Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

‘Let us do that for you,’ Dog offered. ‘You get some food and rest.’

Balbus and Micon quickly followed the man’s example, Statius more grudgingly so, his face sour as he took hold of Stumps’s mail and sword. Then, as he pulled Stumps’s blade free of its sheath, I saw him sneer – the steel was clean. I expected the arrogant soldier to open his mouth, but following his beatings, Statius had the sense to keep it shut.

‘Food then sleep,’ I repeated to the men who’d accompanied me that night.

‘I’m going to see Titus,’ Stumps told me instead.

I put a hand on his shoulder. It was a friendly hand, but firm enough to hold him from the doorway. ‘Get some rest, Stumps. Titus isn’t going anywhere.’

He pouted. ‘I want a drink.’

‘I’ve gu-got a wineskin you can have,’ Balbus smiled. ‘It’s bu-behind my bunk. Go ahead.’

After a flare of his nostrils, Stumps did his best to muster a nod of gratitude for Balbus’s offer; then he slipped into the bunkroom.

My shoulders dipped a little with relief. I wanted to keep Stumps close. I wanted to ask him questions: how had he got himself on to the raiding party, and why? Having volunteered, why hadn’t he drawn blood when the Germans were at our mercy? These were all questions that needed to be asked alone, but for now my greater need was to keep the man in the sight and company of his section. Drunken solitude was increasingly his desire, and no good ever came of such a thing.

My loose gaze snapped from the wall as Dog spoke to me, smiling. ‘Go to bed, Felix. We’ll take care of this. You look fucked,’ he added, clearly with the best intentions.

He wasn’t wrong. Nervous excitement had carried me back to the fort, and so I had barely felt the aches and pains that now seeped from within my bones and into my muscles.

I managed to smile back at him. ‘I am.’

And so I crept into the bunkroom, which was lit by a single candle. In the near darkness I heard Stumps suckling from a wineskin like a hungry babe.

‘Felix,’ he whispered as I lay down on my own bed, ‘I didn’t kill anyone tonight.’

‘I know,’ I answered, hoping that my words sounded like a simple acknowledgment, and free of the judgment I had heard in his own. ‘We can talk about it tomorrow, if you like?’ I offered.

There was a long moment of silence.

‘Nah. I’m fine,’ he lied.

Brando and Folcher entered a second later. The night’s killing, and the talk of it, died with their heavy snores.

Or so I thought.

I shot upright in my bed, my head colliding with the wooden slats of the bunk above me.

‘Fuck!’ I cursed.

Reeling from that blow, I reached for my dagger as the screams that woke me continued to pierce the night.

‘Wake him up!’ I then ordered.

Brando grabbed hold of Stumps’s shoulders and shook him like a child. My friend’s shrieks were long and woeful.

‘Out of the way,’ I ordered, clapping my hands over Stumps’s mouth and nose. His body snapped from its dream state in desperate need of oxygen. As I saw the white eyes bulge open like a newborn foal’s, I pulled my hands away.

‘You bastard!’ he gasped.

‘You were screaming and thrashing. I was worried you’d fall out of your bunk.’

‘Much better that you suffocate me then, yeah?’ Stumps taunted, propping himself up on to his elbows as his chest heaved. ‘Where’s that wine?’ he finally demanded.

‘You fu-finished it,’ Balbus apologized.

‘Fuck’s sake. All right. Move out the way.’

Stumps made to get out of the bunk, but I stayed where I was. ‘Dawn’s still a way off, Stumps.’

‘Well, I think it’s fair to say I’m wide awake, thanks to your comforting skills.’

Brando laughed at the words, his thick chest heaving as he snorted. Something about the sound was contagious. Folcher was the first to pick it up, giggling like a virgin, and soon even Stumps himself was smiling. Perhaps we would have all fallen back to sleep, if it hadn’t been for what we heard next.

It was another scream, but without doubt this howl was born from physical pain, not imagined.

‘The prisoners?’ Folcher guessed.

‘Gods,’ Dog swore. ‘I’ve never heard one go for so long.’

Statius smiled in the candlelight. ‘Malchus knows what he’s doing.’

‘What are they du-doing to him?’ Balbus swallowed, a dry tongue running over his lips.

No one answered. For a long time our silence held, ears cocked to the sounds of the tormented cries.

Brando finally shrugged, pulling a thick cloak over his head. ‘I’m going to sleep.’ The other men who had risen from their bunks slowly followed his example. Eventually, I was left to stand alone beside Stumps. He looked at me from his bunk.

‘Put the light out and go to sleep,’ he told me. ‘Your face is hurting my eyes. I’d rather take my chances with the nightmares.’

The insult told me that, for the moment at least, my friend was restored to himself. Lying back on to my bed, I pulled the cloak tight about my ears. I wanted to rest. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to dream about a past life.

The screams didn’t care.

They echoed across the fort until dawn approached, and the time to stand-to arrived. They echoed as we stood guard on a wall that overlooked empty fields scarred by trenches. They echoed as we were relieved and filed back to our barrack block with drawn faces and sunken eyes.

‘Will you shut up?’ Stumps snapped, barking at the sky. This time, when he told me he was going to seek out Titus, I did not try to stop him. The agony of the tortured prisoners was seeping into my own mind, and I would not deny my friend the comfort of drink.

‘You coming with me?’ he grunted, desperate to be on his way.

I shook my head, hit suddenly by a pang of guilt and embarrassment, for I knew there was a place where I could seek out my own comfort, and a window to my past.

And so I went in search of her.

‘That’s a different one.’ Linza spoke quietly, her eyes on the floor as a shrill wail penetrated the October morning. ‘It sounds like a boy.’

I tried to swallow the biscuit that was now like lead in my mouth, thinking about the young German I had captured in the night, and how I had herded him towards his dreadful fate. Would it have made any difference if I let him run? Would sparing his life have cost the lives of my friends? Doubtful.

But then I thought of Arminius. How I had saved his life on the parade square when his uncle had tried to warn Varus of the prince’s treachery. How I had spared it when I stepped from the forest, a spear in my hand and the clear target of Arminius ahead of me. I had thrown myself into harm’s way to save lives I thought worthy before, and where had it led? Three legions rotted in the forest because of my sensibility. Suddenly, the rush of guilt and nausea slammed into me like a chariot. The half-chewed biscuit stuck in my throat as I choked.

‘Are you all right?’ Linza asked me as the crumbs fell on to the floor of the empty barrack block.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied, like every other soul within the fort.

‘You turned white.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Here, take some water.’

‘I said I’m fine,’ I spat, angry and disgusted at my actions that had led to this misery, then instantly nervous that my words would be seen by Linza as an attack on her.

I needn’t have worried.

‘Just don’t waste your food,’ the Batavian girl warned me, pushing her blond hair back over her shoulders. ‘German winters are long. You look like a skeleton. You should eat.’

‘Now the fort commander’s ordered half-rations I don’t think anyone’s getting any fatter.’

Linza shrugged and pulled a face. ‘There’s always someone who gets fat, even when everyone else starves. That’s just the way the world is,’ she answered pragmatically. ‘My father said so. He travelled a lot.’