by George Green
Word spread up the column. The warriors in the trees watched as the camp followers, women and slaves who had been deliberately spared from the massacre as being militarily useless but a reliable source of panic, ran up the line, screaming that every man at the rear was murdered and that a hundred thousand Germans were coming at a run, every one invisible and seven feet tall and covered in Roman blood. Soldiers near the centre of the column who had thought themselves relatively safe now realized every man behind them was dead and that they were now the rearguard. A few of them – the auxiliaries, Gauls mostly, not legionaries – threw away their weapons and ran blindly into the forest, where the Germans killed most of them instantly. A few of the fleeing auxiliaries were Germans. These men who fought for money against their own people were captured and spared for later, a treat for the women.
Those who stood firm did their best to make a fight of it. Some found small clearings between the trees and were able to form defence lines and small squares. The German tribes knew from long experience that many of them would die without profit if they attacked the squares directly, so they stood back and broke the Roman formations with arrows and then attacked them from all sides when there were too few men left to form an unbroken front. Where the trail was narrower and the legionaries could do nothing but stand with their backs to a comrade, the attackers threw spears out of the dark forest into them, jumped from the trees onto them, ran out from the bushes and killed them where they stood. The huge column dissolved into a maul of desperately struggling bodies. The legionaries fought well, but the Germans were too many and the invaders were far from their own country, surrounded by a foreign forest, standing on the cold earth of Germany.
By the afternoon the fight was almost over. Both sides paused for breath. All the remaining Romans were gathered around their Chief in a clearing on a slight hill. Men in the trees overlooked them on all sides, and they were entirely surrounded. Had they been Germans they would have charged, tried to break through the encircling line and died honourably, but they were Romans with a different sense of what is proper. They had the high ground, such as it was. They formed their defensive square, interlocked their shields and waited.
Armin made the tribesmen stand in a great circle around the Roman position. Already several individual groups of Germans had tired of doing what they were told, had disobeyed orders and attacked the Romans in the traditional way, head-on and screaming defiance. They were beaten off with heavy losses, and had unwittingly demonstrated the need for the tribes to obey the commands of the Chief. Now Armin had control of the army again, and the Germans waited. The legionaries’ destiny was written clearly, both attackers and defenders knew it, but the manner of it was still to be decided. The warriors approached carefully. They knew that a wounded bear is still a bear. They were not in a hurry.
Armin’s only concern was the possibility of reinforcements arriving. He waited until all his scouts had returned. They all told him the same thing. Every Roman on the German side of the Rhine was either trapped in front of him or lying dead on the forest trail. Armin was a cautious man. Some called him a coward for it, but he achieved victories against Rome like no German before or since. He knew the invaders would come again eventually, and it might be soon. He did not wish to lose any more men unnecessarily, but nor did he have the time or inclination to sit and wait for Varus and his men in their square to starve to death.
Armin had the German warriors collect branches and wood. They grumbled about doing work they regarded as fit only for slaves, but they did it, and they piled everything that would burn into a wall around the Roman square on three sides, everywhere taller than a man. The sacred fire was brought, oil and tar were thrown onto the wood, and the pyre was lit. The wood was wet, and at first there was little in the way of flames, but dense clouds of smoke poured out and completely obscured the square. Then, as the wood dried in the heat, hot flames emerged and reared across the ground towards the line of shields. The legionaries suffered it with courage, and although the tribesmen could hear coughing, shouts and curses, none broke formation. From the other side of the three-sided fire, the women threw new wood and branches over the flaming barrier, which then caught fire in turn, and the clear space between the square and the fire grew smaller and smaller. The Romans tried to throw the burning branches back, and they had some little success before arrows from high in the trees pinned them back, but there were too many branches and the burning wall closed inexorably in on the men trapped inside it.
The tribesmen waited for them at the open end of the square. The smoke billowed over the shields, and the Germans watched as the Romans’ uniforms began to smoulder. The story-tellers spoke admiringly of how, when their shields grew too hot to hold and turned each man’s forearm into one long blister, the Romans still held their line. Finally, when the fire was close enough to set hair alight, they gave up any hope and, with a desperate shout, ran at their tormentors, howling their last. Every man of them knew he was about to die, and every one of them fought with a frenzy that no one had seen possess Romans before. Almost like Germans. Many of the tribesmen died with them.
When it was over and the flames had died down, they found the Chief of the Romans on the ground, dead by his own hand rather than be taken prisoner. Our women had made plans for him if he was taken alive, and anyone who has seen our women go to work on an enemy would say that Varus made the right choice. Denied the pleasure of feeding lightly toasted bits of the General’s anatomy to him on a stick, the women waited until the few captured legionaries had been interrogated and the madness of their march into the Teutoburg Forest understood, then practised on them instead. Once they had perfected their skills, they went off in search of the Germans who had been captured fighting for the Romans. For those men no one had any sympathy, but their screams would have made a stone wince.
When the fight was over, the eagle standards that every legion carried were brought to Armin. They were sent away to be kept by the druids in three separate hiding places at the centre of the forest, and for seven years no Roman ventured into the Teutoburg Forest again.
Alraic saw the standards taken away. He saw the Romans die, saw the fires, heard the screams, smelt them burn. He saw the celebration that lasted for days afterwards. He was sixteen years old.
Chapter Two
The crowd shouted and shoved at each other in anticipation when they saw the huge iron-studded doors at both ends of the arena being closed and sealed. Thousands of excited voices combined in a deep roar of approval as the sluice-gates opened wide and cold green water poured into the arena from all sides. The water came from the sluices under such pressure that it fountained up and over the sand until it came down almost at the arena centre, and then, where the opposing jets collided, it flew upwards and tumbled backwards on itself like huge waves hitting a cliff. Those exposed to the sun in the seats nearest the arena side shrieked their delight as a cool spray fell on them.
Behind the closed doors sweating men worked desperately to make things ready. Today the crowd was even more than usually impatient. Even before the arena was properly ready, while the foaming water still poured in to mix with the sand from the arena floor, they were already stamping their feet and shouting for the action to begin. Several dozen hurled seat-cushions were floating on the water’s surface like giant lilies, and a group of young men near the Senator’s box, already drunk on the Senator’s wine, were yelling cheerful abuse at him for keeping them waiting.
Senator Catullus Appius smiled and waved, acknowledging their presence and pretending that he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Nearby stood Marcus Otho, the Master of Games, with lines of strain showing on his face. The small cane which hung from the Senator’s fingers had been tapping irritably against the side of his chair for some time. The old man was paying for the games, and he wasn’t enjoying laying out a fortune just to be kept waiting and have insults shouted at him from the cheap seats. Otho knew that the Senator would shortly be looking for someone
to blame, and he had a shrewd idea who that someone would be.
The Senator glowered at Otho with pursed lips and rapped the cane sharply against the leg of his chair. Otho knew from long experience what was going on in the old man’s mind.
The process was simple. Whenever a games went according to plan, the man paying for it would accept the plaudits of the crowd and his peers as no more than his due; he had, after all, come up with the idea personally, and had followed it through, backing his judgement with hard cash, ignoring the misguided – and perhaps self-seeking – counsel of those more timorous than he, and was reaping no more than his just reward. However, when a games threatened to go badly, the man whose money and reputation were at stake invariably had little difficulty in persuading himself that he had been gulled into holding a games wholly against his better judgement, seduced by – probably mendacious – appeals to his generosity and good nature, and that the foolishness, bad faith and inefficiency of those around him were entirely to blame.
Otho knew that, in the latter case, this blame was, primarily for reasons of proximity, most commonly vested in him, the Master of Games. He moved his weight uneasily from one foot to the other and prayed that the games would start before the Senator’s patience ran out. It was going to be a close race.
In theory the games were intended to honour the goddess Diana and give thanks for the successful return of one of the Senator’s treasure ships. In practice, as everyone knew, including, presumably, the goddess herself, who might have been expected to have an opinion, the games were designed to make the Senator’s son, Claudius Appius, noticed and popular. If the day went well, Claudius Appius would probably be elected tribune in the next election and he and his father could look forward to a prosperous future. On the other hand, if the day went badly, Claudius Appius would never be heard of again, his father would have crippled himself financially for the next five years for nothing, and Otho would get the blame. The Master of Games felt a worm of sweat run down between his shoulder-blades. Neither the Senator nor the crowd were in a forgiving mood. Otho concentrated on looking like a man with absolute confidence in his subordinates and the imminence of great events.
The Senator stopped beating his chair with the cane and, with a feeling of immense and increasing dissatisfaction with everything in his world, looked balefully at Claudius Appius. His only son was standing at the front of the box with a fold of his pristine toga held languidly over one arm. He was striking a pose that he no doubt thought looked patrician, but which reminded the Senator of an overfed lapdog sniffing the wind for interesting scents it would never bother to chase. He shook his head ruefully. The Senator had trained himself to think of the differences between himself and his son as merely the gods having their little joke, but there were times when he looked at Claudius Appius and his suspicions broke through his determination like a bull through a picket fence. He would wonder for the hundredth time if his wife’s shrill protestations and the midwife’s assurances that a fully grown baby could be born a mere seven months after his wedding day were to be trusted. It was not a possibility he enjoyed considering.
At such times, and this was one, the Senator found that a little wine soothed both his nerves and his fears.
The jewelled cup next to the Senator’s right hand had already been refilled several times both discreetly and speedily by a tall slave carrying a jug of wine who stood silently at the back of the viewing box. Claudius looked disapprovingly at his father every time the slave stepped forward, and the Senator looked back at his son defiantly. The Master of Games, standing to one side of the box with his apprentice by his side, saw the glances, counted the cups of wine, and winced at the clouds gathering on his master’s brow. Otho felt that he was surrounded, as always, by impatience and incomprehension. He sighed silently and looked around critically at his empire.
The arena was by now almost full of water, foaming and browned with the arena sand. To obtain such an enormous amount so quickly the engineers had fitted a series of valves to the three main aqueducts that supplied the city from the rivers to the north. In a few moments these valves could divert almost the entire contents of all three aqueducts into the pipes that fed the arena. Every time the pipes were opened – six huge troughs large enough for a man to stand up in with a child on his shoulders, aided by thirty smaller pipes the diameter of a man’s thigh – the whole of Rome, every tap and every fountain, every sewer and every drain, even the Imperial baths, ran dry, until the thirst of the arena was satisfied and the valves could be switched back to normal again. The sluices were so big and so numerous that the crowd could leave their seats to relieve themselves and know that the arena would be a lake by the time they returned.
Otho leaned over the edge of the box with an irritable expression. Lucius, his apprentice, a dark-haired boy with the eyebrows of a startled nymph, leant over at the same time in the same way and with the same expression. The Master of Games was both flattered and annoyed by this. Every time it happened Otho felt he should say something about it to the boy, but never knew quite what.
Below him, immediately behind the studded leather-sealed gate that led to the arena, a mass of swearing, sweating men were failing to provoke a huge spindle lever into movement. From almost immediately above them, Otho could see that there was a problem with the launching equipment. The foreman, a short barrel-chested man called Cornelius who always wore a heavy black leather jerkin and a length of dark cloth rolled up into a rope and tied around his head to keep the sweat from his eyes, looked up at the Master of Games and held up both hands. He needed more time. Otho shook his head abruptly and, keeping his own hand down where the Senator could not see it, cut him off with a sharp gesture. Then he turned back to the Senator with a smile laced with what he hoped was an appropriate mixture of the willing and the unctuous.
‘Where are the ships? What is the delay?’ growled the Senator, the returning beat of his stick accelerating to a rhythm that not even the feet of an Egyptian dancer in a pit of scorpions could have kept up with.
‘We are almost ready, Excellency,’ murmured Otho. He cursed the fact that his employer had specified that he wanted the arena flooded, which meant that the tactics usually open to Otho in the case of delay – the use of nearly naked young women dancing a bacchanalian ritual was known to be highly effective – could not be employed. Unless the show began as soon as the arena was full of water, the crowd suspected that something was wrong and immediately became restless. Otho thought of the great days, when masters of games were emperors of the arena, creating spectacular works for the public. Mountains were built, piled high with men, and then collapsed as if in an earthquake, pitching the men into a vast cage of wild beasts underneath. Otho smiled to himself. The pinnacle of his career. Appreciated, lavished with gifts, feted even. And now it had come to this: dealing with idiots possessed of the sensibility of a wild boar’s backside.
An apple core hit the parapet in front of Claudius Appius and dropped down onto his foot. He looked at it for a disbelieving moment before kicking it away irritably. ‘See?’ the Senator said, a note of self-pity entering his voice. ‘It’s apples now. They’ll be throwing vegetables in a minute. If my luck holds.’ He raised his voice and called to his son. ‘Claudius, for Jupiter’s sake come away from there.’
Claudius turned, an expression of irritation on his face. ‘My friends are watching. How do you think it makes me look if you order me about?’
There was something about his son’s voice that made it easy for the old man to imagine himself running forward and pushing him over the edge of the box with a glad cry. Instead he forced himself, as so often before, to explain.
‘The crowd are not admiring you, they are using you for target practice. If a piece of fruit hits you it could lose us a thousand votes. If your so-called friends see a suggestively shaped vegetable come within ten feet of you then we can kiss goodbye to the election, and how you look won’t matter a handful of lentils.’
Claudiu
s retreated unwillingly back into the box. He pushed his lower lip out and stood with a fist on his hip, like a child whose new toy has been confiscated. ‘The people need to see me, surely? Isn’t that the point of this farrago?’ The whining note was still in his voice. The Senator shifted irritably in his curved chair and pointed to a spot beside him. Claudius trudged over and stood nearby. The Senator sighed and reached for his cup with the air of a man nursing a dozen deeply held grievances. He looked at Otho with red-rimmed eyes. Claudius stood glowering behind his father. Otho braced himself. Both men were looking for someone to blame and Otho knew for certain that the someone they would find would be him. The Senator poked holes in the air around Otho with a finger.
‘How the hell are we supposed to convince people that Claudius has the dignity suitable to a tribune if those braying idiots down there are permitted to yell insults at him while turning the place into a market fruit stall?’ The finger stabbed again. ‘You told me, assured me, that you had men planted in the crowd to make sure that this sort of thing didn’t happen.’
‘There are, Excellency, my men are…’ Otho’s voice tailed off as, to the accompaniment of much laughter from the young blades below, a long pole with a crosspiece was held up in front of the Senator’s box and waved drunkenly from side to side. A woman’s dress was hung on the cross-piece and two melons had been stuffed into the front of it.