Raptor (125 page)

“But no warriors,” said the messenger. “Only the townsfolk. They are being let to run to safety.”

Theodoric grunted and waved the man back to his station, then said to us, “It means that Odoacer intends to fight a holding action, street by street and house by house. That will cost both of us many dead and wounded. What an unkingly way of waging battle.”

Ibba muttered, “Like a whore lying spraddled to be used, but scratching and biting at the same time.”

“In wars past, Odoacer stood ever upright,” said Herduic. “Age must have sapped the marrow from his bones.”

“It surprises me,” said Freidereikhs, “that his General Tufa would agree to fight so. He is, after all, a Rugian.”

“Since the citizens are not being held hostage,” said Pitzias, “why, we could simply station guard forces to block the gates, seal the Roman army inside Verona and go on our way, victorious without bloodshed. Eventually they would starve and rot in there.”

Theodoric shook his head. “No good simply to bury Odoacer. I must make it plain to every Roman—and to Zeno—that I have utterly defeated him.” Taking up shield and sword like any common foot soldier, he added, “So, comrades, if he and Tufa desire a battle fought inchmeal, let us oblige them.”

And we did. Going in on foot, kings and officers and rankers alike, we fought with spears or contus lances as long as we had room to thrust—in Verona’s many open squares and among the arcades of the city’s immense amphitheater and up and down the seating tiers around its arena. Then we fought at closer quarters with swords—back and forth among the avenues and into ever narrower streets. And finally some of us were having to fight with our daggers, so cramped were the combats in alleys and in the atria of public buildings and even in the snug rooms of private houses. Odoacer’s legionaries may have despised this hole-and-corner style of combat as much as we did, but they fought no less bravely or fiercely on that account. Had not our snake-blade steel been superior to that of the Roman gladius sword—keener to begin with, keeping its edge, less liable to bend or break—we invaders might not have prevailed at all. We did drive the enemy back and back, but as we cleared one street and one building after another, that place was left littered with as many of our fallen men as of theirs. In keeping with Theodoric’s wishes, Verona was not dealt any structural damage, but it got sickeningly feculent with blood and the other fluids and substances that spill out of men in whom holes have been cut.

One thing I learned there in Verona. During the house-to-house fighting, I learned why every spiral staircase everywhere in the world has always been built the same way: so that it spirals upward to the right. It is done so that the central column of it will impede the right arm, the sword arm, of any intruder trying to fight his way up the stairs, while the defender, fighting from above, will have unconstricted space in which to swing his sword. That is how, in a house somewhere in the middle of the city, I got a sword cut on my left arm—not a totally incapacitating wound, but a gash that bled so profusely that I had to retire from the fray to be poulticed by a lekeis. I consoled myself that now I would be “balanced” with scars, one on my left arm to match that on my right, incurred many years before, when Theodoric had treated me for snakebite.

I do not know how far into the city our men had made their way by the time the lekeis finished tending to me. I hurried back toward the clamor of battle, flexing my bandaged arm as I went, wondering if it could be trusted to hold a shield really firm again. I came to a small square in which many men were furiously engaged, hand to hand, while many others already lay still or writhing upon the pavement stones. Just as I prepared to plunge into the struggle, two other men entered the square from its far side, holding empty hands above their heads and shouting to be heard over the noise. The newcomer crying in the lighter voice was young Freidereikhs, the deeper-voiced a large man in Roman dress. Both of them were calling for “Truce! Indutiae! Gawaírthi!”

The Roman combatants, obeying the bigger man, lowered their weapons. So did our men, obeying Freidereikhs, and he then ordered several of them to run seeking Theodoric, and to fetch him hither. When the young king saw me approaching, he said cheerfully:

“Akh, Saio Thorn! You have been injured. Not badly, I hope. Allow me to introduce to you my Rugian cousin, the magister militum Tufa.”

The general acknowledged me only with a grunt, so I did the same. While around us the city quieted, as word of the truce was spread, Freidereikhs pridefully told me how his “cousin” had sought him out to request a temporary halt in hostilities. Tufa wore the elegantly worked armor of his high rank, and he certainly filled it well. Though he was only about as old as Theodoric or myself, thirty-five or so, he wore a gingery beard more voluminous than any of our side’s oldest officers boasted—and the wearing of a beard was in flagrant disregard or disdain of Roman army uniform regulations. Evidently disdain was the right word, because, when Theodoric joined us, Tufa sourly disavowed any further connection whatever with the entire Roman army.

“In the thick of battle, I espied the King of the Rugii,” he said, nodding toward Freidereikhs, “and I begged of him a truce, so that I could seek audience with you, King Theodoric.” Tufa had been speaking in Latin. Now, as if to emphasize the matter of kinship, he spoke in the Rugian dialect of the Old Language. “I come not to surrender—not
just
to surrender—but to take auths to you, and make your cause my own.”

“Or, in less lofty words,” Theodoric said drily, “to desert your high office and your own men.”

“Any who are my own men will come with me. That will not be many more than my personal palace guard—Rugians like myself, who will be honored to serve under our King Freidereikhs. The rest of the army will remain loyal to Rome, little though they esteem Rome’s King Odoacer.”

“And why do you, magister militum of the Roman army, do this?”

“Vái! Look about you!” Tufa said disgustedly. “A battle in nooks and crannies! I am for Rome, ja, and I too would go on defending it, but is this any way to fight? This is Odoacer’s doing, as was our ignominious retreat from the Sontius. You at least fight boldly, in the open, advancing. I say again, I am for Rome. That is why, since I expect that you will
manfully
defend it when you have it, I am with you.”

“So much for your reasons. What of mine? Why should I accept your auths?”

“Because, first, I can reveal to you something of value. I can tell you that Odoacer has already eluded you, gone from here. When he let Verona’s populace depart through the riverside gates, he went with them, unnoticed, just another old man. And now, this moment, while your warriors are embroiled in these streets, fighting only an expendable rear guard, the bulk of Odoacer’s army is also streaming out through those gates.”

Theodoric said, unruffled, “I have just been so advised by a messenger. You are telling me no news. And I deliberately left open those bolt-holes.”

“Of course. But you would have wished them used only after you had inflicted a crushing, resounding, unequivocal defeat. And you will not have accomplished that. Odoacer is heartlessly abandoning all these dead and wounded, so his army can move at its best speed. He and it will join with another entire army not far from here. Verona was a trap set for you, Theodoric. What you declined to do to Odoacer, he intends to do to you. My orders were to keep you ensnarled in here while he returns with troops enough to seal you in, to finish you off at leisure.”

My fellow marshal Soas and our General Herduic had now joined us—no doubt having come in some perplexity to ask Theodoric why the battle had so abruptly ceased—and they stood listening with interest.

“And now, Tufa?” Theodoric asked him, still coolly. “Now that you have divulged the plan, why should I not simply thank you with a sword thrust instead of a brotherly embrace?”

“My brotherly advice may be of use to you,” Tufa went on. “I suggest that you need fight no longer for Verona. The city is yours, so bring no more of your men in here. Let those outside the walls remain there, where they are freely mobile. And I doubt that you will be as heartless as Odoacer. So, while you stay to tend your wounded and bury your dead, I suggest that you do not quarter your men within the city. Have them camp in the open roundabout. Odoacer’s speculatores, seeing that, will report to him that you are not to be easily caged here. He will discard that plan and you will not be at hazard of his—”

“Enough!” Theodoric snapped. “My first consideration is not the avoiding of danger. It is putting the
enemy
into danger.”

“Exactly so. And that is what I propose. Let me go and do that.”

Theodoric snorted, “You?”

“I know where Odoacer is likeliest to go. I can catch him before—”

“Akh, Odoacer will not be hard to follow. My already pursuing cavalry are by now snapping and gnashing at his army’s flanks. It can be traced by its trail of corpses.”

“It will not move the slower for that. You have no hope of moving your entire army quickly enough to catch Odoacer before he does one of two things. He is racing for the river Addua, west of here, where that other army waits to be brought against you. However, when Odoacer realizes that his entrapment plan has gone awry, he may instead run south for Ravenna. And if he gets there, you probably never will get him out before Doomsday. That marshland city is impossible to surround, impervious to attack, unconquerable by siege. I say let me go this instant, Theodoric, and catch Odoacer before he can reach either of those destinations.”

“You?” Theodoric said again. “You and your few palace guards?”

“And as many of your own men as you can entrust to me. Those that are already giving chase, and some more from here. I need a swift striking force—small enough to be fast and wieldy, but big enough to do damage when it engages. I would not hope to defeat that whole fleeing army, only to force it to halt and defend itself, thereby giving
your
army time to catch up to it. So, Theodoric, merely detach to me some of your cavalry. Or come along yourself, if you—”

“Ne, let
me!”
young Freidereikhs excitedly broke in. “Yonder outside the walls my Rugian horsemen are, like their horses, champing at the bit for action. Theodoric, let me and Tufa and
all
us Rugii together go after Odoacer.”

When Theodoric did not immediately reply, but pondered the proposal, Herduic said helpfully, “If nothing else, that ought to dishearten Odoacer—the sight of his former commanding general and apparently the whole of the Rugian nation suddenly turned against him.”

“He might totally despair,” Freidereikhs added, with enthusiasm. “He might very well throw up his hands and surrender on the spot.”

“I promise nothing like that,” Tufa said. “But whatever happens, Theodoric, what have you to lose by sending us?”

“One thing is certain,” rumbled solemn old Soas. “The longer we discuss the matter, the farther away Odoacer is getting.”

“You are right,” said Theodoric. “All of you are right. Go, then, Freidereikhs, and take ten turmae of your horsemen. Go with him and guide him, Tufa, but remember that you are only a probationary ally. On this foray, your Rugian king is your commander. Send messengers to keep me advised of what occurs—and where. Habái ita swe!”

Like Freidereikhs, Tufa responded with the Germanic salute, not the Roman, and both men went running for the gate by which we had entered the city.

I said to Theodoric, “Not long ago you were speculating on the chances of Tufa’s defection. Why now were you seeming resistant to it?”

“I want more than his word that he is defecting. Let us see if he proves it with the deed he proposes. Even then, though—and Tufa must know it—a traitor never can be trusted, much less respected. Come now, my marshals, let us start restoring order to this city, so its inhabitants can return and restore life to it. Verona is too gracious a place to be left long in disarray.”

I have, in after years, heard many a traveler in Italia speak rapturously of the “rosy glow” of Verona, because so much of that city’s architecture and statuary and ornamentation is made of warm red and pink and rust-colored stone and brick and tile. If Verona was so strikingly colorful during the time I fought there, I confess that I was too busy to be impressed by it. But I cannot help wondering if that much praised “rosy glow” might not be simply the lingering result of all the blood that stained Verona during our battle for it. The combat having been waged in so many separate corners and cubbies and coverts, the carnage was less immediately evident than it would have been in an open field. However, when we came to count and collect the fallen, we found that they amounted to more than four thousand lost from the Roman army, about the same number from ours. How woefully that may have weakened Odoacer’s forces, we could not estimate. But, counting the other casualties we had suffered on the way hither, our army was only about two-thirds the size it had been when we marched out of Novae.

Well, this ruinous slaughter
had
won Verona for us. And we could congratulate ourselves that we had successfully forged our way deep into the Roman homeland, having now come a good third of the distance across the entire width of the Italian peninsula. Still, this battle—all of our fighting so far—had really been inconclusive, in that it had not yet overthrown Odoacer, or caused him to sue for peace, or won for us invaders the people’s acceptance as their liberators. Taking Verona had not, apparently, made much difference to anybody at all.

Because of the suddenly called truce in the fighting, not all of the legionaries remaining in the city were dead or disabled. The survivors, some three thousand men, were taken prisoner. Though they were understandably resentful of Odoacer for his having left them to be only a suicidal rear guard—and perhaps were even more disgruntled that they had
not
died nobly in that task—none of them emulated Tufa in forswearing his Roman army auths and asking service with us. Theodoric naturally would not let them keep their arms or go free, even on condition of fides data. But he was of course mindful that these men, like all the legions of Rome, would presumably someday be his, so he ordered them treated with respect and courtesy and liberal rations while they were our captives. This put an extra onus on our depleted forces, who were already occupied with the multifarious chores involved in making camp, ministering to the wounded, burying the dead and evacuating the city so it could resume its normal life. With so much to be done, it is perhaps unsurprising that none of our generals made worried comment because the departed Freidereikhs and Tufa sent no immediate word back of where they had gone and what they were doing.