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

“I turned him into a soldier—a good one—and he gained a self-respect he never had before. He can neither read nor write, but he is clever with his hands and makes leather harness for the horses when he is not fighting. He can build a bridge or make a road, mend a leaking roof or repair a broken wall. You would find him useful in this crumbling city, my lord Bishop. All these things he learned as a soldier.”

I paused. I said, “He served with me in Italia. Then we came here. He met a girl in the city; she is the daughter of a man who makes glass ornaments to sell to people of your faith; and he wanted to marry her. The girl’s father said no, he was a legionary. He would be here to-day and gone to-morrow. He was not to be trusted. This made him miserable. He was homesick, too. He had learned that his mother had died. So he deserted. He had some idea of leaving the city, sending for the girl and taking her home. He is not very clever at thinking. He did not think much about what would happen afterwards.

“But what will happen if he does go home? The district he lives in is full of people whose sons have joined my legion. Many of them have since died. Will he be happy with his shame? Will they let him be happy? Will his girl be proud of him when he returns to thieving? Will she grow to despise him as a man who ran away? How much of their time will they spend in a sweat of fear, waiting for the authorities to catch up with them? You are the expert on souls and a man’s conscience. Not I.”

He said, “Is this true, what you have told me?”

“I may be a pagan, but I am also a soldier. I know my men.”

He frowned and his hands played with the cross about his neck.

I said, “We have, both of us, laws to obey. Let me render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s, and I will let you render unto God those things which axe His.”

He stood aside and I walked alone into the church.

When I came out again into the bright sunlight the crowd had gone and the square was empty. Only Flavius and my soldier stood there on the steps, at a little distance from the Bishop.

“Well?” he asked.

I blinked. The light, amongst other things, blinded me. I said harshly, “I spoke to a beggar inside. He told me that Vibius crept up to the great door and listened to our conversation through the crack. When he heard me say—that I would—take him by force if need be, he—he left the door and went to the far side where they sometimes sit and play at dice when no-one is about.”

The Bishop raised his head sharply.

“He is in your hands now,” I said.

I threw the dagger that all legionaries carry on to the steps and held out my hands. They were covered in blood.

I walked down the steps. I said, “Pray for him if you can. He must have been so unhappy, so afraid, so very lonely to do what he did. I, too, have known such despair.”

I heard a voice behind me say, “Maximus.” Out in the square I turned and looked back up the steps to the silent figure at the top. I said, “He had no faith in either of us.”

I turned and walked away from the church. At that moment all that I wanted to do was to be alone.

On the tenth night of May I was woken by a trumpet blowing the alarm. It was a wet night and I shivered on the wall and wrapped my cloak about me as I listened to the swirl of the water and watched the signal beacons flare across the river. On either side of me the troops stood waiting. Faintly through the darkness I heard cries and shouting.

“The outposts are being driven in,” I said. “Pray that they make the boats in time.”

At dawn, while I was drinking a cup of hot wine, for it was bitterly cold and the rain was still in our faces, we saw movement on the other bank; little parties of men launching the boats that lay concealed there. They were not attacked and I assumed that the enemy were content to let them go.

“Tell the centurion-in-charge to report to me when he gets in,” I said to Barbatio. “Tell half the men to stand down and keep watch for any boat bearing a blue cloth on a pole. It will be from Marcomir. He may have news for us, too.”

The centurion rubbed a sore on his nose. He was hot, excited and tired and the steam rose from his wet cloak. He had little to say. All the posts had reported movement in the country to the east and south—this was before the moon rose—all had been attacked a little after midnight. In accordance with their instructions they had fired the beacons and withdrawn half an hour later.

“Were the attacks in strength?”

The centurion said grimly, “If we hadn’t left when we did, sir, we should all be dead by now.”

“How many casualties?”

“Three dead and four wounded, sir.”

I returned to the river. The sun was up and a mass of tribesmen were moving slowly from the woods that surrounded the old villa district to the water’s edge. There must have been between five and eight thousand, all told. An excited decurion from a cavalry patrol to the south of the camp rode in to report that the mouth of the Moenus was crowded, for as far back as he could see, with a fleet of small boats. “Filled with armed men, sir.”

“Order up the nearest ships of the Rhenus fleet,” I said.

“I have done so, sir,” came the reply. He was torn between apprehension, lest he had done the wrong thing, and pride in his own initiative.

“Good,” I said. “Signal them to attack, but they are to keep out of the narrows. They will be trapped if they go too far in.”

My building of the fleet justified itself that morning. The three ships moved rapidly into the mouth and, executing a series of turning movements, opened fire with their ballistae, using both fireballs and iron projectiles. Those of the enemies’ boats that tried to close and board had their crews shot to pieces by the archers, while their craft were set on fire. The action lasted a little over an hour and by the end of that time half the enemy boats had retreated to a safe point up-stream. The other half had been sunk.

“Signal them to return up river and anchor,” I said at the end. “They may try to concentrate again later.”

All that afternoon the Vandal war-bands remained close to the bank. Tents went up, fires were lit, supply waggons could be seen in the distance, while palisades for defence were erected along the river front. By the early evening the smoke from a hundred fires hung ominously, a dark blue cloud, above the shadowed plain; and, all the while, the constant thud of axes and the groans of dying trees told us that the woods were being cut back to provide camping space for the mass of people moving in slowly from the direction of the old Limes road. They had come at last: they were determined to stay.

Messages came in from Bingium, from Boudobrigo, from Salisio and from Confluentes to say that all was well and that no enemy threatened the opposite bank. A horseman, riding in from Borbetomagus, however, said that there was an Aleman host encamped opposite the fort but no fighting had taken place.

For a week nothing happened and then a boat pushed off from the other shore one morning, a man bearing a green branch standing in the bows. I met him on the shore. He was a young man with a short beard and he carried no weapons except pride.

“I am Sunno, son of the king, Rando of the Alemanni. I come as a hostage. My father would speak with you in his camp across the river.” I withdrew a few paces and said to Marcomir, who stood wrapped in a cloak, the cowl well over his face, “Does he speak the truth?”

“Yes. It is his eldest son. Let me come with you. I understand them. They are akin to my own people.”

“Thank you, but no. This is something I will do myself. There is little danger.”

“I am a warrior,” he said. “It is silly for me to hide behind this.”