The First Man in Rome (68 page)

Leaning forward in his saddle, Cotta put his hand out and grasped Caepio's arm. "Quintus Servilius," he said, more earnestly and seriously than he had ever spoken in his entire life, "I beg of
you, join forces with Gnaeus Mallius
!
Which means more to you, Rome victorious or Rome's nobility victorious? Does it matter who wins, so long as Rome wins? This isn't a little border war against a few Scordisci, nor is it a minor campaign against the Lusitani! We are going to need the best and biggest army we've ever fielded, and your contribution to that army is vital! Gnaeus Mallius's men haven't had the time or the training under arms that your men have. Your presence among them will steady them, give them an example to follow. For I say to you very sternly, there
will
be a battle! I feel it in my bones. No matter how the Germans have behaved in the past, this time is going to be different. They've tasted our blood and liked it, they've felt our mettle and found it weak.
Rome
is at stake, Quintus Servilius, not Rome's nobility! But if you persist in remaining isolated from the other army, I tell you straight, the future of Rome's nobility will indeed be at stake. In your hands you hold the future of Rome and your own kind. Do the right thing by both, please! March tomorrow to Gnaeus Mallius's camp, and ally yourself with him."

Caepio dug his horse in the ribs and moved away, wrenching free of Cotta's grip. "No," he said. "I stay here."

So Cotta and his five companions rode on north to the cavalry camp, while Caepio produced a smaller but identical copy of Mallius Maximus's camp, right on the edge of the river.

The senators found themselves only just in time, for the German treating party rode into Aurelius's camp slightly after dawn of the next day. There were fifty of them, aged somewhere between forty and sixty, thought the awestruck Cotta, who had never seen men so large—not one of them looked to be under six feet in height, and most were six inches taller than that. They rode enormous horses, shaggy-coated and unkempt to Roman eyes, with big hooves skirted in long hair, and manes falling over their mild eyes; none was encumbered by a saddle, but all were bridled.

"Their horses are like war elephants," said Cotta.

"Only a few," Aurelius answered comfortably. "Most ride ordinary Gallic horses—these men take their pick, I suppose."

"Look at the young one!" Cotta exclaimed, watching a fellow no older than thirty slide down from his mount's back and stand, his pose superbly confident, gazing about him as if he found nothing he saw remarkable.

"Achilles," said Aurelius, undismayed.

"I thought the Germans went naked save for a cloak," Cotta said, taking in the sight of leather breeches.

"They do in Germania, so they say, but from what we've seen of these Germans so far, they're trousered like the Gauls."

Trousered they were, but none wore a shirt in this fine hot weather. Many sported square gold pectorals which sat on their chests from nipple to nipple, and all carried the empty scabbards of long-swords on shoulder baldrics. They wore much gold—the pectorals, their helmet ornaments, sword scabbards, belts, baldrics, buckles, bracelets, and necklaces—though none wore a Celtic neck torc. Cotta found the helmets fascinating: rimless and pot-shaped, some were symmetrically adorned above the ears with magnificent horns or wings or hollow tubes holding bunches of stiffly upright feathers, while others were fashioned to resemble serpents or dragon heads or hideous birds or pards with gaping jaws.

All were clean-shaven and wore their uniformly flaxen hair long, either braided or hanging loose, and they had little if any chest hair. Skins not as pink as Celtic skins, Cotta noted—more a pale gold. None was freckled; none had red hair. Their eyes were light blue, and held no grey or green. Even the oldest among them had kept himself in magnificent trim, flat-bellied and warriorlike, no evidence of self-indulgence; though the Romans were not to know it, the Germans killed men who let themselves go to seed.

The parley went on through Aurelius's interpreters, who were mostly Aedui and Ambarri, though two or three of them were Germans captured by Carbo in Noricum before he was defeated. What they wanted, the German thanes explained, was a peaceful right-of-way through Gaul-across-the-Alps, for they were going to Spain. Aurelius himself conducted the first phase of the talks, clad in full military-parade armor—a torso-shaped silver cuirass, scarlet-plumed Attic helmet of silver, and the double kilt of stiff leather straps called
pteryges
over a crimson tunic. As a consular he wore a purple cloak lashed to the shoulders of his cuirass, and a crimson girdle ritually knotted and looped around his cuirass just above the waist was the badge of his general's rank.

Cotta watched spellbound, now more afraid than he had ever dreamed he could be, even in the depths of despair. For he knew he was looking at Rome's doom. In months to come they haunted his sleep, those German thanes, so remorselessly that he stumbled red-eyed and thick-witted through his days, and even after sheer custom reduced their capacity to keep him wakeful, he would find himself sitting bolt upright in his bed, mouth agape, because they rode their gigantic horses into some less important nightmare. Intelligence reported their numbers at well over three quarters of a million, and that meant at least three hundred thousand gargantuan warriors. Like most men of his eminence, Cotta had seen his share of barbarian warriors, Scordisci and Iapudes, Salassi and Carpetani; but never had he seen men like the Germans. Everyone had deemed the Gauls giants. But they were as ordinary men alongside the Germans.

And, worst terror of all, they spelled Rome's doom because Rome did not take them seriously enough to heal the discord between the Orders; how could Rome hope to defeat them when two Roman generals refused to work with each other, and called each other snob and upstart, and damned each other's very soldiers? If Caepio and Mallius Maximus would only work as a team, Rome would field close to one hundred thousand men, and that was an acceptable ratio if morale was high and training complete and leadership competent.

Oh, Cotta thought, his bowels churning, I have seen the shape of Rome's fate! For we cannot survive this blond horde. Not when we cannot survive ourselves.

Finally Aurelius broke off the talk, and each side stepped back to confer.

"Well, we've learned something," said Aurelius to Cotta and the other five senators. "They don't call themselves Germans. In fact, they think of themselves as three separate peoples whom they call the Cimbri, the Teutones, and a rather polyglot third group made up of a number of smaller peoples who have joined up with the Cimbri and the Teutones during their wanderings — the Marcomanni, Cherusci, and Tigurini — who, according to my German interpreter, are more Celt than German in origins."

"Wanderings?" asked Cotta. "How long have they wandered?"

"They don't seem to know themselves, but for many years, at least. Perhaps a generation. The young sprig who looks like a barbarian Achilles was a small child when his tribe, the Cimbri, left its homeland."

"Do they have a king?" asked Cotta.

"No, a council of tribal chieftains, the largest part of which you are currently looking at. However, that same young sprig who looks like a barbarian Achilles is moving up in the council very fast, and his adherents are beginning to call him a king. His name is Boiorix, and he's by far the most truculent among them. He's not really interested in all this begging for our permission to move south—he believes might is right, and he's all for abandoning talks with us in favor of just going south no matter what."

"Dangerously young to be calling himself a king. I agree, he's trouble," said Cotta. "And who is that man over there?" He unobtrusively indicated a man of about forty who wore a glittering gold pectoral, and several pounds more of gold besides.

"That's Teutobod of the Teutones, the chief of their chiefs. He too is beginning to like being called a king, it seems. As with Boiorix, he thinks might is right, and they should simply keep on going south without worrying about whether Rome agrees or not. I don't like it, cousin. Both my German interpreters from Carbo's day tell me that the mood is very different than it was then—they've gathered confidence in themselves, and contempt for us." Aurelius chewed at his lip. "You see, they have been living among the Aedui and the Ambarri for long enough now to have learned a lot about Rome. And what they've heard has lulled their fears. Not only that, but so far—if you exclude that first engagement of Lucius Cassius's, and who finds exclusion difficult, considering the sequel?—they have won every encounter with us. Now Boiorix and Teutobod are telling them they have absolutely no reason to fear us just because we're better armed and better trained. We are like children's bogeys, all imagination and air. Boiorix and Teutobod
want
war. With Rome a thing of the past, they can wander where they choose, settle where they like."

The parley began again, but now Aurelius drew forward his six guests, all clad in togas, escorted by twelve lictors wearing the crimson tunics and broad gold-embossed belts of duty outside Rome itself, and carrying axed
fasces.
Of course every German eye had noticed them, but now that introductions were performed, they stared at the billowingwhite robes—so unmartial!—in wonder.
This
was what Romans looked like? Cotta alone wore the purple-bordered
toga praetexta
of the curule magistrate, and it was to him that all the strange-sounding, unintelligible harangues were directed.

He held up well under the pressure: proud, aloof, calm, soft-spoken. It seemed no disgrace to a German to become puce with rage, spit gobbets of saliva to punctuate his words, pound the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, but there could be no mistaking the fact that they were puzzled and made ill at ease by the unassailable tranquillity of the Romans.

From the beginning of his participation in the parley until its end, Cotta's answer was the same: no. No, the migration could not continue south; no, the German people could not have a right of way through any Roman territory or province; no, Spain was not a feasible destination unless they intended to confine themselves to Lusitania and Cantabria, for the rest of Spain was Roman. Turn north again, was Cotta's constant retort; preferably go home, wherever home might be, but otherwise retreat across the Rhenus into Germania itself, and settle there, among their own peoples.

It was not until dusk was fading into night that the fifty German thanes hauled themselves up on their horses and rode away. Last of all to leave were Boiorix and Teutobod, the younger man turning his head over his shoulder to see the Romans for as long as he could. His eyes held neither liking nor admiration. Aurelius is right, he is Achilles, thought Cotta, though at first the parallel's rightness was a mystery. Then he realized that in the young German's handsome face lay all the pigheaded, mercilessly vengeful power of Achilles. Here too was a man who would kick his heels by his ships while the rest of his countrymen died like flies, all for the sake of the merest pinprick in the skin of his honor. And Cotta's heart thudded, despaired; for wasn't that equally true of Quintus Servilius Caepio?

There was a full moon two hours after nightfall; freed from the encumbrance of their togas, Cotta and his five very soberly silent companions ate at Aurelius's table, then got ready to ride south.

"Wait until morning," begged Aurelius. "This isn't Italy, there are no trusty Roman roads, and you know nothing of the lay of the land. A few hours can't make any difference."

"No, I intend to be at Quintus Servilius's camp by dawn," said Cotta, "and try to persuade him yet again to join Gnaeus Mallius. I shall certainly apprise him of what's happened here today. But no matter what Quintus Servilius decides to do, I'm riding all the way back to Gnaeus Mallius tomorrow, and I don't intend to sleep until I've seen him."

They shook hands. As Cotta and the senators with their escort of lictors and servants rode away into the dense shadows cast by the moon, Aurelius stood clearly delineated by firelight and moonlight, his arm raised in farewell.

I shall not see him again, thought Cotta; a brave man, the very best kind of Roman.

Caepio wouldn't even hear Cotta out, let alone listen to the voice of reason.

"Here is where I stay" was all he said.

So Cotta rode on without pausing to slake his thirst in Caepio's half-finished camp, determined that he would reach Gnaeus Mallius Maximus by noon at the latest.

At dawn, while Cotta and Caepio were failing to see eye to eye, the Germans moved. It was the second day of October, and the weather continued to be fine, no hint of chill in the air. When the front ranks of the German mass came up against Aurelius's camp walls, they simply rolled over them, wave after wave after wave. Aurelius hadn't really understood what was happening; he naturally assumed there would be time to get his cavalry squadrons into the saddle— that the camp wall, extremely well fortified, would hold the Germans at bay for long enough to lead his entire force out the back gate of the camp, and to attempt a flanking maneuver. But it was not to be. There were so many fast-moving Germans that they were around all four sides of the camp within moments, and poured over every wall in thousands. Not used to fighting on foot, Aurelius's troopers did their best, but the engagement was more a debacle than a battle. Within half an hour hardly a Roman or an auxiliary was left alive, and Marcus Aurelius Scaurus was taken captive before he could fall on his sword.

Brought before Boiorix, Teutobod, and the rest of the fifty who had come to parley, Aurelius conducted himself superbly. His bearing was proud, his manner insufferably haughty; no indignity or pain they could inflict upon him bowed his head or caused him to flinch. So they put him in a wicker cage just large enough to hold him, and made him watch while they built a pyre of the hottest woods, and set fire to it, and let it burn. Aurelius watched, legs straight, no tremor in his hands, no fear on his face, not even clinging to the bars of his little prison. It being no part of their plan that Aurelius should die from inhaling smoke—or that he should die too quickly amid vast licks of flame—they waited until the pyre had died down, then winched the wicker cage over its very center, and roasted Aurelius alive. But he won, though it was a lonely victory. For he would not permit himself to writhe in agony, or cry out, or let his legs buckle under him. He died every inch the Roman nobleman, determined that his conduct would show them the real measure of Rome, make them take heed of a place which could produce men such as he, a Roman of the Romans.