Eagle in the Snow: The Classic Bestseller

by Wallace Breem

  A bearded man, who had been drawing lines in the snow with a stick, said quietly, “Is it wise to go on fighting like a soldier?”

  It was Fredegar.

  I said, equally quietly, “It is the only way I know how to fight. We held them for seven days at Moguntiacum because I was a soldier.”

  He said, “I understand.”

  “How many of your people are with us now?”

  He said calmly, “I have not been able to count them all. I am waiting, still, for more to come in. About three thousand.”

  The man I had spoken to the night before came up and saluted. He said, “The commandant, Scudilio, will be all right, so the doctor says. The arrow has been removed, but without too much loss of blood. He is trying to get up, but the orderlies are holding him down on the waggon.”

  “Keep him there. He can walk when he is fit and not before. Aquila, how many of his men are with us?”

  “Two hundred and forty, sir.”

  “Does that include the wounded?”

  “It is all those who can fight.”

  Fredegar said, “Let me hold the pass for you. Leave me two centuries of your men. Give me some auxiliaries also. I will hold this position for two days while you withdraw and set up further ambushes at each signal post down the road. Leave me one troop of horse, also, to act as messengers and to fight as a rear-guard. In this way we will slow them down and give time for your ballistae to arrive.”

  I hesitated. He put his head on one side and smiled. “I am not a young man, but I am a good fighter.”

  “Right. We will do as you suggest.”

  At that moment the sentry shouted, and we saw a horseman coming down the road from Treverorum at a canter. Quintus shaded his eyes and swore softly. At first I thought the animal was riderless but, as it came nearer, I saw that its rider was lying along the beast’s neck. The horse trotted up, blowing froth, and then stood still before us with heaving flanks and lowered head. Its rider slipped sideways out of the saddle and fell to the ground before any one could catch him. He was one of the five men I had sent on to Treverorum the night before.

  He was still alive but there was blood on his neck and on his left thigh. They looked like spear wounds. He was bleeding badly and his face had no colour in it. I bent down and took him in my arms.

  He said in a whisper, “We got six miles up the road to that big bend. There we met the survivors from the garrison at Boudobrigo.” He choked. “Water, please.” A soldier ran to fetch some. He swallowed a little. “The fort fell two days ago. They were hunted across the hills.” He spat blood, choked again and was silent. Presently he opened his eyes. He said, “Burgundians on the road to Treverorum. They caught us. Two got away. We covered them. The others died. I escaped.” He stared up at me, his eyes frightened. He was only a boy. He said, “Guntiarus has his war-host out. Thousands of them.” The blood was coming very slowly now from the wound in his thigh, in spite of the efforts of the medical orderly who knelt beside me. The wounded man looked faintly puzzled. He said in a whisper, “I didn’t know it was so easy.” I looked at the orderly, who shook his head. Presently the blood stopped coming altogether and I laid him down upon the snow.

  Quintus said quietly, “I could not have ridden two hundred yards with a wound like that.”

  Fredegar said calmly, “Let my plan stay. It is still the only one. But keep your cavalry. You will need them all. Leave me only a few horses.”

  “As you wish.”

  Quintus said, “Well, I had better get on and clear the Burgundians off the road.”

  “Yes.”

  The trumpet blew, and I said to Fredegar, “Join us when you can.”

  He stroked his beard. He said, “If I cannot join you, then I shall be with Marcomir. Either way I shall be content.”

  I gripped him by the arm, and then swung myself on to my horse.

  He looked up at me and smiled grimly. “I have much to avenge.”

  The Franks were spreading out on the slopes above the road; trees were being felled, and the palisade round the tower was being straightened up, as I rode off at the head of my legion. Ahead of us, Quintus and his cavalry were fading from sight into a blur of falling snow. I wrapped my cloak about me and chewed a dry biscuit. I was sick with fatigue and with worry.

  We marched, and, at intervals of two miles, a double century would fall out to prepare defences and lay an ambush. Three hours later we reached the scene of the fighting. The Burgundians had blocked the road with fallen trees, had roasted the garrison of the signal post to death, and were spread out along the slopes, either side of the road. Quintus had failed to break through, had taken his horses well to the rear, and was feeling the enemy position with his scouts. The main body of his troopers were off the road and out of sight. It was then the middle of the afternoon and behind us, in the distance, echoing between the hills, we could hear a distant murmur that was the sound of Fredegar and his men engaged in battle.

  By nightfall we had failed to dislodge the Burgundians, and it was then, while we were sitting, exhausted, round a small fire, that a messenger rode in to say that Fredegar was in difficulties.

  “Our people cannot hold them,” he said, in his vile Latin. “They are fighting all the five tribes at once, and soon they will be surrounded. We have used the last of our arrows.” He put his hand on my arm. “My chief does not ask this, but I do. He is an old man and was a great warrior once. Can you not help him? He is prepared to die, not for your emperor, but for you, and to keep faith with Marcomir.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Quintus, we’ve got to get behind these Burgundians. Try to get a cohort round to the left, if it takes all night. Send fifty horsemen across country to make for the road in their rear. Send men with loud voices who can blow trumpets. They are to pretend to be reinforcements. Brushwood tied to the saddles will kick up the snow. It’s dry enough.”

  He said, “That trick won’t work twice.”

  “It will. We never played it on them. Get those men moving now. And send another detachment down to help Fredegar. Give them trumpets too. Make the Vandals think the Burgundians have been beaten and that we’ve sent help.”

  I turned to the Frank. “Tell your chief to ask for a truce. They will grant it. They have lost enough men already. Fredegar can say what he likes, but while he is saying it, the bulk of his men are to retire down the road upon us. In this way he will escape.”

  “But it is not honourable.”

  I shot out my hand and seized him by the shoulder. “I am not fighting for honour,” I said. “I am fighting for the life of this province, and I will employ any means to protect it. Go now and do as I say.”

  “What will the Vandals think?” he muttered dismally.

  “What do I care what they think? What are the Marcomanni and the Vandals to me? My honour lies in my hands, not in theirs.”

  The deception worked. It was an old trick, though I had never tried it before. Gunderic and Hermeric at first refused to parley, but Respendial, whose pride had been hurt by the defection of his cousin, insisted on a truce. If he could win another tribe to his side it would restore his self-esteem and his position in the eyes of the others. The meeting took place at day-break and, while Fredegar talked, his men began to slip away from their positions, keeping to the woods and not descending to the road until they were well out of sight. Difficulties arose over terms and Fredegar said—it was of course a lie—that we were camped a little way down the road, that it was necessary to re-assure me that he could hold his position, and that to make victory certain, the Vandals should pass through his lines that evening. They could then make a night attack and take us unawares. In return for this the Franks, under his leadership, were to be allowed to return to the Rhenus and hold land on both banks, between Bingium and Moguntiacum. It was now time for the morning meal, so both parties withdrew to eat in their own camps and consider the terms. All this Fredegar told me when he rejoined us.

  “How long did it take them to discov
er they had been tricked?”

  “I do not know,” he said cheerfully. “We kept a sharp watch but we never saw them following us. How goes it with you?”

  “Our trick worked, too. The Burgundians have retreated north into the hills.”

  “So!” he said. “And what do we do now?”

  “We march,” I said. “Nothing stands between us and Treverorum except fatigue. That is the most difficult enemy of all, that we have to conquer.”

  The retreat went on. We were out of the worst of the hills but, all the time, we were climbing upwards to a highland plain that exposed us to the worst of the weather. The wind had fallen, however, there was no more snow, and the sun shone and warmed our spirits. At intervals I would drop a mixed group of soldiers and Franks to make an ambush and, in every instance, my orders were the same. “Hold the position until they look like over-whelming you. Then burn the signal tower, if there is one, and retire behind the next ambush and march on the rear-guard. Keep your casualties as light as possible. Don’t try to be brave. There will be time for that later.”

  We marched slowly and in self-imposed silence. There was only the everlasting rumble of the wheels of the ox carts, the monotonous clanging of the cooking pots that hung beneath them, the tired shuffling of feet, and the occasional whimper of a wounded man, tried beyond the point of human endurance. The men held their spears reversed over their shoulders, the blades wrapped in cloth to keep them dry, and the centurions strode stolidy behind their men, swearing softly if a soldier showed signs of falling out. Once, a man, parched with thirst, picked up a handful of snow and raised it to his mouth. I struck him across the back with my stick. “Lick the frozen snow, you idiot, and you may blister your tongue. Be patient. Wait until the next halt.”

  The cavalry led their horses. Every hour we stopped for ten minutes, and the section commanders would pass round a flask of vinegar, so that each man might swallow a mouthful; while the mules were off-loaded and their backs examined for gall marks. At midday I went back to the waggon train and spoke to Scudilio. He had a better colour in his face now, and pleaded with me to let him march with his men. “No,” I said. “You will need all your strength at the thirtieth milestone.”

  He said, “I let you down. All your plans in retreat depended upon the holding of Bingium.”

  I shook my head. “We might not have been able to hold it in any event. Don’t think about it. Remember, I trusted him also. Up to the very last, I trusted him. If there is blame, then let us share it equally. It does not matter now.”

  “I should march with my men,” he said. “I know what you think of the auxiliaries. I wanted, so much, to prove you wrong.”

  “There is nothing now to prove.”

  That afternoon, because of the icy conditions, we made only six miles, even though I took the precaution of continuing the march an hour after sundown, in order to keep our lead on the enemy. The next morning we set out a little after sunrise, as was our custom, and I had cavalry patrols range the countryside, looking for farms, huts or villages where they might pick up food; for the men were suffering acutely from being on half rations in the intense cold. They were more cheerful now, however, and began to sing those tuneless marching songs that all soldiers sing. They were all the same, usually obscene, about girls or a girl, had innumerable verses, and seemed to go on for ever. But I had not heard them sing since that last time when we had marched out of Treverorum, in what seemed to be another life. Then, we had been a legion. We were a legion still, and I was much cheered by the thought.

  Two hours later, a messenger rode up from the rear-guard.

  “There is the noise of fighting behind us. We are short of two ambush parties, sir.”

  “They must have caught up at last. Tell your commander to hold his ground till he has collected the two groups. I want no-one left behind, do you understand.”

  He was back again, an hour later. “Their horsemen are in sight,” he said breathlessly. “We picked up one patrol, but the other, so they think, was wiped out.”

  I nodded. “Your commander knows what to do.”

  By the middle of the afternoon we could see their horsemen coming down the road. They were a great distance away, but they were clearly silhouetted against the white dazzle of the snow. They closed up slowly, for there were not many of them, and then attacked the rear-guard. Their charges were wild and undisciplined, and were beaten off easily enough. Later, more and more horsemen joined them, and they got bolder, and followed us closely, making quick fierce attacks whenever the opportunity occurred. Quintus kept a screen of cavalry either side of the column, for there were heavy drifts on the road, and the marching was slow and painful. Soon our men got so used to watching cavalry fights take place out of bow-shot range that, presently, they took no notice. Occasionally, an enemy horseman would break through and canter up in a flurry of snow, and make a clumsy sweep at a helmeted figure trudging alongside a cart. The legionary might go down, unprotesting, too tired to defend himself, and the Vandal ride off, brandishing his sword in triumph. Sometimes, however, a bowman would hastily string his bow and loose an arrow, so that the man would continue his journey back to his waiting comrades, dying over the neck of his horse.

  On the third day, after they caught us, we marched ten miles, and now there were horsemen all about us, in groups ranging from a dozen to twenty or thirty; but of the columns of their infantry there was no sign. That night their cavalry camped within two miles of us, and we were attacked, when the moon rose, by men both on horse and on foot. The enemy were a mixture of Vandals, Quadi and Marcomanni, and their efforts were, as Quintus remarked contemptuously, half-hearted in the extreme. A second attack, just after daybreak, was ended by a high wind and a sharp fall of snow which created a small blizzard; and both sides were compelled to cease fighting because of these conditions. That night I broke camp as soon as it was dark, despite the fact that the men had been on the march for nine hours. Again we made a forced march through fresh snow, the cavalry breaking the trail ahead of us in slow and coldly painful fashion. The pickets that we had left to keep the fires alight caught up with us late the next day, and reported that the enemy had not sent out patrols to the camp until well past daylight, and did not realise they had been tricked until the pickets rode off. We marched again all day, the men singing their tuneless songs, Fredegar limping beside the aquilifer, and Quintus bringing up the rear of the column and looking, as usual, a part of his horse.

  In the late afternoon the sky cleared and I could see the sun, a circle of molten gold, just above the tops of the trees that thickened the horizon to our front. We dropped into a hollow, passed an abandoned straggle of huts, and then began to climb up a long slope; and either side of the road the snow lay thick and undisturbed, as far as a man on a horse could see. The legionaries began to quicken their pace, and the cavalry, as though at command, mounted their horses. A stir of expectation ran through the column, and faces began to peer through the slits in the waggon covers. There, ahead of us, between a gap in the trees, black against the sky, stood the framework of a signal tower, and the smoke from it streamed upwards into the cold air, as a message of welcome against our coming. We knew then that we had reached our destination—the thirtieth milestone out of Augusta Treverorum.

  It was now the thirteenth day of January. For seven days we had held Moguntiacum against the hatred and envy and greed of five tribes. Then, we had retreated for six days through the hills in the most appalling conditions of ice and snow, fighting a rear-guard action of savage skirmishes over a distance of seventy odd miles. Yet not one man had fallen out who had not previously been injured by the swords or axes of the barbarians. It was still a legion that I commanded. As I went forward to greet the post commander, while my tired men began to bivouac behind the ditches we had prepared all those months before, a raven flew above my head and cawed dismally. I shivered. I knew, in my heart, that the legion had made its last march.

  XVIII

  INSIDE T
HE PALISADE I met Agilio, no longer the care-free boy I had last seen a short while ago; his face was strained and he looked anxious the whole time.

  “Is everything in order?” I asked.

  He nodded dumbly, his eyes wide as he watched my tired men file past towards the site of their camp in the rear. He had not believed me when I had warned him of what might happen; he had not visualised the possibility of defeat.

  “Is Flavius here?”

  “Yes, sir. He has been here several days.”

  “Have you seen anything of the garrisons from the other forts—Salisio, Boudobrigo, Confluentes?”

  He shook his head.

  “I signalled them to withdraw days ago,” I said. “They must have been destroyed by now. We saw nothing of them upon the road.”

  Flavius was inside the tower, and Quintus and Fredegar joined me there. We sat down on the narrow benches in the living quarters and drank the wine Agilio offered us, in silence. We were so tired and so cold that nothing seemed to matter except sleep. Even death would have been welcomed as a friend at that moment. At length I roused myself with an effort. “What supplies have you got?”

  Flavius said grimly, “All I could lay my hands on. Many were evacuating the city when I left. I had to kill in order to take what I wanted. I have thirty waggons, loaded with biscuits, salt meat, corn and vinegar, as well as a little wine. Also arrow heads and shafts, ballistae bolts and spears. Enough food, that is, for five thousand men for two days on full rations.”

  I said, “We have Fredegar’s Franks to feed, as well as the signal post people we picked up on the way. How many did you bring?”

  “The two centuries you left me, and four hundred others.”

  “Any horses?”

  “Sixty. That was all I could muster. I had to use mules for the waggons.”

  “Artillery?”

  “Four ballistae and six carroballistae.”

  “Very well.” I nodded my dismissal.