Siege

by Geraint Jones

  ‘I’ve got wine?’

  And so, moments later, we sat in the shelter of the wall’s lee. We didn’t talk, not even to ask each other’s names. We simply drank, slowly, comforted that we were not the only creature to be suffering. We sat there until a knot of soldiers approached, bandaged and grim. Centurion H was at the head of them.

  ‘It’s good to see you, sir,’ I told the man honestly. His smile was gone. Instead, H’s lips were drawn into a grimace. Half his century had not returned, and this was not the kind of officer who looked for glory or opportunity in that loss. His clouded eyes told me as much.

  ‘Your man Statius is still in the hospital,’ the centurion informed me. ‘Balbus, too. His corruption’s getting worse. I don’t know when you’ll get him back. To be honest, Felix, I don’t know if there’s a century any more. I expect that we’ll be split up amongst the others,’ he concluded sadly.

  I noticed a red stain that was spreading through the centurion’s linen bandage. ‘I don’t want to overstep, sir,’ I offered, ‘but shouldn’t you be in the hospital, too?’

  H slowly shook his head, and then looked at the men around us. They took his hint, and left.

  ‘I’m telling you this because, after all you’ve been through, you deserve to hear it. Last night was a disaster, Felix, nothing less. We can’t afford to take losses like that, which means no more raids. No more proactive patrols, or attacks. We’re going to sit here in this fort until we’re rescued, or until we starve.’

  ‘Are supplies that low?’

  ‘They will be. German winter’s harsh. Have you seen many cats and dogs around recently? People are preparing already. Everyone’s about to go hungry. That’s why the prefect’s ordered that we release the prisoners we captured last week.’

  ‘Release them?’ I asked, surprised at the mercy.

  The centurion shrugged. ‘Better they eat the enemy’s rations than ours.’

  I understood that logic well enough, but the clemency confused me. Why not kill them, and let them feed the crows? Dead men didn’t eat.

  H read my thoughts. ‘It’s not as simple as that, Felix.’ The man shook his head. ‘We’re taking a burden of hungry mouths from us and putting them on to the goat-fuckers.’

  I licked nervously at my cracked lips, knowing what was coming next. ‘But we’re not about to hand them soldiers, are we?’ I asked.

  H met my own dark eyes. ‘Caedicius wants to take their hands, Felix,’ he confided in me, spitting at the dirt. ‘And he wants what’s left of our century to be the butchers.’

  We formed up in full battle dress and marched to the centre of the camp and its parade square. The ranks were silent and sullen, men grieving over the loss of their comrades from the raid not yet a day old. It was this grief that Prefect Caedicius and Centurion Malchus hoped to tap into. The opportunity to give men who had been beaten – for what else was the botched raid but an abject failure? – the chance to strike back at the faces of their enemy. To draw blood, and bring forth screams. To avenge the comrades that they had left behind.

  And this demonstration was not only for those who had taken part in the failed assault. Leaving a skeleton guard force on the walls, the entirety of the garrison had been formed up in ranks to watch the coming punishments. Civilians, whether drawn by order or by morbid fascination, jostled for space to witness the proceedings.

  There were ten German prisoners. Naked, haggard men, on their knees, heads hanging, their bodies a map of torture from where Malchus and his men had extracted their information some days ago. Once proud warriors were now a pathetic sight, drained of all spirit and humanity.

  Our century drew to a halt in front of them. Malchus, as imposing as ever, quickly strode forward to our ranks, tossing four pieces of rope to soldiers at random. One such length was dropped by Micon, but the young soldier scrabbled quickly to pick it up. I noticed that there was a noose at one end.

  ‘Those of you with rope, step forward,’ Malchus ordered, his eyes like caves. ‘Take an arm or a leg and put the noose around wrist or ankle.

  ‘This one first.’ He pointed to a fair-haired German who was silently weeping. So timid and shattered from captivity was this enemy that it took only moments to subdue him: the ropes around his limbs pulled outwards under Malchus’s instruction so that the German was spread-eagled on the parade square’s dirt, his wriggling limbs held fast by Micon and the other soldiers. As if the gods were watching and casting judgment, the skies chose that moment to open, and a light rain began to patter against our armour and the victim’s naked skin.

  A squat legionary then walked forwards and handed Malchus an axe. Malchus used the tool to gesture at an arm, and the burly soldier knotted rope around the elbow – he was creating a tourniquet. Once finished, the squat soldier stepped away, and Malchus spat into the face of his enemy. Then the axe swung down. With a sickening chop the lower arm came free, and Micon, who had been holding that rope, stumbled backwards as the anchor of flesh was severed.

  The screams came moments later. They were universal in language, and dreadful. Tired of the sound, Malchus drew his dagger and knelt over the man. Within a breath, a tongue lay discarded on the floor.

  Malchus snorted. ‘Tongue first for the rest of them. Can’t hold their pain like men, the fucking scum. I suppose if you fuck enough goats, you start to bleat like them.’

  The centurion’s taunt was followed by laughter from the hardest of his men, and the most nervous – those who were keen to hide their own perceived weakness behind the terror of others.

  I looked at Micon, who held a rope with the severed hand at its end. I tried to read the boy’s expression, wondering about his sanity. In the forest he had turned green at such sights. Now his face was without a trace of emotion. Why should I have expected differently? Only weeks ago, he had seen his best friend die beside him. He had seen men and women killed in the most unimaginable and horrendous ways. This teenage veteran had never known a woman, and yet a severed hand and cut-out tongue were now nothing out of the ordinary to him.

  ‘Next four,’ Malchus ordered, taking the rope from Micon and the other soldiers who had held down the condemned prisoner and tossing them towards the ranks of our depleted century.

  Brando snatched one from the air as if it were hewn from gold.

  The second German victim whimpered like a dog as he was pushed into the dirt, and I heard the big Batavian plead with Malchus as he strode to his side.

  ‘Let me gut the bastard, sir,’ Brando begged, and I suspected Malchus would have agreed, had Prefect Caedicius not answered for his more bloodthirsty subordinate.

  ‘Send them alive and unable to fight, and they become a burden on their own people, soldier. If you kill him, he’s just food for the crows.’

  Brando stood to his full height. He was an imposing bastard. Respectful of his seniors, but imposing. ‘Then let me do it slowly, sir. Please. They killed my friend, sir. They killed my whole cohort in the forest. Please, sir, let me send him back with a lesson.’

  Eventually, Caedicius gave a slow nod. Malchus took the rope from Brando, and handed the Batavian his blade.

  The German writhed as if he were possessed by spirits. It did him no good. Brando took his tongue first. He was savage in his work, and most of the man’s lips came with it. His ears were next.

  ‘Hurry this up,’ the prefect ordered, eyes on the rain clouds, and Brando hacked at both of the man’s wrists until they were ragged stumps. As blood pooled into the dirt, the prisoner rolled on the floor like an eel gaffed out from a stream.

  One after another, the German prisoners were pulled forwards to similar fates. Eventually, one of the pieces of bloodstained rope found its way into my hands. From a long acquaintance with death and fate, I knew without looking who the victim at my hands would be: the young boy I had dragged from his tent. The young boy that I, with Folcher, had brought to this place.

  ‘You want to cut him?’ Malchus asked me, seeing my gaze linger on the b
oy’s thrashing eyes.

  ‘He’s young,’ I tried, feigning indifference. ‘Don’t we need slaves, sir? Maybe he’s worth keeping.’

  Malchus shrugged, oblivious to my true intention. ‘Not with winter coming. Take hold of his arm, Felix. Hold him still.’

  And so I did, watching as Malchus’s dagger bit into the red meat of the boy’s tongue. Through the rope, I felt every lashing second of defiance. Every wild jolt of panic. Malchus soon tired of the boy’s resistance and rammed his fist into his face. The boy didn’t know it, but the punch was a mercy: he was barely conscious as the gore-painted axe head chopped into his thin wrist and took his hand.

  I fought down the bile that rose in my throat. What good was a sign of weakness now? What good was pity? Mercy? I had to think of my friends. I had to think of Linza. This boy and his comrades belonged to an enemy that wanted us dead. That wanted Linza raped and enslaved. Now, at least these ten were no longer a threat.

  ‘Send them out of the camp,’ Caedicius ordered, loud enough for the assembled troops to hear. ‘Let this be a lesson to them, and to anyone who dares take up arms against Rome.’

  ‘I have a suggestion, sir,’ Malchus quickly put in with a grimace that touched on a smile. Prefect Caedicius listened, and agreed, and so it was that the prisoners were freed with their hands after all, or at least one of them, stuffed into tongueless mouths. Of the ten prisoners dragged on to the square, only six survived the initial shock of their injuries to stumble in agony from the gates, their moans stifled by their own amputated flesh. Another dropped before barely clearing the gates.

  ‘They won’t survive more than a few days,’ Stumps said to me later, dispassionately. ‘Drain on the enemy resources, my arse. The prefect knows he fucked up, and he wants to pretend we didn’t leave forty of our blokes out there, where the same thing’s happening to them.’

  I kept my mouth shut. Stumps had spoken for us both and, sure enough, the enemy were quick to make their own point, for later that day a large body of horsemen arrived and pulled to a halt beyond bow range. Their horses were trailing something, and the soldiers with the keenest eyesight told us that they were the bodies of the raiding party. The German riders then fell on these corpses with glee, hacking until there was nothing remaining but a pyramid of chopped limbs and skulls.

  I knew that amongst that carnage would be the bodies of Folcher and Dog. One of those men was a friend that had escaped slavery with me. The other, a soldier I had barely known, yet I had been responsible for. Both men had lived for families, and dreams. Now they were reduced to food for crows and foxes.

  ‘Fuck war,’ Stumps snorted angrily beside me, and I did not know if I had ever heard words so heartfelt and true. ‘Fuck war.’

  43

  We slept for a long time after the raid and the mutilation of the prisoners. It wasn’t a good rest for some, and men cried out and shook in their sleep, fighting unseen battles, losing the same friends over and over. I wasn’t the only man to wake more exhausted than when I’d fallen into sleep.

  ‘He’s not here.’ Brando spoke sadly, looking at the empty bunk that had been occupied by his closest friend. ‘I’ve been awake for hours, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.’

  We were alone in the bunk room; I presumed that Stumps was drinking with Titus, and had taken Micon with him like a cherished younger brother.

  I rose from my mattress and put a hand on the Batavian’s shoulder. He didn’t need words, or promises from me. He just needed to know.

  ‘I don’t think he would blame me for leaving him behind, Felix.’ Brando rubbed his hands together as if he were milling wheat. ‘He knows I would have died with him if he was breathing.’

  I nodded at that truth.

  ‘I tried to hide his body in the trees. Maybe they didn’t find him?’

  Maybe. Or maybe Folcher’s severed head and dismembered limbs were in the pile of bodies that the Germans had stacked beyond the wall. Prefect Caedicius had sent a work party to recover the fallen so that they could receive a proper burial, but German horsemen had burst from the trees. They had baited the trap with our need to give the men a decent burial, and the work party had narrowly escaped with their own lives.

  ‘He’s in a better place,’ I told my friend. How many soldiers had heard that promise?

  The door to the barrack room pushed open then.

  ‘Balbus,’ I greeted the man at the threshold.

  ‘I’m su-sorry it took me so long to get back,’ the soldier told me, head bobbing in earnest, his eyes struggling to meet my own. From experience, I could see a familiar slope in his neck and shoulders where shame had gripped him. Shame that he had been spared the slaughter when others had fallen.

  ‘How’s the hand?’ I asked him, hoping to pull him from those thoughts.

  ‘It’s fu-fine,’ he bluffed.

  I stood and took it. Beneath the bandage I could feel swelling. Balbus tried to mask a wince as I applied pressure through my fingers.

  ‘You’re a good man, Balbus, but a shit liar,’ Brando said from the edge of his bunk, recognizing the hurt and the reason for hiding it.

  ‘I’m su-sorry about Folcher,’ Balbus answered with feeling. ‘He-he was a great bloke.’

  ‘He was,’ Brando agreed, standing so that he could meet Balbus’s eye man to man. ‘Dog, too. He was long a friend of yours?’

  ‘Tu-ten years,’ Balbus confirmed.

  ‘Then he wouldn’t want you trying to fight with one hand, would he?’ the Batavian pressed gently. ‘This siege isn’t going anywhere, my friend. Get your rest. Get it for us, and for Dog.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you to the hospital,’ I put in, ending the matter. Balbus’s cheeks reddened with shame at being dismissed, but he did not try to argue.

  We walked through the camp in silence. My mind was elsewhere, and I suspected his was on the friends that he had lost, and the shame that he had been spared that carnage because of a splinter picked up during a work party of no consequence.

  Good soldiers blame themselves for the death of their comrades, no matter how ridiculous the accusations. Neither I nor Balbus had control over even our own lives, and yet we would beat ourselves mercilessly because we had not saved others. What if was the veteran’s greatest enemy.

  ‘Don’t leave here until the surgeon gives you the all-clear,’ I ordered the man as we reached the high-sided building of the hospital. ‘I’m going to look in on Statius.’

  I half expected Balbus to offer to join me, but he left quickly enough. I expected that he did not want the shame of confronting a comrade injured in a fight he had taken no part in himself.

  The stink of blood and bodily fluids hit my nostrils as I entered the hospital. The building was quiet but for the bustle of slaves and the specialist assistants who worked beside the surgeons – those who would have screamed from their wounds had either died or were now battling to recover.

  Finding Statius was easy enough. He had the strong accent of the Empire’s capital city, and I heard it carry along a hallway as he boasted of a whore he had once known on the Rhine.

  ‘Statius,’ I greeted him, throwing a nod to the two bandaged men who sat with him on their cots.

  ‘Felix?’ he replied, a little puzzled. A little alarmed.

  ‘I thought I’d check in on you,’ I said, and Statius’s companions had the acuity to leave the room. ‘How’s the arm?’ I asked.

  Statius shrugged. He looked uncomfortable, whether from wound or from scrutiny, I could not tell.

  ‘It’s a struggle to lift it,’ he finally offered when I said nothing. ‘One of those fucking Syrians.’

  I looked into his eyes, then. I don’t know what compelled me to do it. Perhaps it was because of the way his voice had shifted from bravado with his hospital comrades to piteousness when he saw me. Or perhaps, after living a life of duplicity, I knew how to spot a fucking liar.

  I smiled. ‘Let me take a look.’

  ‘I don’t know if the surgeons
—’

  ‘It’s fine, Statius. I want to take a look. I want to see what those fucking Syrians did to you.’ There was no room for compromise in my tone, and the man held his tongue as I unwrapped the bandage covering his arm and looked at the wound: a clean cut through the flesh of his upper left arm. Within a moment, I was certain.

  There are many things in my life that I am not proud of, and one of these is that I have seen and inflicted wounds with almost every blade and weapon imaginable. From this dark experience, I knew now that Statius was a liar. He claimed to have been struck by an arrow, but from the thickness and direction of the sutured wound, I knew that it had been done by his own hand – his opposite hand dragging a dagger across his own flesh.

  I smiled at the coward as if I were his greatest ally. ‘It looks clean,’ I told him. ‘Missed the muscle?’

  He gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘Good. You can come with me back to the section. We need every man, and they’ll be glad to see you.’

  Statius hesitated, desperate to remain within the hospital’s walls. ‘The surgeons—’ he began.

  ‘—are here to patch us up so we can fight,’ I finished for him. ‘And they’ve done that. Get your equipment together. You’re coming back to the section.’

  ‘But—’

  My patience ran out at that moment. It was one word too many from his sewer of a mouth, and as the image of Folcher’s torn throat flashed into my mind, I drove my fist into Statius’s startled face. My hands were on his neck a second later.

  ‘You want to stay here, then I’ll give you a reason.’ His face was growing as purple as the Emperor’s robes. ‘You can stay here and die, or you can find your fucking balls and act like a soldier.’

  When his eyes begged hard enough, I let go of his windpipe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘I was scared.’

  I stood back from him. ‘We were all scared,’ I spat. ‘You’re out of chances, Statius. The next time you put your own life ahead of the others, I’m taking your fucking throat.’

  The time for pity was over. The death of men under my care had seen to that, and now there was only one thing on my mind. One thought for the men that depended on me.