Wallace Breem - Eagle in the Snow - A Novel of General Maximus and Rome's Last Stand

“I did not realise you were a soldier,” he said, softly. “With a sword like that in his hands a man could aspire to the purple.”

“I gather you approve,” I said.

“My father was wrong. He did not believe you could do it.”

“Neither did you.”

He flushed and rubbed his cheek. “I do not bear malice,” he said, with a flash of his teeth. “I have a good ala. And you need as much cavalry as you can get. I’ve half a mind to join you. I’m sick of Eburacum and those endless patrols along the signal forts, looking for Saxons. When they do come they arrive so half drowned that they don’t even give us a good fight.”

“You forget,” I said, “I might not take you.”

He grinned. “You would,” he said. “You would take any one who was a soldier. I know you now. Why don’t you try for the purple? The men would elect you.” He spoke as though it were a game of some kind.

“And what would you be?”

“Oh, your deputy, of course.”

“I see. Yes, of course.”

“Why not? The province is yours. You could take it like a ripe plum. With a strong army to keep out the Saxons and the rest it could become a rich land again. Yours and mine.”

“But it’s not mine. It’s a part of Rome.”

“Oh, well, if you want more you could have that too. Gaul, Hispania and then the empire. But why bother? They’re too much trouble to hold down. Magnus Maximus, your name-sake, found that out. Why not stick to this island. It would be so easy. Why bother about the rest?”

I stared at him. “I don’t want the purple,” I said. “Neither here nor in Ravenna. As for the rest, everything that this island is, is Rome. Cut yourself off and you will be nothing; a rotting carcass without a head. We can’t manage without Rome. We are Rome.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “We need a strong man here who can establish a strong government and run things properly. Not one of them at Eburacum can do that. Not even my father, though he often thinks—” He checked and said, lightly, “Oh, well, it was worth trying. It is not often that I think of anyone except myself. A pity that. Rather a waste of good intentions.”

I did not trust him. “I shall bring the legion back when Stilicho lets me. Meanwhile you have the other legions and the auxiliaries. If you need activity, why not work on them? The Wall will not stay quiet for ever.”

He said, pettishly, “But it’s such a bore working on one’s own.”

Before he left for the return journey to the north, he said to me from the saddle, “I will make a good report, general.”

I smiled.

He leaned down towards me and said, urgently, “Don’t go, sir. Maximus went and the men he took never came back. It will be the same with you whatever your intentions may be. None of you will come back and all this will have been wasted.”

I walked back to my office in silence. He had not smiled when he spoke. He had meant every word he said.

A fortnight later we left Segontium for the south, and two months later we were in Gesoriacum. As I came in sight of the camp, the measured tread of the cohorts behind me, I gasped. The road leading to it was, for the last half mile, lined with men; rank upon rank of armoured men on horseback, each holding spear or sword, while Quintus, mounted on a black horse with two white feet, his red cloak spread behind him, the scarlet horse-tail plume of his helmet moving in the breeze, stood motionless by the gates with his hand raised in salutation.

I rode alongside him and he greeted me as though I had been an emperor.

“You found your horses?”

“Yes, I found my horses. Oh, it is good to see you, Maximus. Come and meet the general of Belgica.”

Late that night, when the camp was sleeping, we sat over a jug of wine in Quintus’ tent and he told me the news.

“Stilicho arrives to-morrow,” he said. “He is collecting all the troops he can lay his hands on. Apparently Italia is about to be invaded and our beloved emperor, Honorius, has retired discreetly to Ravenna. Rumour has it that he spends his time worrying about the health of his pet chickens and wondering if the marsh air will kill them off. So much for the Emperor. Now, what of our friends at Eburacum?”

I told him and when I came to the visit of Constans he looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said at length. “Something must be going to happen that the young man doesn’t like or he would never have applied to you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think we are both well out of the island. It is not likely to be a safe place for a general.”

He said, sombrely, “Nowhere is safe when you are a general.”

We sat in the sun outside my tent and, while Stilicho gave his orders, I watched him closely. This was the man who had helped Theodosius to defeat Maximus, my name-sake, and who had married a niece of his emperor afterwards. This was the man who had warred against the Goths of the Eastern Empire, who had checked Alaric once already at Larissa and who had destroyed the power of the Moorish prince, Gildo. This was Stilicho, the last General of the West; this man who sat so still in his chair and who gave his orders with such confidence and rapidity.

“I am stripping the frontier of its troops,” he said. “I am pulling out the Thirtieth Ulpia and the First Minerva from Germania Superior, as well as the Eighth Augusta from the lower province. It’s a gamble, but one I must take. I need every trained man who can bear arms if I am to win against Alaric— thirty regiments at least.”

“Will the frontier hold?” I asked, thinking of Maximus who had not cared.

“Long enough, perhaps.” He smiled. “The Teutons beyond the Rhenus are feeling the pressure of the Huns from the east upon their backs, and they are moving west. In time they will crowd out those already settled along the banks of the river your father once guarded. But things will hold for a while. I have made treaties of peace with the more influential chiefs along the Rhenus. Gold is a good cement for a temporary friendship.”

“What of the east?” asked Quintus quietly.

Stilicho frowned. “The Vandals this side of the Danubius—my people—are restless. They wish to migrate also. I have been forced to grant them fresh lands. They are, in theory, under our rule.” He shrugged. “You see, I live from one expedient to the next. I have to.”

“And Alaric?” I asked.

His face darkened. “Alaric is a prince of the Visigoths, a member of the family of the Balti. He failed to win a kingdom for himself in Graecia and now marches in search of another.”

“What are our orders, sir?”

“You will march to Divodurum where you will find the Army of Gaul. I will join you there.”

“We are going into Italia?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “I understand that it has been an ambition of yours to see Rome. Well, pray that we don’t see it. Because if you do it will only be in defeat.”

A week later, on a hot July day, the Twentieth Legion, six thousand strong, set out on its long march south, towards that country in the sun, whose capital I had never seen.

RHENUS

VI

OUR FIFTH WINTER in Italia was a wet one, the wettest they had known in ten years. But it was also our last. In the spring of 405 Stilicho, whom I had not seen for eighteen months, came to our camp in the valley of the river Padus. It was a day of high wind and rain. The wind came from the east and it was very cold, and the wind blew in our faces and shook the tents so that even their poles seemed to vibrate like the skin of a beaten drum. He inspected my troops, drank wine with my officers and then, late that night, held a conference with Quintus and myself inside the large leather tent that was my home.