The Wald (32 page)

Septimus
wondered what his frightening vision of the rising giant serpent biting Jupiter meant to him and the legions.  He had not told anyone about it, not even Marcus, since an omen as bad as that would spread through the ranks like a wildfire.  If that were to happen the spirits of the men would plummet and nearly guarantee that whatever ill the sign conveyed would come to pass.

Eventually t
he Cattans had had enough of the menacing march of Drusus’ army.  The scouts said they appeared ready to give battle, with some eight thousand of the tribe’s men forming up for battle in the next valley.  Word traveled quickly through the ranks that there was to be a fight that day, but the pace of the army’s march did not change.  It was early in the campaign and Drusus meant to demonstrate that he was in charge, deciding the time of engagement.

The sun was already at its apex by the time Septimus and his cohort emerged from the wald into a sweeping
valley that the tribe had cleared over the eons in which to live and cultivate.  The Cattans had already spread out over many of the fields and trampled the peasants’ oats under foot, no doubt hoping that this would be where they stopped such activity once and for all.  Three humble fence rows were torn up, with the posts and rails piled haphazardly behind the tribe’s army.  As a result, a group of ten young women and boys shuffled while waving their arms in order to drive a small herd of cattle out of harm’s way.

The left-
most end of Drusus’ line had already begun to draw up into battle order, with their centurions and optii bellowing encouragement.  Septimus ordered his men to drop their shovels and packs at the edge of the woods so that they carried only the proper tools of the trade into battle.  The rattling carts of the baggage train were soon the only sounds heard as the well-rehearsed dance of the legions played out as it had countless times on parade grounds or on battlefields in Macedonia, Thracia, Carthage, Syria, Gaul, and now Germania since the great city’s founding by Romulus hundreds of years earlier.

Septimus remembered the first time he had assembled in formation with an entire legion.  He recalled his astonishment at just how long it took for an army of thousands of men to methodically walk into place.  His wonderment had long since passed, but he looked out across the battlefield to the Cattans who he would soon be killing.  Watching Rome’s finest men assemble in such order had to terrify them.  Yet they stood firm in their formation
which closely resembled that of the legions.  Apparently, the Cattan generals had decided to forego the hopeless wedge formation that, more often than not, led to utter destruction for the side that employed it.

He was close enough now to hear Drusus’ own voice erupt from the silence to call for the advance.  Septimus and the other centurions repeated the order until every man was prepared.  In a heartbeat, the first line of men moved forward as one.  The next five lines began their march simultaneously so that an eerie wave of bristling men slowly swept across t
he land like wind blew across the fat heads of a ripe barley field.  The legions were silent – deathly quiet.

The Cattans broke into a raucous set of uncontrolled screams.  Septimus now understood some of their more base cur
ses and heard them all in rapid-fire succession.  When one group of the tribesmen grew tired of shouting there always seemed to be more ready to take up the shouts.  They beat their shields with long wooden clubs, spears, and swords.  They stomped the ground in order to drown out the frighteningly regular beat of the legions marching to cut them down.  At least one hundred of their number broke ranks and ran into the space between the closing armies.  These men proceeded to strip themselves completely naked while still clutching their weapon and shield, if they were fortunate enough to have one.  A fair amount of these naked warriors then chanted or even chewed on their own arms.  It was obviously a show meant to strike terror into their enemies.  To a large extent it worked, for if men were this enthralled before the heat of battle bubbled in their breasts, what more would they do then?

Septimus calmly told his men to ignore the naked warriors and hold their javelins steady for the main Cattan force.  He was pleased to see that not even the most junior centurion allowed his men to panic and loose missiles.

Five of those wild, naked men decided to fall in glory.  They rushed Septimus’ century as a more or less cohesive group with spears leveled.  The men bypassed Septimus, out in front of the line as he was, and crashed into the shield wall to his right.  But the strength of the wall, with its shields knit together like a warm garment made on the loom, did not bend.  Instead, the wild men were immediately pierced, only to shrink down harmlessly beneath the marching legionaries’ feet.  Septimus was pleased with his men and returned his gaze toward the enemy.

When the Roman line was close enough to use their javelins to rain down terror onto the tribe, Drusus ordered a halt.  Here is when the Cattans would either run or stay.  This is what would determine whether the fight was one fought face to face or if Septimus and his
century would spend the afternoon slicing into fleeing men’s backs.  The centurion raised his empty right hand, ready to relay the signal for javelins to be launched.

Instead, Drusus called, “Hold javelins!”

Septimus watched as the general said something to the Gallic brothers and Hostilius, his new camp prefect, before kicking his horse out ahead of the line, in easy range for any angry Cattan to reach with a spear.  “Cattans, we come to give you full battle.  Caesar Augustus sends us here.  I, Drusus, general of these fine men, do challenge any among you to combat.”  Septimus checked his immediate gulp of horror.  Even though Drusus had proven himself time and again as a capable warrior, why would he expose himself needlessly?  If a lucky blow killed him, the morale of the now headless legion would be sapped.  He could invite defeat.  Then Septimus again remembered his new vision of the Jupiter Column.  He mumbled words to Jupiter on the spot, hoping for mercy.

A proud-
looking Cattan stepped forward.  He was of Drusus’ height, but broader, with limbs well-hewn.  He wore a simple mail shirt with no additional adornment.  The challenger carried a sword that was probably taken from a Roman cavalry officer, it was long and broad.  He dropped his shield and reached behind him where another man handed him a spear.  Drusus abandoned his horse while one of his assistants scrambled out from his place in the line to lead the beast back.  The general waited while the Cattan closed in.

They did not talk or greet one another.  The Cattan was angry that this Roman stood on his land.  He was bitter for the years of pain Rome’
s meddling caused his people.  The challenger meant to decapitate the legions once and for all.  With his left arm tucked firmly downward he drove the spear forward at Drusus’ muscled cuirass.  The general swung his spatha down and around to deflect the jab. The Cattan used the opportunity to give a broad swing with his sword.  With agility, the Roman commander reversed the course of his weapon and blocked the blow.  The two swords seemed suspended together for a full heartbeat until Drusus kicked the man’s hand that held the spear.  Drusus gave a backhand swing of his spatha, rapping the man’s shoulder and sliding down his chest.  The mail held and no blood was drawn, but Drusus drove his advantage while both sides looked on, afraid to breathe.

Drusus jabbed his sword so quickly that Septimus could barely see as it slipped under the man’s mail and into his groin.  A resonating gasp echoed down the tribe’s lines, while a simple cheer of hope sprang from the legionaries.  The challenger released both of his w
eapons instinctively.  His legs gave out and he curled into a ball, still on his knees.  With a mighty two-handed swing the general ended the man’s suffering by racing the blade through the prone neck.  The head fell to the ground promptly.  The man’s body teetered, its heart pumping two full beats of blood into the air before the entire mess collapsed.

The general raised his sword where he stood and called, “
Legions, close on the enemy!”

His men
leapt forward at the shocked Cattans.  Septimus rammed into two men at the same time with his large shield.  His century closed around him and eliminated his opponents before he could even offer them one thrust of his sword.

The battle raged.  Septimus had fought for Rome for years.  He could sense the mood of his enemy from the way they met his blows or the way they brought their own.  From the start
, he knew that while these brave tribesmen held their ground, while they stood and fought for their people, they had already lost.  Drusus, in killing one man, had removed all of their resolve, surety, and passion.  The legions slaughtered the Cattan there in the fields of oats.

. . .

After he gave them a crushing defeat, it was as if Drusus completely dismissed the Cattans.  Each day following the remarkable victory, he drove his men on a march to the east.  The pace he set was rapid, the column rarely rested, and they marched long into the evening when the sun barely hovered over the western horizon.  The legions scarcely had enough time to dig a shallow ditch around their camp each night before the land fell into darkness.  Drusus was correct, though.  The Cattans were no longer a threat.  None of their horseman harassed the march by day.  No fires of any shadowing army could be seen by night.

It made sense to the men.  Their Imperator had challenged a counterpart to a head-to-head struggle and emerged with the spoils.  The legions had been whipped into such a killing frenzy that the
y drenched the farm fields with Cattan blood, eliminating over half their number in just the first few moments of the confrontation.

It was as if Rome had moved its boundaries
eastward from the Rhenus on that very day.  The legions had long felt free to move about as they pleased on the southern peninsula where their great home city sat.  Now, that same confidence seemed to extend into Germania.  Once again the men had chanted to their commander whenever he came through the camp at night.  Morale was high.  They could not be defeated that year.

The men were soldiers, though, and
aside from marching and gambling, soldiers grumble.  They groused about the long, rapid marches.  However, so untouchable was Drusus, that his men never blamed him for any of their suffering.  It was poor Hostilius who took all of the accusations from the common legionaries.  Septimus heard some of the men openly complaining about the new camp prefect.  His initial reaction was to think that Hostilius deserved all manner of gripes he received.  That was the life of the camp prefect, after all.  Was the bread moldier than usual?  It was the camp prefect’s fault.  An army-issued boot rubbed your heel raw?  Damn the prefect!  But then he remembered his position in the ranks as someone who was to maintain order.  A centurion had to be feared or revered or both.  So Septimus had each of the men stripped to the waist and lashed in the center of camp one morning as the legion prepared to leave.  He chose to swing the whip himself, going a little easier on them than another man may have.  They still yelped in pain with each stroke.  Blood still blistered from their skin.  Yet some of the men actually gave their centurion a nod of respect as they delicately laced their way back into their tunics.  It would be a difficult few days on the march with heavy packs bouncing on those wounds.

Eventually Drusus, who always had a set of Germanic guides with him for direction and translation, passed into the Hercynius Saltus, or Hercynian Forest, which was made famous by the writing of Julius Caesar in his journals.  The black woods were full of mystery
, having served as a boundary between civilization and the barbarous peoples beyond since time began.  They had blocked that previous Roman general’s advance into the heart of southern Germania.  Not so with Drusus.  Though the men mumbled prayers to the gods as they fell into its shadows, allowing their imaginations to conjure all sorts of vivid pictures of what they would find, Drusus remained upbeat with supreme confidence.

Even Septimus seemed to have forgotten the omen about which he had so worried weeks earlier.  He pushed his men so that they would outmarch other centuries.  He volunteered his men to lead patrols to the left or right.  He asked for the glory of leading the column.  More often than not, his requests were grante
d.  Drusus clearly held the sheep-herder’s son in high regard.  And despite his name, Hostilius actually treated Septimus pleasantly.  The camp prefect was no longer a stumbling block for Septimus. The centurion felt that his rise to fame in the army was all but certain now.

The
Hercynian Forest was majestic with its old growth beech, spruce, and fir trees climbing like columns out of the earth.  It was trackless.  Even Drusus’ guides were not aware of anyone who had traversed its entire north-south direction, said to be six days’ worth of constant walking if the maps were to be believed.  Certainly no one, the tribesmen said, had ever started at the west end and emerged from the east end.  Some of the oldest in their ranks said that such a journey would take nine days.  Nine days of marching while a man would never see the sky or see farther than he could throw a heavy stone.  Still other men claimed that the mysterious wald never ended at all.  They said that it went to the very edge of the world where the god-realm became dominant and man could not hope to live.

The hunters brought back strange beasts such that no Roman had ever seen.  The interpreters were
able to name them all, but their knowledge did not make the men any less amazed.  They called them names like elk, moose, reindeer, and aurochs.  The creatures were enormous, with horns or antlers as wide as a man was tall.  On several occasions after bringing the beasts down with spears and arrows, the men hauled the animals up over a stout tree branch using thick rope tied around their hind legs at the level of the dewclaws.  Just to get the carcasses to budge took six men.  To lift them up so they dangled above the ground required ten men.  One of the moose was so long when stretched in this manner that two men could have stacked themselves on one another and still the beast’s hind legs would have extended further into the trees.