I turned to look behind us, expecting that a wave of Germans would have followed in our pursuit, but there was nothing. Aside from the thick smudge of movement in the German camp, all was quiet and serene. Having gone from death to such tranquillity in an instant, I wondered for a moment if this was the afterlife.
‘Who are you?’ a voice called out from above, reminding me of where I was.
I stepped back from the gate so that I could see the man who addressed us. He was a centurion, marked out by the transverse crest of his helmet. His face was open and smiling. ‘Speak up, boys. These archers have got a competition going on for most kills, and you lot are looking tempting.’
‘We escaped, sir,’ I managed.
‘Yeah, I saw that.’ The centurion grinned, before he remembered that one of us had died in the attempt. ‘Sorry about your friend, but the fort comes first. No settling debts if you come in, all right?’
‘If?’ Brando blurted out, unable to contain himself.
‘Fort comes first,’ the centurion repeated. ‘Now who are you?’
One by one, we gave our names and unit, and then the centurion quizzed us until he was happy that we had indeed served beneath the eagles as we claimed. Stumps was irritated, but the mild interrogation did not surprise me. What did was that the centurion made no attempt to quiz us on how we had come to be slaves of a German horde. News of the lost legions had arrived before us.
‘Look, boys.’ The man spoke up. ‘Just sit down there and rest. Here.’ He smiled, dropping down a wineskin. ‘Relax. These gates aren’t opening even for a parade of half-priced whores, so I’ve sent for ropes. We’ll lift you in.’
With nothing to do but wait, I took the officer’s advice and sat back against the timbers. The wineskin passed from hand to hand, eventually arriving in mine. The liquid was beautiful.
‘Cheers,’ Brando offered, passing it to me for a second time. ‘You know, I thought I’d be relieved when we made it here,’ he confided, ‘but looking at that …’ His arm swept out to encompass Arminius’s sprawling army. The vast body of men was thick on the ground surrounding us, cloaking any rise in the terrain – it was a formidable sight.
I thought to answer, but at that moment, ropes came tumbling from the top of the defences.
The Batavian shrugged as he took hold of one and tested its strength. ‘At least now we’ll be on the right side of the wall.’
It took some time before we made it on to the fighting step of the fort. We were too weak to climb, and so the centurion had his men fashion loops in the rope into which we could place our feet, then be hoisted upwards. When my own turn came, I spilled on to the wooden boards of the step with as much grace as a netted carp.
It was the centurion who helped me to my feet. ‘My name’s Hadrianus,’ he said. ‘But my men call me H. Sorry for the delay, but I’ve ordered the cook to get you some scoff on. Hot scoff. Doesn’t look like you lads have eaten in a while.’
There wasn’t much to say. In truth, we were still in shock that we had escaped. The reality that we were no longer slaves had yet to sink into already battered minds. In this stony silence I followed H from the battlements, casting my red eyes over the fort; it was large enough to hold several cohorts, though the sentries on the wall seemed to be spread thinly. Civilians sat huddled between the buildings, evidently cowed by what waited for them beyond the ramparts. Many looked to be in the same state as myself, and I guessed that these were refugees who had fled in the face of Arminius’s army. It was a question for H, but it could wait. I just wanted to eat, to drink and to sleep.
H offered me something else. ‘You lead this lot?’ he asked. I hesitated, but Brando spoke up for me.
‘He does.’
‘Well, that’s good. You can keep command of your mates. Our cohort’s understrength, and I don’t want to break you lads up after what you’ve been through. You’ll be Seven Section in the Fifth Century, which is mine. We don’t have an Eight Section,’ he added.
I had nothing to say. We were back in the folds of the army, such as it was, and I had clearly been given an order, no matter how friendly. H turned to address Brando and Folcher.
‘Don’t worry about you lads being Batavian and all that. We just need you to stand watch, and fight from the walls. Plenty of time to learn the heavy infantry ways when we get out of here.’ H sounded happy, as if we were not surrounded by a swarm of the enemy. ‘Besides, plenty of dead men’s shoes. We just need to be a little creative on the record-keeping. Find you a Roman name you like. Anyway, welcome to the Fort of Aliso, boys. Welcome to the Nineteenth.’
Part Two
* * *
9
All I had wanted to do was eat, drink and sleep, but a soldier has about as much choice over the direction of his life as a slave, and so, after a legionary was directed to take my comrades to barracks and see that they were fed and watered, I did as I was ordered and followed Centurion H towards the headquarters building.
Like all Roman bases, the HQ stood proudly in the camp’s centre, and we followed the wide road that led directly from the camp gate. Huddled groups of civilians lined the way. They were miserable-looking creatures, shoulders stooped and their eyes on the floor. Even the children – usually the most optimistic and active no matter the circumstances – were subdued; what had they endured to get here, and reach the safety of the walls? What acts of war had they already witnessed at such a young age?
H spoke up. ‘Look terrified, don’t they?’
I gave no reply, for it seemed so obvious.
‘It’s not just the goat-fuckers,’ the centurion went on to explain. ‘There was a murder last night. Young girl, twelve years old. Fucking brutal. Now we’ve got to start night patrols inside the walls as well as on them. As if we didn’t have enough to do.’
My attention was then drawn from the sunken-eyed children to a group of dark-skinned men who marched towards us. They were bundled tightly up as if for deep winter, though there was some warmth in the September day. The bulky clothing made it hard to judge their size, but they were not tall men. All had short, jet-black beards. In their hands were the bows that had caused such murder from the battlements.
‘They’re from the East?’ I asked H.
‘Yeah. Syrian. We’ve got a cohort of them here. Probably them that killed the little girl, to be honest. They’re not much better than the goat-fuckers, really.’
Despite H’s words, I felt my spirits threatening to rise; a cohort of archers on the walls would punish Arminius heavily in every attack. How many men was he willing to lose? More to the point, how many were the tribes willing to lose? Arminius was only their leader so long as they decided to stand with him. The Germans had been roused for war, and had won a great victory in the forest, but with my own eyes I had seen that they had paid heavily for it. Were they willing to lose more of their youth to press on further into Roman lands, or would Arminius and his collective of chieftains be content to push Rome back beyond the Rhine before making peace?
The headquarters building loomed ahead.
‘Fort commander wants to be debriefed by you,’ H explained. ‘I’ll try and speed him up as much as I can. Don’t want you dropping dead in his office now that you made it this far.’
I muttered thanks as we passed the two sentries that stood at the headquarters building’s door. Like the other structures in the fort, it was crafted by legion hands from wood – Varus’s Lippe garrisons had been intended to be semi-permanent, before strong stone forts such as the ones on the Rhine could be built in their place, or the need for them moved deeper into Germany. Surely those dreams of expansion had died in the forest with the three legions.
I suddenly felt anxious, and realized that it was my unfamiliarity with being indoors. It had been weeks since I had stood within a structure that shielded me from the elements, and reminded me that people lived in towns and cities, where a wet blanket beneath a tree was not considered a good bed for the night.
‘
Been a while, has it?’ H smiled, catching my darting looks at the tables and chairs.
‘Minden,’ I mumbled back.
‘I liked it there,’ he told me. ‘Spent a lot of my children’s savings on a beautiful blonde whore. Money well spent, it was. I didn’t even catch a thing.’
I’m not sure quite how I looked at him, but H felt moved to give me a friendly tap on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not that much of a bastard! I only spent it when my daughters died.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I mumbled.
‘Ha! You’re too easy, you are.’ The man laughed, shaking his head at my naivety. ‘Sharpen up, eh? Children, my arse. What a waste of good money. Go on. In you go.’
I was ushered through the doorway into a small office space. One officer waited inside, his hair silver and eyes blue. Despite his advanced years he was athletic and vital.
‘Come in, soldier,’ he encouraged me. ‘Sit down. Relax. I’m Prefect Caedicius. I’m the fort’s commander,’ the officer introduced himself before looking to my escort. ‘H, can you go and get this man some food and water, please? Not too much, though.’ Caedicius turned to me with an apologetic smile. ‘Body has to get used to it again.’
I nodded, and took the chair that he gestured me into. I looked again at the man in front of me. As a prefect, Caedicius held the third highest rank in a legion, and the highest that could be reached by a soldier who had started at the bottom as a simple foot-slogger. Caedicius would be an experienced soldier, but he was also a lucky one; he had been here behind Aliso’s walls whilst his legion had been butchered in the forest.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Legionary Felix, sir. Second Century, Second Cohort, Seventeenth Legion, sir.’
‘And the Second Century, where are they now?’
‘Mostly dead, sir.’
‘Mostly?’
‘There are some other survivors, sir. Two came in with me.’
‘So as far as you know, there are three survivors from your century, and the rest are dead.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you didn’t die with them.’
Fuck. I should have expected this. Caedicius wasn’t seeing a survivor in front of him. He was seeing a deserter. This was the Roman army, after all. If the eagles fell, we were expected to follow suit, and to have the decency to die in their defence.
‘We were taken as captives, sir.’
‘Tell me how.’
I did. I began with telling him how, once Varus and his staff officers had taken their own lives, a prefect named Caeonius had rallied the army, and made one last attempt to break out of the forest. That attempt had died trying to overcome the Germans’ wall, and then there had been the last stand beneath the eagles. Finally, a band of a few hundred Romans was all that was left of the great army, and to this group Arminius offered the terms of surrender and enslavement. Caeonius took it. Then he and all the other surviving officers were murdered in the most hideous ways. The rank and file, myself amongst them, were marched into slavery.
As I told the story, Caedicius’s eyes never left me. My own eyes were fixed on to the wall. It was the first time I had played over the events of that final day, and the memory of the stink of blood and shit tried to force its way into my nostrils. When I had finished with my tale, my hands were as white as marble. For the first time, I noticed that one of my feet was tapping uncontrollably. I fought to stop it, but the twitching muscles would not obey.
Caedicius walked away from me then. When he returned, it was with a thick cloak that he placed kindly over my shoulders. The door opened, and through eyes moist with shocked tears, I saw food and water placed before me.
‘Eat,’ Caedicius ordered gently.
I struggled to hold down the bread and the broth that H had brought for me. My stomach had become conditioned to its empty state, but my difficulty was more as a result of retelling the last moments of the forest battle – it had shaken me to a point where my mind swam and blood pounded in my temples. I was nauseous, and it was a long time before the food was gone, and the patient prefect spoke.
‘I knew Prefect Caeonius well. He was a great friend, and always did care more about his men than his reputation. He died well?’
‘He did, sir. It was quick.’ I tried not to think about how the blade had cut the man’s head from his shoulders. How the blood had pumped from the stump.
Caedicius then questioned me in more detail: had Varus truly taken his own life? Were the eagles lost to enemy hands? What number of enemy casualties? What of their tactics? I answered to the best of my drained ability, careful to avoid any trap that would reveal something of my own past, and relationship with the enemy’s leader.
‘I always liked Arminius,’ the prefect then grunted. ‘He was the most promising officer on Varus’s staff, and always seemed more Roman than a native. He could have been brilliant.’
It was not my place to point out that the German was brilliant. That he had orchestrated one of the greatest victories against the Roman Empire for decades, and had proven himself a master tactician and strategist.
‘You’re not the first survivor we’ve had come in,’ Caedicius then explained. ‘But … three legions? It’s beyond comprehension. Until the bastard arrived with his army, I still believed it was the made-up fairy tale of some cast-out civvies and a bloody deserter.’
Caedicius then stood straight, turning his full attention to me. ‘Centurion Hadrianus tells me he’s taken you into his century?’
I gave a shallow nod.
‘Good. Go get some rest, Felix. Dawn will be here soon, and I expect Arminius and his scum will be coming with it. Be on the walls to meet them, soldier, and show them Rome’s vengeance.’
10
Centurion H escorted me from the headquarters building. Prefect Caedicius had insisted that I keep the thick cloak, and I pulled it tight around my bony shoulders as we marched through the camp to the barrack block that would be my accommodation. The block was of the same design as any in the Empire, broken down into ten sections: one for each of a century’s eight sections; one for the optio, the century’s second in command; and a large section for the centurion, including an office and living space.
I entered the doorway of Seven Section’s accommodation, walking first into the partition that housed the soldiers’ equipment. My eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and I could make out the rounded shape of shields and the points of javelins that shone dully in the ambient light.
‘All your kit’s here,’ H whispered. ‘I’m just going to hold you in reserve tomorrow. I’ll only use you if they get over the walls, in which case you don’t really need to be in any fit state to fight anyway, because it’ll all be over. Goodnight.’
I saw his white smile flash in the darkness, and then I was alone. I pulled back the flap that separated the storage area from the men’s sleeping space, and quietly stepped within, careful not to disturb my comrades, who snored on the bunk beds. I found a lower one that had been left unclaimed, and exhaled gently as I lay down on the straw mattress.
Within a breath, sleep had claimed me. Perhaps I slept for hours, but I did not even feel as if I’d closed my eyes when an unknown legionary shook me by the shoulder and uttered the words that every tired soldier dreads to hear: ‘Stand to.’
There was no point in fighting it. I swung legs of lead from the bunk and began to wake my section.
‘Micon. Get up.’
‘Where are we?’ he asked. Half dead with fatigue as we were, I did not hold it against him.
‘Just get up and put your kit on. Wait outside.’ I turned to where Stumps still snored deeply. ‘Stumps. Wake up.’
‘It’s not my duty,’ he mumbled, reciting automatically the defence of every woken soldier. ‘You got the wrong bed.’
‘Arminius is coming at dawn, Stumps. Do you want to be in your bunk when he gets here?’
The veteran finally opened his eyes. His answer was deadpan: ‘Yes,’
he told me, unblinking.
I thought about reasoning with him. I thought about telling him how we hadn’t come this far for him to be imprisoned for refusing to fight. I thought about saying all of that, but instead, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I laughed. I laughed so hard that it did the job of waking the others, and even persuaded Stumps that sleep would now escape him.
‘Fuck it then. I’ll come. May as well die on the wall with you and get it over with, you cunt,’ he grumbled, and my tired spirits rose to see his own character returning. I caught the feeling and wondered at it; by what right was I laughing – and hopeful? Surrounded and cut off, we were surely soon to be assaulted by Arminius’s savage army.
And yet I was. I was hopeful. Why?
We had walls, and we had archers, but neither guaranteed victory, nor even short-term survival. It was as I helped Micon pull his heavy chain mail over his head that I discovered the reason; it was as I watched Brando and Folcher check each other’s equipment, pulling straps tight and testing the fit of their armour: I was amongst comrades, but more than that, I was responsible for them. I was a commander again, if only of a small group, and for a short duration. It wasn’t from vanity or glory that this position lifted me, but because I felt as if I now had a good chance to protect their lives.
I hadn’t risen to be standard-bearer of the Eighth Legion because of my looks. I hadn’t dragged out a rebellion against Rome because I was skilled as a shepherd, or fishmonger. I hadn’t survived the forest because I was a man of words, or art. No, I was a survivor, but more than that, I was a killer, and as I accepted that truth, the weight of the armour lifted from my shoulders. The concrete holding my tired limbs began to break away.
I was a killer.
In the grey light of the dawn, I looked at the four men surrounding me, helmeted and armoured, the last taint of our slavery cast off as we took command of sword and javelin. We were soldiers again.
In that moment, I felt the need to explain myself to these men, but then I remembered the words that Marcus had once taught me on a bloody mountainside, a continent away: ‘Leaders don’t talk. They lead.’
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