Eagles at War (51 page)

What concerned him too was that he had spotted a fork in the track. He had no idea which way was the fastest route to the Lupia and a Roman fort. In the morning, he would have to choose, and if he made the wrong decision, their survival that day would have meant nothing.

In spite of all his worries, Tullus fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

He dreamed of slaughter.

He was fighting for his life against two berserkers. Just as they had that day, the pair split up, one attacking Tullus from the front while the other circled around to his rear. Struggling to hold his own against the first berserker, he could do nothing about the second. As he clashed with the opponent before him, Tullus felt someone grab him by the left arm. Expecting a blade across his throat next, Tullus twisted, tried to turn, spat a curse. Even if he stopped the second berserker, the first would gut him where he stood.

A hand was placed across his mouth. ‘Quiet! It’s me, Fenestela!’

Tullus came awake with an unpleasant jolt. There were no berserkers attacking him. He was lying on his side, chilled to the bone, under a tree. Fenestela was crouched by him, covering his mouth. Tullus shook his head to show he understood, and moved Fenestela’s fingers away. ‘A bad dream. I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘What is it?’

‘Piso’s here, sir. He was on sentry duty. He’s got someone with him.’

Fenestela’s tone drove the last woolliness from Tullus’ brain. He sat up, wincing at the pain that issued from every part of his body. ‘Who?’

Fenestela leaned in close. ‘That warrior of yours, sir. Degmar.’

Tullus’ heart leaped. ‘
Degmar?
Here?
’

‘Aye. He’s just over there, with Piso.’ Fenestela jerked a thumb at the edge of the copse.

Tullus hurried over with Fenestela, stumbling over tree roots and the outstretched bodies of his resting men. He spied Degmar squatting on his haunches, chewing on something. Piso stood behind him, half watching the ground that led down to the track, half watching the Marsi warrior. Degmar rose as Tullus drew near; his teeth flashed white in the dim light. ‘Well met,’ muttered Tullus, extending a hand. They shook, hard. ‘
Well met
,’ Tullus said again, grinning. ‘It’s good to see you – alive.’

‘No surprise that you’re still here,’ replied Degmar, his lips turning upward.

‘Fortuna has been kind to a few of us at least,’ said Tullus, throwing a glance at his soldiers.

Degmar let out a sniff. ‘It was
you
who got them here, not Fortuna.’

It was true, thought Tullus. What a pity he had not been able to save more men. ‘I thought you were dead.’ He hesitated. Degmar chuckled and said:

‘Or that I’d run, eh?’

‘I did wonder that. It wouldn’t have been so surprising.’

‘I made an oath to you. Arminius’ ambush doesn’t change that. Until my debt has been repaid, I follow you.’

Tullus smiled. ‘To find me, here, you’re better than any scent hound I’ve ever come across.’

‘It was complete chance, to be honest. I couldn’t find you after I’d finished scouting, and it was too dangerous for me to join another unit – they’d have killed me. I hid for two more days, and then followed after the army. There was no point checking if you were among the dead – there were too many. I assumed that you’d survived and kept skirting around the fighting. That wasn’t hard, given the way I’m dressed.’ Degmar indicated his tunic and trousers, which were typical of any German warrior. ‘I continued moving when it grew dark today, listening out for anyone speaking Latin. I came across several little groups, but none had any senior officers among them. In the end, I started looking for shelter, and came upon this copse. Your sentry saw me first, and called out a challenge in Latin. Lucky for me, I was able to answer in the same tongue. I gave him my name – and he told me you were here.’ Degmar shrugged. ‘You’re making for the Lupia, I take it?’

‘Aye,’ replied Tullus, thinking of the fork in the track. ‘Do you know the way?’

‘I do.’

Weary or not, Tullus could have done a dance on the spot. ‘That’s more than I could have hoped for. How far is it to Aliso?’

‘Forty-five miles, maybe fifty. Expect a slow journey. Three days, or four. We’ll have to take smaller paths through the forest. The main ways will be too dangerous.’

Tullus had been expecting this, but he still felt a fresh stab of fear. ‘Arminius’ warriors are going to attack the local forts?’

‘From what I heard, they’re going to set alight every Roman settlement east of the Rhenus. Aliso may well have fallen by the time we reach it,’ said Degmar. ‘If we reach it,’ he added without apparent irony.

‘Caedicius is a crafty old bird,’ Tullus said, remembering the night he and Tubero had spent with him in the spring, and the wine they had consumed. It seemed a lifetime ago. ‘The camp will prove hard to take with him in charge.’

Degmar’s grunt was non-committal. ‘May the gods grant it be so. The road between Aliso and Vetera will be long indeed if we have to march it on our own.’

XXXI

BY THE END
of the third day, Arminius had been aware of the scale of his victory, but the knowledge didn’t really sink in until the following morning, when he went to survey the battlefield alone. The contrast between the riotous, drunken atmosphere in the various tribes’ camps and the calm of the woodlands beyond was stark, but neither bore any comparison to the staggering scenes of carnage that greeted him on and around the route taken by the ill-fated Romans. His horse, a combat veteran, was first to protest, shying and jinking along the path. Its reaction wasn’t altogether surprising, thought Arminius, his nostrils laden with the odour of blood, shit and the gas that bloats dead men’s bellies, his ears full of the buzzing of flies and the harsh cawing of the corpse-feeding ravens and crows.

The vast majority of slain warriors had been carried away by their fellows for honourable burial, but the legionaries’ bodies lay everywhere, like household rubbish scattered on a midden. Most had been stripped of their armour and weapons, leaving them the indignity of exiting this world in their tunics or undergarments. Face down in the bog, half submerged in murky pools, on their backs, staring at the sky. Alone, in pairs, in groups, under a speared horse, heaped on top of one another like a pile of toys discarded by a child. Back to back, or in circles, where they had fought and died together, or in lines, cut down one by one as they ran. One unfortunate was still on his knees. Several thrusts of a framea had opened his throat, and Arminius wondered if the legionary had been arranged in the position after he’d died, in mockery of his cowardice.

Crushing the heads of the dead had been popular, for, in the Germans’ minds, that prevented a man’s soul from leaving his body. Scores of legionaries had had their eyes gouged out, and more had been decapitated, with the severed heads being nailed to trees afterwards, as victory symbols and warnings both. The mutilations didn’t stop there. Ears had been bitten off. There were legs missing, and feet, hands, even testicles. Stone altars had been erected in a number of places, and there high-ranking officers had been burned alive. Blackened, twisted shapes were all that remained of their bodies. Arminius’ gorge rose at the sight, but he was not sorry that it had happened, nor that the legionaries had died in so many other brutal ways. The innumerable corpses were physical proof of his sacrifice to Donar, the bloody embodiment of his oath, laid out in terms so uncertain that no one could miss their intent. This was Rome’s reward for its aggressive role in the region for the past quarter-century: divine justice, delivered by his warriors’ spears.

Those in the empire’s capital would call what had been done here savagery, Arminius thought, but this was how his people –
his
people – treated their enemies’ dead. Even if that hadn’t been their tradition, the Romans were the invaders here, the wrongdoers, not he and his fellow tribesmen.

What they had done – what
he
had done – was to wipe out Varus and his wolves, the ruthless enforcers of Augustus’ rule. In the days that followed, obeying Arminius’ orders, thousands of warriors would sack and burn every settlement east of the Rhenus, cleansing the land of Roman influence. He wondered how fast news of the initial calamity – his ambush – would reach the emperor. It wouldn’t be long: in extremis, the imperial messengers could travel extraordinary distances each day. Tremble in your palace, old man, he thought. With a stroke, I have wiped out three legions. One tenth of your army. One tenth!

It was frustrating that amidst such incredible success, only two eagles had been taken by the tribes. A third one was missing, and it was this that had taken Arminius from his blankets. His victory, the defeat inflicted on Rome, could not be complete without the last eagle. The gold birds were the ultimate symbol of Rome’s power, the beating heart of every legion, and therefore one of the highest battle honours that a leader could bestow on his allies. Varus’ head was another, it was true, but that was to be sent to Maroboduus, leader of the Marcomanni tribe, in an effort to win him over to the war against Rome. Arminius had gifted the Nineteenth’s eagle to the Bructeri, who had inflicted huge casualties on the enemy, and that of the Twentieth to the Chauci, a tribe that had arrived late, but with six thousand warriors. Without the last golden standard, he could not give the Marsi the reward he’d promised them. The eagle would do more than cement their alliance, it would recognise the tribe’s valiance. Their small numbers had not prevented them from wiping out the senior officers and their escort – a pivotal moment in the ambush, when Roman resistance had crumbled beyond repair.

A wailing cry caught Arminius’ attention. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard such a sound – the women who followed after his warriors were here already, working their way through the dead, searching for money and other treasures. Anyone they found alive received a swift knife between the ribs. This victim was receiving different treatment, for his protest went on and on, a trailing sound of agony and despair. Curious, Arminius urged his horse towards its point of origin, a clearing in the trees hard by a section of the earthen rampart he’d had built. As he drew nearer, sunlight glinted off something metallic at its base, and he saw the facepiece of a Roman cavalry helmet, sitting upright, as a man’s decapitated head might. There was no sign of the main body of the helm, and the valuable silver sheeting had been prised away from the facepiece with a blade. The eyeholes in the blackened piece of iron in the shape of a human face seemed to watch Arminius, and he found himself averting his gaze.

Gods, let that have belonged to Tubero, he thought. Arminius had retained an intense dislike of the tribune. To his frustration, there had been no word of Tubero among the high-rankers who’d been slain or captured. In an odd way, Arminius decided, it would be apt if the young politician-in-waiting had escaped – proving him to be as greasy as he appeared.

The man being tortured – by four warriors – wasn’t Tubero. From the look of his armour and helmet, which lay alongside him, he was just an ordinary legionary. What wounds he’d had from the battle, Arminius couldn’t tell, but since being discovered, he had had his tongue cut out. Red-lipped, dripping gore from his mouth, emitting a high-pitched, agonised wail, he knelt before his captors, hands raised in supplication.

The warriors were so engrossed that they didn’t notice Arminius. They were Usipetes, which didn’t surprise him. While other warriors preferred to sleep off their hangovers, they had the youths who’d been in the raiding party to avenge.

‘I can’t understand you,’ said one of the warriors, sniggering.

‘I think he wants his tongue back,’ declared another, a man with a mane of black hair. He waved a blob of red tissue under the legionary’s nose. The soldier recoiled, screaming louder, and Black Hair said, ‘At last, you viper, you have ceased to hiss.’

His companions fell about laughing.

Black Hair was first to grow serious. ‘Hold him,’ he ordered. Two of his fellows seized the legionary by his shoulders, and watched as Black Hair pulled a needle and thread from a pouch by his waist. Frowning with concentration, Black Hair began to sew the legionary’s lips together. His victim’s cries reached new heights, and he struggled so much that Black Hair cuffed him across the head and threatened, ‘Want me to scoop out your eyeballs as well?’

The terrified legionary shook his head in a vehement ‘No’.

‘Stay still, then!’ Black Hair bent and resumed his handiwork. Incredibly, the legionary managed to steady himself, although he could not refrain from making muffled groans. When Black Hair was done, he put away his needle and rubbed his hands together. ‘My workmanship is a little crooked, perhaps, but it’s not bad, eh?’

‘Next time there’s a hole in my tunic, I know where to come,’ said one of his comrades, grinning.

‘Greetings!’ Arminius called.

The warriors turned. Recognising Arminius, they hailed him as the conquering hero he was. Arminius dismounted, accepted their shoulder claps and hearty praise. ‘Been watching us?’ asked Black Hair, jerking a thumb at the legionary, who had slumped to the ground. His eyes were glazed with horror, and great sobs were racking his frame. He’d pissed himself as well.