The Emperor's Men 4: Uprising

by Dirk van den Boom

  It would in any case become to be a very bloody war.

  Andragathius leaned forward. Von Klasewitz alone could understand his words. “Production has now begun and is being continued. Whatever you need, it is to be procured for you.”

  “Good.”

  “You suggested that a training schedule has to be started.”

  “Our own legionaries must be accustomed to the guns. They must not be frightened once they are fired, they must become familiar with the injuries that can be caused by them, and they must be prepared for the thought that they can be shot at some time. As soon as we have some pieces ready, we must begin with appropriate maneuvers and marches.”

  “Shot?” Andragathius frowned. “You mean, if Rheinberg equips Gratian’s troops?”

  “That too. But we’re talking about a battle with ultimately mobile troops. Has it never happened that the occasional catapult was also aimed accidentally in the direction of your own soldiers in a battle?”

  The General nodded thoughtfully. “This is true. It happens.”

  “It will happen again. Only this time the consequences, especially for the troop’s morale, could be even more negative.”

  The old general stroked his impressive and well-groomed beard. “I concur. Maneuvers and plenty of them. And what kind of marches?”

  Klasewitz suppressed a sigh. It was difficult for him to communicate the necessity of testing the artillery in combat, before going on a trip to Gaul and challenging the Emperor.

  “We have enemies on which we can try these weapons. Is there not a tribe in the north of the Hadrian’s wall, to whom Rome is not well-disposed?”

  “More than enough. With most, however, we have valid agreements. We should not provoke them unnecessarily. That would be a bad signal to the others.”

  “Most of them?”

  Andragathius’ facial expression got thoughtful. Then he grinned. “I think something could be arranged …”

  Klasewitz grinned back.

  7

  Godegisel could only guess the impression he gave.

  For a moment he stopped, looking down at his dirty legs. The constant rain ran down his neck, but he almost didn’t notice it. His clothes were completely soaked and filthy after several days outdoors without any protection from the weather and driven by the fear of being pursued.

  He had to admit that he had not seen any pursuers. Nevertheless, he continued to march steadily. He avoided the large streets that connected the cities and mostly had military posts. Who knew what kind of news the traitors, the murderers of Valens, had spread. A transient gothic rebel, a violent barbarian to be seized and killed instantly? It was possible. It was actually very likely.

  Godegisel was sure that not even his mother would have recognized him in his present condition. His beard was overgrown and unkept. His hair stuck greasily to his head and shimmered. His skin looked pale and his cheeks fell. He hadn’t been able to eat much the few last days. Here and there he had fed on what nature offered him. Armed only with a sword, it wasn’t easy to hunt, and his abilities as a trapper were limited, and he didn’t have time to wait for a rabbit to meet him and to present himself as a meal. Berries and fruits, he had sought in vain at this time of the year. From a farmstead, he had stolen fresh bread that someone had put into the open window for cooling. It had been the best meal for a long time, but now already two days ago.

  There was plenty of water – God blessed Gaul with a constant rain, not very intense, but permanent, which went through everything –, and the paths the young Goth used were transformed into almost impassable mud courses. Thirst was the only thing Godegisel didn’t suffer from. But the drifting hunger, which had started to become painful and established itself as his permanent companion, weakened him with every step. He felt reminded of the arrival of his people on the Roman frontier, a time which seemed to him to be an eternity and yet not two years ago. Even then they were all very hungry, exhausted by the flight from the Huns. Hunger was well known to Godegisel, and he had learned to hate that feeling fervently. He would have to eat something soon. If not, he couldn’t continue his way.

  His way.

  The young Goth wasn’t sure where he was going. Maximus and his supporters had great influence and would certainly have placed their men at important positions. Godegisel didn’t know whom to trust. In the end, he had no choice but to speak directly with the Emperor, which he thought was unlikely, or he returned to Fritigern, his people, and let things take their course. But Godegisel was no fool. All Rome would suffer under the civil war, which would inevitably break out as soon as Maximus put his plan into action.

  The course of events could then turn out to be very unpleasant for his people, especially if it became public knowledge that Valens had survived the Battle of Adrianople and had been surrendered by the Goths to the enemies of Gratian. Godegisel wanted to curse Fritigern’s plan, but told himself that he had allowed the opportunity for serious opposition to pass him when he had had it.

  Of course, he might be able to get in touch with the time-wanderers.

  Godegisel didn’t feel too well at the thought.

  It had been his sword that had killed one of their leaders. He hadn’t been punished for it, and had been allowed to return to his family after the conclusion of the peace treaty, but it would be silly to assume that his role had been forgotten.

  On the other hand, if the Goth who had killed a leader of the Germans, came and warned of great danger, wouldn’t that increase the chance to be heard by a clever and intelligent man, such as the new Magister Militium?

  Godegisel wasn’t sure, but there was only one method to find out. He would have to go as far as Italy to make direct contact with his former enemies.

  But until then there was still a long way to master.

  Godegisel raised his head, glanced at the cloud-covered sky. The weather wasn’t so cold, and he guessed that he had moved fairly steadily toward the southeast since his escape. He might have traveled between 150 and 200 Roman miles. As he avoided entering large settlements and had no particular knowledge of how these towns and villages were scattered in Gaul, the only way left to him was to maintain a roughly southerly route. He hoped to be able to make his point but was aware of the fact that his current condition was not adequate to arouse great confidence in other people. He’d noticed the peasant’s eyes on the fields, as he had walked past them. No one had stopped or called on him, but his ragged appearance made every Gallic peasant appear as a nobleman in comparison.

  Godegisel now avoided the fields. The time of sowing had come, and the land’s population was busy. Nevertheless, it was clear that he wasn’t doing very well. Clean and tidy clothes, some cash, a bath and a shave, all this would help him considerably.

  Night fell. The Goth looked at the edge of the nearby forest before him. In there, he might find shelter, set up on a tree for protection from bears or wolves. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, just drank, and felt the weakness of his limbs. He wouldn’t be able to walk much further without a rest. Perhaps there was something to eat in the forest. In any case, a mighty tree crown could hold back the rain. Luckily he could sleep for a few hours.

  He needed about half an hour until he reached the forest. It wasn’t as dense as seen from afar. Carefully, the man entered the edge. When he had advanced a few yards into the undergrowth, the stumps of two trees, which had just been felled, became visible. Were there any forest workers at work who had brought building material or firewood for one of the nearby villages? Perhaps a careless man had left some food. The probability was low, but Godegisel clung to this thought, as he followed a barely recognizable forest path, on which traces of sand could be seen. Every now and then he passed another tree stump. Whoever was responsible had been careful not to cut the wood randomly, and not to take a group of trees completely. In addition, the impact could not be seen from the outside, the signs began only a few meters inside the woods.

  After a few minutes, Godegisel came to a sm
all clearing. The light of the setting sun was becoming more sparse, but that wasn’t a problem, because the building, which he observed from hiding in the scrub, gave off both light and warmth. It was a large cone-shaped structure, glowing from the inside. Little holes were drilled into the structure, behind which the glow of a slow-going fire could be discovered. Godegisel didn’t have to think long in order to recognize what he was looking at: In this carefully constructed device wood was processed into charcoal. Once such a pile had become active, it would slowly burn for several days, and would need constant supervision in order not to consume itself. The charcoal burner working here wanted to produce coal, not ashes, and was therefore compelled to guard the embers day and night, to supply air, or to block holes again until he could open the pit and remove the finished charcoal.

  That meant two things. On the one hand, a worker was present in the immediate vicinity, perhaps on the other side of the kiln. And on the other hand, this man was either unattentive or simply not proficient in his line of work. Godegisel wasn’t an expert in charcoal, but he knew that the greatest danger was that the pile caught fire and consumed himself and his valuable contents. And the smoldering of the openings, as well as the smoke coming out of them, suggested that this time came closer.

  He circled the construction with great caution. He enjoyed the warmth it exhaled. It gave the promise of dryness – dry skin and dry clothes.

  Godegisel concentrated on his surroundings. One thing after the other.

  As he circled about halfway around the miller, he saw a small wooden shed that wasn’t even worth being called a hut. It was merely an oblique roof of branches, resting on two wooden beams, fully open at the front. In front of it was a small, now extinct campfire. Godegisel saw a bundle with something that looked promising like food. Two feet protruded from the shed. The Goth guessed that the man was asleep, one of the greatest dangers that this occupation entailed.

  For a moment, he hesitated. People like them were not rich. And this one would be in big problems when his work flared up in flames. To steal one of his possessions …

  The Goth pushed the thought aside. He was hungry. That was all he could think of now.

  He went on carefully, peered into the opening of the cagelike structure. Then he relaxed.

  There was no reason for special caution.

  The man was dead.

  The man was already somewhat old, at least he looked so. Life here caused people to age early so that from their appearance it was difficult to judge their real age. He had, however, long since crossed the zenith of his time. There was no sign of violence. The old man, he thought, had been engaged in his work and then died in his sleep. It couldn’t have been so long since the pile had not yet destroyed itself.

  The young Goth knelt. He shied away a bit from squatting right next to the corpse, although it looked remarkably dry in the hatch – the roof seemed to be tight. Godegisel’s hands went through the belongings of the deceased. In the bundle he found a dry shirt, freshly washed, but also a hard piece of cheese, an edge of bread, and some grains which could be made into a mash with warm water. Next to the extinct fireplace stood a metal bowl, in which water could be boiled. Finally, Godegisel found a small amphora, closed with a stopper made of wax. He opened it and sniffed. Diluted wine that smelled slightly sour. Godegisel took a cautious sip. After all the hardships of the last few days, he felt like the most noble drop he had ever tasted. He closed his eyes and took another sip.

  “Who are … Father?”

  A bright voice, a woman, full of terror and fear.

  Godegisel stood slowly, turned around, his right hand visibly on his sword-grip. Before him stood a young woman, not yet twenty years old, in a filthy, simple dress. In one hand, she held a kind of pot with a wooden lid, from whose steam evaporated. It smelled auspicious. Soup.

  Soup for the dead father.

  Godegisel looked into the woman’s face and was looking for tears. He saw into the weary eyes, looked at the folds that had already dug into her skin, saw the dirty, black-gray hands. No daughter of a Roman noble or even a wealthy craftsman or trader. A woman like one he often met among his own people. He had lost his father to the Huns, his mother died on the flight, the little brother on the border to the Roman Empire, starved to death, and his sister sold herself to a Roman officer for a slaughtered dog. Her gaze was that of someone who had so much suffering and deprivation in her short life that even another death was nothing that would tear her from emotional dullness after the initial shock had subsided.

  As if to confirm that, her gaze caught him filled hopelessness as well as silent grief. “And? What will happen to me?”

  A simple question, made without any emphasis, almost businesslike. Godegisel wondered at his own emotional reaction, felt sudden shame. “Nothing. It wasn’t me. I roamed the forest in search of food. I found your father lying here, he was already dead. See for yourself. I didn’t touch him. He isn’t hurt.”

  She looked at the corpse again, now seemed to be consciously aware of it for the first time. She took a step forward, remembered the pot in her hand, put it down awkwardly. Another step, then she bent over the lifeless body, looked at him closely. Then again the look in Godegisel’s face. Sadness still but somewhat less hopelessness. That was at least what the Goth himself hoped to see.

  “You may be right,” she muttered. “He was sick, my father. The constant cough. However the pit had to be supervised, and he was supposed to sell coal on the market. Since mother is dead …”

  Godegisel just nodded. Then he pointed to the pile. “It’s about to burn up. We should …”

  He didn’t have to say anything. The young woman turned around at once, took a tool, looked at the heat with a professional look, and began to close some of the openings in the pile, reducing the air supply, and thus the risk of an all consuming flare. Godegisel watched her for a few minutes, looking at the slender, almost droughty body, as it tensed, the muscles flexing, and focused on work. Then he joined her without a word, likewise a bronze shovel in his hands, and did as she told him. Twenty minutes, thirty, perhaps, they were struggling for the survival of the charcoal, the value of which the young daughter, now on her own, would surely be able to feed herself from for a few weeks.

  Then the young woman paused, wiped soot-sweat from her forehead, and looked at the Goth. Was there a certain degree of respect, indeed appreciation, in her gaze?

  Godegisel might be fooled.

  Then they stood again before the body of the father. When the daughter took the corpse by the shoulders and looked at Godegisel, he took his feet and dragged the body away. The young woman had a remarkable strength and knew her way around. With occasional glances behind her, she led the Goth, both connected by the corpse, along a narrow path to a coarse-framed hut, which stood on another clearing. Then she let the body slip to the ground. Godegisel’s eyes followed her. A little distant from the hut, he recognized a simple gravestone, hammered from sandstone, with a carving of a crude image of a charcoal pit. No writing. Godegisel guessed that the father had made it for the deceased wife – and that he could neither read nor write, and therefore had left only a simple picture. “We bury him here.”

  It hadn’t been a question, more a statement. Whether the young woman was still assuming that the Goth was responsible for the death of her father, and now trying to exploit his guilty conscience as long as she could or whether she was simply expecting, hoping, and doing things, Godegisel didn’t know and maybe it wasn’t so important anyway.

  He just did as she did.

  It was a formless, but not unworthy, funeral. Godegisel said nothing, remained silent beside the now freshly dug tomb. The family of the man had been Christians, as he now ascertained, for the daughter fetched a wooden cross from the hut and placed it on the grave, and said a prayer as far as he could interpret the murmur. She didn’t expect Godegisel to join her in this.

  Godegisel suspected that the next graveyard was quite distant, and the dau
ghter wanted to save herself a proper burial ceremony for monetary reasons. The Goth said a silent prayer, out of respect for the daughter.

  “The pit!” she finally said. “We must look after it.” Resistance stirred in Godegisel. He had not come here in order to do the work of a charcoal producer. For him, bigger things were at stake.

  “There’s soup,” the woman added, looking at his hungry face. “Bread and cheese. Cervisia. I’ll share it with you.”

  This was an argument that felt very convincing to the young man. And though he could have done it, he didn’t want to steal anything from this thin, almost frail, yet powerful woman. In a sense, Godegisel thanked God for preserving this degree of humanity in him despite all the confusion.

  It took another half an hour – now it had turned dark –, but then the pit seemed to glow to the satisfaction of the young woman. Without pausing for a moment, she put the pot, which had stood all the time in the grass as if forgotten, to the fire-place, ignited a bonfire, took bread and cheese from the bundle, handed Godegisel the amphora with the wine, and went to fetch beer from the hut. The Goth declined the beer with thanks, which the woman silently accepted. Minutes later, a warming fire burned, and finally the Goth received what he had dreamed for days: a warm meal. The bread was hard, but the hot soup made it edible, and the cheese tasted surprisingly spicy.

  On the other hand, in his condition, almost everything that was offered to him would have been excellent.

  The woman shared with him, as she had promised. That meant she left him the bulk of the food, stared silently into the fire, and probably thought about her deceased father and her own future. Would she be allowed to continue the father’s business? Godegisel was not yet well-versed with the Roman customs and laws, but he doubted it. His eyes fell on the comforting glow. It was the legacy of the dead man, and it would probably be the last one that had been put up in his family.