Blood Forest Page 21

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Titus grunted, offended, but Pavo continued.

  And he was right to, because we were one man short.

  Someone had been left with the enemy.

  ‘It’s Rufus,’ Titus said immediately, without needing to look over the faces of his section.

  Pavo’s own was hidden in the darkness, but from the suppressed anger in his words, I could imagine the handsome face twisted into a snarl.

  ‘Where is he, Titus?’

  ‘The baggage train,’ he answered curtly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His family’s there.’

  ‘Gods,’ Pavo groaned. ‘He brought his bloody family into this fucking mess?’

  ‘Yes, Pavo, he brought his bloody family,’ Titus answered, growing hot.

  ‘And you let him?’

  ‘I had no fucking idea, but it’s done now, and if we’re about to abandon the baggage train, then I’m not going to stop him seeing his family.’

  ‘It’s your job to stop him,’ Pavo hissed. ‘You’re his section commander, and he’s a bastard-deserter.’

  The final word was too much for Titus. His arm shot out like an arrow, gripping Pavo by his mail and making as if to lift him by the throat.

  To give him his credit, the centurion kept a remarkable kind of calm. ‘Moon,’ he said, his words measured, ‘What’s the punishment for attacking a superior officer?’

  ‘Death,’ Moonface answered after a moment.

  From the venom in his next words, Titus could not have cared less. His face loomed within an inch of Pavo’s. ‘I put my sword through eight Roman soldiers tonight, you pompous piece of shit, because the governor was going to leave them to be gutted and tortured by the bastard goat-fuckers, so don’t you go telling me that one man looking after his family will make any difference to this cunting army!’

  Titus’s heated admission left the section and centurion open-mouthed. Deep down I had known Titus had carried out mercy killings within the tent, but hearing the confirmation made my knees shake and my bowels loose, for there was no more harrowing act than taking the life of a comrade, no matter how justified.

  ‘You did that?’ Pavo asked finally.

  ‘Of course I fucking did.’ Titus’s voice was as flat and as hard as his iron sword. ‘What choice did I have?’

  Gently, Pavo pushed Titus’s hand away from his throat. After a moment, the big man allowed it to be moved.

  ‘You had none,’ Pavo agreed heavily. ‘But I can’t let Rufus desert, Titus. Do you think he’s the only one with a family in the baggage train? If it gets out that he’s gone with no repercussions, then the century will be down to twenty men by dawn.’

  ‘So say you dispatched him on a task,’ Titus offered, as neutral as it was possible for the hard man to be. ‘Do that, Pavo, and I wipe your debt clean. You hear that?’ he asked the section. ‘The centurion’s debt to me is wiped clean. Write him off as one of the badly wounded, and I’ll write off what you owe me. If we’re going to die out here, then let Rufus die with his family.’

  It seemed like an age before Pavo replied, after turning the possibilities over in his mind. Finally, he addressed his words to the section as a whole.

  ‘Rufus was killed tonight on sentry duty. His body could not be recovered. If anyone ever speaks differently, then I’ll gut them myself.’

  ‘You’re finally sounding like a leader.’ Titus’s words were heavy with bile. Then he smirked. ‘Now fuck off.’

  Pavo’s temper flared at the words, but he had accepted a bribe to overlook desertion and was in no position to assert his authority.

  I watched the silhouette of his tall figure and shorn-crested helmet stalk away into the darkness, thinking of the complexities of the man. Within the space of the day I had seen him be a heroic and natural leader in battle, an ambitious and remorseful man in private, and a greedy and unscrupulous commander in the face of debts. He was not a man I could ever trust, but when the century formed up before dawn and marched into the forest, that is exactly what I’d have to do.

  Until then, I was left to shiver in the darkness.

  33

  I was alone in the trees. It was dark, and yet I could see every detail: the branches, withered and decayed; the ground, red and violent.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I called out, knowing that I was being watched, and knowing by whom.

  They gave me no answer.

  I staggered on into the trees, desperate to find the forest’s end. The stink of decaying flesh made me retch. The ground groaned in agony with each of my steps.

  ‘Shut up!’ I hissed, knowing there were souls trapped beneath the muck. ‘Shut up!’

  They would not.

  Feathers began to fall from the sky. They were black, caked in burned blood.

  ‘Get out of my head!’ I screamed.

  The dark feathers clung to me like insects. I wiped at them with frantic hands.

  ‘Get out of my head!’ I screamed again as the rain began to pour. A rain of blood. It ran into my eyes and beneath my armour. It covered me.

  It was too much. I wept.

  Then, through my tears, I heard the laugh. A laugh that I knew so well. ‘Marcus?’ I croaked.

  A harsh voice greeted me from the depths of the blood forest. ‘Coward.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I pleaded.

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’

  ‘You’re not.’

  I dropped to the floor, my knees sinking into the red ooze.

  I heard footsteps behind me. I tried to turn, but my body was frozen. Paralysed.

  ‘You left me,’ the voice accused.

  With slow paces, he moved into my eyeline. I saw him through blood and tears. Marcus. My oldest friend. My centurion.

  ‘You left me,’ Marcus rasped through his severed jaw.

  I cried.

  He spoke again, toying with a coil of intestine that protruded from a ripped belly. ‘You left me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’ he asked, with another laugh made ugly by the wounds to his face. ‘You’re sorry?’

  I had nothing to say. Blood poured from the sky. I wanted only to die.

  ‘Then finish it,’ Marcus finally offered, and a blade landed at my feet. ‘Kill me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I stammered. ‘I can’t.’

  Marcus sneered. I looked at the blade, wondering if I had the strength to turn it on myself.

  Then a second voice spoke from the trees. ‘Kill him,’ it told me. ‘Kill him.’

  The voice was powerful. Certain. Somehow, it filled my limbs with purpose. I stood. The blade was in my hand.

  ‘Kill him,’ the voice said again.

  ‘I can’t,’ I lied.

  ‘Kill him.’

  Marcus smiled. His jaw flapped beneath what had been a handsome face. The face of my closest friend.

  ‘Kill him.’

  He was still smiling as I drove the blade into his heart.

  34

  My eyes snapped open.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Stumps grunted.

  ‘I was screaming?’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ He shrugged, ending the matter.

  As I took in deep breaths to overcome my sleep terrors, I looked about me. The section sat huddled inside the tent beside a pathetic fire, its flames as weak as our desire to leave the camp and re-enter the forest. We sat crowded for warmth, pruning hands pushed into armpits or groins. Only Titus sat alone, his hard stare fixed upon a sword that lay across his lap. The sword that he had recovered from the Germans in the forest.

  With no warning, he got to his feet and left the tent.

  ‘Titus?’ Stumps called to the man’s wide back.

  There was no response.

  ‘Probably gone to see Rufus,’ Moonface managed through chattering teeth.

  It was the logical explanation, and yet I could not accept it. Nor could I explain why I got to my weary fe
et and left the sanctuary of the tent for the violence of the storm, the others watching me push my way out of the canvas as if I were a madman. Perhaps I just wanted to be awake, and away from my terrors.

  Outside, I saw my section commander easily enough. Even the darkness could not hide him, his massive figure like the silhouette of a mountain against the ink-black sky. I followed at a short distance, making no great attempt at stealth – the storm was enough to hide my presence.

  Following the man through the tent-lined avenues of churned mud, I soon became aware of our destination despite the darkness – the ingrained map in my brain of an army’s marching camp told me that we were headed towards the quartermaster’s.

  I was not wrong.

  The area about the quartermaster’s tents was a hive of activity, soldiers and slaves unloading equipment from carts so that it could be carried on the backs of men and mules. Muleteers, those slaves that tended to the animals of the baggage train, looked to their charges. I noticed how they packed the mules’ bells with straw and wrapped them in cloth, a precaution against noise that could give away the army’s pre-dawn departure. I almost smiled at their optimism. I fully expected that the Germans would know we had set foot outside the camp before our own generals did. The tribesmen had been one step ahead of Varus at every turn, and I did not foresee that tomorrow would bring a change in our fortunes.

  What I did see, by torchlight, was Titus moving amongst the slaves and soldiers, his stern face questioning. I had no doubt whom he was looking for. Eventually, as a slave pointed in the direction of the latrines, it would seem that Titus had found him.

  Hidden by shadow, I followed on.

  The latrines were nothing more than a waist-deep slit trench dug into the dirt, the spoil deposited on the camp’s ramparts. Given the ferocity of the storm and the predicament of the army, I did not expect that many soldiers were using them, preferring the promise of at least a little shelter between tents. My hunch seemed justified as I saw only a lone figure squatting over the hole. A lone figure that Titus now approached. Downwind as I was, I caught the full stench of the trench, but the wind also trapped the big man’s accusing words, and they were full of hate.

  ‘You lying bastard,’ Titus snarled.

  The squatting man raised himself to his full height. I could not see his birthmarks, but I recognized the voice well enough – the quartermaster.

  ‘Who do you think you are, interrupting a superior officer when he’s taking a shit?’ the man spat with no trace of humour.

  ‘You told me they were going to Britain,’ Titus snapped.

  ‘They were,’ the man answered after a pause.

  ‘Then why am I finding them killing our men!’ Titus shouted, stepping forward and shoving his superior hard in the chest.

  ‘Calm yourself!’ the quartermaster ordered, an edge of alarm in his tone. ‘We can talk.’

  But Titus wouldn’t calm himself.

  ‘We can talk,’ the quartermaster almost begged.

  Then, for the briefest moment, the dark storm clouds slid apart and a slither of moon showed itself against the black.

  It was enough light for me to see the fear on the man’s face.

  It was enough for me to see the hate on Titus’s, and the sword in his hand.

  He drove it upwards into the quartermaster’s throat.

  Somehow, I mastered my own desire to call out, and in that silence I heard the man’s gurgled struggle as he tried to scream. Leaving the blade embedded, Titus pushed the man backwards; the quartermaster toppled into the trench with little grace. Had I not known what he was like, I could almost pity the bastard: his final breaths would be drawn lying in the filth of an army.

  Instead, I crouched in shadow, anxious that the moon might show itself again and reveal me. There, I watched as Titus took a moment to stand over the man he had killed, as if savouring the murder.

  Murder.

  For what?

  I had to know.

  Titus followed the same path back towards the century’s lines, doubtless confident that the storm could provide better cover than any meandering route. He seemed oblivious to my stalking of him, and as the questions about his murderous act raced through my mind, I grew careless in my pursuit.

  And that momentary lapse was enough for Titus to kill me.

  Somehow, the man had melted into the shadow of a tent, and now, as I passed, his thick arm swung out, the oak-like forearm hitting my throat and dropping me to the mud, where I lay wheezing like a landed fish.

  ‘You,’ the giant accused me. I looked up into his eyes, seeing nothing but cold calculation – and murder. I had underestimated him, and now I would die for it.

  ‘You.’ He spoke again. ‘Did you see it?’ he asked finally.

  I still struggled to breathe, but I saw little point in denial. If Titus wanted to kill me, he would kill me, and so I nodded.

  ‘And you want to know why?’

  I nodded again, expecting a blade. Instead, I got a hand.

  Titus pulled me to my feet, the big man grimacing as he saw the confusion in my eyes. ‘The sword,’ was all he told me.

  It was enough.

  ‘The weapons under the straw.’ I managed to choke, referring to the weapons I had seen smuggled out of Minden under Titus and the quartermaster’s supervision.

  ‘They were supposed to go to Britain,’ he confirmed. By his tone, it was clear that they hadn’t.

  ‘You found them in the forest.’

  ‘I found them in the forest.’ His voice was bitter. ‘Roman blades in German hands.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that they were yours,’ I offered, rubbing at my burning throat.

  ‘They were mine.’ Titus held up a scarred fist. ‘There was only one supplier working out of Minden, you understand? I made sure of that.’

  ‘And now he’s dead.’ As I spoke I thought of the quartermaster’s body in the shit-filled trench.

  ‘Quicker end than the cunt deserved,’ Titus grunted as the man’s eulogy.

  I said nothing. The rain beat against our faces as we held each other’s stares.

  ‘So what now?’ I asked. As witness to Titus’s murder of a superior officer, I still held little hope that I would be leaving the filthy avenue alive.

  The killer snorted. ‘Rufus has gone to his family. He won’t be coming back. Chickenhead’s a good soldier, but this storm is turning him to rust. The others? They’re sheep.’ Titus spoke harshly, his eyes hard.

  ‘So you won’t kill me?’ I asked, almost jumping in surprise as the big man bellowed out a bark of laughter.

  ‘You’re as guilty as me, Felix.’ He smirked. ‘I don’t know of what, exactly, but you have blood on your hands. I’d bet my life on it.’

  I said nothing, and Titus smiled again, enjoying his sport and, perhaps, seeing life with the clarity that can only come when one is so near to death.

  ‘I don’t promise you’ll live through today,’ he told me, ‘but it won’t be my blade that guts you.’

  I imagined that was as heartfelt a truce as I could ever get from this man, and so I put out my hand. I had nothing to gain from denying our transgressions. ‘To secrets, then.’

  Titus paused, his thick lips twisted in amusement. ‘To secrets.’ He took my hand and stared deep into my dead eyes. ‘And to killers,’ he finished, walking away into the darkness.

  I watched him go. He knew who I was. Despite our differences, we were the two most alike in the section.

  Then such thoughts were cut away as I was suddenly forced to bend at the waist. Perhaps it was being a moment from my imagined death that made me vomit, or perhaps it was the irony. Either way, as I wiped the acidic bile with the back of my hand, I echoed Titus’s salutation in my head.

  To killers, he had said.

  To killers.

  35

  I followed Titus into the section’s tent.

  ‘We thought you’d gone to get Rufus,’ Stumps mumbled, relieved to see his leader return.


  Titus made no reply. Instead, he cast his eyes over the section’s soldiers, seeing the five men clustered about the weak flames, their stares as empty as the pathetic brazier. In them, I saw the look of men who were on the edge of surrender. Titus saw it too, and acted.

  ‘Look at me,’ he ordered.

  They did, heads turning slowly on aching shoulders. At Titus’s back, I took in the sight of them, and one fact was painfully clear: these were not the men who had marched from Minden.

  Chickenhead’s pinched face was gaunt and grey. He had wrapped Lupus the kitten in a scarf, and held him to his chest as if the feline were a precious jewel. Moonface and Stumps, young veterans in the prime of their years, had the hollow-eyed and desperate look of criminals condemned to the arena. Micon and Cnaeus, mere boys, seemed to have aged a decade in a day, Cnaeus’s temples having developed a shock of white like a rabbit’s tail.

  Yes, this was a section on the edge of breaking. In times of crisis, men show themselves to be leaders or followers, wolves or sheep.

  Our own wolf stepped forward. He pulled away his helmet, dropping it to the ground. ‘What happened tonight, at the hospital,’ Titus began, looking at each of the shivering men in the eye, ‘that’s not going to be us. That will never be us.’

  Titus paused with his next words still in his mouth, and I wondered if the gnarled veteran was about to fill his comrades with false promises of invincibility, everlasting life and glory.

  He was not.

  ‘Our section will never leave a wounded man behind. If any of us are too fucked to go on, then …’ Now he did falter, his thick jaw grinding like a millstone. ‘… then what needs to be done will be done.’

  His words finished, I watched as Titus seemed to swallow what looked like a rock in his throat. The sorry figures before him stared back, their already assaulted minds struggling to accept the thought of dying at the hands of their friends. It was not a concept they were eager to face, but Titus gave them no choice.

  ‘Do you all agree?’ Titus pushed them, volume rising. ‘Well? Fucking talk!’ he finally snapped, when no answer was forthcoming.

  It was Chickenhead who was the first to break his silence, his head bobbing as he shrugged and grimaced. ‘What choice is there? We’ve all seen what the goat-fuckers do for sport.’ At his chest, Lupus made a mewling sound, and the veteran turned his attention back sharply to his beloved creature.