I put the shield on my right side, under my red cloak, and went forward, my sword in my left hand. Before me, Gunderic stepped out on to the bridge, and we met alone on the hard, frozen surface between the outer ditches, that forty feet we called the killing area, and over which so many Vandals had run and died. The ditches were three-quarters filled with dead, and there were dead, too, on this ground, over which we had to pick our way carefully to avoid stumbling. We met in the centre, Gunderic and I. He looked more gaunt than ever. There was a rag tied round his right arm and a long cut above his eyes, which looked to be swollen and bloodshot. He had the angry, famished look of a beast of prey that has missed its kill, and I was suddenly afraid. I could smell the danger in our meeting through the sweat of my own fear.
He said, “You refused our offer. I shall not make it again.”
“I did not expect you to do so.” He was a tall man, but he had to look up to me as I spoke, and this he did not like. “But I will make you an offer.” I spoke through my teeth. “Give me the wife of Marcomir living, and I will let you return across the Rhenus unharmed.”
“She is dead.”
“In the Roman fashion?”
“Yes.” He spoke coldly.
“Ah!”
“Unharmed you say?” He glared at me, and said in a blaze of hatred, “Unharmed. You poisoned the wells—butcher. My wife and my children died; and I watched them and could do nothing.”
I said, “I watched you of what would happen.”
He looked at me coldly, “You are a great fighter,” he said softly. “When I am old, I shall be able to boast of how I destroyed Maximus, a Roman general, who barred my way into new lands.”
“Will you also tell them how few men it was who barred your way, and for how long?”
“Of course. That is what makes the story that my people will sing.” He spoke coolly now, but with respect, and I was surprised. I knew so little, really, about these people.
“Will you also say how you were aided by the Marcomanni, the Quadi, and the Alans?”
His teeth snapped. “We have done the hard fighting,” he said. “Their share has been small.”
He lifted his head and looked at the sky. “The moon sets,” he said. “In a little while you will be destroyed with all your men; and your bleached bones will litter the snow. A good end for warriors, but a waste of life. Unbar the way, and you may take your men where you will. I have enough wives who weep in my camp. I do not want more.”
I said, “Once, on a summer afternoon, I met six kings. Are they still all living, Gunderic of the Vandals? I told you when last we met, that you would walk in blood to Treverorum. You must walk in my blood, too, before you get there.”
“Why?”
I smiled. “If all men bar your way, as we do, then how strong will you be when you at last reach those lands of which you dream? I think you will be so weak that, in the end, you will be destroyed in your turn. You will be remembered only as a people who could kill. For yourselves, or for other people, you will make nothing that will last.”
He snarled softly in his throat, like a dog. He said, “You are wrong. You bar my way as an enemy, but the day will come, when you are dead, that I and my people shall be the servants of Rome, calling ourselves its citizens. Does not that seem strange?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. I shall not then care. But why should you need Rome, if you hate her so much?”
He said, as though to a child, “There has always been a Rome. It is a great empire; it is needed; but it needs us also.”
He stroked his beard then, and his eyes flickered sideways. He said, “Rome has been wasted on you. I would not wish—”
“I do not think, King Gunderic—”
At that moment the archer fired. I felt an agonising pain as the arrow drove through my cloak and shield, and into my shoulder. I went sideways with the shock, and felt two more arrows drive home into the shield as I stumbled and tried, desperately, to regain my balance.
“Quintus!”
Gunderic stepped back and to his left. Like a striking cat, his hand dropped to his sword. It came out with a dreadful rasping sound, a blur of light and steel, and I saw it glint high in the air as he raised it for the killing stroke.
I moved one step forward, the sword of Agricola pointing towards his right side, my arm slightly bent as I did so. His sword came down at arm’s length as I straightened my elbow, and then fell from his hand across the rim of my shield onto my shoulder. For a moment we stood there, quite still, facing each other.
“You should have been a Vandal,” he said, in a tired voice.
“Three inches is enough, even for a king,” I said.
He buckled at the knees and I caught him as he fell.
The archer, who had lain in ambush along the edge of the ditch, was dead with six fire arrows in him. I backed across the plank, holding the dead king before me, while the Vandals roared, and arrows flickered to and fro, and a clamour of arms sounded on both sides. Across the inner ditch I withdrew behind the shields of a dozen men who had come out to help me, and was dragged to safety while a bowman fired at the plank on the outer ditch until it burst into flames.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“It was a trick. I warned you.”
“Yes.” I bit my lip. “But a good one.”
“What about the hostage, his brother?”
I looked at him through my pain, standing between his guards, a sword at his throat. I sank to the ground and, while an orderly attended to my damaged shoulder, which was bleeding badly now, said curiously, “How did you expect to escape?”
He said, “You killed my brother.”
“He tried to jump the palisade,” said Aquila.
“Well?”
“It was a risk. I lost.”
“You did, indeed. You are the first Vandal to enter my camp alive.”
“Kill him,” snarled Fredegar.
“Send him back with his brother,” I said.
“Kill him,” said Fredegar again.
“Crucify him,” said Agilio angrily.
“Be quiet, my friends. Do what I tell you, Quintus.”
He started to protest, looked at my face, and then nodded. “Of course,” he said.
Supported by my orderly, I walked to the palisade. “Peoples of the East, listen to me.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Listen to me, I say.” Slowly the noise died down and the firing ceased. “Peoples of the East: I break no truce, I keep faith with my own people and with yours. Go back the way you came, or your women will weep blood for their unborn sons. I will not give you the city of Treverorum, or another yard of land. This land is mine.” I paused, and then cried, more loudly stilclass="underline" “I am Maximus. I give you only death and the body of your king. I give you—Gunderic.”
“Fire,” said a voice. The long arm of the ballista swung up, and there came a long, thin scream, as the two brothers, the one living and the other dead, returned to the earth and to their own kind.
For an hour there was a lull, while they watched us from behind the rough defences they had built within flight range of our arrows. They used movable shields of rough wood, the piled bodies of horses, and sacks of straw, mixed with hard earth or snow. The sun rose, and the cold winds blew again, and they came out of the flying snow like snarling wolves, and attacked us with the same ruthless courage, the same hungry despair, the same cold hatred that they had shown before. Time and again, Quintus and Fabianus led their cavalry out. Swinging right or left handed, they would close up, steady their line, move smoothly into a canter, while Quintus shouted “Steady, steady,” at the top of his voice. Then the gallop over the last two hundred yards, the charge smashed home, the swords red with blood, and men shouting; the break up of the formation, when it was every man for himself, and you had to watch for the man with the knife under your horse’s belly, as well as the man with the axe who tried to take off your thigh; the hasty rally, while horses and men were still warm but not yet blown; and then the charge back, every yard taking you nearer and nearer to safety. Safety was the cold wind, and the sweat on your face, and your horse blowing at the ground. Safety was the silence from barbarian voices, the swinging sword, the flying axe, and the smell of blood that was everywhere.