Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

I saluted and left the room. Early autumn sunlight hit my face as I stepped through the doorway. It was beautiful, but as I closed my eyes to embrace it, I caught the sound of screams – the wounded outside the walls still toiled in their agony. I tried to let the thought of them slip from my mind, thinking instead of what Malchus had told me.

Be careful.

He had no idea how close to the truth he was. If I survived Arminius’s siege, my past was only a chance encounter away. Whilst I remained in the Empire, I lived on the precipice. For the first time in days I thought of Britain beyond the sea. Instantly I felt the familiar pull to break free of Rome’s chains, and to chase the ghost of a new life beneath the white cliffs of that island. To chase the ghost of the one blissful memory in my past.

I snapped from my daydream. The screams would not cease. Before I could ever be rid of them, I would have to survive.

The hillside was a carpet of plant life, deep green and vibrant. I sat high up in its reaches, the rocky clearing a refuge since my childhood. Below my sanctuary stretched the sea, its purest shades of blue teased by the wind.

‘I don’t want to leave here,’ I told my friend.

He sat beside me on the stone on which we’d once carved our names. His face was handsome and vital in profile. ‘You don’t have to.’

I snorted a laugh. We both knew it was a lie, and so instead of speaking I strained my eyes to stare hard at the horizon, willing them to see what was beyond the waters. Willing myself to see the majesty of Rome.

‘You’ll go there one day,’ my companion told me. My most loyal friend, he had always known what was in my mind.

‘I don’t know if I want to,’ I answered, surprising us both.

‘Why?’

I thought then about love, and expectation. I thought about dreams, and hope, and how they never survived the reality of our lives. Did I want to shatter an illusion?

‘What are we doing up here, Marcus?’ I said instead. ‘This is home. We shouldn’t be here.’

A soft laugh, and then my friend turned to face me, revealing the side of his face that had been hidden.

I jumped back as terror shot through me – his jaw had been unhinged from a sword’s bite. It flapped useless and red beneath his face.

‘Don’t you miss it?’ he asked me, his voice now rasping. With each breath, his thick tongue lifted below his opened mouth.

I recoiled, reaching desperately for my weapon.

I found nothing.

‘Don’t you miss it?’ he asked again.

‘What are you doing here?’ I gasped.

He stood in answer. A hand held against his split stomach was all that kept him together.

‘I miss it.’ His voice grated, eyes wandering from me to the horizon. ‘I miss the sea. I miss the hills. I miss the wind.’

‘Marcus…’

His stare shot back to me, eyes full of furious vengeance. ‘I miss my sisters. I miss my parents. I miss my friends…’

‘Marcus…’

‘Do you miss your friends, Corvus? Do you miss your friends?’

He stood over me now. Blood from his wounds dripped on to my face.

It was cold.

‘Do you miss me, Corvus?’

‘Marcus…’ I stammered, beginning to cry. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘DO YOU MISS ME?’ he roared.

And then the droplets became a downpour, the blood cascading over my face, washing into my eyes, choking me as it clogged my throat.

I was dying. Drowning.

I tried to scream.

I tried to cry out.

Marcus…

But there was only blood.

It was Brando who had thrown the water over me. I woke gasping, seeing the Batavian look back at me with a wide-eyed Folcher on his shoulder.

‘I told you to just let him get on with it,’ a voice grunted. It was Stumps, lying flat on his own bunk. ‘Mattress is fucked now.’

Brando ignored him, and looked apologetically from me to the empty bucket. ‘It used to work with my father.’

I swung my feet from my bed and on to the concrete floor of our barrack block. Micon’s snores droned from the bed above me. ‘How long was I asleep?’

‘Six hours,’ Brando told me. ‘It’s almost dusk. The raiding party’s beginning to form up,’ he added, and I noticed then that both Batavians were wearing their armour.

‘You’re not coming,’ I told them flatly.

Brando ignored me. Instead he passed me a bowl of hot soup and a wedge of bread.

‘You’re not coming,’ I insisted.

‘With respect, Felix, we lost hundreds of our brothers in the forest. We’ll do what we like.’

I didn’t try to argue. Not yet. Instead I quickly finished the food, grateful that I had something to concentrate on instead of the blood that pounded inside my skull, and the lingering touch of the nightmare.

‘I heard you volunteered to go on this raid.’ Stumps spoke up from his bed. I said nothing. ‘You’re a fucking idiot, Felix. Stop looking for ways to get yourself killed.’

I had no desire to argue with my comrade, but I felt the need to calm him. It could be the last time that I saw him, and if this was to be the parting of our ways, I wanted it to be on good terms.

‘I’m just going as a guide.’

‘You’re guiding yourself into a hole in the dirt.’

‘I’ll see you in a few hours.’

Stumps snorted at that, and rolled on to his side, his face hidden from me.

‘I’ll see you in a few hours,’ I repeated; then I walked into the dusk, collecting my short sword as I went.

Folcher spoke up. ‘Felix. Your armour.’ Having been fed and given some measure of rest, the Batavian had finally found his tongue; it was thicker in its handling of Latin than Brando’s.

I shook my head. ‘Not for this. Light and silent.’ I hoped my words would encourage the men to remain behind me, to discard their own armour, but they stayed on my heels as I made my way towards the western gate.

The civilians I passed on our way were cowed and fearful. Their manner surprised me, given our victorious slaughter of the dawn.

‘Did something happen?’ I asked Brando.

‘Nothing unexpected,’ he answered cryptically. Folcher was only slightly more helpful.

‘Arminius was killing.’

I asked them to be more specific. The actions of the day could affect the course of the raid.

‘Two dozen horsemen came out of his camp,’ Brando explained. ‘They stopped just out of the archers’ range. They had heads on their spear-points.’

News of the grotesque display was not surprising. Arminius would want to dampen the Roman spirits that had been raised by the morning’s repulse of his attack. I hoped that the owners of the severed heads had not suffered too greatly before the parade, but knowing the enemy, the deaths of the victims would have been long and agonizing.

Sword in my own hand, with bloodshed imminent, I thought then about how quickly it could all end. How years of a soldier’s life, and all the memories and moments he had treasured, could cease far from his home surrounded by strangers, and in a strange land. How mothers would never know that their boys cried for their comfort as life slipped away into dirt or sand. The families of the fallen would never know the detail of their loved ones’ end, and that, at least, was a mercy.

In the fading light I saw the body of the raiding party forming up. Drawing closer I took in their faces. All were volunteers, and it showed: narrow eyes and set jaws. The mark of men set on killing.

I sought out the crest of Centurion Malchus. He found me first. He was inconspicuous in his dress – a simple tunic. His weapons were sheathed in the scabbards on his crossed belts, his skin darkened with dirt. All about us, the men of the raiding party followed his example.