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  ‘When we get back to the Rhine, we’ll honour them,’ I encouraged my friend, hoping that my words would not betray my true feelings. ‘We can dedicate a shrine to them.’

  ‘The Rhine?’ Stumps snorted miserably. ‘We’ll never see those forts again, Felix. We’ll never set foot in the Empire. They’re taking us south. We’re going to their towns, and the slave markets.’

  But Stumps was wrong, for the next morning, after we were roused viciously to our blistered feet, we were marched westwards.

  Westwards, and towards Roman lands.

  3

  Hope burned bright in me during the second day of my enslavement. A voice in my head began to whisper that my captivity would be short-lived. That Arminius was looking to come to an accommodation with Rome, and that we prisoners would be returned to the Empire as an act of good faith.

  I battled against that voice, but with each mile west it grew louder, and I dared to dream of food, open fires and a bed.

  I was a fool.

  The evidence of my stupidity was a small Roman fort that burned savagely beside the River Lippe, where it had likely been erected as part of the army’s supply chain. There were screams coming from within, behind its low wooden palisade. They came from those who had sought to hide, and were now being consumed by flames. Piled in front of the blaze were the bodies of those who had tried to fight.

  Varus, convinced by Arminius that the province was peaceful so long as it was garrisoned, had sent detachments from his legions and auxiliary cohorts to man a series of forts along the river. These forts had been designed to resupply Varus during any punitive campaigns against the tribes, but Arminius had again used his relationship with the governor to convince him to abandon the supply route, and to instead push the army north and into the forests. Now, it seemed, Arminius was eradicating what was left of the Roman presence east of the River Rhine.

  ‘Arminius isn’t going to stop.’ Brando shook his head, his granite jaw twitching. The trio of Batavians had stayed beside me during the march, though they had stayed silent until now. Like us, their unit had been decimated in the battle of the forest, and so he had seen enough of Arminius’s treachery to guess at the German’s intent. ‘He’s not looking to bring Rome to the table,’ Brando went on. ‘He wants her on her knees.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘The garrison hardly put up a fight.’ Brando spat, looking at the one-sided battlefield. ‘They didn’t know what was coming.’

  The evidence of his words was in the bodies. They all wore Roman uniform – no Germans amongst the dead. Behind them, the gate of the small fort yawned open and belched flame.

  ‘They surprised them,’ I guessed. ‘Unless a survivor made it here, there’s no way they’d know about the forest.’

  Brando grunted in agreement. ‘As far as Rome knows, Arminius and his men are still allies. They probably rode straight in through the open gate.’

  ‘How many forts on the Lippe?’

  ‘What’s it matter? None of them will know what’s coming. He’ll do this one by one, until he hits the legion’s main forts on the Rhine.’

  It seemed that Brando was right, for the next day, having been marched beside the river, we reached a second small fort. The garrison had been defeated, but the fort stood intact, its gates spread invitingly wide like a camp whore’s legs. A pair of auxiliary soldiers lay dead in the churned dirt beside them, whilst a few dozen others were being herded out to join our growing number of slaves. These latest captives were sped onwards by the screams of their former commander – a half-dozen German warriors were finding great hilarity in skinning him alive. We looked on at this new torture with numb eyes.

  German voices began to bark orders. Threatening spear-points enforced them.

  ‘They want us to strip the fort,’ Brando translated. ‘They want the good timber.’

  We were jostled towards the barricade. The Germans were crafty enough not to trust their prisoners with tools in their hands, and their own warriors set about the task of cutting ropes and pulling away nails. Then, with muscles already aching and spent, we slaves lifted the timbers on to our sagging shoulders and made for the bridge that crossed the river.

  It was a place I remembered well.

  I turned quickly to look at Stumps behind me. We had been here before. We had built this bridge, and I had spilled blood on its boards when Germans had ambushed our work party.

  Thinking of that fateful summer day, my mind began to play tricks on me. I could hear the sound of blades clashing. I could feel the resistance of the German’s skull as I had driven a blade into his brains, and then the choking water in my lungs as Titus threw me into the river. So strong was my nostalgia that, for a moment, I pictured the boy soldier Micon struggling to carry his own timber across the bridge.

  ‘Felix?’ he asked me, feeling my eyes on him. ‘Stumps?’

  It was no illusion.

  ‘Micon,’ I managed, taking in the boy with my gaze and fighting back the urge to drop my burden and embrace him. ‘Don’t drop your log!’ I warned, worried that he would be thinking the same, and would incur the guard’s wrath.

  I drank in the sight of him. Like us all he was battered and bloodied, his limbs drained and empty, but his face still retained the same idiot, confused smile he had worn since the day I had first come across him, polishing armour outside of the section’s tent.

  ‘We’ll talk when we stop,’ I promised him. ‘I’ll find you.’

  Holding to my word was not easy. Darkness had fallen by the time we were allowed to stack the cut timber beside the river and halt for the night. The burdens had grown heavier by the hour, and a constant stream of fire had poured down from my shoulder and into my hip. Men had groaned or prayed to get through their own pain; I saw a legionary on his knees plead for mercy before a blade was driven between his chattering teeth. I saw other men drop to the floor unconscious, or simply because they ceased to value their own lives. I didn’t blame them for giving up. A part of me envied them, but I was more afraid of the mystery of death than the certainty of pain. I had found life to be brutal and uncaring. Why should I expect the afterlife to be any different?

  ‘Micon,’ I called quietly, picking my way across the prone soldiers who hadn’t moved from where they had fallen. ‘Micon?’

  ‘Felix?’

  I could make out his young face in the moonlight, innocent as a lamb despite all that he had seen and endured. It was as if the reality of the situation had yet to dawn on the boy soldier. I wished in that moment that it never would. Let him be ignorant. It was a blessing.

  ‘Follow me. I’ll take you over to Stumps. We’ll look after you.’

  He followed. I stepped carefully over sore limbs, using the position of the German campfires to guide me back to where I had left my comrade. Micon was not so nimble, treading on hands and feet, leaving a chorus of tired insults in his wake. Perhaps it was this that drew the Germans’ attention.

  I heard a harsh word barked in our direction. From its force, I took it to mean ‘halt’. We did. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a huddle of Germans approach. Several of them began rousing sleeping Roman figures to their feet. The light of torches played from their blades as the enemy shoved a handful of prisoners towards their campfires, the tribesmen talking excitedly amongst themselves.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Micon asked me as rough hands took us by the shoulders and pushed us on after the others. ‘Felix? What are they doing?’

  I didn’t answer him, because I had picked out one Latin word amongst the excited laughter. One word known across the Empire, and beyond.

  It froze my blood to hear it.

  Gladiator.

  4

  The Germans pushed us on to our knees. There were half a dozen of us in the dirt, surrounded by a wide circle of German warriors, their smiling faces golden in the torchlight. Perhaps thirty of them. Young, their beards thin and eyes defiant.

  I knew what was to come.

  ‘F
elix?’ Micon chattered beside me. I ignored him, scanning quickly for any chance of escape, no matter how slim.

  Nothing.

  In the same moment, a warrior stepped from the crowd and towards the prisoners. He was young, but huge, his muscular arms as thick as marble pillars. He carried fresh scars, showing his experience of the battle in the forest. The skin of his face was stretched tight by an ugly smile.

  ‘Gladiator,’ he said in thick Latin. Then he raised his blade to point out a tall legionary who knelt beside me. ‘You.’

  A sword came from the crowd to land beside the Roman. He looked from it to the warrior in the circle’s centre, and he knew in that moment that his life had run its course.

  He turned to me and spoke. Rarely have I seen a man accept death with such strength. ‘My name is Seneca, from the Nineteenth Legion, born in Ostia.’ This soldier understood that no man should die amongst strangers.

  ‘Felix,’ I said, meeting his dry brown eyes, desperate to help him find some honour in the spectacle of his death.

  The legionary then pushed himself to his feet, sword in his hand, fingers dancing on the pommel as he shook to loosen his grip. There was no quake in his muscles as he raised the weapon and assumed his defensive stance. German smiles slipped slightly at this show of courage, but cheers returned moments later when the muscled champion moved as gracefully as a dancer, his flurry of lightning blows driving the Roman backwards, and then the blade from his grasp. Two breaths and a strike later, Seneca was on his back, blood bubbling from his throat as he gasped away the final seconds of his life.

  The German warrior used his feet to flick the fallen blade up and into his hand. He was clearly a master of the sword, trained since childhood for the glory of single combat. We Roman soldiers were cogs in a killing machine, skilled at taking life in formation through repetition, not grace. This warrior would kill us one by one, delighting in the irony that the world had been turned on its head – that the Roman army was beaten, and that Romans citizens would now provide the entertainment in death that they themselves had enjoyed as spectators in the arena.

  The warrior grinned and held out the blade, inviting one of us to take it. Inviting one of us to our deaths. I looked at Micon. If I could buy time …

  A Batavian auxiliary was not so indecisive. He stood behind me and stepped forwards, letting loose a torrent of curses in German. He spat at the warrior’s face as he took the offered blade, but the action provoked nothing more than a deep laugh.

  The brave Batavian didn’t wait to be attacked, but lunged at his opponent. The move was slow, the man’s muscles spent from his captivity. Not so the tribesman, who sidestepped quickly, flicking his blade to nick the flesh of the Batavian’s arm.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. This would not be a quick death. He was toying with him.

  The auxiliary tried to attack again, screaming defiance as he brought the blade across in a swinging arc. It was blocked easily, the German warrior bringing his thick skull down in a vicious and unexpected head-butt. It dropped the Batavian to his knees and the German swordsman took the man’s head from his shoulders with a skilful backwards swing. Jets of blood spurted into the air, the cut so swift and clean that the body remained on its knees. The onlookers cheered, and a teen broke from their ranks, rushing to the body and undoing the rope that held up his trousers. The watching tribesmen doubled over in laughter as the boy then aimed a stream of piss into what had been the Batavian’s neck.

  As the braying laughter finally faded, the warrior picked up the severed head and spat into the Batavian’s dead eyes. This time, when he held out the challenger’s sword, I did not hesitate. My victory would come from buying more life for Micon, however short.

  The huge man grinned as he saw my haste to take the blade, mistaking it for a desire to meet my inevitable end quickly – he had no idea that I wanted to draw out every bloody second.

  I stepped back and felt the weight of the weapon. It was a long sword, and heavy. Exhausted as I was, I would struggle to swing it with enough speed or force to break the big German’s defence, but I had no intention of doing anything so clumsy. I would use the point to jab and parry. He would fight to cut, and I would fight for time. Even if I were fully fit and could defeat the man, I would never leave this circle alive – any Roman that killed this warrior would be cut down by his friends, and so my victory would be counted in breaths and heartbeats only. Maybe I could buy sufficient time so that enough of them grew tired of the sport. Even then my survival was not assured, but what guarantee is there in life, other than death?

  And so I let out a cry.

  I had been holding it within me since my enslavement began. The shout had festered within my chest; I had been unable to unleash it for fear of the fate it would bring. I had no such reason to hold back now, and all of the anger, the frustration, the hate burst out of my lungs with such ferocity that the watching Germans stepped backwards, some uttering protective oaths to their gods.

  I screamed again; then I laughed. I laughed at the world, and my place in it. I laughed because, with a blade in my hand, I had regained some measure of control over my life.

  ‘You stupid ugly cunt! You fat piece of shit! Come on – come and die. Come and die!’ I challenged, grinning at the German warrior.

  He didn’t die. Instead he danced about me, and I struggled to keep my eyes on his blade as it blurred through the torch-lit air, the singing steel missing me by inches and moments. Our blades clashed, and I knew that my life was coming to an end as my strength ebbed with every ringing parry. Every panted breath.

  ‘Die, you cunt!’ I shouted, and then let loose a high-pitched wail that made the warrior wince – I was alien to him, and superstition was creeping into his tribal mind: the stories that crones had whispered at the fire’s side; the tales of wicked spirits that had been burned into his soul.

  The German roared his own challenge at such evil and attacked. Our blades met. So did our eyes. I could see in his that he knew he had beaten me before the fight had begun. What did he see in mine, in that moment where I knew that death was moments from taking me? I could even feel its hard grip on my shoulders, pulling at me, tearing me back off my feet.

  I landed in the dirt, the last of my breath choking from my chest. A chorus of shouted German erupted, and I looked up; the warrior stood with the blade by his side and his eyes on the floor. An older warrior was inches before him, screaming oaths, spittle flying into the younger tribesman’s face. I couldn’t understand the angry words, but from the pointed fingers to myself and to the bodies of the warrior’s victims, I could guess their meaning – slaves have a price, and this man had not paid it. We belonged to Arminius, and so long as we were useful, we lived.

  I wasted no time, and began crawling towards Micon. Strong kicks from German legs propelled me on my way. Hissing at my comrade to move, we skulked back to the mass of prisoners, leaving the bitter tribesmen arguing in our wake.

  We would survive the night.

  5

  We survived longer than the night. In the morning, after being roused by insults and kicks, we were fed and watered by our German masters. The water tasted foul. The meat was tough and stringy.

  Never have I enjoyed a meal more in my life.

  Stumps smiled, the ghost of his true character rising. ‘Must be my birthday.’ The most basic of medical supplies had come with the food, and Stumps had subdued his pain as I stitched what was left of his ear together.

  Funny how the ways in which we find happiness can change so quickly. I’m sure there are filthy-rich senators in Rome whose day is ruined by a stained toga, or too much seasoning on the third course of a meal. I have been guilty of such pettiness in my past, but that morning, for a brief moment at least, my situation was somehow forgotten. I had enough food in my shrunken belly so that I felt like a new man. The sun came from beneath the clouds to warm me with its rays, and beside me were two dear comrades. Yes, for a short time at least, I was a slave and
I was happy. Life is strange.

  We marched from the campsite with our shoulders a little straighter, our eyes a little more lively. The timbers were left in our wake, to what end I did not know, nor did I care. My near cheerful mind-set remained until we crested a wide ridge, and for the first time, I was given a glimpse at the scale of Arminius’s victorious army.

  It was massive. The tribes had gathered and spread like a cloak across their land.

  I turned to Brando. The Batavian had become a fixture beside me, and there was a reassurance in his solid presence.

  ‘The chieftains are lining up behind him,’ I said. ‘He’s shown them that Rome can be beaten.’

  Brando nodded. ‘Germans like a strong man.’

  And who was stronger than the prince who had destroyed three of Rome’s legions?

  ‘As long as he’s winning, they’ll stay with him,’ the Batavian added.

  I looked at the winding snake of men that stretched ahead of us. It didn’t march with the same rigid formality as a Roman army, but it engendered the same kind of fear. What chance did the forts on the Lippe stand against such numbers? It looked as though nothing could stop Arminius until the Rhine, where numbers would count for far less as he would be forced to face Romans behind stone walls. Should he triumph there … what force would stand between him and Rome itself?

  There was none.

  Something had to stop Arminius and his army. Someone had to stand and fight.

  It was another three days until we found them.

  For three more days we marched beside the river. We passed forts reduced by the German vanguard, the pattern familiar: bodies lay in the dirt; screams rang out as men were tortured and women were raped; prisoners were taken; valuables were looted; at times our labour as slaves was called upon, and we dug graves or carried burdens. It was not a happy time, and for the most part men withdrew into themselves. Conversation was stifled as we sought to conserve our energy and minds.