‘We’ve got a long spell ahead,’ H murmured once the quiet rustle of the men’s movements had died away. ‘We’ll lie up here tonight. It’s a good spot.’
We formed our hide in silence. Titus took the first watch, and I was still in the laze of near-sleep when I heard him speak up. I kept my lids tightly shut, willing my mind to disengage, but it caught like a hook on the big man’s conversation with the centurion.
‘You look surprised to see me,’ he said, his whisper like a forge’s bellows.
‘Not really,’ H replied. ‘But I am glad to wake up alive, at least, so thank you for that.’
For days we had stayed silent, but I could tell by their surprised words that both men needed the closure of this conversation. I feigned sleep, not wanting to become an intruder.
‘Why would I kill you?’ Titus asked, bemused. ‘You saved my life. Dragged it out a little longer, anyway.’
‘What happened with Statius,’ H explained. ‘You don’t strike me as the kind of man who likes witnesses, Titus.’
‘It wasn’t my crime. You were as much a part of hiding it as I was.’
H had nothing to say to that.
‘How did you know I wouldn’t run?’ the big man pressed.
‘You didn’t run a black market to go home poor, and you’re not weighed down with coins.’
‘You bet I want those coins more than my life?’ Titus asked, amused.
‘No,’ H conceded. ‘But you’d never leave without Stumps and Micon, would you?’
There was silence then. With certainty, I knew that Titus would be picturing the moment he had chosen to walk away with a legion’s pay chests rather than to stand and die alongside his comrades. The situation had seemed hopeless, and yet I was sure the shame of that moment gnawed away at his core. Titus was more complicated than he seemed.
‘I wouldn’t leave them,’ he admitted, and there was steel in that promise. Titus had been given his chance for redemption, something I had always been denied. He would not spurn it.
‘You’re a good man, H,’ Titus added after a long moment. ‘I can see that this shit with Statius, the raid and Malchus eats at you. That’s the problem with being a good bloke. But you are one, and I just wanted to tell you that.’
‘Before we die?’ the centurion asked darkly.
‘Of course,’ Titus answered, unashamed.
When darkness fell we left our shelter and the men’s words behind. We went forth, and sought out the enemy’s army.
62
For ten days we lived like animals in the undergrowth that touched the encampment of the blocking force. The German army was where it had been the night of our failed raid, straddled across the paved road that led to the crossing on the Rhine twelve miles distant – far enough to avoid tempting the Rhine garrisons to battle, close enough to make escape for us impossible.
We hoped to make a fool of Arminius’s claim. To that end we skulked in depressions in the earth during daylight, watching the enemy from tree-cloaked ridges and hillsides. At night we emerged alongside fox and wolf, creeping so close to the enemy positions that we could smell the ale on the cold air. We heard the bored voice of their sentries. We heard their laughter, and farts. We were close enough to kill them, but we watched, we noted, and we learned.
The force Arminius had left behind was a considerable one, a few thousand men, but it had grown lazy. Stagnant. There were no challenged passwords, simply spoken greetings that even we could understand. The patrols were infrequent, predictably timed and lacklustre. The German tribes had shown themselves to be brutal and fierce in combat, but given the tedium of the grind of campaign, they now showed their amateur nature.
‘Germany breeds warriors,’ I had once been told by a veteran of the early campaigns. ‘Rome trains soldiers.’
I saw the truth of that distinction now. Without the strict discipline that was the backbone of the legions, the German army appeared as nothing more threatening and hostile than any gathering of peoples.
Of course, that would change quickly if we were caught in the open.
The coming winter proved our ally in avoiding such detection. The nights grew bitter, and men clung to flaming campfires that warmed their hands but ruined their night vision. Tribesmen and camp followers stuck to their tents, leaving only when they had to. Frequent downpours washed away the enemy’s will to patrol.
But nothing comes without a price. We had no tents to retreat within. Instead, hides of branch and leaves were our refuge. We lived in sodden clothes, dank and miserable. My nose was a constant spout of snot, my greatest fear of detection coming from a wayward sneeze or cough. We were becoming sick men, our stubbled beards dusted with frost on the harshest of mornings. Needing to maintain our silence, there was no means to complain. No means to encourage.
It was not a happy existence, but we watched, we noted, and we learned.
Eventually, H decided that we had learned enough. I knew this because that night, following the fall of darkness, he began to lead us eastwards. We walked for miles before we stopped, resting on our knees within the slippery confines of a woodland ditch.
‘Seen enough,’ he told us. Words were almost unfamiliar to the man after ten days of near total silence.
We covered another eight miles before we stopped to build our hide, H anxious to make good speed and deliver our news to the fort. We were also on the last day of our rations, though there were plenty of icy streams to drink from.
On the second night of our withdrawal, H stopped us with hours of darkness remaining.
‘Don’t want to turn up in daylight and get picked off by their scouts,’ he explained. ‘Not after this.’
And so we spent our last night in the dirt. It began to rain, the stripped trees offering no protection from the wind-lashed hail that struck our skin. We huddled together, sleep an impossibility. Instead we thought of hot water. We thought of baths. We thought of food, and firelight, and dry clothes. We thought of our friends, and I thought of Linza.
The next night, we returned to the fort.
63
Watchwords were called. The guard commander was summoned. The gate creaked open, and we stepped inside the walls.
Torchlight greeted our arrival. What did those soldiers see by the flames? Weathered faces bearded like our enemy and as filthy as the lowest beggar in Rome. Clothes torn from bramble, soiled and repulsive.
But it was our eyes that made them tense, for they were both wild, and sharp. They took in everything, and nothing. They were the eyes of men stripped of civilization, returned to their most primal. The soldiers knew that we were animals, and they had opened the gate to let us in.
H led us at speed to the headquarters building. Already I saw word of our return begin to spread from the soldiers present. Soon, the entire fort would know that a trio of individuals had entered, barely recognizable as soldiers, yet possessing the watchwords that Malchus had ordered every man of the centuries to learn by heart.
The guard commander escorted us inside the building at the fort’s centre. A nervous-looking clerk showed us to an empty room where we were to wait until the fort’s leadership could be roused.
‘Food and wine,’ Titus growled at the clerk, who went scurrying in search of it.
Prefect Caedicius arrived moments later. His face had thinned, but his eyes were alive.
‘Did you find us a way out?’ he asked, desperate to know if there was an escape from Arminius’s trap.
It was H who spoke.
‘We did.’
Dawn had come and gone by the time that we had finished our debriefing at the headquarters building. Malchus had arrived soon after Caedicius, and to both officers we had reported on all that we had witnessed of the German camp, and their movements.