Blood Forest Read online

  ‘Come back to the track with me. We can stay in cover. Maybe we’ll see them. If not,’ I promised, ‘then I’ll come with you. We’ll make a break for it.’

  Titus held my eyes. He was no coward, far from it, and yet we both knew that with every moment delayed, the chance of us escaping the forest grew ever smaller.

  ‘One look,’ he told me as he spat, and so, pulling the mule’s reins, I led us back towards the track where an army had been destroyed.

  At least so we thought.

  ‘Fuck. How?’ Titus whispered, peering out from the trees.

  We were looking at an army of ghosts. A cohort of Roman soldiers. Somehow, this band of bloodied men had survived the collapse, and had rallied in an area of open ground. There were perhaps a thousand of them, from all three legions and all manner of auxiliary cohorts, bound together now as a single unit, fighting for survival.

  ‘It must be the second battle group,’ I guessed. ‘I didn’t see what happened to them. Did you?’

  The big man shook his head slowly.

  To see such a cohesive force still alive was a surprise not only to myself and Titus, but to Arminius’s army. The Germans had thought the battle won, but this thick tangle of Roman soldiers had hung on doggedly to life. Flush with victory, no German warrior was anxious to die now that the battle’s outcome had been assured, and so a tense lull had descended over the field.

  ‘It’s stopped raining,’ I heard Titus say in wonderment.

  I looked up. For the first time in days, the skies had closed. I noticed then that the branches had ceased to tremble, the winds dying away to nothing. The final act of Arminius’s deception would be played out beneath a beautiful blue September sky.

  I ran my eyes over the assembled ranks of the Roman soldiery. What I saw was no surprise, and I recognized men who were resigned to death in this place. Their eyes were hollow. Their cheeks were gaunt. There would be no escape. Only the manner of death was to be decided.

  The death of my comrades. The death of my friends.

  Stumps. Micon. Moonface. I saw them in the front rank, with overlapping shield, and bloodied blades in hand. For now, they lived, but the German horde was stirring. This lull would end. The tempest had cleared, but death was coming again with more violence than any storm.

  ‘Titus.’ I pulled at his tunic, but I could see that the warrior had already sighted the men of his section, for his eyes were huge and wet.

  And then, without a word, he walked back into the forest.

  47

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’ I hissed at Titus as the big man led the mule away from the army’s survivors in the open ground and deeper into the forest.

  ‘Home,’ he said simply.

  ‘Titus,’ I tried. ‘Those are our mates out there. They’re still alive. Didn’t you see them?’

  ‘I saw them.’ He pushed a branch out of the way of his face.

  ‘Then where the fuck are you going?’ I demanded again.

  ‘Home.’

  It was too much.

  I raised my blade. Its edge was thick with congealed blood that smeared across the coarse hair of the big man’s throat.

  ‘Kill me, or get out of my way,’ he ordered, and I had never seen the brute so calm. So at peace. What reason could possibly compel him to walk away from his comrades’ side with such serenity?

  ‘I’ve got a son,’ Titus answered the question in my eyes. ‘He served with the fleet, and three years ago, his ship was lost at sea.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘That’s why you rejoined the eagles,’ I managed eventually.

  Titus nodded. Having lost his boy, he had gone back to the closest thing he had to a family. A family he was now abandoning.

  In pleading tones, I told him as much.

  ‘My boy’s alive,’ Titus answered me, and almost smiled. ‘Just before we left Minden, I got word. My boy is alive, Felix. He’s in trouble, but he’s alive.’

  I thought back to those days when we had marched out of camp, Titus withdrawn into himself, sullen and despondent. I had assumed it was due to the prospect of the upcoming campaign, but it was the scars of the past that had troubled him.

  ‘Titus,’ I began, ‘you have a son, but those are our brothers out there. We can’t leave them to die.’

  ‘You and me? What can we do?’ he whispered, his eyes flickering across the forest. ‘We’re two bastard-soldiers, Felix. Arminius has almost wiped out three fucking legions. If it was Stumps and Moon standing here now, and you and me out there in the open with our balls in our hands, I’d tell them to run as fast as they fucking could.’

  I couldn’t argue with his logic. I would do the same.

  And yet.

  ‘We can’t just leave them to die.’

  Titus ran a gnarled hand over the cracked skin of his face. His chest rising like a mountain in earthquake, the man sighed. ‘We all died when we came into this forest, Felix, but for you and me, this is our chance for a new life. Out of all the people in this army, you should be the one to understand that.’

  I made no reply, and so those were the last words that Titus spoke to me. I wanted to talk, but no words would come, so I simply watched as he led the mule and the legion’s pay chests into the forest, until his thick shoulders were swallowed by the green.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. From an army of thousands, and a handful of comrades, I was once again alone.

  But I did not have to end my life that way, I realized. I had a choice.

  I turned my back on Titus, and sought out death.

  Moving through the trees, I collected a spear from a German corpse. The man’s lips had twisted in death, giving him a bemused expression. Even the dead seemed to chide me for the decision I was making.

  Finding the Roman survivors was a simple enough task. The battle was still in a lull, but the screams of wounded men, and the taunts of those who were still thirsty for blood and glory, guided me through the trees like a ship following a lighthouse.

  Wanting to be nimble on my feet, and knowing how drained my body was, I discarded my battered helmet and slipped the chain-mail shirt over my head, gasping at the pain – my shoulders had been rubbed raw beneath the summer tunic.

  Finally unburdened, but with my muscles screaming at even such a simple effort, I began to stalk my way at a crouch to the forest’s edge. Aside from the dead, I seemed to be alone within the trees. The foe had his eyes on a bigger prize than the lone stragglers of the army.

  The army. I looked at it now, all that was left of it. A thousand bloodied men who had already gone through everything that nature and the enemy could throw at them. Somehow, they still stood, though I did not deceive myself that any of these brave warriors thought that they could come through this ordeal alive. Like myself, they had committed themselves to death here, beneath the blue German skies.

  Not so the warriors of the tribes. Under Arminius, the Germans had won a great victory. It was a victory that would spread ripples of fear throughout the Empire, and yet their glory had been secured at a terrible cost, and the open ground was littered with German dead. With my own eyes I had seen hundreds fall in the forest. To break apart the final Roman stand would likely take hundreds more German lives, and a man is far less likely to throw himself against sword and shield when he knows that the spoils of victory are so close at hand. That was why the Roman soldiers were left swaying on their feet, their enemy watching them, poised, yet nervous.

  And so it was for Arminius to ride forward towards the men he had once called allies, comrades and brothers.

  It made my skin itch and crawl to see him, but I realized instantly that it was not because of his treason. It was because, in every movement, and every ounce of his poise, Arminius showed nothing but grace and dignity. Despite the horrors, despite the bloodshed, this man was totally assured that his cause was just.

  Could I argue that it wasn’t?

  ‘Soldiers of Rome!’ he called in a v
oice that commanded attention from every man, no matter how battle-shocked. ‘It is time for you to end your suffering.’

  ‘Fuck off, cunt!’ came shooting back from the Roman ranks; the call was picked up by a dozen voices, though most men remained like stone, too drained to offer challenge.

  ‘Your leaders abandoned you, soldiers!’ Arminius countered, undeterred. ‘They fell on their own swords, instead of standing by your side. Why should you fight for weak men like that? Why should you die? You have done all that honour could demand, and a thousandfold more. Like Hector’s, your defeat will be remembered in history for its glory. There is no shame in it! None! It is time to end this bloodshed.’

  I did not expect any further taunts from the ranks, nor were there. The Roman survivors were being offered the slightest chance of life, and every man was weighing that in his mind, playing out the most hopeful of scenarios.

  The Roman leader stepped forward from the ranks.

  Prefect Caeonius. He lived. This man had ultimate authority, and would determine the course of the Roman army, and so I found my fate once again in the hands of the two warriors who had discovered me as a bloody apparition in the sacred grove.

  With his thick shoulders drawn back, Caeonius walked out from between the shields. Even from a distance, I could see that his armour was bent and bloodied. Here was a true leader, one who had been in the thick of the action. The most salted veteran in the legions, who loved and valued the soldiers beneath his command. He would not fritter away their lives needlessly.

  ‘What are your terms?’ he called.

  I had expected that Caeonius would have made some comment about Arminius’s treachery, but he was so long in the tooth that he had seen Roman allies – even Roman senators – cast aside their allegiance for vainglory.

  Arminius had proved himself to be a great commander. Now he recognized Caeonius as an equal, and climbed from his saddle so that both men stood on the bloodied turf.

  Arminius’s words were simple, the tone neutral yet unyielding as they carried across the field. ‘Your soldiers will surrender, Caeonius, and be taken into slavery.’

  Slavery. The word struck like an arrow. Depending on the conditions, it was as much of a death sentence as defying Arminius and his tribesmen on this battlefield. Backbreaking labour in mines and fields – what terms were those?

  But the damning conditions of surrender offered one thing that a last stand could not.

  Hope.

  There was the hope that a Roman army would swoop in to avenge the defeat of Varus. There was the hope of escape from farm, or slave barracks. There was the smallest hope of a benevolent master. Every Roman survivor was now convincing himself that he would be the one to defy the odds and resume his former life. That he would be the one to see his homeland and town once again, and be reunited with loved ones.

  Caeonius, I’m sure, would have known that slavery was a harsh sentence to inflict on his soldiers. I am equally sure that, had he known a handful would escape and survive the ordeal, he would have seen the enslavement as infinitely preferable to a final stand in which all his soldiers perished, however gloriously.

  Hope. It had driven me across a continent. Now it opened Caeonius’s mouth.

  ‘We surrender.’

  48

  No man seemed to dare breathe in the moments following Caeonius’s surrender. The Roman soldiers held their ranks, battered shields overlapping, eyes hollow beneath steel helmets. The German tribesmen stared at their foe, desperate to finish their enemy, but wary of the wounded animal that could still kill and maim in scores.

  It was Caeonius who acted first, drawing his bloodied blade from its sheath and casting it down into the wet dirt. Then, with that signal, shields, javelins and swords began to fall from Roman hands. A few men began to weep. Most stared vacantly at nothing.

  It was over.

  Arminius climbed back into his saddle and called something aloud in German. With fierce eyes, he repeated it with force, and I can only assume it was a savage order that his men must respect the surrender, and not butcher the Roman prisoners, as so many clearly wanted to do. I had seen surrender before, and the moments following the laying down of arms were critical. If blood spilled now, it would not stop until the last drop had run into the dirt. If calm could prevail for a time, then the Roman soldiers would live to see their enslavement.

  ‘Caeonius,’ Arminius then called in Latin. ‘Leave your arms here, and march your men to that camp.’ He pointed towards the army’s final marching camp, where Varus and his staff had taken their own lives the previous day.

  Caeonius hesitated for a moment. He knew that once his soldiers were separated from their arms, there would be nothing to prevent a massacre.

  ‘Form up in ten ranks!’ the prefect finally called, realizing that he had no choice, and I watched as the desperate-looking mass of men shuffled their way into formation. Many had to be held aloft by their comrades, and I knew that the end for these wounded soldiers would be near. A crippled slave was of little use.

  Eventually, the remnants of the army formed up. Knowing that they were ten ranks deep, I could now make an estimate of the cohort’s size. The mathematics left my stomach sour.

  Fewer than a thousand survivors.

  Fewer than a thousand from an army of seventeen and a baggage train of three.

  The forest had swallowed us whole.

  ‘Formation!’ Caeonius called, his voice showing no recognition of the tragedy. ‘By the centre, quick march.’

  Of course there was nothing quick about the shuffle of exhausted and wounded men. A few of the most stubborn held their shoulders back, with some reserve of pride, but most stumbled and staggered towards their enslavement, herded by the German warriors who followed in their wake like hungry dogs.

  The army’s path to the fort brought them closer to my position, and as they came, I sought out the faces of the men I had known. Only a short time had passed between my laying eyes on Stumps, Moonface and Micon, and then Caeonius’s capitulation, and I was hopeful that my comrades had survived those final moments. And yet, try as I might, I could not see them amongst the mass of hobbled soldiery.

  But I could see Arminius.

  I could see him well enough, the cunt, sitting astride his war-steed like a god, his blond hair cascading over his thick shoulders, his face serene. It made me hate his treason all the more that he showed not the slightest smugness at its success. It was as if he had known all along exactly how the campaign would unfold, and so he felt no relief. Surely he knew that his actions here would shake the world, and yet … nothing. No smile. No oration. No beating of his thick chest. He simply walked his mare behind the army that he had butchered, and, in doing so, he walked it into killing range of the spear in my hand.

  I knew I would not miss him from my vantage point; he was too close to have time to evade the missile. My initial movement would give away my position, but Arminius’s instinct would be to turn towards me, not shy away, and that action would present me with twice the target width to hit. My muscles were beyond fatigue, and yet they now raged with hate for this man, and so I knew they would not fail me. My aim would be true, and though it was too late for my comrades, perhaps I could do something to stop the landslide that was about to pour from Germany into Roman-occupied lands.

  My grip went loose about the spear’s shaft as I considered those words: Roman-occupied lands.

  Since when had I cared about Rome, Germany or any other country or tribe? With shaking hands, I knew the truth was that I did not. I was not Moonface, a patriotic chest-thumper. I was not Rufus, proud of my heritage.

  Lines on the map meant nothing to me. I was wearing one uniform, but I could just as easily be wearing another.

  Perhaps it was for this reason that instead of hurling the spear into Arminius’s chest, I held it limp by my side as I stepped from the trees and on to the corpse-strewn track.

  ‘Arminius,’ I called, though the prince was already turni
ng to face me, his troops sprinting towards the threat with murder in their eyes.

  He stopped them with a raised hand. Like a pack of hunting hounds, the German warriors waited to tear me apart at a signal from their master.

  Arminius’s eyes burned into me, and then he gave the slightest shake of his head. I saw his lips move as he spoke in silent German.

  I expected honeyed words from the man who had talked Governor Varus and his army to their deaths. My ego even flattered itself that he would wish to justify his treasonous actions to me.

  Instead, Arminius simply looked at me with the same bemused detachment as he had done in the sacred grove. Yet again I had appeared to him as a bloodied, savage-looking thing, though now that I had given up the element of surprise, I was as little threat to the prince as a gnat to his mare.

  ‘You could have killed me?’ he said finally, with a gesture of his chin towards the spear in my hand.

  The words were a question, the answer to which I had not fully understood myself until I replied.

  ‘You said that I owed you two,’ I forced from between my broken teeth. ‘On the parade square at Minden, you said that I owed you two. I won’t die in debt to you.’

  And with those pathetic words of defiance, I threw my spear to the floor, and prepared for death by closing my eyes, clamping my jaw tight and squeezing my muscles so that I would not shake or shit myself as the German warriors came for me.

  I expected it would be the strike of a sword into my flesh that would force me from this state of dreadful anticipation. Instead, it was a bark of the happiest laughter.

  I opened my eyes.

  The bastard. The bastard was smiling. He was looking at me with wonder, as gleeful as I had ever seen him.

  ‘I don’t want you to die, my friend.’ He beamed and chuckled, throwing himself gracefully from the saddle, and walking towards me with his hands free of weapons.

  I tried to muster the courage to attack him with my own bare hands and teeth, but something in his grace held me rooted to the spot.

  And then, with a few words, Arminius spilled my insides as well as any blade could have done.