Time Patrol (59 page)

Two one-person shelters rested side by side in soft radiance, and savory odors drifted from a cook unit, technology futureward of his and her birthtime. Just the same, after he had gotten his horses settled by hers, Everard kindled firewood he had prepared earlier. They ate in musing silence, then turned off the lamp. The cook unit became another shadow, unobtrusively cleaning up. They sat down on the grass by the flames. Neither had said anything about it; they simply knew, in some blind way, that this was right for them.

A breeze wandered chilly. Now and then an owl hooted, low, as if asking a question of an oracle. Treetops glimmered like a sea beneath the stars. The Milky Way stretched hoar above them in the north. Higher gleamed the Great Bear, which men here knew as the Wain of the Sky Father.
But what do they call it in Edh's home country?
wondered Everard.
Wherever that is. If Janne didn't recognize the name "Alvaring," then it's so obscure that nobody in the Patrol has heard of it.

He lit his pipe. The fire crackled, gave him its own smoke, brought Floris's face out of the dark in flickery highlights across the braids she had uncoiled and the strong bones. "I think we've got to search pastward," he said.

She nodded. "These last few days, they have confirmed Tacitus, have they not?"

Throughout them, he had necessarily still been the operative on the ground, she observing from on high. But her role had been as active as his. He was confined to his immediate vicinity. She scanned widely, and then dispatched her minute robotic spies by night to lurk unseen and relay what went on beneath selected roofs.

They witnessed— The senate of Colonia knew its position was desperate. Could they get terms of surrender less than disastrous, and would those be honored? The tribe of the Tencteri, living across the Rhine from them, sent envoys proposing unity independent of Rome. Among their demands was that the city walls be razed. Colonia demurred; it would accept only a loose league, and unhindered passage over the river only by daylight, until usage had bred more trust. It also proposed that the mediators of any such treaty be Civilis and Veleda. The Tencteri agreed. About then, Civilis-Burhmund and Classicus arrived.

Classicus would as soon, or sooner, have Colonia given to sack. Burhmund was reluctant. Among other reasons for that, the city held a son of his, taken for a hostage in the ambiguous period last year when he was still ostensibly fighting to make Vespasian emperor. Despite everything that had happened since, the boy was well treated, and Burhmund stood to get him back. Veleda's influence could make a negotiated peace possible.

It did.

"Yeah," Everard said. "I guess the rest will go according to the book too." Colonia would yield, suffer no harm, and join the rebel alliance. It would, however, get new hostages, Burhmund's wife and sister and a daughter of Classicus. That those men would lay so much on the line spoke of more than realpolitik, the value of the agreement; it spoke of Veleda's power.

("How many divisions does the Pope have?" Stalin would gibe. His successors would find it had never mattered. In the long run, humans live mainly by their dreams, and die by them.)

"Well, we are not at the divergence point yet," Floris said needlessly. "We are exploring the background of it."

"And we're stiffening our notion that Veleda is a key to it all. Do you think we—meaning you, I suppose—could approach her directly and get acquainted?"

Floris shook her head. "No. Especially not now, when she has isolated herself. Probably she is in a state of emotional, perhaps religious crisis. An interruption could bring on . . . anything."

"Uh-huh." Everard puffed on his pipe for a minute. "Religion—Did you hear Heidhin's speech to the army yesterday, Janne?"

"In part. I knew you were there, taking note."

"You're not an American. Nor are you any of your Calvinist ancestors. I suspect you don't appreciate what he was doing."

She held her hands toward the fire and waited.

"If ever I heard a stem-winding, hellfire-and-damnation revival sermon, throwing the fear of the Lord into the meeting, Heidhin delivered it," Everard said. "Almighty effective, too. There won't be any more Castra Vetera atrocities."

Floris shivered. "I should hope not."

"But . . . the whole approach. . . . I realize it wasn't unknown to the Classical world. Especially after Jews were living everywhere around the Mediterranean. The prophets of the Old Testament came to have their influence even on paganism. But up here, among the Nordics—wouldn't a speaker have appealed to their machismo? At most, to their obligation to abide by a promise?"

"Yes, of course. Their gods are cruel, but, well, tolerant. Which will make them, the people, vulnerable to the Christian missionaries."

"Veleda seems to have hit the same unshielded spot," Everard said thoughtfully, "six or seven hundred years before any Christian missionaries reach these parts."

"Veleda," Floris murmured. "Wael-Edh. Edh the Foreign, Edh the Strange. She has borne her message, whatever it is, across Germany. Tacitus Two says she will carry it back there after Civilis falls—and the faith of the Germans will begin to change—Yes, I believe we must follow her spoor through the past, to wherever she began."

9

The months toiled on, slowly grinding down Burhmund's victory.

Tacitus would record how it happened, the confusions and mistakes, dissensions and treacheries, while the weight of Roman reinforcement inexorably mounted. Already then, memory would have blurred or lost much and any single man staring at the wound from which his life drained would be quite forgotten. Such details as did survive are of interest, but for the most part unnecessary to understanding the end result. A sketch suffices.

At first Burhmund continued to enjoy success. He occupied the country of the Sunici and recruited intensively among them. At the Moselle River he defeated a band of Imperialist Germans, took some into his host, and chased the rest and their leader south.

That was a bad error. While he struggled through the Belgic woods, Classicus sat idle and Tutor was fatally slow to occupy the defenses of the Rhine and the Alps. The Twenty-first Legion took advantage, crossing into Gaul. There it linked with its auxiliaries, including a cavalry troop commanded by Julius Briganticus, nephew and implacable enemy of Civilis. Tutor was beaten, his Treveri routed. Before then, a rebel attempt on the Sequani had met disaster, and Roman units had begun moving in from Italy, Spain, and Britain.

Petillius Cerialis was now in overall charge of the Imperial effort. Though worsted nine years before by Boadicea in Britain, this relative of Vespasian had since redeemed himself by taking a major part in the capture of Rome from the Vitellianists. At Moguntiacum, Mainz to be, he sent the Gallic conscripts home, declaring that his legions would be ample. The gesture practically completed the pacification of Gaul.

Thereupon he entered Augusta Treverorum, Trier to be, city of Classicus and Tutor, birthplace of the Gallic rebellion. He gave a general amnesty and took those units that had defected back into his army. Addressing an assembly of Treveri and Lingones in bleakly reasonable style, he convinced them that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by further insurgency.

Burhmund and Classicus had regrouped their scattered forces, minus a substantial contingent that Cerialis had trapped. They sent a herald to him, offering him the imperium of Gaul if he would join them. He merely passed the letter on to Rome.

Busy with the political side of the war, he was not well prepared for the onslaught that followed. In a hard-fought battle, the rebels captured the bridge over the Moselle. Cerialis personally led the assault that took it back. Rallying his cohorts when the barbarians were in his very camp, he caught them in disarray, plundering, and put them to flight.

Northward down the Rhine, the Agrippinenses—Ubii that were—had made their treaty with Burhmund reluctantly. Now they surprised and massacred the German garrisons among them, and appealed to Cerialis for help. He advanced by forced marches to relieve their city.

Despite some minor reverses, he got the capitulation of the Nervii and Tungri. When fresh legions had doubled his strength, he set forth for a showdown with Burhmund. In a two-day battle near Old Camp, aided by a Batavian deserter, who guided his men in a flanking movement, he broke the Germans. The war might have ended there, had the Romans had ships on hand to block their escape across the Rhine.

Upon learning of this, the remaining Treverian rebel leaders also withdrew over the river. Burhmund retreated into the Batavian island, where the men left to him waged for a while a guerrilla campaign. Among those they killed was Briganticus. Yet they could keep no ground. The fiercest fight saw Burhmund and Cerialis pitted directly against one another. The German, trying to rally his troops as they reeled back, was recognized; missiles hailed about him; he barely got away by jumping off his horse and swimming across the stream. His boats took off Classicus and Tutor, who were thenceforward no more than disconsolate hangers-on.

Cerialis had one contretemps. After going to inspect the winter quarters being constructed for the legions at Novesium and Bonna, he was on his way back down the Rhine with his fleet. From their coverts, German scouts saw a sloppiness born of overconfidence. They gathered a pair of strong bands and, on a clouded night, attacked. Those who invaded the Roman camp cut the tent ropes and slaughtered the men within. Their companions threw grapnels on several vessels and dragged them off. The great prize was the praetorian trireme, where Cerialis should have been sleeping. As it chanced, he was elsewhere—with an Ubian woman, rumor said—and emerged groggy, nearly naked, to take charge.

It was only a hit-run action. No doubt its main result was that the Romans smartened in a hurry. The Germans towed the captured trireme up the River Lippe and gave it to Veleda.

Small though it was, that setback to the Imperial cause might later have been taken for an omen. Cerialis advanced deeper into the tribal homelands. None could withstand him. But neither could he come to final grips with his foes. Rome could spare him no more troops. Supplies grew scant and irregular. All the while, marching down upon him was the Northern winter.

10
A.D. 60.

Over the highlands east of the Rhine valley trekked a caravan of thousands. For the most part the hills were thickly wooded, the ways through them little better than game trails. Horses, oxen, men strained to move wagons along; wheels groaned, brush crackled, breath rasped. Mainly folk trudged afoot, dumb with weariness and hunger.

From a height two or three miles off, Everard and Floris watched the exodus as it crossed a grassy open stretch. Hand-held opticals brought it into arm's-length view. They could have used auditory pickups as well, but the sight was hard enough to take.

Straight-shouldered yet, a white-headed man rode at the front. Mail and spearheads gleamed where his household guards walked behind. That was the only brightness, and no merriment stirred beneath the helmets. After them, some boys herded what few scrawny cattle, sheep, and pigs were left. Here and there in the line, a cart bore a wicker cage of chickens or geese. Hardtack bread and the rare piece of cured meat went more closely watched than the bundled-up clothes, tools, and other chattels—even the crude wooden idol on its wain where gold glinted meaningless. What use had any gods been to the Ampsivarii?

Everard pointed. "That old guy in the lead," he said. "Their chief, Boiocalus, do you think?"

"As Tacitus wrote the name," Floris replied. "Yes, surely he. Not many in this milieu reach an age like his." Sadly: "I imagine he regrets that he did."

"And that he spent most of his life in Roman service. Yeah."

A young woman, a girl really, shuffled by, cradling a baby in her arms. It wailed at a breast bared for it, from which no more milk would flow. A middle-aged man, perhaps her father, using a spear for a staff, kept his free arm ready to help her when she staggered. Her husband no doubt lay slain, tens or hundreds of miles behind them.

Everard shifted in the saddle. "Let's go," he said roughly. "It's a ways to the meeting place, isn't it? Why'd you route us by here?"

"I thought we should have a close look at this," Floris explained. "Yes, it will haunt me too. But the Tencteri have experienced it directly. We need to know well what it is, if we hope to understand their reaction to it, and Veleda's, and theirs to her."

"I s'pose." Everard clucked to his horse, pulled on the tether of his spare, which at present carried his modest baggage, and picked a way downhill. "Though compassion is mighty scarce in this century. The nearest society that ever encouraged it much is in Palestine, and that one will get scattered to the winds."

Thereby sowing Judaism throughout the Empire, of which the harvest will be Christianity.
No wonder that strife and death in the North would become the barest footnote to history.

"Kin loyalty is overwhelmingly strong," Floris reminded, "and in the face of Rome, a feeling is in embryo among the western Germans, of a basic kinship reaching past tribal borders."

Uh-huh,
Everard remembered,
and you suspect Veleda has a lot to do with it. That's why we're tracking her back through time—to try and discover what she signifies.

They reentered forest. Summer-green arches reached high before them, above a path walled with underbrush. Sunlight struck between leaves to spatter on moss and shadow. Squirrels ran fiery along boughs. Birdsong and fragrance wove through a mighty stillness. Already nature had swallowed up the agony of the Ampsivarii.

Like a spiderweb he saw snaring brightness in a hazel, pity reached between them and Everard. He must fare a goodly ways before it stretched so far that it broke. No use telling himself that they all died obscurely eighteen hundred years before he was born. They were here, now, as real as the refugees he had seen no great distance east of this ground, fleeing west, 1945. But these would find no succor.