Eagle in the Snow (7 page)
“I am stripping the frontier of its troops,” he said. “I am pulling out the Thirtieth Ulpia and the First Minerva from Germania Superior, as well as the Eighth Augusta from the lower province. It’s a gamble, but one I must take. I need every trained man who can bear arms if I am to win against Alaric— thirty regiments at least.”
“Will the frontier hold?” I asked, thinking of Maximus who had not cared.
“Long enough, perhaps.” He smiled. “The Teutons beyond the Rhenus are feeling the pressure of the Huns from the east upon their backs, and they are moving west. In time they will crowd out those already settled along the banks of the river your father once guarded. But things will hold for a while. I have made treaties of peace with the more influential chiefs along the Rhenus. Gold is a good cement for a temporary friendship.”
“What of the east?” asked Quintus quietly.
Stilicho frowned. “The Vandals this side of the Danubius—my people—are restless. They wish to migrate also. I have been forced to grant them fresh lands. They are, in theory, under our rule.” He shrugged. “You see, I live from one expedient to the next. I have to.”
“And Alaric?” I asked.
His face darkened. “Alaric is a prince of the Visigoths, a member of the family of the Balti. He failed to win a kingdom for himself in Graecia and now marches in search of another.”
“What are our orders, sir?”
“You will march to Divodurum where you will find the Army of Gaul. I will join you there.”
“We are going into Italia?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “I understand that it has been an ambition of yours to see Rome. Well, pray that we don’t see it. Because if you do it will only be in defeat.”
A week later, on a hot July day, the Twentieth Legion, six thousand strong, set out on its long march south, towards that country in the sun, whose capital I had never seen.
O
UR FIFTH WINTER
in Italia was a wet one, the wettest they had known in ten years. But it was also our last. In the spring of 405 Stilicho, whom I had not seen for eighteen months, came to our camp in the valley of the river Padus. It was a day of high wind and rain. The wind came from the east and it was very cold, and the wind blew in our faces and shook the tents so that even their poles seemed to vibrate like the skin of a beaten drum. He inspected my troops, drank wine with my officers and then, late that night, held a conference with Quintus and myself inside the large leather tent that was my home.
He carried two flat parcels, wrapped in goatskin, which he put upon a spare stool very gently. He said nothing about them, however, and I did not like to ask. His beard was now quite white and there were shadows under his eyes. He moved restlessly up and down and I realised then that the frictions and jealousies of that insane court at Ravenna were bearing upon him hard. I had been there once. Honorius, I had not seen, but I had met his chancellor, and the court reeked of a eunuch’s rule. I had met his sister, too. Galla Placidia was young and beautiful and she behaved like the cats that she kept in her private apartments. She purred one moment and spat the next. The gods alone knew what secret ambitions she concealed behind a wanton’s smile. I did not like her.
Stilicho spoke. “I need you on the Rhenus,” he said.
I was startled. I looked first at Quintus and then at him. The wind had risen and the oil lamps spluttered as their flames were touched by the icy fingers of air that streamed in through the string-holes of the tent.
“The men that Magnus Maximus took into Gaul never went back. It damaged the defences of our island for years,” I said desperately. “We have been away five years.”
“And have done good work. Without your aid we should not have held Alaric and forced him to withdraw to Illyricum.”
“Our return was promised.”
“Matters have changed.”
I said to him, “I have never questioned your orders before—”
“So?”
“I must do so now.”
He said, in a tired voice, “The pressure is growing along the Rhenus. I knew it would. I have had reports. The treaties I had made were only a temporary expedient. I didn’t expect them to hold for ever.”
“But you stripped the Rhenus of its troops to defend Italia.”
“It was necessary.”
“And now?”
“Alaric, for the moment, is quiet. I have been making preparations to move into Illyricum and deal with him properly. I hope to move this year. But now—” He clenched and unclenched his hands. “Now, I have news that the Ostrogoths, the Vandals and the Quadi have formed an alliance under Radagaisus and are preparing to invade Italia on their own account.”
“You will need us here then.”
“No. Someone with a trained force must hold the Rhenus and keep the peace, while I deal first with Radagaisus and then with Alaric.”
“The peace?”
“Yes. The Alemanni are restless. I have had reports—how true, I don’t know—that they are planning to migrate.”
“I see. But why the Twentieth?”
“Because it is the Twentieth—your legion—and you command it.”
Quintus said, curtly, “It took eighty thousand men to hold the Rhenus in the old days. Do you expect us to hold it now with only six?”
There was silence, and the wind drummed on the tent walls so that they curved inwards as though pushed by a giant’s hand. It was very cold and I put on my cloak. I felt chilled inside.
Stilicho said, patiently, “They held it on the east bank along the defences they called the Limes. These were abandoned long ago. Later, it was a matter of raids and skirmishes; war bands and looting. It was easy for them to cross the river in boats and make night raids upon a bored garrison. But now it is not a question simply of war; it is a question of a migration. You cannot move a whole people across that river unless there are bridges.”
“But—”
“Listen to me, please. In summer the Lower Rhenus floods its banks for miles and the whole countryside is water-logged. That provides a natural barrier. The high Rhenus is in the mountains and the passes are few and easily defended. That only leaves the middle Rhenus, in Germania Superior, to be guarded: a distance of fifty miles or so, and there are only a handful of places along that fifty miles where a crossing can be made. A tribe migrating needs a road, and roads are few. I do not say that one legion is enough, but skilfully handled it could be.”
He looked at me then and I saw the appeal in his eyes. “It must be enough, Maximus, my friend. I cannot spare any more men.”
I held the centre pole of the tent and felt it shake under the strain. The wind was howling through the camp and I could hear men shouting outside to each other to check the ropes and the pegs. The rain crashed upon the roof like a flight of arrows striking a shield and a spattering of drops came through a worn patch in the leather above my head. I moved away.
I looked at Quintus and he looked at me. I knew that we shared the same thoughts. We were neither of us young and we had had our share of the fighting. The exhilaration of the big command had almost gone. In its place was worry and work and sleepless nights. In five years we had had no regular camp. We were sick of living in tents, sick of hardship, sick of the dust and flies in summer, and of slush and rain in winter. We needed a rest. We had deserved one.
“For how long?” I asked. I could not refuse him.
“Give me eighteen months,” he said. “That is all I ask. Hold the Rhenus for eighteen months. By then the danger will be past and I shall be able to send reinforcements. When that day comes, and I promise you it will, you may take your legion back across the water.”
I said, “Are you quite sure, general, that you do not wish for a new legate.”
He smiled faintly. “Neither a new legate nor a new Maharbal.”
Quintus said, “You have told us how to defend the Rhenus in summer. But what about the winter?”
“In a very bad winter, which does not happen often, there is a chance that the Rhenus may freeze. But if it does not, the heavy rain and the melting of the snows raises the level. There will be a fast current too. In winter it is an impossible river to cross. No war chief would take such a risk.”
Quintus said, steadily, “It last froze thirty-nine years ago.”
Stilicho said, “Then the odds are in your favour. There is a risk, indeed, but it is a very small one.”
“I will hold it,” I said, and I added quietly, “If I can.”
“You must hold it,” he replied. “We cannot afford any more disasters. One major disaster and the western empire, like a cracked dam, will crumble slowly into pieces.”
I said, “If that happens, my general, then be sure of one thing: neither I nor Quintus will be alive to watch it happen.”
He did not say anything. He turned to the stool and picked up the wrapped parcels that he had put there. He handed one to each of us.
“They are gifts,” he said. “From one friend to another. There is also a cavalry standard which I have given into the safe keeping of the camp praefectus.” He smiled at Quintus. “Your present one has suffered much in my service.”
Quintus undid the wrappings on his parcel first. Inside was a most beautifully curved Sarmatian sword such as are worn by their horsemen. It had a wonderfully decorated hilt and the edge was as sharp as a razor. I could see from the expression on Quintus’ face that he was pleased.
“I would have given you the sword of Maharbal himself had I been able to find it,” said Stilicho with a smile. “You would have deserved it.”
I picked up my present in its turn. It was a short officer’s sword of a style that dated it from the great days of the legions.
“I found it by chance in Rome,” said Stilicho, quietly. “If you look on the blade below the hilt you will see from the inscription the name of its owner.”
I looked as he had told me. Very faintly I could see the marks cut by the swordsmith at the owner’s request:
J. AGRIC.LEG.XX.VAL.
He said, “I thought it fitting that one legate of the Twentieth should carry the sword of another.”
T
HREE MONTHS LATER
, on a day of alternating rain and sunshine, I rode with Quintus at the head of my bodyguard into Augusta Treverorum. It was the oldest city in the Roman world, once the capital of the Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul, the seat of the Caesars of the West, and sometime residence of the Imperial Court. Since the re-organisation of the provinces, however, it had dwindled to being only the capital of Belgica, though it was still a great centre of industry and commerce. But it was not Rome, that city I had never seen.
The journey had been a depressing one. The countryside was bare and neglected. Here and there I passed a farm on ploughed land or saw in the distance a villa surrounded by vines that were still shaped and tended. More often, though, the farm was a disintegrating huddle of broken huts, and the land round it so full of weeds that you could tell at once it had not sown a crop in years. The surfaces of the roads were pitted with holes, their once carefully built edges crumbling away, and the ditches either side so filled with dirt that, at the least shower of rain, the whole surface flooded over and made marching difficult. The towns I passed through had few people in them, and those listless and with unsmiling faces. The streets stank of refuse, and the aqueducts that should have brought water to the public baths had fallen into ruin. The peasants we passed looked gaunt and thin, their hair greasy, their clothes in tatters and their children covered in sores. At the posting houses the horses looked out of condition and the carriages stood in need of repair. It was obvious at a glance why the imperial messenger service was often bad and unreliable; some of the animals were so out of condition that they could barely make the journey between one posting station and the next at a walk, let alone a canter. I was told by a sullen ostler that the crops had failed and that hay and oats were in short supply.
The men sang as they marched and made jokes. They were pleased to be over the mountains and out of the flat plains of Italia. Gaul was next door to the island from which many of them had come, and to be in Gaul, any part of it, was to be near home. But for me it was the land I had to defend, and upon the help of whose inhabitants I must rely if I was to fulfil the orders of a grey-faced man, now in Ticinium, collecting troops for his war against Radagaisus.
Once, I stopped a man to ask him a question about the distance to the next village, for even the milestones had been allowed to collapse onto the ground; the local officials were apparently too incompetent or lazy to attend to their duties. This man had blue eyes and fair hair and spoke Latin vilely. I learned that he was a Frank whose family had been allowed to settle west of the Rhenus and who had come south seeking work. I asked him, being curious, why he had not stayed in his own land.
He shrugged his shoulders. “We are a restless people, highborn. We like to move and to see new places.”
“But why come to our lands?” I asked in exasperation.
He shrugged again. “You are Rome,” he said, simply. “We all know that the Romani are rich.” He wrinkled his nose. “That is what we thought,” he said, gutturally. “But we come and we find we must work as before. I do not see that you can be rich if you have to work.”
“You could go home,” I suggested.
“I should have to work there. It would be the same.” He looked at me expectantly. “Perhaps if I go on far enough I shall find those Romani who are so rich that they do not have to work.”
“Perhaps,” I said, and rode on.
Further on I met a great column of men marching purposefully towards us. They carried staves but no other weapons and had the look of servants, not free men. When my cavalry surrounded them they did not seem put out, but stood their ground and waited quietly till I came to them.
“And where are you going?” I asked. “You are slaves, aren’t you? Look at that man, decurion. He has the brand mark on his heel.”
One of them bowed and held out a roll of parchment. “If you please, excellency, your excellency is correct. But this order will explain.”