Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘What do the Romans do in the winter time?’ Sigmer asked his son.

  ‘You’ve never spent the cold season with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They repair their weapons, their carts, their roads and bridges. They go through their warehouses and take inventory. The officers write letters to their friends, their girls or their wives, to complain about the cold, the damp, the food, the sour wine. In the evenings they bet their salaries on games of dice; sometimes they even lose the clothes off their backs. The smarter ones invest in wool underwear and trousers . . .’

  Sigmer shook his head, perplexed. ‘I’ve never understood what they’re looking for here, with everything they have in Rome and in Italy.’

  ‘A border. The safest and most dependable one possible. And barbarians to civilize. They feel that’s their mission.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘You shouldn’t need to ask. You had long conversations with General Drusus. I know the doubts in your mind: why should my people have to pay taxes and tributes to the Roman governor? It’s true, maybe he’s robbing you. But he’s also building cities and roads, bridges and aqueducts, he’s digging canals and draining swamps, and if he had the time he’d be raising libraries, thermal baths and theatres. Romans pay taxes and tributes to their own state as well. They complain about it, but they pay. And the citizens can see what their money is good for when they travel down a road or cross a river using a bridge meant to last for centuries. All we’ve done is worry about killing each other, and every new generation is fiercer than the one before it. You know? Since I’ve been here, with you, with Mother, with the things from my youth all around me, instead of mellowing I’m becoming fiercer and wilder every day.’

  ‘It’s our nature,’ replied Sigmer. ‘We live in a cruel, merciless place. You’re not changing. You’re what you’ve always been. You just forgot, living for years like you did in such an enchanting, luminous land.’

  Arminius fell silent for a long time, as if he were listening to the voices of the forest as darkness overcame it. Then he said, ‘Have you ever seen that girl again?’

  Sigmer looked at him questioningly.

  ‘The one that I saw at the spring festival.’

  ‘She was a little girl. And I told you to forget it. You mean that girl?’

  Arminius nodded.

  ‘Her name is Thusnelda.’

  ‘Is she married?’

  ‘No, but as I told you then, she’s betrothed.’

  ‘So she’s waited for me.’

  ‘Because you looked at her?’

  Arminius decided that the time had come to ask him the only question worth coming all this way for. ‘Was it you who sent me a message through the Hermundur? The message that spoke of a woman between two heads, the centre of everything, of life and of death?’

  Sigmer sighed. ‘I didn’t know much about how the two of you were faring, just what the Hermunduri warrior would tell me, but it was enough. I knew that your position, and the friendship of Centurion Taurus, would allow you to intervene and to bend the course of events in the way that the two of you – but you in particular – felt would be best.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have been more explicit?’

  ‘No. A written message might have been intercepted and one that was any clearer might have put you in a dangerous position. The Hermundur himself could not be allowed to understand the meaning of the message. Only you and your brother. If you had found yourself in fortunate circumstances, you could have provided the crucial key; you might have made a decision that would put you in a position of great advantage. Either as far as the Roman emperor was concerned, or . . . on behalf of all of the Germanic nations that for more than three lustra have been fighting against him and his sons, Commanders Drusus and Tiberius.

  ‘For me, it’s always been an unsolvable dilemma: on one hand the destiny of our peoples, on the other the thinking of General Drusus, to whom, as you know, I was tied by a strong bond of friendship and an even stronger one of admiration.’

  Arminius was not letting a single word of his father’s escape him.

  ‘In the end, you decided to stay the killer’s hand, and thus you gained Augustus’s trust. I don’t want to ask you whether that was your final choice but I would say it was, and I’m beginning to believe myself that it was the right one. As far as I know, your brother Wulf has no doubts and he is considered one of the most valuable officers of the Roman army. I’m getting along in age and my temples have turned grey, while you, my son, still have many years ahead of you to come to a firm choice. I hope I’ve answered your question.’

  At that moment Arminius caught his mother’s glance and he had no doubts about what her thoughts were; you could see them in the cutting light of her eyes.

  ONE EVENING, at twilight, as Arminius was returning from the hunt with a roe deer tied to the back of his horse, he found himself suddenly facing a wall of fog, seeping forward from the century-old trees. He stopped to find his bearings, glancing around to look for an alternate route. The fog would soon be swallowing him up as well. What would he do then? The odour of the deer’s blood would attract the wolves. How could he have been so foolish? He moved his dagger in its sheathe onto his chest, in order to be ready. There were hills over to his left; he could try to reach the closest and find a place to spend the night there. He loosened the knots which bound the deer and let it slip to the ground as he turned towards the hill. In that instant he heard the sound of pounding hooves and saw a horseman burst out of the fog; he was racing dangerously fast for that kind of terrain.

  Arminius reached down for the sword which hung at his side and prepared for combat. The horseman halted his steed and unsheathed his own sword.

  ‘What language do you speak?’ asked Arminius in his ancestral tongue.

  ‘Yours,’ replied a voice that Arminius knew well.

  They jumped to the ground at the same moment and they hugged each other hard enough to crunch their bones.

  ‘Wulf!’

  ‘Armin!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What you’re doing.’

  ‘So why were you riding so fast in a place like this?’

  ‘To get away from the fog, the dark and . . .’ They heard a howl. ‘. . . them.’ Yellow eyes emerged from the night and they could hear snarling, very close.

  ‘A horseman storming out of the fog on a black stallion . . .’ mused Arminius. He’d already seen that. Was it in a dream? A night in Italy? In Germania?

  They let the horses free and clambered to the top of the hill as the wolves fought over the deer carcass.

  ‘And when they’ve finished?’ asked Flavus.

  ‘We can try to push on. But with this fog we’ll risk getting lost and other packs could attack us. We’ll stay here. They’re only wild dogs, after all. These will do it,’ said Arminius, lifting his sword in his right hand and his dagger in the left.

  The siege started in the dead of night, the wolves encircling and then closing in on them. Neither of them was wearing armour and they planted themselves back to back to stand against their assailants. Their blades flashed in the dark, tracing perfect semi-circles. But the wolves were organized, following a precise strategy, attacking and retreating to find a breach, flesh into which they could sink their teeth.

  ‘Where were you headed?’ asked Arminius to lighten the tension.

  ‘Home,’ panted Flavus.

  ‘Me too,’ said Arminius. ‘I’ve been home for a month. Where were you coming from?’

  ‘The island of the Batavi.’

  They fought to the point of exhaustion, wolf carcasses scattered all around them while new ones kept coming out of the woods.

  Then all at once a flaming meteor flew across the sky and landed just a short distance away from them: a lit torch that sizzled on the snow, followed by another. Flavus picked one up. ‘We’re saved,’ he said.

  ‘Who on earth . . .’ began Arminius, picking up the other.

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nbsp; ‘We’ll worry about that later. Let’s follow the horses’ tracks while we can see.’

  They set fire to dry twigs and branches at the foot of the oaks that had been hit by lightning. They burst into flame, crackling loudly, blazing with incandescent heat. The wolves backed off and fled.

  Flavus and Arminius found their horses, who had managed to stay safe, and they headed towards Sigmer’s house, illuminating their path with the torches. From a hilltop, they made out a vermillion light pulsating half a mile away in the middle of the wood.

  ‘It’s him. Whoever threw us the torches so we could defend ourselves from the wolves,’ said Flavus.

  ‘Who?’ asked Arminius.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know. We owe him our lives, that we know.’

  Sigmer couldn’t hide his delight at seeing both of his sons together. He hoped they would remain with him for the rest of the winter season, but this was not to be. Both brothers set off one cold February morning, heading north. After only three days, they separated. Arminius was directed to Velleius’s winter camp and Flavus would be crossing the Weser on a ferry.

  ‘I hope we’ll see each other again soon,’ said Arminius.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Flavus. ‘Anyway, it’s best we say goodbye.’ They embraced, and Arminius watched as his brother and his black horse boarded the barge that would cross the river.

  AT THE END of the winter, Tiberius Caesar returned as high commander of the Army of the North and military operations began again. In the meantime, the fleet, aided by winds blowing from the north and west, had already set sail up the Ems, the Weser and the Elbe, carrying supplies, equipment and the first troop contingents. The bulk of them would be arriving later. An enormous number of men would be deployed: tens of thousands of soldiers, including legionaries, cavalry and auxiliary troops, coming in on hundreds of ships. Velleius was promoted to general staff and became Tiberius Caesar’s personal aide.

  The high command intended for this operation to be the definitive push that would bring the subjugation of Germania. Tiberius had already conquered all of the Balkan populations and even before that he had fought alongside his brother Drusus to stabilize the Rhine-Danube border. He was the man who had never lost a battle, he was the idol of the army and he was not about to fail the most important mission of his life. The fleet landed the first contingents of troops along the rivers’ banks, some on the left side of one river and others on the right side of the other river, so that the armies could converge on the territory from the east and from the west at the same time, including the interior regions, and gain control of everywhere at once. The land of the Cherusci was crossed but not devastated, as had been convened. Other peoples were given the opportunity to discuss terms of surrender.

  At the beginning of this huge initiative, Arminius got himself assigned to garrison duty on the territory still governed by his father, so he could manage to avoid operations that would force him into front-line combat against his own blood.

  Velleius seemed to approve of this line of conduct. ‘I trust you,’ he said, ‘but the moment will soon come in which you’ll have to fight at the front against other Germanics. There are bonds stronger than friendship that form in a war – a little like love, no? It puts a man to the test. And for soldiers that might mean a test of blood.’ He looked straight into Arminius’s eyes as if to search for an opening into his thoughts, but Arminius’s gaze was as indecipherable as the sphinx’s must have been when Oedipus was at the gates of Thebes. ‘There’s one thing you should remember: there’s never any pity for the Germanic auxiliaries on the part of enemy kinsmen. That’s why they have to fight to their last drop of sweat and their last breath.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ replied Arminius, in a flat, toneless voice.

  He met Sergius Vetilius and Rufius Corvus again in the Eighteenth Legion camp. Corvus commanded a front-line centuria of the third cohort, while Vetilius was the military tribune of the fifth.

  They often joined up to drink a beer and play dice in the village of huts and tents put together by the merchants who were following the army. Their friendship strengthened as an effect of the military camaraderie, as they shared all of the toil and bravado that kind of life required.

  In the second part of the campaign, Commander Tiberius Caesar personally ordered that Arminius be moved to the head of the auxiliary cavalry and that he assume authority, if needed, over the commander of the Germanic infantry fighting with the Romans. In all, about fifteen thousand men.

  Arminius knew little about what was happening to his brother, apart from rare information offered every now and then by a stray messenger. He always appeared to be at the front, attached to various legions. It almost seemed to Arminius that someone was trying to keep them apart, if not actually far away from one another. In reality, both brothers acted in the same way: they fought with great valour against the enemies of Rome.

  More than once, Arminius had intervened to save Roman forces from a dangerous situation and Tiberius’s esteem of him continued to grow. It didn’t take long for the army’s supreme commander to realize that Arminius was a true combatant, a war machine. It was enough to toss him into the fray for all of his most ferocious instincts to come to the fore. Nothing else mattered, not even having to attack men who spoke his language or shared his blood. The high commander did nothing to spare him this type of encounter, first of all because that would be impossible and secondly because Arminius’s actions were proof of his loyalty to the Empire and to the emperor. In his heart, Tiberius thought that if his commander of the Germanic Auxilia continued to fight in such a way, he would request that Arminius be honoured with the highest rewards.

  The spring offensive had the Army of the North moving beyond the Weser in the direction of the Elbe where, according to Augustus’s plan, the borderline between the east and north would be established. In order to achieve such a result, Tiberius Caesar could leave no pocket of resistance or rebellion behind him. Augustus had endured almost twenty years of war at huge expense, losing a great number of soldiers and some very fine commanders like Drusus, without ever having succeeded in his aim: to reduce Germania to a Roman province with a Roman governor, a Roman administration and the Roman rule of law.

  One evening, after the general staff of the Eighteenth Legion had met in the praetorian tent, Legate Velleius invited a few of his most highly prized officers, including Rufius Corvus, Sergius Vetilius and Arminius himself, to dinner. At their meeting they spoke about the great operation that Tiberius was readying. The oceanic fleet was sailing up the Elbe, putting a number of contingents ashore in correspondence to the size of the enemy settlements to be occupied. Sometimes an entire legion would be transported this way, requiring at least two days for such a complex manoeuvre.

  At dinner, conversation continued along the same lines. ‘The fact is,’ said a legate, ‘that it’s not like Gaul here. My uncle, who fought with Julius Caesar, always said that in that land, the settlements are very similar to our own cities in every way, and that each one was a centre around which a vast area revolved, including all the people living there. So it was enough to conquer one of these strongholds for the whole region to be conquered as well. The Gauls defended them strenuously, one by one, and in the end it’s calculated that they paid for this heroic resistance with over one million dead . . .’ Arminius couldn’t help turning towards him. ‘Here, instead, all we find are villages of huts, like the Romans had at their very origins, with maybe fifty to two hundred inhabitants, no more, scattered all through the forests and around the swamps. Dominating all of them is nearly impossible, unless you totally clear the entire territory.

  ‘So that’s what the commander intends to do: the army of the Rhine will move east, and the army of the Elbe will move west, flattening to the ground each and every village, and every people, who refuse to surrender. Do you remember Virgil’s words? Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. Spare the vanquished and subdue the arrogant. Am I right? They are being g
iven a choice.’

  ‘Will we succeed, Legate?’ asked Sergius Vetilius. ‘This war has lasted almost twenty years.’

  ‘I say we will,’ replied Velleius. ‘Commander Tiberius has never lost a battle, let alone a war. It’s true, this conflict has been dragging on for far too long, but if it ends up the way I think it will, it will have been worth it. There will finally be peace, for centuries to come. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the people we conquer will slowly forget about the blood shed by their forebears like the Gauls have. After all, Gallic leaders have seats in the Senate of Rome now and wear laticlave togas; they promulgate the same laws that Roman people have learned to comply with. In a few generations, it will be the same for the Germanics. They’ll have become legionaries, curators of aqueducts and roads, merchants and contractors. They’ll receive honours and awards, they’ll live in houses with running water, they’ll eat foods cooked according to elaborate recipes. Some of them will become poets, philosophers and musicians, others will govern as magistrates. They’ll cut off those wild manes of hair and adopt our styles. But they’ll also adopt the Latin language, and they’ll do it of their own free accord.

  ‘I know the commander well. He won’t stop until he has achieved the job he has set out to do. And I know how this campaign will end, because he never puts his soldiers’ lives at risk without a reason and he’ll never join a battle he’s not sure of winning.’

  ‘The chaotic element of history does exist, Legate,’ said Sergius Vetilius.

  At that moment a voice, one that nearly all of the guests sitting under the great pavilion recognized, rang out: ‘That is true. Events can be unpredictable. But there’s one thing that Tribune Vetilius has forgotten!’

  Taurus! Arminius thought to himself.

  ‘Well, let lightning strike me,’ whispered Corvus into Vetilius’s ear. ‘Where did that old bastard come from?’

  ‘Come forward, Centurion!’ ordered Velleius.

  Taurus, gleaming in his regulation armour and wearing his cross-crested helmet, strode forward.