Raptor (120 page)

When the early spring brought sufficiently clement weather, we resumed our march westward. But we were not to have easy going, as we had hoped, all the way to the Venetia border. About sixty Roman miles upriver of Sirmium, at a place called Vadum, we were ambushed by a hostile force. Vadum is not a city or town or settlement of any sort. The name means only a ford, because there the road crosses from the hilly north bank of the Savus to the southern, where the land is more level. And obviously our vast army of men, horses and wagons doing the slow, cumbersome crossing of a river ford—especially in water so frigid that our horses as well as men shied at stepping into it—was there most vulnerable to sudden assault.

The hidden warriors waited until a good half of our troops were over on the south bank, soaked, half frozen, tired and unready for fighting. Another quarter of us were in the process of crossing, and the remaining quarter were busy with preparations for doing so. Then the lurkers concealed in the woods on both banks launched volley after volley of high-arching arrows. When those seething showers first rained down on us, felling men and horses here and there, we naturally supposed that some of Odoacer’s legionaries had somehow stolen a march on us. But when the attackers emerged from among the trees—archers and swordsmen running, mounted spearmen galloping, all of them bawling war cries—we saw that they wore armor and helmets and shields very similar to our own. Indeed, more surprising to us than the ambush was our realization that we were being assailed by fellow Goths—a Gepid tribe, as we learned later, commanded by a petty king named Thrausila.

Of course, the warriors of a single tribe were nowhere near numerous enough to entertain any hope of defeating an army the size of ours, even with their advantage of ambuscade. Our rear guard, still on the north bank of the river, therefore not yet wet, cold or weary, consisted of King Feletheus’s Rugii. Ever since those men had marched from Pomore, so long ago, in expectation of a different war, they had been comparatively idle—and unhappy about it. Theodoric had had no employment for them except defensive garrison service, occasional escort duties and some minor skirmishes against road bandits and river pirates. So those warriors had long been bored, restive and itching for all-out combat. This was their first real opportunity, and every man of them, from Feletheus to young Frido to the least shield-bearer, went ravening into action. With commendable expedition, efficiency and gusto, they stopped those Gepids who attacked on the north bank, then beat them back.

I was among the men in the middle of the river at the time, so I took no part whatever in that day’s combat. But Theodoric and Ibba were already on the farther bank, and they soon rallied our men there. Although our Ostrogoths were handicapped by waterlogged armor and numbed limbs, they so heavily outnumbered the Gepids that they likewise fought off their assailants, then threw them backward. The battle was very quickly over and, when casualties were counted, it was found that each side had lost only about a hundred men, slain or incapacitated, and about a score of horses. And when the surviving Gepids were rounded up, disarmed and taken prisoner, we learned why those kinsmen of ours had ambushed us.

Their king, Thrausila, said the prisoners, had been ambitious for more than petty kingship. He might, like King Feletheus, have chosen to ally his warriors with Theodoric’s. But he had conjectured that no outlander army could ever prevail against Eternal Rome and Odoacer’s legions. So Thrausila had cast his lot with what he concluded would have to be the winning side. He was well aware that he could not defeat our army, but he hoped perhaps to decimate it, at least to delay its advance, thereby winning himself approbation from Odoacer, and eventually being awarded some of the fruits of Odoacer’s inevitable victory over us. However, even if time were to prove King Thrausila to have been right in his conjecture and decision, he would never benefit by it or even know about it, because Thrausila was one of two kings who lay among the slain that day at Vadum. The other was the posturing, preening (but undeniably valiant) King Feletheus of the Rugii.

Theodoric could have invited the surviving Gepid warriors to join his own forces. That was common enough practice after battles between outlanders, and eminently practical. But he declined to do so with these, because they had tried to deflect him from an objective intended to benefit their people as much as all other Goths. Theodoric simply set the prisoners free and bade them go back to their tribe—in disgrace at having been both disarmed and dismissed—and he gave them a contemptuous parting suggestion:

“Take yourselves some extra wives from among the widows of your slain comrades. Then settle down to be soft, comfortable, insipid family men. It is all you are good for.”

The rest of us lingered at Vadum long enough to dig graves for the dead of both sides. The corpses of Rugii and other fallen pagans, like those of Arian Ostrogoths and Gepids, were buried with their heads to the west. That is an age-old custom of all Germanic peoples—far older than Arian or Catholic or any other creed of Christianity—the notion being that the dead can thus go on “seeing the sun rise.” The Church would dearly have liked to abolish such a pagan sun-worshipping practice, but, failing in that, had hypocritically decreed that Christians must be buried with their
feet to the east,
because “that is whither Christians must hasten on the Judgment Day.”

While the burying was being done, and our accompanying physicians and chaplains were attending the wounded, Theodoric said to me and his other chief officers, “So now our Rugian allies have a stripling for their king. What think you? Should I appoint an older and seasoned man to help him command? The boy is only—what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

Herduic said, “I saw young Frido wielding his blade in the thick of battle. The lad is not yet strong enough to deliver a cleaving downstroke. But he is capable enough at the thrust and the cuff cut.”

“Ja,” said Pitzias. “He staunchly pressed his opponents and ably defended himself.”

I said, “I did not get to see Frido fight. But I can attest that in other respects he conducts himself as a man grown.”

“And bear in mind, Theodoric,” said Soas. “That Alexander whom you so much admire was commanding in Macedonia at the age of sixteen.”

“Done, then,” Theodoric said genially. “We shall let the boy prove himself. Habái ita swe.”

So, before we left Vadum, there was held another auths-swearing ceremony, the boy-king pledging on the name of Allfather Wotan that he would rule wisely and kindly over his people, the Rugian troops pledging that they would obediently and bravely follow wherever he led. At the start of the ritual, however, Frido made an announcement—“I give notice to all here. In assuming the regnancy of the Rugii, I am also assuming a new name”—which raised some eyebrows, because it sounded so much like his fustian father.

But Frido sent a reassuring glance at Theodoric and me, as he went on, “I wish no womanish Romanized name. In the venerable Germanic manner, I shall henceforth be styled Freidereikhs, King of Free Men.”

At that, all the Rugii raised an approving cheer, and so did Theodoric and I and every other Ostrogoth and all our other allies.

Young Freidereikhs got his first taste of combat command—or, rather, his first lessons in that art—at Siscia, the next city we came to on the river Savus, in the province of Savia. The citizens of Siscia, like those of Sirmium, were not at all happy to see our army approaching, and they did their best to let us know we were unwelcome. The city had no garrison capable of fighting us off, no stout walls capable of shutting us out—it had not even a repellent smell like Sirmium’s to make us voluntarily stay away—so it adopted the defensive tactic of a snail or tortoise. In effect, Siscia withdrew into a hard shell and defied us to pry that open.

Ever since the Huns had sacked and devastated this city, about half a century previous, it had never quite recovered its onetime stature and grandeur. But, in the days before the coming of Attila, Siscia had been one of the Roman Empire’s mints and treasuries. Of its former grand edifices, that mint-and-treasury building was still standing intact, though nowadays unused for that purpose. A huge structure of solid stone walls, bossed and studded iron-and-oak doors, unburnable bronze roof, only arrow slits for windows, the treasury building had stood impregnable even under the siege of the Huns. Now, against our coming, the cityfolk had lugged inside there everything we might have wanted to confiscate, and set a guard to bolt and bar the doors behind them. So the building, on all four sides, presented to us a blank, closed face of stolid resistance—much like the face worn by the people still on the streets outside. Those were all the citizens too old or crippled or ugly not to have to fear conscription or rape. They had locked inside the treasury their males of warrior or laborer age, their chaste wives, nubile maidens and virgin boys, along with their civic and personal valuables, their weapons and tools and implements, the foodstuffs and other plunderable goods from their warehouses.

I walked with Theodoric and Freidereikhs and several other officers all the way around that impassive edifice, studying it for vulnerable spots, but seeing none. When we completed our circuit of it, we were confronted by four elderly men, the city fathers, who stood there wearing the bland, smug, self-satisfied smiles of so many priests.

Theodoric told them, “We are not Huns. We are not here to scour this city down to its pavement stones. We merely wish to supply ourselves sufficiently to move on. Open your treasury, let us take only what we need, and I give you warrant that your gold and maidens and other such precious possessions will not be touched.”

“Oh vái,” murmured one of the old men, but still serenely smiling. “Had we known of your magnanimity, we would have made other arrangements. But now the guards inside have their strict orders. They are not to open the doors until they can see from their apertures that every last invader has departed from the city.”

“I suggest you countermand those orders.”

“I cannot. No one can.”

“Akh, I imagine one of you will,” Theodoric said easily, “and right gladly, when I set fire to your feet.”

“It would be of no use. Command what we might, the guards are sworn to yield to no plea or pressure or persuasion, even should you bring here their own mothers to burn.”

Theodoric nodded, as if admiring such obduracy. But he said, “I will not ask again. If we have to breach the building ourselves, my men will want reward for that drudgery. I will let them take every morsel and maidenhead they find inside.”

“Oh vái,” said the old man again, but still not looking the least concerned. “Then we must simply pray that you fail in the breaching.”

“On your heads be it, then,” said Theodoric, “when we smash the shell and devour the nutmeats. Go and do your praying elsewhere.”

As the four men strolled complacently away, Saio Soas muttered to the rest of us, “Pride and honor, of course, forbid our allowing such intransigence. But, besides that, we
need
the contents of this treasury. Our traveling provisions are depleted and, from here westward, we will no longer find replenishments handily waiting for us along the way. The Savus is too shallow upstream of here. Our barges could not get up it to deposit any riverside stores farther on.”

Freidereikhs said eagerly, “Let my men use your siege engines. Day and night, we will hurl great stones—”

“Ne,” grunted Ibba. “Those walls are as thick as you are tall, young king. You could not batter them down if you took all summer.”

“Very well, then,” said Freidereikhs, his enthusiasm undiminished. “I have marksmen who can put fire arrows through the slits. A storm of them. The defenders cannot quench them all. We will torch the whole interior.”

“And the contents, niu?” Pitzias said impatiently. “We do not wish just to deprive the city. We want those goods for ourselves.”

Soas said to me, “Could we try your trumpets of Jaíriko, Saio Thorn?”

I shook my head. “We could, but I think it futile. Those doors are not big double panels like the gates of Singidunum. They are small, compact, not large enough to have any give to them. I doubt that the trumpets could rupture them.”

“Even if we broke one down,” said Herduic, “the opening is too narrow for a mass assault. The guards inside would easily mow down the few men who could go in at a time.”

Theodoric had waited politely while we discarded possibilities. Now he said to Freidereikhs, “If you want to give your men employment, youngster, have them start digging. You see yonder? How the building’s eastern corner stands atop that bluff? Put your Rugii to tunneling under the foundation there.”

“Undermine it?” asked Freidereikhs uncertainly. “Are you ordering a suicide mission, Theodoric? If the foundation buckles, its falling stones will mash the diggers.”

“Have them cut balks of timber, and prop up the foundation as they proceed. Not bendable green tree trunks, mind you. Find hard, dry timber.”

“I do not understand,” said the boy. “Why undermine the building only to leave it standing?”

Theodoric sighed. “Just go and order it done, there’s a good lad. Tell your diggers that they will be earning first pick of the virgins inside. The faster they work, the sooner they will get those delicacies. Habái ita swe.”

Freidereikhs looked still uncertain, but he repeated, “Habái ita swe,” and went off to give the orders.

“Pitzias, Ibba, Herduic,” said Theodoric. “Have your underofficers quarter all our men on the cityfolk. Make these inhospitable Siscians be hospitable. No reason for us to sleep in tents and the open air when we can be comfortable while we wait.”

The digging was hard work, but at least not hazardous. Freidereikhs’s men were under no rain of arrows or rocks or boiling liquids from above. And since they were gouging into a bluff, they simply dumped the excavated soil down the side, without having to cart it any distance. However, the stone walls were thick indeed, and Freidereikhs was not just drilling a tunnel, but making a good-sized cave, so all his workers not digging were kept busy cutting and fetching the timber supports.