The Boat of Fate (20 page)
He was right of course. He knew his people far better than I; I came to realise by degrees that despite their many excellent qualities, trying to shape Burgundians into a conventional Roman force would have been like trying to model a statue from water.
That night we made our first marching camp of the campaign. The Galicians did most of the work; the Germans, touchy as ever on points of honour, considered it beneath their dignity to wield a spade. What tents we had with us were pitched; most of the Arcadians slept in the open air. Night fell with no sign of the cavalry. Vidimerius was unperturbed. The detachments began to straggle in an hour after dark, in no particular order. They brought booty with them, mainly weapons, and a handful of prisoners. It was the first time I had seen barbarians from beyond the Empire at close quarters. They were big men for the most part, with streaming, matted fair hair. Many were injured, some severely, but no attempt had been made to dress the wounds. They had been stripped by their captors; all bore marks of ill-treatment. Vidimerius examined them critically before ordering them to be placed under close guard. A few, he told me, might make useful additions to the Arcadians’ ranks; the rest would be killed at a more convenient time, either in combat with wild animals or each other. Appalled though I was, I realised that for a German it was a merciful decision; he was giving the creatures the opportunity of an honourable death, the passport to their own strange Heaven.
The main body of Arcadians clattered in as the first watches were being set. They brought more specific news. A few miles ahead, Frankish war parties had occupied an ancient hill fort. Their numbers were uncertain but seemed to be considerable. The patrol, pursuing a fleeing band of Alamanni, had come in sight of the place at dusk. They reported many fires, ramparts fined with warriors. Exercising prudence for once in their careers, they had withdrawn, leaving half a dozen men on the watch for further activity from the raiders.
Vidimerius was delighted; nothing could have suited his schemes or inclinations better. He called me instantly to attend him. He proposed, he said, to examine the stronghold in person. Horses were saddled; half an hour later a small party rode north.
The night was fine, with a clear, high moon. For most of the journey we followed a metalled road; it stretched ahead dim in the moonlight, striped and barred by the shadows of trees. The ground round about was thickly wooded; bad marching country but ideal for guerrilla operations. The Germans at least were unconcerned; they rode steadily, harness clinking and rattling, long hair flying. The Duke seemed lost in thought. He only spoke once, gesturing briefly at the sky. I glanced up, following the direction of his arm. The night was still fine, but a solitary cloudstreak had crawled from the horizon, it seemed across our course. As I watched, the moon was extinguished; the cloud-tip glowed with ragged edges of silver. ‘Wotan’s daughters,’ said Vidimerius grimly. ‘Come to choose the slain. An omen of battle, my friend. ...’ He relapsed into silence; I shivered, drawing my cloak more firmly round me. Beneath the trees the air struck suddenly chill.
The enemy camp advertised its presence for some miles. Fires burned on the ramparts, twinkling spots high in the night. As we came nearer to the place we slowed. It lay some half-mile back from the road, crowning the tip of a wooded spur of hills. In front of it the ground was broken and confused, criss-crossed with gullies and overgrown by scrub. To the south, immediately on our right, the forest thrust out a long arm of trees; it lay dense and black in the night, reaching to within a few hundred paces of the road.
Vidimerius rode on thoughtfully, staring up. Originally the embankments of the fort would have been crowned with palisades. All had long since been overthrown, tumbled into the ditches; but the smooth grassy slopes, overgrown here and there with clumps of bushes, still presented a considerable obstacle. I tried to imagine how I would defend such a place, were I its commander. Its weakest points would obviously be the gates, which our scouts had informed us were three in number: one in the middle of the southern face, one each at the western and eastern extremities. The timbers that had closed them would likewise have vanished, but piled brushwood could still provide an obstacle sufficient to slow a charge. Also we would be forced to attack on a narrow front; I would man the flanking earthworks heavily, pick off horses and riders as they struggled to break through. I wondered how many men we could expect to oppose us. From my viewpoint twenty fires were visible. I counted again, carefully. Double that number for the whole circumference, add a few more; and assume the invaders wouldn’t give themselves more trouble than was necessary in the matter of gathering fuel. Say, then, ten men to a fire; unless the fires themselves were a bluff, designed to confuse our notions of the raiders’ strength. But that could be discounted. They were in strength, and confident; otherwise they would simply have melted away into the woods.
Vidimerius seemed to have been having similar thoughts. He spoke abruptly. ‘How many men in there, judging from what you see?’
I said, ‘Five hundred,’ promptly. He stared at me for a moment, pulling his beard, then grunted non-committally. We walked on again, unchallenged. We were abreast of the fortress before I heard faint sounds of horsemen. Tall shadows materialised from the. night: the detachment the Arcadians had left on guard. A muttered conversation ensued, in German. I saw the leader spread his fingers several times. Finally Vidimerius turned to me. ‘Five hundred was a good enough guess,’ he said. ‘We’ve got ’em in the bag.’ He ordered fires to be lit, many fires, to north and south of the fortification'. The Franks, if convinced of the presence of a besieging force, might at least hold the position till daylight. An hour passed in the work; then we turned south again. The sky was brightening as we came in sight of our camp. I retired to my tent, to catch an hour’s sleep if possible before the march.
It seemed the war horns roused me as soon as I had closed .my eyes. I hurried to the Praetorium. Dawn was barely in the sky, but Vidimerius, who apparently never suffered from fatigue, was already shouting orders. Hubbub rose from the cavalry lines; men scurried in all directions, saddling horses, buckling on weapons and armour. I snatched a hurried breakfast of fruit and bread, listening intently while the Duke outlined his plan of attack, mapping out the enemy position with the aid of a stick and a tray of sand. Half an hour later the column swung north on to its line of march.
Vidimerius set a hard pace. Five miles from our objective we were met by Arcadian scouts. A further trickle of Alamanni had come in, they said, during the night. A few had never reached the fortress. They displayed ghastly trophies, grinning broadly. Several attacks had been mounted against the decoy fires; since dawn, however, the camp had been quiet. Many of the enemy were visible, watchfully manning the walls.
My heart began to thump against my ribs. This engagement, insignificant though it might be, looked like being my first real battle. I felt far from how I thought an officer coming into action ought to feel. The meal I had eaten, though light, seemed to lie in my stomach like lead; my mouth was dry; and I was shaken from time to time by fits of shivering. The morning had been overcast; now, to make things worse, a steady drizzle was falling. I set my mouth and loosened my sword in its scabbard. I knew Vidimerius would be keeping a watchful eye on me; whatever happened I must try and acquit myself reasonably well. I thought, wryly, of my childhood preoccupations, but Hadrian’s spirit seemed as far away as Italica itself.
To occupy my mind I ran over the main points the Duke had outlined. The attack would be three-pronged, feints at the eastern and western gates being accompanied by a thrust in strength through the low ground to the south. This Vidimerius would lead himself, at the head of the Arcadian infantry. The Galicians, lightly armed for the most part, would advance in open order ahead of the column. The Hispanians had been entrusted with the western operation, while I was to lead a hundred cavalry through the woods to the east and attempt to storm the lightest-protected of the gates. The remainder of our horse, with the Cantabrians, would be held as a reserve. Each column would have with it a party of Galician archers; if the barricades did prove troublesome they would be set alight and the attacks pressed home under cover of the smoke. In our commanding officer’s view the affair was as good as over.
The column left the road a mile south of the fortress, while still concealed by the intervening spur of woodland. There the forces divided; and Vidimerius called me to him. ‘I’ll give you the turn of a sandglass to get in position,’ he said, ‘so don’t waste any time. These Franks are a slow-witted pack of bastards in the main, and Alamanni are worse. If I know anything about them they’ll have their whole strength posted to the south; as like as not you’ll draw the entire line. If you can get in, well and good; but don’t get yourselves wiped out trying. If you’re held, just make a devil of a row till we come up.’ I saluted expressionlessly, wondering exactly how I was supposed to restrain a hundred bloodlusting tribesmen once they got within killing distance of an enemy. The Duke settled his helmet more firmly on to his bull-like head, buckled the heavy strap beneath his jaw. ‘The Gods be with you,’ he said formally. ‘Though I don’t expect you’ll run into much trouble. If only that bloody catapult had arrived; we’d have shown ’em something then....’ I left him staring morosely to the south, as if he expected his favourite toy to materialise at any moment over the horizon.
While my men formed up, the Hispanians broke cover with a clatter, surging off left towards the road. The distant bawling of war horns told us they were observed. I rode to where a gap in the fringe of trees gave me a view of the fortress. It stood massive and sullen, turf battlements rising sheer over the dead ground at its foot. A surge of figures was already racing along the skyline towards the western gate.
A muttered word from one of the German decurions warned me we were ready. The column had formed in double file; a hundred burly German lancers, half a dozen slight-built Galicians at their head. Quivers were slung on their backs; from them protruded the bulky tips of fire arrows. I moved my horse forward, under cover of the trees; within moments Vidimerius and the waiting infantry were lost from view. As the first fold of ground hid us from the main column an odd silence fell.
And now began a weird experience, the memory of which remains with me strongly. The hiss of rain, the occasional jink of harness or snort of a horse, served, it seemed, to intensify the quiet. To either side rose gloomy trunks; between them the ground, denuded of undergrowth, gleamed faintly, pale as bleached bone. I rode at first as nearly as I could judge due north, keeping close to the edge of the wood; but a few hundred paces farther on the faint track I was following angled to the right, swooping from sight beneath a tangle of massive, low-hanging boughs. I followed it; and instantly the nature of the forest began to change. I realised, with an apprehensive shock, why it had appeared so inky-dark under the moon. On its edges the trees consisted for the most part of gnarled and stunted yew; here the path wound between massive cedars. Their lower limbs, thick as the body of a man, swung and loomed above my head. Under them, the gloom was intense; it was as if I swam not in air, but beneath some primal sea.
I glanced behind me. The edge of the wood was visible only as a confused brightening; and the ground was falling again, cutting off what daylight remained. I began to sweat. Once before, I had bolted from a forest; now the fear was on me again, irrational but intense. Never in my life had I seen such a forest as this.
I swallowed, and tried to concentrate on the job in hand. The ground, I knew from our reconnaissance, trended sharply downward, forming a wide gully round the south-eastern perimeter of the fortress before rising to the wooded ridge beyond. The steeper the slope, the faster we would reach the lowest point and begin to climb once more. Unconsciously I had quickened my pace; behind me the column was jostling and cantering, trying to keep up. I made myself slow to a walk, hunching my shoulders under my cloak, striving not to look up at the looming threat of the trees. It was impossible. My eyes seemed drawn, with a horrid fascination. Higher and higher they grew; and still the path plunged down. The light now was almost wholly gone; in the darkness the chalky soil gleamed evilly, stretching away in dim arcades to either hand. I panted, feeling I might choke; and the wind rose, suddenly. It couldn’t reach beneath the close-set limbs; I heard it above me, a long and sourceless growl, heavy with the terror and crushing weight of the wood.
It was too much. The horse, scenting my fear, had quickened its pace again; I gave it its head, crouching low along its back, clinging with the utmost strength of my knees. A tangle of fallen debris barred the way; the creature gathered itself desperately and leaped. It cleared the obstruction; and the earth seemed to open beneath me.
That moment still haunts my dreams. Here at last was the gully I had been aiming for, but steeper and more impassable than I had ever thought. Before me was a steep-sided pit, filled at the bottom with a jumble of flinty boulders. Growing in it, reaching towards me and far above my head, was the biggest tree I have ever seen. Its trunk, yards across and black as dull pitch, thrust up beneath me, supporting plateau on plateau of dense foliage that rose, it seemed, to mingle with the clouds. The shock to my already overstrained nerves was enormous; what added a unique horror was my viewpoint, poised as it were on equal terms with the monster, halfway between earth and sky. I heard the horse scream, shrilly; next instant its hooves had skidded. It was sliding, scattering earth, directly down, towards those appalling branches.
How the creature ever regained the lip of the pit I shall never know. Its haunches touched the earth; it seemed to gather itself, and spring. By some miracle I stayed on its back; the next moment we were over and away, careering at breakneck speed. The column, taken by surprise, boiled to a halt as I charged back through it. I had a glimpse of a horse rearing, its rider sliding down its back; another, unable to check, plunged from sight over the steep edge of the declivity. Its shriek, and the crashing of its descent, seemed to hang behind me in the air.