‘They won’t leave the Rhine.’ H’s words mirrored my thoughts. ‘They’d be mad to. Three legions gone, Felix. We’re on the defensive now. There’s no need for forts on this side of the Rhine. We’re the dregs of Varus’s barrel, and we’re not worth scraping out.’
I tried to find some ray of hope. ‘A lot can happen in a few months.’
The centurion shook his head. ‘We don’t have a few months. Could we split the rations down further, and make it through winter like skin and bone? Maybe. But the fort will pull itself apart before that, Felix. There isn’t a united group here. Everyone’s in it for themselves.’
I shrank a little with shame at the man’s words.
H saw my disgrace. ‘I don’t blame anyone for it,’ he told me, and I could hear his honesty. ‘Arminius did more than win a battle, didn’t he? He wiped out three legions, Felix, and when he did that, he pulled away the blindfold. We know that we’re not invincible any more. There’re fewer than a thousand of us here, and Varus had more than fifteen! Why should anyone believe we can come through this?’
Did he hope that perhaps I, a survivor of that massacre, would have an answer for him? ‘There’s always hope,’ I said, but my voice was weak.
H looked down at the dying form of Balbus. Resignation was etched into the centurion’s face, this man who had been so full of life and purpose. Like Balbus, he had given up his own fight. When he spoke, his words were soft, but as lifeless as rock.
‘Hope died in the forest.’
Soon after, Balbus followed in its wake.
47
Balbus wasn’t the only person to die in the fort that night. The other was an aged civilian who had lived outside of the camp since its construction, but sought refuge inside when the rumour of war had spread. Linza told me this as we walked away from the graves. We were outside the walls; our enemy was distant enough to spare us the necessity of having to bury the dead alongside the living.
Linza shrugged. ‘The old die first, in times like this.’ There was experience in her voice, and I did not wonder at that. Lean times and famine were commonplace in the world. Blighted crops could starve a family as well as any besieging army.
‘It just doesn’t seem real this, does it?’ she asked me as we stopped ahead of the open gate, savouring the promise of freedom of movement, and choice.
It was an illusion.
‘The cavalry beyond that wood-line are real enough,’ I told her. ‘There’re not many of them, but enough to stop what you’re thinking.’
She shook her head, pushing a strand of dirty blond hair from her face. ‘I’m not trying to leave this place, Felix. Not like that. Better hungry than dead.’
We walked beneath the gateway. Some three dozen had attended the funeral of soldier and civilian, and now the thick wooden gates were closed behind us. There was a fatalistic finality as the heavy locking bar was dropped into place.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Linza smiled wryly. ‘That we only get to leave the walls for death? Either raids, or burials.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
She laughed a little at that. ‘It’s all you think about,’ she teased me lightly.
But the woman was wrong. Perhaps my mind had orchestrated its own successful defence of a siege – a siege of horrors and hopelessness – because for the first time in months I was sleeping without nightmare. I was waking without screams.
I knew that the woman beside me was a part of that. Perhaps the entire part. She was a window to my past, but she reminded me of the good memories, not the bad. I had laid my early story bare to her, and with the revelations a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I could breathe more easily. I could think more clearly. I did not dare to allow myself to hope, but I fought to honour her request to not only survive, but to live.
‘Thank you.’ I smiled at my friend, taking her by surprise.
‘For what?’
I waved that away. She would understand in time, if she did not already.
‘Shit,’ Linza suddenly grumbled. ‘It’s starting to rain.’
I had learned quickly that German rains could move from a dribble to a downpour in an instant, and so it was with haste that we moved to my barrack block. Centurion H had been wrong when he guessed that we would be reassigned to another century, and our reduced numbers were now overseen by the newly minted Centurion Albus. Having survived the botched raid by the skin of his teeth, Albus’s sole concern was now to live through the siege and retire with a centurion’s wage and pay-out at the end of his service. As such, he made for a lenient commander.
‘Hello, boys.’ Linza smiled at Stumps and Micon before speaking to Brando in their native language. Brando was sullen, as he had been ever since Balbus’s death. The Batavian had never struck me as more religious than the next soldier, but now the tall warrior spent much of his time in prayer at the fort’s shrines.
‘I’m going to the shrine of Donar,’ he told me. ‘I’ll let the company runner know where I am.’
‘We have the watch tonight,’ I said. ‘Be back well before last light.’
Brando said nothing, but stepped out into the rain.
‘I’ve spent more time on watch than anything else in my life,’ Stumps grumbled from his bed. ‘What is it tonight? Walls or patrols?’
‘Patrols,’ I told him. A consequence of our diminished size was that our century was easily rolled into patrolling the fort’s roads and alleyways, rather than being stretched thinly on the walls.
‘Hope it stops raining by then,’ he moaned.
It did not, and we passed the next few hours in banal conversation. Linza was a good listener, and Stumps was an Olympian talker. Between pulls from a wineskin he told us of his colourful childhood and family.
‘First time I met my dad was when I punched him in the face,’ he asserted as Linza giggled. ‘I’m telling you! He was dancing on a table with his balls between his legs – balls that I come from, not that I knew it then – and he kicked a cup of wine all over my woman. Couldn’t have that, could I? So I pulled the fucker’s legs out, and then I punched him in the face.’
‘How did you find out he was your dad?’ Micon asked, an eyebrow threatening to move on his statue-like face.
‘Only a young lad, wasn’t I?’ Stumps explained. ‘Innkeeper held me back until my mum came down. Then my dad got a second punch in the chops.’ He laughed.
It had been a good afternoon. I could see that Linza’s presence was sucking the poison from Stumps’s soul as it was my own. I suddenly realized that the man never woke with night terrors on the days that she had sat laughing at his rambling stories.
‘Will you come and see us tomorrow?’ I asked her, acknowledging to myself that I wanted her to be drawn here for me, rather than any other. There was a little guilt at the thought, but… we were friends, and I was well aware that my mind was, if not mending, then bandaged tightly by this woman.
‘Stay out of trouble.’ She smiled as she took her leave.
Stumps gave her a moment to clear out of earshot before his eyes locked on to me, a conspiratorial smile creasing his face. ‘Please tell me you’re shagging her,’ he begged.
I shook my head. ‘You ask me this every day.’
‘Yeah. I live in eternal hope that you remember what your cock’s for,’ my friend leered. ‘Seriously, Felix, she’s a good-looking girl and she’s fucking lovely. Why are you dick-dancing around her? Just shag her already.’
I said nothing.
‘You don’t think she’s tasty? Because if that’s it, and you don’t mind me—’
I cut him off. ‘Of course I think that, but she reminds me of someone,’ I admitted. The tone of my voice told Stumps that it was a painful reminder.