Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Arminius’s eyes shone and his words were so spontaneous they could not be false. Varus reassured him of his trust and the next day Arminius set off at the head of the column. The valley was wide and the ground was dry, the weather fresh and agreeable. At a certain point, he rode over to Varus’s position. ‘There’s a difficult passage at about fifteen miles from here. I’ll take a hundred of my men and move forward to reconnoitre. If you agree, we’ll remain to secure the pass until we see you arriving. We can’t be too careful.’

  Varus was impressed by the sagacity of the commander of his Germanic auxiliaries and watched as Arminius galloped off down the valley.

  For two days, all went well. No cause for worry or alarm. Only the skies were gradually becoming more threatening, but Arminius had foreseen that as well. When night fell on the second day Varus gave orders to halt the march. As usual, the tribunes and centurions instructed the sentries and guard patrols to take position. There was no room to pitch camp properly and this led to general disgruntlement and uneasiness. A blare of a trumpet warned that someone was arriving and thunderous galloping immediately reached their ears. Before Varus had the time to ask himself who it might be, he found himself facing a dozen horsemen. They were led by a man covered in dust and panting for breath: Primus Pilus Centurion Marcus Caelius Taurus.

  ‘Commander,’ he demanded, ‘what are you doing here?’

  Varus felt the earth shift under his feet. ‘Arminius told me that there was a small tribe in rebellion along this route. I’ve come to restore order.’

  Taurus’s brow wrinkled. ‘Arminius? Where is he now?’

  ‘He went ahead with a hundred of his horsemen to occupy the pass and ensure it stays clear until we arrive. But what are you doing here?’

  ‘An attack is underway against all of our garrisons. They are thousands strong and they’re massacring us. I’d come to ask you for reinforcements, but I see that’s impossible. Your column is more than two miles long. There’s no room for you to manoeuvre here, much less regroup. You can’t even build a camp. How did you let yourself get dragged into this gully? All we can do is use the carts to set up a defensive perimeter.’

  Varus gave the order to do so immediately, while the news Taurus had brought travelled up and down the column of soldiers and their blood ran cold.

  A suffocated sound could be heard at the same time, like thunder, but different: deep, muffled but very, very powerful. It crashed into the mountainsides and made the ground tremble.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Varus,

  ‘The hammer of Thor,’ replied Taurus. ‘It means “no mercy”. Arminius won’t be coming back.’ As he said these words he saw panic flooding the eyes of Varus, who could not grasp what was happening. How had Arminius convinced him to put his neck under the Germanic axe?

  PART THREE

  24

  ARMIN HAD PREPARED THE greatest war operation ever attempted on the field against the Roman forces occupying Germania. A large number of tribal chieftains and warriors of the noble class had approved and agreed to implement his plan. The one thing that joined them together was the conviction that the prince of the Cherusci was the only person capable of defeating the Romans because he knew their military system so well and where their weak spots were to be found. But not all of the combatants were so sure. The devastating attack conducted by Tiberius three years before was lodged firmly in their minds, and they feared the overwhelming strength of the imperial legions.

  He needed a way of showing them that they could win by creating a situation where they could strike without ever facing the powerful Roman formations drawn up in all their glory, or Rome’s best combat units, and they could attack from a secure and unassailable vantage point.

  The place to which he had lured Quinctilius Varus, the Teutoburg Forest, was perfect in every way for this purpose. A mortal trap; a slaughterhouse rather than a field of battle.

  Taurus had no doubts about what was about to happen. Sergius Vetilius and Rufius Corvus had already informed him of Seghest’s mission; of how he had tried to convince Varus that Armin was betraying him, of how he had urged him to arrest Armin, and chain him up together with his friends. Anyone would have understood that Seghest was telling the truth. Except Varus.

  ‘We’ll turn back,’ said Vetilius, who had been named the legate of the Eighteenth Legion, after Velleius had followed Tiberius to Pannonia. ‘It’s evident that bastard is waiting for us where the road gets most narrow.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll work,’ replied Taurus. ‘If we reverse our direction of march, we would simply be doing an about-face; it won’t change where we are. The enemy is likely to be everywhere, all around us, and could attack from one moment to the next, especially while we are trying to manoeuvre in such a treacherous area with all the carts and the pack animals. We don’t even know whether the return route is clear. Many of our garrisons have already been destroyed, the warehouses and armouries sacked. I saw a lot of suspicious movement as I was making my way up here; actually, it’s a miracle I’m still alive.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do now. Night is falling. Give orders to set up all possible obstacles on the left flank of the column, send out forward sentries in every direction, get some fires started and get some food to these men. They have to stay strong.’

  Corvus advised the commander and the order was passed down the entire length of the column.

  At the second guard shift, the weather worsened. Lightning flashed in the distance and a clap of thunder tore through the silence of the night and then continued to echo between the mountain flanks. It was rattling down to a finish when another crash sounded, low-pitched and stifled but incredibly powerful. It roared from a distant gorge, shook the earth and the hearts in the men’s chests.

  ‘They want to sow panic,’ said Sergius Vetilius.

  ‘They’re succeeding,’ retorted Taurus. ‘Look at our men; they’re terrified. They’re used to doing the menacing, not feeling imperilled themselves.’

  The night passed without much damage, but no one managed to close an eye, hands cramping around the hilts of their swords. At the beginning of the third guard shift, a suffocated outcry burst out of the darkness, then another and then a third. Three sentries collapsed to the ground. One was hit in the belly and his guts spilled out onto the dirt; he couldn’t stop screaming. Taurus swiftly put an end to his suffering: ‘Farewell, my friend. We’ll see each other in hell before long.’ Trees rustled in the wood; the enemy had hit their targets and were melting back into the thick forest. Only they knew all its thickets and hollows.

  The army began marching again at first light – a grey light that barely filtered through the black clouds. It wasn’t a road they were travelling on at all, more of a trail that wasn’t always practicable. The surface was made of boulders and loose stones and both sides were covered by thick vegetation that only increased the legionaries’ fears. Nature was a dark, ominous force, the forest inhabited by disturbing creatures. And there was a storm coming.

  The wind arrived first, bending over the tips of the oak and beech trees. All at once, a torrential rain began to batter the weary men. A lightning bolt struck a huge old oak and an enormous branch fell across the path, wounding a number of men, crippling others and blocking their march. The injured were loaded onto one of the carts, where perhaps they would be seen by a surgeon and saved. Forward movement was becoming increasingly difficult; the carts and animals continuously hindered the march, while the pouring rain had made the ground slippery and created a state of profound discouragement in the soldiers. It was almost as if they were resigned to defeat before the battle had even begun.

  The steady stream of losses increased at nearly every step. The Germanic warriors were comfortable fighting in the thick wood. Their movements were light, easy, invisible; they struck swiftly and pulled back to seek out their next hiding place. With no chance of defending themselves, the Roman soldiers felt like the sitting targets of a deadly, ruthless hunter. The deep rumble of the h
ammer of Thor never let up, making air and earth shudder.

  ‘Isn’t there any way to make that stop?’ shouted Corvus over the din of the storm.

  ‘How?’ shouted Taurus back, even more loudly. ‘The sound comes from everywhere at once. For now, all we can do is go forward until we’re out of this storm and until, gods willing, we find a widening in which we can deploy our force!’

  The further they went, the more frequent the enemy raids became. Sometimes a flash of blinding lightning would suddenly reveal the face of a Germanic warrior streaked with black like a ghost from hell. Their attackers wanted to wear them down, to bleed the long snake as it slithered forward. A moment came when it seemed that not even the natives could resist the raging storm. Taurus was quick to set off with a group of scouts to explore the route going forward, but it was then that a horseman appeared glittering in the rain on a black steed, his face covered by a mask of bronze.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded Taurus.

  ‘A Roman cavalryman,’ replied the man. His voice was young, and accented. Germanic.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go on, if I were you. Let me go first, along the ridge.’

  Taurus thought he’d already heard that voice, but he couldn’t recall when. The horseman shouted, ‘Don’t move!’ and rode off at a gallop under the drenching rain. He spurred the horse on and disappeared into the wood. Some time went by and then he reappeared one hundred paces beyond them, on a slight rise. He tossed something at the feet of Taurus and Sergius Vetilius. The heads of two Germanic warriors.

  With a wave of his hand, he gestured that they could advance, and then he disappeared again. At that point, Taurus turned his horse and rode back to where the general commander, Governor Quinctilius Varus, was. Vetilius stayed where he was, at the head of the army, loathe to relinquish control of the riskiest position. He also thought that it was worth making sure that the masked horseman had liberated an observation post by taking out the enemy sentries.

  Taurus informed the governor that he intended to advance with a few men beyond the head of the column to see if he could find a passage of adequate width. He rode off as fast as he could go; his path was full of holes and of jagged stones and other objects and the rain was turning it into a turbulent torrent. He skirted around a great number of damaged carts, others sunk up to their wheel hubs in mud. Many of the pack animals had been crippled by the sharp rocks underfoot. The hundreds of civilians that accompanied the army to sell food, wine, clothing and other wares were hindering the march, especially because they insisted on sticking as close as they could to the ranks in order not to fall prey to the attackers themselves. There were many women among them as well, including the camp prostitutes, and some were carrying or dragging children along as best they could, rain-soaked and sobbing with fear and fatigue.

  In less than an hour, Taurus and his men had arrived at a point in which the path seemed to hold fewer obstacles to transit, although it was no less muddy and dangerous. The trail stretched along the base of a rocky hill standing about four hundred and fifty feet tall. The flatter part at the top was crossed by murky rivulets that ran down the slope of the hill and gathered in an enormous swamp towards the north. The top of the hill was completely covered with vegetation; as far as Taurus was concerned, anyone could be hiding there. But since he saw no one, he turned back to advise the rest of the army which was still stretched out into a column well beyond two miles long.

  The attacks and ambushes had been intensifying and many soldiers had fallen, wounded by the arrows and javelins flung by invisible enemies. Taurus shuddered when he realized that these were Roman weapons, raided from the garrisons attacked by the Germanic forces. The legionaries could hardly fight back in the driving rain, caught between slippery slopes to their right and left and burdened by iron armour that weighed nearly a talent. The soldiers’ shoes were disintegrating on the rough surface, and many were pushing on with bloodied feet.

  All at once, the storm seemed to abate and even the wind died down. All that could be heard was the sound of an army on the march – fifteen thousand men covered in iron.

  They were making progress and, as Taurus had reported, the road was becoming a little smoother. One part curved at the base of the rocky hill while another forked off towards the muddy swampland. For a short time even the hammer of Thor seemed to fall silent.

  A savage war cry burst out, echoing loudly, and from the hillside a cloud of darts lifted. Thousands of Germanic javelins sailed towards the sky to then plunge headlong, whistling, into the marching legion. They crashed onto raised shields and helmets like steely hail.

  Taurus, who had pushed on to the head of the column, took stock of what was happening and raced back, shouting, ‘To your left! Ambush! Shields on your heads! Testudo! We’ll scale the enemy rampart! Come to me, men, to me!’

  A second volley and a third followed in quick succession and the deadly rain pierced thousands of men: in the neck, between their shoulder blades, in their arms, legs, stomachs. The soil was so slimy that the legionaries were sinking up to their calves.

  Rufius Corvus arrived at a gallop, spotted Taurus and joined him, protecting himself as best he could with his shield. ‘They’ve deliberately set us down this path! They’ve got us right where they want us. We have to get out of here, you have to get out of the range of their javelins! Out, out! Do not attack the enemy! Don’t do it, Centurion! We have to get away from here. I’m going back to head off the soldiers who are still coming on.’

  Taurus, who had been ordering his men into a testudo vallaria formation in order to attack what he had just realized was an enemy rampart built into the hillside, retreated instead, keeping his men united in close ranks under their shields.

  The enemy had raised a wall, evidently made of clods of soil and grass applied over a framework created from reeds taken from the swamp, so perfectly camouflaged that it was indistinguishable from the green cover of the rocky hill. Taurus had failed to see it himself when he’d reconnoitred the spot. Now the ground was slick with blood and the air echoed with screams of pain. The wounded men attempted to yank the arrow and spearheads out of their chests and thighs, tearing the flesh off their bones. Others were floundering in the mud and had become easy targets for the darts hurled by their enemies.

  Armin waited. When he was satisfied that Varus’s army had been decimated by the Germanic javelins and were dispersing, incapable of moving forward or of counter attacking, he launched the men who were still behind the wall into the assault.

  The Germanic warriors had never faced the legions at close quarters before, but the Romans were in the grip of panic and confusion. It hardly seemed possible to Armin’s men that they could finally unleash their long pent-up rage on the soldiers they’d put to rout. Wielding double-bladed axes, they ripped, slashed, maimed relentlessly. Striking out with blind rage, they hacked at flesh and broke bones, decapitated men who had fallen to the ground without a means of defending themselves and stuck those heads on pikes as trophies.

  Taurus’s unit, which was small but tough and compact, was like a rock against the breaking waves of attackers. They continued to defend themselves. All around them was horror, blood, screams, and mutilated limbs.

  Numonius Vala, cavalry prefect and Varus’s second in command, found himself in the middle of the long column and therefore had no idea of what was happening up ahead. He had thought at first that they were being attacked by a small rebel tribe but as he took stock of the reports filtering back from the front, he realized that one of the greatest military disasters of all time was taking place. He ordered his men to accelerate their march in order to provide support. All this achieved in the moment was to worsen the situation, adding more troops to the massacre and generating even more panic and chaos.

  Taurus managed to break through to Vala, the cavalry commander. He instructed him to move his men further up the column and to deploy as many troops as possible to where the standard-bearer guarded
the eagle of the Eighteenth Legion, still staunchly planted into the ground. Taurus was determined to turn the fight around. He knew that if he could get his men to an area that was sufficiently clear and slightly elevated, a makeshift camp could be organized. He could get reinforcements. He would send some of Vala’s best horsemen to reach Lucius Asprenas, Varus’s nephew who was quartered on the Rhine. Asprenas would send them troops, and they could turn the battle around.

  Meanwhile Armin, astride Borr, was raging against the impotent, mud-mired Roman soldiers. Something soon caught his eye: towards the east, a group of resistors was regrouping around Taurus. He realized how dangerous that could prove to be, and hurled towards them, sword in hand. He was upon them before Taurus even knew what was happening.

  ‘Two Roman soldiers . . .’ shouted Armin, ‘always meet up again somewhere. Don’t they, Centurion?’

  Taurus narrowly avoided a sweeping blow from Armin that would have lopped off his head. He gathered himself into a close guard, shield low and gladius high. Armin whipped Borr around so fast it nearly broke the horse’s back and he lunged forward again at the centurion.

  ‘You tasted my whip once and you’re going to taste it again, you bastard! Man of no honour!’ shouted Taurus, but he found himself on the trajectory of a horse weighing a thousand libra spurred on by a horseman six feet tall. Taurus stood his ground, solid as a statue. As soon as Borr got close enough, he thrust his Balearic sling between the horse’s legs, causing him to crash to the ground along, with his rider.

  ‘If you’ve hurt him, I’m going to skin you alive!’ growled Armin, springing back to his feet.

  ‘Try it!’ retorted Taurus, entrenched behind his shield, the legionary eagle at his back.

  They pounced on one another, swords high, sending sparks flying, but Taurus was fifty-three and Armin twenty-six. The centurion was fighting on a long sleepless night, a grinding march, hours of incessant combat and an empty stomach. His fate seemed to be sealed, when a voice rang out on their left: ‘Try that with someone your own size, fucker! Not an old man!’