Eagle in the Snow (43 page)

I gave my horse to my orderly and walked to the signal tower. Every man I passed gave me a salute or a grin, or a greeting of some kind; and every man seemed to be wounded. I felt exhausted and sick. We had so nearly succeeded; we had so nearly failed.

A voice shouted my name, and Fabianus rode his horse towards me, picking his way carefully between the crowds of men making for their tents. “They are coming,” he cried. “The reinforcements are on the way.”

I shook my head. “You must be mad.”

He said, excitedly, “No. There is a column of infantry a good half mile down the Treverorum road.”

I walked out with him, and I could feel the excitement spread around me, as the word was passed from one tired and wounded man to another. Marius joined me, wiping his sword on a piece of rag. Aquila came up, limping from a cut across the thigh. Scudilio was there, too; and Fredegar was with him, his terrible battle axe resting across his shoulders.

The dark column, heads bent against the driving lash of the wind, moved towards us at a slow pace. At their head was a man on horseback. Two cohort commanders walked slowly to join us, one of them half carried by the other. The wounded man was Flavius, his left arm wrapped in dirty bandages. We stood there, smiling stupidly, and waiting. We could be sure of victory now. I was so relieved I felt almost happy. “Mithras,” I said aloud. “My prayers have been answered.” I turned my head and saw Flavius watching me, a startled and disbelieving look upon his white face. He said, “It—it cannot be the—I can see the rear of the column from here.”

I said cheerfully, “It is the advance guard then. That is good enough for me. Let us go and greet them. They have come in good time.”

We met their leader on the road behind the camp, and he dismounted, in advance, when he saw us coming.

“Artorius,” I said.

The Curator of Treverorum flushed at my tone, and then drew himself up and saluted awkwardly. He wore a leather tunic, leather breeches, and a leather helmet. Strapped to his waist was a long sword. His eyes flickered from face to face, and then he looked at me steadily. “I have come to put my sword at your service,” he said. He spoke rather fast, like a man who has been practising what to say. He spoke defiantly, too, as though he thought I might laugh at him. His men had come to a ragged halt behind. They were similarly equipped; not one man wore armour, but each had either a spear or a sword.

“What of the Army of Gaul?” I said harshly.

“It—it is on its way.”

“I don’t believe it. Chariobaudes wrote—”

“He changed his orders,” said Artorius quickly. His eyes flickered and then he stared defiantly, for a moment, at the wounded Flavius. “They are marching to Treverorum, to our— to your aid.”

“You have come on ahead?” I was too tired to cope with the problem of Chariobaudes and his shifting mind.

“Yes.” He looked, with frightened curiosity, around him. He was used to the bustle of a forum; not the squalid muddle of a battlefield. “I know I am breaking the law. I have no authority to bear arms, since I am only a civilian. I don’t know what the Praefectus Praetorio will say.” He paused, and I remained silent. “I wish to help,” he added in a low voice.

“How many men have you?”

“Only two thousand. Some are gladiators and slaves, to whom I have given their freedom. I had no real authority to do that either, I suppose.”

I was silent with disappointment. He tugged at his helmet and then held it, awkwardly, in the crook of his arm, as he had seen my officers do. “I spoke to the Bishop. I felt I must do something.”

“Of course.” I turned away. Two thousand men out of a city of eighty thousand. . . . I felt too sick to speak. He came after me, stumbling over the slippery ground. He said, “You haven’t accepted my. . . .” His voice trailed away. He cleared his throat, nervously. He said, “We want to help. I—” He broke off, as he tried to avoid a wounded man. “Don’t send us back. We can be of some use, surely. Besides, the men could not go back now. They are tired out.”

I said, “Yes, and I and my men are tired, too. We are soldiers.”

He flinched at my voice. He said desperately, “I know I am only the Curator; but I thought—”

I turned my back on him. I went to the signal tower, leaving the column still standing upon the road, and my officers silent behind me. I would have struck him had he spoken again.

I stumbled through the door. I sat down on my bedding roll and put my head in my hands. We had been so near to victory. Even if Chariobaudes did come in time, he had too few men to be of real help. We should be beaten just the same. The wind rattled the door. It was very cold, and I began to shiver. I knew what it was like now to be a defeated general.

Fabianus came in. He said, “I would like to speak to you, sir.”

“Yes,” I said.

“That was ungenerous,” he said.

“Ungenerous! I?” I stood up, and he backed away. “He has had two years, and in two years he has done little except at the point of a sword. Now he comes whining with offers of help. What help will that ragged crew of comics be, do you imagine? Help. When it’s too late. Too late, do you hear.”

Fabianus said, “It is you who are ungenerous. He has come to help, and you, sir, turn your back on him.”

“It is what he deserves.”

He said, doggedly, “I don’t agree, sir.”

“Why?”

He did not answer at first. He stood there, his hands clenched at his sides, just looking at me, tired and resentful. It was how his father had looked when I told him that the sentry who slept at his post must be executed.

“Why?” I said again.

“Because—because he has come out here to die with the rest of us, and that makes him my friend, if not yours.”

I got to my feet and went towards him. He did not move. “How dare you speak to me like that. Don’t presume too far upon my friendship with your father.”

It was then that he lost control over himself. He said, angrily, “If I dare, it is because you taught me how to speak to an emperor when he is in the wrong.”

He turned and went out. I called after him but he did not come back.

Quintus was brought to the signal tower an hour later. He had suffered an arrow wound in the neck, and had lost blood. He lay on his bed, grey-faced with shock, his hands, raw with the cold, lying limply upon the blankets that covered him.

He opened his eyes. He said, “I am sorry. I ruined the day. My men lost heart; the idiots.” He beat feebly upon the blankets.

“No,” I said. “It would have happened anyway. They are too strong for us, and we are too exhausted. Fresh troops might have done it, I agree. But our men—” I broke off and sat on the stool beside him. What else was there to say?

“Will you try again to-morrow?”

I shook my head. “Our losses were tremendous. So were theirs; but they can afford them. We can’t risk losing another man. Flavius fought well. He timed that charge brilliantly.”

He groaned. “I know. How many did we lose?”

“Aquila is making a count now.”

“Well, if we hold on, this relief army may come in time.”

“Yes, of course.” I trimmed the wick of the oil lamp and poured water into a bowl and began to wash myself.

He said, “Fabianus did well, too.” He paused and stared at the ceiling. “Agilio told me that Artorius has brought men from the city.”

“Yes.”

“He has told me what you said.”

I dried my face on a towel and looked on my bed for a clean tunic. I had just one left. I put it on. Then I poured out two cups of wine. Still he did not look at me. He said, gently, “It is not politic for emperors to turn their backs on those who offer them support.”

I said bitterly, “My horse is more dependable. And braver, too.”

“Do you really think so? He could have been on his way to Arelate and safety by now, with the rest of them. It doesn’t matter about the past. It takes courage, Maximus, to sit alone in a panic-stricken city and decide that the right thing to do is to collect a few men with rusty swords, and go out to help a man who despises you.” He looked at me then. “I should know that. It takes even more courage to admit that you are wrong.”

I did not answer him and he turned his face to the wall.

Presently he said, in a tired voice, “What is the plan far to-morrow?”

“Hold the ditches and the palisade. I shall use the cavalry only for counter-attacks and to relieve pressure, if things get difficult.”

“Maximus?”

“Yes.”

“Do you wish now you had refused Stilicho’s request?”

I was silent.

“Do you?”

“I am not afraid, Quintus, if that is what you mean.” I looked up, and saw him watching me with unhappy eyes. I smiled. I said, “You know, I was happy on the Wall. Yes, I mean that. I have never felt at home here in Germania.”

He said, “If I hadn’t ridden to Eburacum that day—only Saturninus knew why I went. I owed so much.”

“I understand.”

He said, “I wish I could believe that.”

“Get some sleep. We shall need all we can get from now on.”

Later, I went the rounds of the camp. I inspected the sentries, cheered the wounded with stupid jokes, and talked with my cohort commanders. On my return, I saw a man being sick in the snow. I went across to him, thinking it was a wounded soldier who had been given too much broth. He straightened up when he heard me coming, and turned awkwardly away. I saw then that it was Artorius. He was bare-headed, and he had his hands to his mouth. I recognised the look on his face only too well, so I called after him.

“No,” I said. “Just a moment.”

He stopped and turned round, hopelessly. He tried to stand to attention, and I knew what it must be like to be the wild beast in the arena when it has cornered its human victim. It would have looked just like Artorius then.

“Something disagreed with me,” he mumbled, and then added a hasty, ‘sir’, as though I might hit him for omitting it.

“Are you very afraid?” I said.

He nodded, his knuckles to his mouth. I could see his face quiver.

“So am I,” I said. “I am too afraid to be sick any more.”

He stared at me incredulously, as though I were laughing at him. “But you are a soldier,” he said.

“Oh, yes, but it doesn’t stop you being afraid. We all are: it is the waiting before-hand. It’s not so bad when the battle line is drawn up, and you watch for the signal to advance. You can smell your own sweat and the sweat of the men beside you. You hug to yourself the feeling that they are there, guarding your left and your right. You bolster yourself up with little jokes out of a dry mouth, and they answer you, and you pretend it’s a game, like all the training exercises that have gone before. You pretend the worst that can happen is a dressing-down from the Legate and an extra fatigue from an irate centurion. Then the advance is sounded and the line moves forward. Inevitably, you spread out to avoid rough ground or a clump of bushes, and your companions are no longer within touching distance. You see the enemy hurl their javelins, and men scream and go down. You don’t worry about being hit; that’s the funny part of it. You have the soldier’s illusion of invulnerability. It is always the other man who will be wounded or killed—never yourself. And the more this happens—even though it is to your friends—the stronger the feeling. If you didn’t have it, you could never advance at all.”

I paused. His face had lost, for the moment any way, that frightened look. He was absorbed in what I was saying.

I said, “But then, as you get closer to the waiting enemy, comes a terrible sense of isolation. The man on your left, five yards away, might as well be five thousand. It grows and grows, this feeling of loneliness, until you are sure that you must be the only man advancing in the whole of your army.
Then
, you are afraid, and you want to turn and run. Only a curious sense of pride keeps you going. And then the enemy strikes at you with his spear or his sword, and discipline and training take over, and from that moment on you don’t have time to worry about fear or loneliness any more. You just fight, and you go on fighting until it is all over.”

He said, “You make it sound so easy.”

“When it comes to the point, it is.”

He lowered his head. “I thought I had the courage,” he said. “It seemed to be so easy in my room in the Basilica. They were all leaving, and I was ashamed. I knew then that we had let you down, and that somewhere out here you were all risking your lives, just for us. I thought—I thought I must do something too; even though it was so late. I didn’t know I was such a coward.” He tried hard to raise a smile. “It is humiliating,” he said. “You must despise people like me.”

I said, “I was not generous earlier on. I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” I held out my hand and gripped him by the arm. “I know you are not a fighting man,” I said. “That is not so very important. But you have come to help us. That is important.”

He wiped his mouth. He said, “Will it be long? It’s the waiting that is so hard.”

“Two hours at the most, Artorius. If you can endure that two hours, you will never be frightened again.”

XIX

T
HEY CAME AGAINST
us in the early down, and only the startled cawing of the rooks, disturbed at their horrible feast, gave warning of their approach. They were more cautious now, determined to wear us down, as a wolf pack wears dawn a stag that it is hunting. Flights of arrows, a quick charge, a flight of axes, a retreat, silence, and a flight of arrows again. They circled the defences, probing for the weak spots. A sudden rush on the flanks that could only be broken by a charge of horse, a rush through the centre that even the carroballistae could barely check. Hour after hour they kept it up, and hour after hour my men stood at the palisades until they fell or were relieved. By midday Marius was dead, killed leading a desperate counter-attack against the enemy’s barricades; and Agilio had been badly wounded in the chest. In the afternoon it began to snow and they attacked again; grey, ghastly figures looming out of the swirling storm, to throw death with their two hands, or to receive it—it was all one to them. The ditches were choked with their dead and their wounded, and still they came, an endless stream of men, who breathed hatred and envy of all that we stood for. Fire arrows came sizzling out of the darkening sky, to start pools of flame that spluttered along the palisade, burst into roars of white fire when they landed on a waggon, or set a horse screaming with agony when it was hit. There was no respite, no rest of any kind. The hard, relentless pressure was maintained all day, all evening and all night, so that men who were trying to sleep could not do so, because of the sounds of the dying, the exultant cries of the enemy, and the smell of fire upon the snow.