Eagle in the Snow (30 page)

For an hour nothing happened. The enemy lined the palisade and watched us; but they would not move. To goad them into action I moved the artillery forward, protected by a screen of light troops, and began to bombard the camp. This had the desired effect and after half an hour a great body of men, the Alans of Respendial, moved out in bands under their leaders and came towards us. I signalled the artillery to withdraw and it did so, the men panting and sweating as they strained to pull the ballistae back into the safety of their own ranks. Seeing this the enemy, who had been moving forward steadily, broke into a run. When they were two hundred yards away the front rank of the cohorts moved out at the double and threw their javelins from a range of fifty feet. One flight of javelins was followed by another and another as each row hurled its weapons in turn. The javelin shower tore great gaps in the enemy and checked their rush for a moment. Then there was the most appalling crash of steel upon steel, of iron upon iron, all mixed up with the cries of men shouting, as the two sides closed in hand to hand fighting. The tribesmen hacked and swung with their longer swords, their axes and their spears; but the legionaries, their shields close to their bodies, contented themselves with quick underhand thrusts of their short swords, aiming always for the stomach or the chest, never for the head or the shoulders. “Three inches in the right place,” I used to say to them, “and he is a dead or a dying man. But give him six inches in the wrong place, and he will kill you before you have time to give the second blow.” The close fighting went on for ten or twelve minutes, and then a second wave of the cohorts moved forward to take the place of their now rapidly tiring comrades. Our line held; the Alans could not break it and they fell back a little to recover their breath while, in their turn, others took their place. They tried twice more but still failed to break the centre. So many were the enemy that they could not all get into the fighting line at once; so those in the rear spread out and began to assault my two wings, whose archers did terrible damage. When the whole line was engaged and I could see that they had no true reserves left I ordered the trumpeter to sound, and the auxiliaries and Alans under Goar swept round and took the enemy in both flanks. The shock was too much for them. The enemy wavered, tried to hold their ground, wavered again and then broke in flight back towards their camp. The trumpet sounded again and the auxiliary ala broke from the scrub where Quintus had them concealed and struck diagonally at the retreating enemy. In four minutes it was all over. Less than a third of the Alans got back to the safety of the palisades.

In the lull that followed I held a conference with my staff; the wounded were taken to the rear where the waggons stood waiting, and the ranks reformed themselves. Groups of our soldiers went out to recover all the weapons that lay within three hundred yards of our position, and to kill the enemy wounded who lay upon the ground. The men were allowed to fall out, section by section, to eat and drink; the various units re-grouped and the gaps in the ranks closed up. Archers ran up with bundles of fresh arrows, while centurions cried out for more spears and javelins.

A little before midday the enemy began to mass again along the edge of their shattered palisade but, as before, they made no move to come out. To encourage them I had the advance sounded and moved my whole battle line forward three hundred yards. Then I pushed out a line of archers and when they were within range ordered them to open fire. “Watch the wind,” I cried, for I could see the arrows fading to the left as they dropped towards the palisade. The ballistae opened fire and the sky was filled with fireballs. Soon the whole length of the palisade, for half a mile, was covered with points of flame and a pall of smoke hung over the camp as the scrub caught fire. Had the wind been in the right direction we could have smoked them out, but it was blowing gently from the southwest. After half an hour they could stand it no longer; and I could see the sun flicker on the points of swords and spears as, suddenly, a great mass of men moved out of the smoke towards us at a fast walk. Their line extended from the river to well past our left flank and must have been twenty deep at least. In front, with their standards beside them, were the war chiefs of the tribes and, as they came closer, I could recognise Respendial, Hermeric, Gunderic and Sunno, who had succeeded Rando as king of the Alemanni. There must have been twenty-five thousand men on the move and I knew that we could not hold them once they closed the fight; they would destroy us by sheer weight of numbers.

To Fabianus I said quickly, “When the artillery cease fire they are to withdraw immediately back to our last camp. Call up the mules now.” The ships of our tiny fleet were firing steadily in their efforts to break up the advance, but though they did great damage the enemy still came on at the same steady pace. The skirmishing archers were falling back now, each man being covered in turn by the next until, out of range, they took to their heels and ran for the right and left of our centre. My left flank swung round slightly to face the overlap of the enemy right, and then, fifty yards from our motionless front ranks, the barbarians rushed us. I gave the order to fire and the ranks hurled their javelins while the archers flicked arrow after arrow into the mass before them. The enemy front suddenly became a line of huddled dead that mounted, in another moment, into a rising wall of bodies. As the lines crashed together the trumpet sounded twice and Quintus, at the head of his cavalry, fell upon their right flank with two thousand horse. Had we had more men we could have made of it another Adrianopolis. Trapped between the cavalry and the river they would have been hemmed in, forced to fight and die upon their feet until the collapse of the next warrior enabled each man in turn to fall where he stood. But we had not enough men and our success could be only limited. The shock of the cavalry charge broke up the impetus of their attack. They fell back and, in falling back, were forced to turn to face their new enemy. Ridden round by our horsemen, they closed up and fought back stubbornly. Quintus kept his cavalry under an iron control and the discipline he had installed into his commanders showed its worth. Squadrons charged, withdrew, reformed and charged again in hard tight formations so that it was difficult for the enemy to surround and pull individual riders down. For ninety minutes we held them and it was they who fought on the defensive, retreating slowly in a gigantic curve towards the river, pressed inwards the whole time by our cavalry whom they could not contain.

From where I sat upon my horse I could see the whole terrible scene quite clearly. I called up Marcomir’s Franks to support the centre, sent my light cohort out to the left to steady the hard pressed wing, and then rode up and down the line shouting encouragement. For a few brief moments I thought we might do it; and win. I threw in my bodyguard in a desperate effort to drive a wedge through their centre; the charge smashed home and then ground to a halt, checked by the sheer weight of numbers. The air was thick with dust; and the screams of horses, the cries of the wounded and the yells of the living made the giving of orders almost impossible. Very slowly the enemy began to give ground; but they did not break and their retreat was stubbornly ordered, as they withdrew sullenly towards their camp.

I sounded the advance, but my men were too exhausted to obey me. They stood exactly where they had been when the enemy disengaged, in groups and lines, leaning upon their swords; the wounded sinking to the ground; all too tired to follow up their partial success. The horses were blown and stood with bowed heads, sweating profusely, their riders slumped in the saddle, or toppling sideways as their aching muscles relaxed and the pain of their wounds became too much for them. They were quite unfit for another charge. A handful of skirmishers harassed the retreating enemy with bows and javelins; but that was all. A trumpeter blew the retreat and, with my bodyguard holding the field, the cohorts withdrew slowly towards the escarpment and the safety of their camp. The battle had been a draw.

Later that day the barbarians came out from their camp in small parties to collect their dead and wounded, and that night we saw the flames crackle and smelt the smoke of the funeral pyres as they cremated their dead.

The following morning I sent the wounded on ahead, in waggons, towards the safety of the bridge and Bingium. While the men rested, we checked our losses, sent patrols back to the battlefield to collect all the weapons and armour they could, and reformed units.

Aquila said, “The casualties are heavy, sir.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Four hundred dead and eight hundred wounded, I should say.”

“How many cavalry?”

“One hundred dead, two hundred and sixty wounded, and four hundred and thirty horses.”

Quintus listened in silence. He looked angry, tired and beaten.

“We shall have to bring the legion up to strength by drafts from the auxiliaries,” I said grimly. “Well, we did all we could. They won’t try to cross the river now, which is what we were afraid of.”

“No, sir.” He added as an afterthought, “They will wait for winter.”

Quintus said, “Are you angry that I persuaded you into this action?”

I shook my head. “Only a little. It will have done the men good. They were beginning to get bored with waiting. Now, at least, they know what they are up against.”

Aquila said, “We nearly did it, sir. With only a few more men we could have beaten them.”

I said gently, “And now we have less than before.”

Quintus did not look at me. He said, and his voice was sombre, “We, none of us, have any illusions now.”

The following morning we broke camp and I stood on a hilltop with Goar and watched the legion limp down the track that led to Bingium.

He said cheerfully, “It was a great battle. Your men fought like wolves.”

“And yours also.”

“Oh, we—we always fight well. We enjoy it. But we are not soldiers. I see now why you conquered the world. It is the discipline that does it. I—I should like to have been a Roman soldier. Do not laugh at me. It was my father’s wish. And mine also.”

“I do not laugh,” I said. “You will be a general yet when I am dead.”

The daughter of Rando had watched the battle from the hill above Moguntiacum and her face, when we rode in, was scornful. “I prayed that you would lose,” she said. “And my prayers were answered.”

“I did not expect to win, only to weaken them a little with losses. In that I succeeded.”

Her teeth snapped. “You are clever at twisting words. I hate you.”

“Of course.” I smiled. “Why not? You are the enemy too.”

We made up our losses by drafting men from the auxiliaries, and I wrote hurriedly to Flavius and told him to send me his conscripted recruits and all the horses he could lay hands on. I gave small awards in silver to those who had distinguished themselves in the fighting, executed two men convicted of cowardice, and promoted three centurions to replace those of my tribunes who had been killed. The badly wounded I sent back to Treverorum, and there was much hard work, repairing ballistae and armour, sharpening swords that had got blunted and damaged, and replenishing our stocks of missiles.

November came, and the winds blew from the north, and we had much rain; and sometimes on the river, in the morning and at night there was a grey mist so that we could not see from one bank to the other; and the gulls came inland from the sea in vast numbers and perched on the camp walls, or screamed about our heads till they sounded like men dying. And in the dawn the land would be covered with a white frost and, as I rode across the fields, I would see that the pug marks of the cattle were covered with a film of brittle ice.

One afternoon a boat put out from the further bank, bearing a green branch, and I went down to the river to see what it was they wanted this time. The young man who stepped ashore was Rando’s eldest son, Sunno. He looked thin and tired and there were purple marks, all puffy, on his neck and upper arms that showed he had been in the recent battle.

“So, you are the king now?” I asked him.

“Yes, I am the king in my father’s place.”

“What can I do for you that I would not do for your father?”

“I have come to ask for the return of my sister.”

“She is not for sale.”

He flinched at the implication that she was now a slave.

“What bargain then would you accept for her return?”

“The dispersal of all the men in your camp.”

“They will only disperse this side of the river.”

I said, “The day that you land on this shore you will look upon your sister, dying.”

“So I was told. You mean it then?”

“What is Rando’s daughter to me? I am Maximus.”

He bared his teeth. “For that some men would call you—butcher.” He smiled with an effort. “But I come in peace. May I see my sister?”

“No. But you have my assurance that she is alive and well.”

He said, passionately, “You are a man who cares nothing for the feelings of others.”

I said, “So men have told me. I care. But my people are not your people.”

He hesitated. “Will you tell my sister I came? Will you give her this?” He held out a small silver brooch, such as girls like to wear. Judging from the workmanship it had come originally from the east. “I will do that,” I said.

He nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to go back to the boat. I took a step forward, unthinking. He swung round towards me: his hand flashed into his belt with the speed of a striking cat. With the knife upheld to throw he stopped and stood motionless as I pricked him beneath the chin with the point of my sword.

I said, “I wondered why you came. A man who loves his sister would have come weeks ago. I wondered, too, why you gave the brooch into my sword hand. Did you think to catch me with such an old trick? I learned that one from the Picts on the Northern Wall when you were—nothing.” I pricked him and his back arched and his chin went up as he tried to avoid the point. Blood showed on the blade.

He licked his dry lips. He did not speak.