Siege

by Geraint Jones

  ‘You look happy?’ I asked the Batavians cautiously as I got to my feet. The two men were poised to come to my aid should I falter, but they beamed at the news they delivered.

  ‘The raid worked,’ Brando exclaimed. ‘Arminius’s men are cutting down every tree they can find.’

  ‘And moving them that way,’ Folcher added, pointing to the distance. ‘Not this way.’

  ‘How many made it back?’ I asked.

  ‘All but twelve,’ Brando answered with a shrug. He wasn’t being callous. Men died in battle, and a dozen had died that night in an effort to buy life for hundreds within the fort. In the economics of war, it was a profitable trade.

  ‘I hope it was quick,’ Folcher added, grave.

  Brando explained to me that Centurion H had excused our section duties that day, and that we should expect a few more men to join us soon, when they were released from the fort hospital’s care. I told my comrades to wait for me in the barracks, and went in search of the nearest well.

  It was easy to find, as dozens of civilians moved back and forth to the ramparts carrying buckets. These they were using to fill a wide range of containers, from wine barrels to vases, all stored beneath the fort’s walls. If Arminius was carrying out his own ruse – and the removal of the timber was a feint before using it to attack the fort – then Prefect Caedicius would do what he could to douse the flames. At the gatehouse, soldiers poured water over the ramparts to keep the gate’s timbers sodden.

  Seeing such industry within the camp, I expected I would have to wait some time for my turn at the pump. Of course, I had not taken my appearance into account, and when the civilians took in the bloodied and muddied figure that arrived among them they soon moved away, their eyes either fixed on the dirt or drawn irresistibly to the story painted on to my skin.

  I had intended to wash directly beneath the pump, but realized now that to do so would hold up the fort’s preparations. Blood was thick on my forearms and had matted my hair, and I knew that I would not be clean quickly. I needed a bucket so that I could move myself to a quiet spot, and I turned this way and that to find one.

  ‘Here,’ a voice offered.

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied, taking the offered bucket from a young woman. She was perhaps twenty, her blond hair and accent betraying her German heritage. Her face was unremarkable, but her eyes flashed with the brightest blue; they reminded me of the waters of home. And so they compelled me to speak. ‘You don’t need this for the walls?’

  ‘I can wait,’ she answered, eyeing me with more than curiosity. I looked for what that was, feeling in her manner something more desperate than morbid fascination with a killer.

  ‘You came from Varus’s army,’ she said. ‘I saw you, when they brought your men over the wall.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I would like to ask you things, if that is fine?’

  I wondered at her interest, but shrugged. ‘It is. Let’s move over here. I’m getting in people’s way.’

  That was a lie. I was simply sick of their stares. From the flash in her blue eyes, I saw that the girl understood that.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her.

  ‘Linza.’

  ‘Felix,’ I offered; then I began to scrub the blood from my body. I thought I knew why this girl wanted to talk to me, and so I pre-empted the subject, suddenly uncomfortable with her attention. ‘You know someone who was in the army?’ I guessed.

  ‘My husband. He is a Batavian.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Gildo. Fourth Cohort.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never come across anyone by that name, but two of the men that came in with me are Batavian. I could take you to them, if you’d like to talk to them?’

  The slightest drop appeared in her shoulders. ‘I have.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The girl surprised me with her next words.

  ‘I am hoping he is dead,’ she said. Feeling my look, she pushed on to explain. ‘Better to be dead than a slave. The things they do … I pray he is dead.’

  There wasn’t much I could say to comfort the woman. She was right. And what use are soothing words when they come from a man wiping blood from his hands?

  ‘Thank you. I’ll go now,’ she said, though she made no move to leave, and her words were floated as a question. I had come to the well in search of some solitude, but a kind female presence was unlike anything I had experienced since Pannonia, and a voice whispered inside my mind that I should enjoy the moment while it lasted. The alternatives were the company of my own cracked mind, or my comrades in the barrack blocks: beloved to me, but certainly harder on the eyes and nostrils than this woman.

  ‘Could you help me get more water?’ I asked.

  ‘I can.’

  I could hear the relief in her reply; she was as desperate as I for an escape from her truth. Together, we could perhaps provide each other with the briefest respite from our realities.

  And then Arminius appeared.

  My first warning of it was calls of alarm from the ramparts. The mood of the civilians switched from confidence to the early stages of terror in moments. I put the bucket in the girl’s hands without a word and made for the ramparts. I wanted to run, but the painful memory of my collapse was still fresh. I was a proud bastard, I realized then. It hadn’t been the thought of my own imminent death that had stung me so deeply in the field, but the thought that I had, through my own weakness, endangered the life of my comrades who had been forced to carry me.

  It took me some time to reach the western rampart. By the time that I did, the fighting step was thronged with off-duty soldiers come to join those of the watch.

  ‘Get back to your fucking posts!’ I heard Malchus roar. ‘This isn’t a fucking theatre! Get back to your posts, and stand by for your orders! Move!’

  The tall man’s face was livid, and soldiers ran quickly at his words. Malchus was astute, and did not want Arminius to lure our eyes to one spot, opening up our blind sides.

  I was turning to leave myself, when the centurion’s voice boomed again.

  ‘Felix!’

  A sweeping gesture of his arm was my invitation to join him.

  ‘You don’t need to be here for this,’ he grunted as I saluted him on the rampart. ‘But, because you were there, I’ll give you that choice.’

  I wondered at his words, and then, as I looked out over the wall and into the field, I understood too well: Arminius had come, and he had not come alone. Three Roman soldiers knelt in the dirt.

  ‘My men,’ Malchus hissed.

  Not all twelve of the missing had died in the raiding party. Now, mere yards out of archery range, they would die by inches before our eyes.

  I heard a tramp of hobnails and turned, finding Prefect Caedicius and the small body of his staff.

  ‘Swine,’ the veteran cursed through clenched teeth. ‘That bastard swine.’

  He caught my eyes on him then and became a commander, rather than a man. ‘Malchus told me what you did last night. I don’t have an opening for an officer, but when I do, we’ll talk.’

  The suggestion of promotion bounced from me like rain on marble. Survival was my concern, not the career ladder.

  After taking a moment to compose himself and appear rational, Malchus turned to his superior officer. ‘Sir, let me go out there. Let me challenge the cunt, one on one.’

  Caedicius shook his head.

  Malchus pressed: ‘Sir, I can finish him.’

  ‘And if his men just ride in and kill you?’

  Malchus would not be dissuaded. ‘Then Arminius shows that he’s a fucking coward, sir, and he loses support. I’ll die for that.’

  ‘I can’t let you die for that, Malchus.’

  The first scream echoed out across the field.

  ‘Please, sir,’ Malchus begged.

  ‘The barbarians are out there, Malchus, not in here,’ Caedicius explained, shaking his head sadly. ‘We can’t lower ourselves to their level.
’

  I expected that Caedicius simply did not want to lose his best soldier so easily, and for such little gain. Malchus would be deadly in single combat, but he would be more deadly still behind the fort’s walls, orchestrating death for the enemy on the rampart and in the ditch.

  A long wail cut short Malchus’s retort. I chanced a look out towards the condemned men, and wished that I had not. One was tied by his arms, the length of rope fixed to a horse’s saddle. His legs were tied similarly to another beast. The animals were being whipped in opposite directions, and so, slowly, the man was being pulled apart.

  Malchus turned, his eyes full of fire and fury. ‘Felix,’ he ordered. ‘Get down from here. Go to your section.’

  I was happy to obey, my head swimming as I took the steps back to the dirt. The vision of the man and the horses seemed burned into my eyeballs, and would not leave me. Feeling light-headed, I sat back against the wall of a building. I saw Caedicius take his leave from the fighting step, but Malchus remained, an immovable statue as the prisoner’s body and screams finally gave out, and the German host gave a cheer.

  I tasted bile in my throat. I had been yards away from such a fate myself. If Brando and Malchus had left me, would I truly have had the courage to take my own life, or would hope, just the slightest touch of it, have been enough to let me fall to the enemy for a second time?

  ‘I thought you’d be here,’ I heard, and opened my eyes.

  Stumps.

  ‘Why do you do this to yourself, you soft bastard? You think any good is going to come from it? We’re all gonna die, Felix. Stop trying to live with a blade to your throat.’

  ‘Can you help me up?’

  My comrade reached down, and pulled me to my feet. ‘At least you’re clean,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I met a girl at the well.’ I, for some reason, felt compelled to tell him.

  Stumps looked at me with new eyes. ‘You know that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you mention a woman?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Arminius.’

  ‘Ha! Thwarted by the German. He really is a master of grand strategy, the cunt.’

  ‘She was looking for her husband. A Batavian.’

  ‘Oh! That one! Yeah, she came by the block. Good shag, she was.’

  I fell into the man’s trap – my eyes betrayed my jealousy.

  ‘You soft bastard!’ Stumps cackled. ‘She just came by, asked questions, cried, and then left. Probably the same outcome as a sexual experience with you, actually.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re feeling back to your old self.’

  ‘I’m better than that,’ my friend told me as the screams echoed beyond the battlements, ‘because I’ve accepted that we’re going to die here, Felix. And honestly, once you accept that, everything else seems all right. Even the fucking soup tastes incredible.’

  ‘You need more rest.’

  We walked on in silence. I knew that my comrade’s elevated mood would not last. I had seen it in other soldiers broken by war. This optimistic fatalism would be followed by soul-crushing guilt, and then terror. I knew this first hand, and that was why I was only too happy to try and leave the screams behind us.

  With one final look over my shoulder, I saw that the imposing silhouette of Malchus had not moved from his vigil – he would not abandon the men who had been trapped in the raid. Exhausted, but safe in the knowledge that I had such leaders to follow, I knew I could sleep well that night.

  ‘Arminius is gonna know how understrength we are now.’ Stumps’s words were prompted by another scream of a man under torture. ‘Probably that the raid for wood was a load of arse, too.’

  I shrugged, though I expected he was right. ‘We’ll see.’

  We had almost reached our own barrack block now. I felt my comrade’s pace slow.

  ‘Please, Felix.’ Stumps was looking anywhere but at my face as he forced the uncomfortable words from his chest. ‘No more stupid shit. I’ve lost enough mates.’

  ‘All right,’ I promised.

  Stumps still refused to look me in the eye. ‘All right then. I’m gonna go find a drink. Coming?’

  A drink with a comrade. I think I might actually have smiled at the suggestion. At that moment, only one thing sounded sweeter.

  ‘I’m going to sleep,’ I told him, entering the barrack room and falling heavily on to my straw mattress.

  Stumps said something as I pressed my body down into the bed. I caught the sarcastic tone, but the words were lost to me as my eyelids slammed down. Within a breath, I was asleep.

  It was almost a day before I woke. The weak light of dawn was the clue as I stirred, half hoping that I would slip away again into slumber.

  I had dreamed I was in Britain, an island that I had never seen, but which had been painted to me in stories when I was a young man. I wanted to return to those visions. The details of the characters in the dream were lost to me, but the image of white cliffs was seared into my sight. A serene feeling of calm had come over me, the sensation of which I had not experienced in months, nor did I have a right to when surrounded by enemies.

  Enemies. I could not stay in my bed. My dreams were exactly that, and so I shook them off and opened my eyes.

  The white cliffs vanished.

  I was alone in the room, but that didn’t alarm me. There was no sound from the walls. No shouts. No cries. The camp seemed tranquil.

  I swung my feet on to the floor. My joints and muscles ached, but my mind felt vital for the first time in days. I smiled as I saw that bread and cheese had been placed beside my pillow. My stomach growled instantly once I’d laid my eyes on the food and I ate it quickly.

  I stood and stretched, knots of muscle and bone popping and clicking. Pulling back the partition curtain, I saw that the arms and armour of my comrades had gone with them. I guessed that they had been assigned to some guard duty or other, of which there would be many. Arminius’s assaults had been bloody, but those moments of a siege were the anomaly. The usual was the tedious nature of standing watch, the gnaw of hunger and the stress of confinement.

  For the moment, however, I was happy to remain confined myself, and lay back on my bed. There would be more bloodshed, and to survive it I would need my strength. Guilt suddenly washed over me then, taking any lingering happiness from my dreams with it; I would not be a burden again, as I had been to Malchus and Brando. No one would die for me, I vowed. And with those thoughts, I felt the familiar darkness creeping back. Seeping into my mind. Telling me that I was scum. Telling me that I was a traitor. Telling me that Marcus—

  I shot to my feet as I heard men enter the block.

  ‘Brando.’ I was so happy to see his face and its promised distraction from the poison of my thoughts. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Duty up on the northern wall. Centurion H told us to let you sleep.’

  ‘Anything happening?’

  ‘Nothing since the three executions. Centurion H thinks Arminius was using it as a chance to get a look at our numbers, and sneak in a little closer.’

  H was probably right. Armed with the knowledge extracted from his prisoners, Arminius would now have a detailed picture of what stood in front of him.

  ‘We’ve got three more for the section,’ Stumps told me as he came in and clambered up on to his bunk. ‘They’ve gone to get their possessions.’

  The trio arrived soon after. Centurion H appeared with them.

  ‘Felix,’ he greeted me cheerfully. ‘How are the legs? Went a bit wobbly on you, did they? I do tend to have that effect on people.’

  I couldn’t help but smile at the man’s easy manner.

  ‘I’ve got some new lads from the hospital to join you. They’re all Nineteenth Legion. I’ll leave you to get on. Whole century will form up at dusk, full armour. We’re a reserve in case they try anything at dusk, and then we’ve got night duties. Sound good?’

  ‘All good, sir.’

  ‘Great. I’ll leave you to
it then.’

  I heard the sound of arms and armour being shed in the storage partition of the block, and then the first of the men appeared. He was tall, friendly looking, and stammered like a man pulled out of a frozen lake.

  ‘Ba-ba-ba-balbus,’ he greeted me.

  ‘You sound like a fucking sheep,’ Stumps snorted from his bed. ‘The Batavians will be trying to crawl into your arse.’

  The newcomer and the German-born pair laughed. Clearly Stumps had already used the insult that day. It was a tired joke, but I smiled to see my friend’s mind active, if only to create barbs.

  ‘Take a bunk,’ I told the soldier; then: ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the second head through the doorway.

  ‘Dog, sir,’ the man replied.

  I didn’t need to ask why. His breath hit me like a battering ram. The source of the stench was his rotting gums. Two teeth perched in the meat like dirty fingernails. Dog Breath, a common name throughout all legions.

  ‘Twisted my ankle, I did, sir,’ Dog explained the reason for his time at the hospital, his words wet.

  ‘Take a bunk,’ I told him, glad that there was not one available alongside mine. Truly, the man’s smell was more pungent than the rotting dead beyond the wall. ‘And you don’t call me sir,’ I added.

  ‘That’s good then. Wasn’t planning on doing it,’ said the final man to appear. He was younger, and would have been handsome if his features hadn’t been decorated with the scars of disease. The arrogance of his words jabbed at me, and from years of experience in the legions, I knew how I must deal with that display of self-importance – with violence.

  Instead, I put out my hand. There was enough fighting beyond the walls. ‘Felix.’

  My hand was ignored.

  ‘Whose is that bed?’ the man asked instead. A flare of anger burst inside me, but I fought it down, and opened my mouth to talk.

  But I was too late. Knuckles cracked into bone.

  I looked down and saw the newcomer writhing on the floor, struggling to protect his head as kicks rained down.

  They were not my own. Folcher and Brando beat the man as savagely as if he were the Germans who’d held them slave.