SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  “I’m not here to debate the merits of cruelty. You will die – you and your friend. Tell me what I want to know and it will be quick. Refuse and I’ll cut your tongues from your mouths and remove your feet and leave you here for the wolves.”

  “All right,” the old man said, his voice weak. “I’ll tell you, then. It is in these very woods.”

  “We know. Have you seen it?”

  He nodded. “We spotted it last night. Only the sacrifices would have kept us safe.”

  “And how does one kill the thing?”

  The old man’s mouth twisted. “Kill it? How does one kill the wind?”

  “I am not hunting the wind.”

  Scratching the scar tissue where his left eye had once been, the old man said, “You Romans. There is no creature or spirit that you don’t think should roll over and bleed for you. I’ll tell you this thing, and it isn’t much, but is all I know. When I was a child and the Droch-fhola killed our sheep, my grandfather built a hut of yew and we slept there for seven days and seven nights.”

  “That is all you know?”

  “That is all.”

  “Thank you.” The gladius flicked his wrist and opened the old man’s throat.

  That one eye went wide and the barbarian fell forward, gurgling and sputtering until his twitching ceased. Another soldier did the same for the remaining barbarian.

  The Decanus turned to Silanus. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Decimus Junius Silanus, sir.”

  His brow furrowed. “The Younger?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your father was a Centurion?”

  That took Silanus off guard. “You knew my father?”

  He waved the question away. “That was a long time ago. I suggest you find some clothes and shoes.” He walked over to the remaining captive, the legionary that had not been sacrificed, and placed his fingers to the man’s throat. “Who were these men?”

  Silanus hurried to him. “Soldiers from the Second Legion.”

  “Augusta?”

  He nodded. “I’m a cook in the legion, apprenticing to be a soldier.” He swallowed and thought quickly. “We were on leave, the three of us,” he lied. “In a village east of here. The Ordovices crept in at night and the villagers betrayed us.”

  “If they were soldiers then we shall give them a proper funeral.” He stood. “Gather wood for the pyre.”

  Silanus saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  “But find your clothes and shoes first. Your feet may be frost-bitten by now.”

  He did so, finding his things in the same cart that had held the gladius. He also found the soldier’s belt and sheath, wearing the weapon on his hip as he went to work gathering wood. The clothing and thick cloak helped warm him some but the cold had wormed its way deep into his bones and he couldn’t shake it.

  The legionaries’ bodies were burned and prayers given. The soldiers searched the wagons for anything of value but there wasn’t much, barely two saddlebag’s worth, most of it taken from the soldiers they’d murdered. Silanus had not known either of the soldiers but still felt a twinge of sadness at the idea they’d been reduced to loot. Scanning the dark wood, he did not relish the trek ahead of him. The Second Augusta was scheduled to march east tomorrow at sunrise. It would be impossible for him to catch up with them, even had he wanted. Better to put as much distance between them and himself. And what if he were to come across other bands of Ordovices? His stomach twisted at the thought.

  “Let’s be off, then,” the Decanus said.

  Silanus approached him. “May I travel with you, sir?”

  Cold eyes bored into him and he couldn’t tell if the man was going to agree or cut him down where he stood. Freezing, starving, his abdomen still throbbing from the kick he took, Silanus refused to look away.

  “With that thing out there,” one of the other soldiers said, “the boy won’t last the night.”

  Silanus didn’t know to what they referred but didn’t care. There were a thousand ways for him to die in this forest. What was one more?

  “Keep pace with us,” the Decanus finally said. “If you fall behind, we will not wait for you to catch up.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “At the next village, you’re on your own.” He turned to his men. “Move out!”

  As one, they rushed into the forest, Silanus trailing behind.

  * * *

  They made camp an hour later inside a small cave on a hill side where two soldiers pulled brush in front of the entrance. The Ordovices had a hunk of cured boar in one of their carts and the men sliced ribbons from it and ate around the fire. They seemed uncomfortable with Silanus there and did not speak much.

  The Decanus handed him a slice of meat. “Here. Eat.”

  He took it and ripped a massive bite away. It was salty and tough as leather but he was glad for it. When he had finished, he asked what legion they were with. The men looked to one another. One of them grunted.

  “The Hundredth,” their commander said.

  Silanus laughed. “There’s no Hundredth Legion.”

  “There is.” The older man handed him another ribbon of meat. “You won’t find it listed on the Senate rolls. But it exists.”

  He couldn’t tell if the commander was playing him for a fool or not. He looked to the other men but they simply watched the exchange, no smiles or laughter among them.

  “What’s the legion called, then?”

  “Ex Nihilo,” the commander finally said.

  “Now I know you’re having me on, sir. Why would anyone name a legion ‘The Nothing’?”

  The Decanus stared at him and drummed his fingers on the owl emblem adorning his breastplate. “Do you know why you were to be sacrificed tonight?”

  He nodded and swallowed another chunk of pork. “To appease their barbarian gods.”

  “No. To appease the Droch-fhola.”

  That word again. “I don’t know what that is, sir.”

  Reaching into a pouch, the commander removed a small trinket. He tossed it to Silanus. It was smooth and a dingy white.

  “Nine days ago, Senator Paulinus and his entire caravan were found butchered in the forest near the River Medway. Their backs had been opened and their lungs removed. The attacker had not left so much as a footprint in the snow.”

  Examining the trinket, Silanus was certain it was made from bone. It was of the same figure the Ordovices had placed in their sacrificial cabinet. Long, spindly arms were folded over the chest and a jagged mouth turned upward.

  “The attack matches one that occurred a month ago at a trading outpost. A dozen Romans were killed. A slave, an Ordovices woman everyone called ‘Mama’, was the only survivor. They found her in the stables. She had cut open a lamb there and painted sigils on herself with its blood. The governor’s men thought she had conspired with the attackers but, when tortured, she said it had been the Droch-fhola. She’d gone mad and kept raving about how the thing would kill us all and so they put her out of her misery.

  “Upon consulting the records, we discovered that Romans had been killed in the same manner since Julius Caesar first landed here. The Ordovices and the Cornovii claim it has been stalking them every winter for centuries.”

  Silanus looked at the men around the cave, hoping one would be laughing. None were. “You believe this thing is real and you’re what? Hunting it?” he asked.

  “That’s what the Hundredth does, lad,” one of the other men said.

  “We do the dirty work no one else is suited for,” the man beside him added.

  The commander pointed to the trinket in Silanus’s hand. “To the average Roman, these things are superstitious myths and barbarian legend. But we’ve seen what the night spirits can do.” He tapped the scar on his face. “Seen them up close and personal. This thing is responsible for the deaths of nearly two hundred Roman citizens over the years and Orcus alone knows how many Britons. We’re here to put an end to it.”

  Outside the cave, the
cold wind howled.

  * * *

  The snow fell in heavy flurries from a sky the color of dead flesh. The morning had done little to brighten the forest and even less to dispel the cold. The soldiers kept a steady pace despite the biting wind, following some trail that only Crito seemed to recognize.

  He had learned little of the men aside from their names. Crito, a short but stout Gaul with red hair and a nasally voice, had some kind of gift for tracking beasts like the Droch-fhola, and Decanus Marcellus had set him to the task at first light. Antonius, the tall African and only soldier who wore a beard, served as Marcellus’s second. He’d made Silanus into a kind of pack mule for the group. Weighed down with provisions, he struggled to keep pace with the unit. At least the sweat he worked up warmed him some.

  There were horses, Antonius had explained, but the poor beasts refused to travel anywhere the Droch-fhola had been so they’d stabled them at a village several miles back. His breath quick and legs heavy, Silanus wished desperately they had the animals now.

  Crito raised his hand and the unit stopped. The wood was silent aside from the roaring wind and they stood motionless, Silanus holding a hand over his mouth to muffle his breathing. He would have been thankful for the break but his sweat-soaked tunic quickly turned freezing. The scout eventually moved again and the unit followed.

  They continued like this for most of the day, hurrying along until Crito raised his hand. They took a break around mid-day and Silanus fell asleep with his head on a saddlebag. Crispus, a handsome Roman who laughed like a horse when something struck him funny, woke Silanus by kicking him in the shin.

  “Let’s get going,” Crito said. “The thing covered a lot of ground last night.”

  Silanus threw the bags onto his shoulders. “How is he tracking it in this weather?”

  “By its decay,” Crispus said.

  “What?”

  “I’m not entirely sure myself, but the way I understand it, these things corrupt what they touch in small ways,” Crispus said. “Rotted twigs, blackened pine needles, that sort of thing. Crito knows what to look for. He’s also able to smell the thing, who knows how. Says it smells like rot.”

  Silanus took a deep breath but could smell nothing.

  Crispus shoved a saddlebag into Silanus’s chest. “Now, get a move on.”

  They continued on, following Crito until Silanus thought he would pass out from exhaustion.

  As the sun set, they came across a farm. It was little more than a small house, a shed, and a fence. The structures cast long shadows onto snow red from the dying light.

  The soldiers drew their weapons. Marcellus made a motion with his hand and the unit crouched low, fanning out around the fence. Crispus motioned Silanus toward a barren tree, its trunk stout and limbs reaching low like thieving hands. He hurried behind it and crouched, watching as the men approached the farm.

  A man was slumped over the fence, blood frozen on his face and hanging in gruesome icicles from the wooden slats. Antonius made his way to the corpse. He took one look at its back and nodded to the rest of the men. One by one they hopped the fence, as silent as the night creeping in, and made their way toward the farmhouse. Silanus lost sight of them.

  The falling night was still, the only sounds the wind and his heart hammering in his chest. He waited, sweat trickling down his spine despite the cold, and hoped they would hurry.

  A twig snapped off to his right.

  He turned, hoping to see Crispus coming to fetch him, but saw only snow and barren trees. Something waited in those trees. He wasn’t certain how he knew but he did. It waited, watching him with sinister hunger, and he thought he should run. But he couldn’t.

  Wind shook the thin, gray limbs of the trees and then he saw it. It was tall but hunched over, head cocked to one side, stick-like arms brushing the ground. It seemed brittle from here, hidden perfectly among dead trees that looked so much like itself, and he again knew he should run.

  It stepped from his view and he was again afraid to move.

  Maybe it didn’t see me. He pressed against the tree and closed his eyes and prayed it would pass him by.

  A sickly sweet smell hit him, faint but unmistakable. It was the smell of carrion left to rot.

  Snow crunched a few feet from him and this time he did run, turning so quickly he tripped on a low lying branch, tumbling over it. His face smashed into another limb, stars exploding behind his eyes, and he rolled onto his side, the strap of a saddlebag catching on a bulbous knot. Panic flooding through him, he fought to a crouch and almost cried when he realized he was in a gnarled tangle of limbs and dry brush. Something hot ran down his face, stinging his eye, and he wiped it away, certain it was blood.

  The thing paced around him, its quick changes of direction suggesting irritation.

  Why aren’t I dead already?

  Ducking its head low, Silanus caught sight of its face and cried out. Its sockets were empty – gaping holes as dark as graves. The skin was black and leathery, the mouth a jagged maw of blood-stained stones. It pulled away and scrambled to the other side of the tree on all fours.

  A hand shot between two branches, long talons scraping through the snow-dusted earth as it reached for his foot. He kicked the hand and it jerked up just enough to scratch its thin forearm on a twig.

  The scream that erupted was loud enough to send pain radiating through Silanus’s head. He covered his ears until the shrieking faded into the forest.

  Another hand grabbed at him and he kicked it furiously.

  “Boy,” Antonius said. “It’s us.”

  He scrambled from the tangle, shoving the saddlebags off rather than fight with the straps, and fell to the snow. The Roman soldiers surrounded him, swords drawn, staring off into the night.

  Marcellus took a knee and asked him what happened. He related his ordeal, ashamed at how the panic made his voice sound as high-pitched as a child’s. When he’d finished, the Decanus stared at the tree for a long while.

  “I think you’ve found what we’ve been looking for,” Marcellus said as he stood.

  “I saw an axe in the shed.” Crispus took off across the farm.

  “I don’t understand,” Silanus said.

  The Decanus grabbed a branch and shook it. Snow fell from it in clumps. “What tree is this?”

  Standing, Silanus wracked his brain to identify it. When he did he couldn’t help but laugh. “Yew.”

  * * *

  Marcellus woke him at dawn. Silanus followed to the shed where they had stored the bodies. The children had been the worst and he had emptied his stomach when they were carried from the house.

  “Our time for watch, sir?”

  “Lepidus and Gaius still have half an hour or so,” the Decanus said.

  They had used the blankets in the house to cover the family. The four bodies were pressed together on the floor, their shapes visible under the cloth. The little girl’s hand had slipped from beneath and lay pale against the dark earthen floor.

  “What will we do with them?”

  “Burn them,” the commander said. “But not yet.” He scratched his chin and the white stubble that had grown there. “I’m going to ask you something and I want the truth from you. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He glanced at the bodies and then back to Silanus. “The legionaries that were with you. They weren’t on leave, were they?”

  His throat went dry; he tried to swallow, but it was difficult. “They were.”

  Marcellus’s gaze was intense.

  Silanus looked away. “No. No, they weren’t.”

  “Why were they in that village?”

  “To retrieve me.”

  “You’re a deserter?”

  He nodded and thought he was going to be sick. “When my father died, he left me to the legion. Wanted me to be a soldier like him. My mother had died in childbirth and we had no other family. The cook they placed me with, he… Well, he tried to do things with me. An
d so I ran. Those soldiers had been sent to drag me back. And now they’re dead because of me.”

  “Yes. They are.” Marcellus leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “What will you do with me, sir?”

  “The punishment for desertion is crucifixion.”

  Silanus lowered his head and nodded. After everything he had been through, it seemed wrong he would die this way. His knees trembled and he thought he might fall, but he didn’t. That was something, he supposed.

  “I said I knew your father,” Marcellus said. “What I didn’t tell you was that we served together in Spain. He saved my life a dozen times over and I saved his nearly as many.”

  Silanus looked up, hope suddenly within his reach.

  “When we have killed this thing, you will take a day’s worth of rations and go into the wilderness. You may live out your life there. You may even marry some barbarian girl and have children. But if you ever set foot in a Roman settlement again, you will be crucified. Is that understood?”

  Hope faded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now go wake Crito and the two of you get started carving up the lumber we brought in.”

  * * *

  Dark clouds hid the moon and only the torches they had placed around the farm’s perimeter provided any light. They danced in the wind and Silanus thought for certain they’d blow out, but each one held. He was stationed inside the house, the door open and snow gathering on the floor. Pieces of yew had been carved into rough weapons, one end pointed and the other hacked into a grip – Silanus held tight to his. Marcellus had insisted he sit there in the dark; am I some kind of bait? If so, the position wasn’t undeserved.

  The house creaked against the wind. Or was that Lepidus and Crispus shifting their weight on the roof, faces painted black with soot? He wasn’t sure.

  The other soldiers were out there somewhere in whatever positions Marcellus had placed them. If he had to guess, he’d say there were two more men atop the shed. As to the other four, he couldn’t imagine where they might be hiding.

  A tickle in his groin told him he would need to empty his bladder soon. Would the Decanus be angry if he stepped outside to do so? He could just go in here, he supposed. It’s not like anyone would be living in this room anytime soon.