Rome’s Fallen Eagle (24 page)

‘I think it’s a shit idea,’ Magnus mumbled, staying put on his.

‘Oh, so you like being a cavalry trooper now all of a sudden, do you?’

‘It’s better than having to swim home.’

The Batavians sang low and melancholically, with a slow beat to match the rhythm of the stroke, as they rowed the longboats downstream; their shields were slung over the sides next to them to afford some protection against a surprise arrow attack. Birds flitted in the still air, replaying spring mating rituals over the smooth surface of the river and in amongst the trees, fresh with
new leaves, overhanging its banks. The sweet smells of the new season occasionally broke through the musky tang of the Batavians as they sweated at the oars, stripped to the waist, their arm, chest and stomach muscles toned, squinting into the midday sun as they glided northwards through mainly flat lands towards the sea.

Vespasian and Magnus stood at the stern of the second ship, on a small fighting platform, next to Ansigar at the steering oar who kept a course directly down the middle of the hundredpaces-wide river; ahead of them Thumelicus commanded the lead vessel with one of his men as the steersman.

The current was sluggish and their pace was not quick, despite the crews’ exertions; Vespasian was growing impatient. He glanced at Magnus, next to him, who had not said a word since reluctantly getting off his horse and coming aboard once it had become apparent that he had no choice other than to be left behind. ‘You said that you knew how the Germans hid the Eagles.’

Magnus looked glumly ahead as if he had not heard.

‘Oh, come on, Magnus, this boat isn’t that bad.’

Magnus roused himself from his gloom. ‘It ain’t that, sir. It’s just that Germania seems to bring nothing but bad luck. When you look at all those Roman bones just lying there it makes you think that there’s some sort of curse against us in this land. Somewhere around here we fought Arminius’ army at a place called Idistavisus; the Germans withdrew with heavy casualties and Germanicus claimed a victory, but it weren’t so straight forward. I lost a good few mates that day.’ He looked to the east bank. ‘They’re lying out there somewhere, just like Ziri is lying at the bottom of a river; all of them dead in a land with different gods.’

‘Surely your gods follow you wherever you go if you believe in them and worship them.’

‘Perhaps they do, but their power gets weaker the further they get from their homeland. Here in Germania the power of Wotan and Donar and whatever other gods they have is strong, you can tell. You saw that grove on the way to Thumelicus’ tent; those
heads didn’t just grow on the trees, they were put there after being sacrificed. We ain’t had nothing but trouble since we crossed the Rhenus and now we’re sailing into a whole lot more; even if we sacrifice a whole herd of white bulls to Neptune to keep us safe on the Northern Sea how’s he going to hear us and help us if the local gods are getting human victims?’

‘Human sacrifice is abominable.’

‘You tell that to the German gods; I don’t think that they’ll agree with you judging by how well they look after their people. I don’t like the idea of stealing back the Eagle and then going to sea with it with the wrath of the German gods following us.’

‘Why should they be angry with us? We won’t be taking it from them, we’ll be taking it from the tribe.’

Magnus looked at his friend with an expression of incredulous amazement. ‘Of course we’ll be stealing it from the gods; I told you that I’ve seen how the Germans hide an Eagle. It’ll be in one of their sacred groves dedicated to whichever one of their bloodthirsty gods they think can best protect it and they won’t be too pleased with us when we take it;
if
we take it, for that matter, because it ain’t as simple as walking through the trees into the clearing and pulling the Eagle’s pole out of the ground. Oh no, they make traps.’

‘What sort of traps?’

‘Nasty fucking traps.’

‘How nasty?’

‘Put it this way; when we found the Nineteenth’s Eagle in the Marsi’s territory the young tribune who tried to lift from the altar that it was laid upon ended up in a pit ten foot below the ground, with a stake so far up his arse that his last sensation was the taste of his own shit.’

‘That
is
nasty.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it. Then the lads that went to try and help him got smashed to a pulp by two swinging boulders that came out of the trees. You saw how the Chatti got those corpses to swing down on us; they’re good at that sort of thing here.’

‘Then we’ll just have to be very careful. Anyway, they got the Eagle in the end.’

‘But that’s just my point, they did get the Eagle but they took it straight back across the Rhenus; if we find this Eagle then we’re going to take it back by sea. When Germanicus took us back by that route after his victories here the German gods sent the storm after us in vengeance and you know the rest. And we’re about to do the very same thing.’

‘Then we shall make sure that we sacrifice to the right gods. The Batavians worship them after all.’ Vespasian turned to Ansigar who looked concerned; he had evidently been listening to the conversation. ‘Who is your god of the sea, Ansigar?’

‘There’s a few who could help but I think we should be specific in this case and sacrifice to Nehalennia, the goddess of the Northern Sea. We always call on her before a voyage; if anyone can help us she can.’

‘What does she require?’

The decurion scratched his beard. ‘The more that we can give her the more she’ll help us.’

A pale mist had settled as dawn broke the following morning and a thin layer of snow lay on the ground, making the flat countryside seem monochrome; trees and other natural features in the distance were just two-dimensional, slightly darker shades of grey. As Vespasian sat up blinking his eyes, the troopers were rousing themselves from their damp blankets, their breath steaming in the cold air, complaining about their stiff and aching limbs. Apart from a couple of hours in the late afternoon when there had been enough of a breeze to warrant the hoisting of the sails – emblazoned with the boar’s head emblem of the Cherusci – they had rowed constantly until nearly midnight with the almost full, waning moon, sparkling on the river’s surface, guiding them; their arms and legs were now suffering after a chill few hours sleeping on hard ground, dusted white.

‘The Ice Gods,’ Ansigar informed Vespasian as he brushed the snow from his blanket.

‘What?’

‘Every May the Ice Gods walk through Germania for three days, surveying the country before they return to their realms
until it is time to bring winter back to the land. Only once they’ve completed their journey do the spirits of spring feel it safe to emerge.’

‘You see,’ Magnus said, clutching his thumb again, ‘they do have weird gods.’

Within half an hour, after a decent breakfast of bread and pickled cabbage that had been stowed in the boats, they pushed off from the riverbank and continued downstream. The shroud of mist that obscured both banks, as well as the disembodied, muffled calls of birds, gave the river a foreboding air. The rhythmical dipping of the oars, breaking the water with soft splashes, and the creaking of the wooden vessels seemed loud compared to the deadened sounds around them, and the Batavians started looking nervously over their shoulders as they rowed, now that they were, as Thumelicus had informed them upon departure, in the lands of the Chauci.

They rowed on through the early morning and, although it cleared somewhat as the sun rose higher and fought off the effects of the Ice Gods, the mist remained.

‘What sort of people are the Chauci?’ Vespasian asked Ansigar in order to take his mind off the unease that had been growing within him.

‘Like their neighbours, the Frisii, they divide into two. On the coast where the land is low, wet and unproductive they’re seafaring – fishing and raiding up and down the coastline in boats like these. But here, further inland, they have cattle and horses and good land for cultivation. They have treaties with Rome to provide men for the auxiliaries, which they fulfil, as well as paying a nominal tax. Like most of the tribes, they want to stay on good terms with Rome so that they can concentrate on fighting their neighbours and the tribes further east who would dearly love to have our lands. They, along with the Langobardi, hold the wilder tribes at bay on the eastern side of the Albis.’

‘What tribes are out there?’

‘We hear rumours of many names but we only know a few: Saxones and Anglii along the coast and Suebi along the Albis and then further east the Gothones, Burgundiones and Vandilii;
they’re all Germanic. We have no contact with most of them, although occasionally a Saxon or Angle trading or raiding party comes south and we have to deal with them; sometimes with force.’ Ansigar suddenly pushed on the steering oar and the boat veered around sharply. Vespasian looked back towards the lead boat; it was doing the same. Beyond it he could see the cause for the sudden manoeuvre: as the mist rose, faint silhouettes were turning into sharper outlines; a Roman fleet was drawn up on the bank and was disembarking thousands of legionaries.

Publius Gabinius had beaten them.

‘That’s the Chauci’s main township,’ Thumelicus whispered, pointing to a large settlement about a mile away, built along a low ridge; the only high land in an otherwise flat and dismal snowdusted landscape still swathed in a light mist. ‘Their sacred groves are in the woods to the east; the Eagle will be in one of those.’

But Vespasian was not interested in the Chauci’s town or the woodland as he peered out from the cover of a copse. His eyes were fixed on the six cohorts of auxiliary infantry formed up, to the northwest of it, in a line across frosted farmland, shielding a legion deploying from column to battle order behind it. Before the Roman force was a massed formation of Chauci, growing all the time as men rushed in from the surrounding areas, answering the booming, warning calls of horns that echoed all around and off into the distance.

‘This could be a welcome diversion for us,’ Vespasian suggested, his breath steaming.

‘First bit of luck we’ve had,’ Magnus agreed with a grin. ‘It looks like they’re all going to have plenty to keep them occupied for a while.’

Sabinus looked equally pleased. ‘We should get going before we freeze our bollocks off; if we skirt around to the south the mist will obscure us and we should be able to reach that woodland undetected.’

Thumelicus did not look so sure. ‘It’s not ideal; the Chauci will know why they’ve come and will either be moving the Eagle or sending a large force to defend it.’

‘Then we should do this as fast as possible,’ Vespasian said, blowing into his chilled hands. ‘It’s a mile back to the boats and a mile and a half to that woodland; with luck we could be on the river with the Eagle within an hour.’ As he spoke a group of mounted warriors emerged from the Chauci ranks and rode slowly towards the Roman line; one held a branch in full leaf in the air.

Thumelicus smiled. ‘They’re going to parley; that may give us more time. Let’s get moving.’

They made their way back through the copse to where Ansigar and five turmae of the Batavians crouched, waiting; the sixth had been left guarding the boats pulled up on the bank out of view from the Roman fleet.

‘Leave a turma here to cover our escape,’ Paetus ordered, ‘and bring the rest with us, they need to keep low and move fast.’

Thumelicus and his men led them at a fast jog across the flat terrain; to the north the two armies were mainly obscured by the freezing mist but it was thinning all the time as the sun climbed higher. Every now and then it lifted slightly and figures could be seen; but they were still stationary.

A huge shout rose up after they had covered nearly a mile, followed by a roar and then the rhythmical hammering of weapons against shields as the Chauci began to work themselves up into battle fever.

‘Sounds like they’ve decided not to become friends,’ Magnus puffed, his chest heaving with the exertion. ‘Let’s hope they’re evenly matched and they slog it out for a while.’

They broke into a run, splashing through an icy stream, brown with the filth discharged from the Chauci’s settlement, and pressed on, keeping well to the south of the ridge.

Cornua started their low, rumbling calls, signalling orders throughout the cohorts; these were countered by the blaring of Chauci horns used more to intimidate the enemy than to inform comrades.

More bellows and war cries filled the air until there came the unmistakeable yells and ululations of a barbarian charge. As Thumelicus led them into the wood the first clashes of iron
against iron and the dull thumps of shields taking blows resonated in the air; they were soon followed by the shrieks of the wounded and the dying.

‘The first grove is due east, about four hundred paces away,’ Thumelicus said, increasing his speed.

They ran on, following a weaving snow-patched path deeper into the wood, occasionally having to hurdle the fallen branch of an oak or beech. Behind them the decurions were struggling to keep their turmae in some sort of semblance of a two-abreast column but were losing the fight, their men being unused to acting as infantry.

Vespasian’s heart was pounding as he worked his legs hard to push himself forward with the added weight of the cavalry chain mail tunic; he sighed with relief as Thumelicus started to slow. Paetus turned and signalled to Ansigar who, with a couple of movements of his hand above his head, ordered the columns to fan out into line, just as they would have done had they been mounted. They carried on, crouching low, taking care with their steps, easing forward through the trees, javelins at the ready.

‘It’s straight ahead,’ Thumelicus whispered as he signalled a halt.

Vespasian peered through the light haze of the wood shaded from sunlight by the thick canopy; up ahead the atmosphere was brighter where the sun shone down directly onto the thinning mist. The faint sounds of the battle could be heard far off, but nearer at hand the only sound to disturb the peace was birdsong. ‘Keep your men here,’ he told Paetus. ‘Sabinus, Magnus and I will go forward with Thumelicus and his men to have a look.’