Hunting the Eagles (41 page)

Caecina, his senior officers and large escort were ready to follow on after the Fifth. The wagon train, laden down not just with its usual cargo of food, equipment and artillery, but the injured as well, would come next, with the Twentieth Legion taking up the rear.

Tullus could take the tension no longer. He could not leave his position; nor could Fenestela, at the back of the century. Both of them had to be ready to urge the men on when the time came. Tullus’ gaze shifted to his left, and found someone else. ‘Piso!’

‘Sir?’

‘Go and see what’s going on beyond the wall. Quickly!’

‘Yes, sir!’ Piso loped to the nearest set of steps.
Clash, clash, clash
went his hobnails on the wood. At the top, he propped his javelin against the rampart and raised a hand, shielding his eyes against the light. Tullus watched him with growing impatience. ‘Well?’ There was no immediate reply. ‘Piso!’

Piso glanced down, his face unhappy.

‘What is it?’ demanded Tullus.

‘The First has marched out of sight, sir, but the Twenty-First, it …’ Piso hesitated.

Conscious of what he might say, and of the disastrous effect it could have on those listening – every soldier within earshot – Tullus roared, ‘Come back!’

The Sixth Cohort had begun to advance towards the gate by the time Piso had reached the bottom of the wall. Tullus had his soldiers move off, and indicated to Piso that he should walk alongside. He gave Piso a sharp look. The steady legionary seemed scared. ‘What in Hades did you see?’ muttered Tullus.

‘The Twenty-First hasn’t followed the First towards the Rhenus, sir. It’s broken away and marched to the right, to a large, flat area.’

Tullus let out a ripe oath. He would have given a year’s pay for his horse, so he could gallop out to remonstrate with the Twenty-First’s senior officers. He swallowed down his disappointment, sour as it was. Even if his mount had been close by, his intervention would make no difference. A marching legion was impossible to halt unless its trumpeters sounded – and there wasn’t much chance of that, given that the entire Twenty-First appeared to be disobeying orders.

Tullus’ worries now soared. Once the Fifth’s cohorts saw what their comrades were at, the likelihood was that they would do the same, rather than follow the First along the intended route of march. It might be too late – the first five cohorts had exited the gate, and would have seen what was going on. He had to move
now
. ‘Fenestela!’ he bellowed.

‘Sir?’

‘Get up here. The tesserarius is to take your place.’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Maintain your pace,’ Tullus ordered the nearest legionaries.

Holding the hilt of his sword so that it didn’t knock off his leg, he began to run. Plenty of curious glances were thrown as he progressed along the side of the next cohort, the Sixth. The ordinary soldiers didn’t dare question him, but the centurions were curious. ‘Ho, Tullus! Can’t you wait to get at the Germans?’ ‘Why the hurry?’ ‘Forgetting your position, Tullus?’

He grinned and muttered vague replies, and kept running. All the while, he cursed the weight of his armour and his ageing body. Tullus’ back ached, so too did his knees, and the crone who liked to stab at the injury in his left calf was at it again. He had to reach the front of the legion, though, while there was still a chance of preventing it following the Twenty-First.

He shoved his way through the gateway, which was filled with soldiers of the Fifth Cohort. Men cursed the stranger pushing from behind until they saw Tullus’ rank, whereupon they fell over themselves to apologise. He ignored them and kept moving, but his heart sank as he emerged. All was confusion. Rather than follow the First Legion towards the Rhenus, the Fifth Cohorts had splintered into disorganised groups. Hundreds of legionaries milled about, ignoring the shouts of their officers. At least one band was marching off to join the rebellious Twenty-First. Several signiferi had joined the
aquilifer
, and were arguing. The fools were debating what to do, thought Tullus, oblivious to the danger posed by the Germans.

Tullus focused on finding the senior centurion of the Fifth Cohort – his intervention there might help, but it was a scant hope. As its soldiers spilled out from the gateway behind him, they broke ranks at once. A few centurions tried to stop them, but they were barged out of the way. ‘You’ll pay for this, you dogs,’ Tullus shouted as they swarmed past. ‘Running away won’t save you. Arminius will have taken your miserable hides by sunset!’

Discipline hadn’t altogether vanished. The nearest men averted their gaze as they streamed past, but Tullus soon had to abandon all hope of rallying the soldiers outside the camp. He ran back to the gate, hoping to stop the next cohort – the Sixth – from dispersing. Within a few heartbeats, it was apparent that this too was a lost cause. Sensing something, the legionaries had pressed forward into the gateway. The lead centurion, a podgy-cheeked, pink-complexioned individual by the name of Proculinus, stopped when he saw Tullus pushing back,
into
the camp. His face went puce as Tullus explained what was going on. In that short time, Proculinus’ century had passed by – and was beyond his control. The ranking centurion of the Second Century paused and asked Proculinus, ‘Is everything all right, sir?’

‘What should I do?’ hissed Proculinus to Tullus.

‘You can’t stop this – it’s like trying to stem the tide. Stay with your men. Try to keep them together, and be ready to answer the summons to rejoin the rest of the army. If you can’t bring them back, Arminius and his warriors will kill you all,’ warned Tullus. Proculinus nodded and hurried off.

Tullus pushed on, into the crowd of jostling legionaries. He had to reach
his
troops, or they too would copy the rest, the way sheep follow those at the front of the flock.

‘Make way, you filth,’ he roared, clattering his vitis on helmets, arms and backs alike. ‘Make way!’

His own century had just reached the gate when Tullus cleared through the last stragglers of the Sixth Cohort and re-entered the camp. ‘HALT!’ he bellowed in his best parade voice. ‘HALT!’

Fenestela, who was in Tullus’ usual position, repeated the order.

After the slightest hesitation, the front rank stopped. The second came to a halt quicker. After that, things went as smooth as they ever would, each rank coming to a standstill with a one, two stamp of their hobnails. Tullus described the chaotic scene outside the gate to Fenestela, who swore long and hard. ‘Those rebellious pricks will be the death of us all.’

‘Let’s fucking hope not.’ Tullus’ gaze roamed beyond their men, to the troops further down the column. Could he hold back the rest of the legion? He came to a snap decision. ‘The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Cohorts will want to go with the others, not stay here with us. The best chance of stopping the rot is to go to the Twentieth’s primus pilus.’

‘So we move away from the gateway?’

‘Do it now. Keep the men focused. Tell them how we’re about to slaughter the bastard Germans. Come down hard on anyone who even
looks
as if he wants to follow the rest. See that the other centurions do the same.’ Tullus left Fenestela to it.

He had bigger fish to fry.

Time passed – it had to have been close to an hour, but Tullus had no way of knowing. The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Cohorts of the Fifth
had
joined the rest of the legion and the First on the flat ground outside the camp. But thanks to his intervention, the Twentieth Legion, which had still been within the walls, had been kept in order on the intervallum. Together with Tullus’ cohort, the Twentieth had waited until Caecina, his officers and the baggage train had followed the still loyal First Legion towards the Rhenus. Then it had set out too, making up the rearguard.

The mutinous Fifth and Twenty-First were to be left where they were, Caecina had ordered. ‘They’ll come to their senses quick enough when they see us marching away,’ he’d said. It was a massive gamble, but no one had had a better suggestion. Delaying – staying behind to try and win the rebellious soldiers over – was far too dangerous. The Germans would attack at any moment.

Tullus had suggested that his cohort precede the Twentieth, and Caecina had agreed. Too late, Tullus realised this would leave him and his men right behind the baggage train. Under normal circumstances, this position would have been unpleasant, aromatic and shit-spattered. Today, it left Tullus’ cohort as the men who would have to help push the wagons if they became stuck in the mud.

If, thought Tullus with a lingering sourness. More like when. The army had travelled perhaps half a mile westward before its snail-like pace ground to a complete halt. He tramped forward to the tail-end wagon, a low-sided vehicle laden with dismantled bolt-throwers. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of the driver, a tiny old man with wispy white hair.

‘Wagons in front have stopped, sir,’ came the obsequious but sly reply.

‘I can see that,’ replied Tullus in an acid tone. ‘Why are
they
not moving? Because the ones in front of them are at a standstill,’ he said, before White Hair could tell him the same thing.

‘I’d wager that’s the reason, sir.’ White Hair was perched on his seat, the reins to his mule team dangling from one hand. The forefinger of his other hand was buried inside a nostril. He seemed to have not the slightest interest in what was happening around him. ‘Aye.’

Irritated at first, Tullus then decided that the ancient’s attitude was understandable, and practical. He could not shift his wagon until the ones in front moved forward. Frail, old, White Hair was powerless to help with digging out the bogged-down vehicles. He could not run from the Germans, nor even defend himself. Tullus left him to his excavations, and worked his way through the quagmire past a score of wagons. Many were stuck fast.

There was no point continuing, he concluded. Everything with wheels would be axle-deep in mud along the length of the baggage train. It would require his cohort and a good number of legionaries from the Twentieth to dig them out – and it would take time. We couldn’t have handed a better opportunity to Arminius if we tried, thought Tullus with bitterness, and wondered if repairing the road first would have been a better option. Spotting the Twenty-First and most of the Fifth still milling about, he cursed and cursed again. If Arminius was shrewd enough to split his forces and attack both the wagons and the disorganised, mutinous soldiers—

Think like that, and you might as well give up now, Tullus told himself. He retraced his steps, eager to reach his men.

‘Things bad?’ White Hair was still in his position, but he’d given up on the exploration of his nostrils. Now a nasty-looking club, its end studded with sharp pieces of iron, was balanced on his knees.

‘They’re bad enough, aye,’ replied Tullus. He gestured at the club. ‘Planning to fight?’

‘My wife’s twenty-five years younger ’n me. She’s keeping the bed warm in Vetera,’ White Hair disclosed with a wink. ‘That’s worth fighting for, ain’t it?’

‘Without doubt,’ said Tullus, amused and heartened by White Hair’s pluck. ‘I’ll be back. We’ll have your wagon out of the mud in no time.’

HUUUUMMMMMMMM! HUUUUMMMMMMMM!

‘Bastards,’ snarled Tullus, already moving past White Hair and studying the slope to his left for signs of the enemy. Before long, he’d picked out the shapes of men in the trees. They would be gathering on the other side of the baggage train too – and the cohorts had had little time to form up. The fighting was going to be disorganised and even more brutal than usual. ‘Fenestela!’ he roared.

‘I’m here, sir!’

‘One in every four or five wagons is stuck,’ said Tullus. ‘It’ll take hundreds of men to shift them.’

‘All to be done while the savages attack us,’ said Fenestela, curling his lip. ‘O, Fortuna, what did we do to piss you off so?’

‘There’s no pleasing that old whore.’

Fenestela’s shoulders went up and down in a fatalistic shrug. ‘What are your orders?’

‘Three centuries to the left and three to the right of the wagons. We need to move up the train as far as possible before the savages strike. That’ll allow legionaries from the Twentieth to follow on and dig out the vehicles at the back.’

‘And if the Germans attack Caecina?’

They exchanged unhappy stares, and Tullus chewed a nail. ‘It’d be just like Arminius to try something like that,’ he said, picturing hundreds of tribesmen descending on the governor and his escort. ‘Gather the century, and do it fast.’

‘Will that be sufficient?’

‘Any more, and we won’t get there quick enough.’

Fenestela nodded and hurried off.

A light rain began to fall. It progressed fast to a constant, driving sheet that soaked a man through within twenty heartbeats. Thunder rumbled overhead. Flashes of lightning tore strips across the sky. The barritus rang out again, a great deal louder than before. The unpleasant scene was all too familiar. Arminius’ warriors were coming, thought Tullus, and in great strength.

They would be fighting not for the wagon train, but for their lives.

‘RUN!’ BELLOWED TULLUS.
‘Fucking RUN!’