The Summer Sword

by Alaric Longward

  I got up and saw Adalwulf rushing for us with four Sarmatians, shields out. Two fell, screaming, as arrows landed around us from the woods, and I turned to look at twenty Ubii shooting at us as they advanced, not far, eyes full of fear as they saw how many men there were in the village.

  I cursed and ran after the Ubii chief, who turned to see me and Adalwulf coming and ran.

  Gunda threw her spear and took him in the leg, and he fell.

  Gervas, arrow in his shield, appeared and hacked down with his sword, cursed, spat, laughed, and barked. Wulf came to him, and Gervas chopped down on the neck of the foe. Then again. He ripped it off the torso, last shreds of skin tearing. He lifted the head for the enemy to see. They flinched, cursed, and wept, and then I walked for them.

  I, too, saw Woden’s dance, felt the urgent need to kill, to rip the foe apart, and saw four bows aimed at me.

  From the night, rode Gochan. He and his men rode over the shield-wall from behind, throwing it into red ruin. Men fell on their faces, horses dashed through them, and swords flashed. A rider fell, his leg missing, another died to pair of spears, but the Sarmatian wave punished the rest back to the woods, and none escaped, save horses without riders.

  I watched them running and looked around.

  Gunda was there, alive, her eyes gleaming as she poked her spear into a dead body, wondering at the ease of taking a life. Alde was riding around Gochan, and I saw the Tencteri sending men around the village in groups of dozens as the Sarmatians were making the horses ready.

  They all knew we would not stay there.

  We would ride.

  The Ubii were there for a reason.

  Germanicus was in war, after all, having fooled everyone. And I turned and saw the guard at the doorway gone. I saw the hall was empty. I rushed in and cursed bitterly.

  He was gone. Publius too.

  I turned to see the Gray Wolf and my half-brother.

  I eyed the Gray Wolf. “You were looking at the bridges?”

  He shook his head. “Your man, the Young Wolf, told us not to. That there was trouble in the north and his men would—”

  Gochan spat. “None has been watching the bridges yesterday or today. We expected him to send our boys away, but not the Tencteri. Seems my brother did more than just try to capture you. He turned Roman.”

  I spat and cursed. “That’s what he meant. When he said he had to hurry. Germanicus was coming over. Woden’s arse! How bad is it?”

  He grinned. “Bad? Very bad. It will be filled with a stream of legionnaires. They began the night before and are far already. They will have passed Alisio. They are, it seems, going for the Marsi after all.”

  Gray Wolf cursed. “They are no longer with Armin. I got word yesterday. Many are celebrating the harvest and Freyr in Tanfana. A hill near the river. Armin is a day away. Perhaps they know about Tanfana.”

  “The celebration,” I cursed. “Aye. Perhaps. They either go for Armin, or they hope to surprise the Marsi during the celebration. They hope the eagle might be there, but they just want to kill and capture…”

  Gervas spat. “We must go! We must warn the Marsi. Now!”

  “To the horses!” Wulf agreed, both idiots.

  I lifted a hand. “Wait. We must make sure Armin knows,” I said. “We don’t know where they are going. Warn the Marsi, of course, but if Armin isn’t ready, and if he has no eyes out here, it might be even worse than what will happen to the Marsi. Armin’s remaining people are to the east, near Castra Flamma. Germanicus might be testing his men and himself, but who knows how far they go if things go well?”

  “How many?” Adalwulf asked.

  “Twenty thousand,” Gochan said. “At least. Three legions and ten cohorts of auxilia. If they brought them all. As we know, they lack supplies.”

  “We were Armin’s eyes,” I cursed. “We missed twenty thousand marching men, because Germanicus was underestimated, and I was…”

  Waiting to surprise those who sought to kill me.

  I lamented. “It is my fault, this way or that, and it is something that cannot be remedied unless by action. Send more men to warn Armin and the Marsi on that hill, and the rest of the land. Then we gather what we can on the way and go and find them.”

  The men were rushing around as Adalwulf went to scream to his men. Gochan was sending men to all the directions, and some we would never see again, for the enemy was thick in the woods. I turned to see the sky to the south, and I saw smoke from burning villages and towns.

  They were burning behind us already.

  Germanicus had prepared in secret, was making war, was learning he was good at it, and more, that he loved it.

  CHAPTER 9

  The land between Luppia River and the Bructeri towns we were passing were empty. There were a hundred villages on fire, and we were gathering what warriors we could find. Men were joining the band from deep woods, others were slinking away with their wives and children, and many were herding cattle to hideouts. Halls were being emptied, those that had survived the auxilia scouts and legionnaire cavalry.

  These were the marks of war everywhere.

  Death, confusion, and fear were evident in the land we passed.

  In Luppia Valley, peace was always a rare thing. The people, Sigambri, Tencteri, Usipetes, Marsi, Bructeri who lived closest to the rivers, knew what this meant, and they prepared to fight habitually, or someone would likely kill them. They lived in fire, and the survivors we saw were rarely weeping, even if they were terrified. Seeing a troop of over two hundred, and many more every hour, scared many people to headlong flight.

  They fled to the mosquito infested woods, and the locust that was Rome could go away or stay, but the woods would ever guard them, and if they ever lost the woods, like the Sigambri south of Luppia had, they would no longer be a nation.

  Here and there, we began to see enemy corpses, most stripped of arms and armor.

  Gauls, men from the south, some dark of skin from Africa, the world had gathered in the woods of Germania.

  We rode for the east, for Tanfana, near the end of Luppia River. We rode through foggy hills and deep woods, our scouts out and alert. After a day of this, we found enemy scouts who had fled, and the men who joined us were many more. Our party grew into a thousand men and women and thickened with spears and seethed with rage.

  On the end of the second day, just after Sunna had set and Mani had risen, far across a valley we were traversing, we saw a hill filled with smoke and fires.

  Gray Wolf nodded at it. “Gods. They are going for Tanfana. Nobody has warned them. They are celebrating. Thousands. The river is not far to the south.”

  Our men had failed to reach them. Perhaps they had failed to reach Armin.

  Tanfana, they called it, a shrine to fan, a holy site of Vanir gods off the pine-woods and especially holy to the goddesses, but none knew which ones the Marsi revered over the others. It was their celebration, their place, and their small tribe held it dear.

  It was a feast held late, and now, it would turn into a butchery.

  They would be drunk.

  There would be children, women, and elders, and vitka and völva, and we were late, for what we saw riding around the great hill and swarming across the land chilled us to the bone.

  Gochan was cursing foully.

  At least four great blocks of Roman troops were surrounding the hill. There were legions’ worth of men in each. They were swarm of dark soldiers marching up to a hill filled with revelers.

  None alerted them

  There was no sign of Armin’s troops.

  “Have they all gone home?” I snarled and looked around the land lit by Mani’s light. Great bonfires on the hill marked the feast, and soon, the death of many of the Marsi.

  I looked around at our troop.

  Thousand, no more.

  Many of our men would not know how to fight from horseback. Half.

  Alde shook her head, confirming my fears.

  “Hraban!” Gochan called
out. I turned and spotted a Sarmatian riding our way, whipping his horse.

  Gochan nodded. “One of those who I sent to Armin.”

  I rode forward and snarled questions at him. “Armin? Did anyone warn the hill?”

  “Not here yet, Armin,” he said darkly. “I came from there. I found him a day away with an army that was dispersing. The Bructeri,” he said, and nodded to northwest, “have gone home with Helm. Chauci left. All of them. Days past. Tubantes went with them, and some of the Marsi are on that hill, most of their families. Maybe third of their men, those who were not with Armin. We couldn’t get to them. The enemy riders were swarming all over the land.” He shook his head. “Armin is coming with ten thousand men. No more.”

  I turned my horse around and around again.

  I pulled at Gochan and pointed at some Tencteri. “Get men to the Bructeri and Tubantes. Tell them to get ready and to meet us at…”

  I despaired.

  Gray Wolf nodded. “God’s Brow. It’s to the west of here. If you mean to fight, that’s a good place. If they do not go by the road in Luppia, that is.”

  I snapped my fingers. “They will want more blood, if we are lucky. God’s Brow. Aye.”

  I marched to the scout as Gochan turned to obey. “They marched light?”

  He shook his head. “Mules, food, slavers, and a small camp of men, guarded by a cohort of men near the river. A castra, shoddy thing, and badly situated. They have supplies, but not many.”

  As it was with the legions, they built camps like mad beavers built dams.

  I had seen one like it surrounded once, not far from there.

  “We go there,” I told them.

  They blinked.

  “What of the Marsi?” Gunda demanded. “What of their…they will be senseless with drink and feast. Families! They will—”

  I pointed a spear to the darkness lit by fires. “They cannot be saved. But the Roman supplies and slavers, and the gear are waiting down there, and if we burn them now, it will distract the enemy. It will give them a hungry march back home and unhappy sting to their monstrous pride. It will be a victory for them, Tanfana, won’t it? They’ll kill many of our people today. After that, we shall try to stop them, so Armin will get to us. Let us beg they do not simply march back home. This is all we can do.”

  They watched me and finally nodded, one by one.

  I opened my mouth to tell Alde, Borena, and Gunda to stay away from this one and knew I couldn’t let Gunda out of my sight. Nor Gervas.

  I rubbed my face and thought of a castra. It was another fossa to cross and agger to scamper up to. The vallum, the wall, was likely no more than wooden stakes, but it would be a deadly thing to take, anyway. There might not even be gates, just a wall they hauled their gear up and down or a deadly hole with stakes to guard it.

  They would be alert, the main gate would face west, to Armin.

  They would have a makeshift port.

  We would have to be fast.

  It was a terrible place to take. This time, I would not want to see the loss we had seen previously. “Take us to the western wall.”

  I watched at dozen men rode away for the Bructeri and Tubantes.

  ***

  The castra was huge and hastily made. It was built of dirt dug from the moat around it, and stakes indeed decorated its top. There were no towers, nor real walls, but the legionnaires had made the embankments wide and high, and the sides were muddy and slick, and the fossa was deep.

  There were gates to east where Armin was prowling and another one to the west, and there, the fossa had not been dug. It was guarded by soldiers, and indeed, the hole in the wall was usually plugged by a barricade of stakes.

  On top of the agger, there were guards, many men, watching the distant hill where bonfires burned high. A camp prefect, old and gnarled, was standing on the battlements, one eyed and evil, and he had auxilia riding between the army at Tanfana and his castra. He has some centuries guarding a small, makeshift port where small boats and sleek galleys were tied down.

  There were some two thousand men inside, I estimated, in and around the fort and the port, and they were jubilant with their progress.

  There were more than legionnaires in the fort.

  An auxilia unit was shifting and clamoring before the gates, and there was chaos. They had pulled out their horses out of the castra, and at the same time, fifty mules filled with supplies were streaming the other way.

  The plug of the gate was on the side.

  The narrow way over the fossa was filled with men, horses, and mules.

  I watched the group intently. They were shoving and fighting, the servants and slaves and legionnaires screaming at the auxilia who seemed to be pushing the mules back or hitting them with their spear shafts.

  I grimaced at the sight of the walls, filled with men, and at the gate, and then I looked at the Sarmatian band.

  “We must not,” I told Gochan, “get separated inside. Let the Tencteri ride in, as deep as they can, in as terrible chaos as they can create, and burn everything. We must keep that gate, if we can take it and the embankments around it. Most of all, we must get that man.”

  He was watching the old camp prefect.

  One of the highest men in the XX, the old dog was yelling down at the gate area where there was utter chaos, and two centurions were screaming their voices harsh.

  They had been in a hurry. Usually, no march camp was far from a source of water, often built right next to one, and not so close to the woods. In Germania, such an arrangement was a luxury and very rarely possible. The camp had been hastily erected to guard against foes, but more to hold the loot and slaves. The cohort inside it was a large one and possibly the first cohort of the legion, and likely, there was another one as well.

  I turned to look at Adalwulf, who nodded and grinned as he rode off. He took with him his men, Wulf, and three hundred men who had joined us. They were going for the port.

  We waited.

  The Sarmatians were calm, the hundred and fifty of them looking eager, their long hair gleaming in the light of Mani. Not fifty feet away, the enemy was still struggling with the gate, and around us in the woods, their sentries lay dead.

  I heard a yell of triumph as the legionnaires on the northern wall raised swords.

  Not all that far, on a hill filled with Marsi, the legions had apparently begun climbing the hillside.

  Every eye turned that way. They even stopped fighting in the gate area.

  Then, suddenly, every eye turned to the river.

  There, few stone throws away, Adalwulf had ridden straight into a slumbering Roman camp, butchering good part of century of men in the first moments, and hundreds of men dealing with supplies were running away or even splashing to the river. Screams and warnings were echoing as men turned that way, and the camp prefect was rushing for the southern rampart, slipping past stakes set on the top.

  The auxilia at the gate looked confused, and then I nodded.

  Behind me, the Sarmatians shifted in their saddles, grinning. Behind them, Gray Wolf’s men were thronging, ready to ride in after.

  I turned to Gochan, his captains, smiled at Gervas, at Gunda, and gave Alde and Borena a quick look. I pointed a sword that way. “Get through that hole into the camp and kill them. Watch me, fight, and when I say so, we leave. We must burn as much of it as we can.”

  I turned my face back to the gate.

  On the walls, men were rushing to look at the port. They expected at attack that way, and the massive fort was thrumming with the slap of caligae.

  The chaos on the gate got far worse.

  Mules and slaves were pushing in frantically, and the auxilia were pulling out their horses against them. Two centurions were screaming orders, faces red, a hopeless tone in their screeches.

  I nodded, and five hundred men and three women kicked their flanks of their horses. The beasts seemed surprised, and then we rushed forward like mad things escaping from Helheim. The mass of dark riders, lanc
es up, thundered out of the woods, and we rode forward like the wind.

  The castra was far too close to the woods.

  We were there in moment, just a small blink of an eye. The massed enemy before us got trampled and pushed over and to the sides, many to the bottom of the fossa. The hundreds of us were pushing for the enemy, and we were gleeful as doomed men about to take one more enemy with us to the lands of the dead.

  We tore deep to the milling foe.

  I noticed a few things.

  The enemy mules could run and bite with the best of warhorse. They bit at the auxilia and the noble horses, and even their handlers. They tore free in their dozens and crashed deep to the fort and the fossa, and through us. The slaves that took care of them were pushing after them, beating at auxilia, horse, mule and some falling to the ditch after their charges.

  I also noticed the auxilia were Parthian and Syrian archers, and I knew it was the same unit that Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso had once commanded.

  The foppish prefect was gone.

  The man in charge was not him, but a younger man, and apparently the sojourn of my unfortunate friend had ended.

  The one for this new man was about to as well.

  The lances pushed the enemy riders to their deaths. Surprised, the enemy were swept aside by brutal force, lance and spear pushing into their flesh, horses crashing them down. Saddles emptied, horses bolted and crashed down to the fossa with the mules and slaves, and twenty, then thirty of the foe died or howled under our hooves, wounded and hurt. Javelins were falling amid us now, tossed from the walls, and Tencteri and Sarmatians screamed as they were hit, but the tide was hard to stop with few javelins. We went deep, ax and club and sword cutting where lance and spear were lost. Soon, we were at the gate, and then inside it. A centurion flailing below me was promptly crushed between two horses. A pair of legionnaires hacked swords at us, but I skewered one with my spear, then pushed the weapon into the neck of a slave and abandoned it there, the shaft broken. I pulled the Red Wolf. My shield was thrumming with hits, and I saw a legionnaire beating at it with a sword, and then I saw the prefect of the auxilia just before me, red cape flashing.