Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

It was the final action that caused me the most hardship. I had learned to live with the brutal conditions of the continent, and I fancied that not even a German winter could match those I had endured fighting on Pannonian mountainsides. I could master shaking limbs, quivering jaw and chattering teeth, but what I could not master was the chariot race of thoughts that wheeled around my skull as if it were the Circus Maximus: an endless loop of reproach and regret.

‘Tell me a story,’ I told Stumps, desperate for distraction.

He looked at me with surprise. I’d never asked for such a thing before. ‘I’ll tell you a story. It’s about a soldier who stands shivering his balls off in the cunting rain whilst his dickheaded officers sit in their quarters drinking wine and dreaming up new ways to fuck us over.’

‘Cheer up, Stumps. We’ll be at the Rhine in two days,’ Livius tried, the youthful section commander yet to realize that the time to worry about a soldier like Stumps was when he was not complaining.

‘Yeah, I can just see us doing that,’ Stumps scowled. ‘I mean we’ve had great preparation for it, haven’t we? Standing on a wall. And then there’re the civvies. I’m sure they’re all great fucking athletes. Olympians. We’ll probably reach the Rhine by morning.’ Sarcasm dripped from him with the rain.

‘Don’t you want to get home?’ Titus tried instead, his words as hard and as flat as hammered steel.

‘Course I do,’ Stumps allowed.

‘Then save your energy for the road.’ His friend was firm but gentle.

‘Here comes Albus,’ Brando noted, and I saw the curdled face of our centurion appear before the ranks.

‘Stand down. Back to your rooms,’ he ordered.

A chorus of groans and questions was launched like arrows in return, demanding why we had been kept shivering in the elements.

‘I don’t fucking know!’ Albus answered. ‘We stay on immediate notice. Fall out.’

Entering the room, Stumps made straight for the stove. Its embers were still glowing, and he hastily set about reviving them.

‘What the fuck was that about?’ he grumbled. ‘“Oh, go on lads”,’ he mimicked. ‘“Go stand out in the fucking rain. Not like you’ve got anything better to do!”’

‘Maybe Caedicius got cold feet,’ Brando suggested, stripping off his sodden cloak.

‘I’ve got cold balls, never mind feet,’ Stumps shot back. ‘My cock’s halfway inside me.’

‘Makes a change from fully inside a Syrian.’ Titus smiled as he slapped his friend gently over the head. ‘I don’t think he got cold feet,’ he went on. ‘Him and Malchus probably just wanted to test the garrison. Make sure every unit was ready.’

‘I think the fact that we’re all half frozen is proof of that,’ Stumps replied as he stepped back from the growing flames of the stove. ‘What do you think, Felix?’

I expected that Titus was right, and Caedicius had wanted to test the readiness of his men. Such a trial was unwanted – even considered an insult – by those who had sprung ready when summoned, only to have to stand shivering, but there were doubtless some in the garrison who would not have reacted as smoothly to the order, and they could now be put on notice, and watched. It was just another part of life under the eagles, another part of war, and I hoped that my sullen answer would explain as much to my comrade.

‘It’s soldiering,’ I told him.

And then our wait began anew.

If confusion about the conspiracies of our commanders was a part of soldiering, then waiting was what was at the profession’s core. ‘Hurry up and wait’ was a common refrain for a reason, and a legionary would spend far more time in his career passive and immobile than he would in the thrust of a campaign. Even invasions of enemy territory were preceded by long periods of inactivity, then broken with a few short moments of frenzied action. In battle, a soldier could stand looking at his enemy for hours before the commanders made their decision to attack, their orders were passed, and the men found the courage to close the distance and fight. Then it would all be over in a horrid, blood-soaked blur.

Titus knew the truth of all this, and absorbed the delay like the veteran he was, unquestioning and uncaring. Stumps occupied himself with second-guessing our leaders and doubting the ethics of their sexual practices. Micon and Brando passed it in silence, while the Batavian broke it mostly to offer prayer to his gods, who he still feared were angry with him for the murder of Statius, the subsequent death of Balbus being just a part to their punishment. Brando would be far from the only one within the camp to offer prayer, and more, and I expected that the space beneath the altars would be thick with gifts and offerings for the gods, beseeching them for deliverance from what was to come.

Knuckles rapped on the door of our barrack room. ‘Prepare to move,’ a voice called over the wind and rain.

‘Here we go then.’ Stumps smiled. ‘Think this one’s the real thing?’

‘It’s getting dark,’ Titus answered. ‘We go now, or it won’t be tonight.’

We didn’t tell each other good luck. We didn’t say goodbyes. We simply met the looks of our comrades. We all knew what was in our minds. A knowing nod or a touch on the arm was enough, and then we stepped forth into the storm, and fell into the ranks of the century, Livius checking all the men of his section dutifully for the correct equipment and its proper carriage. All, that was, except for myself and Titus. Livius recognized us as the most salted men in the century, and that experience both awed and frightened him.

I knew what was in the young man’s mind. I had once been him, the ambitious soldier with potential. I had looked at the veterans’ cragged faces, cold eyes, and wanted to know what had made them like that. I wanted to know how I could become like that. A person to be feared. A person whose reputation could, by itself, protect all those around them.

The wind and rain had kept their strength, but the light of day was losing its battle. Black storm clouds were growing darker still as dusk came over the soon-to-be-abandoned fort, a blanket pulled over a corpse.

Rain bounced from the dirt that was already slippery beneath our feet. I caught Stumps’s smile and look; remind you of anything? I read in his dark eyes.

There were no torches. No lights. Centurion Albus made constant headcounts of the men in front of him – a nervous tic. He was not the only one in search of ways to distract his mind from fear, and despite the rain the ranks were thick with the sound of dark jokes and forced laughter.

I looked at our centurion, and wished that it was H who would be leading us into the night. Lying in the dirt with someone for two weeks – even in near silence – breeds a strong bond, particularly when it is under the nose of an enemy army, and it was with sadness that I was denied a chance to see the good man before our departure. H’s place was in the van with Caedicius, and I could only assume that the scouting knowledge of myself and Titus was now deemed either irrelevant or unworthy, because alongside a quarter-cohort of Syrian archers, our century would form the rearguard.

‘Century.’ Albus spoke in the darkness, catching me in my thoughts. ‘By the centre, quick march.’

With those simple words, the Fort of Aliso was abandoned.

We abandoned the fort like a guilty lover. Only because we had been told as much did I know that we were the last men to pass through the western gate and to strike out towards the Rhine. What was ahead or around us was nothing but a guess, the night’s storm robbing me of awareness of all but what was within two javelin lengths of me.