Blood Forest Page 24

  Against the wind, I heard the sound of soft sobbing. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Stumps was digging, the soldier seemingly oblivious to the tears that cut through the thick grime on his cheeks.

  ‘His fucking cat died,’ I heard him repeat to himself for the thousandth time.

  Chickenhead sat apart, his head between his bony knees as rain bounced from the steel of his helmet.

  ‘Keep digging,’ Titus grunted, seeing my stare. ‘He’ll come through.’

  I wasn’t so certain. Chickenhead’s kitten had been the anchor that kept his mind from drifting into the waters of depression, and worse. Now there was nothing to hold the man back. Experience told me that he was as broken as any man with a spear in his guts.

  Unfortunately, I had a long time to think over such dark matters. There were hours of backbreaking labour before the camp’s defences were completed. The men of the legions were exhausted and, despite the threats and cajoling of the centurions and optios, construction took twice the time that day as it had done when the army first took to the field.

  Despite my own discomfort, I was grudgingly pleased to see that our commanders insisted on maintaining the regulation defences of the camp, an important step towards sustaining the discipline that was our best chance of survival. Still, that solace did little to soothe my blistered hands.

  Pavo finally nodded, atop the earthen bank. ‘Good enough. Get some rest, and some food.’

  ‘We got any tents?’ Stumps asked in hope.

  Pavo said nothing.

  ‘Felix,’ Titus said. ‘Come with me.’

  I looked at Pavo, but the centurion made no protest as the section commander led me away, leaving our comrades to huddle together on the wet ground, a solitary blanket pulled over their heads for protection against the storm.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked Titus once we were out of earshot.

  ‘To find the camp followers.’

  ‘Rufus’s family?’

  He nodded. So he hadn’t forgotten about his friend. I felt as if I needed to offer something.

  ‘He was a good man, Rufus,’ I tried feebly.

  ‘He was a great man,’ Titus grunted. ‘And a great soldier.’

  ‘He won the Gold Crown?’ I asked, referring to his decoration for valour.

  ‘Four years ago. We went on raids across the Rhine, nothing large scale. We went into a stinking village to raze the place. It looked deserted.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ I guessed from his tone.

  ‘It wasn’t.’ He grimaced. ‘Half the century went down, including our centurion and optio. Rufus held it all together.’

  I was surprised. Titus had always seemed the natural leader of the pair. Perhaps he read my thoughts.

  ‘I was one of the ones that went down.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Rufus pulled me out of a burning hut. He saved my life.’

  I said nothing. No wonder the men’s bond had been so close.

  ‘They offered him the century after that, but he didn’t want rank. That wasn’t him. Just his family and his mates, that was enough.’

  And so we looked for his family.

  The camp followers – or, at least, those who had made it this far – were huddled in the camp’s centre, hundreds of wretched individuals who shuddered in the rain. Many had armed themselves with a mixture of Roman and German weaponry, for they would receive no mercy from Rome’s enemies. At best, these civilians could expect to be taken and sold into slavery. At worst, there was rape, torture and death.

  Tradesmen of every colour and country had followed the army in the hope of riches. Now their stores were abandoned to the Germans, and these merchants would be lucky to escape the forest with their lives. Amongst them were the prostitutes, and I saw one of these hard-eyed women stare at me as we trod through the grass of a field that was quickly being churned to mud.

  ‘Go and fight them, you fucking tarts,’ the whore cursed, desperate to vent her spleen.

  ‘Fuck off, you rat,’ Titus growled. I had no doubt that he would beat her down should she retort, and the prostitute must have sensed it too, for she held her tongue, though her eyes screamed oaths.

  ‘Whores,’ Titus grumbled beneath his breath, and I saw dozens more, but where some followed the army for profit, others had done it out of love. These were the families of the troops, though all were unofficial.

  These civilians made for pathetic figures now. I swallowed as I took in the miserable sight of them. Children wailed, their skin waxen and grey from exposure. Mothers, eyes wide and red, held dying babes to their chests and cried into their wet hair. I wondered which would survive this day, or the next. Very few, I was certain. Their bones would litter this field and the forest, sport for the German warriors and food for the woodland creatures.

  ‘Felix,’ Titus grunted, poking me in the chest with a thick finger and snapping me from my dark musings. ‘Stop standing there with your head up your arse and start asking for Rufus’s family.’

  I did. Most of the families could tell me nothing, their eyes empty wells. Others told me to leave them alone, fuck off, or worse. None were forthcoming with any useful information.

  It was Titus who found someone who had answers. She was married to a veteran of our own cohort, and her family had encamped near Rufus’s own within Minden town.

  ‘They were with us,’ the hard-faced woman confirmed, wiping snot from beneath a constantly running nose. ‘But they made a break for it in the forest. Reckoned they had a better chance on their own.’

  ‘But they were alive?’ Titus pressed.

  ‘They were then.’ The woman shrugged. Like the soldiers, she had seen too much, and death no longer had the impact it had done only a day before. ‘And Rufus?’ she asked.

  Titus’s only answer was to walk away.

  I followed, but I could not help a final look over my shoulder, where I saw the hundreds of innocents that shuddered in the cold, lambs awaiting the Germans’ slaughter. They had followed the army expecting riches and glory, but instead, they had found only death.

  I do not know what Titus had planned to do had he discovered his comrade’s family, but the option had been taken from him. It seemed certain that Rufus’s loved ones would join their husband and father in his grim resting place.

  ‘I’ll never know what happened to my mate,’ Titus suddenly said out of nowhere, breaking me from my thoughts.

  ‘What?’ I asked, flustered.

  ‘I’ll never know. I told him to go, when we were outside the ramparts. I told him: “Go and be with them.” And then what? Did he get lost? Did the fuckers get into our camp, and snatch him? I’ll never know, Felix. All I can hope is that he was dead before they did …’ He faltered. ‘… that fucking shit to him.’

  ‘It’s war, Titus,’ I managed, certain that, as a veteran, he would know what I meant. In war, some things go unanswered, and good men die.

  I wanted to try to say something more to the man, hardened though he was, but my words died as I saw him peering through the grey gloom. A body of men and animals moved within the marching camp’s walls.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Cavalry,’ he grunted, eyes narrowing. ‘They’re getting ready to ride out.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, puzzled, unable to guess why a large body of horsemen would be forming now that the army had fixed itself in position behind the relative safety of ditch and rampart.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered, but I could tell by the curiosity in his voice that we were going to find out.

  40

  Titus and I walked towards the body of horsemen. The troopers were busily checking the hooves of their mounts and tightening straps of both saddle and armour. Many of the beasts and their riders bore scars and bandages, the cavalry having come through the day no less punished than the foot-sloggers.

  ‘Brother.’ Titus hailed the nearest veteran. I saw that the green trousers beneath his tunic were stained almost black by blood.

  ‘My second mount
of the day,’ he told us, seeing my look. ‘This one belonged to a friend of mine.’

  The trooper was anxious to share his experiences, even with a stranger. I recognized this as the sign of a man who was filled with nervous anticipation.

  ‘You look like you’ve had a shit day,’ Titus offered, putting a hand on the horse’s soaked flank. There was comfort to be drawn from the company of beasts that held no malice. Little wonder that Chickenhead was suffering so much from the loss of his feline companion.

  The cavalryman shrugged, taking in our battered and bloodied appearance. ‘No worse than yours.’

  ‘And now?’ Titus asked, looking about at the men who were taking long, fortifying pulls from wineskins. ‘Looks like you’re planning a party.’

  The trooper snorted at the jest. ‘The governor is,’ he explained, offering us a drink from his own wineskin. We declined, knowing that every man in the army was short on rations, and not wishing to deprive a good man of his own.

  ‘Varus is sending us out. North, then west,’ he told us after a hearty swig. ‘We’re to link up with the legions on the Rhine, and bring reinforcements.’

  The trooper’s words were hollow, holding little hope of success, and no wonder: the army had already abandoned its baggage train, and with it the majority of the campaign stores. Every hour in the marching camp would only weaken the fighting capacity of the legions through exhaustion and exposure. We could not hold out forever, and the Rhine forts were a long way away.

  ‘How long’s the ride?’ Titus forced himself to ask.

  In answer, the man simply offered the wineskin. This time, we were both eager to take it.

  ‘Keep hold of it,’ the cavalryman insisted. ‘I’ll either pick up some more on the Rhine, or in the afterlife.’ He cackled at his own dark thoughts.

  ‘Thank you for this.’ Titus offered his hand and gave the man his name and unit. ‘Look for me when we’re back in the forts and I can repay the favour.’

  ‘Atticus,’ the trooper introduced himself. ‘And if you’ll excuse me, friends, it looks as if we’re leaving.’

  ‘Mount up!’ a voice called, and Atticus hauled himself up into the saddle.

  ‘Until we meet again.’ He smiled, and trotted his mare to join the formation of grim-faced horsemen.

  Without speaking, I walked with Titus to the nearest stretch of rampart. We did so not only because we had both been taken by the genial trooper and wished to see him on his way, but also because we knew that the army’s hopes rode with these men. As we stood on top of the earthen bank and watched the depleted squadrons forming up, we recognized that Varus was rolling the dice in desperation, for without cavalry, even a Roman army in open battle would be hard pressed to win, as German horsemen would be able to harass our formations with impunity, picking apart the ranks until they finally broke, and the foot-sloggers could be run down in the open.

  We were not the only soldiers to sense this, and soon the ramparts were thick with troops from every legion and auxiliary cohort in the army.

  ‘It’s the beginning, or it’s the fucking end,’ I heard a salt say behind me.

  ‘Good luck, lads!’ another shouted, and several others echoed the call.

  I turned and looked at Titus. He held my gaze. Neither of us had the stomach to cheer.

  At a command, the horses began to trot northwards, slowly gaining speed, riders anxious not to overwork the animals that had already endured so much.

  I watched through the driving storm, seeing them approach the curtain of forest where they would hope to find a passage to the Rhine. All about me was silent now, the cheering long finished, the only sound the slap of the wind and rain against armour. The forms of the cavalry mounts began to blur into one mass with the distance.

  The first sign of disaster came a moment later.

  ‘Fuck, no!’ came the curse. It was from the mouth of a young soldier, his sharp eyes having picked out something in the gloom a moment before the veterans.

  But we saw it now.

  Horsemen. A host of them. And not our own.

  They came from behind a wall of trees, their formation thick and promising death, war cries carried by the wind. Even from so far, it was clear to see that our own battered troops were severely outnumbered. They had no chance.

  No chance.

  I heard the clash of arms and armour a moment later as the German cavalry enveloped the smaller number of our own exhausted horsemen, some of whom tried to forge ahead through the storm of steel, while others reined in their mounts and bolted back towards the encampment.

  Within the space of a few breaths, the army’s hope of salvation had been routed.

  ‘The gods help them,’ a veteran prayed, but his words fell on deaf ears, and I watched blank-eyed as our cavalry were hunted down like deer by the cheering Germans.

  I saw none make it to the safety of the ramparts, but as the final screams died on the wind, a body of horsemen did ride towards us, the proud men in the saddle flushed with victory.

  At the head of these German warriors, one nobleman rode alone, the wealth about his neck shining splendid even through the grey of the storm. He held a severed head aloft by its hair, and paraded it in front of the watching eyes of the Roman army, a harbinger of their doom. With a detachment brought on by exhaustion, I realized that this was a leader who not only wanted to destroy his enemy, but wanted them to know that their end was near, and terrible. He wanted them to suffer, and so without doubt he hated them. He hated Rome. He hated the legions. He hated me.

  I looked at that magnificent warrior in the saddle, and I was surprised by all of this. Surprised and sickened to see the face of our enemy, and the architect of an army’s destruction.

  Because it was a face that I knew well.

  It was the face of Arminius.

  41

  Arminius, a traitor.

  For a moment, I almost laughed at the irony of it all. Then, as the gorge of bile rose up from my stomach, and my legs threatened to buckle beneath me, I reached out to Titus. He sensed my weakness, a rough fist taking hold of the back of my armour and holding me upright as a father would his unruly child.

  He spoke tonelessly. ‘We’re fucked now.’

  All around us, panicked whispers took flight as the identity of the lone horseman was spread, men desperate to know the answers to their most feared questions: had all the German tribes risen in revolt? Were our bases on the Rhine overrun? Would the German prince treat with our leaders, and negotiate terms, or was he bent on the wholesale destruction of our forces?

  ‘He wants us dead,’ Titus grunted, considering the last one. ‘Look at him.’

  I did.

  Seated astride a powerful grey mare, Arminius appeared as the God of War himself, shoulders thick with armour and bearskin, long blond hair tangled by rain across the handsome face that betrayed not the slightest trace of a smile. Arminius was unmoved by the howling storm, a Roman head in his blood-covered hand. He appeared as confident as a man who was seeing the game unfold five steps ahead of his adversary.

  ‘He planned all this,’ Titus breathed, and looked at me.

  I met his eyes, expecting suspicion in them, but I found none. I should not have been surprised. We had been through too much together – suffered too much together – for my own loyalty to be questioned now.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Titus shrugged, in one of the rare gestures that betrayed his stone-like exterior. ‘I know you liked him.’

  ‘He’s your enemy,’ I managed, and then corrected myself. ‘He’s our enemy.’

  I do not know if Titus would have replied, for a murmur ran through the ranks of watching troops on the rampart, and I turned to see the approach of the army’s staff officers. These panicked members of the senatorial class needed to confirm their fears with their own, wide eyes, and as they climbed the slippery battlement, some even wailed as they saw the lone figure on horseback.

  ‘Traitor!’ others called in anger.

  Ar
minius was unmoved by it all.

  He waited.

  He waited and, eventually, he was given the audience that he desired – Varus.

  The governor came to the ramparts like a cripple, the trials of the field, and now of treason, too much for a man who had considered Arminius a son. Varus slipped as he tried to scale the mud of the earthen bank, dropping to his knees in the dirt, and, seeing such feebleness as a portent, soldiers began to whisper that the gods had forsaken the legions, and that the army was doomed to be destroyed at the hands of Varus’s wayward child.

  Knowing how much the older man had loved the prince, I expected that there would be some kind of exchange between governor and German. Some demand for an answer, or a prayer for peace.

  There was none.

  No accusations, or explanations. Arminius simply turned his hard eyes on to Varus and then threw the severed head towards the rampart. It hit the dirt with a wet thump and rolled away grotesquely into the grass. Then, his message delivered, Arminius simply pulled on the reins of his mount and trotted back towards his greatest ally, the forest.

  With that simple act, he sealed the destruction of an army.

  Varus was the first to fall on his sword.

  There was no speech. No great oration. For the first time during the campaign the man drew his blade, turned it towards himself, and fell forward so that the weight of his flabby body carried the steel through his chest. Perhaps because his hands were shaking from cold, or nerves, Varus missed his heart, and lay floundering for a moment as his torn lungs gasped for air.

  With those on the rampart, I watched this without comment. Like the men about me, I had already seen too much. This act of cowardice left me open-mouthed in shock, but such were the horrors of the forest that I could not be any more revolted by it than I could the rising and setting of the sun. The actions of the governor – and, moments later, those of his staff officers – unfolded so quickly that I seemed to be watching them in slow motion. Within an instant of Varus pulling his own sword, many of his staff lay dead by their own blades, their blood pooling in the mud of the camp they had hoped would prove their bastion.