Blood Forest Page 13

  ‘Run!’ I screamed into Micon’s ear, half dragging him by the shoulder of his armour. Within moments, we were back where Titus had left the remainder of the section.

  Who had vanished.

  Titus didn’t even break stride, and I followed his example, hoping that he was leading us towards the column and not deeper into a forest that now seemed infested with enemies.

  We thudded through the greenery, trying to avoid the ditches, ignoring the thorns that scraped at our skin and the branches that clawed at our eyes. At any moment, I expected to feel a spear’s penetrating agony in my back, but I dared not turn and lose my footing.

  Micon, however, looked over his shoulder, and then yelled as his sandalled feet hit a root. The youngster stumbled; my grip kept him upright, but the weight on my arm finally dragged us both down, turning me so that I was looking back at the Germans on our heels, their bearded faces flushed with the joy of the hunt and the moment of blood-letting at hand.

  They slowed, lowering spears, men jostling for the honour of the kill.

  And that’s when the section sprang its own ambush.

  It was beautifully executed. Later, I would learn that Chickenhead had been its engineer. At the first sign of trouble, he had pulled the section into a ditch, and the Germans, eyes only for their quarry, had thundered past. Chickenhead had led the section in pursuit, and now that the spearmen paused momentarily to see to my own slaughter, their exposed backs fell prey to Roman short swords. Within seconds the economical, brutal stabbing action had worked its way through the spearmen, only one of them having the chance to bring his own more unwieldy weapon to bear.

  ‘They got me!’ Stumps squealed, dropping to his knees as the other men stood over their foes, panting from exertion and adrenaline, Rufus coolly dispatching the wounded with a blade to the throat.

  I let go of Micon and ran to the wounded man’s side. Stumps had his palm pressed to his left shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers. Chickenhead tried in vain to prise back the hand and inspect the wound while Stumps shrieked in fear.

  ‘I’m done! Oh, fuck, I’m done!’

  ‘Shut up and let me look at it,’ Chickenhead ordered.

  ‘No! No! I need to keep pressure on. I’ll bleed out, Chicken, I’ll bleed out! Oh, fuck!’

  ‘There’s not even that much blood, you tart,’ Chickenhead chided his friend, and I was forced to agree.

  ‘Who asked you, eh?’ Stumps shouted back at me. ‘You’ve been nothing but bad bloody luck since you turned up!’

  I was spared further insult as Micon appeared on my shoulder.

  ‘This is all your fault!’ Stumps cursed the boy, taking his hand away from the wound to point a bloody finger at the young soldier, who simply stared back. ‘Do us all a favour and fall on your sword!’

  ‘You’re OK. It’s gone clean through the flesh,’ Chickenhead informed his comrade, taking advantage of the moment to inspect the wound. ‘You’ll be fine, you baby.’

  ‘I will?’ Stumps finally managed, disbelieving.

  ‘Unless you get gangrene,’ Moonface couldn’t resist adding.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Stumps groaned, fatalistic once more. ‘Why is it always me?’

  No one had an answer for him. Not even Titus, who had returned soon after.

  ‘Enjoy your exercise?’ Rufus ribbed his good friend.

  ‘Piss off,’ Titus grunted, but with a smile, relieved to find his comrades intact, at least for the most part.

  I rolled a German on to his back, my sandals squelching in dirt soaked by blood. The man had been stabbed several times around the kidneys, and the blood had come from him like a river. Looking at his face, I imagined he was around Micon’s age, his beard still patchy in parts.

  ‘Some of these tribes have a tradition of not cutting their beards until they kill an enemy,’ Chickenhead grunted, wiping his bloodied blade on the boy’s cloak.

  Most of the other dead were just as young, and none had any great wealth on them. What little we found was given to Stumps as compensation for his injury.

  ‘Just boys.’ Rufus spoke quietly, doubtless thinking of his own sons.

  ‘Green troops,’ Chickenhead agreed. ‘That’s not good.’

  It wasn’t. These were not the grizzled warriors we had faced at the bridge, but young men who had come of age under Roman influence on the region, and an indication that the animosity ran deep. Their motives couldn’t have been purely financial, as the army’s baggage train would have proved a far more lucrative prospect than clusters of soldiers in the forest.

  ‘Maybe they wanted to get themselves a reputation,’ Chickenhead surmised as their eulogy. If he was right, I hoped that the attitude was not widespread.

  ‘Enough of this,’ Titus said, eyeing the bodies. Perhaps he was picturing how, if not for Chickenhead’s quick thinking, it could have been our own flesh growing cold. ‘Let’s get back to the column.’

  20

  ‘Let’s get back to the column,’ Titus had said.

  If only it were that simple.

  ‘Where are we?’ Moonface asked no one in particular, his white face creasing.

  ‘Germany, you twat,’ Stumps piped up as he used the German bodies as stepping stones. ‘Which way back to the column, then, Titus?’ he asked as dead air escaped from the lungs of one of the fallen enemy. ‘Titus?’ he pressed, when no reply was forthcoming.

  The section commander stayed silent. The whimsical smile on Stumps’s lips began to slide. He stepped on to the dirt. ‘Chicken? Rufus? I thought you fuckers had a good sense of direction?’

  ‘Shut up, Stumps,’ Chickenhead answered tiredly.

  ‘No. You’re always going on about how—’ His words ended in a cut-off gargle. Titus’s massive paw was around his throat.

  ‘Shut. Up,’ the brute whispered with iron in his tone.

  Rufus caught Titus’s eye with a nod of his head. He stepped up to the big man and whispered something into his ear. After Titus gave a grunt of assent, Rufus began to peel away his armour.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Though rubbing at his bruised throat, Stumps was unable to resist the hushed question.

  Rufus gestured with his eyes towards the thick canopy above. ‘Find the sun,’ he murmured.

  It was the only option I’d come up with myself. The column had been pressing north when we left its promise of protection, and our search for the screening troops had taken us east. Since then, however, we had become turned about through ambush and counter-ambush. I was certain that I could track our way back if needed, but that route would be twisting, and perhaps more Germans would come in search of their missing friends. No, better to find the sun and, by its position, launch a new tack through the forest to the legions.

  ‘Spread out. All-round defence. Get down on your belt buckles,’ Titus ordered, and so we fanned out about the tree that Rufus now began to climb.

  Prone on the stomach, one began to notice the army of insects that busied themselves with their own life-and-death struggle in the forest, their movements as cautious and deadly as our own. Musty dark earth competed with the stink of German blood and open organs to fill my nostrils. Despite the evidence of death around us, the rustle of wind through the trees was tranquil. Calming. I wanted to sleep. I was not the only one.

  ‘Keep your fucking eyes open, Micon,’ I heard Titus warn.

  I turned to my side, and saw that Rufus was pushing his head through the upper canopy. Within a moment, he was on his way down.

  He pointed after he had dropped cat-like from the lowest branches. ‘That way.’

  Titus squeezed his friend on the shoulder, as much a display of affection as I had ever seen from the man during my time in his company. Then he helped Rufus to slip into his armour, pulling straps tight and double-checking buckles.

  ‘Single file,’ Titus whispered. ‘Rufus is point man. I’ll bring up the back. Don’t want to lose any of you cunts again.’

  Rufus moved off at a slow pace, his body al
most bent double to maintain a low profile. I trusted his soldiering, but I had survived this long by my own skills, and so I made certain that I was behind him in the order of march.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Stumps offered, bemused, as I placed myself at the point of greater danger.

  We inched our way through the tangle of shrubs and thorns. The sky above the canopy had grown darker, and light no longer played over the men’s armour. Instead, long shadows made us think of the threat of ambush and concealed enemies. Hearts skipped beats, breath died in the lungs, only for us to realize a second later that the crouching warrior was a tree stump, the poised spear a branch.

  Maintaining the direction westwards was crucial, and so Rufus led us up and over the ditches and rivulets in as direct a line as possible. It was draining work for the man, always wondering if the next defilade held the enemy, and death.

  It was as he began to crest a steep-sided bank that the redheaded Gaul stopped suddenly in his tracks, his limbs frozen. He stayed there for a few moments, and the other men of the section bit back the urge to call out, and to know what lay ahead. I fought against my own adrenaline. Was it a trap? How many enemies?

  But then I heard it, and it was something that needed no explanation. It was something that I can never forget.

  The most hideous scream.

  The scream came again. Somehow this one was more awful than the first.

  Rufus ghosted his way down the bank, and to my side. His face was drained to the colour of marble.

  Titus came up to us. A jut of his jaw asked the obvious. Rufus turned his thumb downwards, indicating that there were enemy warriors ahead. Then he opened and closed his palm twice – ten of them.

  ‘They have wounded?’ Titus whispered.

  Rufus shook his head. The word dropped heavily from his trembling lips. ‘Prisoner.’

  As if waiting for the moment, another wail pierced the trees. There was a word within the pain.

  ‘An auxiliary from Gaul,’ Rufus said, his eyes closed tightly. ‘He’s calling for his mother.’

  There was nothing to say – but we had to look.

  ‘With me,’ Titus mouthed silently.

  Leaving Rufus behind, we slithered up the dirt bank like adders. At the crest, I exhaled slowly. I did not want to gasp when I saw the inevitable.

  He was naked, tied to a tree, half hidden by the shape of laughing German warriors. His skin was pale from shock, striped red with blood. His chin hung down on a heaving chest.

  I wanted to puke. Instead, I watched as a boyish German stepped forward, a dagger in his hand. The screams came as the youngster sliced off the auxiliary’s ear.

  ‘Initiation,’ I heard Titus breathe, as the trembling young man passed the blade to another barefaced youth.

  ‘We have to do something,’ I muttered.

  Another slice of the dagger. Another scream.

  Titus gestured at the number of the enemy. ‘Twelve against eight.’

  ‘Four of them are boys,’ I protested, straining to be quiet.

  ‘So are two of ours. And Stumps is injured.’

  The scream was weaker this time.

  ‘He’s dying,’ I whispered to the dirt.

  ‘He’s already dead,’ Titus said. The words were hard, but not cold. His eyes told me that he burned to save the man as much as I did, but he was responsible for the lives of his section – his friends. I realized then that he would carry this image to his death. As leader, the decision to act or not was his. So was the burden of guilt that came with it.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ I murmured, hoping to relieve some of it.

  Titus said nothing. His eyes bore into German backs.

  It took another five minutes, six cuts and four screams for the Gallic auxiliary to die. As the man’s life left him, so did the Germans’ enjoyment. At an order from their leader, the band of warriors began to pick up their weapons – but not their equipment.

  ‘They’re going out to fight,’ Titus whispered. ‘They’re leaving their kit behind.’

  He was right. The enemy melted away into the forest, leaving two of the young boys behind.

  I looked from them to Titus. A sick smile stretched across his skin.

  He held an open palm down towards the dirt – I was to remain where I was. Titus then inched down the bank, and to the section. After a few moments when he must have been briefing the others, I heard the sound of the men moving off through the undergrowth.

  Titus reappeared on my shoulder. There was silence. The two German boys sat bored on the equipment. One of them threw stones at the body, which hung limp in its bonds. The missiles made dull thumps as they hit the cooling flesh.

  Eventually, Titus spoke. ‘Let’s go,’ was all he said, standing up.

  Through practice and second nature, his footfalls on the forest floor were muted, but the big man made no effort at concealment. I joined on his shoulder, guessing at his plan.

  We were only twenty paces away when one of the boys chanced to look in our direction. His panicked scream froze in his throat as Titus waved a greeting.

  ‘Hello, boys.’

  They ran.

  We walked.

  ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ said Titus as he ripped open the first of the German campaign packs. These were blankets, folded to make a pocket, and tied to staffs with leather string.

  I had no eyes for it myself. I was looking at the corpse of the auxiliary. His body was a canvas of cuts and stabs. His ears and his nose were gone. His eyeballs lay at his feet.

  ‘Don’t look at him,’ Titus told me, biting into a mouthful of stale German bread. ‘No good will come of it. This bread’s shit,’ he added, spitting. ‘Fucking goat-shaggers.’

  I turned away from the body. The rest of the section were appearing through the trees. One of the German boys was with them, gagged, being shunted forward by Moonface like a sheep.

  Titus smiled. ‘Hello again.’

  Moonface kicked the feet from out beneath the lad. He fell face first into the dirt, head bouncing. There was no need to ask what had happened to the second youth – Moonface’s blade dripped blood.

  No one made any comment; they were looking at the body. Cnaeus sat down heavily.

  ‘Anything in the packs?’ Stumps asked Titus.

  ‘Enough food for a few days. Help yourselves. Bread’s shit, though.’

  ‘What about him?’ Moonface asked, driving a kick into the German boy’s back.

  ‘Take his gag off.’

  Moonface obliged, the point of his dagger pressing into the side of the boy’s throat. He stayed silent.

  ‘Speak Latin?’ Titus asked, tearing off a chunk of bread.

  Nothing. Moonface pressed down with the blade.

  ‘Little,’ the boy conceded. He was perhaps sixteen, and young enough to have grown up under Roman influence. Latin was the language of trade, so even those who despised Rome were keen to learn it.

  His hand full of bread, Titus gestured towards the dead Roman auxiliary. Rufus and Chickenhead were busying themselves with removing him from the tree. They needed to find dignity in death.

  ‘The others,’ the boy protested, looking at the kit he had been assigned to protect.

  ‘Was it?’ Rufus asked hopefully.

  Titus shook his head. ‘I saw him, the little cunt.’ His voice was as calm as a dead sea. ‘I saw him,’ he repeated quietly.

  Chickenhead pulled a blanket across the body. All was still and silent. I saw Titus look from the covered dead to Cnaeus; the boy’s head was between his legs, shoulders shaking with shock. Then Titus looked at the German soldier. He was no older than Cnaeus. The boys were tw0 sides of the same coin.

  Titus got to his feet. The bread dropped to the dirt. ‘Tie him to the tree,’ he said to no one in particular.

  Moonface fell hungrily on to the task. ‘Help me,’ he said to Micon, and the young soldier did.

  The German boy resisted, but Moonface drove his fist into his face. As blo
od poured across the German’s chin, he was tied in the auxiliary’s place.

  ‘On your feet,’ Titus growled, tapping Cnaeus hard on the shoulder with the flat of his blade. ‘On your fucking feet,’ he said again.

  Knees shaking, the soldier obeyed.

  Titus shoved the blade into his hand. ‘Cut off his ears,’ he said plainly. Beside the terrified German, Moonface laughed with glee.

  ‘Titus.’ It was Rufus speaking, with friendly warning. ‘Titus,’ he tried again.

  ‘Cut. Off. His. Fucking. Ears,’ Titus snarled.

  Cneaus staggered towards the tree. ‘I can’t,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Do it, you pussy,’ Moonface goaded him.

  ‘His ears, or yours,’ Titus warned the boy, seeing him hesitate; his voice was like the thud of a battering ram against a city’s gates. ‘This is war, lad, not some fucking parade. You will be a killer, you will toughen up, or you will be a rotting fucking corpse, do you understand that?’

  I watched, paralysed. I did not want to see the German boy tortured, and yet … Titus was right. This was a war. If Cnaeus were to live, he had to become a warrior. He had to become cold. He had to become a machine that only acted, and never thought.

  Thoughts of Arminius pushed their way into my mind. I wished that he were here, certain that he would somehow find a balance. A way to save life, without taking it.

  But he was not. There was only the section, and me.

  ‘Just do it, boy,’ I heard myself say. ‘It will make the rest easier.’ I wanted to console him, certain now that this would not be our last taste of death in the forest.

  ‘Who asked you?’ Rufus flared.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Do it,’ Titus ordered again.

  Cnaeus raised the blade. He closed his eyes.

  Then he was sent sprawling to the floor by Chickenhead’s shoulder. In the same movement, the veteran drove his dagger up through the prisoner’s chin and into his brain.