Blood Forest Page 8

  I shook my head.

  ‘Keeping records. He’s really good at that, because he’s a quartermaster, and this is the Roman army, so you better be bloody good at keeping records.’

  Now I had a horrible feeling that I knew where he was going. My fingers twitched, involuntarily, towards my dagger.

  ‘The quartermaster, he doesn’t just issue sandals and javelins. He’s got other responsibilities, and one of those is putting dead boys in holes. That meant getting the names of your mates from the forest, so they could get a proper burial. They came from the First Legion, so that’s where he had to send for his answers. When he got them, I asked him about these comrades of yours. You know, the ones you can’t remember?’

  The movement of my fingers was no longer involuntary. I’d have to kill this big bastard.

  ‘I lost a friend the other day. A good one. We went through it together. He was a good fucking man. Seeing him coming in on that cart, with his throat torn open like he was nothing more than an animal—’

  He stopped. He was picturing his comrade, and struggling.

  ‘Since then, every time I close my eyes, I see that. I don’t know if it’s revenge I want, or what, but I want something. Now, you? You come out of a forest with twelve bodies, twelve comrades. You scream in your sleep every night, and I wonder if, maybe, you really are that fucked up that you can’t remember it at all.’

  This was the point. He was either going to let it go, or force me to kill him.

  ‘Twelve.’ He repeated the number again. ‘That’s how many they recorded as sent from the First Legion, to join up here as casualty replacements. Guess how many bodies the quartermaster put into holes?’

  I didn’t, and so he answered for me.

  ‘Twelve.’ Titus looked me up and down, but it was intrigue in his eyes, not malice. ‘So where did you come from?’

  And there it was.

  I looked for an opening. The neck? He was too tall. The groin, then? Yes. I’d go for his groin, and the artery within.

  ‘So, I’ve got straw, and you’ve got problems counting.’ He was almost smiling now. ‘Embarrassing for us both, if these things came out.’

  He was offering me a truce, but I wasn’t about to take it. I was waiting for the second his guard lowered, just enough, and then I’d ram the dagger into his groin, and I’d be gone, on the run, and probably dead before the day was out. Fuck it. Better to die with a fighting chance than to have them come for me in my sleep. I’d seen crucifixion. I wouldn’t suffer that fate.

  Movement came from the end of the alleyway, and Titus turned his head to see it. Here was my chance. My fingers gripped the dagger, but the words kept the blade in its scabbard.

  ‘Uncle Titus!’ It was Rufus’s boys, their ruddy faces alive with excitement. ‘Uncle Titus!’ they called again, unaware that they had just saved the man’s life, and probably mine into the bargain.

  ‘What is it?’ he called back.

  ‘We found a dead man!’

  11

  The boys were wrong. They hadn’t found a dead man.

  They’d found three.

  They were in a pile of manure; a stiff arm had been uncovered by a scratching dog. The sullen beast now watched us, protesting with a feeble growl at being denied its dinner.

  ‘Shit way to go,’ Stumps snorted to himself. The others ignored the pun.

  ‘Dig him out,’ Titus ordered, looking at me. ‘Moon, go and get Pavo.’

  The grave of dung was shallow, and I decided that the quickest way to extract the body from shit was not to dig, but to pull, and so I took a hold of the stiff wrist – still warm, thanks to the manure – felt for purchase with my sandals, and tugged backwards. The body began to slip out, face down, the dirtied red neck-tie marking the corpse as a soldier. Though short, the man was heavy, and by the time he slithered out like a newborn I was breathing hard. When Titus put his sandal to the body, and rolled him on to his back, I almost stopped breathing altogether. My drinking companion from the inn. The man who had known my secret. A corpse, his throat opened with a gash that was the same livid red as his features.

  ‘There’s another,’ I heard Stumps say, despite the beating of blood against my temples.

  I knew the identity before he was pulled from the filth and dumped without ceremony alongside his comrade. The silver hair was stained brown from pig shit.

  I felt light-headed, washed over with relief, but with a deep, foreboding instinct that told me a greater sin had been committed to save me from my own. Why, I did not know. When the third body was discovered, the questions that seared my skull threatened to overwhelm me.

  Pavo arrived then, giving me a sidelong look, doubtless wondering why I – the veteran he knew me to be – was so pale at the sight of a few bodies. He turned his gaze to the final corpse to be dragged from the dung.

  ‘A centurion,’ he noted when Stumps produced the vine cane that was a symbol of the officer’s authority.

  ‘Stumps. Search them,’ Titus ordered.

  ‘They’re covered in shit. Get one of the young lads to do it,’ he protested.

  ‘They don’t know what they’re doing,’ he explained, before grunting impatiently: ‘Forget it. I’ll do it myself.’

  Expert hands patted down the bodies, checking all the hidden areas where a pouch of coins could be concealed. He found nothing. Even the soldiers’ belts had been taken, doubtless for the silver plates that marked them out as veterans.

  ‘Robbed and dumped here,’ Titus concluded to Pavo.

  The centurion nodded. ‘Come up behind them, slit their throats, take their loot, and shove them in the shit. Probably a bunch of auxiliaries,’ he concluded.

  He sent for a cart, happy with his conclusion and eager to hand the stiffs over to the care of the quartermaster’s department. As the bodies were loaded on, the open eyes of the shorter veteran seemed to burn bright with hate for me. I couldn’t meet the look and banged against the cart as I turned away, but if Titus noticed, he made no comment.

  ‘Get back to your checkpoint,’ Pavo ordered, and the section did so, the bodies soon forgotten. Crime and death were a part of life on the frontier.

  Stumps cast his eyes over the manure. ‘I mean, really, getting your throat ripped open so someone can have a few more drinks? That’s no soldier’s death.’

  The sweats muttered agreement, and shrugged. What else was there to say?

  12

  As the day’s light began to fade, the late-summer sky a ribbon of pink against the thatch of the town’s hovels, we were replaced at the checkpoint by another section. These soldiers grumbled, sour at being denied a night at the inns. But one of their sweats grinned at our veterans. ‘Hopefully we can shake down some of the locals, make up for it tomorrow night.’

  ‘Three Bears?’ Titus suggested to his companions, drinking foremost in his own mind.

  Rufus shrugged with his usual economy. ‘Wife.’

  Chickenhead also declined. ‘I’ve got to get back and feed Lupus.’

  ‘Shit,’ Titus snorted, ‘I don’t know who’s more in love, you or Rufus. How about you? You look like you could use a drink.’

  It took a moment for me to realize that the big lump’s words had been intended for my own ears, and I was too taken aback to immediately decline.

  ‘Well?’ he pressed.

  There was an angle in it for him, I was sure, but the section commander was right – I could use a drink. Gods, I could use a drink.

  And so I fell in behind Titus, Stumps and Moonface flanking his broad shoulders. As Stumps discussed the size of his comrade’s oval head, I searched my mind for the cause of Titus’s invitation.

  Inevitably, I kept coming back to the pile of manure and the three bodies that had slithered from its depths. But if Titus wanted to kill me, why let on that he knew my secret? It made no sense, and I expected I’d find out soon enough, but as it happened, it was the secrets of our high command that were exposed that night.

 
The source was Metella, the proprietor of the Three Bears. Unlike the German inn that I had visited, this Roman dispensed with security guards, and little wonder – her forearms were as thick as Titus’s, and no less scarred.

  ‘She’s got the face that launched a thousand ships.’ Stumps smiled, catching my appraising look of the innkeeper. ’Course, they were rowin’ fast as fuck in the opposite direction.’

  He had to shout to be heard above the din, for the tavern’s space was crowded with legionaries, and his tactless words were caught by their subject. The big woman grabbed a tight hold of his ear and his smile quickly turned to a grimace.

  ‘Funny boy, hey?’ She grinned before bouncing his head off the counter top.

  Titus and Moonface roared with laughter, and the big woman’s eyes sparkled with mirth. When she eyed Titus, there was a healthy dose of lust in there, too.

  He told her about the dead men in the pig shit, and I did my best not to pass out from relief, and revulsion. It gave me no satisfaction to know that the men’s death meant my own survival, but neither was I about to run to Pavo and confess my sins.

  I was snapped from my reverie by the feeling of eyes on me. Four sets. The others had ceased their conversation, and were simply observing me. What had I missed?

  ‘So you’re the one, eh?’ Metella asked, casting a disappointed eye over my gaunt features.

  ‘The one?’ I managed.

  ‘From the forest. The bloody one. The ghost. You don’t look like much of a ghost to me. A skeleton, maybe.’

  The others howled with laughter at her jibe. So, this was the reason Titus had brought me here: to show me off to his friend, an object for scrutiny.

  ‘I should be going,’ I murmured, but the big man’s hand shoved me back down on my stool.

  ‘Ah, sit down and have some wine, you grumpy bastard,’ he told me, before turning to the innkeeper. ‘You’ve hurt his feelings! Must be a free drink in that.’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied, passing me the cup. ‘But it’s going on your tab.’

  Titus made no protest, and as I drank deep of the bitter wine, the pair continued in their trade of camp gossip. I ignored most of it – I didn’t know any of the characters – until one name caught my attention.

  ‘Arminius,’ she repeated, at my insistence, and then turned back to the others, ‘was a fucking riot at the governor’s dinner, apparently. Young Arminius is there, and a bunch of other commanders and chieftains, then this one German storms in, telling Governor Varus that Arminius is a traitor, and he’s plotting to see us all off.’

  ‘Who came in?’ Titus asked, seemingly unflustered by the accusations.

  ‘I forget the name, but he’s the same tribe as Arminius, a bit higher up the ranks. Think he’s his uncle, maybe? Fuck knows. They’re all inbred, these bloody Germans.’

  ‘Our nobility’s no different,’ Stumps offered.

  ‘That’s true.’ She nodded, chins wobbling. ‘But don’t interrupt, or you’ll get another clout.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s interrupting, isn’t it? Anyway, the uncle wants Arminius put in chains, but Varus won’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘What happened?’ I found myself compelled to ask.

  ‘Nothing. Turns out Arminius had eloped with his uncle’s daughter a few months back. The old man was just pissed off, and wanted to mess him around.’

  ‘Family, eh?’ Stumps shrugged, ending the conversation, at least for their clique. I couldn’t drop it so easily myself. Arminius, accused of treason.

  I found that hard to reconcile with the man I had met, however briefly. A man who had offered me – to whom he owed nothing – such kindness and compassion.

  I knew treason, and traitors. Arminius was not the type. A family feud was all it was, spilled into the governor’s lap because of the high station of the actors.

  By the time I’d convinced myself of this, Metella and the veterans were on to topics new, discussing the occasion when Moonface had been fleeced by a whore, later revealed to be a man in drag. Ridden by laughter as they were – with the exception of Moonface, whose mug was on the verge of curdling – none noticed me slip away and out of the inn’s back door.

  As I traced my way through Minden and into the army’s camp, the thought of treason was still foremost in my mind. It was still there when I lay on my bedroll, despite clenching my eyes tight, and begging it to leave me be. It was still there when, hours later, I finally fell into the darkness of sleep.

  Was it any wonder that I woke screaming?

  13

  I wanted to scream, but there was no sound. I wanted to die, but death would not take me.

  Ribs snapped. Skin and muscle tore, and still I could not scream. My voice was not my own to control. It never had been.

  The eagle’s wings emerged from my shoulders, bloodied, torn and decayed. They took me to the air, but their beat was heavy, a brutal omen, like the drums of war.

  Airborne, I could see my friends. My brothers. I reached out. Beseeched them for help.

  Some ran. Some stood as if petrified, faces etched in horror at the vision I had become, a once handsome face reduced to a human jaw, a bloodied, bear-like snout dripping saliva and hot breath from above.

  My friends ran, or stood, and I reached out to them. I wanted to hold them, to tell them it was me, their friend, their brother, but where I reached, bodies fell. My hands had always been weapons, held weapons, and now they were reddened talons with the fine points of swords.

  This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t my doing. If only someone would listen to me, talk to me, then I could explain all this. This monster was not me. But they would not stop. They would not listen. They never had, even though they knew. Instead, they fled and, one by one, silently wailing as my wings beat against the heavy air, I killed them.

  Husks of comrades danced upon by flies looked back at me, damnation and betrayal in their dead eyes. I needed to escape, now more than ever, and so I beat the wings harder, each snap of the bones threatening to bring forth a scream that would never come. I needed to scream; I knew that. It would be my release. My salvation.

  The wings took me higher, higher. Below, a forest stretched in every direction, closer to black than green, its canopy as dense as a formation of assaulting shields. Fruit hung from the trees. My eyes adjusted. The fruit was decaying, flyblown. It was men. Soldiers. Women. Children. It was my fruit, born from the seeds I had planted. The same seeds that had taken root in my back to sprout the wings of the damned.

  A roar, and I snapped my head up.

  The horizon was growing red, and an immense wall of thunder was approaching. It was a wave, as high as any tower, and it was crashing through the forest, uprooting the ancient trees and carrying with it the bodies.

  I knew that I must climb higher to escape it, but now the wings failed me, their beat becoming weaker. They shed feathers, which mocked me in their gentle spirals towards the earth. The wave roared closer.

  Blood. A wave of blood.

  I tried to close my eyes, but they would not obey. Instead, I watched the wave come closer, closer, trees and bodies churned in its red froth.

  It was upon me.

  I screamed.

  14

  The nightmare left me nauseous, as it always did. My breaths came shallow and ragged, as if the weight of a horse were upon my chest.

  In the darkness of the tent I saw two sets of wide, white eyes upon me. They were terrified: the eyes of Micon and Cnaeus.

  Another pair opened and, as my own sight adjusted to the gloom, I saw that these belonged to Chickenhead. Again, we were the only four present within the tent.

  ‘You woke Lupus,’ he told me, his tone as dull as his stare. In the man’s hands, I could make out the shape of the agitated kitten, struggling.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I finally managed, still fighting for air.

  The veteran got to his feet, cooing to his feline companion. His fingers had wrapped around the throats of enemies, b
ut now they gently stroked his friend. Eventually the kitten calmed, and the old soldier turned his attention to me. ‘Outside.’

  I followed, the cool air welcome on my livid skin.

  ‘Here.’ He handed me a cup, and I muttered thanks.

  ‘This is water,’ I told him, surprised.

  ‘You start drinking now, you’ll never stop.’

  I nodded at the wisdom in his words. We drifted into silence, the cup soon drained. As he refilled it, I turned my eyes up to the skies, where the usual canopy of stars was eclipsed by a shadow of thin cloud.

  ‘How long?’ he asked.

  I was too tired to offer resistance. I accepted the cup, and the offer of a veteran’s ear that came with it. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘But they’re getting worse?’

  I nodded, and he must have seen the movement in my silhouette.

  ‘For two years, after Drusus,’ he told me, referring to the campaign of the famous general, and what must have been the first taste of battle for Chickenhead, the boy soldier. ‘The same one, over and over …’ He paused, and I thought his revelation was at an end. It wasn’t.

  ‘Fifteen legions we took into Germany, the strongest force in the world. The tribes stood, we scrapped, and by the time I was nineteen I’d lost count of the men I’d killed. I was fine with that. I loved that. But it was the other things that kept me awake for the next two years. The raiding parties – a nice name for butchering the local men, and raping the women.’

  His voice had gradually grown weaker, echoing as if he were descending into the shaft of a mine. He took the cup from my hand and sipped, swilling the water around his mouth and spitting it on to the dirt.

  ‘This German girl, she couldn’t have been older than fourteen. First woman I’d ever been inside.’ I felt his sickened smile in the darkness. ‘Isn’t that something?’ he concluded.

  ‘You got past it,’ I said steadily, aching to know how.

  ‘I did?’ he replied with an empty laugh.