‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Legionary Felix, sir. Second Century, Second Cohort, Seventeenth Legion, sir.’
‘And the Second Century, where are they now?’
‘Mostly dead, sir.’
‘Mostly?’
‘There are some other survivors, sir. Two came in with me.’
‘So as far as you know, there are three survivors from your century, and the rest are dead.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you didn’t die with them.’
Fuck. I should have expected this. Caedicius wasn’t seeing a survivor in front of him. He was seeing a deserter. This was the Roman army, after all. If the eagles fell, we were expected to follow suit, and to have the decency to die in their defence.
‘We were taken as captives, sir.’
‘Tell me how.’
I did. I began with telling him how, once Varus and his staff officers had taken their own lives, a prefect named Caeonius had rallied the army, and made one last attempt to break out of the forest. That attempt had died trying to overcome the Germans’ wall, and then there had been the last stand beneath the eagles. Finally, a band of a few hundred Romans was all that was left of the great army, and to this group Arminius offered the terms of surrender and enslavement. Caeonius took it. Then he and all the other surviving officers were murdered in the most hideous ways. The rank and file, myself amongst them, were marched into slavery.
As I told the story, Caedicius’s eyes never left me. My own eyes were fixed on to the wall. It was the first time I had played over the events of that final day, and the memory of the stink of blood and shit tried to force its way into my nostrils. When I had finished with my tale, my hands were as white as marble. For the first time, I noticed that one of my feet was tapping uncontrollably. I fought to stop it, but the twitching muscles would not obey.
Caedicius walked away from me then. When he returned, it was with a thick cloak that he placed kindly over my shoulders. The door opened, and through eyes moist with shocked tears, I saw food and water placed before me.
‘Eat,’ Caedicius ordered gently.
I struggled to hold down the bread and the broth that H had brought for me. My stomach had become conditioned to its empty state, but my difficulty was more as a result of retelling the last moments of the forest battle – it had shaken me to a point where my mind swam and blood pounded in my temples. I was nauseous, and it was a long time before the food was gone, and the patient prefect spoke.
‘I knew Prefect Caeonius well. He was a great friend, and always did care more about his men than his reputation. He died well?’
‘He did, sir. It was quick.’ I tried not to think about how the blade had cut the man’s head from his shoulders. How the blood had pumped from the stump.
Caedicius then questioned me in more detaiclass="underline" had Varus truly taken his own life? Were the eagles lost to enemy hands? What number of enemy casualties? What of their tactics? I answered to the best of my drained ability, careful to avoid any trap that would reveal something of my own past, and relationship with the enemy’s leader.
‘I always liked Arminius,’ the prefect then grunted. ‘He was the most promising officer on Varus’s staff, and always seemed more Roman than a native. He could have been brilliant.’
It was not my place to point out that the German was brilliant. That he had orchestrated one of the greatest victories against the Roman Empire for decades, and had proven himself a master tactician and strategist.
‘You’re not the first survivor we’ve had come in,’ Caedicius then explained. ‘But… three legions? It’s beyond comprehension. Until the bastard arrived with his army, I still believed it was the made-up fairy tale of some cast-out civvies and a bloody deserter.’
Caedicius then stood straight, turning his full attention to me. ‘Centurion Hadrianus tells me he’s taken you into his century?’
I gave a shallow nod.
‘Good. Go get some rest, Felix. Dawn will be here soon, and I expect Arminius and his scum will be coming with it. Be on the walls to meet them, soldier, and show them Rome’s vengeance.’
10
Centurion H escorted me from the headquarters building. Prefect Caedicius had insisted that I keep the thick cloak, and I pulled it tight around my bony shoulders as we marched through the camp to the barrack block that would be my accommodation. The block was of the same design as any in the Empire, broken down into ten sections: one for each of a century’s eight sections; one for the optio, the century’s second in command; and a large section for the centurion, including an office and living space.
I entered the doorway of Seven Section’s accommodation, walking first into the partition that housed the soldiers’ equipment. My eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and I could make out the rounded shape of shields and the points of javelins that shone dully in the ambient light.
‘All your kit’s here,’ H whispered. ‘I’m just going to hold you in reserve tomorrow. I’ll only use you if they get over the walls, in which case you don’t really need to be in any fit state to fight anyway, because it’ll all be over. Goodnight.’
I saw his white smile flash in the darkness, and then I was alone. I pulled back the flap that separated the storage area from the men’s sleeping space, and quietly stepped within, careful not to disturb my comrades, who snored on the bunk beds. I found a lower one that had been left unclaimed, and exhaled gently as I lay down on the straw mattress.
Within a breath, sleep had claimed me. Perhaps I slept for hours, but I did not even feel as if I’d closed my eyes when an unknown legionary shook me by the shoulder and uttered the words that every tired soldier dreads to hear: ‘Stand to.’
There was no point in fighting it. I swung legs of lead from the bunk and began to wake my section.
‘Micon. Get up.’
‘Where are we?’ he asked. Half dead with fatigue as we were, I did not hold it against him.
‘Just get up and put your kit on. Wait outside.’ I turned to where Stumps still snored deeply. ‘Stumps. Wake up.’
‘It’s not my duty,’ he mumbled, reciting automatically the defence of every woken soldier. ‘You got the wrong bed.’
‘Arminius is coming at dawn, Stumps. Do you want to be in your bunk when he gets here?’
The veteran finally opened his eyes. His answer was deadpan: ‘Yes,’ he told me, unblinking.
I thought about reasoning with him. I thought about telling him how we hadn’t come this far for him to be imprisoned for refusing to fight. I thought about saying all of that, but instead, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I laughed. I laughed so hard that it did the job of waking the others, and even persuaded Stumps that sleep would now escape him.
‘Fuck it then. I’ll come. May as well die on the wall with you and get it over with, you cunt,’ he grumbled, and my tired spirits rose to see his own character returning. I caught the feeling and wondered at it; by what right was I laughing – and hopeful? Surrounded and cut off, we were surely soon to be assaulted by Arminius’s savage army.
And yet I was. I was hopeful. Why?
We had walls, and we had archers, but neither guaranteed victory, nor even short-term survival. It was as I helped Micon pull his heavy chain mail over his head that I discovered the reason; it was as I watched Brando and Folcher check each other’s equipment, pulling straps tight and testing the fit of their armour: I was amongst comrades, but more than that, I was responsible for them. I was a commander again, if only of a small group, and for a short duration. It wasn’t from vanity or glory that this position lifted me, but because I felt as if I now had a good chance to protect their lives.