Wallace Breem: Eagle in the Snow

One evening a lone horseman from Corstopitum rode up the track. It was Quintus Veronius. I was glad to see him but Aelia, whose face had shone like a candle when I cried his name, stopped smiling when she saw his face. He looked tired, strained and angry. “I have come from Eburacum,” he said. I am no longer in cimmand of the Ala Petriana. I dared to complain to Magnus Maximus, our beloved chief of staff, about the corruption of quartermasters and illegal profiteering in high places. So here I am, back at Vindolanda in disgrace.”

“And what else?” I asked.

He said, bleakly, “Our iron soldiers are made of iron no longer.”

When he had finished talking everyone was silent, for there was nothing to say. There had been a great battle between the Army of the East and those of the Goths who had settled on the west bank of the Danubius. It had been fought at a place called Adrianopolis, of which I had never heard, and the whole of the Roman army had been engaged—and beaten. The barbarian hordes on their ponies had cut the legions into pieces, and the most disciplined and best equipped army in the world had been destroyed by a rabble of horsemen from the Steppes. The Emperor Valens, his generals, Trajan and Sebastianus, together with thirty-five tribunes, the prefects of a dozen regiments, the Master of Horse, the High Steward, and the entire staff—all lay dead on the field of battle; and with them two-thirds of the entire army.

Forty thousand men had been killed in an afternoon.

I could not believe it. It was so horrible, so unimaginable that for days I could not take it in. I accepted the facts; but I dared not interpret them; for to do so would have meant acknowledging what would be unbearable—that the civilised world could be destroyed.

I stayed on the Wall in my overcrowded fort, an ageing tribune in charge of a rabble of men who scarcely deserved the name of regiment now. They were quiet years disturbed only by the news that Magnus Maximus had got himself proclaimed emperor. This made little difference to us, but when the troops in Gaul denounced the emperor Gratianus, Magnus Maximus saw that his chance had come—to try for two provinces instead of one. He raised troops wherever he could lay hands on them and stripped the Wall of its best men. In a week he undid the work of ten years and we were left naked to defend the frontier with our bare hands. When I, in my turn, received orders to send half my men, I would not do it. Together with Quintus I rode down to Eburacum, where I knew Maximus was, and asked to see him.

“I have heard of you,” he said. “You bear my name. You served Fullofaudes and Theodosius well, but you do not wish to serve me. Give me a reason why I do not have you executed or broken?”

“Because you cannot afford it,” I said. “Not one man can you afford to waste. I serve Rome as well as this island, and the safety of both depends on her frontiers.”

“I am the Emperor.”

“That is disputed by one emperor in Rome and by another in the east. I will believe it when they are dead.”

“I shall not fail.”

“Of course not. To you, Caesar, the throne; to us the war.”

He tried hard to smile. “In my service you could have had a regiment, or perhaps a legion. You could have gone far.”

“To my death in a Gaulish mist?”

“You may do that yet when I return.”

“When you return, Caesar, I shall be with my cohort on the Wall. Or dead under it.”

He looked anxious then. “The Wall must be held,” he said.

“It has never yet been taken by direct assault.” I looked at him and added, slowly, “Only by betrayal.”

We returned to our forts. We had kept our men, but we were lucky to be alive.

He failed, of course. He destroyed Gratianus, but the son of the man who had helped him to power proved another matter. And so Theodosius I became the last sole emperor of the Roman world, while we shivered in the rain and prayed that the Picts might leave us alone.

Then one day a strange tribesman came to the north gate and said he wished to see me.

“Well?” I asked. I was curious, for he wore the marks of the Epidoni of whom I had heard much but seen nothing.

“I bear a message for the tribune of the Tungri.”

“You may give it to me then,” I said.

“I have a friend who wishes to see you.”

“Who is this friend without a name?”

“I was to say that you would know him when you saw him.”

“So.”

“He is two days march to the north and waits upon the coast.”

“And is that all you have to say?”

“It is all I was told to say.”

“It is a clumsy trap,” said Quintus. “Do not go.”

I turned back to the dark man before me. “And if I do not go?”

He looked disconcerted. “My friend told me to say—come for the sake of an old friendship.”

I felt very cold. “I will come,” I said. “But not alone.”

“My friend expected that. But you must carry a green branch or not come at all.”

“It is agreed.”

I took Quintus and twenty men from the fort. Quintus was quietly curious but he asked no questions. For two days we rode north along the old military road, built by Agricola, and then, with the wind in our faces we made towards the sea. It was very cold, but we came at last to a long beach of silver sand. The wind blew in the sharp grass and the sea birds walked among the wet flats, for it was low tide and the sea was calm. On the beach, among the tufted dunes, stood a small tent, and a wood fire burned smokily in front of it. Away to the right with its prow over the sand, lay a long narrow boat with a dragon head, the sails furled below the single mast. I left Quintus, and rode down to the sand with the guide trotting beside me. He had heard us coming for he came out of the tent and stood motionless, waiting for me as I rode forward, the green branch in my sword hand. I dismounted and walked towards him, and he to me. Both of us stopped when we were ten paces apart. Neither of us smiled or raised a hand in greeting. But I knew him still and I had a pain inside me for all that was past.

“I have come as I promised.”

“I knew you would.”

He had not changed all that much. He wore the clothes of his adopted people, but there were no tattoo marks on his body that I could see. He was very thin and he was nervous, I think, because he could not keep his hands still, and his fingers played ceaselessly with the hilt of his dagger. There were lines upon his face and on his forehead, and there was a scar across his neck that had not been there before. But his eyes were no longer dead. He had the appearance of a man who was at the end of his strength.

“What do you want of me?”

He flinched at my tone. “I want only to ask you a question.”

“You could have come to the Wall.”

He half smiled. “I did that—once before. But you were not in a receiving mood on that occasion.”

“Nor you in a forgiving one.”

“That is in the past. If we talk of the past we shall only quarrel.”

“I have no wish to quarrel. I would have killed you at Eburacum once, but there is peace here now.” I looked at him steadily. “The past is dead.”

“You are well and happy?” he asked.

“I am content. Few who serve Rome in these times can be happy.”

“You are fortunate.”

“If I am, then I work hard for my fortune.”

“Yet you risked all when you spoke to Magnus Maximus thus.”

I said, “How did you know that?”

“If a rat squeaks on your Wall we hear it in those mountains.” He glanced behind him as he spoke. “For example, I can give you news from Mediolanum that you will find hard to bear. Your fanatical emperor has passed laws against those who do not worship his god. Sacrifices are not permitted and the temples are to be closed. Not even in the privacy of your home may you pray to the Immortal One.”