Blood Forest Page 2

  A map! Where was I? My destination lay north, but skulking travel through thick forests had made navigation by the sun difficult at best, and I could only hope that I had not strayed south, and deeper into the Roman Empire.

  I had to know. I had to see it.

  Instead, my eyes were pulled to the tent’s flap, which swooped open, Arminius entering with a warm smile that seemed at odds with the intensity of his eyes.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ he asked me in a Latin far more pure than my own.

  I decided silence was my ally, and slowly shook my head.

  ‘Good. Wine, then?’ He had begun to pour before asking, and now thrust a cup into my hand. I hastily moved back as I realized his intention of sitting beside me on the pallet bed.

  ‘To your recovery,’ he offered, and took a deep draught. ‘You’ve had a long road.’

  I mumbled a thank you, and drank long myself. It was a good wine, and as it splashed down my throat I had the briefest glimpse of home: Mediterranean sunshine, warm hillsides, blue waters. How long?

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again, meaning it, but the words came out as a sadness. Arminius mistook it for confusion.

  ‘You passed out there. We thought you were dead, for a moment.’ He paused, a dark flicker across the eyes. ‘Those men you were with. Your comrades?’

  I shrugged. Silence was my ally.

  ‘A detachment of battle casualty replacements from the Rhine garrisons,’ Arminius explained, and then paused, his intense eyes burrowing into my own. Fearing scrutiny, my instincts cried out, telling me to flee this man. It was obvious that my disguise would not fool him, and I would die, screaming. Always screaming. I felt the cup in my hand. I could hit him with it, then go for his throat. I could—

  ‘You’re a soldier, my friend,’ he told me, cutting short my murderous fantasy. ‘You were a naked one, but your sandals were legionary issue.’

  I looked at my feet. New sandals of uncreased leather. Doubtless the metal hobnails below them would be shining. I felt a pang of loss for my old pair, great comrades, then cursed myself for not disposing of them sooner, and concealing my past.

  I shrugged, unconsciously touching the tunic that had been pulled over my head as I slept. It was dyed a deep red – the ideal choice for hiding blood.

  Arminius followed my eyes, and read my thoughts. ‘Can’t have you running around the camp naked. Not like the Britons.’

  The Britons. As a child, I had known one of their kin well. He was a slave, and from him I had learned of his people – fierce tribes across a northern sea, free from the rule of Rome, its taxes and its retribution. Julius Caesar had crossed the waters some sixty years ago, establishing trade and alliances with the southern tribes, and I wanted only to follow in his footsteps. To place myself beneath the shadow of white cliffs, and out from under the hate-filled gaze of Rome’s eagles.

  ‘The detachment you were with,’ the German went on. ‘Some of them were veterans. Scars,’ he explained. ‘You have scars yourself, soldier.’

  Soldier. It was impossible for me to lose that identity. Even if I had not been wearing the sandals, any veteran could read the story carved and nicked into my skin, and this German was well versed in war, I knew it.

  ‘I am a cavalryman. I’ve been in the saddle as long as I can walk. As a cavalryman, my friend, I like to move forward. You must do the same. There may be things in your mind that cannot, or do not, want to be found. So be it. Move forward.’

  I nodded numbly at the words. Words that I knew to be folly.

  Time has a way of wiping the slate of our memory clean. Given enough of it, even the face of our own mother becomes a blur. But the terrible things? The awful things? The things that we wish to forget? Those we can never overlook. Those are the things that haunt us whenever we close our eyes.

  ‘You need a name,’ he said abruptly. ‘How about Felix? The lucky one?’

  I nodded, accepting it. Felix was as good a name as any other. Arminius seemed galvanized by my naming and got to his feet, pouring more wine and laying the half-empty skin down on the map. My heart beat faster as I thought of the answers that lay within its ink.

  ‘You have a name, and now you need an occupation. I’d be happy to take you in myself, Felix. My unit is made up of Germans from my own tribe, the Cherusci, but this I could overlook. From your legs, however, I take it that you are no cavalryman?’

  I shook my head, and he either took that as a no, or I don’t know. It mattered not. He had a home for me.

  ‘The Seventeenth Legion,’ Arminius announced. ‘Your party was destined for the Eighteenth, but … I feel a fresh start is better for you.’

  I didn’t understand the change. Wherever I ended up, as an individual I would arouse suspicion. People would want to know where I had come from and why I was alone. Battle casualty replacements rarely appeared on their own.

  A head appeared through the tent’s flap. An ugly head, belonging to a German. He said something to his prince in their own tongue, and then the gnarled visage was gone.

  ‘Berengar says that your new commander has arrived,’ Arminius informed me. ‘But before you leave, I have some business with him myself. Please, Felix, relax here. Take some more wine. My home is your home.’ He put out his hand, an uncommon gesture from officer to soldier, but what was common about this prince? I accepted it, a little startled.

  ‘Until we meet again, my friend,’ he told me, departing, and leaving his words bouncing around my skull. Until we meet again – just a common farewell, or did it mean something deeper?

  I had no time to ponder. Instead, I rushed to the map. It was brilliantly detailed, outlining rivers, roads, towns and forts. There was only one problem – I did not know where I was.

  Still, at least from the area depicted I could deduce that I was in the province of Germania Magna, a collection of client kingdoms to the east of the Rhine. This gathering of German tribes paid taxes and tribute to Rome. Some, evidently including Arminius’s own people, even provided troops to serve in the Empire’s auxiliary cohorts, the soldiers who provided the bulk of the army, leaving the heavy infantry of the Roman legions to act as shock troops – both the spearheads of campaigning armies, and the lynchpins of the Empire’s frontier defence.

  If I were in Germany, then I could dare hope that I was heading in the right direction – it was likely that the army was poised on the edges of the Empire’s control, and that lay to the east, and north. Perhaps it was the wine, but I felt a little light-headed at the thought.

  Treading lightly, I stepped towards the tent flap. Holding my own, I could hear the breathing of two men outside: sentries. From the bellows-like exhalations, they were big men. Straining harder, I could hear two voices in conversation.

  Putting my eye to a gap in the material, I saw that one was Arminius, relaxed yet commanding. The man facing him was a bundle of nervous, bitter energy, encased in the body of a centurion, identifiable by the transverse crest of his helmet, which shone with the sun. A striking figure, this was evidently my new commander. Though Arminius was senior to him, it was a rank outside of the centurion’s own chain of command, and I wondered what Arminius had over this man that allowed him to pull his strings.

  With a sinking feeling, I realized that it was a question I’d have time to contemplate. I was held only within a structure of hide, but with the sentries at the flap, and with Arminius and the centurion a few paces away, I may as well have been imprisoned in one of Rome’s deepest dungeons.

  With nothing else for it, I reached for the wine.

  3

  At the beginning of summer, the town of Minden had been populated by a few hundred members of the Cherusci tribe, the German people who swore fealty to Arminius’s noble family. As he had done in the previous two years’ campaigning seasons, the governor of Rome’s German provinces, an aristocrat by the name of Varus, marched three of his five legions from their stone-walled bases on the Rhine, and paraded them in supplicant territories to impress
German enemies and allies alike. On Arminius’s advice, the governor had chosen Minden as the location for this year’s summer camp, turning it into a temporary tented city for twenty thousand soldiers.

  Minden had been a small town when the Roman army had encamped on its doorstep. It was still a small town now, but one with a disproportionately high level of prostitutes per capita. Some were locals, keen to take advantage of the business that had fallen, and now lay grinding, in their laps. Others had dogged the army from its winter bases on the Rhine, followers of the eagles as much as any soldier in the ranks. They were not alone, being accompanied by musicians, magicians, thieves and the unsanctioned families of the soldiery – it was forbidden for legionaries to marry, but commanders chose to turn a blind eye so long as the union caused them no headache.

  To cater for the literal thirst of the troops, every other hovel in Minden had styled itself as an inn, while those that did not were used to lock away the innocence of the town’s young women.

  I was told all of this by my new centurion, Pavo. He was young for that rank, which suggested that he was either extremely capable, or well connected. He carried himself with confidence, as befitted his rank and handsome looks, but his contemptuous eyes betrayed a man consumed by bitterness.

  Our journey through the German camp had begun in silence, Pavo taking charge of me as one would a stray dog, with rapid hand gestures and grunts. I walked on his shoulder, playing the part of the lost, but I caught the slightest twists in his neck as he contemplated his charge. He was intrigued by me, and so, as we approached the main encampment of the army and the town of Minden, he had buttered me up with talk of the settlement and that summer’s campaign.

  There had been no campaign, was the thrust of it. Governor Varus had brought the three legions from the western Rhine in a show of force intended to keep the quarrelsome German tribes in their place, but instead of marching the length and breadth of the territories, Varus had been content to pitch his tents and hold court at Minden, accepting tribute from the loyal tribes and turning a blind eye to those who remained absent. From my own experience, I knew that there were some amongst the Germans who were doing more than merely ignoring the Roman presence.

  ‘So what now, sir?’ I asked the officer.

  ‘You say something?’ he asked, his mind clearly drifting.

  I nodded respectfully and repeated my question.

  ‘Now?’ he grumbled. ‘Now we pack our kit and march back to the Rhine. A whole bloody year without any plunder.’

  Plunder. So that was his weakness. Pavo was either greedy, debt-ridden or, more than likely, both. Could this be the source of Arminius’s influence over him?

  Now that I had finally opened my mouth, Pavo put on his best smile to set me at ease. ‘I heard about the grove, and the men they sacrificed,’ he told me, feigning sympathy.

  I wasn’t surprised. Soldiers gossip like fishwives, and doubtless the tale had already spread across the army.

  ‘Now, you arriving on your own, it’s going to raise questions.’ He stopped at this, putting a comradely hand on my shoulder. ‘You don’t need to worry about any of that, all right? You have a problem, you come to see me.’

  I nodded thanks, and we fell back into step. Evidently, this man felt that I had some kind of connection with Arminius. I wondered about the prince’s interest myself, but I could only place it as intrigue in the mind of a benevolent leader.

  We entered the camp through the open wooden gate. There were sentries on the archway above it. Earthen ramparts, topped with a fence of stakes, ran from either side. The grass of the turf had knitted, indicating that what should have been a temporary camp had indeed stood in position for months.

  Through the gate, and the camp followed the familiar plan of all Roman encampments. An open road ran unobstructed through its centre, from the northern gate to the southern. In the centre of the camp was located the headquarters buildings, likely where the governor would be residing. The soldiers were tented in the same manner as they were broken down into units of battle: legions into cohorts, cohorts by centuries and centuries by sections. It was Roman logic, and the legion’s discipline, at its best. I had never stepped foot inside this encampment before, but from the turns we made into the neat, tented alleyways, I knew exactly where we were heading: the quartermaster’s, better known in the ranks as the QM.

  The man himself stood behind a long wooden counter, its surface scuffed by the kit of thousands of soldiers. He was built like a slab of marble, his skin pale and blotched by birthmarks. In my life, I have found that those born ugly tend to extremes of either joviality or anger.

  ‘What the fuck do you want, Pavo?’

  The quartermaster inclined towards the latter disposition.

  ‘Kit him out,’ Pavo told the man, jabbing his thumb towards me.

  ‘I’ve not been told we got anyone new coming in,’ the big lump growled. ‘Who is he?’ he pushed, talking as if I were not standing a mere two feet away from him.

  ‘He’s one of mine. Kit him, and we can sort out the rest later.’

  ‘Humph. Stores is for storing.’ The corpulent quartermaster uttered what was undoubtedly his mantra, but started to reach for equipment behind the counter of his storeroom none the less.

  ‘Titus been back?’ Pavo asked the man as the pile of equipment began to grow in front of him.

  ‘This morning. You see him before I do, make sure he comes to see me. Way things are going around here, could be a scrap on soon, and if he dies without cutting me in, I’ll skull-fuck his rotting corpse.’

  Pavo ignored the threat of defiling bodies to pick up on the first thing the quartermaster had mentioned. ‘What scrap? The governor’s packing up. We’re going back to the Rhine forts.’

  ‘He was, but things are changing. Bodies are piling up, and in some nasty ways. Yesterday, group of engineers scouting a bridge – hacked down to a man. Some nasty shit in the forests, too. The goat-fucking savages burned them alive, the bastards. I’ve gotta sort out the funeral rites, as if I don’t have enough to be getting on with.’

  I tried not to swallow, but I needn’t have worried. The quartermaster had forgotten I was there; his words were for Pavo only. For his part, the centurion mastered what must have been an overwhelming urge to look my way.

  ‘Doesn’t mean there’ll be war, though. Varus is a lazy bastard.’

  ‘He is, but that German ain’t.’

  ‘What German?’

  ‘Arminius.’

  Pavo’s act held, though I could feel the interest come off him like a wave of heat. I could only hope my own wasn’t as obvious.

  ‘Roman name?’ asked the centurion.

  ‘Yeah.’ The quartermaster nodded, hauling a set of rusting chain mail on to the table. ‘He went to Rome as a hostage from his daddy and uncle, the chieftains. Took the name, then took rank with the cavalry. Bloody good soldier, from what I heard, but anyway, Varus thinks the sun shines out of this German’s arse, and the German’s got some scores to settle with the other tribes.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Rumour mill.’ The big man shrugged. ‘If it’s bollocks, though, then it’s bollocks coming from a lot of different mouths.’ He surveyed the pile in front of him, and finally deigned to notice my presence. ‘Sign here.’

  He pushed a ledger towards me, and I ran an eye quickly over the contents: heavy javelin, short sword, dagger, helmet, leather bag, string bag, T-shape carrying pole, all placed within the slightly rounded shield. There was a price set next to each item, and it would be deducted from my pay. That was fine by me. I didn’t intend on being around that long.

  I signed with a cross next to each article, feigning illiteracy. It never did to give away too much, especially to your superiors. Let them think you’re an ignorant peasant, and they’ll talk as freely in front of you as they would a mule.

  Pavo gave a grunt as a farewell, and I hoisted the shield and its contents from the counter. My arms and shoulders ached
instantly from the burden, which must have weighed in excess of seventy pounds, but I could not afford to draw attention to myself through a show of weakness.

  ‘And tell that bastard Titus to come see me!’ followed us out.

  Mercifully, it was a short distance to the century’s tented lines, and yet my back ached as though I’d been trampled by a horse.

  Pavo commanded the Second Century of the Third Cohort, its position marked out by a standard of cloth placed at the end of the tented lines. The tents were large, made of waxed goat-hide that had bleached in the summer sun. There were twelve tents for the century, ten housing sections made up of eight men, with an individual tent set aside for Pavo, and another for his optio, the unit’s second in command.

  Pavo led me to the tent furthest from his own. Outside it, scrubbing armour, were two soldiers barely older than boys. They sprang to a rigid attention as Pavo approached, but the centurion ignored them. He had been quiet since the talk with the quartermaster, evidently chewing over the notion that there could be war.

  ‘In there,’ he told me, and left.

  I felt the eyes of the two young soldiers on me as I placed my burden on the ground. I had been in this situation before, years ago, and I had learned the hard way that it would not do to go staggering into the tent, exhausted and aching. Instead, I caught my breath, rolling my shoulders in their sockets, and all the time feeling the eyes of the two young legionaries upon me.

  It must have been clear to them that I was a new soldier, as they were, but my age and appearance gave them pause for thought. It was not unusual for older men to be recruited by the legions, particularly by force during an hour of need, but by arriving I had elevated them from the lowest of the low, and they were busy trying to decide if they were therefore obliged to put me in my place, as they had endured themselves upon arrival. Certainly they thought of it, and one even came as close as to open his mouth, but one look from my worn-out eyes was enough to silence him. Inside the tent, I knew it would be different.

  I picked up my equipment and pushed through the entrance.