XLV
“Sir, is anybody there?”
“Dear gods, I hope not!” I was in no mood for exchanging travellers’ tales with dead men or their ghosts.
I started to move.
“Are we going in?”
“No. We’re going back.” I turned him round.
“Sir, we could camp inside—”
“We’ll camp where we are…”
* * *
Few of us slept much that night. We lay awake, listening for trumpet calls from Hades, then nodded off just before dawn. I woke early and rose while it was still dark, stiff and snuffle-headed. The rest emerged, too. After a cold drink and some biscuit to brace us, we packed, brought the horses, and then set off in a close group to make a morning call on our colleagues’ camp. At dawn, it managed to look even lonelier.
This was no Vetera. It was a field army’s camp, and a large one. Though intended as a temporary construction, it stood in its isolation with an air of permanence. There were no signs of siege warfare. Decay, however, clung tenaciously. Apart from the rich clothing of brushwood on the outworks, some of the towers had lurched and the palisades collapsed. We could see now that further along from us the actual breastwork was broken down.
We battered a path to the gatehouse. One of the great wooden doors lay off its hinges. We edged just inside, no more. A spider the size of a duck’s egg watched us entering.
The vegetation was dramatic. Everything within the ramparts was wrecked.
“Sir, was there a fight?”
“No bodies left, if there was.” Helvetius, alone of us, dismounted and wandered forwards to explore. Even he had no intention of going far. He stopped and picked up a small object. “I don’t think the place was abandoned,” he murmured in a puzzled voice.
He began to make his passage further in, and this time we followed him. It would have been a tented camp, so there were large tracts of open ground where the long leather “butterflies” would have been pitched in rows. But wherever the legions stay for any length of time, the storehouses and the Principia are made from permanent materials. These should have been evident, in their familiar locations, as squares where only a low covering of thin weeds grew, because of their solid floors, yet rotting old timbers and mounds of other wreckage occupied their sites.
“What’s your verdict, centurion?” Justinus asked. He was white-faced from the early hour, lack of sleep, and anxiety.
“It was an empty camp—but not dismantled normally.”
“They had left for the winter,” I said. I spoke with some confidence. The shrine and strongroom, built of stone, still stood erect. There were of course no standards and no eagles in the shrine. I had seen the gold eagles that once flew here. I had seen them in the Temple of Mars in Rome.
Helvetius looked at me. He too knew what we had found. “That’s right. The buildings were all left here. Bad practice, but they expected to come back, of course.”
He was deeply upset. I turned to the others to explain. “You all know the rules when you leave a marching camp.” The recruits listened attentively, looking innocent. “You pack everything reusable in the baggage train. You take, for instance, all the staves from the palisade to use at your next stopping-point. Every soldier carries two of them.”
We all stared back. On the fortified ramparts behind us, stretches of the wooden defences lolled across the patrol track, still partly laced together, like estate fences that had suffered in a huge gale. Other pieces must have rotted; so had the stairs. Time had done this, no other force.
“You burn the rest,” Helvetius said. “You leave nothing an enemy could use—assuming you think you have an enemy.” He was turning the remains of an old storehouse door. “This was an empty camp!” he exclaimed, almost protesting at the breach of etiquette. “It’s been trampled pretty thoroughly, by looters, I’d guess. The camp was built by Romans, Romans who stupidly believed the area was so safe they could go out like householders, leaving their door-key under the gatehouse mat…” The centurion was burning with a slowly increasing wrath. “The poor bastards hadn’t the slightest inkling of how much danger they were in!”
He strode back to us, clenching his fist around the item he had taken up.
“Who were they, sir?”
“The three legions who were massacred in the forest by Arminius!” Helvetius raged. “There was a fight—dear gods, there was—but there are no bodies because Germanicus came afterwards and buried them.”
He held up his find. It was a silver coin. It carried the special mint mark which P. Quinctilius Varus had used on his soldiers’ pay.
Not many of those ever circulate in Rome.
XLVI
Somewhere in this area had to stand the burial mound. The one whose first turf Germanicus had laid with his own hands—against the rules of sanctity, since he was at the time also holding office as a priest. Here he would have been a soldier first. Standing here, we understood. We too were overwhelmed by our emotional response.
We did not search for the mound. We did not even raise an altar as we had done at Vetera. We honoured them in silence. All of them: the dead, and those who had made it a duty to find them. Gripped by the past, all of us must have wondered whether, if we were killed here in this forest, anybody who cared for us would ever even hear our fate.
We left the camp in the mist by way of its broken Praetorian Gate, on the tough old relics of its exit road. It was easier riding than any other route through the forest, and we wanted to cover distance fast. Our forebears’ road did eventually become overgrown. We made the usual complaints about useless engineers, though after sixty years without maintenance some potholing and weeding-over could be excused.
We kept going. Like the army of Varus, we were moving south. Like theirs, that was where our destiny lay in wait. The only difference was: we knew.
It was impossible not to keep churning over the history. Even Justinus had now joined in: “We know Varus was heading for winter quarters—either the forts they had built on the banks of the Lupia, or possibly right back somewhere along the Rhenus. He must have left that camp wrongly believing he had secured the territory, and all set to return there the next spring.”
“Why couldn’t they stay there in winter, sir?”
“Too far from supplies to sit it out. Besides, I expect his troops were nagging for a break somewhere civilised.” The tribune’s own troops thought about his solemn remark, then slowly grinned.
“And this is the way they went,” Helvetius said. He was really feeling it. He loved to dramatise; he loved to speculate. “Everyone believes they had hit the ridge when it happened, but why not here, much further north? All we really know for certain is that Germanicus found them somewhere east of the River Ems.”
“Sir, sir—” Now they had left the lost camp the recruits felt braver and more excited. “Will we find the famous battleground?”
“It’s my belief,” Helvetius answered heavily, as if he had just worked something out, “the battlefield is all around us. That would be why Germanicus had such trouble finding it. You don’t cut down twenty thousand men—veteran campaigners, after all—in a space like a backyard.”
I agreed. “We think it was quick, but the engagement may have lasted. No—it must have done. Clearly Arminius fell on them and did much damage. But after the first shock, the hardened soldiers would have made a stand.”
“Right, Falco. No choice. We know they did, anyway. Germanicus found whole heaps of bones where they had fought back in groups. He even came on the remains of some who had struggled back to their camp and been slaughtered there.”
“The camp we found?”
“Who knows. After all this time—and Germanicus clearing it as well—you’d have to spend days there to find any clues.”
“So after the initial assault,” I said, “they faced a drawn-out agony. There were even survivors. Arminius took prisoners: some were slung up on tree branches to propitiate the Celtic gods, but some were hel
d in gruesome pits.” We found none of those, I’m glad to say. “Some eventually got home to Rome. A few poor sods even came back here with Germanicus.” Every war produces masochists. “But agreeing a surrender is not the point for the tribes. It was a Celtic fight—to kill and take heads. Any legionaries who tried to make a getaway would have been hunted through the woods. Just like in Britain when the Boudiccan tribes rose.” I heard my voice growing husky with old pain. “The chase is part of the terrible game. Blood-crazed warriors happily whooping after victims who know they are doomed…”
“Arminius may even have prolonged the fun deliberately,” Helvetius informed the rest. “The upshot would have been bodies all the way from here to—”
“To the next river in any direction, centurion.”
“Tell us, Falco?”
“The warriors stop any remaining fugitives at the water’s edge. Their heads and their armour are dedicated to the gods in the running stream.”
We rode on very quietly. It took us two days, even with fine weather and favourable luck, to reach the Teutoburger hills.
* * *
I know that when we rested each evening some of the recruits vanished for long periods into the undergrowth. I know they found various items. They were boys. They cared about their old colleagues, but they found relic-hunting irresistible.
The general mood of our party hardened. Meanwhile, Lentullus would sit with Justinus and me near the fire, taking no part in the secret search for souvenirs. He was withdrawn, as if somehow he thought everything was his fault.
Once I laughed, briefly. “Here we are, stuck in the middle of nowhere with a whole basket of our own troubles, sounding off like strategists using apples on a tavern table to relive Marathon and Salamis.”
“Shut up about taverns, Falco,” murmured Camillus Justinus sleepily from the depths of his camp-bed. “Some of us could really use a drink!”
Since I had stayed in his house and tasted his awful table wine, I knew just how desperate His Honour the tribune must be.
* * *
Next day we tackled the Teutoburger heights.
We traversed the long escarpment strangely without incident. It seemed too good to be true. It was.
On our descent, all to order, we found the headwater of the River Lupia. At sunset we camped discreetly, making no fires. I noticed that Probus and another recruit went off together and stayed absent for too long. They were no doubt scouring the terrain for antique scabbards and studs again. At first we made no comment, as usual, but we had soon finished distributing rations and still they had failed to appear. That was unheard of. Helvetius stayed in the camp whilst Justinus and I went out to search for our lost lambs. We took a recruit each. He chose one called Orosius. With my luck I got Lentullus. In case I needed more company, Tigris gambolled happily along with us.
As you might expect, it was Tigris, Lentullus, and I who stumbled into the sacred grove.
It just seemed like any other clearing when we first went in. It must have been generations old. We marched boldly among the crook-armed trees, thinking the open ground between them had occurred naturally. An angry wind was rousing itself, rustling tirelessly through the dark, dry, November leaves. Tigris, who had bounded on ahead, raced back madly, bringing us a stick to throw. I bent and after the usual noisy struggle I forced him to release it.
“That looks a funny one,” said Lentullus.
Then we saw it was a human fibula.
* * *
While the dog barked in frustration, waiting for his game, Lentullus and I gazed slowly round and noticed at last that this place had a special atmosphere. There was a smell of moss and misery. The silence blocked our throats. Panic leapt. It took a few moments to recognise that empty eyes were watching us from every side.
“Stand still, Lentullus. Stand still!” I don’t know why I said it. No one else was there … yet there was presence everywhere.
“Sorry, sir,” Lentullus croaked. “Oh great mother! I’ve done it again, haven’t I?”
I tried to sound cheerful as I whispered back, “Yes. It seems to be another of your terrifying finds…”
Ahead of us leaned a grotesque statue in rotting, roughhewn wood: some god of water, wood, or sky—or perhaps all of them. He loomed up like a huge gnarled oak trunk, beaded with livid orange mould and rooted in decay. He had emerged from a few strokes of a crude adze. His limbs were barely indicated caricatures. He had three primitive faces, with four staring Celtic almond-shaped eyes distributed among them. Atop him the wide antlers of some massive elk draped themselves as if trying to embrace the sky.
Before the god stood a basic turf altar where the priests of the Bructeri came to make their sacrifice. Upon it lay the head of an ox, badly decomposed. Like us, they predicted the future from the entrails of animals. Unlike us, it was their custom to hack to pieces any horses and other captured animals belonging to their vanquished enemies. They also conducted worse kinds of sacrifice. We knew that because all around the grove, nailed up in the ancient trees, were human skulls.
XLVII
Lentullus, who normally knew nothing about anything, knew about this. “It’s death to enter a druids’ grove, sir, isn’t it?”
“If we wait around, a druid may come along and answer that…” I gripped his arm, then slowly backed out the way we had come.
To our right something stood among the trees: a trophy pile. There were innumerable weapons—long, unfamiliar German swords, war axes, round shields with sturdy bosses—among other items whose Roman design we recognised with an unhappy shock.
Lentullus squeaked and tripped over a root. Only that spring I had managed to lay hands on part of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, going cheap now that Rome had some nasty new wars to occupy its attention. According to Julius, the Suebi worshipped—in those days anyway—in a grove which people could visit for religious purposes, but if they happened to fall down there it was required practice that they should roll out of the grove horizontally. No doubt Caesar quoted other reassuring facts that might have helped us to extract ourselves from this terror, but I had never owned enough money to buy the next scroll in the set.
Here the ground was particularly rich in unpleasant flora, deer droppings, and milky-coloured fungi of the etiolated, squashy kind. I glared at the hostile wood carving and defiantly ruled out Caesar’s rite. Rolling like a log to propitiate local deities was not in our recruits’ training course, and this one would never have mastered it anyway. I hauled on his arm and pulled the young fool upright. Then we turned round and started to leave conventionally.
We regretted it.
We were now forced to walk past something else we didn’t like.
The edifice at the grove exit was square-built, like another and much larger altar. It was set around a massive stake, and made from various narrow-shaped items, irregular or round-ended, and grey in colour. The construction must have been built up over many generations until now it was two strides in each direction and waist-high. Its components had been laid down in rows extremely neatly, first one way, then crosswise, like twigs in a well-ordered bonfire. But they were not twigs.
It was a giant pile of bones. Bones from human arms and legs. Hundreds of victims must have been dismembered to contribute to this ossuary—first hung in the trees as offerings, then smitten into pieces with casual savagery, like choice cuts from meat carcasses. From what I knew of Celtic rites, most of them had once been young men like us.
Before we could stop him, the tribune’s dog went up to sniff this wondrous hoard of bones. We looked away, as a gesture of respect to the dead, while Tigris saluted each corner of the ossuary with his special sign of doggy reverence.
We left the grove very fast.
XLVIII
We started back to camp. That was when the next nightmare began.
Yet again I was out in a wood at dusk with Lentullus. This time it was not the silence that unnerved us. Suddenly we were surrounded by noise—something, or somebody, crashing th
rough the trees in haste. We were already petrified. Then we heard a shout. Foreign voices filled the night. From the start it seemed like pursuit, and from the start we understood that we were their quarry. I forced Lentullus to change direction, hoping to give the rest of our party a chance.
“I’m with you, sir!” he promised.
“That’s comforting…”
We had lost our path and were blundering over treacherous ground where branches and deceptive clumps of moss lay in wait to throw us headlong with wrenched limbs. I was trying to think as we dashed onwards through the brushwood. I felt fairly sure no one had seen us leave the grove. Perhaps we had not been seen at all. Somebody out there was looking for something, but perhaps they were hunters trying to fill the pot.
We stopped. We crouched amongst bushes while the sweat careered off us and our noses ran.
Not the pot. Whoever they were, they were making a lot of noise for men trying to lure animals into nets. They were thwacking at the bushes in order to flush out fugitives. Harsh laughter alarmed us. Then we heard dogs. Some sort of great horn boomed. Now the boisterous party was coming straight for us.
They were so close we broke cover. They would have found us anyway. Someone glimpsed us. The shouts renewed.
We set off again as best we could, unable even to glance back to see who our pursuers were. I had lost Lentullus. He had stopped to call the tribune’s dog. I kept going. They might miss him; they might miss me; we might even escape.
No chance. I was putting distance between us, but sounds broke out that could only mean one thing: they had caught Lentullus. I had no choice. Groaning, I turned back.
They had to be a band of the Bructeri. They were standing round a deep pit, laughing. Lentullus and Tigris had both fallen into it. Perhaps it was an animal trap, or even one of the pits like larders that their hero Arminius had dug for keeping prisoners fresh. The recruit must be unhurt, for I could hear him shouting with a spirit I was proud of, but the warriors were taunting him by shaking their rough wooden lances. He must have been badly shaken by the fall, and I could hear that he was terrified. One of the Bructeri raised his lance. The threat was clear. I started to yell. I was tearing into the dell when someone big, with a very hard shoulder, sprang out from behind a tree and crashed me to the ground.
The Iron Hand of Mars Page 24