Blood Forest Page 16

  Varus’s eyes passed briefly over the handsome centurion. ‘Is that so? Good man,’ he offered placidly, already moving on to the next in the order of business. ‘Now, the camp followers.’

  I stopped listening. Instead, I watched Pavo.

  Where there had been a solid, implacable statue of a soldier, now there were the smallest signs of anxiety. Slight ticks: the quick pull of his nose; the roll of the shoulders. His face was turned from me, but I could see another’s well enough – the legate’s.

  He was looking in Pavo’s direction, a thin smile beneath his hooked nose, and that smile turned my blood to ice because it was not the smile of a proud commander to a brave subordinate, but that of a victor to the vanquished.

  With the clarity born of a long relationship with revenge, I knew in my bones what that meant.

  Our century had been condemned to death.

  25

  I remained in the tent for the duration of the orders, glad of every moment out of the hammering rain and the rising winds that snatched at the canvas, but I paid little attention to the talk of guard rotations and stores. Instead, my mind turned in circles, wondering why the legate could want Pavo dead. Had the ambitious centurion, in fact, volunteered, and placed his own head in the noose? Or was he as unwitting in this as his suppressed – but visible – display of anxiety would lead me to believe?

  I got no answers as we trudged across the greasy ground of the encampment. Pavo’s head was down, his pace as driving as the rain.

  I trailed a few feet behind and, as I hadn’t been dismissed, followed him to his tent. There, I stopped outside the flaps that he pulled violently apart, the waxed hide doing little to suppress the scream of rage and frustration he let out once he was within.

  ‘Cunt!’

  I heard what I imagined was his helmet being thrown, then kicked repeatedly.

  ‘Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!’

  The outburst was over as quickly as it began, the only sound coming from the rain that bounced from the tent’s canvas and the steel of my helmet. I coughed to make my presence known, having to repeat the action several times before Pavo registered it above the downpour.

  ‘Why the fuck are you still here?’ he snarled from within the tent, doubtless embarrassed.

  ‘You haven’t dismissed me, sir.’

  ‘Fine. You’re dismissed. You may as well go and tell the others the good news,’ he concluded with vicious sarcasm.

  I found them back at the section’s tent, their sleeping figures huddled against one another for warmth. I decided the news could wait, but Titus opened an alert eye and was soon demanding information. I kept to the facts, telling him only what I knew for certain: that our century would leave the camp at dawn, alone, and begin the work of clearing the tracks in the forest. Titus’s anger soon roused the others, the news eventually making its way to every set of ears.

  ‘Fighting I can handle,’ Stumps groaned. ‘But fighting and manual labour? That’s just not fair.’

  ‘So what else did you hear?’ Titus pressed me.

  I told them that I hadn’t been privy to the orders group, having to wait outside the tent. Only one of the section was savvy enough to see through the lie, and he waited until dawn, when the others were busy donning their armour, to tell me.

  ‘Something’s shaken you,’ Chickenhead commented quietly. ‘What haven’t you told us?’

  I met the veteran’s eyes in the gloom. He had shown kindness to me. After Arminius, he was the only one to have done so.

  Arminius.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I whispered, suddenly desperate to confide in someone.

  ‘Who?’

  I told him what I’d heard in the tent, and with each morsel spilled, my shoulders felt lighter. In the moment, I didn’t think of the repercussions, I just thought of how Chickenhead was a good soldier – a good man – and deserved to know. I told myself that this was why I opened up. It was all for the veteran’s benefit, not mine. This was duty, not friendship.

  ‘I know he was good to you,’ he offered, once I’d told him all I’d heard. Like the legate, he seemed unconcerned that the German reinforcements might not arrive, convinced of the superiority of Roman arms and the men who bore them.

  ‘But there’s more,’ he pressed, his bloodshot eyes boring into me. ‘That’s not what’s shaken you, is it?’

  I wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but my sudden openness had already left me feeling anxious, and so I could not share with him how the news of Arminius had shaken me deeply. How the feeling of mourning – which had never truly abandoned me during my journey across a continent – was now fresh, an open wound atop the scabs. Chickenhead, immersed in comrades as he was, couldn’t have known just how desperate I was to latch on to the first voice that offered a path from the wilderness and the promise of something better. In Arminius I had seen the kind of leader that the world deserved: a proven warrior who would choose the head and the heart to solve disputes, not the sword. My loss paled compared to the loss for Rome, but still I selfishly grieved for him.

  But the shrewd veteran was also right, and I almost hated him for forcing me to acknowledge that there was more. It had begun as a gnawing uncertainty in my stomach, but the more I considered the possibilities, the more I thought the instinct in my gut was truth. I prayed that it was not, but, right or wrong, I would keep the revelation to myself. Nothing could be gained by sharing it.

  In an instant a clarity came to me, and with it, anger. It was wrong of me to have talked to Chickenhead. Hadn’t the ugly bastard kicked the shit out of me along with Titus and his friends? They were just using me now that we were in the field, seeing a tool that fit the task. Once we were safe, I’d be the one digging the shit-pits again. The section slave. The shunned.

  So be it.

  ‘No, there’s nothing more.’ I added one more lie delicately on top of all the others.

  ‘You’re not worried about today?’

  ‘No,’ I answered, this time honestly. I was so sick of being within my own mind that the thought of action almost excited me.

  ‘Then maybe you’re not as clever as I thought,’ he grunted. ‘We’ve been fixed in place overnight. They’ve had a chance to concentrate their forces. Even if it’s just a few war bands, it doesn’t matter. Numbers don’t count in the forest.’

  I made no comment, and Chickenhead, puzzled at my sudden about-turn, shook his head. ‘Just don’t tell the others, all right? They don’t need to know that our balls are on the chopping-block for this one.’

  It was fair to assume that the other men in the section were under no illusions that it would be a parade, but neither did they grasp the significance that only our own century from the cohort would be pushing into the forest and into the killing ground of the waiting enemy. The perceptive veteran had seen the anomaly, and could determine the reason. Despite my sudden change in attitude, or perhaps because of it, he shared with me the reason why.

  ‘Ever wonder how a young lad like Pavo got a century, with no campaign experience behind him?’

  I half feigned indifference as I pulled tight the straps binding my armour and equipment.

  ‘Depending on who you ask, he was shagging the legate’s wife, or daughter, but one of them did the whispering in the man’s ear and got him his century. Pavo had his eyes set so hard on the top, he didn’t even see that he was walking into a trap, and giving the boss the chance to see him off.’

  I shrugged. ‘Somebody’s got to clear the tracks.’ I was abrasive in my embarrassment at dropping my guard.

  ‘Aye, that they do,’ the veteran agreed. ‘There’s always some poor sod that’s got to be the first.’

  And there had been a time when that would have been me. Willingly. A time when my reckless enthusiasm had bordered on the insane. I had not been alone then, and the reason I was still breathing was because of men like this gnarled veteran before me. Those men had brought me through alive, and what had been their reward?

  I shook m
y head to clear the images that were forming. I needed to concentrate my mind, and so I watched closely as Chickenhead squatted to the floor, worn-out knees clicking, to scoop up Lupus with both hands. ‘You’re staying here, little one, where it’s safe and dry.’

  He kissed the creature on its tiny skull, and something in the kitten’s contented purring began to soothe me. The bitter anger I had been feeling at myself, misdirected at this man, melted away.

  ‘It was a long night,’ I apologized.

  ‘It’s going to be a long day.’ He smiled, all gums.

  A helmet pushed its way through the tent flap, Titus’s grimacing face below the steel. ‘Get your cocks out of each other’s mouths,’ he snorted. ‘Century’s forming up.’

  Our short respite was over. We were going back into the forest.

  The dawn was dark, the sky thick with clouds that unleashed rain on the tiny marching column, four men wide and twenty deep. Wind buffeted our ranks as we slipped towards the encampment’s northern gate.

  Sentries from an auxiliary cohort watched us pass, their dark features scowling against the storm, no doubt pitying those who were stepping from within the relative safety of the marching camp.

  Pavo strode at the head of the column. With his drawn sword and his considerable height exaggerated by the crest of his helmet, he made for an imposing figure.

  ‘He’s keen,’ Stumps sneered.

  ‘Just wants to get this over, like the rest of us,’ Rufus opined, the usually silent soldier casting restless glances over his shoulder towards the camp’s centre.

  ‘Forget something?’ Titus asked him.

  ‘My guts.’ The Gaul forced a smile.

  We cleared the rampart. The forest was three hundred yards ahead of us, silent and sullen. Behind the sheet of rain, it was impossible to make out individual trees in the dawn’s gloom, let alone any trace of ambush.

  ‘Cavalry are on their way out,’ Stumps commented as the first of the mounted detachments thundered their way from behind us, striking for their own chosen paths. ‘Lucky bastards,’ he added, enviously eyeing the troopers’ steeds.

  ‘You’re better off on foot in a forest,’ Chickenhead countered. ‘Smaller target. Too easy to get picked off from a distance with a horse.’

  ‘I see you’re a bundle of joy this morning.’

  ‘Shut it, now,’ Titus ordered.

  The forest was twenty paces away.

  As we entered the trees, I half expected to be greeted by a chorus of screams and war cries. Instead, the barrage of sound decreased, and the foliage gave some small shelter from the wind and rain.

  I hadn’t been the only one expecting trouble to welcome us, and its absence caused more unease amongst the century than an attack would have done; helmeted heads bobbed and twitched as men scanned their surroundings. Ahead, Pavo forged on, and it wasn’t long until we found an obstruction across the track – a tangle of branches brought down by the wind. It was easily negotiable for men on foot, but the already struggling baggage train would need it cleared.

  ‘Work party up,’ Pavo ordered. The command was passed along the ranks in a hushed whisper, men daring to hope that they could remain in the forest undetected. Eight soldiers – armed with axes, saws and entrenching tools – made their way up to the obstacle, while the other legionaries of the century turned out to the flanks, crouching behind their shields with javelins ready.

  I looked over the iron rim of my protection, trying to methodically scan the woodland ahead of me. The rain made identifying details impossible, and with the dawn a carpet of mist was beginning to rise from the forest floor. There could have been a war band a stone’s throw away, and we would have been none the wiser.

  The sound of chopping axes and biting saws mixed with the rain, and I turned from my shield to glance at the men dragging the deadfall from the track.

  Deadfall.

  ‘Don’t!’ I screamed.

  Too late.

  Unleashed by the movement of its counterweight, and as if it had been hurled by a god, a thick log came swinging from the canopy.

  Some of the work party saw it coming and threw themselves flat into the mud. Some were fortunate to be outside its arc, and watched it glide through the air with wide eyes.

  Others were not so lucky.

  Two men – either slowed by fatigue, or shock – remained in the deadfall’s path, the log swatting them into the air as if they were dolls; the bodies landed with wet thumps only feet away from me.

  I don’t know what I thought I could do for the stricken soldiers, but instinct compelled me to my feet. I came to the first, who was clearly dead, his chest caved in beneath the armour, blood running freely from his ears, mouth and nose. I looked at the second, and saw Pavo standing over him. The centurion’s face was wiped blank by surprise. Before I could move to help, I felt an animal grip on my shoulder.

  ‘Back to your place,’ Titus growled, pushing me towards the section.

  ‘Maybe I can help him,’ I pleaded, desperate for that to be the truth.

  ‘His head’s split like a fucking egg. He’s done.’

  Titus shoved me down into the crouching ranks. Feet away, and despite the damage, the soldier clung to life for a few minutes more. A few minutes where knuckles went white about javelins, the soldiers certain that the enemy was about to close its trap.

  I heard wet footsteps in the mud behind me. Pavo.

  ‘You knew,’ he stated simply. ‘You shouted, before it fell.’

  There was a question there. There were a hundred questions, but Pavo wasn’t looking for answers – he was looking to survive.

  ‘I want you at the front,’ he told me. ‘Titus, get your boys to gather the tools. Julius’s section have to carry their dead. You’ll replace them as work party.’

  The centurion didn’t wait for an answer, moving away to stare at the shattered bodies of his soldiers.

  ‘Do you see what you’ve fucking done?’ Titus hissed at me, eyes burning with anger. ‘He’s always looking for a way to see me off, and you just handed him one!’

  ‘I—’

  His arm struck out like a viper, thick fingers gripping my throat. I didn’t fight back, and felt the dirty fingernails dig into my windpipe. I felt it closing, being crushed, the sight around my eyes growing black, sound coming to me as if I were underwater. I wondered if this was how it felt to die, and for one blissful moment I almost wished that he would kill me, and end the nightmare that had been my journey. My life.

  But then, through darkening tunnels, I saw the limp bodies of the dead as they were hefted from the dirt by their grieving comrades, blood and fluids leaking from them like rain, and I knew that if I could have accepted death, then I would have met it an age ago, far from here.

  ‘Get. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off. Me,’ I managed, my thoughts growing darker than my vision.

  I could see from his face that my bile surprised him, and as Titus released my windpipe, I sucked in a deep lungful of wet air.

  ‘You’d better get us through this,’ he threatened, regaining himself.

  ‘I will,’ I pledged aloud.

  And then, silently, I made a promise to myself.

  I promised that I would save Titus’s life, and I promised that, once I had saved it, I would take it. I promised this because, as his fingers had crushed my throat, I had remembered who I was.

  And that man was a killer.

  26

  The century pushed along the forest track and, with Pavo, I was in the van. The path, barely wider than three men, twisted and turned its way by the most ancient trees and flooded gullies, some of which had overrun, the cold water shin-deep about the metal of our protective greaves.

  As I steered the men through this quagmire, I tried to concentrate solely on my survival, but the anger at being placed in this exposed position fought to be heard. The big bastard Titus had threatened that I must keep his section alive. Pavo had ordered the same for his century. I had no intention of disappoint
ing either, but I was one set of eyes, and the forest was a blank canvas for the expert German trappers. How could they ask the impossible of me? I was a soldier, not a fucking god.

  Despite my distraction, I was able to uncover the enemy’s next surprise, though I had the rain to thank for the discovery. The weight of the heavy downpour had cleared away some of the foliage used to disguise the trap: a deep pit lined with sharpened stakes. I used my javelin to remove the rest of the camouflage as Pavo peered down at what would be a hideous and ignoble death.

  ‘Is that shit?’ he asked me, referring to the dark matter smeared on to the stakes.

  ‘Carries an infection into the wound, if you somehow got out,’ I told him, recalling the results of such injuries. The weeping pus. The tormented screams.

  I didn’t wait to be told. I pressed on.

  The going was slow. I could tell Pavo chafed at the pace, but he had seen the stakes, and I noted how he was careful to remain in my footsteps. The centurion was a quick learner.

  Several times we encountered debris across the track. At these potential ambush sites I slid on to my belly, worming my way about the obstruction and searching for the pegs, rope or thick vine that would indicate something sinister. Once I’d given the all-clear, Titus and the section would move up, hacking and dragging the debris clear of the track. Each time, the big man would growl menacingly in my ear, ‘You had better be right.’

  I was, but I couldn’t see everything. It was only a matter of time before the enemy, and the forest that served as their unwitting ally, would get the better of us.

  That moment announced itself with a crash, closely followed by a high-pitched scream that sounded like a wailing infant’s.

  I dropped instantly to a crouch, checked my front for danger, and then chanced to look behind me. A young soldier, not out of his teens, had fallen into a chest-deep pit at the track’s edge. His screams cut through the downpour like sheet lightning.

  ‘Titus!’ Pavo shouted. ‘Take the tools! Get him out and shut him up!’