Some were missing limbs. More horrifying, others had no heads. Those that did now looked like demons, thanks to the helmets and armour they were yet wearing. With clenched jaw, Tullus made himself study their empty eye sockets, grinning mouths and stumps of brown, decayed teeth. These men who had been abandoned by their comrades, left for six years to the mercy of wild beasts, wind, rain and snow, had to be honoured, if only by a nod, or a silent greeting.
Germanicus’ face was harrowed as he strode to and fro, examining different sets of bones and lifting an occasional weapon. ‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked after a time.
‘I’ve seen a shield cover with Seventeenth Legion insignia, sir, but that doesn’t tell me much,’ said Tullus. ‘There are no wagons, and no signs of civilians, so the fighting in this spot must have been on the second day, or after.’
‘Because Varus had you abandon the baggage train, and had the column assemble properly, without civilians?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Tullus could smell the burning olive oil, could hear the camp followers wailing and crying and the wounded soldiers swearing as they’d marched out that morning. ‘We left them to die. There was no other choice. If they had stayed with us, every last one of us would have been slain.’
‘Gods grant that I never have to make such a decision.’ Germanicus’ face was bleak. ‘You must have had to abandon legionaries too.’
‘Aye, sir.’ Tullus’ grief cut him, sharp as a blade. ‘I finished a good number myself, so the tribesmen didn’t capture them.’
‘You’re a fine officer, Tullus. You look after your soldiers.’
Even as Tullus coloured, and heard Fenestela rumble his agreement, he wished again that he had managed to drag more men free of this hellhole. ‘I did what anyone would have, sir.’
‘No.’ Germanicus jerked his head at Caecina, Tubero and the others, who were talking together in twos and threes, and staring at the skeletons with horrified fascination. ‘You did more than any of those could have. Your group was the largest one to escape, by some margin. Be proud of that.’
For the first time, Tullus and Germanicus looked at each other not as ordinary citizen and royal scion, not as centurion and general, but as men and as soldiers – as equals. Something made Tullus glance then at Fenestela, Piso and the others. They were all nodding. Fuck it, Tullus thought with rising pride. Maybe I can be satisfied with what I did. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Show me the rest of the battlefield. We’ll start burying the dead after that.’
‘Aye, sir.’ Grateful that his slain legionaries would rest in peace at last, Tullus set off to the north.
I’m coming to find you, brothers, he thought.
Two long days had passed since Tullus had guided Germanicus on to the battlefield.
His hopes of ever finding his fallen soldiers had faded to almost nothing, but he, Fenestela and his veterans had not stopped searching. Time was running out, however. They could not remain here forever. Already half the army had been set to dig vast mass graves while the remainder stood guard against possible attacks. When the grim task had been completed, Germanicus’ campaign to punish the still-hostile tribes would continue.
Tullus paced to and fro, using his vitis to push aside low-hanging branches and patches of long grass. He’d looked at enough skeletons to fill half the underworld, or so it seemed, yet the task was growing no easier. Six years had seen the flesh stripped from the dead legionaries, leaving nothing but bundles of bones within the rusting mail shirts and segmented armour that lay scattered along the cursed track, among the trees and in the bog. It made personal recognition an impossibility. Tullus’ frustration and grief grew with each passing hour. What might have been the easiest way – finding a unit standard, say – had also eluded them. It seemed that every item of monetary worth or of symbolic nature had been carried off after the battle, or rotted away. Not one was to be found.
Checking the underside of helmet neckpieces had yielded a good number of scratched-on names, but none that were familiar. Tullus was beginning to wonder if they would have to reconcile themselves to failure and join the rest of Germanicus’ men in digging graves for all the dead. They would nominate one such for their fallen brothers, and make their offerings over it. This solution would be far from ideal, but it was better than leaving the bones of the Eighteenth’s soldiers forever uncovered.
Tullus reached for his clay water-carrier. Despite the nearby stream, he took only two swigs. Old habits died hard. The pause afforded him the chance to see what everyone else was doing. Piso was in the trees off to his left; so too were Vitellius, Saxa and Metilius. Since rescuing Degmar’s family, the four had been inseparable. It gladdened Tullus’ heart.
‘Find anything, Piso?’ he called.
‘No, sir.’
Tullus felt another stab of disappointment. ‘Keep looking.’
A muffled curse from his right made him turn. Fenestela had been working the scrubby ground that ran on into an area of bog, a muddier job than anyone else’s. He was picking himself up, and muttering filthy curses.
‘Lost a sandal?’ asked Tullus.
‘I tripped over a skeleton.’
They had each done the same. ‘Hurt?’ asked Tullus. ‘Just my pride.’
Chuckling, Tullus stoppered his water-carrier and balanced it on his right hip again. Vitis at the ready, he took a step forward, his eyes searching for clues. Fortuna, be kind, he asked. Just this once.
There was another loud oath from Fenestela.
‘Fallen on your arse this time?’ shouted Tullus.
‘Sir!’
The urgency in that one word brought Tullus’ head snapping up. He peered at Fenestela. Even at a distance, it was clear his optio was rattled. ‘What?’
‘Come and see, sir.’
Fenestela’s reluctance to say more had Tullus moving at once. Three dozen strides, and he found Fenestela standing by a massive fallen trunk.
‘I was working my way around it, and didn’t see this poor bastard,’ said Fenestela, gesturing at a skeleton that was lying under a branch forking off the main body. ‘I’d say he crawled in there to die.’
‘A quiet place to breathe his last,’ said Tullus. ‘What else have you found?’
Fenestela pointed.
Tullus leaned in closer. The rusted segmented armour, mildewed leather straps and still-beautiful gilded belt decorations were the same as a thousand he’d seen before, but Fenestela hadn’t called him over for those. He lifted the helmet, which Fenestela had eased off the skull, and peered under the neck guard. There was no inscribed name. As he laid it back down beside its owner, Tullus’ gaze fell on something silver. He focused on something lying beneath the skeleton. ‘This?’ he asked, pointing.
‘Aye.’
Tullus realised he was looking at a silvered spear tip, which had once served as the top of a century’s standard. His heart beat faster. The soldier who’d been carrying it wasn’t a signifer, like as not, because he wasn’t in scale armour. That meant he’d taken it from the fallen standard-bearer and tried to carry it to safety. In a way, he had succeeded, Tullus thought sadly, because the tribesmen hadn’t found the standard. Yet the wounded soldier hadn’t got far. Tullus hoped he had not lingered, listening to the slaughter of his comrades.
Tullus rolled the skeleton a little to the left. Beneath the spear tip, the wooden staff had mouldered away, but the distinctive copper alloy discs and crescents that decorated a century’s standard remained where the shaft would have been. Green now rather than golden-brown, they had been pressed into the earth by the soldier’s weight. A line of metallic dots marked the outline of the silvered pendants that had once hung from either side of the standard’s crossbar.