Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

It was all over by the fifth hour of the day. And then the Germans turned north again, and walked the thirty miles back to where their many thousands of wagons stood all around the camp of the dead Aurelius. In Mallius Maximus's camp and in Caepio's they had made a wonderful discovery: huge stores of wheat, plus other foodstuffs, and sufficient vehicles and mules and oxen to carry all of it away. Gold, money, clothing, even arms and armor didn't attract them in the least. But Mallius Maximus's and Caepio's food was irresistible, so that they plundered the last rasher of bacon and the last pot of honey. And some hundreds of amphorae of wine. One of the German interpreters, captured when Aurelius's camp was overwhelmed and restored to the bosom of his Cimbri people, had not been back among his own kind more than a very few hours when he realized that he had been among the Romans far too long to have any love left for barbarian living. So when no one was looking, he stole a horse and headed south for Arausio town. His route passed well to the east of the river, for he had no wish to encounter the aftermath of the terrible Roman defeat, even by smelling its unburied corpses. On the ninth day of October, three days after the battle, he walked his tired steed down the cobbled main street of the prosperous town, looking for someone to whom he could tell his news, but finding no one. The whole populace seemed to have fled before the advance of the Germans. And then at the far end of the main street he spied the villa of Arausio's most important personage a Roman citizen, of course and there he discerned activity. Arausio's most important personage was a local Gaul named Marcus Antonius Meminius because he had been given the coveted citizenship by a Marcus Antonius, for his services to the army of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus seventeen years before. Exalted by this distinction and helped by the patronage of the Antonius family to gain trade concessions between Gaul-across-the-Alps and Roman Italy, Marcus Antonius Meminius had prospered exceedingly. Now the chief magistrate of the town, he had tried to persuade its people to stay in their houses at least long enough to see whether the battle being fought to the north went for or against Rome. Not succeeding, he had nonetheless elected to stay himself, merely acting prudently by sending his children off in the care of their pedagogue, burying his gold, and concealing the trapdoor to his wine cellar by moving a large stone slab across it. His wife announced that she preferred to stay with him than go with the children, and so the two of them, attended by a loyal handful of servants, had listened to the brief cacophony of anguish which had floated on the heavy air between Mallius Maximus's camp and the town. When no one came, Roman or German, Meminius had sent one of his slaves to find out what had happened, and was still reeling with the news when the first of the senior Roman officers to save their own skins came into town. They were Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and his handful of aides, behaving more like drugged animals on their way to ritual slaughter than high Roman military men; this impression of Meminius's was heightened by the behavior of Metellus Numidicus's son, who herded them with the sharpness and bite of a small dog. Meminius and his wife came out personally to lead the party into their villa, then gave them food and wine, and tried to obtain a coherent account of what had happened. But all their attempts failed; for the only rational one, young Metellus Piglet, had developed a speech impediment so bad he couldn't get two words out, and Meminius and his wife had no Greek, and only the most basic Latin. More dragged themselves in over the next two days, but pitifully few, and no ranker soldiers, though one centurion was able to say that there were some thousands of survivors on the west bank of the river, wandering dazed and leaderless. Caepio came in last of all, accompanied by his son, Caepio Junior, whom he had found on the western bank as he came down it toward Arausio. When Caepio learned that Mallius Maximus was sheltering inside Meminius's house, he refused to stay, electing instead to press onward to Rome, and take his son with him. Meminius gave him two gigs harnessed to four-mule teams, and sent him on his way with food and drivers. Bowed over with grief at the death of his sons, Mallius Maximus was unable until the third day to ask whereabouts the six senators were; until then Meminius hadn't even known of them, but when Mallius Maximus pressed for a search party to find them, Meminius demurred, afraid that the Germans were still in possession of the field of battle, and more concerned with making sure that he and his wife and all his shocked guests were readied for a quick flight to safety. Such was the situation when the German interpreter rode into Arausio and located Meminius. It was immediately clear to Meminius that the man was big with news of some kind, but unfortunately neither of them could understand the other's Latin, and it did not occur to Meminius to ask Mallius Maximus to see the man. Instead, he gave him shelter, and told him to wait until someone came with both the language and the state of mind to interview him.

Under Cotta's leadership, the missing senatorial embassage had ventured back across the river in their boat the moment the Germans turned back into the north, and began to search that awful carnage for survivors. With their lictors and servants counted in, they numbered twenty-nine all told, and labored without regard for their safety should the Germans return. As the time passed, no one came to help them. Drusus had come to his senses with darkness, lain half-conscious through the night, and with the dawn recovered enough to crawl in search of water, his only thought; the river was three miles away, the camp almost as far, so he struck off to the east, hoping to find a stream where the ground began to rise. Not more than a few feet away he found Quintus Sertorius, who flapped a hand at sight of him. "Can't move"," said Sertorius, licking cracked lips. "Leg dead. Waiting for someone. Thought it would be German." "Thirsty," croaked Drusus. "Find water, then be back." The dead were everywhere, acres upon acres of them, but they chiefly lay behind the route of Drusus's unsteady walk in search of water, for he had fallen in the true front line at the very beginning of the battle, and the Romans had not advanced an inch, only fallen back and back and back. Like himself, Sertorius had remained in the front line; had he lain among the tumbled heaps and mounds of Roman dead scant feet to his rear, Drusus would never have seen him. His heavy Attic helmet gone, Drusus was bareheaded; a little puff of wind came and blew one single strand of hair across the great lump above his right eye, and so swollen, so stretched was the skin and tissue beneath, so bloodied the frontal bone, that the touch of that single strand of hair brought Drusus to his knees in agony. But the will to live is very strong. Drusus climbed sobbing to his feet and continued his walk east, and even remembered that he had nothing in which to carry water, and that there would be some like Sertorius in sore need of water. Groaning with the immensity of the pain produced by bending over, he pulled the helmets off two dead Marsic soldiers and walked on, carrying the helmets by their chin straps. And there among the field of Marsic dead stood a little water donkey, blinking its gentle, long-lashed eyes at the carnage, but unable to move away because its halter was wound round and round the arm of a man buried beneath other corpses. It had tried to tug itself free, but only succeeded in tightening the rope until tubes of blackening flesh protruded between the coils. Still wearing his dagger, Drusus cut the rope where it entered the lifeless arm and tied it to his sword belt, so that if he fainted the donkey would not be able to get away. But at the moment he found it, it was very glad to see a living man, and stood patiently while Drusus slaked his thirst, then was quite happy to follow wherever Drusus led. On the outskirts of the huge confusion of bodies around the water donkey were two moving legs; amid renewed groans from Drusus that the donkey echoed sadly, Drusus managed to shove sufficient of the dead aside to uncover a Marsic officer who was still very much alive. His bronze cuirass was stove in along its right side just below and in front of the man's right arm, and a hole in the middle of the great dent oozed pink fluid rather than blood. Working as delicately as he could, Drusus got the officer out of the press of bodies onto a patch of trampled grass and began to unbuckle the cuirass where its front and back plates met along the left side. The officer's eyes were closed, hut a pulse in his neck was beating strongly, and when Drusus pried the shell of the cuirass off the chest and abdomen it had been designed to protect, he cried out sharply. Then, "Go easy!" said an irritable voice in purest Latin. Drusus stopped for a moment, then resumed unbuckling the leather underdress. "Lie still, you fool!" he said. "I'm only trying to help. Want some water first?" "Water," echoed the Marsic officer. Drusus fed it to him out of a helmet, and was rewarded with the unshuttering of two yellow-green eyes, a sight that reminded him of snakes; the Marsi were snake worshipers, and danced with them, and charmed them, and even kissed them tongue to tongue. Easy to believe, looking at those eyes. "Quintus Poppaedius Silo," the Marsic officer said. "Some irrumator about eight feet tall caught me on the hop.'' He closed his eyes; two tears rolled down his bloodied cheeks. "My men they're all dead, aren't they?" "Afraid so," said Drusus gently. "Along with mine and everybody else's, it seems. My name is Marcus Livius Drusus. Now hold on, I'm going to lift your jerkin off." The wound had stanched itself, thanks to the woolen tunic the force of the German long-sword had pushed into its narrow mouth; Drusus could feel broken pieces of ribs moving under his hands, but cuirass, leather jerkin, and ribs had managed to prevent the blade invading the interior of chest and belly. "You'll live," said Drusus. "Can you get up if I help you? I have a comrade back in my own legion who needs me. So it's either stay here and make your own way to me when you can, or come with me now on your own two feet." Another lone strand of hair blew across his pulped right forehead, and he screamed with the pain of it. Quintus Poppaedius Silo considered the situation. "You'll never cope with me in your state," he said. "See if you can give me my dagger, I'm going to cut a bit off the bottom of my tunic and use it to bind this gash. Can't afford to start bleeding again in this Tartarus." Drusus gave him the dagger and moved off with his donkey. "Where will I find you?" Silo asked. "Over yonder, next legion down," said Drusus. Sertorius was still conscious. He drank gratefully, then managed to sit up. His wound was actually the worst of the three of them, and clearly he could not be moved until Drusus got help from Silo. So for the time being Drusus sank down next to Sertorius and rested, moving only when Silo appeared an hour later. The sun was getting up into the sky, and it was growing hot. "The two of us will have to move Quintus Sertorius far enough away from the dead to give his leg less chance of being infected," said Silo. "Then I suggest we rig up some sort of shade shelter for him, and see if there's anyone else alive out here." All this was done with frustrating slowness and too much pain, but eventually Sertorius was made as comfortable as possible, and Drusus and Silo set off on their quest. They hadn't gone very far when Drusus became nauseated, and sank down in a retching huddle on the battered dusty ground, each convulsion of diaphragm and stomach coming amid frantic screams of agony. In little better case, Silo subsided near him, and the donkey, still tethered to Drusus's belt, waited patiently. Then Silo rolled over and inspected Drusus's head. He grunted. "If you can stand it, Marcus Livius, I think your pain might be much less if I broke open that lump with my knife and let some of the fluid out. Are you game?" "I'd brave the hydra-headed monster if I thought it might fix me up!" gasped Drusus. Before he applied the tip of his dagger to the lump, Silo muttered some charm or incantation in an ancient tongue Drusus could not identify; not Oscan, for that he understood well. A snake spell, that's what he's whispering, thought Drusus, and felt oddly comforted. The pain was blinding. Drusus fainted. And while he was unconscious Silo squeezed as much of the dammed-up blood and fluid out of the lump as he could, mopping up the mess with a chunk he tore off Drusus's tunic, and then helping himself to another chunk as Drusus stirred, came around. "Feel any better?" asked Silo. "Much," said Drusus. "If I bind it, you'll only hurt more, so here, use this to mop up the muck when it blinds you. Sooner or later it will stop draining." Silo glanced up into the pitiless sun. "We've got to move into some shade, or we won't last and that means young Sertorius won't last either," he said, getting to his feet. The closer they staggered to the river, the more signs that men lived among the carnage began to appear; faint cries for help, movements, moans. "This is an offense against the gods," said Silo grimly. "No battle was ever worse planned. We were executed! I curse Gnaeus Mallius Maximus! May the great light-bearing Snake wrap himself around Gnaeus Mallius Maximus's dreams!" "I agree, it was a fiasco, and we were no better generaled than Cassius's men at Burdigala. But the blame has to be apportioned fairly, Quintus Poppaedius. If Gnaeus Mallius is guilty, how much more so is Quintus Servilius Caepio?" Oh, how that hurt to say! His wife's father, no less. "Caepio? What did he have to do with it?" asked Silo. The head wound was feeling much better; Drusus found he could turn to look at Silo easily. "Don't you know?" he asked. "What does any Italian ever know about Roman command decisions?" Silo spat derisively on the ground. "We Italians are just here to fight. We don't get a say in how we are to fight, Marcus Livius." "Well, since the day he arrived here from Narbo, Quintus Servilius has refused to work with Gnaeus Mallius." Drusus shivered. "He wouldn't take orders from a New Man." Silo stared at Drusus; yellow-green eyes fixed on black eyes. "You mean Gnaeus Mallius wanted Quintus Servilius here in this camp?" "Of course he did! So did the six senators from Rome. But Quintus Servilius wouldn't serve under a New Man." "You're saying it was Quintus Servilius who kept the two armies separate?" Silo couldn't seem to believe what he was hearing. "Yes, it was Quintus Servilius." It had to be said. "He is my father-in-law, I am married to his only daughter. How can I bear it? His son is my best friend, and married to my sister fighting here today with Gnaeus Mallius dead, I suppose." The fluid Drusus mopped from his face was mostly tears. "Pride, Quintus Poppaedius! Stupid, useless pride!'' Silo had stopped walking. "Six thousand soldiers of the Marsi and two thousand Marsic servants died here yesterday now you tell me it was because some overbred Roman idiot bore a grudge against some underbred Roman idiot?" The breath hissed between Silo's teeth, he shook with rage. "May the great light-bearing Snake have them both!" "Some of your men may be alive," said Drusus, not to excuse his superiors, but in an effort to comfort this man, whom he knew he liked enormously. And he was awash in pain, pain that had nothing to do with any physical wound, pain all bound up in a terrible grief. He Marcus Livius Drusus who had not known any of life's realities until now wept for shame at the thought of a Rome led by men who could cause so much pain all for the sake of a class-conscious quarrel. "No, they're dead," said Silo. "Why do you think it took me so long to join you where Quintus Sertorius lay? I went among them looking. Dead. All dead!" "And mine," said Drusus, weeping still. "We took the brunt of it on the right, and not a cavalry trooper to be seen." It was shortly after that they saw the senatorial party in the distance, and called for help.