Soon, I saw the standard of Germanicus himself, up on the higher ground.
He was staring down at us with astonishment.
I stepped forward. “Look, Germanicus! The sword that will take your life!”
He shook his head, lips dry and white, and walked forward. He cursed at a centurion that was trying to stop him. “Hraban!”
“The bad seed of Drusus!” I called out spitefully, spitting and cursing. “Cassia! You took Cassia!”
“I did,” he called out. “I took her. And eventually, I shall take your boy too. Killed my lover, didn’t you, Hraban! And you smeared my honor. You made mockery of all of us. One day, soon, I shall sit on the Roman throne, and I will hunt all your kin to death. So I swear! I nearly had you already, and I shall yet!”
I waved my hands around and laughed. “Look around you, boy! You will find the bottom of the swamp, Germanicus, like Varus did!” I yelled. “This land looks like his grave. We threw his carcass, minus the head and the hands, to the bog. He is out there, watching! He is lonely!”
He shook his head, white with fear, and turned away.
“I shall never crawl to you! If you ever found Gervas, I would consider it, but they are gone! Gone for good!” I called out.
“I shall find them!” he called back from the dark. “I keep my promises!”
He rode away, and soon, I Germanica marched up.
We lifted out shields and bore the brunt of the last pila of Germanicus. They came at us in a frenzy, and we held them, until our shields were gone. We stepped back over the corpses of our fellow fighters and left the carcasses behind.
Trumpets blared, and they came on.
It was an hour later, when their dead drifted around us, the heaps of their and our corpses intermingled ungracefully on the bridge and the swamp, hundreds lost, when they stopped.
Then trumpet rang, and I knew that command.
They were breaking camp.
I watched the Bructeri marching forward in the darkness, probing, and then I found a gladius. I walked for a figure leaning on a tree, Helm, and looking around, I waded to the swamp.
I saw he was delirious with pain, Helm, and then I pushed the blade into his guts and fled.
CHAPTER 22
It was very late night when we sat on the islands of the bog. We had fifteen thousand men, wet and still wild with fury and hope, and we were watching dead Helm’s body being wrapped away. His cousin, Burkein, was weeping next to the man. Armin was watching him carefully, deep in his thoughts.
I hoped the warning would not go unheeded.
“So is the best of them spent,” said Inguiomerus, who sat on his horse near Adalwulf and I.
I looked up at him. “Lord. He was truly a great man.”
“Hraban,” he said. “I hear your father is looking for you. I hear Armin doesn’t like you.”
I nodded and kept a close eye on him. He was looking for something.
An edge, an ally?
He smiled thinly. “I hanged four men who were seeking a way to you. I dislike such games.”
He lied. I had killed the men who hunted for me. He was trying to make me an ally.
He eyed Armin. It was an uncertain look on his face.
“Indeed, lord,” I agreed.
He huffed and stared at us. “Out to kill Germanicus, eh? I was sorry to hear of your woman. Or both.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He looked up to the wet, terrible fort on the island. “You have seen such before.”
“I have,” I said. “I have seen many. I have seen permanent ones that are like cities, and these miserable things as well.”
“And you took some,” he said. “You swarmed up them and took it, and your spears pushed the enemy back, and they were killed. That glorious sight I would have loved to see.”
I squinted at him. “We didn’t take the one last year. We just got in.”
He nodded. He didn’t care for semantics.
“You are here to serve Armin?” I asked him.
He smiled. “We find our ways going to the same direction after a long while of troubled relations. Thusnelda’s loss. It was a terrible thing. I could hardly stand back after that.”
Adalwulf looked disgusted as he sharpened his blade.
He was there to show he too was moved by the tragedy of Thusnelda. He couldn’t be the only one who stood away from the cause. I had to wonder if he had known the Chauci had turned away.
He confirmed it. “The betrayal of the Chauci was a mild shock, I must say. But we are now cooking the same stew, those of us who remain. More and more men are coming this way, from the east and north. Men who barely speak the same language.” He looked up at the fortress, a mound of mud and likely filled with water. Six thousand enemy were huddling inside. Germanicus with them.
“I think we should,” he said softly, “not wait at all. We should go over the wall.”
I looked at the fortress. It was mud. It was a filled-in fossa and a crumbling agger, and inside it, were two eagles.
Waiting would make our victory assured.
Inguiomerus was impatient for glory. He had no experience in the battle to take such as this one. He wanted me to say it could be done. He was risking my goal, and Armin’s.
“Inside there,” I said, “is Caecina. There are other legates. There are battle-hammered legions who know what will happen if they lose. There is no Varus, no cowards. No Vala.”
“There is Germanicus in there as well,” said Adalwulf. “He has their respect.”
I ignored the words and cursed softly. “Germanicus or not, there is a determined enemy who is not beaten. None is coming to their aid in a long while. We know some auxilia will have escaped and some will get to Alisio and Xanten, but it will be days. Let them starve, lord. None know of their predicament yet. If Armin wants to starve them out, then perhaps we should allow him.” I smiled at the old man. “I wonder what the others said, when you suggested it.”
He smiled back, his face wet and cold. “What did they say, you ask?” he murmured. “None agree with me. Not one. They are all Armin’s men. But I am not Armin’s man but his uncle, and if I serve, I serve with him, not him. I gave him no oath yet. We must take the fortress. This night. It is unexpected, it is heroic, and we are starving like they are. We cannot risk them escaping. We must take him.”
He turned his horse and rode for Armin.
He reached the Thiuda and hailed Armin, who looked away from Helm’s corpse. He spoke, and Armin argued. We didn’t hear them, but we saw what they were doing, and both were gesturing for the fortress.
Then, Inguiomerus turned his horse and rode for his men. They made up nearly half the camp.
Adalwulf sighed. “He is going. He is pulling Armin after him. We are going up there.”
I saw Armin holding his face and shaking his head. Then he got up, nodded at his men, and they all prepared.
Armin pointed a finger at me, Adalwulf, and our men. We got up as one and armed ourselves. I saw his eyes searching the ranks and I smiled.
***
There were fifteen thousand men creeping through the water and mud. And soon, there were fifteen thousand men crouching under the hillside.
Fifteen thousand men are not silent. Especially in marsh, in mud.
Guards spot them, and horses sense them.
The Roman camp above was still silent, torches burning with pale light, and guards walking the walls.
There would be men outside it, and I expected an attack at any time.
Jingling armor, clash of spear against a shield, and the thump of foot on mud, it was enough to wake a slumbering man.
Armin was to climb from east, Inguiomerus from the west, the Bructeri from the south, and Marsi and Sigambri from the north.
If only there had been more of Armin’s own men, it would have been avoided. It might have been enough, perhaps, to wait to win the war.
It was Inguiomerus who went in first, eager for glory to cover himself in immortality, enough f
ame to escape the oaths to and causes of Armin, and he rushed forward with his men suddenly, loping up the hillside.
He was brave. There was no denying that.
We could all hear his men running and then roaring.
We went up as well, following Armin’s men.
We rushed that hillside, killing some surprised Gaul guards, stabbing them down, and then trumpets blared up in the castra. They echoed across the entire marsh like gods themselves were blowing them.
We saw, in the light of Mani, helmets filling the sides of the fortress.
“Over the mud-shit fossa, the bastard agger, and over the foe,” Armin snarled, and then we all scrambled, split the night with howling curses and oaths for the death for our enemy, and we made our way up that hill in a hail of last of the pila and rocks, and men began dying.
We came to the sad fossa, the enemy leering down just above us, and men splashed to the watery grave, to the stakes under, and began swarming up the side of the muddy hill. Men died and were maimed, in dozens, as legions swords, thousands of them, stabbed down.
The struggle for agger became a gruesome game of mud and blood.
We tried to get up.
They kept us out.
And then, in many places, the wet, badly built castra betrayed Rome.
The walls broke in several places, legionnaires were pulled down with mud, and on these holes, Germani fought fiercely, trying to crawl and slide through the collapsed agger to the fortress.
Armin was climbing with the first thousand, determined not to die in such a hole.
We were around him, trying to keep him alive. We were pushing up the sides of the agger, and still, endless numbers of legionnaires were on top. We had men with spears weakly thrusting up at them, killing many such legionnaires, impaling blades into their legs and crotches, but more replaced them, and centurions kept them in line. Stabbing down on their knees and arms, struggling with our muddy, desperate troops, the legionnaires held the castra.
Here and there, we got in. Our men swarmed in to capture the walls, and they were summarily repelled, slain, and thrown down on us.
Soon, such battles were fewer, and you could sense the men were desperate, exhausted, tired.
Worse, Caecina lead a counterattack.
He led hundreds of men out, butchered several families and clans on the western slope, and cut to the sides of the castra, pushing our men into disarray.
We, including Armin, finally managed to get on a wall and there, watched as legionnaires cut their way for the Pontes Longi.
“No!” Armin howled.
Armin nearly died.
A champion of Armin fell, a wolf-skin berserker, and two centurions pushed to grasp Armin. They had led forth a heavy mass of men, trying to retake the wall, and Armin was dragged amid them.
I jumped after, laying about with my sword. I fell and still was upright, leaning on several legionnaires, and I was sawing my sword at a centurion’s neck. I was pushing, fighting, biting, and hacking around, and soon, Adalwulf was there with me. Many others came down to Armin, who was trying to get up at our feet, only to take a sword in his helmet.
He fell, the helmet half-split, and spat blood. Men were trying to pull him out and finally managed it, dragging him up.
We, dozens of us, were pushed and stabbed and attacked from all the directions as we tried to make it out.
Finally, Armin was borne away, and Adalwulf, I, and our men left the walls in a rout, clawing our way out, rolling down the agger to the mud-pit of fossa, and by Woden’s grace, we evaded death and capture as Romans howled above us.
“Varus!” they screamed. “Varus!”
“Retreat!” called out a war-chief, a long-awaited command. “Go back!”
“Run back!” I called. “Hold the ways out!”
It was too late. The legions had taken it, pushing out our guards, and butchering those who tried to stand in their way.
With Armin senseless, it was impossible to lead an attack to retake it. It was impossible to push Caecina off into the darkness or back to the castra.
We were chased to the marsh, where many drowned.
Hiding in the islands of the marsh, I saw Germanicus riding out of the fortress, leading men for the escape, and helplessly, we watched his men marching out of their doom.
We lost two thousand men to sword and rout, and to Caecina’s bravery.
Fortuna guards the bastards.
***
Depressed, divided, we trailed the enemy, making life miserable for their stragglers, picking off the wounded, but we could only watch as they marched to supplies and safety of Luppia River, Alisio, and then, Xanten beyond.
It was little consolation, when we later found a great northern storm had sunk half of the fleet of Germanicus. Legionnaires landed even in the far away shores of Albion and the Saxon lands. He lost thousands.
We had not lost, we had not won, Germanicus yet lived.
The war hung on balance. It was a summer of tears, but at least they were being shed by romans as well as the Germani.
I was summoned by Armin as we watched the enemy march off to the west.
He watched me with hate and tried to sit up. “And again, you live.”
“You live as well, for my sword.” I leaned close to him. “Your bodyguards tried to kill me. They failed.”
He shifted in the saddle, holding his face, hiding shame and rage. I knew he had been nearly killed. Blood trickled down his chin. “I didn’t order them. I told them what Donor told me. They made up their own mind. Helm agreed he would not stop them.”
I snorted. “We are fine allies, Armin. You are putting me in harm’s way, and you yourself try to murder me.”
“And yet you stay,” he said. “Why?”
“For Germanicus,” I told him.
He grunted. “Donor will come back. What will he tell me?”
“Lies?” I said, and cursed Germanicus for surviving, for I would have to stay one more year under Armin’s dread banner.
He sneered at me. “I believe his lies rather than yours. Truly, Hraban, if you had a hand—”
“I tire of this,” I told him. “I am tired and bored with this, Armin. I shall serve you, to kill Germanicus. That is all. If I have not served you well enough, then what shall I do? Shall I ride the land alone, while we wait for Donor, my enemy whom you sent to find evidence against me? I will fight him, if you want, and let gods—”
“Gods lie to us,” he said. “I have asked gods for guidance, and always, they say I shall win. And I have yet to win, Hraban.”
“Stop telling your people how much you resent me, Armin,” I said. “Stop sending men to their deaths against me. I know your secrets too. The Pannonian War. I will serve you until Germanicus is dead. I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
He was silent and thinking. “How did Helm die?”
“By a sword,” I said. “So, they say. He was a great man. A hero.”
He sneered. “We will fight again next year. It will be a perilous battle. It will have to be the last one. We cannot kill Germanicus like this. No. Not in an open combat.” He gnashed his teeth. “It seems we need your father. I hear he has lately been shamed amid his allies. He might want to speak now.”
“And you would send me to speak to the man who was going to capture me for Germanicus, and his own pleasure?” I said with a smile.
He nodded. “Go. I need you to go and speak with him. You go and talk with him and get him to join us. He has been spreading around us, they say, and still, he has not helped Germanicus either. Make him see the sense of joining us. He will be the last surprise I can spring on Germanicus.”
“What will you offer him?” I asked. “He will not easily risk his kingdom and Rome’s ire.”
Armin would have to offer him something substantial.
“I shall offer him the north,” he said heavily. “If only we beat the Romans, I shall bend a knee to him, and I shall ride away after. I will give him Varus’s sword. I
t will be his, so long he never goes Roman again. Do you think that would make him happy? Oaths. Oaths from Armin, and Armin’s adelings, for his kingdom. He will know it is only a matter of time he is supplanted by the enemy. Only a matter of time. Rome is coming, his amber road is soon useless, and he must finally choose a side. Rome offers him servitude. I shall offer him all our people. Do that, and none shall try to kill you in my lands, unless you lied to me.” He shook his head to me. “So, Hraban. Have you something that might persuade him?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
That Yule, I summoned Catualda and after that, I rode south to speak with my father.
I rode to peril’s way, for Germanicus wanted me, and Father did as well, and Armin was mad with pain and suspicion.
CHAPTER 23
(Near Mattium, 12th of January, A.D. 16)
The meeting between Father and us was set after Yule-Tide. I had had Adgandestrius set it up. It would be a meeting of two powers of Germani who should never fight but come to an agreement.
Without that agreement, and with Germanicus still strong in legions, Armin’s surprises were growing fewer and the war closer to Cherusci lands. It would be a matter of time when Luppia was lost.
But how much time did Germanicus have?
We rode near the Hermanduri plains, in the lands Chatti claimed, and Maroboodus held, taking ways through the snowy paths, and there, we finally found a hall. It was called Crow’s Beak, and a Celt held a sort of house there. Adalwulf and I were swathed in furs, and while we were sitting there, staring at the house, the door opened. Our horses moved away from the sudden light, and the packhorse, heavily laden with a huge bundle of gear, tried to bolt.
A man, his pudgy nose red, old as old gnarled oak waved us forth. “You here for food and drink? Or for trouble?”
I laughed softly as we rode to the yard. “I expect both.”
“Food and drink alone, I hope,” he said, and came to help us dismount. He took our horses and nodded us inside. “Come, take a seat. I am alone.”
I turned to him. “Leave the packhorse as it is. Do not touch the saddles. We are not staying for long.”
He nodded, and we dodged in.
The Summer Sword Page 33