Chapter 20

Camp Banwīhraz, Central Germania

Medb settled onto the rough wooden bench in the watchtower just as the sun started to make its way over the horizon. She’d been watching these people for weeks now and she found she’d gotten the most useful information in the morning, before the sun was all the way up and the temperatures started to really rise. It was when they were the busiest, which meant she got to see more interactions between the prisoners, which is where she got her most interesting observations.

The guards had quickly learned not to disturb her. Her reputation had preceded her arrival at Camp Banwīhraz, and a few well-chosen words to those who initially tried to be helpful, or were simply just curious, had ensured her solitude.

She opened her small leather-bound journal, its pages filled with meticulous notes and drawings. She’d developed her own system to track individual prisoners and their movements, creating a detailed map of the camp’s social structure, which had quickly expanded into something even she was having trouble following as it got more complex.

She looked at the small book for a moment, appreciating it. A gift from Cormac before she left Carthage, the leather cover bore the marks of constant use, worn at the edges from being carried everywhere, and stained with ink where her pen had leaked during a sudden summer downpour three days prior. The fact that it was worn actually made her like it more, even though it was a gift.

Things were meant to be used. To box them up and save them was to deny them their purpose and remove the meaning behind the gift. The worn edges, the stain, the filled pages, these were the signs of a gift truly appreciated.

She pulled herself out of her reverie as the first prisoners emerged from the rows of tents that were lined up, one after the other, around the huge square field enclosed by wire fences topped with barbed wire and dotted with guard towers. One of dozens at Camp Banwīhraz, each more or less alike, able to hold a thousand prisoners. The camp population overall had passed thirty thousand prisoners. It was not the largest of the prison camps in Germania. There were three medical camps that held seriously injured prisoners who made up the bulk of those they’d captured, and who were only moved here when it was safe for them to maintain themselves on their own.

She found this one the most enlightening of all the sections she’d observed because it was built on a slight hill, the center point of which was more or less in the center of the square. Although it was a square, the inmates had arranged themselves into what she’d started to think of as a set of concentric circles, with the most privileged prisoners occupying the central area situated on slightly higher ground. This elevated position, which was drier and more comfortable, had not been designated by the Britannian guards and she wasn’t even sure the designers had noticed the gradations, or counted them as serious enough to account for. The prisoners, however, had noticed and, from what she was told, established this arrangement within days of this section being opened. And they’d maintained the arrangement with remarkable consistency.

She’d noticed the pattern early on and had even tested it to a degree, to get a sense of the camp hierarchy. Three separate times she’d instructed the guards to relocate prisoners randomly throughout the camp. Each time, the original order had reasserted itself within hours, the privileged returning to the center, the lowest ranked banished once again to the periphery. There had been no riots or fights and yet the pattern remained unbroken.

Most revealing was how new prisoners were integrated into this system. Medb had witnessed the arrival of thirty fresh captives the day before yesterday and, within hours, each had been assessed and assigned his place within the concentric rings.

Breakfast had begun and the guards had set up a station for men to come through and get their rations. Each man got a bowl of whatever was being served that morning, each given the same amount, regardless of how they classified themselves. And yet, the distribution did not stay that way.

Certain middle-tier prisoners collected food as the men came through the line, pouring some into an extra bowl or giving additional food from the extra bowl, depending on their place in the hierarchy, apparently. The central elites consistently received the largest portions, sometimes significantly larger, while those in the outer rings survived on much less. Often half of what they’d been given.

The guards had tried to put a stop to this, but without a huge influx of praetorians, it was impossible to stop altogether. She’d put a hold on that when she’d started observing this section, however, so she could observe how it was naturally working for them.

What made this arrangement remarkable was its persistence without overt enforcement. Medb had witnessed few attempts by the lower-ranked prisoners to secure more food for themselves.

She’d divided the camp into five distinct zones, marking the territories claimed by different groups within the prisoner population.

Zone one, the central area, housed what Medb had classified as the administrative elite. There were very few of these, only about thirty men, mostly captured in the early days before the trenches had gone in and the front lines had become static. A few had been recovered from Valdar’s actions in Africa.

These men did not seem to be the type that purposefully put themselves in harm’s way. Here, they rarely engaged in physical labor and were deferred to by every other group in the section.

Zone two contained what appeared to be higher-ranked military officers. Unlike the central elite, these men participated in work details, although usually in a supervisory way. They also seemed to serve as intermediaries between the central figures and the broader population.

Zone three seemed to be made up of lower-ranked officers, men who led small groups into battle similar to a Britannian Decanus or Optio. Here, they worked mostly as go-betweens for the first two zones and zone four.

Zone four housed the bulk of the prisoners, common soldiers, Medb presumed. Even among them, there was an internal hierarchy that was too complex for her to have worked out yet beyond there being two distinct groups.

Zone five, the outermost ring, presented a puzzle Medb hadn’t yet solved. Everyone in the entire section was an Easterner, with the soldiers from subjugated countries held in their own sections. And yet, the Easterners themselves seemed to see a difference between the people in Zone five and those in the other zones. Its inhabitants showed signs of severe malnourishment despite receiving the same initial rations as the others. They occupied the lowest, dampest ground, falling ill more frequently than their counterparts. Yet they made no visible attempt to improve their circumstances, accepting their position with a resignation that suggested permanence.

Medb tapped her pen against her journal thoughtfully. There also seemed to be no way to move from one zone to another. When beds became available in better positions due to prisoner transfers or deaths, lower-ranked captives never attempted to claim them. The system operated as if governed by immutable laws rather than convenience or comfort.