Gods and Legions (21 page)
'Men,' he cried, 'strong arms are nothing if not supported by full bellies and stout legs! I seek only to make our victory all the more certain by...'
More shouts, and then Marius, an older centurion who was one of Julian's trainers in swordsmanship, clambered onto a small mound in the middle of the riverbed and raised his own hands for silence. The tanned, hard-looking veteran showed every day of his thirty-odd years of service to Rome in the weather-beaten lines of his face and arms.
'Caesar – you concern yourself with our safety, but by holding us back you keep safe the barbarians instead! The warning they are receiving of our approach is a chance for them to escape. If we wait until tomorrow, they'll have time to flee, and you will have deprived us of a certain victory. This, Caesar, we will not allow!'
Cheers roared up from the men surrounding him on the riverbank, and the troops surged forward to where Julian stood unflinching on his rock, facing Marius with an expressionless gaze. The men again clattered their shields with their spears, this time setting up a chant – 'Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry!' – imploring their Caesar to lead them on to the invading Alemanni.
Julian raised his hand for silence. 'Men! How often have I heard you, the bravest of you, exclaim "When will we find the enemy? When will we fight?" Well, here they are, chased from their lairs. The field is open, as you hoped it would be. An easy path awaits you if you win, but know this –
know this!
You will have a terrible, uphill struggle if you lose. The miles of hard march behind you, the dark forests you have conquered, the rivers and swamps you have crossed – all these are witness to your bravery and determination,
but only if you win!
If you retreat, all these become deadly liabilities. You will die!
'We do not have the enemy's local knowledge of the area, nor their abundant supplies. But we have strong hands, and the swords they hold are of Roman steel, and we have the power and might of Rome behind us, and I defy any enemy to vanquish us with God on our side! No army, no general, can safely turn his back on the enemy – nor shall we! If you are determined to press forward now, we shall do so to complete victory or death. I yield to your obstinacy – I yield to your valor! Fall in by company and march out. God grant us victory this day, and the devil take the Beast!'
The men roared and scrambled out of the dry riverbed, pouring from the depth of the ditch onto the road like ants from a hole, sharpened spears held high, gleaming in the blinding sun. Incredibly, despite the heat, they set off in perfect company formation, not marching but
trotting,
reciting as their cadence an obscene old victory song about devastating the Gauls, and even the Gallic auxiliaries joined in with grins, in their sheer exuberance at preparing to rout the Alemanni. Julian sat astride his horse at the side of the road, his right arm outstretched in salute as his troops passed in formation, looking the men in the eye as they marched, nodding solemnly at those whom he knew. As the last company of auxiliaries strode by, cheering, he glanced casually over at Sallustius, next to him on his own mount.
'Well, that worked,' he said simply.
Within three hours we topped a low rise, yielding a vast view of the horizons below us, with the Rhine not more than two miles distant and the great walled city of Strasbourg just before that. The tiny Ill River meandered across the foreground, through the walls and heart of the city, to emerge on the other side, a languid stream gliding gentle and smooth, like a slow trickle of olive oil. Before the stream, in a vast display of color and strength, was a heart-stopping sight. With an order and precision unprecedented in our months of fighting the Alemanni, Chonodomarius and his chieftains had arrayed their troops below us, thirty-five thousand strong, in a series of six dense, wedge-shaped units, forming a solid block of men across a distance of a half-mile, their backs to the river, their faces all turned expectantly and silently toward us as our column marched over the rise and down the other side.
Hundreds of pennants, each painted and embroidered with their family and clan crests in differing levels of crudeness or expertise, fluttered from cavalry lances. The men, in varying states of armor and undress and with their bodies, faces, and shields hideously painted, stood motionless and massive in perfect formation. Their broad shoulders and deep chests were awe-inspiring even from this distance, and their auburn and blond hair, loose or in braids, fluttered like so many offspring of the colorful pennants above them. Several paces in front of the barbarian troops, motionless atop an enormous war charger painted with fiery orange and gold flames across its broad chest and neck, sat the Beast himself, his great barbed weapon propped casually upon his shoulder as he, too, turned his face toward the sun where our army emerged over the crest of the hill in the west. Far from having been caught unawares, the barbarians had been long expecting us, for the precision of their deployment indicated considerable preparation.
Julian's men kept their silence, the column snaking over the top of the hill without so much as a waver in the pace of its march, the cavalry fanning out into the fields of ripening grain on the flanks, spacing the distance between their animals slightly to give the enemy the illusion of greater strength of numbers, even while the infantry involuntarily tightened its own ranks, each man seeking comfort in the proximity of the shield carried by his comrade to the right.
Julian galloped up to take his place in the vanguard, flanked by Sallustius and Severus and his cavalry guard, and he now rode resolutely forward, his chin held high, looking neither right nor left as the perspiration ran in rivulets down his cheeks and fell in hot droplets to the plate armor on his shoulders and chest. Beyond the rise over which we had just passed was a gradual descent of a half-mile or so, which itself terminated in another ridge, smaller by half than the first, but sufficient to hide our view of the enemy, and theirs of us, for as long as we remained in the shallow valley between the two ridges.
Sending a troop of scouts galloping forward to the top of the second rise to secure the height and monitor the Alemanni, Julian took advantage of the army's short lapse away from enemy eyes to form his own ranks. With barely a third the numbers of Chonodomarius' men, it was necessary to extend our lines along at least as broad a front as the barbarians to prevent being enveloped on the flanks by the wily German's horse troops. This meant, however, sacrificing any benefits of depth. There would be no opportunity for a unit to hide behind the company in front of it. Every squadron would be on the front line.
Julian divided his army into four equal units, one of which, chiefly comprising infantry auxiliaries from various Gallic tribes, he assigned to the rear as a reserve. Of the three remaining units, he himself assumed personal command of the two on the center and the right, the heavy infantry and armored cavalry, while the left-most unit, consisting of more infantry, scouts, and archers, was led by Severus. The formation had been carefully planned in advance with a view to confounding the enemy, who would normally expect Severus to lead the cavalry, and as the marching column reached the bottom of the shallow valley just beyond sight of the barbarians, a single trumpet blast signaled the soldiers to fall into battle array, and within moments the new formation had been completed.
With a second blast of the trumpet the army advanced up the side of the next small ridge, with Julian, Sallustius, and Severus now to the rear. Upon mounting the hill we found ourselves within the barbarians' missile range, and even before we crested, the air began whizzing and humming an evil song as a cloud of arrows descended upon us like a poisonous shadow.
At a quickly shouted command from the centurions, the troops, as one, knelt on their right knees, left knees forward. The front ranks in each wing extended their shields in an interlocking wall, to protect their faces and torsos, while the troops immediately behind them raised their own shields horizontally over their heads, sheltering themselves as well as the men immediately in front of them. A thousand arrows, five thousand, clattered onto the upraised shields with a deafening rattle like that of a hailstorm on a tile roof. Most bounced off harmlessly or shattered, yet others, falling from a great height in the arc the barbarian archers had aimed, gained tremendous speed in their descent and pierced straight through the wooden and oxhide shields, or found their way through cracks between the shield rims of a man and his comrade, and here and there scattered cries of pain arose from among the Roman ranks. Gaps opened as soldiers fell, to be quickly filled by the man to the side or behind.
Julian shouted for Severus to advance on the left wing with his archers, to relieve the pressure on our center from the enemy arrows, and they did so, letting loose their own deadly cloud of missiles upon the barbarians. The Alemanni, despite their impressive formation, had not the training or the discipline to interlock their shields and protect themselves as the Romans had done. In a single volley a hundred barbarians fell screaming; their lines wavered and gaps opened; and at Severus' bellowed commands the Roman archers advanced methodically, firing volley after volley, pinning the Germans in a disorganized squat under their shields and halting the murderous storm that had been falling on our center. Our heavy infantry rose back to their feet and resumed their steady march, shields swinging hypnotically from side to side, a relentless, rhythmic tramping designed to strike fear into the enemy with its throbbing cadence.
Julian galloped his charger back and forth through the lines, accompanied by the two hundred armored cavalry of his personal escort, shouting at his troops to maintain order, to advance steadily, to keep their pace. My position, as always, was as near to his side as possible, ready to assist in any way, even to defend him with my own raised cavalry sword and shield, but I was not needed – the man was golden, untouchable, arrows whizzing past his head and all around him, landing with a
thwack!
in the shields of the men close by, sometimes even grazing his skin, but never striking him.
The steadily advancing Romans, protected by the withering onslaught of arrows from the left wing, were now only yards from the enemy front lines. Closer they marched, the war cries of the barbarians rising to a terrifying pitch, and with a final roar the opposing ranks of men smashed into each other, muscles straining as Roman and barbarian slashed with sword, parried and slashed again, each man seeking to find the gap between the protective wall of shields that would allow him to drive the blade home through skin and bone to tender, bursting organ.
The Germans fought like animals, their long, flowing hair streaked with sweat and blood and whipping about their heads, their taunting screams making the blood curdle as they swung their great broadswords in fury. Our own short blades were murderous at close range, light and deadly, easily handled and able to be thrust precisely between shields and into the soft space under a man's jaw unprotected by any armor; yet it was a terrifying task to advance within range of a barbarian to deliver such a stroke. The enormous Germans whipped and swung their five-foot blades like windlasses, with such momentum as to lift a man completely off his feet into the air even if struck on the shield, and with force enough to slice cleanly even through thick mail or armor, to break a half dozen ribs with a single stroke, to crush a helmet with a man's skull inside.
The barbarians' strength and fury were overwhelming; our only defense was to increase our precision and discipline. Our soldiers determinedly protected their heads by raising their shields, each man sheltering himself and his neighbor, forming an impenetrable barrier beyond which the barbarians could not see, pressing inexorably on to the enemy front, denying the giants maneuvering room for their terrible weapons. They bore down on the Germans, closer, closer, shield boss against shield boss, until swinging blades and battle-axes became useless, and it was simply the weight of each enormous barbarian straining mightily behind his shield against the weight of his shorter, lighter Roman adversary – yet the Roman was not alone. Behind him were his comrades, pushing him in turn, and behind them still more, formation intact, until the enraged barbarian slipped in the gore beneath his feet, or until his ankle turned, or until, for a split second, he looked pleadingly and fruitlessly for assistance from the man at his side – then the swift and deadly Roman sword was thrust like lightning around his shield, into his neck or shoulder, and the man would give way, trampled ruthlessly beneath the hobnailed soles of the advancing Roman legion, and another naked barbarian, flowing mustaches soaked with sweat and blood, would leap bellowing into his place.
From my vantage point behind the lines, racing my horse from one flank to the other with Julian and his guard, the conflict looked fluid, though visibility was worsening. A terrific cloud of dust rose from the thickest part of the fighting, hovering malevolently over the combatants, refusing to disperse in the thick, still air. Rather, it spread slowly like a disease, swallowing legionaries and barbarians as they were drawn into its midst. The sun had nearly reached the horizon behind us, and the small hill's shadows were creeping inexorably toward the fray, creeping as they had a thousand or a million times in the past over the still fields and the languid Ill, moving like Morpheus' shroud over the howls of the victors and the moans of the injured. Tomorrow, regardless of tonight's outcome, tomorrow the shadows would creep once again over still and silent fields.
Severus' archers continued their deadly rain of missiles into the midst of the dense cloud, guessing the location of the enemy line by the pennants stabbing up through the swirling dust. The Roman infantry in the center advanced against the furious barbarians, relentless as the tide, slowly driving them back by sheer brute strength and discipline. The cavalry on our right, however, deprived of Severus' steady hand and unexpectedly seeing one of their captains slump on his horse after being pierced through the neck by an arrow, suddenly lost heart, and began falling back in disarray. The barbarian cavalry opposite them wasted no time. Quickly organizing a charge ordered by Chonodomarius, they swept into the ranks of our horse troops, their terrifying war cry piercing through the groans of the wounded trampled underfoot. Our cavalry turned in terror and began galloping back to the foot of the hill, threatening to trample the infantry in the center, who were blocking their path, or, even worse, to leave them unprotected as the Alemanni cavalry ran them down with their heavy German chargers. Our right wing was about to be routed.