Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Armin spun around and found himself facing a man on a black stallion whose face was hidden behind a mask of bronze. He wore a Roman uniform but brandished a Germanic sword.

  ‘Bring it on!’ howled Armin.

  Who was he? His voice was deformed by the mask, which gave his words a metallic ring.

  Taurus leaned back against a rock, exhausted and panting. He hadn’t escaped the encounter with Armin unharmed; a stream of blood ran down his side.

  All around them a delirium of shrieks and groans, the clatter of clashing arms, wheezing animals, the shrill whinny of horses whose bellies had been slashed open. But there was a slight rise at the head of the column, where many of the soldiers who had survived were making their way. They were readying for their last battle, even if that meant the death foretold by the dull roar of Thor’s hammer.

  The two horsemen were dragged apart by their galloping horses. The black stallion moved at a furious clip while Borr was slower, still hurting from his fall. They finally drew up at the edges of a sandy clearing near the Great Swamp. The two warriors faced off, on horseback at first and then on foot, with violent slashes and stabs of sword and dagger. Armin wielded an axe as well, whirling it with enormous strength, making it roar in the dense air of Teutoburg. The masked horseman bent sharply to dodge it and came up ready to smite with a Germanic sword in one hand and a Roman one in the other. There were no words left; all they could do was strike repeatedly with incredible violence, trying to maim each other, aiming at arms, legs and heads.

  A strong swipe by Armin at his adversary’s left shoulder was deflected from above by the steel plates of the segmented shoulder plate and his mask fell to the ground.

  They stood facing one another, gasping and wheezing.

  ‘You!’ said Armin in shock.

  The horseman jumped onto his black stallion and raced away, crossing the field of blood and death at a gallop.

  25

  THE MASSACRE RESUMED IN the afternoon, with a vengeance.

  The Germanics, who had so often seen their best warriors, their youth, mowed down by the legions, couldn’t believe that they were finally able to get revenge. They’d been let loose to vent their ferocity on a disjointed, pinned-down army. Many of the Roman army’s commanders were gone; some had been killed, others had escaped in the hope of reaching Castra Vetera. A number of soldiers had sought to flee as well, heading north, but when they tried to circle the Great Swamp, many were sucked in by the slurry mud at its banks. Squads of Germanic warriors, crouching in the vegetation at the shore, had been waiting for just this chance and eagerly let their arrows and spears fly so they could watch their prey fall and then float away in the black waters of the huge bog.

  All the Romans who were able to do so tried to regroup, with the horses and carts remaining to them. A small redoubt had been established on a little area of sandy high ground. Although it afforded them some shelter, they were still caught between the swamp and the rampart, from which swarms of sharp javelins continued to rise and then fall from the sky to cut, break, pierce.

  Thiaminus and Privatus, who were part of the entourage of civilians, baggage wagons and pack animals still following Taurus, tried in vain to convince the centurion to evacuate from the redoubt. They had hoped to bring Taurus to safety for the duration of the battle but there was no dislodging him from the heart of the fight.

  Meanwhile, the Germanic warriors were trying to storm the circle of carts defending the Roman position. They knew their best chance would be before the sun set and the shadows of the night enveloped the pass and the bloody bog of Teutoburg, but their attack proved to be unsuccessful. A few portable ballistae fortuitously discovered in the bottoms of the carts provided the defenders with sufficient ammunition to discourage their most resolute assailants. Part of Numonius Vala’s cavalry had also managed to enter the circle before it was closed off.

  ‘You must leave,’ Taurus was saying to his freedmen. ‘It’s an order. You are not legionaries, you don’t owe it to anyone to die in this disgusting hole.’ It was like speaking to rocks. They looked at him, smiled, and did not move a step.

  The hammer of Thor began to let out its dark roar, to remind the surviving soldiers that they would soon be dead, down to the very last man.

  The sky darkened and became black as pitch. The ear-splitting thunder was accompanied by bolts of lightning that lit up a desolate landscape: bloody mud trampled by thousands of feet, cadavers that were missing their heads. Their skin was grey and so were the once vital organs now on display, matching the hue of the mud they were mired in. The swollen clouds rolled and twisted, releasing a brief storm of huge hailstones, which covered the ground with a blanket of ice. Here and there stony faces took on sad expressions, pelted by the rain. Then a strong wind ripped through the clouds and let the pale moon shine through for a brief moment.

  Publius Quinctilius Varus’s guard had fought their way through the battle to lead the governor to the high ground, where he was safe, but to all intents and purposes he was a larva. His face was leaden and there was panic in his every gesture, in his trembling hands and flaccid belly, his sunken eyes rolling in bewilderment. He was not capable of giving orders, or of instilling a drop of courage into his exhausted soldiers. Rufius Corvus, practically unrecognizable because of the dried blood caked on his face, approached Varus. ‘Governor, Centurion Taurus has a plan and he would like to explain it to you. I’d like to call together all the surviving officers.’

  Varus nodded, and a glimmer of hope seemed to make his gaze less pathetic.

  The meeting of the remaining men of the general staff took place inside a covered wagon at the centre of the camp, a sort of makeshift praetorian tent, the last homage to their commander on the part of his soldiers. It was completely dark. The centurion spoke first: ‘The Germanics are quiet for the time being. They’re tired too. They’ve killed so many of our men, it’s too much even for them. The die is not cast. We can stop this vile fate from claiming us.’

  ‘How?’ asked Varus anxiously, as if Taurus could perform a miracle.

  Rufius Corvus could barely believe what he was hearing: Varus was looking for salvation from one of his men, while he had had every opportunity to prevent the disaster from ever happening. He remembered when they had accompanied Varus to Carrhae, together with Armin. To what remained of the battlefield where Marcus Licinius Crassus’s army had been completely annihilated. Bones bleached by the sun, thousands of them, covering the barren desert. He had thought then, and had even discussed these thoughts with Armin, that the governor who had been capable of crucifying two thousand Judaean rebels had at least learned a crucial and very simple lesson. He remembered his own words, and without meaning to he screamed them out, one by one, nearly spitting into Quinctilius Varus’s face.

  ‘Even the most battle-ready Roman army can be defeated!

  ‘Never trust a foreigner, even when he is an ally!

  ‘Never let yourself be lured into a territory that you don’t know but that the enemy knows like the palm of his hand!’

  Varus didn’t dare respond and Rufius continued yelling: ‘We were in Carrhae together! How can you have forgotten those lessons? Didn’t you see all those bones? They were Romans, Romans like me and you, Governor, and like us they were sent to slaughter by an incapable commander! Armin was there with us. Do you remember that? Well, he learned the lesson. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you listen to those who sought to warn you?’

  Taurus, wounded but still on his feet, put a hand on Rufius’s shoulder. ‘That’s enough, Corvus. What’s done is done. Now we have to try to survive. Maybe we still have a chance of getting out of this hell. If we do, we’ll reach Castra Vetera by marching due west. Lucius Asprenas, who commands the garrison, will come to us; he’ll come to our aid and chase off the Germanics. We will march in close formation. Once we’re on the open field I don’t believe they’ll try to attack us.’

  ‘But how will we get there? The enemy is everywhere!’ said
Varus.

  ‘There’s some pitch in the bottom of one of the carts down there,’ replied Taurus. ‘It was meant for creating a barrier of fire if one was needed. We’ll wait until the Germanics come back to attack us, then we’ll set the pitch and the carts on fire and hurl them at the attackers. This will achieve two results: it will stop them for a while, and give us time to escape. We’ll be able to move more quickly without the carts, with only the pack animals. We need to find fire, to make embers . . .’

  Rufius Corvus widened his arms. ‘And where are we going to find fire, Taurus, in this swamp, in all this damned mud?’

  No one answered Rufius. A leaden silence fell over the group.

  Almost immediately, Taurus heard something. ‘There’s someone out there,’ he said. They could all hear it then, the sound of a gallop, very close. Then they saw a small meteor fall from the sky, plowing through the thick darkness. A tiny sphere of fire that fell into the middle of the circle of wagons.

  Taurus looked astonished. He turned to Rufius Corvus: ‘Run, get that before the mud puts it out.’

  Corvus rushed to pick up the firebrand sizzling on the ground. He propped it up in a dry place and added some straw soaked in the pitch.

  The sound of the gallop was lost in the night.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Corvus.

  Taurus took a deep, deep breath. ‘Someone paying back a debt. A flame for a flame. That’s it; nothing else will be coming our way.’

  ‘So you know who it could be?’

  ‘I certainly do. I can tell one gallop from another. Every horse is different. This one is very different and he even has a name. He’s called . . . his name is Borr. Now we have a chance. At least I hope we do.’

  ‘You hope?’ shrieked Varus. ‘So that’s your whole plan? Don’t you have anything else in mind if this one fails?’

  ‘I do have another plan, in fact.’

  ‘So what’s that?’

  In the reflection of the burning firebrand, Taurus stared fiercely at him. ‘To die like a Roman, Governor.’

  Then he turned to the legionaries who were sitting in a circle around him. ‘There will still be some salted food in the holds of the wagons. Eat and drink, even if it revolts you. Have your men do the same. Then find a dry spot on the carts, or underneath them, and try to sleep. What we’ll have to face tomorrow will be no less difficult than what we’ve done today. We’re going to find a way out, if there is one, otherwise we’ll see each other in hell, boys.’

  Sergius Vetilius stepped forward. He was covered with mud and blood and in the dark no one had recognized him; no one had seen him for such a long time that they were all sure he was dead.

  ‘Well, well . . . the commander of the Eighteenth!’ exclaimed Rufius Corvus.

  Taurus had one of the legionaries hand him a piece of smoked meat and he tossed it over to him. ‘Eat up, Commander. We’re going to crack some heads tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t say!’ laughed Vetilius. ‘And here I was, planning to take a little stroll.’ Meanwhile he had drawn his gladius and was using a whetstone to sharpen it like a razor. Taurus watched him, knowing well who he was preparing that blade for, when he would no longer have the strength to fight.

  The prefect of the camp showed up as well. He was a lad of twenty named Ceionius once destined for a dazzling career. ‘Do you have a bite for me, Centurion?’ he asked.

  ‘Have some, son,’ replied Taurus. ‘There’s still a bit left.’ Ceionius ate with appetite and took part in the conversation as if he were an old friend of each of those present. They all felt equal in front of impending death, without any difference of rank or social standing.

  Varus watched them in amazement. They were frightening to look at: bloodied, tattered, filthy with mud, limping, wounded. And yet sitting around that wretched little fire, surrounded by thousands of ferocious enemies, exhausted, mourning for the friends they had lost that day, and almost certainly destined to a horrible death in just a few hours’ time, they still felt like joking.

  Then their voices, one by one, fell silent, the remaining chunks of meat were thrown onto the fire and, lying one alongside another in the warmth of the flames, the legionaries and officers of the Eighteenth, utterly worn out, fell asleep.

  THE REFLECTION OF a leaden dawn drew from the dark a squad of Germanic cavalry who were slowly advancing towards the wagons. Ceionius woke Taurus. ‘Centurion . . . come and see this.’

  ‘Damn,’ cursed Taurus. ‘So early?’

  He strapped on his balteus, hung his sword from it, and followed Ceionius; hundreds of warriors were advancing on horseback towards the wall of wagons and each one of them carried a javelin on which he had stuck the head of a Roman soldier.

  ‘Powerful gods,’ he muttered.

  The Germanics were advancing slowly. The surviving Roman officers, aided by their men, started helping Taurus to manoeuvre the carts and wagons so that they were pointing down the slope. As the Germanic horsemen got closer, the scene became more horrifying. In those severed heads, with their mangled, distorted features, many of the Romans recognized their friends, companions of many adventures and comrades of many battles. Some wept in silence, others boiled over with rage.

  At that sight, something broke inside Ceionius, who had seemed so cocky and fearless until then. Before Taurus could stop him he pushed his way through the wall of carts and started running like crazy towards the Germanics, shouting, ‘We surrender! We surrender, spare our lives!’ He fell to his knees with his arms raised and open.

  Taurus was beside himself, and shouted, ‘Turn back, boy! Turn back!’ But when he saw his words were useless he turned to the surviving group of archers. ‘Kill him. In the name of the gods, kill him now.’

  The archers let fly with their arrows but it was too late; they only hit the Germanic shields. Ceionius disappeared, dragged off towards atrocious sufferings.

  Taurus startled the men with his curt orders: ‘What’s there to look at? What are you doing? There’s work to be done here. Move those carts, men. Go, go!’

  He turned to the civilians who had found shelter in their encampment: ‘There’s nothing we can do for you. Wait here. The Germanics have nothing against you. They’ll take you as slaves but you’ll live. Especially the women. Good luck.’

  The torches were already aflame and all of the vehicles were set on fire. When they started to burn, they pushed them down the slope towards the Germanic cavalry. The smoke was soon thick enough to hide the Romans from sight and Sergius Vetilius ordered them to retreat towards the wood, heading west. There was a little more room in that direction, enough to form up the units in sufficiently compact order, and incredibly the Germanics did not attack en masse as they could have done. But the respite did not last long. It became increasingly difficult to manoeuvre between the large trees in the wood. The units advanced with difficulty, often splitting up due to the obstacles they found in their way. The Germanics, led by Armin himself, had soon slid into all of the passes. And the march of the legionaries quickly began to be seeded with dead and wounded soldiers. The cavalry of Numonius Vala, who had been sent ahead to reconnoitre and keep the passage clear, would not return . . .

  The infantry tried to stay compact and for a certain time many of them thought they could actually reach the outposts of Asprenas in front of Castra Vetera, and survive. But the Germanic pressure was incessant. The Romans, guided by their most courageous and valiant officers, tried continuously to keep rank, but the terrain made it nearly impossible to stay in battle formation. They resisted nonetheless until nightfall. They finally reached a clearing and assembled into a circle to ready for their last, desperate defence.

  26

  THAT WHOLE NIGHT, the forest shuddered with the sinister rumble of the hammer of Thor. No one closed an eye. The sentries scanned the darkness to understand where the attack would be coming from. There were noises: twigs broken, the cries of night birds. The forest was crawling with invisible ghosts.

  The ne
ws of Armin’s success against the Romans had convinced even those in doubt to throw themselves into the final fight. The powerful army of Varus had been decimated and the survivors were exhausted, pinned down with no hope of getting away. What better chance to gain favour in the eyes of the victor? Thousands more warriors had marched all night to arrive in time for the final carnage. The strongest had danced the dance of death and massacre, had drunk the sacred beverage that erases pain and fatigue, naked, until they achieved a delirious state of fury, roaring like beasts, their eyes flaming with hallucinatory folly. The Berserkers.

  But cruel fate was still not satisfied by the thousands more warriors pouring in, in a bloodthirsty frenzy, to fill Armin’s ranks. The hostile sky unleashed a violent storm at dawn, with a wild wind that agitated the leaves of the ancient trees. Lightning tore into their enormous boughs and sent them crashing to the ground with deafening cracks. There was no hope left, besides a miracle, and Primus Pilus Centurion Marcus Caelius had something to tell his soldiers. An exhortation and also a goodbye to his weary men. The storm raged and the rain fell in torrential sheets from the sky, as if the floodgates of the heavens had opened.

  ‘Men of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Legions!’ he shouted. ‘I am only a humble soldier and no words are adequate to express the immense admiration I have for you. I’ve done battle on all the fronts and regions of the Empire, but I’ve never seen men of your mettle. You have been fighting for days and nights without pause, without complaint, putting up with hunger, thirst, pain, lack of sleep, and the fury of the weather! You deserve victory, and you will not have it. But it was betrayal, deceit and adverse fortune that brought you down, not any want of strength or valour.

  ‘The time has come for the final battle. It will be a fight to the death, without any glimmer of hope. You will die and I will die with you, but we will fall as soldiers and as Romans, dragging to hell all the enemies we can. Your sacrifice will be remembered for centuries, even when the Empire of Rome no longer exists.’