Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

‘There’re women here,’ the Batavian offered.

‘You seen a decent one? They only managed to sneak out of the forest because they looked like boar.’

‘The one that Felix talks to is nice.’ Folcher smiled. ‘The Batavian,’ he explained, wondering at my sudden unease.

‘I like her company,’ I explained to Stumps’s sly look.

‘The company of her tits in your face,’ he leered. ‘Good for you, Felix. At least someone’s getting some fanny.’

‘Not like that,’ I answered, pulling off my sandals. ‘I haven’t even seen her for days.’

‘Probably found some new cock, then,’ my friend teased me, enjoying my discomfort. ‘Maybe young Micon here? You look like a fine swordsman.’

The boy soldier, an admitted virgin, blushed at the attention.

Brando smirked. ‘There’re whores in the fort.’

‘That’s why you have stopped fucking your mattress?’ Folcher laughed.

‘So it’s mattresses as well as goats for you lads, is it?’ Stumps grinned, leaning over the edge of his bunk. ‘I’ll keep that in mind when I retire and open my brothel.’

‘You’d retire in Germany?’ Dog put in.

Stumps recoiled in horror. ‘Fuck me, Dog, we’re supposed to be on half-rations. How come it smells like you’ve eaten a sack of onions? And no. The only way I’m staying in this shithole is if some goat-shagger nails my head on to a tree.’

‘They do that.’ Micon spoke up without emotion.

‘They do, my friend,’ Stumps granted. ‘Civilization for me. Back to Italy. No more forests. No more snow.’

‘I’ll come and visit.’ Folcher laughed again, enjoying the fantasy. ‘I will show my children Rome.’

‘Why not?’ Stumps rolled on to his back. ‘A nice picnic whilst we watch a few executions in the arena. A proper Roman family day out.’

‘Felix,’ a voice called from the barrack room’s doorway. It belonged to a young soldier. Dressed in helmet and mail, he was acting as the company runner. ‘Centurion H wants all section commanders to his quarters for briefing.’

I looked down at the pair of sandals I had unstrapped from my feet. Sleep would have to wait.

Stumps snorted. ‘Privileges of rank. Ask him if I can go back to Titus.’

‘Missing life in the stores?’ Brando asked.

‘Those blankets won’t stack themselves,’ Stumps answered as I left the room and made my way to the centurion’s accommodation.

‘Get comfortable, lads,’ our centurion offered to the small assembly of section commanders. His tone was reserved; H was usually a genial soul, and I wondered at the cause of his change in humour. Whatever the reason, I doubted that it would be good.

‘Right, lads. General situation is still the same. Only sighting we’ve had of the enemy is a few mounted scouts, and we expect they’re keeping eyes on us constantly from Bald Crest Hill on the northern flank. Visible fires at night seem to confirm they’re in that area, but not in any force that we need to worry about.’

‘Any news from our own scouts?’ a section commander asked, referring to the two men who had left the camp with Malchus a week before, and who had been sent onwards to the Rhine in an attempt to rouse the legions there into effecting our rescue.

‘You’ll know if there is,’ H shrugged. ‘It’ll be like a triumphal march by the time everyone comes out to hear what they’ve got to say. But no, I’m afraid. The situation’s the same, boys. Germans out there. Us in here.

‘Now look,’ he went on, his brow creasing. ‘It should be that, with us in here, and them out there, nobody in this fort is dying. Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case. One of the First Century lads got stabbed by a mate of his last night, and bled to death in the barrack room. He died because he was complaining about someone’s fucking snoring – don’t laugh, you fuckers – and we cannot afford to be losing blokes for that kind of bollocks.’

‘Noted, boss.’ One of the veterans smiled. ‘Beatings only for snoring.’

‘I’m fucking serious,’ H warned, trying to suppress his own dark grin. ‘I don’t want to lose men to the Germans. I sure as fuck do not want to be losing men over shit like that.’

‘First Century lads have always been nuts,’ the veteran offered, and H shrugged in agreement.

‘Even so. Keep a close eye on your boys. Keep the discipline. I’m not one for bullshit, you know that, but I’m going to start doing snap inspections of the block and the lads’ kit. Extra duties for anyone who’s not up to standard. Section commanders included,’ he added with a smile.

After a few dramatic groans from the veterans, the men were dismissed. I hung back.

‘He can go back to the QM’s once you get Balbus back from the hospital,’ H told me in answer to my question on Stumps’s transfer. ‘Could be a few days though. His finger looked bloody horrible when I went to see him.’

It did not surprise me that H would visit one of his men in the fort’s hospital, even for an innocuous injury. His leadership pushed me to chastise myself for not calling in on Balbus myself that day.

‘Got it from a splinter,’ I told him as I turned for the door.

‘Hang on a minute, Felix.’ The centurion’s tone was friendly, but it was still an order. ‘I’ve got my own question about the QM.’

I held my tongue.

‘It’s all through the cohort that you can have a good night in one of the stores down there – wine and tits – but no matter who I ask, everyone’s pretending like it doesn’t exist.’ He paused then, trying to read me. I knew that my face would be nothing but a scar-crossed mask.

‘I’m not stupid, Felix, I know why they don’t want an officer turning up, but officers need wine and tits too. Seeing as you arranged your friend’s transfer so easily, I’m wondering, if you and the QM are such old pals, whether maybe you could vouch for me? Leave rank at the door, and all that good stuff.’

‘If I can,’ I began, keeping up my guard, ‘then I’ll be glad to.’

‘Good man.’ H grinned, his spirits seemingly restored. ‘If we can die together we can drink together is the way I see it. Not that I plan on the first eventuality. Tomorrow night then, if you don’t mind? We’ve got the walls tonight. Try not to let any of the boys fall asleep or kill themselves out of boredom. It’s going to be another dull watch.’

He was wrong.

No one knew when the girl had died, only that her young life had come to an end in a bloodstained alleyway, her corpse then dragged and stuffed into a latrine. Gruff soldiers laughed and joked that the civilian who found the body had shit herself.

I was not one of the men laughing.

Our section was on the walls when the news of the latest killing spread around the fort, the army’s chain of whispers leading from the patrolling soldiers who attended to the girl’s body, to the guard commander of the watch, and finally to the eager ears of the men on the battlements.

I might not have been laughing, but I was the most enthusiastic amongst the guard to hear every detail of the body, no matter how grim, and my hurried questions drew peculiar looks from my comrades, who must have wondered why I wanted to know such things. Doubtless they thought me deranged, but I was not seeking the sickening facts from morbid curiosity, but from fear. Try as I might, from the moment I had heard the first whisper of death, I had not been able to shake the idea that the butchered girl was Linza. No matter how hard I tried to push the images away, the picture of her cut-up body floated in front of my eyes.

‘You sure she had brown hair?’ I pressed the soldiers who were relieving us of our duty.