Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

But he could not, and the fateful sneer fell from his lips.

‘Open your eyes, Brando,’ he hissed. ‘Folcher died for nothing.’

Not even Titus had the strength and speed to stop the Batavian. Brando crossed the table like a leopard, taking Statius down in a flurry of thrashing arms and legs. He was pulled away within seconds, but those short moments were enough – blood pooled on the floor.

‘Fuck, Brando!’ Stumps shouted. ‘What have you done?’

I looked down at Statius. He lay frozen on the floor, blood on his lips, dark eyes fixed and rigid.

‘Brando…’ H whispered, his shocked gaze on the dagger that had been driven deep into the Roman’s heart.

Statius was dead.

Titus was the first to recover his senses, and to assess the danger of the situation that had now presented itself on his doorstep.

I wondered what was running through the big man’s mind. The death of Statius was a murder, nothing less, and Titus was surely weighing up the chances of avoiding attention being brought to his enterprises through a cover-up. Inevitably, that brought his eyes to Centurion H, the one man who had not been through it with us in the forest – Brando was one of us through companionship in enslavement. H was the weak link. A good man, but an outsider. An unknown quantity. A danger to our tribe.

I saw Titus’s hand creep towards the dagger at his belt.

‘How do you want this to play out?’ he coolly asked the officer.

Moments ago, H had been drunk. Now, with the body of one of his soldiers at his feet, the man was as sober as rock. ‘I join him if I try and report this, don’t I?’ he answered pragmatically, knowing what was on Titus’s mind. ‘Gods, Brando, did you have to kill him?’

The Batavian grimaced. There was no trace of remorse on his face, or in his words. ‘You heard what he said about Folcher. Fuck him. If he was still breathing, I’d cut open his throat.’

‘I’ll just tell that to Malchus and the prefect, shall I?’ H shook his head. ‘You know what they’ll do to you for this?’

Brando knew. ‘I’m not afraid to die.’

‘No one’s dying,’ Titus cut in.

‘No one else, anyway.’ Stumps tutted, looking at the leaking corpse. ‘Fuck him, anyway. He was a piece of shit.’

‘This is the legions, Stumps,’ H said with a heat that was at odds with his usual passivity. ‘Killing someone because they are a piece of shit is a little outside of fucking regulations!’

‘So what do you want to do?’ Stumps countered. ‘Lose Brando, too? You want to see him lose his head?’

‘Of course I don’t.’ H cursed, knowing that the penalty for the murder would be death, and nothing less. ‘And even if I did want that, I’m not stupid enough to think I’d be leaving here alive.’

Silence prevailed over the scene. It told H that his dark prediction was accurate.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Titus eventually said. ‘So long as we use some common sense.’

‘Common sense being that we forget we were ever here?’ H guessed. ‘That’s great, Titus, but there’s this little problem lying at our fucking feet.’

‘Easy enough to make him disappear,’ Stumps piped up.

‘Do you have any idea how a legion runs?’ H chided the veteran. ‘It’s ledgers and accounts, Stumps. He can’t just “disappear”.’

I had listened to the conversation up until now with near disinterest. Blood and death were the constant of my life, and the brutal truth was that I had not liked Statius, and my only regret for the end of his life was that it endangered a man that I cared about – a brave man, who did not deserve to lose his head for silencing the insults of a coward.

‘Statius was a shit.’ I spoke up, surprising the others. ‘And he was a coward. Look at the wound on his arm, H.’

After a moment’s hesitation, H began to unwrap the bandages on the body’s arm. Statius’s limbs were limp. It would be some time until his body hardened.

‘Look at that cut,’ I told my centurion. ‘That’s from a dagger. You can see how he would have drawn the blade across. He did it himself to get out of the fighting.’

‘He said it was a Syrian arrow.’ For the first time, H looked at the body with a trace of contempt.

‘I knew he was a fucking coward.’ Stumps spat, his spittle landing at the body’s feet.

Titus met my eye, then. He knew that I’d brought up the self-inflicted wound for more reason than to heap shame on to a cooling corpse.

‘You want to stick this on them?’ he asked me.

I nodded. ‘Everyone except us thinks he took a Syrian arrow. Won’t be hard to believe he went looking for payback.’

‘Not like he could keep his fucking mouth shut,’ Brando grunted.

‘I don’t know.’ H shook his head. ‘Half the garrison’s at the Syrians’ throats as it is. A fuck-up during battle? Maybe that they can understand. But this?’

‘What’s the alternative?’ Titus asked. ‘Either way, the civvies and half the Romans here hate the Syrians. What’s to be gained by you losing a good man?’

‘I’m not afraid to die, Titus,’ Brando stated again. ‘I’m glad that I killed him. When I die, I’ll laugh about it with Folcher. If saving my head means more fighting in the fort, then that isn’t something I want. I did what I did, and I’ll take my punishment.’

‘No one’s asking you, you dense German dickhead,’ Stumps dismissed the Batavian. ‘I’m not losing another mate.’

The harsh silence fell again. All eyes rested on Statius, and the dagger in his chest.

‘What will it be, H?’ Titus finally asked the officer.

H continued to look at the floor for a long time. ‘You’d take your punishment?’ he finally asked of Brando, raising his gaze.

The Batavian met his look with unblinking eyes – he would.

‘And I believe you,’ H conceded, with more than a little admiration for the killer. ‘But if you lose your head, Brando, I’ve got a feeling that I’d be joining you in the afterlife soon after.’ He cast his eyes over the assembled, grim faces. Brando’s comrades. His family. Men who would kill for him. Even an officer they admired.

‘You’re a good man, H.’ Stumps shrugged, trying to shake off the truth of our primitive instincts.

‘I’m a realistic one,’ the centurion snapped. ‘Statius isn’t coming back, and if he was a coward, then fuck him. But this is the legion, boys; we kill who we’re told to, not who we want to.’

He was right, of course. Kill a thousand and you would be a hero, but cut the wrong throat and you would be condemned a murderer.

‘I can’t be with you lot after this.’ H shook his head, touching his fresh bandages. ‘I’m in no shape to fight anyway. I can’t promise I can keep you together – you and what’s left of the century will probably get split up to boost the others.’

‘You’re not a bad soldier for doing this, H,’ I offered, seeing that he was coming to his conclusion, and one that sat badly with him.

A ghost of the man’s former smile crept on to his weathered lips. ‘Good or bad doesn’t matter on the frontier, Felix. Are you alive, or dead? That’s all that counts.’

Those words were true, and Statius was now amongst the fallen. With tight faces and nervous movements, we set about ensuring that his end would be attributed to others.

‘Here.’ Titus returned from a storeroom, a saw and an axe in his hands. ‘Stumps, take Micon and watch the front.’

H grimaced, taking in the tools in the big man’s hands. ‘Time for me to go.’

Titus shook his head. ‘You stay until it’s over.’ What did rank matter when murder was concerned?

‘I can’t be a part of this,’ the centurion asserted. ‘There has to be a line somewhere.’