Gratillonius opened the door. Keen air flowed in across him. A full moon had cleared rooftops and made the snow on them gleam, more radiance than what trickled into the entry from the atrium. A man wearing breeches, boots, heavy tunic, cowled cloak stood in the portico. He was short, with bow legs bespeaking a life on horseback. “Imperial courier,” he said wearily. “I have a dispatch for the tribune Gratillonius. They told me at the hostel he’s here.”
“Come in,” Gratillonius invited, and led the way back to the atrium. The porter closed the door behind them. “I am the tribune. You’ve ridden hard.”
“We all did, sir. Epona be thanked for the clear nights. I understand this message is from the frontier.”
It would have gone first to Turonum, while other copies were galloped in relays to Arelate, Ravenna, wherever they must get the bad news as fast as possible. It could only be bad news. At Turonum, more copies were made ana directed to regional authorities. It could only be bad news that concerned all Armorica, urgently.
“Can you get this man something hot to drink, or at least a cup of wine?” Gratillonius asked the women. They had risen and stood stricken, waiting. “Let’s have the letter, fellow.”
He brought it to the candelabrum where Verania had been embroidering, untied it, and read. Considering distances and road conditions, he decided that the information was about ten days old.
A horde of barbarians had crossed the ice on the Rhenus, uncounted thousands of them. It was as though entire Germanic nations were on the move together; scouts had certainly recognized the standards of Alamanni, Suevi, Vandals, Burgundians, with Alani whose fathers had migrated from Scythian reaches where now prowled the Huns. Moguntiacum had fallen to them almost at once, stood plundered and ablaze, while their tide rolled unstoppable, strewing to their death-Gods any feeble opposition that it met, over the snow into the lands of Rome.
Gratillonius stood a long while unmoving. His silence spread outward from him till it brimmed the house. Deep within it he thought—scarcely felt; no shock or horror; those could cry out in him later but at this moment he was entirely watchfulness and thought. The thing that was happening was foreordained, not by God or the stars but by the blindness of men, since he lay in his mother’s womb. His response to it was equally ineluctable.
“We must call up the brotherhoods,” he said.
XXI
1
Augusta Treverorum, the splendor of the Roman North, seethed with looters, murderers, rapists, like a corpse with maggots. That news reached Confluentes as Gratillonius was about to ride forth. It redoubled the urgency with which he and his companions hastened to Vorgium.
There, near the middle of the Armorican peninsula, the leaders met. They were poorly housed and ill fed. The city had dwindled to an impoverished village amidst the wreckage that repeated sacks a generation or more ago had left. It was needful to clear from the council chamber of the basilica those people who slept there. Straw from their pallets littered the floor, smoke from their fires blackened walls and ceiling. Windows were rudely boarded up, choking the space with gloom as well as rime-frosting chill. Handy men among the delegates got pine torches started, lashed to improvised holders. Fixed stone benches provided seating, if you didn’t mind dirt and a numb butt.
Corentinus and Gratillonius mounted the dais. While the bishop gave an invocation, Gratillonius’s gaze probed the uneasy murk. They were a mixed fifty-odd who confronted him, city dwellers with cloaks drawn tight around riding garb, tribal headmen in thick woolen tunics with breeches or kilts, wilder-looking backwoodsmen wearing mostly leather and pelts, farmers, herders, fishers, artisans—and in the front row, pipe-clayed white and purple-bordered, the archaic senatorial toga in which Flavius Vortivir had arrayed himself. Eyeballs glistened, breath sounded harsh in the echoful emptiness. Memory of the Council of Suffetes in Ys was suddenly almost unbearable.
He forced it from him and trod forward as Corentinus finished and stood aside. Raising his right arm, he said: “Greeting. We know why we are here,” at this place, which he had chosen partly for its location and partly for its reminding ruins. “It was short notice, and I thank you for arriving within the days I allowed you. Now let’s waste no further time. If nothing else, the inhabitants need their room back by nightfall.”
Corentinus rendered It into Gallic for such as had little or no Latin. The dialects of Armorica were mutually comprehensible.
Vortivir signalled for attention and Gratillonius acknowledged him. “Nevertheless, it is necessary to spell things out,” said the tribune of Venetorum. “We are no gaggle of tribesmen, to go honking off at the first noise we hear.” Several Gauls showed offense, and Corentinus gave a translation more tactful. Vortivir, who knew both languages, registered displeasure of his own. Gratillonius frowned at him, but needed him too much to reply with other than:
“Please state your meaning, sir. Maybe we’d better thresh this out between us, and then the bishop can render the gist of it.”
“Undeniably,” said Vortivir in measured tones, “we face a terrible threat. By all accounts, this irruption is the largest and worst yet visited on Gallia. However, it is still a good three hundred leagues from here.”
“Less from the edge of Armorica,” interrupted the old mariner Bomatin Kusuri, who spoke for the Ysans. “And moving west.”
“We have our garrisons and their local reservists,” Vortivir answered.
Gratillonius could not entirely hold back the bitterness: “We know what those are worth. Look around you. Vorgium was once the first city in Armorica.”
“After Ys,” said Bomatin in his mustache.
The veteran Drusus gestured, got the nod, and added: “Or think of the cities that fell this month. They had their garrisons and reserves, with catapults on high walls to boot.”
“If we stay as we are, the barbarians will devour us piecemeal,” Gratillonius said.
Vortivir: “You want to assemble those irregular guard units—‘societies,’ ‘confraternities,’ ‘sport and exercise clubs’—that you’ve gotten formed, and try to hold the line.”
Gratillonius shook his head. “No, sir. We have to be mobile. We can’t maintain an army” (there, he thought, I’ve said it) “like that for more than ten or fifteen days. We lack the organization. Every man will have to bring his own rations and bedroll and whatever else he’ll need. If we let him forage, our force will be just a gang of bandits. You and I and others like us can do something about extra supplies, baggage animals, maybe a few wagons—surgeons—a commissariat of sorts that can pay for what food and stuff we requisition—such things, if we’re lucky; but it’ll be strictly limited.
“No use waiting in a stronghold till we starve. The barbarians could easily bypass us. The brothers will know this. They aren’t stupid; they can figure it out for themselves. They won’t come in the first place. Better stay home, prepared to flee with their families. I would myself.
“No, we have got to show that the force will be effective.”
Vortivir: “Also, since your army’s action, its very existence, will be illegal, it must do whatever it does quickly and disband, melt back into the general population, before the government sends troops against it.”
Gratillonius nodded at Corentinus. This appeared a strategic moment for a summary. The bishop’s was concise.
Bannon, headman of Dochaldun, lifted a fist. “That shows you what Rome is worth!” he roared in Osismiic.
Doranius, a young man from Gesocribate who represented aged Rullus, spoke in Latin: “That is what we pay our taxes for.”
Gratillonius: “Wait, wait. I’ll have nothing to do with rebellion. Bad enough, what’s going on in Britannia.”
Vortivir: “You are already in rebellion, sir. I am merely calling the fact to everyone’s attention. Let us clearly understand what it is we propose to do before we go ahead with it. Otherwise we’ll reap panic and disaster.”
Doranius: “What is it, then? We meet somewhere—oh, Gesocribat
e still has a few hale men—and march against the horde? Is that really your intent, Gratillonius? We’ll be annihilated.”
Vindolenus, former Bacauda, who knew Latin: “We’ll take plenty of them along to serve us in hell.”
Bannon, who had gotten the drift: “We’d never get that far before we ran out of food and starved. Not that the lads would go much beyond Armorica. They want to defend their homes, not a lot of fat Romans.” A growl of assent went among the native chieftains.
Gratillonius: “Hold on. Of course I know our limitations. I don’t imagine we can mount an expedition. But remember, those Germani aren’t a single army like a Roman force. They can’t be; not their nature. They’re a swarm of war bands, each following one of several score, maybe two or three hundred, lords. I’ll bet fights break out every day between groups, and men get killed, and this brings on more fights. The Germani must be dispersed and their coordination ramshackle. Some are surely going to feel squeezed out by others more powerful, and scatter west to pick up what they can. A part of them, traveling fast, going by cities they haven’t the manpower to take, could get as far as Armorica. That wouldn’t be a full-scale invasion of us, no. But it’d leave desolation where it came, and might well give the rest the idea of ravaging their way in the same direction.
“My hope is that if we—taking advantage of scouts, couriers, beacons—if we find such a band or two, well cut them up. If we don’t meet any, well, then we haven’t lost much except our time, and have gained experience I believe will be invaluable in future. If we do, if we encounter Germani and win, word will get back east. It may decide those kings, in their gravelly little brains, to sheer off from the far West. They’ll see it would be costly; it’d give the Romans added time to mobilize against them; they could find themselves boxed in this peninsula; and Armorica is poor country compared to the South.”
Doranius: “Especially after what barbarians have already done to it, in this past century.”
Bomatin: “Thanks to Rome, that was supposed to protect it.”
Gratillonius: “I said no seditious talk! By Hercules, the next man speaks any such word, I’ll gag him with his own teeth.”
Corentinus: “Peace, brothers. In God’s name, don’t go off on side paths.”
Vortivir: “Yet you, Gratillonius, are the one who called this meeting—who begot the brotherhoods themselves.”
Gratillonius: “Of necessity.” It began so gradually, when I was King of Ys. I didn’t really see what was happening or where it was headed. Do I now? “Later I’ll put our case before Stilicho—before the Emperor.” He had reached the resolve on his winter journey here: “He can behead me if he will.”
Vortivir: “Oh, no. We need you far too much, my friend.”
Corentinus: “It is God’s ship you steer. You may not take your hand from the helm.” Into the rising hubbub, he again reported in Gallic.
Uproar followed. I am committed, Gratillonius thought. There’s no way back. But where is it we’re bound?
Corentinus got the turmoil quieted. Then Vortivir’s voice carried sharp: “I spoke as I did because we must consider the aftermath before we act. I was not speaking against the action itself. It has my full endorsement.”
Drusus: “And we won’t all be rank amateurs, sir. I know a good many reservists will join us, once they see what we’re up to.”
Vortivir: “I have been looking into that myself. Most of mine will.”
More cries rang out.
“Quiet!” ordered Gratillonius. “Very well, the senator has made an excellent point and we must reach a decision about it. First, though,, we have to talk war.”
2
Skies hung heavy, low above old snow and skeleton trees, a world of grays and whites. The hues men brought into it were dulled; banners hung listless in the cold.
“Will they never come?” Salomon fretted. “We could freeze to death, waiting like this.”
“Most of a soldier’s life goes in waiting,” Gratillonius told him.
They sat their horses before such other men as rode this day, on the crest of a long hill. It dropped ahead of them into a broad trough between it and another ridge. A dirt road ran through, over one, down into the dell, up the next, and beyond. On their left was a wood, tangled second growth on abandoned farmland. From where the hill slanted downward in that direction, across the road, and onward to the right, the country opened up, except for hurdles and rail fences. In the distance that way, a village squatted under its thatch. No smoke rose; the people had fled, driving livestock along. This was the ground Gratillonius had chosen for his battle.
Scouts had brought news of the enemy; skirmishers had gone forth to draw him; now it was to wait. Not to hope, unless you were young like Salomon, nor to fear: only to wait, composing your soul because that helped conserve your strength.
Gratillonius sighed, with a rueful smile. “What is it, sir?” asked Salomon. Since first they fared off, he had set intimacy aside and striven to be military.
“Nothing. A stray thought.” A remembrance that he, Gratillonius, approached the half-century mark. It seldom entered his awareness. He still had most of his teeth and the skill in his hands. Speed and wind weren’t what they had been, but they were there and sufficient when he called on them, and the mail coat rested lightly. While things extremely close got blurred, his vision was otherwise keen. Even in this weather, he suffered no aches or coughs. But—Verania had contracted for a long widowhood. It might begin today.
Favonius snorted and stamped. “Easy, boy.” Gratillonius reached past the dear coarseness of the mane to stroke the warm neck.
Presently he’d learn how well the stallion did in combat. They had practiced together, as had the men and horses at their back, but it was unschooled and restricted. A real cavalry mount required raising to it from colthood. Likewise did its rider. The best that might be awaited of these was that they wouldn’t balk or bolt—most of them.
In front, about halfway down the hill, were the foot, the vast majority, about three thousand, as motley as their captains. The line, four deep, was rough. Men shifted position, hunkered down, trotted in place to keep warm, talked, altogether unsoldierly. The best outfitted had a cap and breastplate of boiled leather. In rare cases, pieces of iron had been sewn to especially vulnerable spots. Many had nothing but the clothes of workaday life, greasy and stenchful after these past days, with perhaps a wooden shield. However, axes and spears were bright, as would be blades when unsheathed. Bows and slings rested ready.
And those troops were better organized than they looked, not as a single army but as brotherhoods of neighbors, each man known to his comrades and his leader. They had come from their widely scattered homes to rendezvous a little east of Condate Redonum in orderly wise and with various answers to the problem of provisions—parched or smoked food, mules, noncombatant bearers, light carts, or whatever. A few units, arriving belatedly, had quickened their steps and caught up with the rest. The standards were of every size, shape, and material, but each bore an emblem that meant much, embroidered tree or fish or horse or Cross or the like, unless it was a bundle of evergreen boughs or a pair of aurochs horns on a pole. … The local reservists who had joined them should help provide stiffness.
A block of men stood separately on the far right at the bottom of the hill. They were those Gratillonius deemed his best, Drusus and whatever other of Maximus’s veterans were able to campaign, the Ysan marines, the much larger number of younger fighters trained by these, and a band of Frankish laeti from Redonum who had gotten wind of the enterprise and, astoundingly, showed up to join. Well, if they could lay old grudges aside in the face of a common danger, Gratillonius could too. He didn’t have to like them.
Hidden in the woods on the left were the foresters Rufinus had shaped into a force. (God, how he missed Rufinus, and Maeloch, and Amreth, and more and more gone down before him into the dark!) Also hidden, by the bulk of the hill, were the supplies, wagons, animals, traces of encampment. He h
adn’t left a guard there. He didn’t expect the barbarians would flank him and take possession. If they did, small difference. The army had pretty well used up its rations, and could not keep the field more than a few days past this. At that, the trek home would be a hungry one.
Gratillonius and those who met with him in Vorgium had given themselves a month prior to rendezvous. He reckoned it would take any invaders longer than that to reach Armorica. They’d have a lot of miles to cross, pillaging as they went, maybe once in a while overrunning some pathetic attempt at resistance while bypassing any real strongpoints—whose garrisons wouldn’t dare try taking them in the rear. Since the time available to his troops would be short, they shouldn’t start off until the earliest date at which it was reasonable to look for an incursion. Besides, a month gave opportunity to accumulate additional stuff, get together a small baggage train, recruit a few physicians and such.
Of course, it also gave opportunity for Glabrio to learn what was going on and take measures. You had to keep things as quiet as possible, and nevertheless rumors were bound to reach Turonum. Inquiries went off to him. He stalled them. It helped that governor and Duke had other worries to occupy them. In Britannia the legions had cast down the Marcus they raised, killed him, and proclaimed one Gratianus Emperor. Ill-omened name, that….
Then the hour came when Gratillonius sent forth his summons, and after that it was too late for anybody to stop anything.
Horns lowed, shouts ripped, faint across distance but growing. On the crest of the opposite hill, men appeared. A kind of sigh went through the Armoricans. Here came the battle.
The die is cast, Caesar said. Gratillonius knew that for him it had been cast earlier—but when? At the departure from Redonum, an open and irreparable breach of Imperial law; at the meeting in Vorgium, when the decision was made; at the moment in Confluentes when he resolved to call that meeting; or earlier, out on the Gobaean Promontory, or far back when he reigned in Ys, or when he marched off at the behest of Maximus, or—No matter. He had these Germani to deal with, and later those Romans.
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