The Wald (9 page)

“Legate,” one of his servants called as he moved aside the general’s tent
flap to duck inside.  Even the governor of the Roman province of Gaul could not have a few moments of peace.

“Yes?” Drusus asked, leaving his tired eyes closed.

“The camp prefect has arrived, lord,” answered the man with a slight bow.  When his master didn’t immediately respond the servant asked, “Shall I send him away, lord?”

The general blinked open his eyes, trying to drive the headache away.  “No, no, thank you
, Paterculus.  I’ll see him now.”  Obediently, the man left and could be heard admonishing the gruff Manilius to treat his master with kindness as it had been a difficult day.  So much for appearing invincible to his men, thought Drusus.  He had taken to calling the servant Paterculus, which meant little father, years ago when it became obvious the man cared for his master as the son he never had.

“You wish to speak with me,
legate?” asked Manilius in his crisp manner.

“Yes, Manilius, come here.  What do you see when you look at this map?”

The prefect leaned in to study the drawing in the dim, flickering candle light, leaning with one hand on the table, the other sitting on the pommel of his sword.  After a moment, “I see that we are quickly moving away from the rest of our forces, which lie west of the Rhenus, lord.”

Drusus muttered while nodding.  “That is what I see as well.  This
Sugambrian general, Adalbern, may be leading us away from support in order to ambush us in these wilds.”  The commander had never intended on invading Germania from the river this year.  He had no logistical chain prepared, no reserve troops ready to run to his aid.  His mind had been on invading from the north via his new canal until the revolt was uncovered.

“Or, l
ord, he may be scared shitless.”

The general was not in a joking mood, but smiled thinly.  “Perhaps, Manilius.  Whatever the case, the scouts report villages here, here, and over here,” continued Drusus, pointing to squares sketched on the map.  “The Germans have steered us wide of them all.”

The prefect shrugged.  “A typical strategy, legate.”

“Oh, yes.  It is completely justifiable.  We would have burned those villages.  But I feel my opponent has sense.  He’s not just one of the wild tribesmen.  He hits us a
t different times each day.  His horsemen come from seemingly nowhere and see us killed.  They withdraw before we have a chance to mount a suitable counterstrike.  They draw just enough blood to keep us coming.”

“Or, they draw just enough blood to try to stop us,
lord – to make us tire of the pursuit.”

Drusus leaned on the back t
wo legs of his chair, pushing the thin feet into the soft earth.  “Yes, Manilius, you may be correct.  But I think we may be up against the man who took so many men from the Fifth Legion four years ago when these beasts invaded Gaul.  Recall, the wild men took the eagle standard from the Fifth – and that the event reignited my father’s interest in Germania.  It was said that there was a boy there that day who cut away the Fifth Legion’s standard.  A big man rescued the boy, then.  Now there are reports that there was a boy commanding the Sugambrians at the river.  That man in Gaul, as is this Adalbern, was smart.  His boy certainly has courage.  They may lead us to some unnamed valley somewhere and surround us with hordes of Sugambrians and Cheruscans and Suebians.”

“Then we will kill them,
lord,” said the prefect simply, wondering when this impromptu war council would end.

“Yes, I suppose we will.  But, I cannot risk having one of the emperor’s legions cut off in its entirety. 
They have no proper roads in this forsaken land.  We travel on paths better suited to feral animals than a man’s army.  This is not how we do battle.”  And it wasn’t.  Manilius tired of the detailed conversation, preferring to organize his men to do his superior’s bidding rather than help his leaders make decisions.  The prefect had his own decisions to make.  He stood silently waiting for young Drusus to reach his point, wondering why the general bothered him when he had many of his personal augurs along on the campaign to divine the proper future course.  The cocksure augur called Cornelius was always good for an answer when one was needed.

Manilius had served many commanders over the years.  He had been a prefect longer than this general had shaved his whiskers.  Manilius thought that he would serve for another year or two and then take the generous land and pension Augustus offered to his officers.  Perhaps he would find himself a fat Gaul and make babies.  The gods
knew they were good at making babies.  He knew when it was time to shut his mouth.  Manilius did not care to do anything to ruin his retirement plans with a careless remark to a commander who may one day become the emperor of all of Rome.  The rumor was that Drusus, though younger than Tiberius, was the favored of the two by Augustus.

Then Drusus made his decision.  His headache seemed to clear
at that moment.  It was amazing what certainty could do to improve a man’s disposition.  The general felt buoyant.  He rose.  “Pack the camp before daybreak.  We move back to the river.  Our task was to prevent an uprising and we’ve done so – and more.  Set the first cohort as our rear guard.  I want experienced men covering our backs from these hill creatures.”

Manilius would have preferred to move forward and crush his enemy, but the general had spoken.  “Yes,
lord.  The first cohort is undermanned, however.  It was they who left four centuries on the west side of the river for the ambush.  I propose the tenth cohort.”

This surprised his commander.  “The tenth?  There is not anyone worthy from the second to the ninth?”

Manilius wanted to tread carefully.  “All of the men of the emperor’s legions are fine soldiers, legate.  But the tenth cohort contains two centurions with much promise.  I’d like them tested and proven.  This will be a fine opportunity to do so.  You met one of these centurions, I believe.”

Drusus drew a blank
, so Manilius helped.  “Septimus, lord.  The goat herder you met at the river.”

The commander
’s eyes lit up as he snapped the fingers of his right hand.  “Yes, the seventh son, now I remember.  Sheep, Manilius.  It was sheep.  He seems a fine soldier and will hold the line in fitting form.  Approved.  The tenth cohort shall remain our rear guard.  I want them to have flexibility to strike out if necessary, but I don’t want them left behind.  Tell them to remain in contact with the rest of us as we move toward the river.”

“Yes, l
ord.”  The prefect bowed and left the tent, hoping that the German’s counterattacked and eliminated or at least humbled Septimus and his friend so the task would not fall to Manilius.  He was tired of young, cocky men. As he strode to carry out his general’s orders, he thought that perhaps he would consider hastening his retirement.

. . .

Septimus had not slept for two nights, and it looked like another would come and go without rest.  A rider had just pounded along his formation calling to the centurions that the main body of the legion was crossing the Rhenus on boats.  They’d be done by morning, but until then they would be at their most vulnerable.  The rider expressed the gratitude of Drusus, further calling to the men to continue their task of a fighting withdrawal.  The navy would shuttle them across in the morning.

Damn the army, thought Septimus.  It was hard to not view his current march as anything but the mark of a sound defeat – a defeat set upon him and his dying men by their masters, n
ot by the opposing force.  He was neither stupid nor foolish though, knowing the importance of supply logistics to his bride.  The young centurion understood and even approved of the decision Drusus had made, but it did not make watching his men fall to the quickly moving enemy any more palatable.

For two nights and two days the Germans had harried
his cohort.  Sometimes a number of the small detachment of scouts that had been left with the rear guard would disappear, never to return.  It was a hazard of those men’s job that they accepted, but for the retreating cohort to so rapidly lose its eyes and ears to the wald was disconcerting to the officers and men.  The scouts who yet survived were proving wholly ineffective at describing what the remnant of the legion faced.

Small bands of Sugambrians
would turn up at the side of the small path Septimus and his men used.  The attackers would all be mounted on horses with no saddles.  Only some of them sat on a blanket.  Most of the time they would keep a safe distance from the Roman army, preferring to launch missiles into the tightly packed ranks.  Other times, however, the tribesmen would gallop directly into the nearest line of marching soldiers.  Some of the legionaries would be trampled under the horses’ hooves; others might be hacked down with a sword stolen from a dead Roman further back on the trail.

Then as soon as the centurion organized his men into a defendable position, the attackers were gone, flowing back into their precious wilderness.  Each time this occurred
, the entire cohort was stopped and prepared for a full battle that never came.  The repetition and slow bloodletting was exhausting to the men and their leaders.  They felt helpless.  They felt they did not act so much as a rear guard as serve as fresh targets for the frolicking natives.

. . .

What excellent fortune.  The Roman dogs had chosen to withdraw, so Berengar and his small band of horsemen had had their way with the rear guard of the legion for two days.  It was dusk of what would likely be the last night of raids – his successful raids on what was supposedly the most powerful army in the world.  By tomorrow the soldiers would be too close to reinforcements to mount any more of their lightning attacks.

What a lesson for Berengar to learn.  The boy had seen his people defeated and retreating, only to rise and strike repeated blows to their enemy.  The boy saw how important supply and organization were to the Romans.  He saw that their mighty force could be badly bloodied with
the lightning tactics better suited to his own people.  Maybe the boy would remember these lessons after his father died and fire took Adalbern’s spirit into the clouds and his bones were burnt to dust on a pyre in one of the wald’s many glens.

Each time they had struck the marching army, Adalbern had chosen to allow
a myriad of village chiefs to run at more or less their own discretion.  Such a tactic removed the necessity of command and made for smaller, rather than larger, mistakes should one man make a poor decision.  For the coming attack, however, Adalbern gathered up all two hundred of his horsemen into a wide, sweeping valley between the fleeing cohort and the river.  It had only taken fifteen brave men to attack the rear guard earlier that day and delay the cohort long enough for Berengar’s main cavalry force – it was his army again – to get into place.

This would be the last attack and it would be bold, demonstrating to the Roman commander that the tribes would not follow the way of the Gaul.  They would not become domes
ticated pets of the emperor.  Berengar could already hear the slow approach of the legion as it made its way around the last ridge into that valley.

The waiting
riders sat atop horses that could sense their owners’ welling anticipation of the coming attack.  The beasts shook their great heads, ears erect, aware of the approaching menace, and pawed at the ground with unshod hooves.  They were all simple hunting or farm animals mere days ago, but each had learned by the fire of battle to obey the tugs at their reins by their masters while ignoring the terrific screams of death around their shoulders.

The moon, which had trailed the sun most of the day, was covered by a patch of grey-black clouds that
had drifted in from the west long ago.  The weak light of dusk was short-lived and the black of night seemed to settle in quickly.  Even so, Adalbern had his horsemen, sitting twenty abreast and ten deep, nestled against the forest’s edge to hide within its dark shadows.

Berengar
sat on a strong horse directly behind him.  The child looked like he was going to be sick ahead of each and every run they took at the fleeing enemy, but he went nonetheless.  He was strong-willed like his mother.  Sometimes the boy thought a little too highly of his abilities in the way only a child who has not experienced the results of his own folly can.  But he was a good boy, liked, and more importantly respected, by the men.  The source of their respect for Berengar no longer came by way of the seed from whom he sprang, but came instead from the boy’s actions in the field.

Adalbern wanted to
send a message to the Roman commander.  The nobleman hoped to kill as many of the Roman flowers as he could as quickly as he could.  Maybe, Adalbern knowingly fooled himself, the legions could become satisfied with all of their conquests west of the Rhenus and south of the Danuvius, leaving Adalbern alone.  The man’s plan was barbaric and simple.  He would drive his mass of horsemen into the trailing gaggle of Roman soldiers, crushing and slicing as many as he could.  This valley allowed for a sweeping return of his men so that they could ride a second pass over the next batch of soldiers they hadn’t cut down.  Adalbern didn’t think they would be afforded such an opportunity since the cohort had formed up for battle rapidly each and every time they attacked, but he was hopeful.

The lead elements
of the retreat were now past Adalbern’s anxious men.  The marching soldiers could not hear the occasional snort from the Sugambrian mounts because of the racket made by their own feet and animals.  Adalbern had personally killed another Roman scout earlier in the evening so he was confident the cohort marched blindly, hoping only for one night of peace.  He would not allow it.