Blood Forest Read online

  He died without a murmur, but not without terror. Piss dripped on to Chickenhead’s feet.

  ‘We don’t have time for this,’ he spat, stepping back as he pulled the blade free. Blood cascaded across the German boy’s thin chest.

  ‘Remember whose section this is,’ Titus rumbled, stepping forward to dwarf the veteran.

  Chickenhead met his stare. ‘I remember whose it was.’

  The words struck Titus. He hit back with threats. ‘The boys need to learn. Maybe I’ll teach them on that rat of yours,’ he sneered, gesturing to the pouch that contained his kitten and which now hung across Chickenhead’s back.

  ‘You’ll eat a fucking blade if you touch him,’ the veteran pushed through clenched teeth, and I had no doubt that he would kill the man if he did harm Lupus.

  ‘Back off, the pair of you.’ Rufus pushed his way between them and faced Titus. ‘You want to teach the boys? How about you teach them some fucking leadership? Some fucking discipline?’ His face was the same violent red as his hair.

  Titus turned away. ‘Get your kit together. Take what you want from theirs. I’m having a piss, and then we move off.’

  Sullen, angry and shaking with adrenaline, the members of the section split to riffle the enemy packs. Behind them, as Titus’s urine splashed against the forest floor, Moonface’s blade bit into the neck of the German corpse. Chickenhead and Rufus looked up, but said nothing – the boy was dead, and Moonface, their friend, was scared.

  He tried to cover it by placing the severed head on a log. ‘For his mates.’ He grinned, though his eyes were filled with tears.

  We moved on.

  21

  We emerged from the forest far from our own century, and Rufus was forced to dodge a javelin thrown by a nervous legionary – the pathetic attempt earning the young soldier the good-natured contempt of his comrades. Having received directions from a pinch-faced officer, we followed Titus towards the head of the winding snake of troops.

  As we went, I saw that Stumps was not the only wounded soldier in the column. We passed perhaps a dozen, and I noticed strike marks on several shields. Clearly, the army had not gone unmolested in our absence, though the damage appeared to be minor, a fleabite to a lion.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Pavo greeted Titus. The big man tossed him the severed finger in answer; Pavo caught the digit out of reflex, and inspected the flesh with his standard scowl.

  ‘Found your screening troops,’ Titus explained as Pavo let the finger fall into the dirt.

  ‘Old news. Column’s been getting harassed the last hour.’

  ‘Harassed?’

  ‘Hit-and-run attacks. Nothing too heavy. None on our own century.’ Pavo shrugged, a little disappointed. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked Stumps, noticing the bloody dressing.

  ‘Heroic stuff,’ the wounded man proclaimed, jutting out his chin. ‘Should be a Gold Crown in it for me, and double pay.’

  ‘You’ve got more chance of getting gangrene, and cashing in on your funeral fund.’ Pavo smiled slyly before sauntering away to the head of the century.

  ‘Shit me, now even that stuck-up bastard’s taking the piss,’ Stumps lamented.

  We took our place in the century’s order of march. The staccato nature of the advance had only increased since entering the forest, and doubled under the Germans’ hit-and-run attacks. We passed the evidence of these skirmishes over the course of the next few hours: perhaps two dozen German dead, all stripped of their valuables.

  ‘We haven’t lost anyone,’ Cnaeus noted of the bodies, his relief causing him to think aloud. Moonface pounced on the chance to chastise him for his naivety.

  ‘We don’t leave our own like the goat-shagging scum do. They’ll go on to carts, and get a proper Roman burial once we reach the forts.’

  ‘We left that auxiliary in the forest,’ Cnaeus mumbled.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, do we have enough carts for that?’ Cnaeus asked dubiously.

  ‘Of course!’ Moonface was full of the confidence and bravado of a people who had conquered half the world. ‘It takes ten Germans to kill a Roman soldier. Just look what happened today.’

  ‘We were lucky,’ Chickenhead grumbled. ‘It could have easily gone the other way.’

  Moonface rolled his eyes, and the conversation died.

  I was troubled, and I suspected Chickenhead was irritable for the same reason. Looking up between the high branches, the clouds were becoming low, dark and menacing.

  ‘Hope we make camp before that breaks,’ the veteran whispered to his feline companion.

  We didn’t. That afternoon, the skies split without warning. There was no patter of rain, growing to a storm, only a sudden deluge that poured on to the heads of the column with a ferocity that would shame the most berserk of German spearmen.

  Titus broke formation to ask Pavo for the wax covers that would stop the hide of the shields from absorbing water, but returned only with a scowl. ‘They’re all in the baggage train.’

  ‘I’ll go for them,’ Rufus offered eagerly.

  ‘Forget it. It’s at the back of the column. Even if we get them brought up, it’ll be too late.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ Rufus pressed.

  ‘I said forget it. It’s too late.’

  He was right, and in no time the shields were twice their original weight. With a German ambush possible at any moment, slinging the burdens on to our backs was not an option; instead, biceps and shoulders burned with the effort of holding them in position, but it was not an unusual sensation – the army trained with doubly weighted arms and armour to prepare for just such a situation.

  The forest track itself was simply a wide path through the trees that avoided the worst of the twisting gullies. Within moments of the deluge, it had become a quagmire. As sandalled feet churned the mud, it became evermore treacherous for the soldiers who followed on behind, and the sound of vicious curses grew in volume and intensity as tired soldiers floundered.

  ‘Why didn’t I join the navy?’ Stumps groaned as rain beat against his helmet.

  ‘Pavo’s coming,’ Moonface informed him. ‘Why don’t you ask for a transfer?’

  ‘Why’ve we stopped this time?’ Stumps asked instead.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the forest,’ Pavo snapped, and he was right to. With the darkness of the rain clouds, visibility had fallen. The fringes of the track were ripe for ambush, and a lax moment could be a soldier’s last.

  Pavo fell in on Titus’s shoulder, his voice at a whisper that I strained to hear. ‘The bloody scouts have pissed off,’ he told the section commander. Why he was imparting this knowledge, I did not know, but from the exaggerated care in his words, I could guess. He was scared.

  ‘They’ve gone?’ Titus asked, eyebrows knotting. ‘The Germans?’

  The handsome officer nodded, the crest of his helmet spraying water with the motion. ‘Felix, I suppose you should know, as you’re so friendly with them. The guides have gone. More of the screening troops, too.’

  ‘People don’t just vanish,’ Titus thought aloud over Pavo’s shoulder.

  ‘I said they’d pissed off, not vanished. Probably got no stomach for a fight. Shit, maybe they just don’t like the rain? Either way, they were supposed to be showing us the way through this bloody mess.’ He waved his arm at the forest. ‘So now we have to send our own scouting parties ahead, and make sure we’re on the right track.’

  Scouting parties. So that was why he was in a sharing mood. I knew what was coming now. So did Titus.

  ‘Not us,’ he declared flatly.

  ‘It’s from the legion command—’

  ‘Legion commander, my arse,’ Titus snorted. ‘You just want me out of the picture.’

  ‘Are you saying you won’t go?’ Pavo straightened his shoulders.

  Titus’s nostrils flared: a bull in uniform. Eventually he pushed the words out from between gritted teeth. ‘’Course I’ll go. Don’t have a fucking choice, do
I?’

  And as Titus had no choice but to follow the orders of the centurion, so the section had no choice but to follow the big man to the head of the column. Only Stumps, owing to his wound, was offered the chance to remain behind, but he refused, cloaking his loyalty to his comrades with a joke.

  ‘If I’m not along for the party, then maybe one of you will have to take a turn getting hurt, and I can’t bear the thought of seeing your fat mothers wailing at your graveside.’

  At the head of the column, similar groups to our own were receiving orders as they were sent out ahead. One of the army’s engineers, squat and tough, made his way over to us.

  ‘I’m Lucius,’ he greeted Titus. ‘If you boys can keep me alive while I assess the route, then I’d be much obliged to you.’ The old veteran smiled.

  We pushed out into the forest, but unlike the morning, we were not alone: we caught sight of the other sections to our flanks. The rain continued unabated, dampening sound as well as our persons, and making it safe to talk despite our position.

  ‘This isn’t as bad as I expected.’ Stumps grinned. ‘Kind of nice, actually, not to be stopping and starting every two minutes, and slipping about in the mud.’

  ‘You must have lost more blood than I thought,’ Titus grunted, unused to hearing Stumps in anything but a pessimistic mood.

  ‘Missing the desert?’ Rufus asked his friend.

  ‘Never. Soaked in this, or soaked in sweat. At least rain stops – eventually.’

  Lucius spoke up, his engineer’s eye on the widening track ahead of us. ‘This is promising. Been used recently, too.’ He pointed to the ground and, with the others, I saw the unmistakable mark of hoof prints. ‘The German scouts, I imagine,’ the short man surmised.

  ‘Your mates ran out on us.’ Moonface addressed me, an edge of accusation to his tone. ‘You can stick them in our uniform, but a barbarian is still a bloody barbarian.’

  I declined to comment, having no wish for an argument. If anything, I partly agreed with his sentiment. I had seen whole cohorts abandon their pledge to Rome; the offer of citizenship was not a potion that could cure all evils. As for Berengar and his men being my friends? No. He was indebted to me, but we were not friends. How could we be? We had never got drunk together. Fought together. Shared stories of lost loves, family, our hopes and dreams. No, I could no sooner call him that than I could these soldiers standing about me. I was at the head of a column of twenty thousand, but I was alone, and that realization caused my mind to wander to a time when I had been surrounded by friends – comrades who knew me better than my own mother did. Comrades who were now nothing but dust and bone.

  Those melancholy thoughts, together with the rain hammering the lip of my helmet, made me bow my head, so that I was within killing range of his javelin before I saw him – but neither the man, nor his weapon, could do harm to anyone, now.

  ‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ Stumps uttered beside me. Behind him, Cnaeus sank to one knee, his vomit splattering the forest floor with the rain.

  Titus, fearless, walked forward. After taking a few steadying breaths, I went with him.

  The man was a Roman soldier, his features waxen and grey, blond hair darkened from the rain.

  ‘Batavian auxiliary,’ Titus guessed. ‘Ever see anything like this?’

  I shook my head, the scene causing me to forget to protest that I had not served before. ‘Not like this,’ I answered, choking back the rising bile in my throat, and it was the truth. I had seen all kinds of unimaginably cruel acts, but this was a first: the soldier had been draped over a fallen log and his javelin forced into his anus.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Titus asked, and I nodded, spitting to clear the acidic tang from my throat.

  ‘Shit. There’s nothing these goat-fuckers won’t do,’ he snarled. ‘They gutted him, too.’

  ‘Maybe he was dead before they did it,’ I offered, seeking any consolation, no matter how trivial.

  He shrugged, clearly unconvinced. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘There’s more over here,’ Rufus called from further along the track.

  We found four altogether, all butchered and positioned with barbarism that touched on the artistic.

  ‘They need to pay for this!’ Moonface growled as he paced back and forth, teetering between collapse and anger. ‘Chickenhead, you soft cunt! This is what happens when you show them mercy. This is what happens. They need to pay!’

  ‘They will,’ Titus calmed him, his tone firm and unmerciful.

  ‘They need to pay!’ the aggrieved soldier shouted again, his white face more ashen than ever. ‘Are you listening, Chickenhead, you fucked-up old cunt?’

  ‘They will,’ Titus promised once more. Chickenhead let the words wash over him. Lupus was his only concern.

  Officers appeared, to inspect the sight. With them came the news that the column had experienced several more, and heavier, attacks. Lucius the engineer said that he would oversee the collection of the bodies, as he was temporarily at a loose end – a good track had been discovered, and it led to open ground.

  ‘Open ground.’ Titus grimaced happily as he spoke the words, and as the rain bounced from his wide, armoured shoulders, the section commander’s face twisted into a mask that promised murder. I took in the sight of this brutal warrior, and could not help but feel a moment of sympathy for our enemies.

  ‘Give us a battle,’ he prayed.

  22

  There was no gradual thinning of forest as we made our way to the open ground. One minute there was the thick, oppressive canopy; the next, nothing between us and the black skies but rain. It hit us with ferocity, but we welcomed its cold touch, anxious to be on ground where we could set our battle lines and dominate our enemies.

  If only they would oblige us.

  Chickenhead snorted. ‘They’d have to be idiots to attack us out here.’

  Behind us, still deep in the forest, the clash of arms and armour echoed through the drumming rain.

  ‘Hear that?’ Moonface said. ‘They’re not letting up. Bet it’s fun in the baggage train.’

  ‘Want to draw blood while they still can. They’ll have to face us eventually,’ Titus asserted, clearly still desperate for vengeance. Beside him, his friend Rufus looked pale with nerves. ‘What’s up with you?’ the big man pressed.

  ‘Nothing. Just cold.’

  Orders came that the army would establish a marching camp in the open ground within which to lick its wounds and take stock of the situation. Our own century formed part of the guard, a three-deep line of men stamping their feet and rolling their shoulders to ward off the chilling effects of the rain. Behind us, surrounded on all sides by the flesh and armour of soldiers, work parties began the labour of erecting the earthen rampart and waxed-skin shelters.

  ‘Missing a lot of tents by the looks of it,’ Moonface observed. ‘Told you the baggage train would get smashed.’

  ‘So we’ll share fucking tents,’ Rufus snapped. The out-of-character outburst was enough to still further conversation.

  Standing in the rearmost rank of the century, desperate to escape the elements and my thoughts, I attempted to shut off my mind, focusing on the patter of rain on my helmet and nothing more. The sleepless night and day of spiking adrenaline had taken their toll and, despite the cold, I soon slipped into a trance-like state. It wasn’t quite sleep, but the veteran’s trick would keep me upright a little longer.

  Chickenhead’s prodding elbow snapped me from my daze. ‘Come on. We’re being relieved.’

  The rampart was complete, the guard units withdrawn behind its defence. We would be rotated every few hours so that all men could escape the elements, if only for a short while. Hot food was the priority over sleep, and in our own crowded tent, Moonface acted as cook, under the direction of his friend Stumps.

  ‘Crumble in the biscuits, you clumsy bastard! Crumble!’ he chided his apprentice.

  We sat naked, the veteran Chickenhead having set the example by stripping off his wet clothes.
Only Rufus was absent – gone on the hunt for wine, Titus said. I’d helped dig a pit into the soggy wet floor, and the recessed fire was warming our flesh, as well as our dinner.

  ‘Just think, you’d have to pay for this in Rome.’ Stumps smiled. ‘Finest bathhouse in all of Germany. How’s Lupus?’

  Chickenhead cradled the creature in his hand, attempting to feed it a morsel of dried meat. ‘He’s stopped shivering, at least,’ he answered, clearly concerned. ‘He’s not an outdoor cat,’ the old sweat added with deep affection.

  ‘I had a cat once.’ Micon spoke up, surprising everyone, a warm smile on his idiot face.

  ‘Well, thanks for that great story,’ Stumps replied, after no further detail was forthcoming. ‘Since you’ve opened your trap, Homer, why don’t you tell us a few more interesting tales? Got any sisters worth shaggin’? Where are you from, anyway?’

  ‘Pompeii.’

  ‘Never been there. What are the women like?’

  The young soldier shrugged. ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Stumps laughed, dragging out the word. ‘The only inside of a cunt you’ve seen was your mum’s. You’re a virgin, aren’t you?’

  Micon made no reply. His cheeks flushed red.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ve all got to start somewhere. When we get back to the Rhine, me and Moon will show you the best whorehouses.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The boy blushed again.

  ‘I went to Pompeii once, with my family,’ said Moonface, still stirring the pot. ‘My dad was a carpenter. He got work there building a ship. It was a good summer.’ He smiled, slipping into the pleasant memories. ‘Eight years now since I saw them. They’ll hear about this campaign, and know I was a part of it.’ There was pride in the soldier’s voice.

  ‘Yeah, they’ll find out when they get a letter to say you’re fertilizing German vegetables,’ Stumps teased with an evil smirk.

  ‘They’d taste fucking good if they came from me,’ Moonface shot back. ‘Here, you stir this sludge.’