was nothing more glorious than a legion’s eagle. The silver totem was the soul of the legion. As the soldiers died in the dirt, or fled for the trees, the eagle wavered, the standard-bearer forced by wounds to his knees. The bearskin cloak about his shoulders was thick with matted blood.

The soldier saw the man sag, a witness to the last stand of the infantry who fell in defence of the eagle. Only when the standard-bearer made no further move to fight did the soldier realize that the man had died with his hand on the sacred staff. The boot of an enemy cavalry trooper was enough to push his body to the dirt. The wild-maned warrior hefted the totem into the air, cheering himself hoarse, and his countrymen broke from their slaughter to revel in the capture of one of Rome’s most sacrosanct possessions.

But the soldier was no longer watching the eagle.

He hadn’t turned away through anguish. Another of the standard-bearer’s charges passed through his vision. A charge that had slunk, unnoticed, into the deep green shadow of the forest.

It was a mule, and the soldier knew what the boxes on its sweat-shined flanks contained. The legion’s pay chests. In this forest of ghosts, they offered the soldier a promise of being reborn.

He took it.

I’d seen worse places to die.

It was a shaded grove of oaks, monolithic and ancient, the expected chorus of birdsong conspicuous by its absence. Between the high branches stretched a blue to match the eyes of the people born into this land of sweeping forests and angry rivers: the Germans.

I had met the first of them far from here, and though the faces of those warriors had blurred with time, I recognized their guttural growling language and their imposing physical traits: the thick beards, thicker shoulders and muscular limbs. Compared to my own, now nothing but gristle and sinew, they appeared god-like.

About their own gods, I had known nothing until this morning. Now illuminated, I wished only to go back to blissful ignorance.

Because the German gods enjoyed sacrifice. Human sacrifice.

I had been spared the sight of the act, mercifully unconscious of what was happening so close to where I rested my head on a pillow of dirt and fern leaves. It was the smell that drew me, the smell of cooked meat, and my hunger had overcome my inclination for solitude. I had approached what I presumed to be a campfire, intending to beg or steal some food, depending on the appearance of those at the feast.

What I had found was a banquet for the gods only. I counted six bodies in six charred wicker baskets, suspended above fires that were now nothing but ash. The bodies were roasted, shrunken, but the cross-slung leather belts on their hips told me that they were Roman soldiers. I knew because I had stood in the ranks myself. Six of their comrades were staked out to the floor, their feet touching to form a circle, bellies slit and entrails piled upon their chests.