‘No,’ I told the stranger. ‘Look at them. Their blood’s up. Their energy. And look at us.’ We were the opposite, beaten down and dying on our feet. ‘We have to wait for the moment. Gather our strength. They’re taking us as slaves, and slaves are only useful if they can work. They’ll have to feed us eventually.’
The Batavian snorted in frustration, but any man could see that action in our present position would result in certain, drawn-out death. ‘And until then?’
I gave no reply, because he didn’t need one. The man just needed to be heard. To be on the offensive, at least mentally, whilst others gave in to fate. He knew as well as I that our crowd of prisoners would become thinner by the hour as men died of wounds, exhaustion, hunger and thirst. This was a battlefield, not a slave market; we would be marched away from here, and many of us would fall.
The Batavian spoke, breaking me out of my dark thoughts. ‘Something’s happening.’
Orders were being barked. The German army was stirring.
‘They’re getting ready to move,’ my new companion translated.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked him, knowing that to survive I would have to look beyond myself.
‘Brando.’ He then gestured to a pair of Batavians who sat silent on the soil. ‘This is Folcher and Ekkebert. We’re from the same cohort.’
‘Felix. This is Stumps. Same section.’ I didn’t need to explain to him what had happened to the rest of our comrades. Rufus had disappeared from our camp and was found hanged from a tree, his innards piled beneath his swaying feet. Chickenhead, the salted veteran, had died attacking the enemy’s final barricade. Young Cnaeus had bled to death as I stood helpless above him, blood bubbling from his opened throat. My centurion, Pavo, had vanished beneath the clattering hooves of an enemy horse. Of Moonface, and the boy soldier Micon, there was no sign. Titus, commander of our eight-man section, had melted into the forest when the army was shattered and all hope was lost.
‘Boys.’ Brando gripped his friends by the shoulder. ‘On your feet.’
I soon saw what the taller man had spotted: German warriors prowled hungrily at the edge of the mass of prisoners, the shoal of slaves shifting like mackerel disturbed by a shark. Grasping the enemy’s intention, I pulled Stumps close to me. Seconds later, I heard the familiar sound of an axe chopping into flesh.
Brando grimaced. ‘The badly wounded.’
There were no cries of protest from the prisoners. Each man knew that to open his mouth was to die, and hope kept their lips tightly shut. Hope that they could live to escape slavery, and reach home.
‘At least it’s over quickly,’ Brando offered, and I nodded in agreement. The death of our officers had been drawn out over hours, only ending, I imagined, because Arminius was keen to march his army from the field and capitalize on his great victory.
Arminius. A man I had thought was a Roman leader to be admired, only to discover that he was a traitor who had carefully engineered the destruction of Governor Varus’s legions, and so, too, the death of my friends.
‘You’re smiling?’ I heard the German speak. His face was neutral.
‘I am,’ I realized, catching myself.
‘Why?’
I tried to shrug, but I suddenly began to weep instead. I was still weeping when our German captors stripped us of our armour and we were herded into a mass and shuffled northwards from the carpet of corpses.
‘They’re all dead,’ Stumps finally moaned beside me.
It was an inadequate eulogy for our friends, but in that moment, it was all we could offer.
Our life as slaves had begun.
2
The human body and mind were created to endure. I often wonder why that is so. If, as we are told, we were created by the gods, then they must be black-hearted bastards to allow us to struggle through so much misery. Endurance is a curse, and hope is intoxicating. Combined, the two were an elixir, keeping us upright and marching from the battlefield. It was the same poison that had carried me away from a past that I had hoped forgotten, only for it to be uncovered by Arminius when he had revealed me to be Corvus.
Corvus. The heroic soldier who had abandoned the Eighth Legion to stand in defiance of the Empire. That insurgency had all but collapsed, and now I was no longer a rebel, simply a traitor. The word burned inside me as painfully as any spear-point in the stomach, but why? What was I a traitor to?
Fuck Rome. I didn’t care for the place I had never set foot in. It was no more my home than Arminius’s forest. And fuck the Emperor. His supposed divinity was nothing but a political ploy of the senators who suckled from his gift-giving teat. Fuck the Legions, too. Fuck their campaigns, and the ‘enlightenment’ they brought to new frontiers. Fuck them all.
But my comrades? My friends?
I was a traitor to them too. I had tried to forget, but the unforgivable acts had stalked me across a continent. I knew now that this slavery was my punishment. It was the penalty for my abandonment of Varo, Priscus and Octavius. It was vengeance for Marcus.
Marcus…
I fought down the rising tide of puke. Desperate as I was, I needed every drip of my body’s fluids to survive.
‘Stumps,’ I hissed. ‘Stumps.’
I had to grab his shoulder and pinch the flesh before he half turned to acknowledge me. ‘I won’t leave you,’ I told him suddenly.
He made no reply.
‘I won’t leave you. What I did before, I won’t do it. Not to you,’ I promised.
For a split second something of the old Stumps moved beneath the surface. A twitch around his eyes. A battle for the return of his merciless banter.
But then it was gone. ‘What does it matter?’ he told me. ‘We’re dead men.’
‘We’re not,’ I protested in a bid to convince myself. ‘We survived the forest. I’m going to get us out, Stumps, I promise.’
He looked at me as if I were a child. ‘Save your energy, Felix.’
‘My name is Corvus.’
‘It’s Felix. Anyone who knows differently is dead. You can hold on to your secret a little longer, until we join them. Or don’t.’ He shrugged my treason away. ‘Won’t change things for you.’
I looked at our surroundings. The forest had thinned to copses of woods and fields – the open ground Varus and the legions had been seeking to set our battle lines. The army had died within miles of salvation, and now what was left of us, a few hundred men, were being herded to what could only be slave markets, and a short life of misery.
The march that day lasted only a few more hours. The dusk came down with a violent pink that matched the drenched soil we had left behind, the September sun setting on our right flank as we marched south into the German hinterland. The ranks of prisoners were silent, but our guards were in full voice, braying what I could only assume were songs of victory. The three Batavian men alongside me could understand the words; Brando’s face twisted in growing fury with each chant. With such obvious contempt for his new masters, the man was unlikely to survive long in captivity.
There was no order to halt. The Germans simply ceased to herd us. Seeing them set to work on their campfires, Roman legionary and auxiliary soldiers dropped to the ground. Many were asleep within moments. I wanted to follow their lead, but sleep, like death, was not interested in taking me.
Stumps was also trapped by his thoughts. He was lying beside me, voice calm but raspy from thirst. ‘Felix. We didn’t bury them.’
‘No,’ I agreed eventually.
‘We didn’t bury them.’
I knew what was in his mind. Stumps was picturing our comrades being pecked at by crows. Gnawed at by wolves and foxes. They deserved better, but they would not receive it at the hands of our enemies. That was war. Unless it was to prevent the spread of disease, the Roman army did not extend the courtesy of burial to its victims either.