Siege

by Geraint Jones

  Survival.

  44

  Statius followed me from the hospital like a whipped dog. I felt his eyes on my back. Did he hate me? Undoubtedly, but I knew that hate was born not from my actions, but his own – no man wanted to discover himself a coward. In a world that placed virtue and courage above all else, what was there for the soldier who found that he was unable to control his fear? Pity was for the women and children. Sympathy for the wounded. For the coward, there was only contempt.

  ‘Felix,’ Centurion H called, catching sight of me as I passed the window of his quarters.

  I waited by the doorway for my superior to appear.

  ‘Cohort commander’s stood us down for forty-eight hours,’ H told me, eyeing Statius but making no comment. ‘Time to lick our wounds and remember the boys. You still have a friend in the quartermaster’s?’

  I gave a shallow nod.

  ‘Then get your section. I’m buying. Can’t take the shit with us, can we?’

  It took little to convince Brando to join us. I considered leaving Statius behind. The more malicious part of my mind wanted to put him to work cleaning latrines, or the equipment of men who had stood and fought. Instead, I decided that his shame would be a secret held between him and me. There was nothing to gain by dividing a section already depleted. Already in grief.

  ‘How’s your wound?’ I asked H as we walked to the quartermaster’s department.

  ‘Not fatal.’ He managed to smile. ‘Which is the only thing that matters, when you get down to it.’

  ‘There is that,’ I granted.

  ‘The other lads, though …’ The centurion trailed off. ‘Keep an eye on your blokes and the Syrians, Felix. I’ve done enough years to know that these things happen, but it’s not like things have been great as it is. I keep thinking that all Arminius needs to do is sit back, and we’ll pull ourselves apart easier than he could have ever done.’

  I nodded. ‘A siege does things to men.’

  ‘Not like any of us were sane in the first place, is it?’ H tried to grin. ‘Got to be a lunatic to sign up for this, haven’t you?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I can still remember the recruiter,’ H told me, enjoying the memory. ‘He was a hard-looking bastard, and threw coins around like he was Marc Anthony. Course, I thought, that’ll be me in a year or two! My dad beat the shit out of me when he found out, but it was too late by then, wasn’t it? Marched away the next morning, and it’s been sixteen years since I set foot south of the Alps. Haven’t seen much of that coin, either.’ He laughed.

  We had reached the quartermaster’s department. The guards recognized me and moved aside. We entered the long storeroom that doubled as the site of games and gambling, but all was quiet. Three men sat alone at a table.

  ‘Titus. Boys,’ I greeted my friends.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Stumps slurred, his eyes then settling on Statius. ‘And what the fuck’s he doin’ ’ere? Better grow your hair if you’re lookin’ to sell your fanny. Oh, ’ello, sir,’ he added quickly, spotting his centurion.

  ‘Relax, Stumps,’ H smiled. ‘I just want to get shit-faced. Can I buy in on that wine?’

  ‘Your money’s no good here,’ Titus interjected. ‘The blokes have spoken up about you, sir. You’re my guest. Drink what you like.’

  ‘You’re a gentleman, for such a scary-looking bastard,’ H conceded, and then laughed. ‘I suppose the wine fits into our daily ration?’

  ‘There’re forty less mouths to feed, boss.’ Stumps spoke without humour. ‘I don’t know about the Nineteenth, but in the Seventeenth Legion, that ration goes to the lads who made it, so we can give them a good send-off.’

  H nodded, solemnly. ‘We do the same, and we’re all Nineteenth now, boys.’ He raised his drink. ‘Here’s to the boys who can’t raise a cup.’

  We echoed the toast, and drank deep. Titus poured again, the wine splashing over the brims like bubbling wounds.

  ‘Another one,’ the big man ordered.

  We drank, and then we drank some more. In what seemed like moments, my eyes began to swim, my words catching on my tongue.

  ‘Tell me more about the desert,’ H pressed Titus when Stumps had revealed something of his friend’s past.

  Titus shrugged. ‘Sand and camels.’

  ‘What about the women?’ H encouraged him. ‘How do they stack up compared to the Germans?’

  The big man thought over his answer. ‘They’re slighter. Smaller tits. Dark eyes. Dark hair.’

  ‘But who fucks better?’ Stumps asked eagerly.

  Titus considered for a further moment before answering. ‘The Germans.’

  ‘Thank the weather for that.’ Brando laughed. ‘It’s so cold here in winter no one wants to keep their clothes off. Get it done wild and fast.’

  We laughed at that, wine spilling over our lips and on to our tunics. Only one man sat unmoved.

  Statius.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Brando asked the man. ‘You’ve got a face like a donkey’s bollocks. Drink some wine, man. Relax.’

  ‘Why?’ the Roman asked, simply.

  Brando’s thick brow creased. ‘Why? Why the fuck not? Because we could be dead tomorrow, and so enjoy. Enjoy this time.’

  There was a chorus of applause at that, cups rapping on tables. I looked at young Micon, and saw that even his dull-witted face was twisted upwards in amusement. He had seen the evidence and learned the lesson: live for the moment.

  ‘But it’s all bollocks, isn’t it?’ Statius said suddenly and sullenly. ‘Die tomorrow? Yes. And if not tomorrow, then soon. And for what? We’ll die in this fort, or outside of it, and for what?’

  The question was met by silence, and dark looks. Micon was the first to move, slurping noisily at his cup. It was Titus who opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘What would you like to die for?’ he asked plainly.

  Statius had no reply.

  ‘There must be something?’ Titus shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘You want to die for fame? For money?’

  Statius shook his head. ‘I don’t want to die at all,’ he admitted, his eyes on his drink.

  ‘Picked the wrong profession then, didn’t you?’ Stumps scoffed, before a look from Titus shut him up.

  ‘No one cheats death,’ H put in, his words slurred from wine and blood loss from his still-leaking wound.

  ‘All right then,’ Statius conceded. ‘I don’t want to die for this.’ He gestured at his uniform. ‘I don’t want to die so someone can put a mark on a map. I don’t want to die so a senator gets new lands. I don’t want to die so a general can have poets suck his cock and say what a brilliant mind he had, losing only hundreds of men like us, and not thousands.’

  ‘You joined the army,’ Stumps sneered. He couldn’t help himself. ‘The army didn’t join you.’

  ‘Yes, I joined the fucking army,’ Statius snapped back. ‘I joined the army because I wanted food in my stomach. I joined because I didn’t want to die a beggar in the streets.’

  Stumps was like a dog with a bone. ‘You have a roof over your head now, don’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Food? Even if it is half-rations.’

  ‘Yeah, and for what price? So that I can watch friends die? So that I can be skinned alive by the goat-fuckers? How many friends did you lose in the forest, Stumps? You’re not screaming the barracks down and getting pissed every night because you love what you do.’

  ‘You have no fucking idea,’ Stumps warned darkly.

  ‘Then enlighten me,’ Statius pressed. Somehow his fear of death had given him the confidence to confront the absurdity of his position. ‘Are you going to be one of these lying bastards who tells the stories of smiles and laughter as we march off to get fucking slaughtered? I may not have seen much, but I’ve seen enough to know that the only ones who talk that way are the ones who have never drawn a blade! Three legions gone in that forest, Stumps! Felix, you were there. Are you telling me that you went through it all thinking of glory
for Rome? Do you wake up screaming thinking of eagles and triumphs?’

  ‘Of course I fucking don’t. And you know nothing about it, so hold your tongue now. We came here to remember friends,’ I warned.

  Statius shook his head. ‘Bollocks.’

  Titus saw me rise, but held out a hand – he wanted me to let the man speak.

  ‘You came here to forget,’ Statius insisted. ‘To drink, and forget. You all know it’s a fucking sham. Glory is just something they invented to suck us in. If it were true, then why would they need to enlist us for twenty years and more? Who’d want to leave if it was like they said it was?’

  No one answered. I could see on the faces of my friends that they hated Statius for his words, but that hate was born from the realization that, in some aspects at least, he was right.

  ‘Are you honestly telling me you’re all right with all of this?’ the man pressed on. ‘Do you not see how fucking ridiculous it is?’

  Titus then stepped in, placing his cup on the table, his words measured. ‘Of course we do. But the world is a hard place. Open your head a bit, and you won’t see the army as a prison. You’ll see opportunity.’

  ‘Easy for you to say, when you’re running the black market,’ Statius sneered.

  Titus was unblinking as he delivered his calm threat. ‘You’ve obviously got eyes and ears, and some brains between them. Learn how to keep them all where they should be.’

  ‘And there’s more to this than money and lands, Statius,’ Brando put in diplomatically. ‘There is something bigger than us all here. We are small parts of greatness. We are parts of Rome.’

  ‘What do you know about Rome, Brando?’ Statius asked, swirling the red liquid about his cup. ‘I’ll tell you about Rome. Swarms of mosquitos so thick you can walk on them. Streets running with piss and shit. Every month there’s some new fucking disease that’s filling holes in the dirt and taking your family. Rome’s a curse,’ he finished with a cautious eye towards his centurion.

  H shrugged. ‘There’s no rank here,’ he said, his tone suggesting that his mind was aligned at least in part with that of his bitter subordinate.

  ‘You’re wrong, Statius,’ Brando countered, shaking his head. ‘Rome is no curse. The Empire is a cure. My father. My grandfather. They lived in chaos before Batavia was taken into the Empire. The system is flawed, I’ll give you that, but it is a system. It brings law and order. On the frontier, of course, life is hard, but our sacrifice as soldiers means better lives for others.’ There was real passion in the Batavian’s voice. ‘That is why I would give my life for Rome. And that is why Folcher gave his.’

  ‘Then you’re a fucking idiot,’ Statius mumbled, and I saw Brando’s nostrils flare like an enraged bull’s, his muscles bunching. Perhaps, if Statius had held his next thought within himself, then the bigger man would have let the insult pass.

  But he could not, and the fateful sneer fell from his lips.

  ‘Open your eyes, Brando,’ he hissed. ‘Folcher died for nothing.’

  Not even Titus had the strength and speed to stop the Batavian. Brando crossed the table like a leopard, taking Statius down in a flurry of thrashing arms and legs. He was pulled away within seconds, but those short moments were enough – blood pooled on the floor.

  ‘Fuck, Brando!’ Stumps shouted. ‘What have you done?’

  I looked down at Statius. He lay frozen on the floor, blood on his lips, dark eyes fixed and rigid.

  ‘Brando …’ H whispered, his shocked gaze on the dagger that had been driven deep into the Roman’s heart.

  Statius was dead.

  45

  Titus was the first to recover his senses, and to assess the danger of the situation that had now presented itself on his doorstep.

  I wondered what was running through the big man’s mind. The death of Statius was a murder, nothing less, and Titus was surely weighing up the chances of avoiding attention being brought to his enterprises through a cover-up. Inevitably, that brought his eyes to Centurion H, the one man who had not been through it with us in the forest – Brando was one of us through companionship in enslavement. H was the weak link. A good man, but an outsider. An unknown quantity. A danger to our tribe.

  I saw Titus’s hand creep towards the dagger at his belt.

  ‘How do you want this to play out?’ he coolly asked the officer.

  Moments ago, H had been drunk. Now, with the body of one of his soldiers at his feet, the man was as sober as rock. ‘I join him if I try and report this, don’t I?’ he answered pragmatically, knowing what was on Titus’s mind. ‘Gods, Brando, did you have to kill him?’

  The Batavian grimaced. There was no trace of remorse on his face, or in his words. ‘You heard what he said about Folcher. Fuck him. If he was still breathing, I’d cut open his throat.’

  ‘I’ll just tell that to Malchus and the prefect, shall I?’ H shook his head. ‘You know what they’ll do to you for this?’

  Brando knew. ‘I’m not afraid to die.’

  ‘No one’s dying,’ Titus cut in.

  ‘No one else, anyway.’ Stumps tutted, looking at the leaking corpse. ‘Fuck him, anyway. He was a piece of shit.’

  ‘This is the legions, Stumps,’ H said with a heat that was at odds with his usual passivity. ‘Killing someone because they are a piece of shit is a little outside of fucking regulations!’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ Stumps countered. ‘Lose Brando, too? You want to see him lose his head?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ H cursed, knowing that the penalty for the murder would be death, and nothing less. ‘And even if I did want that, I’m not stupid enough to think I’d be leaving here alive.’

  Silence prevailed over the scene. It told H that his dark prediction was accurate.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Titus eventually said. ‘So long as we use some common sense.’

  ‘Common sense being that we forget we were ever here?’ H guessed. ‘That’s great, Titus, but there’s this little problem lying at our fucking feet.’

  ‘Easy enough to make him disappear,’ Stumps piped up.

  ‘Do you have any idea how a legion runs?’ H chided the veteran. ‘It’s ledgers and accounts, Stumps. He can’t just “disappear”.’

  I had listened to the conversation up until now with near disinterest. Blood and death were the constant of my life, and the brutal truth was that I had not liked Statius, and my only regret for the end of his life was that it endangered a man that I cared about – a brave man, who did not deserve to lose his head for silencing the insults of a coward.

  ‘Statius was a shit.’ I spoke up, surprising the others. ‘And he was a coward. Look at the wound on his arm, H.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, H began to unwrap the bandages on the body’s arm. Statius’s limbs were limp. It would be some time until his body hardened.

  ‘Look at that cut,’ I told my centurion. ‘That’s from a dagger. You can see how he would have drawn the blade across. He did it himself to get out of the fighting.’

  ‘He said it was a Syrian arrow.’ For the first time, H looked at the body with a trace of contempt.

  ‘I knew he was a fucking coward.’ Stumps spat, his spittle landing at the body’s feet.

  Titus met my eye, then. He knew that I’d brought up the self-inflicted wound for more reason than to heap shame on to a cooling corpse.

  ‘You want to stick this on them?’ he asked me.

  I nodded. ‘Everyone except us thinks he took a Syrian arrow. Won’t be hard to believe he went looking for payback.’

  ‘Not like he could keep his fucking mouth shut,’ Brando grunted.

  ‘I don’t know.’ H shook his head. ‘Half the garrison’s at the Syrians’ throats as it is. A fuck-up during battle? Maybe that they can understand. But this?’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ Titus asked. ‘Either way, the civvies and half the Romans here hate the Syrians. What’s to be gained by you losing a good man?’


  ‘I’m not afraid to die, Titus,’ Brando stated again. ‘I’m glad that I killed him. When I die, I’ll laugh about it with Folcher. If saving my head means more fighting in the fort, then that isn’t something I want. I did what I did, and I’ll take my punishment.’

  ‘No one’s asking you, you dense German dickhead,’ Stumps dismissed the Batavian. ‘I’m not losing another mate.’

  The harsh silence fell again. All eyes rested on Statius, and the dagger in his chest.

  ‘What will it be, H?’ Titus finally asked the officer.

  H continued to look at the floor for a long time. ‘You’d take your punishment?’ he finally asked of Brando, raising his gaze.

  The Batavian met his look with unblinking eyes – he would.

  ‘And I believe you,’ H conceded, with more than a little admiration for the killer. ‘But if you lose your head, Brando, I’ve got a feeling that I’d be joining you in the afterlife soon after.’ He cast his eyes over the assembled, grim faces. Brando’s comrades. His family. Men who would kill for him. Even an officer they admired.

  ‘You’re a good man, H.’ Stumps shrugged, trying to shake off the truth of our primitive instincts.

  ‘I’m a realistic one,’ the centurion snapped. ‘Statius isn’t coming back, and if he was a coward, then fuck him. But this is the legion, boys; we kill who we’re told to, not who we want to.’

  He was right, of course. Kill a thousand and you would be a hero, but cut the wrong throat and you would be condemned a murderer.

  ‘I can’t be with you lot after this.’ H shook his head, touching his fresh bandages. ‘I’m in no shape to fight anyway. I can’t promise I can keep you together – you and what’s left of the century will probably get split up to boost the others.’

  ‘You’re not a bad soldier for doing this, H,’ I offered, seeing that he was coming to his conclusion, and one that sat badly with him.

  A ghost of the man’s former smile crept on to his weathered lips. ‘Good or bad doesn’t matter on the frontier, Felix. Are you alive, or dead? That’s all that counts.’