‘Fuck war,’ Stumps snorted angrily beside me, and I did not know if I had ever heard words so heartfelt and true. ‘Fuck war.’
43
We slept for a long time after the raid and the mutilation of the prisoners. It wasn’t a good rest for some, and men cried out and shook in their sleep, fighting unseen battles, losing the same friends over and over. I wasn’t the only man to wake more exhausted than when I’d fallen into sleep.
‘He’s not here.’ Brando spoke sadly, looking at the empty bunk that had been occupied by his closest friend. ‘I’ve been awake for hours, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.’
We were alone in the bunk room; I presumed that Stumps was drinking with Titus, and had taken Micon with him like a cherished younger brother.
I rose from my mattress and put a hand on the Batavian’s shoulder. He didn’t need words, or promises from me. He just needed to know.
‘I don’t think he would blame me for leaving him behind, Felix.’ Brando rubbed his hands together as if he were milling wheat. ‘He knows I would have died with him if he was breathing.’
I nodded at that truth.
‘I tried to hide his body in the trees. Maybe they didn’t find him?’
Maybe. Or maybe Folcher’s severed head and dismembered limbs were in the pile of bodies that the Germans had stacked beyond the wall. Prefect Caedicius had sent a work party to recover the fallen so that they could receive a proper burial, but German horsemen had burst from the trees. They had baited the trap with our need to give the men a decent burial, and the work party had narrowly escaped with their own lives.
‘He’s in a better place,’ I told my friend. How many soldiers had heard that promise?
The door to the barrack room pushed open then.
‘Balbus,’ I greeted the man at the threshold.
‘I’m su-sorry it took me so long to get back,’ the soldier told me, head bobbing in earnest, his eyes struggling to meet my own. From experience, I could see a familiar slope in his neck and shoulders where shame had gripped him. Shame that he had been spared the slaughter when others had fallen.
‘How’s the hand?’ I asked him, hoping to pull him from those thoughts.
‘It’s fu-fine,’ he bluffed.
I stood and took it. Beneath the bandage I could feel swelling. Balbus tried to mask a wince as I applied pressure through my fingers.
‘You’re a good man, Balbus, but a shit liar,’ Brando said from the edge of his bunk, recognizing the hurt and the reason for hiding it.
‘I’m su-sorry about Folcher,’ Balbus answered with feeling. ‘He-he was a great bloke.’
‘He was,’ Brando agreed, standing so that he could meet Balbus’s eye man to man. ‘Dog, too. He was long a friend of yours?’
‘Tu-ten years,’ Balbus confirmed.
‘Then he wouldn’t want you trying to fight with one hand, would he?’ the Batavian pressed gently. ‘This siege isn’t going anywhere, my friend. Get your rest. Get it for us, and for Dog.’
‘I’ll walk with you to the hospital,’ I put in, ending the matter. Balbus’s cheeks reddened with shame at being dismissed, but he did not try to argue.
We walked through the camp in silence. My mind was elsewhere, and I suspected his was on the friends that he had lost, and the shame that he had been spared that carnage because of a splinter picked up during a work party of no consequence.
Good soldiers blame themselves for the death of their comrades, no matter how ridiculous the accusations. Neither I nor Balbus had control over even our own lives, and yet we would beat ourselves mercilessly because we had not saved others. What if was the veteran’s greatest enemy.
‘Don’t leave here until the surgeon gives you the all-clear,’ I ordered the man as we reached the high-sided building of the hospital. ‘I’m going to look in on Statius.’
I half expected Balbus to offer to join me, but he left quickly enough. I expected that he did not want the shame of confronting a comrade injured in a fight he had taken no part in himself.
The stink of blood and bodily fluids hit my nostrils as I entered the hospital. The building was quiet but for the bustle of slaves and the specialist assistants who worked beside the surgeons – those who would have screamed from their wounds had either died or were now battling to recover.
Finding Statius was easy enough. He had the strong accent of the Empire’s capital city, and I heard it carry along a hallway as he boasted of a whore he had once known on the Rhine.
‘Statius,’ I greeted him, throwing a nod to the two bandaged men who sat with him on their cots.
‘Felix?’ he replied, a little puzzled. A little alarmed.
‘I thought I’d check in on you,’ I said, and Statius’s companions had the acuity to leave the room. ‘How’s the arm?’ I asked.
Statius shrugged. He looked uncomfortable, whether from wound or from scrutiny, I could not tell.
‘It’s a struggle to lift it,’ he finally offered when I said nothing. ‘One of those fucking Syrians.’
I looked into his eyes, then. I don’t know what compelled me to do it. Perhaps it was because of the way his voice had shifted from bravado with his hospital comrades to piteousness when he saw me. Or perhaps, after living a life of duplicity, I knew how to spot a fucking liar.
I smiled. ‘Let me take a look.’
‘I don’t know if the surgeons—’
‘It’s fine, Statius. I want to take a look. I want to see what those fucking Syrians did to you.’ There was no room for compromise in my tone, and the man held his tongue as I unwrapped the bandage covering his arm and looked at the wound: a clean cut through the flesh of his upper left arm. Within a moment, I was certain.
There are many things in my life that I am not proud of, and one of these is that I have seen and inflicted wounds with almost every blade and weapon imaginable. From this dark experience, I knew now that Statius was a liar. He claimed to have been struck by an arrow, but from the thickness and direction of the sutured wound, I knew that it had been done by his own hand – his opposite hand dragging a dagger across his own flesh.
I smiled at the coward as if I were his greatest ally. ‘It looks clean,’ I told him. ‘Missed the muscle?’
He gave a reluctant nod.
‘Good. You can come with me back to the section. We need every man, and they’ll be glad to see you.’
Statius hesitated, desperate to remain within the hospital’s walls. ‘The surgeons—’ he began.
‘—are here to patch us up so we can fight,’ I finished for him. ‘And they’ve done that. Get your equipment together. You’re coming back to the section.’
‘But—’
My patience ran out at that moment. It was one word too many from his sewer of a mouth, and as the image of Folcher’s torn throat flashed into my mind, I drove my fist into Statius’s startled face. My hands were on his neck a second later.
‘You want to stay here, then I’ll give you a reason.’ His face was growing as purple as the Emperor’s robes. ‘You can stay here and die, or you can find your fucking balls and act like a soldier.’
When his eyes begged hard enough, I let go of his windpipe.
‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘I was scared.’
I stood back from him. ‘We were all scared,’ I spat. ‘You’re out of chances, Statius. The next time you put your own life ahead of the others, I’m taking your fucking throat.’
The time for pity was over. The death of men under my care had seen to that, and now there was only one thing on my mind. One thought for the men that depended on me.