‘General Drusus is probably thirsty. You know Chickenhead fought under him?’
So that was what had brought him here – memories of his friend who had died beneath the enemy’s barricade in the forest. I held my silence. Stumps needed to be heard. I knew, because I had felt the same desire to unburden my soul.
‘Every minute, it’s in front of my eyes,’ Stumps said. ‘I see him when the spear went into his shoulder. I see him when the rock smashed his head open. I could see my friend’s brains, Felix. One second he was there, the next he was dead, and now it’s in my head, over and over. When does it stop?’
I said nothing. I didn’t want to tell him that the pain was endless.
‘You’d think it would get easier, wouldn’t you?’ he almost snarled. ‘I saw two of my little sisters die. I watched my uncle shit himself to death. But Chicken… he was closer to me than any of them. He was my true brother, and… and I failed him…’
Stumps suddenly threw the wineskin violently at the altar. Crimson liquid dripped from the marble like blood as the man dropped to his knees and the misery of loss took him. ‘I’m a piece of shit and I just want to die,’ he groaned.
I went on to my own knee beside my friend. There were no tears – he was too exhausted for that; instead his chin hung limp on a heaving chest.
‘I just want to die,’ he told me again.
I put my arm over his shoulders, fighting for words that escaped me. I wanted to tell him that he could overcome it. That the visions would fade. That the pain would go away.
I wanted to lie.
‘I feel like this every day,’ I told him instead.
The chin lifted. He looked at me. ‘For how long?’
‘Years,’ I admitted.
‘The screaming? The nightmares?’
‘Not spirits, Stumps. The same things you see.’
The man slumped back on to his heels. ‘So I’m fucked, then? This is my head from now on? I’m as fucked up as you?’
He meant no offence with the words and I took none.
‘Chickenhead told me how to get better,’ I told him. ‘He said you have to accept your memories. You can’t run from them.’
‘I don’t want to feel like this forever,’ Stumps pleaded.
I took hold of the back of my friend’s head, and pulled him into my shoulder.
Stumps pushed back from me after a moment, suddenly conscious of his vulnerability. My own itched and bit at me like a swarm of insects as my comrade turned to look at the altar.
‘It doesn’t end, does it? War.’
How could I disagree? All of my life I had seen war’s stain. Regardless of a campaign’s outcome, there was no such thing as a definitive end. Victory was simply the sowing of seeds for the next generation’s battles. Defeat was a grudge that would demand vengeance. No, it did not seem that there was an end to war itself, but one way or another it would end for the soldiers that fought it. Until then it would rage inside of minds if not on battlefields. I did not know of a way to heal these wounds, but I knew of a bandage.
‘Come on,’ I told my friend. ‘Let’s go and find some more wine.’
22
Blood pounded inside my skull. My chest heaved. Bile was rising from my gut.
A voice laughed. ‘He’s going to be sick again.’
I puked. The purple-tinged liquid pattered the dirt floor. Wiping at my mouth, I saw my section laughing.
‘Never again,’ I swore to Stumps, the man my equal in degeneracy.
‘Just kill me,’ he croaked.
We had drunk late into the afternoon and then stood a very shaky guard during the night. Arminius’s host had continued to shrink during the daylight hours, creating a jubilant mood in the camp, and so Stumps and I were far from the only soldiers wishing for death as an escape from our hangovers. Instead of that mercy, we were tearing down unneeded buildings for the fort’s supply of wood for fuel and the construction of defences.
‘Fu-fu-fuck!’ Balbus called out, grabbing at a hand that trickled blood. ‘Fu-fu-fucking splinter,’ he explained as we tore away the wooden planks of what had been a storeroom.
‘What do you think Arminius will do now?’ Dog asked me, his hideous breath threatening to make me gag once more. I was in no mood to answer questions, but as I was the man’s commander, some sense of duty compelled me to concentrate and string a sentence together.
‘I don’t know, Dog. He’s left enough of a force to keep us contained, so I expect he’s settling in for a siege.’
‘There’re only a few th-th-thousand of them out there,’ Balbus put in, pulling at the splinter in his palm. ‘Not enough to stop the Rh-Rhine legion when they come fo-for us.’
‘Who says they’re coming?’ Statius asked, his face darkened by more than just bruises. ‘Why risk leaving the bases to rescue a few hundred of us?’
‘Because we’re Ru-Romans?’ Balbus answered, as if speaking to a child.
‘Statius is right.’ Folcher spoke up in his thick Latin. ‘Rome must come first, not us. I hope that the Rhine legions stay where they are. Arminius must never cross there.’
Dog looked at the Batavian with a wry smile. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? You don’t want that.’
‘I do,’ Folcher answered. ‘Rome is bigger than all of us.’
‘None of us are saying the Empire doesn’t come first,’ Dog allowed. ‘But are you really saying you want it to forget about us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bollocks.’ Statius laughed. ‘You’re not even a Roman citizen. Why would you care?’
‘Because I will be a citizen,’ Folcher answered proudly. ‘So will my children. So will their children.’
‘I didn’t realize it meant that much to you.’ Dog shrugged, handing the Batavian a hammer.
‘That is because it is not appreciated what you have. I will soldier for twenty-five years for this. Maybe I will die.’
‘Have you ever even been to Rome?’ Statius asked.
‘No.’
‘So you’d die for a city you’ve never seen?’
Folcher let his body language talk for him – he would.
Statius smiled. ‘Rome’s a cesspit. I was born there. If it’s so great, then why does anyone from there leave and end up in the legions?’
‘For duty,’ Folcher answered without hesitation.
Statius laughed at his answer. ‘Because they can’t find work,’ he told the Batavian. ‘Because they hate being poor and hungry. Or, if the Empire feels like it, because they get told to join, and have no fucking choice.’
‘Which were you?’ Brando asked.
‘What does it matter? I’m here. I’m just telling you, don’t be so quick to die for a city that doesn’t care.’
Folcher hit a plank of wood violently with the hammer, knocking it to the floor. ‘I care,’ I thought I heard him mutter.
The conversation died there, returning instead to the necessities of the task, and the ever-at-hand topics of the soldier: wine and tits.
I held my tongue, instead chastising myself for drinking, and thinking of what Folcher and Statius had said.
Rome. Folcher was not the only man in the section who had never set eyes on it. The centre of the Empire had controlled my life in one way or another since I was born, but I had never walked its streets, set foot in the forum or taken in its grand temples and palaces. And yet I had killed hundreds for that place. I had suffered for it, and inflicted suffering upon others. As a child and a young man I had looked on the idea of the city with love. Then, witnessing its true face, I had considered her the great betrayer. It was enough to say that I now hated the capital, the Empire and all that they stood for.