Siege

by Geraint Jones

  And so I led.

  The century was beginning to form up outside of the barrack block. It was a small force, as two sections were already deployed as part of their guard duties.

  ‘Morning, Felix,’ Centurion H greeted me. ‘Ready to make widows and orphans?’

  I grunted something to the affirmative.

  ‘Won’t be much need for that, I don’t think,’ H went on. ‘I just need you and your boys in that south-eastern corner there. There’s a nice big pile of stones at the bottom of the stairs, so you’ll run them up to the top if the piles on the wall get small. Didn’t have to use any the first time they attacked, thanks to the archers, but we’ll see. Have fun.’

  With that we were dismissed, and I led my small band to the fort’s corner. Other knots of soldiers moved in the fading darkness. Most conversations were hushed, but some voices carried to my ears, full of bravado. These were the men who were more afraid of being discovered afraid than of the source of the fear itself.

  We reached our assigned position; the rocks were the size of a child’s head, or bigger. No doubt they had been diligently scrounged from every corner of the camp and the river. I looked up at the sky, which was slowly lightening to grey. Beside me, I felt the impatient energy of Brando as he shuffled from foot to foot. Doubtless he was eager for the chance to spill the blood of the enemy who had murdered his comrades.

  ‘I’m going on to the wall to look,’ I told the section, wanting to know where our resupply would be needed.

  At least, that was how I justified leaving our position. In truth, I wanted to see the enemy coming if they attacked. I did not want to be a bystander, like the civilians who were peeking nervously from doorways and alleys.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Brando offered, as I was certain he would.

  The other men remained where they were, Stumps lying on the ground and using his shield as a pillow.

  ‘I don’t want to be down there,’ Brando told me, echoing my own thoughts as we climbed the steps that led to the wall’s top. ‘I want to kill, Felix. I want to capture them, and treat them like they treated us. I want them to suffer, and then I want them to die.’

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to the man’s bloodlust. ‘You’ll get your chance,’ I said eventually.

  We reached the top of the wall and I looked about me. The men of the watch were cloaked spectres against the battlements, the slightest trace of their breath visible in the dawn. Veterans amongst them stretched their limbs, preparing their bodies for combat. Syrian archers tested the pull of their bows, and placed arrows close at hand.

  The sight of those archers did a lot to explain the smell that now came to me. It was the pungent, sweet aroma of death; the bodies of the decaying German dead were visible as dark marks on the field. None had made it to the double ditch that ran below the wall, or on to the rampart that had been created from its spoil.

  ‘They didn’t even get close,’ Brando snorted. ‘We won’t be bringing any stones up here.’

  I didn’t share his optimism. Arminius was no fool, and I did not believe that he would be content to follow one failed attack with the same tactics as the first.

  He decided to prove me wrong.

  It was Brando who first spotted them. The sun was slowly cresting the eastern horizon, and below it was the unmistakable movement of a large body of troops.

  ‘He’s hoping the sun will blind the archers.’ Brando smiled. ‘Maybe we will get to kill some of the fuckers.’

  It was no sneak attack. No surprise. Men do not willingly run at a wall of death without coaxing, and we could make out the braying of orders, the deep boom of chants as men built up their courage through drink and song. The sun was steadily climbing. It came to a height where it was now or never for Arminius. Light in the archers’ eyes was his slim hope of avoiding another massacre. Knowing him as I did, I expected him to lead by example, and initiate the first charge.

  It was something to see.

  War is a brutal thing, a plague, but it is a sight to behold, as beautiful as it is terrifying. As the charging carpet of German warriors rolled towards us, the breath caught jaggedly in my dry throat.

  ‘I’ll get the stones,’ Brando whispered, leaving me to watch the smiling Syrians as they began their own chants and mantras, nocking the first of their arrows and calling to one another what I imagined were challenges of competition and marksmanship.

  I squinted into the sun, the shape of the attacking men a blur. Could the archers identify single targets? What did it matter, when the enemy host was so thick?

  The slaughter began seconds later. The Syrians could not miss. Screams pierced the calls of challenge and defiance. Stricken bodies sent others tumbling to the ground as they fell. I watched an archer pull and loose. Pull and loose. He was smiling. He had been born for this day. Trained for it since childhood. There were no enemy archers to threaten him. This was a target range for him, and nothing more.

  For the Germans, it was a slaughter.

  Through sheer strength of numbers the first of them reached the earthen rampart across the ditches, but as these men climbed they were plucked from their feet with arrows. Other brave men charged by. Within moments, the ground below us was filled with snarling faces that fought for handholds on the wall.

  ‘They don’t have ladders!’ A legionary laughed, then whooped in joy as his dropped stone found its mark.

  ‘Legionaries! Stones on the ditch!’ a strong voice commanded from the gatehouse. ‘Archers! Fire beyond them!’

  The soldiers of the Nineteenth set to work on hurling their burdens over the wall; German heads were shattered like eggs; shoulders crumbled. I risked a look over the wall, seeing a ditch that was filling with the dead and dying.

  ‘More stones!’ a voice called.

  I ran to the stairs. Brando and the others were already making their way up it, their arms full.

  It wasn’t the last time they ran up and down them. By the time the killing was done, we were slathered in sweat. Outside of the walls, the cheering of the enemy had gone. Only the dead and dying remained, and their wails and groans forced me to raise my own voice as I instructed my men to wait for me on the dirt at the foot of the stairs; I had seen Centurion H on the wall, and wanted to report in. Now that the attack had been broken my adrenaline had drained quickly, and I hoped that the centurion would dismiss me and my comrades to our beds.

  I wanted to escape the screams. So too, evidently, did some of the archers – arrows struck down into the wounded who lay gasping and howling in the ditch.

  ‘Hold your fucking fire, you lizards!’ a voice boomed, and I turned to see a tall centurion striding the battlements. Centurion H was behind him, smile gone now as he scanned the carnage beneath the wall.

  I turned my eyes back to the taller officer, working out by his decorations and manner that he was the cohort’s commander, the Pilus Prior. Confidence came from him in waves. The Syrian archers almost bowed as he addressed them.

  ‘Don’t waste arrows on these cunts, understand? Where’s the interpreter? Come here. Tell them that these screams send a message. They scare the other goat-fuckers, and scared goat-fuckers mean you lizards will live through this. You start feeling sorry for them, go and speak to the survivors of the army that came in last night. Ask them how the hairies treat our wounded. Our prisoners.’

  Centurion H had noticed my presence, and came over. ‘That’s the cohort commander, Malchus,’ he explained. ‘All your lads all right?’

  I nodded, my eyes scanning the distance – there appeared to be no stirring for a second attack. The morning’s massacre had taken the fight from the enemy, at least for now.

  ‘We didn’t lose a man,’ H told me, recognizing the same. ‘Not that I’m complaining of course, but … fuck. You almost feel sorry for them.’

  I said nothing, and the officer took that to mean he had offended me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Felix. I wasn’t with you in the forest. I didn’t mean it like
that.’

  I shook my head. ‘No warriors deserve to die like cattle.’

  We fell into silence then, distracted by the agonized cries of the dying.

  Centurion Malchus paced over to us. He towered over me, a formidable presence. Slate-grey eyes peered intently from his rugged face. ‘You’re the one that came in last night? What’s your name?’

  ‘Legionary Felix, sir.’

  He surprised me by offering his hand. ‘You’ve got some bollocks on you. I hope you got the chance to get stuck into the bastards this morning?’

  I realized then that I had taken no direct part in the dawn’s killing, but I was under no illusion that my hands were clean, knowing that the rocks I had carried to the battlements had been used to split skulls and crush bones. I was not ashamed of that – survival of my comrades was my first and only concern – but that gave me little solace as the pleading screams for mercy droned on.

  ‘We can only hope to do our duty, sir,’ I finally said.

  ‘Come with me, Felix.’ The man gestured, surprising me again. He then turned to my own centurion. ‘H, make sure the lizards don’t waste any more arrows. This isn’t a place for weakness.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Do you need any more men?’ he asked. There was an edge of confusion to my own centurion’s tone, wondering what the cohort commander could want with me.

  ‘Just him,’ Malchus replied with a grim smile. ‘He’s going to help me kill Arminius.’

  11

  Malchus was silent as he strode towards the fort’s centre. I followed in his wake, watching as lone soldiers ran back and forth to the ramparts. These runners were the fort commander’s eyes and ears during the battle. They were all young, as they needed to be fit, but it wasn’t a responsibility that could be handed to any boy soldier. Delivering the wrong message could bring disaster, and I made a mental note to never allow Micon to be drawn for the duty within our own century. It was as much for his own good as the safety of the fort.

  The imposing officer found Prefect Caedicius in the headquarters building, which was still lively with chatter following the morning’s attack. In the centre of the room stood a table on to which had been drawn a diagram of the fort. Numbered stones showed the disposition of the Roman forces, and I expected I had been brought here to help the officers learn more about the enemy’s. Seeing me beside Malchus, Caedicius came to the same conclusion.

  ‘I’ve already debriefed him, Malchus.’

  ‘Not about their army, sir,’ the centurion explained, removing his helmet. ‘Arminius himself.’

  Arminius himself?

  I don’t know what they saw on my face in that moment, but my mind screamed in alarm; how could Malchus know that I had knowledge of the German personally? Had I let something slip as I’d talked to H? What about to Caedicius? He appeared unwitting, but had he set the trap, and was he now readying the noose for my neck?

  Malchus turned to me, pressing a cup of wine into my hand. When he spoke, I almost fell to the wooden floorboards in relief.

  ‘This soldier’s seen Arminius as a general at work, sir. Not just the numbers in his army, but how he drew Varus in. How he broke the legions. The tactics. The tricks.’

  Caedicius now gave me his full attention. ‘True,’ he agreed after a moment. ‘But he’s not the only survivor we’ve brought in.’

  ‘He’s the only one that escaped his army. And I know a veteran when I see one.’ Malchus turned to me. ‘Got more scars on your arms than hairs, eh? How long have you served?’

  I plucked a number from the air. ‘About ten years, sir.’

  ‘Done a lot in that time.’

  I held my silence, and hoped that hiding my past would be interpreted as modesty.

  It was.

  ‘Good lad.’ Malchus smiled before turning back to the prefect and coming to the point of his visit: ‘I don’t like how this morning went, sir.’

  Caedicius looked about the headquarters; then he raised his voice so that it could be heard by the half-dozen clerks and runners. ‘Clear the room,’ he ordered. ‘You stay here.’ He gestured towards me as the room quickly emptied.

  ‘My runners told me you butchered them?’ Caedicius then asked of his subordinate.

  Malchus nodded. ‘We didn’t lose a single man, sir. There’re at least a hundred dead goat-fuckers in the ditch. Probably another hundred more on the rampart and in the field.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But Arminius didn’t destroy three legions by throwing eggs at a brick wall, sir. The bastard’s got brains, and we can’t expect that he’ll keep doing us a favour and let us kill all of his men.’

  ‘His trenches are getting closer,’ Caedicius thought aloud.

  ‘That buys him some distance, but we’ll still slaughter them in the ditch,’ Malchus explained. Then he turned to me. ‘You saw what he did to the other forts. Tell us what you think. Speak freely.’

  And so I did. Not because of any misplaced sense of duty, but because my mind was aligned with Malchus’s; Arminius was not just good, he was brilliant, and to survive in the fort we would need to find our own weaknesses before the enemy did.

  ‘He didn’t expect two things here, sirs,’ I began. ‘The first is that you would be ready. The second is that you’d have archers.’

  ‘A little fortune on both counts,’ Caedicius agreed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Arminius’s success in the forest came because his forces were lighter than ours, and that suited the terrain where we could never set our formations. When we set our lines in the open, he was content to hold us there and wait for us to starve.’

  ‘He won’t do that here.’ Malchus spoke up, rubbing a hand over his jutting jaw. ‘In the forest he knew that Varus had a week or two of supplies at best, and the army was deep into Germany. He has no idea how well supplied we are here, and the Rhine legions can march to us if he digs in to starve us out.’

  Caedicius chewed over Malchus’s words. I could see by the worried crease of his temple that he had come to the same conclusion as I: that holding the crossings on the Rhine was the best guarantee of Rome’s protection against Arminius. Crossing them to break a siege and fight on Arminius’s terms risked too much, at least until the frontier could be reinforced.

  ‘Sooner or later, there will have to be a reckoning with the German.’ Caedicius spoke as he paced, the room silent but for his words and the tap of his hobnails on the wood. ‘We have no idea when that will be, but what we do know is that the German tribes do not easily come together. Nor are they easily held together. After his victory over Varus, Arminius has momentum, but he must keep it if he wants to fight on.’

  Malchus nodded. ‘Agreed, sir.’

  I agreed silently in my own mind. Knowing Arminius as I did, I believed he would have simply bypassed the fort had he known how much blood it would cost him. He could have kept the garrison contained with a small force of his own, but now that battle had been initiated, pride and the need to keep up appearances would ensure that some kind of victory must be reached. But how?

  And then I remembered the blaze of that first fort. How the flames had danced into the sky as the sizzling thatch of buildings hissed and popped.

  ‘He could burn us out, sirs.’

  Malchus nodded gravely. This was his own conclusion. ‘Those trenches can’t get him over the walls, but they can get him close enough to them to build fires. He just needs enough fuel to get it going, and half of Germany’s a fucking forest.’

  Caedicius surprised me then by smiling. I realized he had recognized a look in his senior centurion, and I took it in myself – it was a fearsome snarl. A look of a man who lived for the chaos and terror of battle.

  ‘You have a suggestion, Malchus?’ Caedicius indulged him. ‘I expect it’s a violent one.’

  Malchus grinned savagely, one hungry shark to another. His words were simple, but in that simplicity was written the deaths of dozens. ‘A raid.’

  For a moment, Caedicius said nothing. Finally, he
shook his head. ‘This inaction doesn’t sit well with me either, Malchus, but we can’t afford to lose the men in a raid. We’re slaughtering them at the wall and not losing any of our strength.’

  ‘The raid’s not for killing, sir,’ Malchus countered, to the prefect’s surprise. ‘It’s for stealing.’

  Caedicius grasped the raid’s intention a moment later. He laughed, full of pride in his subordinate. ‘You want to steal his wood, you bastard!’

  Malchus nodded. ‘If we can convince him we’re desperate for fuel, maybe he won’t pile it against our wall. Not only that, but if it looks like we’re settling in for winter, perhaps he’ll think we know something he doesn’t, and that there’s a relief force coming. There’s no guarantee, but …’

  I found myself looking at the centurion in admiration. He was right; there was no guarantee of success, but the only guarantee in war was death and misery. Given the way the dice had rolled, it was an ingenious idea by Malchus. It was also one that was certain to be deadly.

  So why did I volunteer to lead it?

  12

  ‘I’ll go,’ I heard myself say. ‘I can show them into the camp.’

  Malchus laughed. ‘Well, that saves me the trouble of ordering you to do it.’

  I took no offence from his words. As I had expected, the centurion would want guides for his raid, and who better to guide him than a man who had lived within the enemy’s host? The fact that I was a half-starved survivor of the forest massacre was of no concern to a killer like Malchus. I had known many men like this warrior, and to them, pity and weakness had no place in the legions. Sacrifice and honour was all.

  ‘We’ll take the rest of the group that came in with you too,’ he added, to my alarm. ‘They good lads?’

  I thought quickly of a way to dissuade him. ‘I don’t want to speak badly of my comrades, sir,’ I finally confessed.