The boys must have felt my dark thoughts. Clapping their eyes on me, both twisted on their heels and fled.
I turned the sharp corner to the blacksmiths’ yard. There was such a building in every fort, the legion training some of its number to become the specialists who would hone the point of javelins and sharpen short swords. As experts they earned a degree of privilege in the ranks, and were immune from such trivial responsibilities as guard duties and the digging of ramparts, but the stench of scorched flesh in the air told me that it was not steel that was now receiving the careful attention of the red-hot irons.
There was no sign of the prisoners, but outside the building stood a section of soldiers fully armoured and on their guard. They were not the only legionaries present. A dozen or so others milled around, trading gossip. I was not the only one with a curious and twisted mind.
Or a broken one.
‘Stumps,’ I greeted my friend who sat crumpled in the dirt.
‘What you doin’ ere?’ he slurred.
‘I came to find you,’ I answered honestly. Indeed some sense had told me that Stumps would be drawn to the suffering as I had. I took in the sight of him now, more wine than man, his uniform filthy. Without doubt he had been sleeping in some muddy alleyway between the buildings.
‘Come on. We need to get you back and cleaned up before you get disciplined.’
‘Where’s Chickenhead?’ he demanded instead, confirming that he had passed beyond any normal state of inebriation.
‘Chickenhead’s dead,’ I told him gently.
‘I know that, you arsehole.’ The veteran waved his hands. ‘I mean, where’s his body? We need to bury him. And the cat. We need to bury them!’
‘We will,’ I lied.
‘Today?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Today.’
‘All right.’ He nodded, a little happier. Then: ‘Felix, I’m out of wine. I think someone took it.’
A child would have been able to wrestle Stumps’s possessions from him. He was lucky he still had the tunic on his back.
‘Where’s your helmet?’ I asked him. ‘Your armour, Stumps? Where is it?’
‘Left it with Titus,’ he managed before belching. A second later, powerful red vomit bounced from the dirt.
Behind us, I heard a pair of soldiers snigger.
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ I snapped at two legionaries barely out of their teens. They said nothing, but one shot Stumps a contemptuous look. It was enough for me to leave my friend’s side. Hand on the pommel of my sword, I crossed the short distance to them at speed, seeing the fear etch into their faces as they recognized the murder in my own.
‘You have a fucking problem?’ I repeated, gripping one by his red neckerchief and pulling his face towards mine.
What did he see? A once handsome face that was now a patchwork of cracked skin and scars. Deep-set eyes that had seen too much, now nothing but empty pits. Rage that could drive my blade into an ally’s stomach as soon as an enemy’s.
‘We’re sorry,’ the second boy managed. ‘We didn’t mean to offend.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I snapped at him, shoving the other boy backward as I released him. ‘You enjoying the show?’ I gestured to the building that housed the prisoners, and their screams.
The young soldiers said nothing. Like the tens of thousands of citizens who crammed into arenas across the Empire, the boys had come to see suffering as an escape from boredom. I couldn’t blame them for it any more than I could blame a snake for its venom, but I knew that, once they had seen and endured enough anguish of their own, the fights of gladiators and the execution of criminals would no longer hold any allure. That every death, every scream, would echo the ones given by their dying comrades. By their friends.
But how to tell a young soldier that?
‘Just fuck off,’ I said to them instead. ‘Get out of my sight. If you ever laugh at my friend again, I’ll cut you open.’
The boys were hurriedly moving away when I was struck by a better idea.
‘Get back here!’ I called, and they turned nervously to face me. ‘Pick him up.’ I gestured at Stumps, who was now passed out on his back. ‘That man’s killed more men and seen more battle than you could ever fucking imagine. If you drop him, or even graze his arse against the floor, I will kick your fucking brains out through your arseholes. Do you understand me?’
They did. And so Stumps was carried to Titus.
‘He’s goin’ to drink me dry, this fucker,’ Titus snorted, casting a concerned eye over our friend who now snored heavily in the quartermaster’s stores. ‘I had to smack a couple of lads around when they complained that Stumps was getting more than his fair share.’ The big man chuckled at the thought. ‘Fair? What the fuck does that even mean, Felix?’
I shrugged my shoulders. Like Titus, I had learned through experience that it was an empty concept. Life was about avoiding suffering, and accumulating power. As long as he did not upset the most senior leadership, Titus had enough of his own within the camp to do as he pleased. The man’s sheer size silenced most critics. His monstrous fists did for the rest.
We were alone, but loud voices came through the adjoining wall. They were excited. Animated.
‘Business?’ I asked.
He gave a gruff nod as he pulled a blanket gently over his comrade’s sleeping form.
‘Why the fuck did he go to the prisoners?’ Titus shook his head. ‘And volunteering for a raid? That’s not like him.’
‘I don’t think he even volunteered.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It was dark. I think he just joined on.’
‘Why? You, I can understand. You’re one of these fucking idiots who thinks they can unfuck the world. But Stumps? What’s got into his head?’
I shrugged again. Clearly the experience of the forest had shaken Stumps’s mind, but no soldier reacted to war in the same way. And so, instead of offering guesses, I tried to put forward a solution for keeping our comrade away from the fighting.
‘I think I can swing it with my centurion that he joins you here. Shouldn’t be a problem, if you pull it at your end.’
‘Yeah, good thinking,’ Titus agreed, pulling a huge hand across his jaw. ‘He’s been injured enough times that they won’t hold it against him.’ It was common practice in the legions that the men who saw the most action, or who suffered the most wounds, should get the pick of the more comfortable and desirable positions within units.
‘What did you do to those young fuckers who carried him in?’ Titus smiled, suddenly amused. ‘Thought one of them was goin’ to start crying.’
I waved the question away. Instead I filled the big man in on the news that the boys had been eager to spill to ease my temper. The news that had dribbled from the trembling lips of the tortured prisoners.
‘Arminius is mopping up everything east of the Rhine, Roman or allied to the Empire,’ I told him. ‘The blocking force that we raided is the only thing between us and Roman lands.’
‘Enough though, isn’t it?’ he grunted. ‘And once Arminius is done he can come back here. Finish what he started.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Why lose the men when he can let winter do it for him?’
Titus had nothing to say to that.