“Won’t let them deploy.’“ Arminius used the precise Latin word. “This is what we’ve been looking for all along.”
“You found it,” Sigimerus told him. “You said you had when we went up to talk to the Chauci, and you were right. And this mound—”
“Rampart.” Again, Arminius used a Latin word in place of a less accurate one from his own language.
“Rampart,” Sigimerus agreed indulgently. “You’ll stick on leaves and branches and such, so they don’t know what it is ‘till too late?”
“Oh, yes.” Arminius grinned. “You’re thinking along with me, all right.”
“You can talk about deploying and ramparts and all that fancy stuff as much as you want,” his father said. “Just the same, you’d better remember I was ambushing Romans before you were born.”
“Some people do need a head start.” Arminius sounded as innocent as a child.
“Why, you miserable puppy!” But Sigimerus started to laugh instead of walloping him. “I’m among my own kind again! Gods, it feels good. And pretty soon—”
“No more Romans among us,” Arminius finished for him. “If everything goes the way it should, I mean.” No, he didn’t want to price the unborn foal.
“Where are your warriors cutting those turves?” Sigimerus asked.
Your warriors. Arminius didn’t answer for a moment, savoring that. It was as if his father had passed him the jeweled pin that closed a highborn man’s cloak. Pride made his heart swell—and almost choked him. He had to try twice before he could say, “Over behind the hillock there.” He pointed. “We don’t want the Romans to notice anything wrong.”
“You thought of everything.” Sigimerus’ eyes glowed. “Well, I’ll go back there and cut some myself. I want to be part of all of this, even if it means fetching and carrying like an ox or an ass.”
“I’ve cut them and carried them, too,” Arminius said. “I feel the same way you do—and seeing me work hard makes the rest of the men work harder.”
“That’s one of the tricks, all right,” his father agreed. “I hate to say-it, but I was some older than you are before I figured it out.”
“One more thing I picked up from the Romans,” Arminius said. “Anybody knows fighters will follow a strong fighter. But in the legions and auxiliaries, any officer who works himself, no matter at what, can get his men to do the same.”
“The Romans have taught us plenty of lessons,” Sigimerus said. “Now we teach them one: they don’t belong in our country. We’ve been trying to get it across since I was a little boy. This time, maybe…” “Just one more thing we’ve got to do,” Arminius said. “What’s that?” “We’ve got to win.”
XVI
From behind Caldus Caelius came the usual racket of a Roman army on the march, somewhat muffled by the rain’s dank plashing. Legionaries squelched through puddles on the track they were following. The ground to either side was worse—much worse. Chainmail clinked faintly. Like most of the other soldiers, Caelius had rubbed his mailshirt and helmet with greasy wool. That would help hold rust at bay, but only so much. He’d have a lot of scrubbing and polishing to do once the legions got back to Vetera.
Ahead? Through the rain, he could see a couple of horses’ rumps, and also the glum-looking cavalrymen atop the animals. The way the riders’ shoulders slumped said they wished they were anywhere but here.
As a matter of fact, Caldus Caelius felt the same way. That German who’d served with the auxiliaries over in Pannonia had told the governor this part of Germany had better weather than Mindenum did—so scuttlebutt insisted. As far as Caelius could see, the barbarian had sold Quinctilius Varus a bill of goods. It was coming down like a mad bastard.
Caelius stepped into a puddle—and went in deeper than he’d expected. He swore wearily. His voice was only one note in a massive grumbling chorus. The legionaries would complain marching on a paved road in perfect weather. Since this was neither, they groused and groused.
Water dripped from the visor of his helmet. Most of the time, it didn’t drip onto his face. Every so often, though, the wind would swing and blow the drips—and the rest of the rain—into his eyes… and into his mouth, and onto his nose, so he had new drips from the end of it. With his feet soaked, too, chances were he’d come down with catarrh. Just my luck, he thought.
He shook his head, as much to look to right and left as to try to get rid of some of the water. Not much to see in either direction: only swamp that was starting to fill up with nasty little puddles. He didn’t spot any Germans. He hadn’t for some time now. Part of him was unsurprised—they wouldn’t have wanted to live in this gods-forsaken country, either. But Germany was full—much too full—of savages. He’d seen worse terrain packed with big blonds trying to scratch out a living. Why weren’t more of them doing the same thing here?
Maybe Varus could ask his pet German. As soon as that thought crossed Caelius’ mind, he shook his head again, this time annoyed at himself. The accursed German was off dealing with his woman. His father had buggered off, too; nobody quite knew why. But it was unsettling. The neck-guard on Caelius’ helm kept water from dripping down his back. He had that chilly, unsettling feeling all the same.
Something a little more substantial than usual in this marshy landscape loomed up ahead and to the left: a low, grassy hillock. Not just grassy, Caelius saw as the path brought him closer to it. Branches and bushes sprouted from it. Caelius wished he could get a better look, but the rain wouldn’t let him. His mailshirt clattered about him as he shrugged. You could find anything in Germany. Why get all hot and bothered about one poorly manicured little hill?
It looks funny, a voice inside him said. He told the voice to shut up and go away. It wouldn’t. That hill doesn’t look right.
Caldus Caelius shrugged again, this time in exasperation. If anything were wrong, the horsemen up ahead would be catching it right now, as they rode past. And they weren’t. They were riding along wishing they were somewhere else, the same way he was marching. At least their feet weren’t soaked.
Something’s wrong, the small voice shrilled. Ignoring it, Caelius pulled his left foot out of the mud and stuck his right foot into it.
Arminius peered out between two lovingly transplanted bushes. Roman cavalrymen rode by on their big horses, almost near enough for him to reach out and touch them. One looked his way. He froze. The Roman looked straight ahead again—he hadn’t noticed a thing.
The gods are with us, Arminius thought jubilantly. To make sure they stayed on the Germans’ side, he hissed, “I’ll kill the man who casts now—d’you hear me? I’ll gut him like a swine. Remember—you’ve got to wait.”
Behind the rampart they’d built, the German warriors seethed like boiling soup. They jumped up and down, nerving themselves for the fight ahead. They brandished their spears. They brandished them, yes, but nobody threw one. They all understood what the plan was. And if that wasn’t a gods-given miracle, Arminius didn’t know what would be.
His own right hand clutched a spearshaft tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He was ready himself, ready and then some. But he too needed to wait. This was the one chance he’d have. He had to remember that. If he moved too soon, if the Romans got a chance to recoil and to fight on ground that gave them any kind of chance… In that case, who could say when his folk would be able to try again with the odds on their side? Who could say if they ever would?
More horsemen rode past, and more still. The Romans were going through the motions of protecting their van, but their leaders didn’t really believe trouble was anywhere close. That attitude rubbed off on the men. They were laughing and joking and grumbling about the weather and bragging of what they’d do to the whores once they got back to Vetera. They weren’t paying so much attention to what lay around them as they might have.
The rain did make it harder for them. On Arminius’ side of the barricade rose a growing hum and murmur of excitement. He’d charged every leader here and in the woods off to th
e right—which held even more warriors—with keeping his men quiet. The chieftains were doing what they could, but it wasn’t enough. Arminius fidgeted like a man with the shits. Killing wasn’t near enough for the loudmouthed fool who betrayed his comrades because he couldn’t shut up.
But the Romans never twigged. The drumming rainfall muffled the noise from the German host. Truly the gods favor us, Arminius thought. When we conquer, we have to give them rich offerings indeed.
He peered out again. The last Roman cavalrymen were going by. There would be a little gap, and then… Oh, and then!
“When?” someone beside him asked. For a wonder, the other German didn’t look out to see for himself. It wasn’t Roman discipline—it wasn’t anything close to Roman discipline—but it was more than Arminius could reliably expect from a man of his own blood.
“Soon,” he answered. “Very soon.” Here came the foot sloggers. Arminius waved. The chieftains were supposed to be waiting for that signal. They were supposed to ready the fighters who’d accompanied them and to pass it on to the men in the woods. Had Arminius been leading legionaries or auxiliaries, he would have been confident that what was supposed to happen really would. With his own folk, he could only hope.
Very soon indeed. He could see the Roman foot soldiers’ faces through the rain. They looked less lighthearted than the riders. And well they might—they were doing the work themselves, not letting their mounts carry them along.
As soon as the first rank passed that bush… Arminius had promised himself that as soon as he came back from his long stretch lulling the Roman, lulling Quinctilius Varus in particular.
Idly, he wondered how things would have gone had Varus not had a son about his age. He shrugged. I would have found some other way to do what wanted doing, he told himself. Was it true? He thought it was, which was all that really mattered.
On came the legionaries. Closer… Closer… The nearest man in the lead rank had a long chin and a broken nose. Arminius’ right arm went back on its own, as if freed at last from some unjust imprisonment.
“Cast!” he roared. His arm shot forward. Like an eagle, like a god’s thunderbolt, his spear flew free.
Caldus Caelius kept staring at the little rise off to the left of the track. It just didn’t look the way it should have. He’d tried getting some of the Romans near him to pay more attention to him. He hadn’t had much luck. They didn’t want to think about funny-looking landscape. All they wanted to do was get through this gods-despised muddy stretch of ground and make tracks for the Rhine. Since that was all he really wanted, too, how could he blame them?
When you got right down to it, he couldn’t.
Somebody shouted something. It didn’t sound like Latin. Caelius’ head snapped to the left, toward that hillock. But the cry sounded closer than the reverse slope should have been.
He wasn’t the only one who heard it. “What the demon?” another Roman said, his hand dropping to the hilt of his gladius.
Something sliced through the air. No—several somethings. No again—a swarm of somethings. For an instant, Caelius thought the cry had flushed a flock of birds, or perhaps even came from the throat of one of them. Only for an instant. Then, suddenly, horribly, he knew exactly what those somethings were, and he knew he and all the Romans with him had been betrayed.
The spears reached the top of their arcs. Some of them clattered together in the air. A few, knocked spinning, fell short. But most of them crashed down on the head of the Roman column.
Like his comrades, Caldus Caelius marched with his scutum slung over his back. The big, heavy shield would have been impossibly awkward on his arm. It was for battle, not travel. And so the shields did no good as the spears struck home.
One of the spears came down not half a cubit in front of Caldus Caelius’ foot and stood thrilling in the mud. Another pierced the thigh of the legionary marching to his left. The man stared at the shaft and the spurting blood for a couple of heartbeats, more astonished than in pain. Then reality caught up with amazement. He shrieked, clutched at the spear and at his leg, and crumpled.
A soldier two men to Caldus Caelius’ right took a spear through the throat. He made horrible gobbling noises, gore pouring from his mouth in place of words. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he too slumped to the muck of the track the Romans were following. In a sense, he was lucky: he didn’t suffer long before oblivion seized him. There were plenty of worse ways to go.
Caelius wished he hadn’t had that thought. How many worse ways would he see before this day died? And what sort of end will I find for myself? he wondered fearfully.
He turned to find out how the rest of the soldiers were faring. The answer was simple: worse than he could have imagined in his most dreadful nightmare. That enormous volley of spears had wrecked the head of the column. Dozens—no, more likely hundreds; maybe even thousands—of legionaries were down, some mercifully dead, more wounded and thrashing and screaming their torment and terror up to the wet, uncaring sky. The agonized din made him want to stuff his fingers in his ears.
More cries came from the Romans’ left. Those weren’t wails of pain but fierce, triumphant bellows. The Germans realized what they’d done with their shattering volley. Well, they could hardly not realize it, could they? They might be barbarians, but they weren’t stupid barbarians. They’d just proved that, by the gods!
They proved it again a moment later. They’d built ways to get up and over the curving rampart that concealed them. They dropped down on the near side and loped toward the legionaries. And they rushed out of the dark woods next to the rampart. Jove’s thunderbolt could not have struck the Romans a harder blow than those deadly spears.
“Fight!” Caldus Caelius yelled, shrugging out of his pack and drawing his sword. “We’ve got to fight them, or they’ll slaughter us like sheep! Deploy! Form line of battle!”
He wasn’t the only legionary shouting orders like that through the wounded soldiers’ howls and screams. Here and there, Romans did their best to obey. But the presence of their injured comrades not only demoralized them but also hampered their efforts to form up.
And, as Caldus Caelius rapidly discovered, even if that hadn’t been so, there was almost nowhere for the Romans to deploy. When they stepped off the track to the right, they sank to their knees in muck. The ground to the left was a little better, but sloped swiftly upward toward the hillock from which the spears had flown—and down which the baying German horde now swarmed.
Along with a few unwounded comrades, Caelius set himself. The legions were ruined. Even a blind man could sec that. The barbarians were going to slaughter every Roman they could catch. A few legionaries floundered out into the swamp, desperate to get away. Caelius might have done the same thing if it didn’t seem so obviously hopeless. Since it did . ..
“Come on!” he shouted. “We’ll make the whoresons pay for our hides, anyhow!” And if he made them kill him in battle, it would all be over pretty fast. Then they wouldn’t have the chance to amuse themselves with him at their leisure afterwards.
Something hard caught him in the side of the head. A stone? A spearshaft? The flat of a sword? He never knew. Inside a heartbeat, his vision went from a red flare to blackness. He crumpled into the mud, his hands scrabbling feebly.
Quinctilius Varus and Aristocles were arguing in Greek about Plato’s Symposium. It made time go by and helped Varus forget about the wet, gloomy German landscape all around.
“What I’d like to see is the Symposium on the stage,” Varus said.
“It’s not a play. It’s a dialogue!” Aristocles sounded shocked. He was fussy and precise. To him, everything had one proper place—and one proper place only.
“It could be a play,” the Roman insisted. “Aristophanes and Alcibiades are both wonderful roles, to say nothing of Socrates himself. You might -“ He broke off and fell back into Latin: “By the gods! What’s that?”
The color drained from Aristocles’ face. “Nothing good,” he a
nswered. Numbly, Varus nodded. The two of them rode just in front of the baggage train, near the center of the long, straggling Roman column. That sudden eruption of shrieks and screams and wails from up ahead… It sounded like the noises from a slaughterhouse, but monstrously magnified.
No. Varus made himself shake his head. Thinking such thoughts is a had omen. I won’t believe it. I won’t let myself believe it.
He kept on not letting himself believe it for five more minutes, maybe even ten. Then a bloodied legionary came running back toward him, crying, “We’re buggered!”
“What do you mean?” Varus demanded. He feared he knew, but clung to ignorance as long as he could. Sometimes, as with a spouse’s infidelities, not knowing—indeed, deliberately looking the other way—was better.
But the wounded Roman cried, “The Germans! There’s a million Germans up there, your Excellency, and they’re slaughtering us.”
“No,” Quinctilius Varus whispered. “It can’t be.”
It could. He knew that only too well. And if the barbarians had attacked the legionaries… If that had happened, then Arminius’ infidelities were likely to prove far more lethal than any mere spouse’s.
“What do we do, sir?” his pedisequus asked.
For a moment, Varus had no answer. Everyone from Segestes to Aristocles to Lucius Eggius had tried to tell him Arminius was not to be trusted. He hadn’t believed any of them. He’d been sure he knew better than all of them put together. And they were right. And he was wrong. And, because he was wrong, because he’d trusted where he shouldn’t, three Roman legions were in deadly peril.
No treachery since Helen of Troy’s had caused this kind of slaughter. Being remembered with Menelaus was a distinction Varus could have done without. He hadn’t even got to lay Arminius—or wanted to, no matter what some people thought.
Give Me Back My Legions! Page 28
