‘I’m here to see Titus,’ I told the two men that stood sentry at the quartermaster department’s door.
‘Yeah, he’s in there,’ one of them answered whilst warming his hands over a crackling brazier.
I stepped inside.
Flickering candles lit the room. Placed lower than the man’s towering height, they turned Titus’s already imposing face into a figure of dread.
‘Fucking glad you’re here,’ he grunted. ‘Thought I was gonna have to carry him on my own.’
I looked at the floor. By Titus’s feet lay the prone figure of our comrade.
‘Drunk?’ I asked.
‘Drunk was hours ago. I’m not sure what I call this. He’s fucking pissed himself too, so watch your hands when you grab him. I’ll take the arms.’
‘Don’t you have stretchers?’
Titus laughed. ‘Sometimes I forget there’s more to this place than a front.’
‘Business going well, is it?’
‘Yeah, and you could be a part of it.’
‘I could use some coins,’ I confessed. ‘I lost everything in the forest. A loan though, not work.’
‘Shut up, you tart,’ the man chastised me, shoving a small purse into my hand.
‘I’ll pay you back,’ I promised as Titus pulled a stretcher from storage.
‘We’ll take it from your share of the chests. Come on. Help me roll the fucker on to this.’
I did, Stumps mumbling something as his arms flopped over the sides of the stretcher.
‘Did he say what I think he said?’ Titus asked.
‘Chickenhead,’ I confirmed. ‘He’s been struggling since the forest. I thought he was getting better, but…’ I looked at the limp form between us, at the crotch stained dark with Stumps’s own piss.
‘Well, he can’t do this every night. Only so much wine in the fort.’
We carried the stretcher out of the door and to the barrack block in silence. There wasn’t much conversation between myself and Titus that could be had without privacy.
‘I wish I’d known he was like this,’ Titus admitted as we reached our destination. ‘I’d have come see him. I will do now. I’ll come and see him tomorrow.’
‘Put it down here, and we’ll carry him inside.’
‘Fuck,’ the big man snarled as we entered the barrack room. ‘You smell that? He’s fucking shit himself, too.’
He hadn’t. It was Dog’s breath. I tried to catch the laugh, but it was too late, and enough escaped for Titus to catch it.
‘What?’ he asked.
I told him.
‘Don’t start laughing,’ he whispered, and I could tell he was holding back his own giggle. ‘You’ll wake them all.’
Perhaps I could have held it, but then Stumps murmured his way back to life, the cloud of his drunkenness rising just enough for him to slur.
‘You fucking bastards,’ he accused us. ‘You pissed on me!’
It was too much, and laughter ripped through the room like cavalry into broken ranks. It drove us to our knees, leaving us breathless.
‘You took me out of bed and pissed on me!’ Stumps moaned sadly, adding to our fits.
Eventually, my section had thrown enough curses and objects that the laughter dried out, and there, as I collapsed on the floor with a piss-soaked comrade and a murderer, I remembered for a moment how it felt to be truly happy.
Dawn’s stand-to came and went. I walked to the civilian blocks, trying to ignore the sidelong glances that came from alleys and doorways. Following the recent murders, the fort’s streets were thick with suspicion and scorn. All knew that there would be more blood spilled on dirt and cobblestone. None but the killer knew when.
‘I’m looking for Linza,’ I told a skittish child. ‘Do you know her? Tell her Felix has come to see her.’
Doubtless eager to escape the scarred man in front of her, the child slipped away and inside. Linza appeared soon after.
‘Breakfast?’ I asked. ‘Where can I buy it?’ I held out two coins, and after saying hello, Linza led me to where a trader was selling bowls of thick stew – suspiciously thick.
‘I think sawdust’s part of the recipe,’ I half joked, hoping I was wrong. ‘But at least it’s hot. How are things around here, after the girl?’
It was not the happiest topic of conversation, but we were besieged by an enemy bent on our deaths or enslavement – it was not a happy time.
‘People are scared of the Syrians,’ she told me. ‘You know in the East, they do this to their own families? Also the men fuck the men.’
I could see in her wide blue eyes that she believed it. The march into eastern Germany was likely as far as she’d ever been from home. The idea of civilizations in the desert was a concept beyond the comprehension of the untravelled mind, no matter how intelligent or open – seeing was believing.
‘All men are capable of evil,’ I replied.
I had meant the words as comfort, but saw from her look that I had blundered. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. There are good people, too.’
‘No. You are right.’ She shrugged, then switched direction. ‘You look tired,’ she observed, although without judgment – there was something about the Batavian manner that was friendly and yet uncompromisingly direct. I had noticed it in Brando and Folcher.
‘I don’t sleep well,’ I found myself saying before I could stop.
‘Why?’
I didn’t reply, instead talking to her of Stumps, and how I had found him at the altar. I don’t know why I told her, only that her eyes encouraged me to be open.
‘He misses his friends,’ she said when I finished, recognizing the same pain she no doubt felt for her husband.
‘He does.’
‘Did you have a day for them? Have you made sacrifices for them?’
I thought about how Stumps had angrily poured wine into the dirt beneath the altar.
‘Not really,’ I confessed.
‘You should.’
I ate on in silence, knowing that she was right. After I had said a fond farewell, I walked quickly from the civilian part of the camp in search of Titus.
‘I’d like that,’ the big man agreed as I made the suggestion. ‘I’d really like that. Let me sort it out.’
And so the next day, we remembered our dead.
26
On the day of the service in memory of our friends, a strong wind raked itself off the river, bringing its chill into our throats and nostrils as we stood guard on the southern wall.
I watched the brown waters jog by, thinking of how the river’s banks would froth and rage when winter set in. Even now the river provided us with a barricade that matched a cohort of soldiers for deterrence, and in reality my section was here for us to use our eyes, rather than our swords.
My men were spread out on the wall and I was alone. The solitude was almost welcome, as I needed time to think. I needed time to turn words over in my mind, and to try and find the ones that would do justice to the fallen of the forest if I took my turn to speak, though I was not sure if I would even be invited to open my mouth; Titus and Stumps had been long-time brothers of the veterans who fell, and Micon had been thick as thieves with young Cnaeus.
And yet, still, I wanted to speak. I wanted to tell them how Chickenhead had helped me in the darkest nights. How Rufus had shown me that there was something bigger than ourselves. I had little good to say about the xenophobe Moonface, that was true, but he was a comrade none the less. An ignorant bastard of a comrade, but so perverted is the nature of camaraderie that I would have died for him.
It had been a long time since I had stood in front of a formation of men and spoken words of thanks for the life and the sacrifice of friends and comrades. At times my audience had been hundreds. At others, a handful of desperate renegades. Never was it easy.