Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

‘Shut it!’ Metella ordered with a thunderclap, stepping into the ring as if she would fight any dissenters. ‘He won fair and square. If you have a problem with it, you can stick your name down to fight him tomorrow!’

Plancus was then almost overwhelmed in a stampede, as a half-dozen indignant Romans rushed to him for just such an opportunity, anxious to restore both legion and national honour.

‘You’re a clever bastard,’ I grunted to Titus, watching the frenzied circus that he had whipped up with his comrades.

The big man shrugged. ‘We’re out here on a limb because it puts coins in senators’ pockets,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his granite jaw. ‘We’ve lost this war, Felix, but you don’t have to be on the winning side to be on the winning side.’

I knew those words were accurate, but also how they held true in the opposite case; where was victory for the soldier who died in supposed glory for the profit of an emperor and his senators?

‘Just be careful,’ I warned my friend. ‘You rub two sticks together long enough, you’ll get a fire.’

Titus waved my worries away with an open palm. ‘You can get in on it too?’ he offered.

I shook my head.

‘All right then. So what will you do?’

I had no good answer for him. Whether the enemy was in sight of our walls or not, we were under siege in a hostile province. Freedom of action was something that Arminius had taken from us, and so what choice did I have?

‘I’ll wait.’

I rubbed the chalk into my hands, the fine powder falling like the snow that now clung to the hillsides. Winter had come, but the gymnasium was hot from bodies and breath, my skin shining with sweat.

‘Again?’ my opponent asked me.

‘Again,’ I confirmed, and then stepped into the wrestling ring.

The fight was over as quickly as the last. The man was like the sea, always moving, and with a grace that belied his power. There was no doubting that strength now as he kicked my legs from under me and drove my snarling face into the dirt.

‘You’re too angry,’ he told me as he pulled me to my feet. ‘You come charging in like a boy that’s seen his first pair of tits. Control yourself, Corvus.’

I said nothing. I was angry. I woke angry, and I fell to sleep angry. Every moment of the day I was one wrong word or look away from lashing out. It made me angrier still that my friend could be so calm, so perfect, and yet beat me in the ring as if I were a child.

‘I used to be the one doing this to you ,’ I grumbled. ‘I hate losing, Marcus, even to you.’

My oldest friend saved me the mercy of pity. ‘Times change. Concentrate on wrestling instead of trying to take my head off, and maybe you’ll have a chance.’

‘You know it’s not your head I want.’ I spoke darkly, taking the offered cup of water.

‘I know.’

Our conversation lapsed there, but my mind was not so easily pushed into silence. Voices – all of my own creation – fought as angrily as I had wrestled to be heard: You’re a coward. Why are you here? You’re weak. You’re pathetic. Why did you—

‘Again,’ I snapped at my friend, desperate to fight, knowing no other way to shut off the voices.

His eyes narrowed as he took in my battered face. ‘Corvus, your nose is already ruined. Let’s just call it—’

‘Again!’ I boomed.

And so we fought. I let the anger consume me. I charged at my best friend with every intention of breaking his bones, and he used that weakness against me, turning me inside out with feints and lunges, planting blows against my skull that only enraged me further, causing snot and blood to bellow from my shattered nose.

‘Let her go, Corvus,’ he told me as a jab crashed into my eye socket.

I would not. Instead I roared. I charged. Without knowing how I got there, I was then on my front, the weight of my friend pinned against my back, driving the air from my lungs and the blood from my face.

‘Let her go,’ he said with a calm that had no place amidst the violence.

‘Fuck you,’ I spat into the dirt.

‘Let her go.’

‘Fuck you!’

And then I felt the fingers on my windpipe. I felt it close. I felt the breaths becoming ragged, and the panic in my mind as my vision closed in.

‘Fuck you. Fuck you,’ I gurgled, blacking out.

And then all was silent.

I couldn’t breathe. My mind was racing. Terrified.

I couldn’t breathe.

I was dreaming, I knew I was, and yet there was no escape. I was trapped within my mind, and with each rapid heartbeat, each shallow breath, I knew that I was panicking myself towards death. I tried to scream, but the sounds died in my closed throat. I tried to call out for my mother, for her , but there was no sound except the pulsing of blood in my skull.

I didn’t want to die like this, but if I didn’t wake up, I knew that I would.

Somehow, my mind, conscious yet locked in its dream state, knew how to wake. Arms flailing, I fought for the edge of my bunk. With all my strength, I pulled myself out and crashed on to the floor.

I woke. I cried for her .

Brando leaped to me and took hold of my shoulders. My chest began to heave as painfully as if I’d been kicked by a horse. My eyes were wild.

‘Felix!’ Brando said urgently. ‘ Felix! ’ he pressed, trying to pull me back into his world.

I heard the words, conscious now, but all I could think of was her .

‘Who was she?’ Stumps asked me.

We were atop the wall, yet another watch that stretched the day’s hours into an endless tedium. The fields ahead of us were empty, the only movement the birds that sought out scraps of tribesman in the abandoned trenches.

No answer was forthcoming, so my friend shrugged, his eyes on the crows. ‘It could be worse, I suppose.’

Still I said nothing. My own eyes were fixed on the cold horizon, where the endless forests appeared like spilled ink.

‘Titus says you’ve sorted it for me to go and work with him in the quartermaster’s?’ the veteran tried instead.

I gave a shallow nod.

‘I appreciate that, Felix, but I can still fight. We all have bad nights.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words fell away. Finally: ‘I’m so fucking tired of this,’ I confessed. ‘We can’t ever get away from it, can we? You close your eyes, pretend it doesn’t happen, and then it finds you in your dreams.’

‘We can drink?’ my friend offered helpfully. ‘Seems to be working all right for me,’ he bluffed.

‘Until it runs out.’ I shook my head. ‘What life is that, Stumps? Crawling around pissed like the village idiot. Is it what you pictured when you signed up to soldier?’

His look told me that it wasn’t. ‘What did you picture?’

‘I didn’t.’ It was the truth. ‘I didn’t know what I was joining, just what I was leaving.’

‘Her?’ he tried at last.

I didn’t answer.

We watched the feeding crows.

Days passed with guard duties and half-empty stomachs. Moods grew as dark as the brooding German skies. There was an unseen enemy beyond the horizon, but the soldier’s concern now was the battles he fought against appetite and boredom.

‘This is shit,’ Stumps grumbled after yet another stint on the walls. The previous day, Balbus had been sent to the surgeon when a cut on his hand had turned septic. Unable to hold a javelin, he was currently relieved of all but light duties, and so Stumps’s transfer to Titus had been cut temporarily short.

‘Better than being in the forest,’ Folcher said, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Forest or fort.’ Stumps shrugged, climbing for his bunk. ‘All the fucking same. People out to do us in, no pubs and no women.’