Siege Read online

  Geraint Jones

  * * *

  SIEGE

  Contents

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part Three

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  SIEGE

  Geraint Jones deployed as an infantry soldier on three tours of duty to Iraq and Afghanistan. For his actions in Basra, Geraint was awarded the General Officer Commanding’s Commendation. Upon leaving the military, Geraint worked to protect commercial shipping against Somali and Nigerian based piracy. He now writes full-time and can be found across social media @grjbooks.

  To Dad

  Prologue

  The soldier was dying. Wounds and starvation were bringing him to his knees. Death had shadowed him from the moment he had entered the forest, and through a thousand cuts and days of agony it now reached out to claim its victim.

  The soldier spat in its face.

  He could feel it on his heels – it snapped at them. Grasped at him. Its cold touch was on his shoulders. He ran from this cloying force, every painful mile of the race worn on his uniform like a decoration. Every rip, every stain told a story.

  It wasn’t a happy one.

  What was left of his clothing was torn and filthy; a broken sandal flapped against a foot rife with blisters.

  As the soldier broke through the forest’s branches, the final stitches of his footwear pulled away. He cursed as his bare foot hit wet grass and slid outwards. Feeling the screaming of his tendons that warned of rupture, he gave into gravity. His body slammed down on to the slope, where it gathered momentum. The man grimaced as he felt a sharp stone rake across his back, and then he hit the ditch, feet plunging into the stagnant water. He used his battered knees to absorb the impact, his backside sinking down towards his ankles, the breath forced out of him as the cold water reached his waist.

  Instantly, the soldier looked up the slope.

  His eyes were wide. He was scared – very scared – but it was not a fear born of cowardice. For the past few days, his life had been measured by hours and miles. The fact that he drew breath meant that he had won the race so far, but the broken sandal, and now the slip, had cost him time.

  He spat, and prayed that it would not cost him his life.

  The soldier searched his surroundings. There was no sign of them, but that meant nothing. The men that chased him were mounted, and this was their land. They could predict where he would run, and be there to greet him with spear-points and smiles. Maybe, if he was lucky, they’d be forced to kill him in the chase. If they caught him … He spat again to clear that image from his head. The soldier still carried a blade, albeit a short dagger. It was no match for a sword, let alone a cavalryman’s spear, but it would be good enough to nick his own throat and deny the enemy their entertainment.

  The soldier scooped up a mouthful of ditch water to slake his thirst. ‘Fucking goat-fuckers,’ he growled.

  The words and the rage warmed him. He was intelligent enough to be scared, but he was also angry enough to be dangerous. ‘Fucking goat-fuckers,’ he mumbled again, looking out in frustration across the open ground ahead of him.

  It was cultivated farmland, seemingly abandoned now that blood was flowing in the province. To attempt to cross such a killing ground was an invitation to the afterlife, and so the soldier knew what he must do to reach the smudge of smoke creeping up on the horizon.

  He would have to crawl.

  Day became night. Night grew to dawn. Hour after hour, the soldier moved through the ditches like a rat. Farmland became a patchwork of fields and wooded groves. Concealment became easier, but the soldier’s vision began to swim from fatigue. The thought of a forest of corpses kept his limbs moving.

  At some point during the second night he collapsed on to his face. When he woke in daylight he tasted blood. A tooth came away from the gum. The soldier threw it into the grass, angry at his body for giving way. Angry because it was a sign of the end.

  And then he saw the smoke.

  It was no smudge now, but a stark tower of soot that rose from behind thick wooden walls. Thick wooden walls that were studded with guard towers set beside an open gate.

  An open gate.

  The soldier’s stomach lurched into his throat. No!

  ‘Close it!’ he tried to shout, but the words fell pathetically from his lips. He stumbled, cursed, crawled. The fires within him began to burn stronger. He had come so far. Too far to fail.

  The soldier dug his fingernails into the dirt. Finally, words formed: ‘Close it, you idiots!’ he roared. ‘Close the gate!’

  But it was too late.

  He could hear the hoof beats. He could feel them through the soil.

  Bastards! he screamed in his mind. Fucking goat-fucking bastards!

  In that moment the soldier knew that it would be death for him. He could no longer run from it, not even crawl from it, and so he drew his blade, pushed himself on to his knees, and saw the horsemen for the first time.

  He tried to swear, but his tongue had become dry at the sight of them: a charging wall of armour and beast. A tide of murder.

  The soldier drove his dagger into the dirt, and gave himself to death.

  Part One

  * * *

  1

  I thought I knew fear.

  I had seen it: men screaming and wailing, bodies whole but minds shattered through combat. I had smelt it: the piss, shit and puke that came with every battle. I had felt it: my muscles dancing and quivering like netted fish. I had even tasted it: the rank acid that burned my throat as my insides churned and retched.

  Yes, after years of bloodshed – years of the butchery I was told was soldiering – I had thought I knew fear.

  I was wrong.

  It was not battle itself that now had me shaking like a child, a dribble of tears cutting paths throug
h the grime and blood coating my hollow cheeks.

  It was what was to follow.

  I stood in a field of corpses, the carpet of dead so thick that a man could step from one body to another as children would dance on stones in a river. I watched as these cold Roman bodies were hacked apart by the German blades and feasted upon by crows that owed allegiance to none but the gods.

  We numbered a few hundred. A few hundred miserable, half-starved, blood-drenched creatures. The sole survivors of a Roman expeditionary force that had marched into Germany with the might of three legions, only to be torn apart inside an endless, vengeful forest. Brutal hurricanes of wind and rain had been followed by murderous storms of German steel, and on those blades I had seen my comrades die. Only Stumps, right ear half hanging from his head, stood beside me now.

  Yes, I had thought I knew fear, but no skirmish or battle could compare with the terror that now filled my mind, because it was no longer death that I dreaded.

  It was life.

  The life of a prisoner.

  The life of a slave.

  ‘We have to escape,’ I whispered to Stumps.

  My comrade stared back blankly.

  I had not fought my way through the war in Pannonia, and through Arminius’s treachery in the forest, to live and die a slave. ‘We have to escape,’ I repeated.

  ‘You’re right,’ I heard behind me. The Latin words were accented, and I turned to see the face of a Batavian auxiliary, one of the light-infantry soldiers recruited into the army from provinces under Rome’s control.

  The man was tall, thickset, with a scruff of blond beard covering his face and throat. Batavians were as German as the men who guarded us, but keen allies of Rome; they had chosen the losing side of this battle.

  The man spoke to me, his blue eyes wild and lively. ‘We have to act soon, whilst we have the strength.’ A fighter, who could not conceive of defeat even when the savage evidence of it surrounded him.

  I said nothing, simply looking towards the ring of warriors that watched us as wolves eye a tethered goat. Cries of agony rang out from the few Roman officers who had not yet succumbed to their torturers. German jeers rose with each scream.

  ‘No,’ I told the stranger. ‘Look at them. Their blood’s up. Their energy. And look at us.’ We were the opposite, beaten down and dying on our feet. ‘We have to wait for the moment. Gather our strength. They’re taking us as slaves, and slaves are only useful if they can work. They’ll have to feed us eventually.’

  The Batavian snorted in frustration, but any man could see that action in our present position would result in certain, drawn-out death. ‘And until then?’

  I gave no reply, because he didn’t need one. The man just needed to be heard. To be on the offensive, at least mentally, whilst others gave in to fate. He knew as well as I that our crowd of prisoners would become thinner by the hour as men died of wounds, exhaustion, hunger and thirst. This was a battlefield, not a slave market; we would be marched away from here, and many of us would fall.

  The Batavian spoke, breaking me out of my dark thoughts. ‘Something’s happening.’

  Orders were being barked. The German army was stirring.

  ‘They’re getting ready to move,’ my new companion translated.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him, knowing that to survive I would have to look beyond myself.

  ‘Brando.’ He then gestured to a pair of Batavians who sat silent on the soil. ‘This is Folcher and Ekkebert. We’re from the same cohort.’

  ‘Felix. This is Stumps. Same section.’ I didn’t need to explain to him what had happened to the rest of our comrades. Rufus had disappeared from our camp and was found hanged from a tree, his innards piled beneath his swaying feet. Chickenhead, the salted veteran, had died attacking the enemy’s final barricade. Young Cnaeus had bled to death as I stood helpless above him, blood bubbling from his opened throat. My centurion, Pavo, had vanished beneath the clattering hooves of an enemy horse. Of Moonface, and the boy soldier Micon, there was no sign. Titus, commander of our eight-man section, had melted into the forest when the army was shattered and all hope was lost.

  ‘Boys.’ Brando gripped his friends by the shoulder. ‘On your feet.’

  I soon saw what the taller man had spotted: German warriors prowled hungrily at the edge of the mass of prisoners, the shoal of slaves shifting like mackerel disturbed by a shark. Grasping the enemy’s intention, I pulled Stumps close to me. Seconds later, I heard the familiar sound of an axe chopping into flesh.

  Brando grimaced. ‘The badly wounded.’

  There were no cries of protest from the prisoners. Each man knew that to open his mouth was to die, and hope kept their lips tightly shut. Hope that they could live to escape slavery, and reach home.

  ‘At least it’s over quickly,’ Brando offered, and I nodded in agreement. The death of our officers had been drawn out over hours, only ending, I imagined, because Arminius was keen to march his army from the field and capitalize on his great victory.

  Arminius. A man I had thought was a Roman leader to be admired, only to discover that he was a traitor who had carefully engineered the destruction of Governor Varus’s legions, and so, too, the death of my friends.

  ‘You’re smiling?’ I heard the German speak. His face was neutral.

  ‘I am,’ I realized, catching myself.

  ‘Why?’

  I tried to shrug, but I suddenly began to weep instead. I was still weeping when our German captors stripped us of our armour and we were herded into a mass and shuffled northwards from the carpet of corpses.

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Stumps finally moaned beside me.

  It was an inadequate eulogy for our friends, but in that moment, it was all we could offer.

  Our life as slaves had begun.

  2

  The human body and mind were created to endure. I often wonder why that is so. If, as we are told, we were created by the gods, then they must be black-hearted bastards to allow us to struggle through so much misery. Endurance is a curse, and hope is intoxicating. Combined, the two were an elixir, keeping us upright and marching from the battlefield. It was the same poison that had carried me away from a past that I had hoped forgotten, only for it to be uncovered by Arminius when he had revealed me to be Corvus.

  Corvus. The heroic soldier who had abandoned the Eighth Legion to stand in defiance of the Empire. That insurgency had all but collapsed, and now I was no longer a rebel, simply a traitor. The word burned inside me as painfully as any spear-point in the stomach, but why? What was I a traitor to?

  Fuck Rome. I didn’t care for the place I had never set foot in. It was no more my home than Arminius’s forest. And fuck the Emperor. His supposed divinity was nothing but a political ploy of the senators who suckled from his gift-giving teat. Fuck the Legions, too. Fuck their campaigns, and the ‘enlightenment’ they brought to new frontiers. Fuck them all.

  But my comrades? My friends?

  I was a traitor to them too. I had tried to forget, but the unforgivable acts had stalked me across a continent. I knew now that this slavery was my punishment. It was the penalty for my abandonment of Varo, Priscus and Octavius. It was vengeance for Marcus.

  Marcus …

  I fought down the rising tide of puke. Desperate as I was, I needed every drip of my body’s fluids to survive.

  ‘Stumps,’ I hissed. ‘Stumps.’

  I had to grab his shoulder and pinch the flesh before he half turned to acknowledge me. ‘I won’t leave you,’ I told him suddenly.

  He made no reply.

  ‘I won’t leave you. What I did before, I won’t do it. Not to you,’ I promised.

  For a split second something of the old Stumps moved beneath the surface. A twitch around his eyes. A battle for the return of his merciless banter.

  But then it was gone. ‘What does it matter?’ he told me. ‘We’re dead men.’

  ‘We’re not,’ I protested in a bid to convince myself. ‘We survived the fo
rest. I’m going to get us out, Stumps, I promise.’

  He looked at me as if I were a child. ‘Save your energy, Felix.’

  ‘My name is Corvus.’

  ‘It’s Felix. Anyone who knows differently is dead. You can hold on to your secret a little longer, until we join them. Or don’t.’ He shrugged my treason away. ‘Won’t change things for you.’

  I looked at our surroundings. The forest had thinned to copses of woods and fields – the open ground Varus and the legions had been seeking to set our battle lines. The army had died within miles of salvation, and now what was left of us, a few hundred men, were being herded to what could only be slave markets, and a short life of misery.

  The march that day lasted only a few more hours. The dusk came down with a violent pink that matched the drenched soil we had left behind, the September sun setting on our right flank as we marched south into the German hinterland. The ranks of prisoners were silent, but our guards were in full voice, braying what I could only assume were songs of victory. The three Batavian men alongside me could understand the words; Brando’s face twisted in growing fury with each chant. With such obvious contempt for his new masters, the man was unlikely to survive long in captivity.

  There was no order to halt. The Germans simply ceased to herd us. Seeing them set to work on their campfires, Roman legionary and auxiliary soldiers dropped to the ground. Many were asleep within moments. I wanted to follow their lead, but sleep, like death, was not interested in taking me.

  Stumps was also trapped by his thoughts. He was lying beside me, voice calm but raspy from thirst. ‘Felix. We didn’t bury them.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed eventually.

  ‘We didn’t bury them.’

  I knew what was in his mind. Stumps was picturing our comrades being pecked at by crows. Gnawed at by wolves and foxes. They deserved better, but they would not receive it at the hands of our enemies. That was war. Unless it was to prevent the spread of disease, the Roman army did not extend the courtesy of burial to its victims either.