The Wald (29 page)

Men from both sides fell at the feet of Septimus
until he splashed in blood as he would in puddles after a rain storm.  He used his shield as a punching weapon to drive noses into faces.  He rutted under, over, or around shields with his gladius as he looked for any ground, fertile or infertile, within which he may drive its blade.  Ribs were separated or cleaved.  Legs, arms, and foreheads were gashed or broken.

Ermin used the
big sword with surprising agility.  The summer of countless guerrilla attacks had seen that he had developed a comfortable efficiency at killing men.  He used his wide horse to his full advantage, clearing men out of his way when he felt excess pressure.  One of the Roman centurions was fighting his way ever closer and Ermin obliged him by fighting his way through the choking mass of men toward him.

Septimus saw the boy
-soldier had appeared nearby on his large horse and saw that he was an effective killer of Romans.  Septimus decided that he would have to be the one to put a stop to it.  Roman military organization had disintegrated to the extent that they held no clear line of defense.  Septimus simply hacked his way toward the boy who surprised him by doing the same.

Just as the two were to meet, another Cheruscan, this one on foot, stabbed his spear at Septimus.  The tip slipped behind his shield and into the leather strap that held it to his arm.  The point had missed the arm, but now acted like a pin, fastening the arm, shield, and spear together.  The foot soldier pressed his advantage and cleanly punched Septimus in his face.  The cheek plates of his helmet helped absorb much of the
crack, but his head snapped back from the blow.  Sweat stung his eyes.

Ermin saw the opportunity his comrade had given him and drove the sword at the tilting centurion’s open neck.  But in the melee the boy had not seen another Roman of even higher rank step in the way of the sword thrust.  Ermin could see that the older man’s intent was not to take the sword himself, but such was the mayhem of battle.  The man’s body did not act the way he had intended or maybe
, at his advanced years, his body was no longer able to comply.  At any rate, the senior centurion was pierced under his outstretched arm.  Ermin felt his blade slide past the protective layer of ribs and into the soft flesh of the man’s organs.  The old man’s face, like all trained warriors who find themselves at the point of death, showed utter disbelief.

Septimus recovered quickly from
the blow to his face and slashed the Cheruscan who had struck him with a backhand motion of his short sword.  He turned to face the boy, but instead was greeted with Manilius falling back upon him.  The two went down in a heap.  Septimus watched as the boy went about his swinging and killing, the gap created by the horse slowly collapsing as they moved away.

“Prefect!” Septimus shouted.

Manilius’ eyes already showed a lifeless gaze.

Septimus was surprised at just how sad and simultaneously angry he became at seeing his chief nemesis in the army dead in his arms.  But
he swallowed any feelings that welled from beneath and threw the dead man’s body off.  Manilius rolled in the dirt until he disappeared under a mass of feet.  Septimus stabbed his gladius into the ground and with his knife cut his arm free from the shield.  He stood then and surveyed the horror that surrounded the legion.

Even in the dark gorge, lit now only by the earliest stars and the partial moon above the still-leaved trees, the centurion could see they were defeated.  Many of the legionaries yet lived, but the terrain would not allow them to utilize any of the fighting methods with which they had trained.  Theirs was a world of open battle and spreading terror just by showing their brilliant colors and standards. 
Theirs was not the world of simulated retreats leading to huddled dark ravines.  Septimus remembered the sling stones he had gathered at the Pillars of Hercules and reached into his pack.  He did not know what he was going to do with them, but when he laid his hand upon one he felt better, even though in his heart he knew the truth.  All was lost at that moment.

. . .

Kolman, too, knew it.  From his perch above the gap, he peered down at the dying soldiers on both sides.  His vantage point gave him the knowledge that if they so desired, the Cheruscans could completely remove these legions from the face of the earth.  They could kill all these invaders and leave before the reserve units even understood what happened.

But Kolman thought in broader terms. 
It was a source of pride for him to be able to make decisions as if he weren’t a Cheruscan.  He tried to think in the political idioms of the Romans.  Total destruction of the professional soldiers who toiled below his feet would mean that Augustus would react out of anger rather than intellect.  Within a year, the Roman emperor would send innumerable legions to slaughter every inhabitant in the lands between the Rhenus and the Albis.  There would be no negotiations for peace, only revenge.  And if the most powerful man leading the most powerful nation was bent on revenge, there would be no stopping him.  He would bankrupt his treasury before he allowed the tribes to demonstrate that Rome could be broken.  The Cheruscans and their neighbors would be forced to unconditionally accept the peace dictated to them.  So, Kolman reasoned, an unmistakable triumph on this battlefield could result in an unthinkable loss for generations of his people.  A brilliant tactical victory would lead directly to a strategic defeat.  It was best to merely bloody them badly, he thought.

“And we’ve done that,” he said out
loud.

The man nearest him
threw down another rock, hoping it hit a Roman and not one of his own, and asked, “What?”

Kolman shouted to make sure he was heard over the clamor echoing off the walls of the pass.  “Sound the horns of retreat.  We withdraw with a great victory to use at the negotiating table.
  The Romans will have reason to fear us now.”

The man appeared shocked and opened his mouth to argue, but stopped short.  Kolman was wealthy and generous to his men.  He also had the ear of Segimer, the strongest of all the warlords. 
So instead of telling Kolman just how preposterous it was to abandon the battle when at the cusp of victory, the man bit his tongue and ran back to find the nearest horn blower.

“What is that?” shouted Segimer when he heard the rolling calls coming from the cliffs.  “Who ordered a retreat?  No, we cannot!  No!”

But it was too late.  His men, though brave and ruthless, were not experienced in the ways of battlefield tactics.  Hardly any could sense how the battle fared.  They could tell that they were not personally and immediately pounded back, and so knew that the tribes’ army was not being routed.  But the individual warriors did not know if some other part of their lines were being overrun.  So, they heard the horns, fought on for just a moment while their minds caught up to the meaning of the notes, and turned to flee so they would not be the last man stuck on the battlefield amidst thousands of enemy soldiers.

Segimer and his boy, Ermin, did know they were only moments from turning the fight i
rreversibly in their favor.  No longer.  While the common Suebians and Cheruscans began to flee, father and son grabbed hold of jerkins to drag them back into line.  They were but one man and one boy, however.  It was the ebb tide.  A child’s pail would not be enough to stop it.  The men ran out, slipping from the grasp of their would-be leaders, opening their backs up to an unopposed retaliatory attack.

Many of the tribesmen
died there in the dark.

Chumstintus
heard the haunting notes of the German horns.  He heard the calls of the German women cease.  He sensed the sea change.  The battled inexplicably altered in Rome’s favor.  He rode to Drusus, cutting down two staggering Cheruscans on his way.  “Lord, give me just one cohort.  Give another to Avectius.  The Germans flee not because of another feign.  They flee because one of their leaders doesn’t know that the purpose of battle is victory.  Allow us to crush those who would stand in our way back to the clearing.”

Drusus had his blood up from the near defeat. 
His face was splattered with the guts of his enemies.  His legs, dangling down from his saddle, were cut and marked from spears of the Germans.  “Take the cohorts out in front of us.  Sweep the devils from the face of the earth.”  He wanted to tell the Gallic tribune to not come back until every last tribesman had been killed and every one of their women and children enslaved, but he let the gravity of his command resume control over his mind, letting his heart and belly settle.  More calmly now, “And Chumstintus, pursue only so far.  I don’t need you to lead the men into a trap as did I.”

“No,
lord.  What was meant as a trap will turn into a resounding victory!  Your victory!”  Chumstintus used his reins to slap his horse’s rump.  He gathered his favorite officers and their legionaries and, even though the men were bloodied, thirsty, and exhausted set out on the chase into the dark of night.

CHAPTER 6

9 B.C.

Adalbern’s belly had again slowly dwindled away as it had done whenev
er the times of plenty fled with the wind.  His eyes shown dark and receded.  His old wrinkled skin had finally begun to show its true age, and then some.  His beloved young wife was gone, taken a captive and then probably enslaved, said his neighbors, who had the sense to run for the trees when they saw the legionaries marching toward them.  But his strong, stubborn wife ran toward the Romans, giving the wives of those same neighbors time to flee.  They could call her foolish all they wanted.  To Adalbern, she would be remembered as Dorthe den tapferen.

Stigr and his small band of Chaucian fighters tired of fighting for the Sugambrians when they realized Drusus had, so far, left their homes
up on the coast alone.  Young Stigr wanted to follow a winner and Adalbern had a string of losses under his loose belt.  The Chaucian took his men home in the autumn of last year after helping Adalbern with what might prove his last victory, his defeat of the Cattans.

The coming of Drusus had been hard on the old warlords of Germania.  It had been unbearable to the commoners who wanted nothing but to be left alone to make babies and live life.

Each year since Drusus cut off their planned invasion into Gaul across the Rhenus River; the Roman general had attacked and blanketed more and more of the wald.  His soldiers covered the ground like a winter’s snowfall or like a spring’s dew.  Livestock was plundered.  Crops were destroyed.  Homes, storehouses, and barns were burnt to the ground.

Adalbern and Berengar lived like wretches after they returned from the war with the Cattans.  Their house was gone and there was no extra food within a four
-day ride.  To get through the winter they built a tiny hovel, using one of the walls of their original house that had survived the Roman onslaught.  They survived by eating the meat from Berengar’s old gristly horse.  The great old man’s gums bled some during those cold months and his joints ached more than usual, but they survived.  They always survived.  His people always survived.

After being thoroughly whipped by Adalbern and his Sugambrian army while Segimer was fighting Drusus, the Cattans had learned the error of their ways.  The following year
they had joined the alliance against Rome and proved to be able allies.  Unfortunately, they were only able in their ability to suffer just like the other tribes had under the unrelenting determination of Drusus and his legionaries.  Each year since his first time crossing east of the Rhenus, the Roman general had worked his way further south.  The whole of what the Romans did was methodical.  They kept records of everything from the number of men here or there to the number of onions needed for an army to march two hundred miles.  This Roman general was just as methodical in his conquering of Germania.  Drusus had heart and organization.  The two were proving to be deadly to the tribes.

But even knowing in advance where the legions would hold their campaign in the coming season did not seem to help.  They were out-supplied and out-commanded.  Adalbern was tired.  He was tired of feeling tired.  He was even tired of feeling sorry for himself and his people, but he did not see any way
out of his plight.  So the once-proud and great man sat in his hovel on a breezy spring day, stewing over and again about how they would rid themselves of the Roman menace once and for all.

Berengar quietly walked in
.  Adalbern studied his boy standing in the light cast through the low door.  He was truly growing now, Adalbern saw.  Berengar had gotten even taller and, if they all lived a few more years, would be able to look down at his father if they stood facing one another.  Where the boy used to be like the thin string of a plumb line held tight by a rock at its end, he was now broad-boned.  There was not much flesh to cover those bones because of their plight, but one day, his father saw, the boy would be a large man – like he had once been.

Berengar had small wisps of whiskers
growing on his cheeks – cheeks that looked more like they were smeared with dirt – cheeks that matched his clothes, filthy from working in the fields all morning to pry some basic sustenance from the earth this year.  Adalbern chuckled at the thought of the once tiny boy who carried his tiny sword into battle in Gaul.  He was becoming a man.

“Father,” said Berengar.

“Yes, son,” answered Adalbern, more humbled than he had ever been in his life.  He was almost resigned to permanent Roman occupation, to permanent Roman rule.

“Our visitors are here,” the young man answered simply.  There was no reason to go into more detail because riders had been sent many weeks earli
er to coordinate this meeting – yet another meeting.  Adalbern’s burned-out hovel was the central-most location, and so the conference between the Suebians, Cheruscans, the Sugambrians, and even the Cattans – their treachery long since forgotten for they had suffered mightily from the incursions of the legions last year – would occur there.

“What’s the weather like out there today?” Adalbern asked.  Even though the day was already long, he had not yet stepped foot outside, such was his despair.  Many days were like that, and Berengar had learned to ignore it.  He would have like
d to have help in managing the farm, but it was not to be.  Berengar did have neighbors, but they had their own families and villages for whom to care.  Their fields were burnt, too, their livestock gone.

“Pleasant, father,” answered Berengar, with remarkable calm.  He too, had learned humility after suffering so under the constant burning and attacking of the Romans.  “Let’s sit out in the sun and at least warm our faces.  There are still several logs yet to split for firewood that may serve as benches.”

The old man slapped his creaking knees and pushed himself up.  “That’s a fine idea,” he said.  Adalbern smiled, but everything on his face showed utter sadness.  “Let’s see if we can’t come up with a plan to save our people after all.”  He squinted as he came out in the bright spring sunshine, his spirits surprisingly lifted.

Already dismounted were Segimer; his son, Ermin;
and the ever-cautious Kolman.  They were surrounded by twenty guards who felt safe enough that they, too, had climbed off their horses.  Further behind them on the path, Adalbern saw the trotting contingent of Cattans, looking utterly despondent.

Segimer, appearing
nearly as weary as the much older Adalbern, greeted the warlord.  “You look like a shriveled turd, Adalbern.”

That caught him off
guard and he laughed out loud, showing some of the fire for which he was known.  “I do at that,” he answered, still chuckling.  “But I suppose it’s better than looking as you.”

Adalbern didn’t elaborate
, so Segimer asked, “I’m game for your sport old man, what do I look like?”

“Well, you look like a shriveled turd, too.  But since you’ve always been uglier than me, I make a more handsome shriveled turd.”

Segimer slapped him on the back and the two warlords walked their way to the wood pile.  Adalbern intentionally ignored Kolman, who was forced to walk awkwardly to the meeting place, nearly unnoticed.  The word had spread rapidly from the great battle between the Cheruscans, Suebians, and the Romans two years earlier.  In the telling of the tale, Kolman was not highly regarded, having single-handedly turned a stunning victory into a punishing defeat.  Once the tribesmen began fleeing the site of the engagement, two enterprising Roman officers chased them down in the moonlight and slaughtered thousands of them.  After that, Drusus was able to pull the remainder of his large force back to the clearing and eventually the winter bases without so much as a stray arrow sailing into his ranks.  That moment was the beginning of the general’s unmolested supremacy in Germania and Kolman would not be permitted to forget it.

Ermin and Berengar embraced as brothers, each marveling at how much the other had changed in the two years since they saw one another.
  With his knuckles, Ermin scrubbed the faint whiskers on Berengar’s chin.  He had to reach up to do so as Berengar was a head taller.  “What’s this?” the still-boy asked the young man.  “Did you kiss your grandmother and some of her whiskers rubbed off on you?”  Berengar punched Ermin in the shoulder and they walked over to the meeting.

“Don’t forget who gave you that scar on your cheek.  There’s more where that came from if you wish,” said Berengar as he poked a
dirty finger at Ermin’s face.

It
seemed like it was so long ago that the boys stood with their fathers in the dark glen watching that sorceress do her magic.  So much had, in fact, changed since then.  After that meeting, with his father insisting even the next morning that there had been a beautiful young woman spread naked on the blanket, their morale was lofty.  They were going to bring a surprise to the Roman general.  But it was the general who stunned them.  The actions of Drusus forced the boys and their peoples to fight separately two years earlier.  The alliance had continued last year with the addition of the Cattans, but each tribe again fought as individual units.  They struggled like a crazed man trying to put out a fire, only to find that another blaze sprung up behind him, and another, and another.

The Romans now had permanent forts
and heavily defended depots east of the mighty Rhenus.  Two sat in the southern territories of the Chaucians, two were placed in lands that Adalbern once claimed as those of his own people, and one now rested in the central lands of the Cattans.  Drusus was busy like the bee.  The garrisons from each of those forts could patrol and strike out with shorter notice and with deadly intensity.  All this did not count the vast army that Drusus himself led into and across the tribal lands with each new campaigning season.  Germania was nearly overrun.  Only the Cheruscans to the east and the Marcomannians to the south had yet to feel the humiliation that came with having a foreign invader set up forts or towns as if it had been there realm all along.

The Cattan nobles sat down a short distance from where the other men assembled
, muttering amongst themselves.  They had certainly suffered from the Romans, but they were wise enough to harbor guilt from what some thought was their earlier acts of collusion with Drusus.  Even Adalbern rarely said anything about it, because that type of treachery went along with his view of the world – clan, village, tribe, others.  But the great warlord certainly didn’t go out of his way to make them feel welcomed.

“So much for you
r priestess,” said Adalbern.  “The biggest idiot we’ve got could have given a more accurate prediction than she.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure, friend,” said Segimer in soft reproach.  “I recall her saying that Adalbern the Sugambrian would see much success and much sorrow.  You had great success in
bringing our cousins, the Cattans, into the fold,” making sure that he phrased it in such a way that neither party would feel attacked.  “Now you feel the sorrow of which the woman spoke.  It’s as simple as that.”

“Aye, but the woman said that it was foregone that Cheruscans and Sugambrians would fight together.  Other than talk, we’ve had no occasion to do so.  How are we to win if we don’t band together?” asked Adalbern for what he thought must be the one thousandth time in his life.  “Though I don’t know why I bother since I can only trust my family, village, and tribe.  No offence.”

“None taken.  We feel the same,” answered Kolman.

“Huh!  And that is why we keep failing against the Romans.  Although, I hear that you do a fine job of failing against Drusus on your very own.”  Adalbern could not resist sticking a figurative finger in Kolman’s eye.

“I did that for political reasons – for a chance for nuanced negotiations, which are something you’ll never understand,” retorted Kolman, blustering at such a public out-calling.

“Ha!  And how has that been working out for you – those, what did you call them, nuanced negotiations?”  Even the Cattan delegation laughed at that.

Ermin piped up then, surprising his father.  “Adalbern, you are great warlord.  You are right that we made a grave error in our fight against Drusus.”  His hands rested on the pommel of the sword Kolman had given to him as a reward.  From his look, it was obvious that Kolman no longer thought so highly of the boy.  “But for my part and I think for my father’s part we understand the value of another attempt at a true alliance – one where we will once again draw our forces together and fight as one.  That is why we are here.”

“It is?” asked Kolman, sarcastically.

The boy didn’t back down.  “It is, Kolman.  We need the passion of the Sugambrians.  The Cattans bring us battlefield tactics that can match the Romans.  Each brings men.  We need men.”

The dull thud of dozens of hooves on the earthen path echoed from the forest.  “And I hope you’ll get them, young Ermin.  That sounds like the last of
the tribes set to join our negotiations.”  Adalbern raised his eyebrows in his old way.  “I invited Mawrobodwos of the southern Marcomannians to sup with us.  I hope that after seeing Rome creep ever-closer to his territory year after year he has changed his mind and will bring his men into the fight.”

It was easy to tell which of the men riding to the meeting
was the Rome-educated Mawrobodwos.  He rode at the front of his men while sitting in a four-horned saddle like the professional army officers used.  His hair, a non-descript brown, was cut short, hanging just over his ears, forehead, and nape of his neck.  It looked as if he regularly shaved off his beard, though Mawrobodwos had let it grow into stubble while he traveled to the war summit.  To the tribesmen sitting in the circle, he looked almost Roman.