Ben Kane - Eagles at War

The tribesmen knew that they had the upper hand, of course. Tullus and his soldiers needed reinforcements, but their enemies required only a break before they swept to the attack again. So, ignoring the watching warriors the way a lame deer tries not to see stalking wolves, Tullus had started out along the muddy track once more, step by weary step. There had been no time to treat the wounded, no time to do anything other than order everyone who could to follow. ‘If you want to fucking live, come with me,’ Tullus said. Fewer than twenty men had broken away with him, the vast majority bearing at least one wound. Fenestela was still there, and the new recruit Piso, and his friend Vitellius, who wasn’t even able to hold a shield. Most incredibly, the woman he had rescued and her child had survived. So had the pup. It was far fewer than he’d wanted, but it was better than none, Tullus told himself. Better than none. Bitterness washed over him. How had it come to the point where he could envisage his soldiers being annihilated?

Little groups from the rest of the cohort – sixes, tens, sometimes more soldiers – trailed in their wake, but Tullus didn’t stop to rally them. That was up to their centurions and optiones, if they lived. His command had reduced to his century, just his century. It was a brutal choice, but if he tried to save any more men than that, they wouldn’t make it. The tree had been the final straw. Such a simple thing to do, but so effective. You whoreson, Arminius, he thought.

After a hundred steps, the warriors hadn’t moved. Tullus cast a look over his shoulder at them. Maybe he and his men were in luck at last. Maybe the bastards were going to wait for the next legionaries. They covered another fifty steps, and his hope was borne out. Summoning what remained of his reserves of energy, Tullus drove his men into a speed that approached the double pace. Not long after, he was delighted to see a massive stony outcrop to their left, which had prevented the rampart from being continuous. From the look of it, it went on for some distance. Who knew what lay beyond, but having a guaranteed respite from the enemy’s attacks felt like a gods-given gift. Tullus let his tired soldiers slow down, bandaged a man’s leg, gave several a hearty clap on the back, smiled at the woman, squeezed Fenestela’s arm. He kept moving, however. In this pit of despair, to stop was to die.

The rise in his spirits did not last.

Around the far side of the outcrop, more earthen ramparts loomed. Atop them, a mob of screaming warriors was raining spears down on what had to be what was left of the First Cohort. Heaps of bodies on the track were evidence that the fighting had been going on for some time. Tullus slowed up, stopped, and fought a rising despair. He’d cursed the First for deserting them, but had also hoped they had escaped. Here was a warning sign as to their own probable fate.

It was as if Tullus’ body realised how beaten he was feeling. Every part of him began to protest at the same time. His thighs ached; his arms shook with fatigue. The base of his spine throbbed, as if an unhappy smith were beating on it with his heaviest hammer. Darts of pain radiated from the point beneath where the sling bullet had struck his mail shirt. A miserable crone was stabbing needles into the old injury in his calf. His eyes felt as if they were full of sand, his mouth and throat were dry and sore, yet his face ran with sweat. What he wanted – longed for - was to lie down, and close his eyes. The fucking soothsayer had been right, he decided. The mud would be the end of them all.

‘Don’t give up on me, you dog.’

‘Eh?’ Annoyed that he hadn’t noticed Fenestela creep up, shocked by what he’d hissed, Tullus wheeled. His optio was close enough for it to be uncomfortable, eyes understanding, but flint-hard. He sees the fear in me, thought Tullus, feeling like an old man, like a failure.

‘If you give up, Tullus, we’re fucked. Fucked. All of us,’ whispered Fenestela. ‘Take a look at the men. One look! They’re only marching because you’re leading them. You are giving them hope. You. If you can’t find a way out of this shithole, there’s no chance that they will. As for the woman and her child – they’ll be dead by sundown.’

Fenestela was right, thought Tullus. He had been watching his soldiers sidelong since they had set out that morning, seen their morale being nibbled away, piece by tiny piece, with each successive attack. Like as not, they were doomed, but he owed it to the men not to give up. And the woman. What point would there have been in saving her if he abandoned her now? He took a deep breath, straightened his creaking back. ‘I hear you. We keep going.’

Fenestela looked relieved. He jerked his head at the beleaguered legionaries ahead. ‘The way I see it, our best chance is to avoid fighting and barrel on past them, heads down, right along the edge of the bog.’

Tullus studied the maelstrom and saw that Fenestela’s eyes had been sharp indeed. Fear of the marshy ground had kept both sides away from it, which had left a narrow strip at its border clear of combatants. ‘A good plan,’ he said. ‘Form the men up in single file. We’ll take it at a slow pace until I blow my whistle, then double-time it through the fighting. Instruct everyone to focus on the ground, not the enemy.’

‘Aye.’ Fenestela went to leave, and Tullus reached out to stop him.

‘What you said. I-I thank you.’

‘You’d do the same for me.’

Tullus’ heart clenched. ‘I would. See you on the other side.’

‘On the other side,’ repeated Fenestela, winking. Off he went, repeating Tullus’ orders.

‘Ready, brothers?’ asked Tullus, battening down his fear that Fenestela’s flimsy plan would fail.

‘Yes, sir,’ his soldiers croaked back. ‘Aye.’ ‘Get us out of here, sir.’

With a low blast of his whistle, Tullus led the way.

It wasn’t possible to double-time it through the combat area – in places they had to wade through the edge of the bog, sinking to their calves. Yet thanks to the savagery of the battle and the mud that covered them from head to toe, they went unnoticed by tribesmen and legionaries alike. Tullus was reminded of the thieves who had once robbed the largest wine merchant in Rome of his best stock by simply overpowering the workers inside his premises and loading the amphorae into their wagons on the street, before everyone’s eyes. Men often go unseen, if they act with purpose, as if they were born to be there.

Perhaps half a mile later, they had left the doomed First behind. Breaks in the German rampart started to appear. To everyone’s amazement – and relief – they were unmanned. Tullus took heart. Clever though he was, Arminius wasn’t fully able to instil Roman discipline into his allies. Like as not, the warriors who’d been assigned to these positions had grown tired of waiting for legionaries to arrive, and decamped to where the fighting was.

His hunch proved correct. Some distance further on, they came across the corpses of the last auxiliaries, Gauls, sprawled along a section of track only a few hundred paces in length. The Gauls had stayed together, and forced the tribesmen to pay a heavy toll before they had fallen. The mounds of corpses were the only signs of the enemy to be seen, however. Tullus began to hope again. The further they travelled without hindrance, the more likely it was that they had gone beyond the last of Arminius’ forces.

The cynic in him thought that it was too good to last, and he was right. A short while later, the only thing that saved them from immediate discovery was a slight bend in the track. Hearing the sound of men coming from beyond it, Tullus forced, shoved, cursed his soldiers off the path, behind the enemy rampart. If there had been a single warrior still in position there, they would have been undone, but they were met by nothing more than pools of flood water, a few discarded rinds of cheese and the smell of men’s piss. Tullus’ men sagged against the banked earth and turf wall as if it were the softest of beds, while he kept a lookout from a gap in the fortifications.