Siege

by Geraint Jones

  Those words were true, and Statius was now amongst the fallen. With tight faces and nervous movements, we set about ensuring that his end would be attributed to others.

  ‘Here.’ Titus returned from a storeroom, a saw and an axe in his hands. ‘Stumps, take Micon and watch the front.’

  H grimaced, taking in the tools in the big man’s hands. ‘Time for me to go.’

  Titus shook his head. ‘You stay until it’s over.’ What did rank matter when murder was concerned?

  ‘I can’t be a part of this,’ the centurion asserted. ‘There has to be a line somewhere.’

  Titus shrugged. ‘Turn your back, but you don’t leave my sight until this is over. Afterwards, you’ll never have to see me again.’

  H hesitated for a moment. Then he took a wineskin and walked away, sinking on to his heels when he was clear of the blood that had run from Statius’s body. It was as well for his own safety that he stayed. I knew from experience that Titus was not opposed to killing officers, and Brando was one of his wards, now – the Batavian’s kinship to myself and Stumps had seen to that.

  The former auxiliary stepped forwards now, and held out his hand to Titus. ‘Pass me the axe.’ Then, blade in hand, he straddled the body of the man that he’d killed. ‘You said Folcher died for nothing,’ he snarled at the corpse. ‘Well, what did you die for, you cunt?’

  Titus looked at me. ‘Are you ready to do this?’

  ‘What choice do we have?’ I asked him.

  There was none, of course. To protect the life of one comrade, we would have to butcher the remains of another.

  Titus knew that truth. His eyes were as grim as his words.

  ‘Start cutting.’

  Part Three

  * * *

  46

  There are a lot of ways that a soldier can die, and death at the hands of a comrade is not an uncommon one. In fact, when the legions require the most malevolent form of discipline, army commanders can enact the punishment of decimation, where lots are drawn between men of a section and a single man is then condemned to be beaten to death at the hands of the men he called brothers. Funny, how an enlightened civilization keeps its soldiers in check.

  Murder was a staple, too. Sometimes pre-meditated, but more often as a result of a drunken brawl or a bull-headed grievance. Fall the wrong way, hit your head in the wrong place, and a man’s lights could go out, never to be relit.

  Then there were the accidents. During times of peace – or at least, when not prosecuting campaigns – the army was the Empire’s corps of engineers, and building bridges and aqueducts carried with it the inherent risk of injury. A dropped stone from above or a wobbly piece of scaffold could see a soldier dead or, worse, crippled. Reduced to be a beggar in the streets, living amongst the filth and surviving on scraps.

  Of course, soldiers were not immune to the plagues and diseases that were a constant of every civilization. Even senators had to fear the unseen killers, and for the men of the legions, often travelling into new climes, death was more likely to come from a sweated fever than an enemy spear. The discipline of the legions ensured that its men did not live in filth and squalor, but even so, a tightly packed mass of men often seemed too tempting for the gods, or whatever force, to pass by. Entire legions could be reduced without a blade being drawn. Even the baths, a benchmark of Roman enlightenment, were an invitation to death for a man with an open wound.

  Boredom could be fatal. Many soldiers were young men, and young men do stupid things. In Pannonia, I recalled watching a soldier who had been challenged by his friends to leap from one rooftop to another. He failed miserably, his life ending as a heap of fractured bone and skull.

  Thinking was no good for a soldier’s health, and was to be discouraged. Think too much about your place in the army, and the army’s place in the world, and you might well become a deserter, and deserters died painful deaths. Think about what you had done in the name of glory and perhaps, as I had done, you would consider taking your own life. Then there were men like Statius. He had been stupid enough to give voice to his thoughts, and his dismissal of purpose in Folcher’s death had been enough to bring about his own end.

  I thought a lot about that murder during the weeks that followed. The way the saw had ground against Statius’s bones. The way that his blood had soaked the sacks into which we’d shoved his dismembered body. The pant of the hungry dogs that had followed us through the darkest parts of the fort, and the way that they had pulled an arm free from the sacking before we had a chance to run breathlessly clear.

  I thought a lot about the murder, and the butchery, but it wasn’t with guilt or shame that I looked back on it – it was with anger. Anger at myself that I should have ever allowed the killing to take place. Anger at myself that I had not dealt with Statius’s cowardice in my own way.

  True, I had disliked Statius and his malingering, but he didn’t deserve to die for that spinelessness. I did not want to be like the legions, sentencing to death men who had seen sensible reason to keep their blades sheathed. The punishment was unjust, but once Statius’s heart had stopped beating, his body had become mere flesh, and nothing more. There was no way to turn back time. Brando, my friend and comrade, had then become my only concern. It was for him that I had played a willing part in the gruesome cover-up, and for him that I suffered the shame in the eyes of Centurion H, a man I admired.

  After that night, I realized that my mind was becoming as hardened as the chain mail that hung over my shoulders. A war was being fought inside my head, and the darkness had taken the advantage. In a way, it seemed almost a blessing – my nightmares were becoming less frequent. The death of Statius was now an afterthought in my own life, and in that of the fort’s – a murder attributed to the Syrian archers.

  The fallout of that revelation had been predictable enough. Fortunately, as it was assumed that Statius had gone looking for revenge for his ‘wound’, Prefect Caedicius had not been proactive in his search for a scapegoat. If anything, he used the Roman’s death as an example of why the men and civilians under his command should remain within the boundaries that he had drawn up. It came as no surprise to find that Statius had been short on friends, and no acts of vengeance were carried out in his name. I was almost coming to believe that the death was free of consequences, when a grim-faced Brando rushed into the alleyways of the civilian encampment.

  He found me with Linza. I was scrubbing my mail, and smiling. Smiling until I saw the look on my comrade’s face, and I knew that tragedy had come with him.

  ‘What?’ was all I asked. Beside me, I felt Linza stiffen.

  ‘Balbus. The corruption has spread up his arm. The surgeon’s amputating now.’

  I dropped my mail and ran with him, Linza left behind in our hurried wake. As my sandals beat the cold dirt, my stomach churned – I knew what this was. This was our punishment. This was justice for our butchery of a comrade.

  ‘This is because of me,’ Brando breathed, thinking the same.

  ‘The corruption was there before … that,’ I tried to console the Batavian, and myself.

  ‘No, Felix.’ Brando was adamant. ‘This is the gods. This is it. The beginning of their punishment. I should have died like a man, Felix. Now … now this …’ His voice trailed off.

  We reached the hospital. Balbus’s screams rang out from within.

  They were terrible.

  ‘Wait in the barracks,’ I told my comrade.

  He shook his head. ‘I wait here.’

  We stood in silence. A breathless Stumps and Micon arrived soon after.

  ‘Should we go in?’ Stumps asked, wincing at the sound of the screams.

  I shook my head. ‘Let the surgeons work.’

  ‘This is—’ Stumps began quietly.

  ‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘Enough.’

  And so we waited, each one of us stumbling over doubts and accusations and thoughts of divine justice. I had never seen Brando shaken, but now there was a tremor in his hands an
d jaw.

  It seemed like an eternity, but eventually the screams died away. I hoped that Balbus’s life had not gone with them.

  ‘You his mates?’ a bloodied surgeon’s assistant asked us as he emerged for air.

  ‘His section,’ Stumps answered. It was a good answer. We all sensed that Balbus was a good man, but we had not lived and breathed beside him long enough for him to become family.

  ‘He’s alive,’ the man told us, with no trace of happiness at that fact. ‘Bled a lot, though. Prepare yourselves for the worst.’ He shrugged as he ducked back inside the building.

  ‘Not a word,’ I told the men, seeing Stumps and Brando on the verge of self-reproach and recrimination. ‘Not a word,’ I forced again. ‘We wait.’

  And so we did.

  The night had long settled before a slave appeared from the hospital and summoned our huddled figures inside.

  The copper tang of blood hit my nostrils as we were led into the candlelit building. We passed the open door of an operating room and saw a slave on his knees, scrubbing away what must have been the blood of our comrade.

  ‘In here.’ The first slave gestured, and we entered an open ward of beds. Only two were occupied. Standing next to Balbus was a man whose once red hair was losing the fight with white. He introduced himself as Balbus’s surgeon. Though not unfriendly, the man’s tone was clipped and dispassionate, a necessity of his profession.

  ‘He won’t make the morning.’ The surgeon confirmed what I already knew. One look at Balbus had been enough to tell me that the soldier was on death’s door. His skin was grey and waxen, like tent canvas. Despite the thick blankets about him, he looked cold to the touch.

  ‘Lost too much blood in the operation,’ the surgeon explained. ‘Had to take the whole arm. There’re not many who come through from that.’

  It was Micon who spoke. ‘Thank you for trying, sir. We know you did your best.’

  The surgeon gave a curt nod. ‘Stay as long as you like.’

  I watched the man leave. Then I felt Brando’s eyes on me.

  ‘This isn’t our fault,’ I said to him as he placed his hand on Balbus’s shoulder.

  But the Batavian ignored my words. ‘I’m sorry, Balbus. This is my fault. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ Micon ventured.

  ‘Sure. Donate him your arm,’ Stumps lashed out, regretting the insult instantly. ‘Sorry, Micon.’

  The youngster shrugged. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Stumps asked me then. ‘He must have other mates here? He was Nineteenth Legion a long time. They’ll want to see him off, won’t they? He’s a good bloke.’

  He was right. ‘Half the garrison’s on the walls,’ I answered, ‘the other half’s asleep. The centurions will have runners posted at their quarters, though. Try them. It’s the least we can do for him.’

  ‘All right,’ Stumps agreed, turning to Micon. ‘You come with me.’

  ‘You too, Brando,’ I told the crouched figure.

  ‘I want to stay with him,’ the man protested. ‘This is my fault.’

  ‘Go and get his friends,’ I said. There was no room for argument in my tone, and not long after my friends had departed did the reason for that forcefulness walk into the ward.

  ‘Sir,’ I greeted Centurion H.

  ‘Felix.’ Framed by candlelight, I saw nothing but sorrow and dread in his features. Hard to believe this was the man who had worn his humour so openly.

  ‘I sent the others away,’ I explained. ‘I thought you’d come here.’

  ‘Balbus was – is – still one of mine,’ H agreed, coming to stand beside the bed and looking down at the unconscious soldier. ‘Was one of mine when he was hurt, anyway. Can you believe a splinter did this to him?’ There was as much wonder as grief in his voice. ‘A fucking splinter, and a good man’s life is over.’

  ‘There’s no reason in death, sir,’ I offered, having spent years searching for it. If I was honest with myself, I was still looking.

  ‘Maybe it’s a blessing.’ H seemed to be trying to convince himself. ‘I just came from a briefing with the prefect. Rations are to be cut again from tomorrow. I’d actually forgotten I had ribs.’ The man attempted to smile.

  I liked this officer. Shame burned me for what I had done in his sight, and the desire for his approval pushed me to speak. ‘Better hungry stomachs than the Germans, sir,’ I said, and that was true – cavalry scouts aside, there had been no sighting of a body of enemy troops for weeks. Neither had there been any sight, or even word, of our own.

  ‘They won’t leave the Rhine.’ H’s words mirrored my thoughts. ‘They’d be mad to. Three legions gone, Felix. We’re on the defensive now. There’s no need for forts on this side of the Rhine. We’re the dregs of Varus’s barrel, and we’re not worth scraping out.’

  I tried to find some ray of hope. ‘A lot can happen in a few months.’

  The centurion shook his head. ‘We don’t have a few months. Could we split the rations down further, and make it through winter like skin and bone? Maybe. But the fort will pull itself apart before that, Felix. There isn’t a united group here. Everyone’s in it for themselves.’

  I shrank a little with shame at the man’s words.

  H saw my disgrace. ‘I don’t blame anyone for it,’ he told me, and I could hear his honesty. ‘Arminius did more than win a battle, didn’t he? He wiped out three legions, Felix, and when he did that, he pulled away the blindfold. We know that we’re not invincible any more. There’re fewer than a thousand of us here, and Varus had more than fifteen! Why should anyone believe we can come through this?’

  Did he hope that perhaps I, a survivor of that massacre, would have an answer for him? ‘There’s always hope,’ I said, but my voice was weak.

  H looked down at the dying form of Balbus. Resignation was etched into the centurion’s face, this man who had been so full of life and purpose. Like Balbus, he had given up his own fight. When he spoke, his words were soft, but as lifeless as rock.

  ‘Hope died in the forest.’

  Soon after, Balbus followed in its wake.

  47

  Balbus wasn’t the only person to die in the fort that night. The other was an aged civilian who had lived outside of the camp since its construction, but sought refuge inside when the rumour of war had spread. Linza told me this as we walked away from the graves. We were outside the walls; our enemy was distant enough to spare us the necessity of having to bury the dead alongside the living.

  Linza shrugged. ‘The old die first, in times like this.’ There was experience in her voice, and I did not wonder at that. Lean times and famine were commonplace in the world. Blighted crops could starve a family as well as any besieging army.

  ‘It just doesn’t seem real this, does it?’ she asked me as we stopped ahead of the open gate, savouring the promise of freedom of movement, and choice.

  It was an illusion.

  ‘The cavalry beyond that wood-line are real enough,’ I told her. ‘There’re not many of them, but enough to stop what you’re thinking.’

  She shook her head, pushing a strand of dirty blond hair from her face. ‘I’m not trying to leave this place, Felix. Not like that. Better hungry than dead.’

  We walked beneath the gateway. Some three dozen had attended the funeral of soldier and civilian, and now the thick wooden gates were closed behind us. There was a fatalistic finality as the heavy locking bar was dropped into place.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Linza smiled wryly. ‘That we only get to leave the walls for death? Either raids, or burials.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

  She laughed a little at that. ‘It’s all you think about,’ she teased me lightly.

  But the woman was wrong. Perhaps my mind had orchestrated its own successful defence of a siege – a siege of horrors and hopelessness – because for the first time in months I was sleeping without nightmare. I was waking without screams.

&
nbsp; I knew that the woman beside me was a part of that. Perhaps the entire part. She was a window to my past, but she reminded me of the good memories, not the bad. I had laid my early story bare to her, and with the revelations a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I could breathe more easily. I could think more clearly. I did not dare to allow myself to hope, but I fought to honour her request to not only survive, but to live.

  ‘Thank you.’ I smiled at my friend, taking her by surprise.

  ‘For what?’

  I waved that away. She would understand in time, if she did not already.

  ‘Shit,’ Linza suddenly grumbled. ‘It’s starting to rain.’

  I had learned quickly that German rains could move from a dribble to a downpour in an instant, and so it was with haste that we moved to my barrack block. Centurion H had been wrong when he guessed that we would be reassigned to another century, and our reduced numbers were now overseen by the newly minted Centurion Albus. Having survived the botched raid by the skin of his teeth, Albus’s sole concern was now to live through the siege and retire with a centurion’s wage and pay-out at the end of his service. As such, he made for a lenient commander.

  ‘Hello, boys.’ Linza smiled at Stumps and Micon before speaking to Brando in their native language. Brando was sullen, as he had been ever since Balbus’s death. The Batavian had never struck me as more religious than the next soldier, but now the tall warrior spent much of his time in prayer at the fort’s shrines.

  ‘I’m going to the shrine of Donar,’ he told me. ‘I’ll let the company runner know where I am.’

  ‘We have the watch tonight,’ I said. ‘Be back well before last light.’

  Brando said nothing, but stepped out into the rain.

  ‘I’ve spent more time on watch than anything else in my life,’ Stumps grumbled from his bed. ‘What is it tonight? Walls or patrols?’

  ‘Patrols,’ I told him. A consequence of our diminished size was that our century was easily rolled into patrolling the fort’s roads and alleyways, rather than being stretched thinly on the walls.