‘You’d be mad to try,’ the elder brother said, ‘you could never cross the Rhenus.’
Thumelicatz inclined his head in agreement. ‘Not if we stay as disunited as we are now and even if we could you would use the resources of your empire to beat us back in time. But you still have the strength to cross the other way and that is why I am here talking to you against all my principles. One of you has something to show me, I believe.’
The younger brother took out a knife and passed it to Thumelicatz; he examined the blade and saw that it was indeed engraved with his father’s name. ‘How did you come to be in possession of this?’
‘Our father was a junior centurion in the Twentieth Legion in Drusus’ army. After Arminius …’ He paused as Thumelicatz gave him a scowling glare. ‘I’m sorry, Erminatz. After Erminatz and his brother had been handed over as a hostage, the general, Drusus, detailed our father’s century to escort them back to his household in Rome; he got to know Erminatz quite well in the two months that the journey took. The further they travelled west and then south the more Erminatz began to realise just how far he was being taken from home; he began to despair about seeing his parents again, especially his mother. The morning our father delivered him and his brother to Drusus’ house, Erminatz gave him that knife and made him promise to give it to his mother. Our father promised, thinking that he would be rejoining his legion back in the east. However, Drusus had fallen from his horse three months after they’d left and he had died of the injuries a month later. My father met his funeral cortege on his way back and this legion was with it. They were then posted to Illyricum and, with Tiberius, campaigned in Germania Magna again a few years later; but this time they came in from the south to fight the Marcomanni and didn’t reach your father’s lands. Then later, during another campaign, he was almost gutted by a spear thrust and invalided out of the army; so he never had the chance to return to the Cherusci’s lands and give the knife to Erminatz’s mother.’
Thumelicatz continued staring at the runic engraving, thinking, and then nodded. ‘You speak the truth; it is exactly how my father set it down in his memoirs.’
‘He wrote his memoirs!’ the younger brother exclaimed, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
Thumelicatz suppressed the sudden anger that he felt at the Roman’s patronising surprise. ‘You forget he was brought up in Rome from the age of nine. He learnt to read and write, although not that well as it had to be beaten into him; we do not consider them to be manly practices. However, he had a better idea: he would dictate his memoirs to his crushed enemies and he would keep them alive so that they could read it out whenever it was necessary, and today it may be necessary. Mother, would you join us?’
Thusnelda entered; she looked at the Romans, contempt blatant on her face, before turning to her son.
‘Mother, is it necessary to tell my father’s story to these Romans? What do the bones say?’
Thusnelda pulled her Rune Bones from her bag, breathed on them and muttered her call upon Air, Fire, Water and Earth before casting them to the ground.
Stooping, she examined their fall for a few moments, pawing at them. ‘My husband would wish his story told to these men; to understand you they must understand where you come from, my son.’
Thumelicatz nodded. ‘Then so be it, Mother, we shall begin.’
As Aius and Tiburtius began to unroll the scrolls on the desk, the younger brother indicated to them and said, ‘So he spared these two to write down his life and read it out?’
‘Yes, who better to tell of the life of Arminius than the aquilifers, the Eagle-bearers, of the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Legions?’
CHAPTER II
‘MY FATHER’S STORY begins almost fifty years ago to the day,’ Thumelicatz informed the Romans, ‘during the time that Drusus, Augustus’ stepson, was attempting to complete the conquest of Germania Magna.’ He nodded to Aius who spread a scroll out on the desk, cleared his throat and began to read.
It was at the time of the Ice Gods, in my ninth year, that my mother woke my brother Chlodochar and me early, before the dawn.
‘You must both come quickly,’ she said, stroking my forehead and gazing at me with a strange look that I had never seen before in her loving eyes, reflecting the fading glow of the fire.
I look back now and recognise it as a look of longing; longing for a life that would never be, a life in which she would bring up her two sons to become warriors of the Cherusci. At that moment she knew that she had lost that life for ever; I did not.
‘What is it, Mother?’ I asked, determined not to be frightened by her expression.
‘Your father and your tribe have need of you both; you must be brave and know that what you are being asked to do is for the good of all of us.’
I remember the thrill of feeling that I was being called upon to be brave, brave as a warrior, brave as my father, Siegimeri, the king of the Cherusci. I crawled out of the bed of furs that I shared with my elder sister and younger brother in a corner of my father’s longhouse; all around, men were stirring from their beds, talking softly to each other, lighting tallow candles, combing their hair and beards and pulling on their war gear. My childish sense of excitement grew as I stepped into my breeks and then pulled on my doe-skin boots: perhaps I was to accompany my father on a raid against the hated invaders of our land, the ironclad men of Rome. Then one look at the confused face of my seven-year-old brother, as my sister, Erminhild, helped him to dress, put an end to that fantasy. Intrigued nevertheless, I fastened my belt over my tunic and attached to it my prize possession: a knife, given to me by my father, with my name engraved in runes down one side of the blade.
Pulling my cloak around my shoulders and grabbing a sliver of smoked venison and a hunk of dry bread from a platter left on a table from the previous night’s meal, I walked, chewing thoughtfully, out into the cold pre-dawn air; my breath immediately started steaming and my boots crunched on the frosted ground. The Ice Gods had passed in the night.
Slaves had saddled the men’s horses and waited with them, in flickering torchlight, for their masters to emerge from the longhouse. I looked around the warriors as they mounted up and realised that their mood was sombre, lacking the sense of nervous excitement I had come to recognise as the prelude to combat. I had last seen the men in that mood half a moon previously on the final day of the muster of the Cherusci here in the high hills of our natural stronghold of the Harzland; that day my father led more than ten thousand warriors east towards the Albis River, shadowing a great force of Romans who had skirted around the Harzland to the north, in the hope of taking the invaders by surprise. What remained of the army of the Cherusci came back little by little over the next few days, defeated men, grim but defiant. My father eventually returned and for two days and nights he had sat taking counsel with the headmen of all the clans of the tribe; at the end of the moot each man renewed his oath to my father and he distributed gifts of silver before they dispersed to their lands.
When I asked my father why it had been necessary to renew the oaths that bound the tribe together for as long as this Middle-Earth existed he replied enigmatically: ‘Things have changed.’ Nothing more could I get out of him. However, the reported sighting, four days later, of more than a thousand shackled prisoners, once-proud sword-bearers of the Cherusci, being sent west into servitude confirmed the truth of that statement.
My father’s men began to mount up, but of him there was no sign; until I had spoken with him I did not know what was expected of me. I waited, stamping my feet and flapping my arms across my chest to ward off the chill breath of the Ice Gods who revisit our land for three days every spring before returning to their halls of ice below the Middle-Earth to regain their strength whilst fairer gods hold sway. My cousin, Aldhard, who had been born in the same summer as me, appeared from the deep shadows by the latrine, shivering and fastening his breeks.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
I shrugged.
He noticed my cloak. ‘You’re going with them?’
‘Yes; at least I think so. My father has sent for me.’
There was a stir amongst the men and my father strode out of the longhouse dressed in his finest bear-fur cloak and with a thick golden torque around his neck. He lifted my brother up to my uncle, Inguiomer, placing him in the saddle in front of him, and then signalled to a couple of slaves concealed in the shadows. They stepped forward holding bundles of freshly sprouted beech branches and started distributing them amongst the men who tied them onto the tips of their spears; I knew then that there would be no fighting.
‘We must be going to negotiate,’ I observed to Aldhard.
‘Then why’s he taking you and your brother?’
‘Perhaps he wants to teach us something.’
A wistful look spread over Aldhard’s face and I cursed myself for being so tactless: his father, Vulferam, my mother’s brother, had not returned from the battle and Aldhard did not know whether he was dead or enslaved; the Romans had had the captives burn the fallen on mass pyres so there was no way of knowing who was alive or dead. I knew, however, what Aldhard would wish, what we all would wish, in that terrible uncertainty: to die with honour, grasping a sword, with dead enemies at your feet or to live out a short, miserable life in the mines or arenas of Rome; between death or living-death, who would choose the latter?
My father mounted his horse and, catching my eye, signalled for me to join him. I clapped Aldhard on the shoulder and walked towards him, looking around for my mother and sister to say goodbye; there was no sign of them and I thought nothing of it as I clambered up into the saddle in front of my father, I would see her that evening or maybe tomorrow. He kicked the horse forward towards the gates; they slowly opened. I did not look back as we passed through; perhaps had I done so I would have glimpsed my mother in the doorway of the longhouse, weeping, with an arm around my sister. I do not know; but what I do know is that I did not see my mother again until I was a man, and my sister, never.
The negotiations were already over.
We rode in silence as the dawn came up before us, crisp and clear, following the path east through the frosted, wooded hills of the Harzland; the snorts and steady hoof-steps of our horses, the morning song of birds and the rushing gurgle of the upland stream to our left, whose route we followed, were the only sounds to break into my thoughts. My father had an arm tight around me and I sat enjoying the rare closeness as I waited for him to speak; it wasn’t until the sun was two hands’ breadths above the horizon and we were descending to the flat lands that lie between the Harzland and the Albis River that he chose to break his silence.
‘There is a time, Erminatz,’ he almost whispered in my ear, ‘in every man’s life when he must realise that to proceed with a course of action in unfavourable circumstances is folly. For me that time came as the flower of the Cherusci broke upon the regimented shields of Rome.’
I tried to turn to meet his eyes but he tightened his grip and would not let me. ‘But you will fight again, Father, surely?’
‘Of course, but not in the same manner as we did the other day, that’s for sure. It would be folly to take Rome on again in open battle and alone; we cannot defeat the legions like that.’
My naïve faith in the prowess and bravery of our warriors clouded my youthful judgement and I felt a wave of anger towards my father for daring to say such a thing. ‘But they are runts, half-formed men of no stature, you told me so yourself; our warriors tower over them.’
My father sensed the ire in my voice and raised his. ‘What size a man may be individually counts only in single or dispersed combat, boy; but when you have thousands of individuals all acting as one then it does not matter how tall or short each one is if you can’t break their shield wall and get amongst them to use your superior strength. My warriors died by the hundreds at the hands of men whose training and discipline far exceed our own and negate our physical advantage. I will not see more of them die in a useless cause; I will not risk the survival of the Cherusci. I will not enter Walhalla as the last king of our tribe; how would I face my forefathers with that shame hanging over my head?’
‘How will you face them if you don’t fight?’
I could not see the expression on my father’s face but I sensed that it had become downturned with regret and perhaps sorrow; his voice remained resolute but was tinged with these emotions. ‘I have fought and I fought well; however, we were defeated even so. But now, for the moment, the time for fighting is over; the Cherusci will not face Rome’s legions again head on or unaided. I believe that now we must look to the long term and develop a strategy that will ensure Rome’s eventual expulsion from our lands and the lands of all the tribes east of the Rhenus. And what I’ve learnt, my son, is that we Cherusci aren’t powerful enough to achieve that on our own.’
Although this statement went right against everything about my tribe that I had been told and so, therefore, fervently believed, the timbre of my father’s voice convinced me that he was speaking the truth and I accepted it as such. ‘So you would form an alliance with whom? The Chatti? The Chauci? The Marsi? They’re all our enemies, you’ve told me so.’
Again I felt my father’s expression change, I assumed into a faint smile as I heard a touch of amusement in his voice. ‘Yes, I told you that and, at the time, I was right to do so; but things have changed. You’ll come to understand that your greatest enemies are always closest to hand until another foe, from further away, threatens you all; then, in order to survive, your greatest enemies become your most valuable allies. We now need the Chatti, Chauci, Marsi, and all the other tribes of Germania; only together can we rid ourselves of Rome. I intend to build an alliance against Rome, not just an alliance of tribes because that will fracture; it has to be deeper than that: it must be an alliance of All Men, united in our struggle against our Fatherland’s common foe. In other words: a united Germania.’
We rode on in silence for a while as I contemplated what that would mean; I had no concept of how large an area Germania covered as I knew only the Harzland and the lands surrounding it. I had never travelled, although that was about to change.
‘Who would lead this alliance of All Men?’ I asked eventually.
My father laughed. ‘They say that a child can see straight to the heart of an issue, Erminatz, and you have certainly proved that saying to be true. That will be the problem. It should be me as it is my idea but the reverse is also true: since it’s my idea it cannot be me because the other chieftains will suspect that my overriding aim is to gain power over them. If one thing is as sure as the changes in the seasons it’s that men will not relinquish their power willingly.’
‘So therefore you must be the first to do so; you cannot be the leader.’
I remember this exchange vividly because it earned me the rare praise of my father. He squeezed my shoulder and hoomed in the back of his throat. ‘You will be a deep thinker, Erminatz, I can see that and it gives me pride. Yes, I’ll relinquish my claim to leadership and I hope that it’ll encourage others to do the same in favour of the best man and not the most arrogant.’
It was my turn now to laugh and I did so in an easy companionship, way beyond my years, as if we were equals and not father and son. ‘I cannot see that happening.’
‘Whilst we’re at war with Rome, then no; but in the years to come when Rome believes we have accepted her rule and are settling down to become like the three Gallic provinces, then we will have a chance.’
I was shocked by the implication. ‘You will surrender?’
‘Very few of the tribes remain openly hostile to Rome and I hope that my surrender of the Cherusci will hasten the end of the others’ piecemeal resistance. Then, when we have peace and Rome starts to impose her taxes and laws upon us, resentment will grow and I’ll be able to forge an alliance of mutual hatred, willing to rebel as one. We’ll rise up together, united for the first time, not to take on Rome in open battle that we can never w
in, no, we will have to do it a different way; a way that I’ve not yet seen. But I will and when I do we will wipe out Rome’s legions here in Germania Magna in one stroke with a victory so thorough that they will never return.’
‘How long will this take to achieve, Father?’
‘I will have to wait at least ten years, as will many other chieftains – some maybe more than that – but eventually they will all be free to act. But first we must have peace.’
‘Is that where we’re going; to negotiate peace with Rome?’
‘We’re going to meet with Drusus, the Emperor Augustus’ stepson, the general of the Romans in Germania, a man of honour and my equal in the field of battle; a man to whom I am content to bow my head. But we don’t go to negotiate, the terms have already been settled; we’re going to deliver the surety that he needs.’
This hit me like a spear thrust to the heart. ‘That’s why you will have to wait at least ten years, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, my son. But you and your brother must put it to good use; you will learn their ways, befriend them, fight for them. You must gain their trust so that they believe that you have both become one of them. Only then will you be allowed to return and I will be finally free to act. Do you understand me, Erminatz?’
Despite the sudden, sickening emptiness in my stomach I managed to answer: ‘Yes, Father; if you ask it of me then I will do it.’
I now understood why my mother had looked at me that morning in such a way and had entreated me to be brave for my father and my tribe: it was as much to herself that she was saying it as to me, her eldest son at whom she was gazing for the last time as a child; her eldest son who was about to become a hostage of Rome.
I had never seen a Roman, not even from a distance, but I had seen the helmets, armour, shields and weapons that our warriors had brought back as trophies from skirmishes, so I was prepared for their outlandish appearance. What I was not prepared for, however, was the regimented way in which they seemed to do everything. The legionaries would wait, all standing in exactly the same pose in regular lines the same distance apart. When they travelled they would, again, do so in lines, all holding their weapons and equipment in the same hand and walk – or march, as I found out they called it – in step. Every man seemed to know his place and where to move to, and how quickly to do so, on the orders of their centurions and optios.
Arminius Page 5