I hadn’t risen to be standard-bearer of the Eighth Legion because of my looks. I hadn’t dragged out a rebellion against Rome because I was skilled as a shepherd, or fishmonger. I hadn’t survived the forest because I was a man of words, or art. No, I was a survivor, but more than that, I was a killer, and as I accepted that truth, the weight of the armour lifted from my shoulders. The concrete holding my tired limbs began to break away.
I was a killer.
In the grey light of the dawn, I looked at the four men surrounding me, helmeted and armoured, the last taint of our slavery cast off as we took command of sword and javelin. We were soldiers again.
In that moment, I felt the need to explain myself to these men, but then I remembered the words that Marcus had once taught me on a bloody mountainside, a continent away: ‘Leaders don’t talk. They lead.’
And so I led.
The century was beginning to form up outside of the barrack block. It was a small force, as two sections were already deployed as part of their guard duties.
‘Morning, Felix,’ Centurion H greeted me. ‘Ready to make widows and orphans?’
I grunted something to the affirmative.
‘Won’t be much need for that, I don’t think,’ H went on. ‘I just need you and your boys in that south-eastern corner there. There’s a nice big pile of stones at the bottom of the stairs, so you’ll run them up to the top if the piles on the wall get small. Didn’t have to use any the first time they attacked, thanks to the archers, but we’ll see. Have fun.’
With that we were dismissed, and I led my small band to the fort’s corner. Other knots of soldiers moved in the fading darkness. Most conversations were hushed, but some voices carried to my ears, full of bravado. These were the men who were more afraid of being discovered afraid than of the source of the fear itself.
We reached our assigned position; the rocks were the size of a child’s head, or bigger. No doubt they had been diligently scrounged from every corner of the camp and the river. I looked up at the sky, which was slowly lightening to grey. Beside me, I felt the impatient energy of Brando as he shuffled from foot to foot. Doubtless he was eager for the chance to spill the blood of the enemy who had murdered his comrades.
‘I’m going on to the wall to look,’ I told the section, wanting to know where our resupply would be needed.
At least, that was how I justified leaving our position. In truth, I wanted to see the enemy coming if they attacked. I did not want to be a bystander, like the civilians who were peeking nervously from doorways and alleys.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Brando offered, as I was certain he would.
The other men remained where they were, Stumps lying on the ground and using his shield as a pillow.
‘I don’t want to be down there,’ Brando told me, echoing my own thoughts as we climbed the steps that led to the wall’s top. ‘I want to kill, Felix. I want to capture them, and treat them like they treated us. I want them to suffer, and then I want them to die.’
I wasn’t sure how to respond to the man’s bloodlust. ‘You’ll get your chance,’ I said eventually.
We reached the top of the wall and I looked about me. The men of the watch were cloaked spectres against the battlements, the slightest trace of their breath visible in the dawn. Veterans amongst them stretched their limbs, preparing their bodies for combat. Syrian archers tested the pull of their bows, and placed arrows close at hand.
The sight of those archers did a lot to explain the smell that now came to me. It was the pungent, sweet aroma of death; the bodies of the decaying German dead were visible as dark marks on the field. None had made it to the double ditch that ran below the wall, or on to the rampart that had been created from its spoil.
‘They didn’t even get close,’ Brando snorted. ‘We won’t be bringing any stones up here.’
I didn’t share his optimism. Arminius was no fool, and I did not believe that he would be content to follow one failed attack with the same tactics as the first.
He decided to prove me wrong.
It was Brando who first spotted them. The sun was slowly cresting the eastern horizon, and below it was the unmistakable movement of a large body of troops.
‘He’s hoping the sun will blind the archers.’ Brando smiled. ‘Maybe we will get to kill some of the fuckers.’
It was no sneak attack. No surprise. Men do not willingly run at a wall of death without coaxing, and we could make out the braying of orders, the deep boom of chants as men built up their courage through drink and song. The sun was steadily climbing. It came to a height where it was now or never for Arminius. Light in the archers’ eyes was his slim hope of avoiding another massacre. Knowing him as I did, I expected him to lead by example, and initiate the first charge.
It was something to see.
War is a brutal thing, a plague, but it is a sight to behold, as beautiful as it is terrifying. As the charging carpet of German warriors rolled towards us, the breath caught jaggedly in my dry throat.
‘I’ll get the stones,’ Brando whispered, leaving me to watch the smiling Syrians as they began their own chants and mantras, nocking the first of their arrows and calling to one another what I imagined were challenges of competition and marksmanship.
I squinted into the sun, the shape of the attacking men a blur. Could the archers identify single targets? What did it matter, when the enemy host was so thick?
The slaughter began seconds later. The Syrians could not miss. Screams pierced the calls of challenge and defiance. Stricken bodies sent others tumbling to the ground as they fell. I watched an archer pull and loose. Pull and loose. He was smiling. He had been born for this day. Trained for it since childhood. There were no enemy archers to threaten him. This was a target range for him, and nothing more.
For the Germans, it was a slaughter.
Through sheer strength of numbers the first of them reached the earthen rampart across the ditches, but as these men climbed they were plucked from their feet with arrows. Other brave men charged by. Within moments, the ground below us was filled with snarling faces that fought for handholds on the wall.
‘They don’t have ladders!’ A legionary laughed, then whooped in joy as his dropped stone found its mark.
‘Legionaries! Stones on the ditch!’ a strong voice commanded from the gatehouse. ‘Archers! Fire beyond them!’
The soldiers of the Nineteenth set to work on hurling their burdens over the wall; German heads were shattered like eggs; shoulders crumbled. I risked a look over the wall, seeing a ditch that was filling with the dead and dying.
‘More stones!’ a voice called.
I ran to the stairs. Brando and the others were already making their way up it, their arms full.
It wasn’t the last time they ran up and down them. By the time the killing was done, we were slathered in sweat. Outside of the walls, the cheering of the enemy had gone. Only the dead and dying remained, and their wails and groans forced me to raise my own voice as I instructed my men to wait for me on the dirt at the foot of the stairs; I had seen Centurion H on the wall, and wanted to report in. Now that the attack had been broken my adrenaline had drained quickly, and I hoped that the centurion would dismiss me and my comrades to our beds.
I wanted to escape the screams. So too, evidently, did some of the archers – arrows struck down into the wounded who lay gasping and howling in the ditch.
‘Hold your fucking fire, you lizards!’ a voice boomed, and I turned to see a tall centurion striding the battlements. Centurion H was behind him, smile gone now as he scanned the carnage beneath the wall.
I turned my eyes back to the taller officer, working out by his decorations and manner that he was the cohort’s commander, the Pilus Prior. Confidence came from him in waves. The Syrian archers almost bowed as he addressed them.