Bissula. English

by Felix Dahn

  CHAPTER XVI.

  During those days the vicinity of the Holy Mountain, where a largenumber of fugitives had taken refuge, was full of busy life, and fromthe north, the quarter not threatened by the Romans, reinforcementswere constantly arriving from other provinces.

  The Tribune's efforts to discover the retreat of the fugitives had beenbaffled hitherto; neither those in the marshes nor on Odin's Mountainhad been overtaken by the spies and reconnoitring parties of the RomanGeneral. Marshes and impenetrable primeval forests surrounded the Romancamp on the Idisenhang on every side except southward toward the lake.

  In the last few days, after a tremendous thunder storm, a southwestwind had sprung up, bringing on its dripping wings pouring torrents ofrain; then the forests became absolutely impassable for the heavy treadof the legions: the few fords were buried in marshes or overflowed; thetiniest rivulet became a raging river. Sulky and shivering, theintruders, principally natives of the south, remained in the camp underplank roofs and leather tents, fanning day and night the flames of hugefires which, however, as all the wood was wet, diffused more smoke thanwarmth.

  For long distances from the foot of the mountain the few and narrowopenings which led to the interior of the immense forests were blockedand barricaded by felled trees. Huge oaks, ashes, and pine-trees hadbeen felled and piled one above another more than the height of a man,strengthened by earth and turf, and held together at regular distancesby enormous posts driven into the ground or by trees which had beenleft standing. Thus an almost insurmountable breastwork was formed, onwhose summit, and in the tops of the trees towering above it, the bestarchers were stationed. Similar lines of defence were repeated, onebehind another, wherever the locality permitted. The legions would haveneeded many more days than the brief time still remaining before theend of August--they always finished their short summer campaigns inGermany before the commencement of the autumn rains--to storm all thesefortifications; they could scarcely find it possible to make a circuitof them, on account of the marshes. But even if they succeeded inpenetrating all the barricades to the foot of the mountain, they wouldthen be forced to begin the inexpressibly toilsome siege of thisnatural fortress.

  All the entrances were covered by several tiers of logs; while, on themountain itself, rising one behind another, was a whole system of "ringwalls." These extremely powerful and extensive fortifications datedprincipally from Celtic times, but had been considerably strengthenedand enlarged in scope by the Alemanni during their occupation of thecountry for more than the past century: they had been forced to seekrefuge here from the Roman troops often enough.

  These walls were made of heaped up earth, turf, palisades, and socalled Cyclopean walls: that is, rocks, so closely joined togetherwithout mortar or bricks, by a skilful use of their points, edges, andfissures that fire, tearing asunder, and the blows of the ram seemedequally ineffectual.

  Each one of these rings, which rose in stories, like terraces, requiredto be stormed as a separate fortress. Each lower one was protected notonly by its own garrison, but by all those above, since they were soconstructed that stones, logs, spears, and arrows from all the upperwalls could strike the enemy without injuring the combatants on the onebeneath. Seven such defences girdled the mountain, the topmost onesurrounding the summit, which concealed Odin's altar in the heart of anash forest.

  Those unable to fight, the women, children, old men, and slaves, werescattered through all the stories of the mountain fortress. The herdshad been driven to the rear on the northern side, where their lowing,neighing, and bleating would be as far as possible from the enemy. Thefugitives rested at night in huts built of thick green foliage, oftenwith the skin of some animal fastened among the branches, which theAlemanni had great skill in constructing. Nor was there any lack ofcellarlike subterranean passages where stores of grain and valuableswere concealed.

  The fighting men garrisoned all the entrances, reconnoitred in smallbands, especially at night, beyond the barricades close to theneighborhood of the Roman camp. They spent the day in feats of arms ordrilling, impatiently enduring the long delay in giving battle, andgrumbling at the incomprehensible procrastination of their white-hairedDuke. For the latter, Adalo, and other leaders, huts of leaves had beenbuilt on the summit of the mountain with the tents of their followersscattered around them.

  Before one of these huts (a stag's antlers had been cut on the centralpost for a house mark) on the day after Bissula's capture, a brightfire was burning late in the evening, fed with pine cones which hadbeen protected from the wet under the stone closing the opening of acellar. It was supplied by a man about forty years old, whose croppedhair showed that he was a slave; while the shape of his short face, hisdark eyes, high cheek bones and snub nose denoted that he was not ofGerman lineage. Suomar had bought him many years before in Vindonissa;cheap enough, for Valentinian--or the slave dealer--had broughtcountless captives from the Jazyge war.

  In front of the fire, sheltered from the wind and smoke, old Waldrunlay on a bearskin, her feet covered with another. Adalo was kneelingbeside her. Mirthfulness and wrath had vanished; deep sorrow cloudedhis handsome face. He gave the blind woman some wine to drink from asilver goblet. Both beaker and wine were booty wrested from the Roman.