Arminius

by Robert Fabbri

  ‘Then how will we deal with them when we get them to the killing ground? They’ll be stationary there.’

  I smiled at him. ‘You’ll see; trust me. There’re less than four miles to go now to the ambush site; I’m going to go forward with half our men. You stay here and keep tearing at them as they move off. I’ll see you in the shadow of the Chalk Giant.’

  And so I left him and, taking half of the Cherusci with me, slipped through the trees out of sight of the Roman column to join Engilram and his Bructeri warriors waiting at the place chosen for the deaths of so many Romans: the Teutoburg Pass where the forest meets the marsh. Anxious as I was to reach the site, I went ahead, leaving my men in the charge of my father.

  ‘As you can see, the Chalk Giant funnels the pass ever closer to the marsh,’ Engilram said, as we stood in the teeming rain behind a rough, earthen wall, looking down onto the open ground, mainly pasture, at the base of the Chalk Giant; at its southeastern end, where the column would appear, it was four hundred paces wide, but it gradually narrowed until the mouth of the pass, beyond which lay the open ground where the legions could turn and face us, was little more than a hundred. He pointed beyond it to what looked like a huge area of heathland that went north as far as the eye could see. ‘That is the marsh, and treacherous marsh at that, especially after all this rain. There is no escape through that unless you have the luck and cunning of Loki. A few may get across it but most will be sucked under.’ He then diverted my attention northwest to the narrow far end of the diminishing pass and the trees beyond. ‘My men have cut down much of that wood so that the trunks will impede anyone trying to escape the pass in that direction. I’ve also put five hundred of my men there to defend the barricade should they make a concerted effort to break out.’

  I nodded in approval. ‘Well done, my friend; and what of the other matter?’

  ‘It’s all in hand, come.’

  Engilram led me diagonally up the hill, so that we soon lost sight of the pasture through the trees; after a few hundred paces there was a scene that filled me with glee: carts, scores of them and each covered with an ox-hide sheet to protect the contents from the endless rain. He pulled one back to reveal hundreds of javelins. ‘They were hastily made but they will do the job. I estimate that there are five hundred or more in each cart.’

  I tried to count the carts.

  ‘Over sixty,’ Engilram said, reading my thoughts. ‘We have something between thirty-five and forty thousand missiles to hurl at them.’

  I grinned at the old king of the Bructeri. ‘That should do it.’

  ‘I hope so. I’ve placed my nephew in charge of distributing them as the warriors arrive; each man will have four until they run out, and then they will hide behind that earthen wall we were at so that they won’t be seen. The first volley will come as a complete surprise.’

  This was what I had wanted to hear; Engilram had not let me down: the way to neutralise the Roman shield wall, before it had time to be deployed, was in position. As my men arrived they were given their javelins and went on to join the Bructeri warriors at the wall in the trees, about ten paces from the bottom of the hill. Crouching there in their hundreds they were invisible from the open ground. The rest stayed further up the hill, in the trees, ready to charge down once the ambush was sprung. I calculated that we had in the region of five thousand warriors on the Chalk Giant with more arriving all the time as the column drew closer. Soon the Chatti and Sugambri came in, having yielded their place at the rear of the column to the Marsi and the Chauci who would be the ones to block off any possible retreat from the killing ground, now lush green with pasture fed by rain but soon to be turned crimson by the blood of men who should not be there.

  And so we waited as the shouts and screams from within the forest grew closer for there were still warriors harrying the column, keeping their fear up by killing and maiming as well as taking many prisoners.

  Closer came the sound of bloodshed and we waited in silence, each warrior knowing that surprise would be worth many more deaths than if the legions were expecting a javelin-storm. Louder it became until finally the head of the column appeared through the trees at the far end of the open pasture. Immediately they speeded up, almost jogging across the long, uncropped grass. Behind them more emerged, the remnants of the first cohort of the Seventeenth all breaking into a quick march. Suddenly the whole pasture was filling up with legionaries desperate to use the open ground to perhaps pull away from their tormentors, if only for a little while, to gain some respite. On they came and when the head of the Seventeenth was level with me, in my position halfway along the open ground, the Eighteenth’s Eagle appeared from the woods. Cavalry, who had been dismounted as they were worse than useless in the confined space of the forest, now remounted, and began to canter forward, down either side of the column. I watched, hardly daring to breath, as the doomed legions advanced. Soon the Eagle of the Nineteenth was visible and the space of the column had greatly increased, which, in turn, meant that their order was not so tight; ranks were starting to draw apart from one another. Despite the bellowing of centurions and optios to keep a solid formation, the legionaries’ natural fear of what was pursuing them caused them to ignore the shouts and beatings of vine canes.

  As the middle cohorts of the Eighteenth Legion drew level with me I pulled down the mask on my helm, muttered a quick prayer to the Thunderer and, leaping to my feet, pulled back my throwing arm to hurl a javelin high into the air. By the time it reached the apex of its flight it was one of thousands cast at the Roman formation and as it slammed through the top of a helm, downing a legionary like a wet sack, the second volley had already been launched and the warriors hiding further up the slope had charged forward and were coming up to us. And so I vaulted the wall; letting loose another javelin and, crying the war cry of our Cheruscian fathers, I led my people forward.

  Joy flowed through me as, at last, the opportunity to rid our Fatherland of the men from the south had arrived. There they were, a mere fifty paces away from us, disordered and dying under a hail of javelins that had turned the already slate grey sky the colour of dusk. Ten thousand missiles fell on them in the first ten heartbeats of the ambush and ten thousand fell in the next ten; three thousand lives were reaped in that short time, depleting their numbers by almost a third.

  The surprise with which we had ambushed them was complete; just when they thought they had the chance to pull away, just when they were concentrating on what was in front of them, we screamed out of the forest to their left, teeth bared in hatred, death in our eyes: the men of the north, the product of their worst nightmares, manifesting out of the dark northern forest so close to them. Down, the javelin hail continued to storm, felling men as they struggled to raise their sodden shields above their heads; but the endless rain had taken its toll, and the glue that bound the layers of wood together had started to fail, causing the shields to disintegrate under the multiple impacts. And so we raced from the wall, hurling our missiles directly at the column so that the flankers, already disordered from losing formation as they sped across the open ground, were thumped back, impaled, for they could not deploy their shield wall in time so far were they from one another. My last javelin slashed through a centurion’s eye, exploding out of the back of his transverse-plumed helmet, arching him back, shrieking, his sword flying into the air; around him his men wavered as their officer clattered to the ground to expel his last few moaned breaths. Before their optio could shout some order into his men we slammed into them, our swords whirring above our heads, our spines curved back, ready for the downwards blow; and so they came, almost together, blades slashing down, cleaving flesh and bone or spraying plumes of sparks as they scraped across armour. Slamming the boss of my shield forward, knocking the wind from a hysterical youth, I took off his sword arm in a spray of blood, casting him shrieking to the ground to be slashed by the warriors following me.

  All along the length of the column we tore into them with javelins hurtling
over our heads to rip into the rear ranks; here and there the line buckled, like a writhing snake, but in the main it held firm; the six thousand legionaries still standing did not just wash away under the full force of our tide of hatred. However terrified they were, however surprised and disordered, they managed to stagger a few steps back and then, by the sheer will-power produced by the instinct to survive, they planted their feet firm and the shields started to lock together. But still the warriors kept flooding down the hill, piling in behind us adding their weight to the scrimmage, and I saw, with horror, just what a calamity it would be if the ambush turned into a shoving match with a Roman war machine. ‘Back! Back!’ I shouted, pushing at the man behind me. ‘Back for another charge!’ I barged back, physically pulling those around me after me; away we stepped from them like a wave receding to either side as the message to disengage was passed along. Warily the Romans watched us, breathing deeply, gore-spattered, but their formation still intact, just. We pulled back almost to our wall and readied ourselves to charge again, although this time, we knew, they would be expecting us.

  But then something happened that changed the situation; from behind the Roman lines a lituus sounded, high and shrill, and I knew the call, it was for cavalry to retreat. Every one of the legionaries also knew that call and those that could turned to see the remainder of the cavalry under Vala Numonius fleeing northwest, towards the barrier of cut-down trees. They were deserting and a great moan erupted from their erstwhile comrades on foot; and as despair settled on the enemy I led my warriors forward again.

  Thumelicatz leant forward in his chair towards his Roman guests. ‘Vala Numonius a coward? Well, that’s certainly the opinion of your historian Velleius Paterculus.’

  The elder brother waved a dismissive hand. ‘He had spoken to some of the few who made it back to the empire and they had all said the same thing: Vala deserted.’

  ‘Did he?’ Thumelicatz turned to his slaves. ‘What do you say?’

  A brief glance between them decided that it should be Tiburtius who spoke. ‘Varus had assembled his command behind the Eighteenth Legion; we three aquilifers were also there, to keep our birds as safe as possible. He called a meeting of all his senior officers as the Germanic warriors disengaged after the first attack. He knew this was the end. He turned to Vala: “Go,” he said, “and take the cavalry with you; make for the Amisia, from there you have a chance of getting home.”

  ‘“I’ll not, for my honour’s sake, desert you,” Vala replied.

  ‘“You will,” Varus ordered. “What good is it if you die here, because that is certainly what will happen to us. Get out, get back to Rome and tell the Emperor what happened so that he might avenge me and my men. Go, my friend, and tell them I was duped.” He put his hand on his cavalry commander’s shoulder and squeezed it. There was a moment between the two men before Vala nodded once and then turned away. Varus then looked at his remaining officers and spoke. “Gentlemen, for us who remain there are three choices: to surrender to barbarians and we know what that would mean for us, or to die fighting but run the risk of capture and the same torment as if we surrendered. Or we take matters into our own hands.” He paused and looked at the face of each man; only one seemed to disagree.

  ‘“I’m for surrender,” Ennius, the camp prefect of the Eighteenth, said. “If we lay down our arms now, and prevent any more bloodshed, then Arminius will surely grant us free passage back to the Rhenus.”

  ‘Varus laughed in the man’s face as a cavalry lituus sounded and hoofs pounded off. “How did a coward get so high in rank? Of course Arminius won’t spare you or any here. I can see that and so I choose death at my own hand.”

  ‘That was the only option for him now and it was in this frame of mind that he approached the three Eagles that we held aloft still, and with an expression vacant of the pride that normally resided upon his face he unstrapped his breastplate and laid it on the ground. Most of his senior officers came to support him in his final moments, they too readying themselves to escape the fires and blades of the rebel tribes. I and the two other Eagle-bearers stood beneath our birds as the command of the three legions knelt before them, swords in hand, the blades aimed just below their bottom ribs on the left side of their chests. Without a word, Varus pitched forward so that the hilt of his sword rammed against the ground, stopping it dead as the momentum of his body forced the tip up under his rib and into his heart that had no more appetite for life. His breath burst from his lungs but no cry of pain passed his lips as the bloodied point ripped through his shoulder blade and his body twitched in the spasm of death before resting still. Within a few moments of his passing, his officers had followed him on the road to the Ferryman and the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth legions had lost their high command just at the time when they needed it most. The war cries of the tribes were raised again and we knew that even if we could resist them a second time it was a certainty that we would not be able to do so a third.’

  Thumelicatz smiled. ‘So, Romans, you see now that Vala was not a coward and actually it was Ennius who comes out the worst from my slave’s recollection. However, Varus doesn’t come out well either. There is never a right time to die but there is certainly a wrong one; and Varus most definitely chose the wrong one. His staff had already been depleted by him sending many officers back to Rome on leave and now he led a large proportion of the remainder in a useless suicide. He killed himself through fear of what would happen to him if he were captured, not to save his honour; it was the suicide of a coward. Up until that point it was still just possible for the Romans to retrieve the situation. My father’s original objective had been to annihilate the column in one day, as he knew that if he was to leave it wounded but intact it would always be able to run for open ground and turn and face the combined tribes; my father did not deceive himself, he knew who would come out best in such an encounter.

  ‘And here they were, in the pass on open ground; confined ground, unlike what lay beyond the mouth of the pass, granted, but nevertheless reasonably open and with the remainder of his men having survived a charge and still just about in good order. As Tiburtius said: it was what his senior officers had advised the previous night, it was the only sensible thing to do and yet rather than take that decision to try to fight in that place and have a chance of extracting half of his men from Germania he kills himself and condemns three legions to death, for there was no one senior enough left who would command the confidence of so many terrified men. The cavalry’s seeming desertion, the suicide of their commander and so many of their officers spelt an end to whatever small reserves of hope and good morale the legionaries had left; and then, when a new force appeared in the wood through which Vala was trying to flee, cutting him and his men down, their demoralisation was complete. They were surrounded by warriors on three sides and had an impenetrable marsh, made worse by so much heavy rain, to their backs. Carry on, Tiburtius.’

  Tiburtius looked down at where his finger still rested on the manuscript.

  And as we crashed into them a second time we felt less resistance; the cavalry’s flight had had a profound effect upon the legionaries. Their despair was palpable and they fell back beneath the weight of our blades and the impact of our spear heads. On we hacked, as another, final, full volley of javelins hissed above us and clattered into the rear ranks, many of whom were, by now, desperately trying to dig a makeshift wall in the ridiculous hope that it might shield them from our wrath. Back we ground them, thinning them out, wearing them down. To my right the Chatti were pushing the Nineteenth Legion hard with the Marsi and Chauci taking it from behind; this was the weakest of the three legions having received much punishment as the rearguard. To my left the Bructeri hammered at the Seventeenth whilst the Sugambri roved about behind us charging here and there where gaps appeared. Soon we had pushed them back to their pathetic wall. But this structure caused many to lose their lives as they tried to leap over it in the face of our relentless blades. A mule, already in panic, rush
ed it and twisted as it jumped to land on its neck, snapping it; it was dead before its back legs hit the ground. Other mules bucked and ran amok, braying ceaselessly, causing havoc in the already fragile formation as the legionaries scrambled over the impediment that had been constructed behind them by their own comrades. Over they tumbled, exposing their backs to us and receiving wounds of dishonour as my warriors targeted the buttocks, laughing in their fury. Although many did not make it back over the wall more than a few did to strengthen the lines manning it. And so we paused and pulled back again to ready ourselves for what would be the final assault on the remnants of the three legions crouching behind their makeshift breastwork.

  A stillness fell over the field as if all present were pausing for breath and for a couple of moments the only sounds were the moans of the wounded dampened by the incessant rain.

  ‘Arminius!’ a voice shouted from behind the Roman lines. ‘Arminius!’

  There was a stirring amongst the legionaries and through them came an officer whom I recognised surrounded by a hundred or so rankers. ‘Ennius, are you come to beg for a swift death?’

  ‘I come to beg for our lives, Arminius; we offer to lay down our arms in return for safe passage to the Rhenus.’

  The base lack of dignity in this plea dumbfounded me for an instant and seemed to insult the honour of many of the legionaries as there came shouts of outrage from many of them.

  ‘What of Roman honour?’ I demanded. ‘Even if I were to let you go how could you ever face your countrymen again?’

  ‘Let us worry about that when we are west of the Rhenus.’

  Again, more shouts of outrage greeted this remark.

  ‘It would seem that you are in the minority, Ennius. But if you want to surrender, you are more than welcome to, although I can assure you that you will not be going west. Some of you will die in our fires and the rest will remain in servitude for the remainder of your miserable lives. Come now and take your chance or stay there and prepare to die with your honour intact.’