Eagle in the Snow

by Wallace Breem

  “Slaves, I suppose.”

  He nodded.

  I said to Quintus, “There isn’t a tribune of frontier troops anywhere in the empire who doesn’t trade in slaves. They’re more interested in that than in their military duties.”

  Barbatio flushed. He said, defensively, “We get paid so little. They give it to us in food and supplies instead, but half the time the rations are short. We get cheated by everyone.”

  “You should receive money,” I said sharply.

  “That’s what I mean, sir.”

  “I know all about that. I have been on a frontier too. Tell me, have you heard of the new law which allows you seven days rations a year from your men which you can commute for silver?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And have taken advantage of it, no doubt.”

  He nodded again, his eyes shifting from face to face.

  “Stick to the law then.” I stared at him hard. “You will have little time for being a slave dealer from now on. You will be too busy being a soldier. Your unit is in a disgusting state. Mend it quickly or I will have a new commander appointed.”

  He saluted and started to back away.

  “Don’t go yet. There is another matter I want explained. I thought your cohort’s strength was five hundred, but you’ve only two hundred, in fact. Why?”

  He said, “We had sickness, sir. Some died, others have gone on pension recently and—and there are a number on leave.” He spoke confidently.

  I said, “I saw your ration statements at the imperial granary. You have been drawing food for five hundred with regularity for the last four years.”

  “Well, sir, I—my quartermaster always asks for the rations of—of the men on leave. It is customary.” He sounded aggrieved now as though I did not understand something that was obviously a matter of simple common-sense both to him and to his quartermaster.

  “Stop lying. You haven’t had three hundred men on leave, now or at any time. You’ve been indenting for food for men who are dead or who were pensioned off years ago. Is that not so?”

  He did not say anything. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish.

  “Answer me,” I said. “What was the cohort’s strength when you took over. I want the truth.”

  He rolled his eyes as though in prayer. Then he licked his lips. “One hundred and eighty,” he whispered.

  I prodded him in the chest with my stick. “I could have you broken for this. You’ve recruited twenty men in four years. That must have been hard work.”

  “Everyone does it,” he muttered.

  I said, “I am not everyone. Remember that from now on.”

  When he had gone, Quintus said, “You were a little hard on him, Maximus. The poor devil’s been rotting here or in places like this for years.”

  I said, “How many years were we on the Wall? And we never rotted.”

  “Didn’t we?” he said. “I am not so sure.”

  I looked at him. His face had gone pale and he looked sick and unhappy.

  “Quintus.” I touched him on the arm. “Don’t look like that. Are you all right?”

  He, nodded silently and I wondered if he was thinking of his home in Hispania which he had not seen in thirty years.

  “Don’t worry about Barbatio,” I said. “He’ll prove a good soldier from now on. I’ll give you twenty denarii if he hasn’t shown an improvement by the end of a month.”

  Quintus smiled. “Done,” he said.

  I won my bet and it was Barbatio who acted as a guide whenever I wished to explore the countryside. In the plain around Moguntiacum the Franks and Burgundians who had settled in the district made some effort to develop the land they had been allowed to annex by agreement. In places the woods had been cut back and clearings made where straggling villages of smoky huts sprang up, strongly fortified by stockades of heavy pine. Strips of land outside were cultivated and each village had its cattle, its goats, its dogs and its few horses. The people were large, cheerful and good looking with their flaxen hair and blue eyes. They drank a great deal of beer and fights between them were frequent, though seldom over women.

  These people I liked though I had difficulty in understanding their speech, and their guttural Latin was atrocious; but I did not trust them and the sentries on the town gates had instructions to admit no-one bearing arms.

  It was close on midsummer now and I thought that the dangerous time would be in the early autumn when the harvest was gathered. It was then that the tribes would be restless and eager to look for plunder if their own food supplies for the winter seemed to be insufficient. Barbatio discounted Stilicho’s suggestion that the Alemanni had thoughts of a migration, and I was inclined to agree with him. Those whom I met were friendly enough and my spies brought back little information that was of value. But still I had to be careful and before the autumn came there remained a great deal to be done.

  At all the garrison centres the troops were kept busy, repairing and fortifying their camps. I gave instructions that all were to be protected by palisades of earth and timber, with square towers at the corners, each strong enough to mount a ballista. Around each camp protecting ditches were dug while traps were prepared in the ground outside each gate. Signal towers, large enough to hold a section of ten men, were erected on the roads linking each camp with the next, each guarded also by a palisade and a ditch. Another line of towers was built along the road between Bingium and Treverorum. In time I hoped to have these manned by auxiliaries so as to relieve the legionaries for more important work.

  It was within the area of Moguntiacum, however, that the most important work was done. Between the river wall and the north wall a huge area was cleared, large enough to hold two cohorts and an ala of cavalry, and walled off again from the rest of the town, which was too large to defend with the few men at my command. The huts were cleared from the waterfront and a triple row of ditches dug along the front of the east wall. Each ditch was V shaped, the outer face being at an angle of forty-five degrees. The outer face was lined with timber to prevent filling in, while the bottom of the ditches, fifteen feet deep, were planted with pointed stakes. Between the two outer ditches was a flat space, forty feet wide, and between the middle and inner ditch a space of ten feet. The distance from the fighting platform on the fort wall was ninety feet to the outer edge of the furthest ditch: the length to which our soldiers could throw a spear with lethal accuracy. The main killing area, however, was the forty feet between the two outer ditches. These ditches would break up any attack while there were still men to stand on the walls and hurl missiles.

  To the left of the town and just to the east of the Bingium road, at a point opposite the northern end of the southern island I had three small camps built, each to hold a century. The walls were of turf and timber and the whole was protected again by the usual ditches. The old camp, too, behind the town, was put into repair as a barracks for the horses.

  While this work was going on cavalry patrols quartered the countryside and the first ship of our fleet, a converted merchant vessel, made a hesitant appearance on the river, armed with ballistae and manned by archers.

  I went aboard at Bingium and found an anxious Gallus on the poop, having a heated argument with the Master.

  He saluted and said gloomily, “The rowers aren’t up to much. None of them have ever been on the water before.”

  The Master said something under his breath.

  “We made very slow time coming up. She answers sluggishly to the river.”

  The Master tightened his mouth and said nothing.

  He took the ship up the Rhenus, hugging the right bank, and it was as Gallus said. We found the greatest difficulty in altering course in mid-stream. She would only turn in an arc that took her nearly from one bank to the other, and ran into trouble the moment she hit the heavy water. Broadside on to the full force of the current she lost way dangerously and drifted badly, so that it was all the rowers could do to get control over her again.

  “Sh
e is too big for the work you want from her,” said the Master wearily. “I could have told you this at the start but the tribune would not have it so.”

  Gallus said, “I am afraid he is right.”

  “What is her length?”

  “Two hundred and seventy feet.”

  “What length should she be for this kind of work?”

  The Master hesitated. “One hundred and twenty feet at the outside, but much narrower in the beam. The ballistae you have mounted have upset her balance and the oar banks are not distributed right. Besides, she takes too large a crew. At this rate we shall not find enough oarsmen for the remaining ships.”

  Gallus said bitterly, “If we built a smaller boat we should only get one catapult in the bows.”

  “That is better than nothing. I must have a ship that can turn in the space of a denarius.”

  We went downstream again towards Bingium and found that the only effective way we could turn quickly was to throw out the anchor and, when she had gripped hard, let the current swing her round. The force of the river was tremendous and I was glad to be rowed ashore and to stand on firm ground again.

  “Do what you can,” I said. “I shall need ships by the time the harvest is cut.”

  News came from the outer world infrequently. There was an early letter from Gallus, telling me that he was not happy about the plans for the new warships submitted by the Master and that there was a shortage of carpenters owing to an outbreak of fever in the city; that the Curator had complained to his superiors at Arelate about the taxes; and that the Bishop had written to the Emperor complaining about me. He added, in a postscript, however, that the money had been made available and that we need not worry about a shortage of unskilled labour, the peasants being quite willing to work for the price of a meal a day for themselves and their families.

  Another letter came; this time from Arelate, but it was full of polite evasions, veiled threats, meaningless assurances and hollow sincerities; the whole so wrapped in the stilted language of the civil administration as to rob the contents of any value whatsoever. I took no notice of it.

  Messages came in from the various forts. Confluentes reported a willingness from the Frankish settlers to serve as auxiliaries and that their defences were completed, their quota of signal towers finished. Boudobrigo reported hostility among the tribesmen in the district and said that planned accidents had wrecked a half-completed tower, while a three man patrol had been killed in the woods, but by whom, no-one knew. At Bingium all was quiet, but there was considerable movement on the east bank and everything that they did was spied upon. Their commandant added, naively, that he trusted no-one save his own troops, though the new auxiliaries were behaving well. From Borbetomagus the cohort tribune wrote that tribesmen were infiltrating across the river in small boats, and that two attacks had been made on the supply trains that we had sent him. Patrols, landed on the east bank, however, had found the countryside apparently deserted and had returned safely with unsheathed swords.

  Walking through the streets one morning my eye was caught by a half-naked man sitting dejectedly in a pen by the slave market. He was dark skinned and wore round his neck a leather thong with a disc on it. His wrists were chained in front of him, which was unusual except in newly made slaves, and he was making patterns in the dust with his fingers. He was about my own age.

  “Just a moment,” I said to Barbatio. “I want a word with this man. Find the dealer and have him brought out to me.”

  The man was filthy; his one garment stank and I could see the movement of things in his hair. I put my stick under his chin and forced him to look at me. “What is your name?”

  “Fredbal,” he muttered sullenly.

  “Where did you get that disc on your neck?”

  “It is mine.”

  “Is it? Give it to me.”

  Barbatio cut the thong and I took it between my fingers. It was a lead identity disc such as our soldiers always wore.

  “Are you a Frank?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get this? In a fight with our people, I suppose.”

  He shook his head violently. “No. It’s mine.”

  “You’re lying.”

  He stared at me and the sudden anger vanished, to be replaced by a look of incredible misery. The change was astonishing.

  “Wait a minute. Barbatio, look at his ankle.”

  The tribune did so.

  “Is he branded?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I said, “Then you were in our army. A deserter, I suppose?”

  He looked at me gloomily, and said in bad Latin, “No—sir. I was—an optio in the auxiliaries here at Moguntiacum. I was taken prisoner when the Alemanni raided the town.” He dropped his eyes. “I was only a boy at the time.” He added, in a low voice, “I have been a slave ever since. That was a long time ago.”

  I turned to Barbatio. “Thirty years,” I said. “In the name of the gods! Thirty years.”

  Barbatio, his face flushed, said, “All the men in this pen have been sold, sir. To a merchant from Treverorum.”

  “Did you tell the dealer you were a Roman citizen?”

  Fredbal shrugged his shoulders. “It never makes any difference. They sell you just the same.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He said, “I used to listen to—to my master talking. He was an Aleman. People never care what they say in front of slaves. It’s a common thing. They all do it. There’s a big trade in the likes of us across the river.”

  Barbatio said, “Yes, that’s true, sir.”

  I said savagely, “You, certainly, should know that. Have him brought up to the camp. Get the records looked up and check his story. If it’s true then we can find a use for him—as a free man.”

  Barbatio said in a shocked voice, “There will be complaints. This is a common practice.”

  “You mean it was. If the merchant complains, arrest him. It is an offence to sell a free citizen in his own land. And get the magistrates and have the market closed at once.”

  “But, sir, he’s one of a lot already bought and sold.” The tribune added desperately, “They’ve been purchased for work on one of the new churches in Treverorum. The merchant told me.”

  “You heard my orders.”

  “But, sir, the Bishop—the Praefectus—”

  “I am the governor here.”

  “Yes, sir.” He saluted and hurried off.

  I turned and walked back towards the camp, the man following me like a dog.

  ‘Thirty years,’ I thought. ‘He kept that disc for thirty years in hope. And then he was bought and sold by his own people to work for the church. Oh, Mithras, you would not ask that of any man.’

  At last came the news for which I had been waiting; first a rumour only of a great victory in Italia, brought by a wine merchant returning from Mediolanum; and then a letter, containing the facts and the details: a letter from Stilicho himself.

  Radagaisus had been beaten. He had tried to besiege Florentia, had been besieged in his turn by Stilicho, had tried to fight his way out and had been captured and executed. More than a third of his men, Suevi, Vandals, Alans and Burgundians, had died beneath the walls of the city. The remainder had retreated north into the country of the Alemanni.

  At the end Stilicho wrote: “We took so many prisoners that we glutted the market and, at the end, we were selling them at only one solidus a head, which was absurd. Many chose to enlist in our forces, however, and because of this I had hoped to return a part of my army to help you gather grapes in Gaul; but the news from Illyricum forbids this, unhappily, for the moment. From the complaints I have received about you from those close to the Emperor I judge that you are fulfilling my expectations to the uttermost. Alaric is, as before, the problem that I have to solve. To quiet his ambitions we have been compelled to appoint him to a high office in the imperial service, but the fact remains that those who follow him represent too large a lump for the stomach of the empi
re to digest in comfort. I intend to move into Illyricum next spring with all the forces I can muster, but I must not alarm Alaric as to the nature of my intentions towards him. This time a final settlement cannot be avoided. And I have affairs to smooth over in Dacia and Macedonia that can no longer be delayed. I must, as they used to say, hasten slowly.

  “This means, my dear friend, that I must ask you to hold Germania Superior for another twelve months. Give me this time, I pray you, and all will yet be well. I have ruled this empire, who am no emperor, for ten years now, and I shall continue to rule it until I die. You may believe in my judgement as I believe in yours. Serena sends her greetings as I do to you both.”

  I showed this to Quintus and he said, “Shall we ever get relief? I think they will only send more troops when we ourselves are in trouble. And then it will be too late.”

  “That is what I am afraid of,” I said.

  IX

  TWO DAYS LATER I received a visit from Guntiarus, the Burgundian king, who crossed the river to meet me at Bingium by arrangement. He was short and swarthy and he reminded me strongly of a kestrel about to fly. But he was an old kestrel and I judged that he was fiercer in looks than in performance. Like all his people he greased his hair, which he wore down to the nape of his neck, and, it being a hot day, I could smell him before he came. Most of our auxiliaries were Burgundians and there had long been a standing feud between them and the Alemanni on account of a dispute over some salt springs which both tribes claimed as their own. I prayed to Mithras, unworthy though my prayer was, that the dispute might continue.

  I showed him round the camp and, though he said little, he was properly impressed.

  “This is only my advance guard,” I said. “Soon I shall have a great army. Rome does not forget its provinces when they need help.”

  “Do you need help?” he asked shrewdly.

  “No,” I lied. “But I can allow no more of your people across this river. That is what I wish to tell you.”

  He looked troubled. He said, “Things have changed since Stilicho and I held hands over the salt. My people have increased in number and we have had bad harvests. The land is too poor to support so many.”