Young Writers Society

The spring rain weighed heavily against my battered shoulders as I trudged through the thick muck, and stumbled over the remains of fallen comrades soon to be reunited with mother earth and the Gods of Olympus. My sword hilt dangled limply against my side along with my right arm. An arrow stuck out of the shoulder and had firmly wedged itself in my rotator cuff, preventing any movement. The arrow itself was of crude construction, the metal was poorly fashioned, and was fraily fastened to the shaft which stuck from my torso. However, this didn’t prevent a barbarian, a Pictone I think, from impaling me with it and dislodging me from my mount. This was the moment in which I lost my sword and consciousness. From what remained of the battleground that I currently traversed I came to two outcomes of the battle. Either my Legionnaire group had been completely destroyed by the barbarians (which judging by the body count was unlikely) or they had fled (much more likely). Either way didn’t matter much to me right now, the weather was horrid, the murky river ahead was full of leeches and other hellspawn, so taking a shortcut back to camp was out of the question. I would have to walk the long way back by foot.

The next few hours were complete drudgery as my new injuries revealed themselves, and old ones found new ways to alert me to their ever worsening condition. However, most of the pain from my shoulder had abated which worried me, as it alerted to further damage than I had previously thought. Also a severed Achilles Tendon had revealed itself to me as I struggled to walk in the mud. My foot merely drug at the bottom of my leg limply, refusing to aid in any attempt to make headway back to camp, and hopefully to safety.

As I did mental checks of my injuries and attempted to bear the pain, I realised that nightfall had begun and that soon I would be in complete, and utter darkness. I started off the trail aways towards the treeline. I watched my sides and rear to keep myself aware of any charging barbarians. Though, in the state I was in, it wasn’t like I could prevent anything from happening even if I was availed of the situation beforehand. Along the way I grabbed a spear that must’ve missed and had ended up impaled in a tree, and used it as a crutch to hurry myself along towards the woods. I made it just to an open area in the woods as the sun sky took on the last remnants of sunlight. Fluorescent pinks and oranges painted the sky like a canvas. A canvas which was too happy in appearance for the situation in which I currently reside.

“Well,” I spoke out loud, hearing something other than the sounds of nature for what felt like an eternity, “I need to get some sort of camp set up.” It took almost an hour for me to get a fire started, and even then it was nothing like the roaring fires that took residence in the hearths back in Rome. For a few minutes I sat examining the spear that lay beside me, where I had dropped it when I sat. It was an intricately decorated Triarii spear. It read Venitus Maximus right below the head of the spear. There was a number of other names denoting that this weapon had been passed down from what appeared to be father to son for at least five generations. I wondered if the man who had wielded this spear had survived or was amongst those that lay in the field out of sight, but not out of mind. I placed the spear in a crook next to me to hide it from sight in hopes that any passerby that hoped to attack would be completely taken aback by a spear in their gut.

I finished admiring the design on the spear and took some time to become acquainted with my current surroundings. I sat in a small clearing surrounded by ancient hardwood trees, saplings dotted the landscape and provided some concealment from any prying eyes. The canopy of the trees also shielded me from the light rains that constantly plagued Gaul during this time of year. I was thankful for that as the fire had just begun to dry me off and I was feeling slightly more comfortable than I had in the past day.

As I lay there dozing off in the twilight hours of the night I cursed the General I had been following for the past Two Years for getting me in the Predicament. His name was Gaius Marius. He was a frail old man who stayed in the military through political intrigue and old favors that he had acquired. He was foolhardy, pompous, and absent of any form of reason. His tent was adorned with exotic furs from the far off campaigns in Africa, and his battle strategies were that of a three year old. He was of a rare toxic breed that believed the men’s lives expendable, and had a sense of “honour”. In other words, messengers fairly often invited barbarian settlements to fight us even if we had no quarrel with them. He usually accomplished this under the pretense that they were our end target, as most barbarians feared a full Roman Legion, and rightfully so. But, constant fighting once or even twice a week wore down on our already dwindling supply of food, medical supplies, and men. I wondered if the fiasco today at the hands of the Picts had been in response to one of his challenges. I hoped that he lay in that field rotting along with any stupid enough to associate themselves with him.

...

I woke up in the early hours of the morning near the remains of my once not so great fire. I set about removing the arrow from my shoulder so I could assess the damage more thoroughly. I slowly cut away at any tissue that hung off the barbs of the arrow as it came out with a knife I carry. As soon as it was removed, I untied the leather lacing that held my chestplate on and dropped it off to the side. The wound itself had taken on a peculiar color, it resembled and apple that had been out for too long, some of the skin has browned and red blood oozed from the deep gash the arrow had created. I cast aside my armour and the arrow to allow myself to grab the spear the lay near me. I untied the leather strings that held together by greaves and whittled them smaller with the head of the spear. I knew that I needed to do something to close the wound, and the best way that I could figure is to do it the way that women sew clothes together and make stitching to hold the skin close so it would heal. I kept whittling the leather down until it was made into a small enough piece that it wouldn’t cause more damage being pulled through the skin than already had occurred in the area. I looked around and located a small enough piece of wood to be fashioned into a needle next to me. I spent the next hour breaking twig after twig while attempting to create the eye of the needle to put the leather string through. On my 6th attempt I succeeded and begun to string the leather through the whole.

At this point the wound had begun to take on an angry shade of red, and the amount of blood that I had lost was making conscious thought more difficult so I hurried my movements. I quickly stitched my skin together gritting my teeth through the whole process as the not so smooth needle pulled the wound together. I dropped the end of the leather and tied both ends in knots so as not to let it reopen and proceeded to shove the end of the spear into the smoldering fire in front of me. The coals in the middle still retained a substantial amount of heat and turned the spear a dark red in a short span of time. I carefully shimmied my hand down the shaft of the spear until I was below the head enough to maneuver it where I pleased. I took a deep breath and looked down at the wood on my shoulder which still oozed slightly and pressed the spear flatly against it. I screamed, and kicked with my good leg but still firmly pressed the spear against my shoulder for a good ten seconds.

I tossed the spear away from me and looked at the wound after. The leather was still there, slightly burned but not gone, a concern that I had held from the beginning of the process was that it would completely burn away leaving the skin to hold itself together. The skin had blacked and was slightly cracked but had ceased to bleed. With this in mind I proceeded to pass out for the next few hours from the blinding pain that I was currently in.

When I awoke drank water from my satchel which had come off along with my chest piece, it was lukewarm but good enough to satisfy the thirst that I had awoken with. I downed the whole thing before eating some jerked meat that I carried with me on long marches where stops were infrequent, and you better have your own food. I looked down at my left leg, more specifically where the tendon in the back of my foot had been severed. I spent the next few hours replicating the same process to get stitching material that I had the previous day as the needle had been crushed in my thrashing during the cauterization.

I sewed the tendon together and the the muscle and skin above it. This part of the process was lengthy as the pain was pervasive and I kept drifting into unconsciousness, sometimes in the middle of a stitch allowing it to slide through again, preventing headway.

It took most of the afternoon but I finally finished it. During the stitching process I had also been pouring small amounts of wine on the wound the I kept in a vial for sacrifices to the God’s on major holidays while out in the field. The field medics had realised its potential during an accidental spill on an infected wound. The doctor was slightly inebriated at the time and would’ve been punished if not for the medicinal purposes of something in the wine. Anyway that was besides the point, it stung like hell, and prevented the wound from becoming infected. Which unless one wanted to be crippled for life, was a plus. Personally, I preferred to keep my leg as I needed it to walk and generally do soldiering duties.

After I was satisfied with my work, I lay back against a tree that I had been leaning against for the past few days and slept. During the night I kept seeing the mangled faces of the men that I had seen in the field a few days ago. Romans and Barbarians alike had been dismembered and the nightmare that was forming in my mind distorted their images into something grotesque and not unlike the demons that reside in Hades. They began to move with rigid, unnatural movements, they approached the viewpoint that I witnessed the scene from and reached out. I felt the need to move away from their rotting, disturbing forms but was unable. I was enveloped by the horde and felt myself attempt to scream but my lungs carried forth no sound.

I awoke with a start in a cold sweat, and looked around me quickly still thinking that I was in the dream. It was morning and the sun broke through cracks in the leaves and shone off the head of the spear that lay a few feet in front of me. The metal glinted off and nearly blinded me too look at. I reached for it and attempted to prop myself up, and failed miserably. I tried again and managed to get myself of the forest ground and brush myself off. I felt my face and realised that a beard was taking hold upon it, and wondered if I had left my shaving knife back in my tent at camp or if it was lying in the field in the mud somewhere.

“Doesn’t matter too much really, I won’t be able to shave if I don’t ever get back to camp.” I said to myself.

I started from my makeshift campsite as soon as the sun was at noon, I needed a reference for the passage of time and knew where noon was to the dot. I walked through the wet, and squishy ground sinking with every step. The rain for the past few days had made the air humid which felt heavy upon my weary body. I traversed terrain for one day and one night without sleep before I passed out from exhaustion. I slept for Gods know how long before I woke up but I continued walking in this damned forest. Close to nightfall on what I hoped was the third night I saw light. I slowly increased my pace and began to weep. I wept for I was safe, my comrades would be ahead of me to welcome me back with a hero's welcome. I tripped a few feet up a small incline and frantically pulled myself forward towards the light in front of me. I felt myself grinning like a maniac and wondered if I had gone insane when I saw the sight before me.

The whole camp was ablaze with more bodies than I could count strewn about. Spears, swords, axes, arrows, and knives littered the area like it was made of jagged spikes. I felt what must have been the last echoes of hope leave my soul at that moment, and I blacked out.

...

I woke up on that grassy knoll that I had first come to glance upon the ruins of my camp. The fires had subsided overnight, wisps of smoke rose from smoldering ruins and dead bodies, filling the air with and acrid smoke that was nauseating. My ankle where I had done field surgery was itching furiously, it was maddening. I hoped that my body could stand the leather stitching long enough to allow my wound to heal without causing a reaction and rejecting it. I’ve seen some men lose limbs from that sort of thing, and preferred to keep my leg. I picked myself up off the ground and begun to limp around the burned out camp to try to get a better idea of what had happened.

As I wandered through the dismembered, charred figures, I caught sight of something that looked familiar. “My sword!” I exclaimed, moving as fast as my injured limbs would allow me. My sword was the same as any other Legionnaires sword, there was a substantial blade that tapered into a point at the end, and a comfort grip inlaid into the handle. I had carved my name into the butt of the handle Arentis Venetii. I had used some of the wages I had gathered from my years of service to have it embellished in gold. As I reached down to grasp the sword from the hand of the fallen comrade in possession of it currently, it held firm. “Rigor Mortis must’ve set in.” I thought. I pulled upon the guard of the sword harder. It still stood firm with no sign of any give. I let the sword go to reevaluate the situation and was taken aback when the arm let go of the sword and pulled under the heap of rubble where I presumed the body resided. It took a moment for the shock to where off and the magnitude of the situation to dawn on me.

“Shit! Someone is under there!”

I rushed frantically around trying to find a lever to pry the debris off the trapped man. I passed rows of burnt out tents, trying to spot a untouched support beam, on the final row I found a corner support beam that was untouched by the hunger of the fire. I pulled it from under the cloth of the tent. I hobbled as fast as I could back to where the man had been, and jammed the pole under the debris.

“Hold on! I’m going to get you out!” I yelled.