‘Ah.’ He sighed. ‘Well, all right then, mate. I’m just saying, as your brother, that you should maybe think about securing it before someone else does. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not a great ratio in this fort. Even with these looks I’m struggling to get any.’
I looked at my friend, and a laugh choked out from my throat. Stumps was grinning like a lunatic, the maniacal smile only made ridiculous by the botched sewing that had reattached his right ear.
‘I didn’t do a great job of that, did I?’
‘Nah, you didn’t, you cunt. Looks like I’ve got a pig’s tail on the side of my head, but I know you did your best.’
We said nothing, then. What else was there to say? I had been through everything with this man. Only months before he had been a stranger. Worse than that, a stranger who hated me as much as I distrusted him. Now he was as close to me as a brother. I would die for him, he knew that, and I knew that he would do the same for me. Perhaps that’s why he finally found the nerve to voice a confession.
‘I haven’t killed anyone since the forest,’ he admitted, still trying to smile. ‘On the raids, it just… I don’t know if it just didn’t happen, or I didn’t want it to happen?’
‘What does it matter?’ I asked my friend honestly.
‘It matters if I can’t kill someone, and one of my mates dies.’
I hoped that dark humour would be the cure for his worries. It was a remedy used by all soldiers. ‘You don’t have many mates left, Stumps, so the odds of it happening are pretty slim. You’ll be all right.’
‘Yeah,’ he finally breathed, appreciating my effort. ‘I just… Nah, forget it. It’s all right.’ He tried to smile, and I knew from experience the tide of reproach that would be washing over him now. The guilt and the shame that he had exposed a weakness. The self-loathing that he possessed such a flaw to begin with.
Stumps climbed from his bunk, and moved towards his arms and armour. He was right to, as dusk was approaching, and with it our watch, but I held my friend by his elbow and swallowed back the stumbling clumsiness of my words.
‘You’re a good bloke, Stumps. I don’t want anyone else with me if things go bad.’
To speak those words – and to hear them – was as terrifying an ordeal for us as to face an enemy shield wall. We swallowed the sentiment down with curt nods and broken eye contact.
‘Let’s get on parade,’ I added hurriedly.
‘Yeah,’ my friend agreed. ‘Twelve hours of sticking my thumb up my arse and wishing I was on an Italian beach.’
The image made me laugh, and the tension of our heartfelt words was broken. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I smiled, avoiding a thumb that was shoved towards my face.
But it was I who was the fool. I who should have learned to be suspicious of such moments of happiness.
Later that night, we found her body.
48
It was Micon who was the first to realize something was amiss in the night. The young soldier’s eyes were far sharper than his mind, and through the downpour of chilled rain he had seen the movement of a dog as it emerged from an alleyway. Micon had called to it playfully; dogs were a rare sight since rationing had come into force. He was eager for its companionship, and such was his gentle nature that the creature allowed his approach.
‘There’s a hand in its mouth,’ the boy soldier then told us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Stumps carried the section’s torch; the flames spat in the rain as he used it to light the alleyway. We saw a set of legs poking out of the shadows.
‘Gods.’ Brando grimaced. ‘She can’t be more than ten.’
‘Get the guard commander,’ I ordered Stumps, anxious to have him clear of the sight. He passed the torch to Brando and made off at a sprint, sandals slapping in the rain.
‘You think they’re still around here?’ Brando asked me cautiously, hand on the pommel of his sword, eyes on the long shadows.
I shook my head. ‘They’re spreading fear. They don’t want an even fight.’
‘Who does this, Felix?’ the Batavian pressed me. ‘What’s wrong with these fucking Syrians?’
So he bought into the angry bile of those who blamed the archers for each of the gruesome deaths.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly, though I had my suspicions, which were that the killer had been born in the West, not the East. What better way to weaken the garrison’s resolve than by sowing fear and discontent amongst those that dwelled within the fort, and relied on each other for survival?
‘I think Arminius has men inside here,’ I finally concluded.
‘Warriors?’
‘No. No one could hide this long. It’s someone in the garrison. They either sympathize with him, or they’re getting paid.’
Arminius had shown in the forest that he was a master of tactics, and so surely he would have known that the forts would have to fall after the legions? To that end, there was ample time for him to insert saboteurs, spies and assassins.
And yet…
Something troubled me. The theory was solid, but Arminius hadn’t come to Aliso expecting a fight. He hadn’t expected a siege. Surprise had been Arminius’s ally as he took down the forts along the River Lippe. Was he so thorough that he had considered all eventualities, including a garrison being prepared for his arrival? His lack of siege ladders and ability to storm the fort’s walls would suggest not.
‘Guard’s coming,’ Brando put in, the rushed tramp of hobnails announcing the arrival of the fort’s quick-reaction force, a half-century of men.
‘Another girl?’ their centurion asked me. ‘Report.’
I did. All the time the man’s eyes were on the girl and her wounds. I wondered if he had his own children, and was picturing them cold and dead in the wet dirt.
‘You and your men wait here,’ I was then ordered. ‘Send for Centurion Malchus,’ he told a runner.
‘Don’t we need more men, sir?’ a veteran asked of his officer. ‘Last time the civvies caused a right fucking riot.’
The centurion shook his head. ‘The fuckers are sleeping, and even if they’re not, they won’t be coming out in this.’ He gestured to the heavy weather. ‘Best thing to stop a riot’s some rain.’
It wasn’t long until the imposing silhouette of Centurion Malchus appeared in the darkness. ‘Another?’ His voice carved out the question.
‘Younger,’ the centurion answered. ‘Looks like this one’s been raped, sir.’
‘Hmm.’
Malchus noticed me then by the torchlight, but made no acknowledgment – his face was tight with anger. He was a tethered lion, held from its prey. The fact that a murderer was loose on his watch could only further fuel his rage.
‘Get her out of here,’ he instructed the centurion. ‘Find somewhere to keep her dry, and tell your men they’ll pull a triple duty if one word of this gets out before the prefect says something himself, understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Malchus spat into the dirt, water falling from the crest of his helmet as he turned on his heel. ‘I just want a war,’ he growled. And then the beast slipped away into darkness.
49
The young girl’s death began a pattern as dark as the night her body had been found.
First there was the revulsion, fear and panic that such a crime could take place within the walls that were supposedly our bastion against such violence. Then came recrimination, and the primal urge to find and punish the source of such terror. Civilian blamed Syrian archer. Syrian archer blamed Roman legionary. Roman legionary blamed the civilians themselves. As the girl had been butchered, so too was the fort’s garrison carved into tribes full of suspicion and hatred.