One thing prevented him. His men.
He could not go to Hades knowing that he’d abandoned them. He had to keep his cohort moving. To stay was to die.
‘The gods be with you,’ he said to Fabricius.
Disbelief flitted across Fabricius’ face – then it was anger. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to my cohort.’
‘What about the eagle?’ demanded Fabricius. ‘It has to be recaptured!’
Shame scourged Tullus anew, not least because there was nothing to be done. ‘It’s thanks to the incompetence of you and your fellow officers that it was lost in the first place,’ he snarled.
Fabricius spat into the mud. ‘Varus will hear of this.’
‘I’ll tell him what I did myself,’ Tullus retorted. ‘He can be the judge of who did the right thing. It won’t be you, you fool. Mark my words: stay here, and you will all die. We can’t fight these whoresons, at least not the way we’d want. Our best chance – our only chance – is to keep marching.’
He walked away, ignoring Fabricius’ orders to stand his ground. Gods grant that he comes to his senses before it’s too late, Tullus thought, putting the fate of the First – and the eagle – from his mind. In this calamitous situation, his cohort came first, and everyone and everything else came a distant second. Including Varus. Especially Varus. I told him, Tullus remembered, a throbbing fury pulsing behind his eyes. If only he’d listened. But Varus hadn’t, and here they were, with hundreds of men dead and an eagle lost – and that was just among the ranks of the Eighteenth. Who knew what was happening to the rest of the army?
A short distance along the path, Tullus was presented in gory fashion with the fate of the senior officers and their escort. Whether it was because the enemy had noticed the number of officers together – legates, tribunes and auxiliary prefects – or the fact that they were only protected by a single cohort, he didn’t know, but the attack here appeared to have been made with even more force than that directed against his soldiers. In the carnage upwards of two hundred legionaries lay slaughtered, and among them Tullus counted four tribunes, two prefects and a number of centurions. It was a relief to see no legates among the dead, and to note that the senior officers who had survived had not lingered.
He eyed the enemy’s earthworks with renewed respect.
It was as if the tribesmen saw him looking. A rendition of the barritus began, and a number of warriors emerged from the nearest gaps in the fortification to hurl abuse towards the path. Some even dropped their trousers in order to wave their genitalia at the Romans. On another day, Tullus would have found a wisecrack to shout back. Instead, he watched the taunting men in grim silence. With their confidence running this high, it wouldn’t be long before they attacked again.
How Tullus wished that he had the legion’s artillery to call on. Behind the earthworks, the enemy would be packed as tight as a shoal of fish in a net. A sustained barrage from ballistae would cause heavy casualties, and force them out from their defences, whereupon the legionaries would be able to slaughter them. Arminius had foreseen this, however, by tricking the legions on to this narrow, godsforsaken path upon which wagons and artillery could not travel. The result meant that, despite being less than fifty paces away, the tribesmen were invulnerable.
Tullus hadn’t trudged much further when cheering broke out among the enemy. He peered, making out a familiar broad-shouldered figure in fine armour, surrounded by a group of excited warriors. It was Arminius, Tullus felt sure of it. Hearing Arminius’ voice a few heartbeats later was the final proof that his suspicions all along had been correct. That sour realisation, although expected, was hard to take.
It was far worse, however, to see his legion’s eagle being brandished aloft beside Arminius. It glinted in the weak rays of afternoon sunshine, mocking the Eighteenth’s failure. Tullus’ fury was such that his vision blurred for a moment. When it cleared, the eagle had been taken behind the enemy fortification, driving the reality of the loss even further home.
Tullus took a silent oath on the spot.
One day, my men and I will return and reclaim what belongs to us – what belongs to the Eighteenth. The eagle will be ours again. By everything that is sacred, I swear it. We will be back.
For now, though, he had to focus on survival.
XXVI
Arminius couldn’t take his eyes from the eagle. He’d been near one, and had been impressed by its beauty, but he’d never before laid hands on one, never been able to study one close up. It was typical of a legion’s standard, with the golden eagle positioned lying forward, on its chest, wings upraised behind. Staring eyes and an open beak gave the eagle a fierce, imperious expression, which impressed and amused Arminius by turn. You’re mine now, he thought, tipping over the wooden staff to feel the eagle’s weight. Cast from gold, it was impressively heavy.
The eagle had been brought to him as soon as it had reached their earthworks, borne by the same warrior who’d snatched it from the dying aquilifer: Osbert. Arminius had been delighted that the glory belonged to one of his own. A jostling mob of cheering warriors had accompanied Osbert, but he had suffered no one else to touch the eagle until it had been presented to Arminius.
Arminius had at once repaid the gesture by asking him to stay by his side, so that every man in their host might see who had seized such an illustrious prize. Osbert was still grinning from ear to ear, and seemed oblivious to the small bleeding cuts that marked his arms and chest.
Having taunted the battered legionaries with the eagle, Arminius traced his way along the earthworks for half a mile or more. The standard had a rapturous reception from the warriors assembled behind the defences. There were spontaneous renditions of the barritus, repeated chants of Arminius’ name and shouted oaths that the remaining eagles would soon be taken.
Its appearance before the soldiers of a different Roman cohort – who until that point had had no knowledge of its loss – also had a dramatic effect. Emerging from a gap in the fortifications, Osbert and his companions roared and shouted to get their enemies’ attention. Arminius watched as the legionaries – no longer in recognisable ranks or files – pointed and cried out in dismay. Their ragged lines even wavered, away from the triumphant warriors.
It was an incredible spectacle, thought Arminius with delight, to see the arrogant Romans brought so low. Their marching speed was pathetic, their usual impressive formation absent. Their mud-spattered cloaks were rain-sodden, their armour dulled and rusting. Few of them had javelins, and even fewer carried any equipment. Many sported crimson-spotted bandages, or were limping. Those with more severe injuries were being helped along by their comrades. At regular intervals, dying men, or those who could not keep up, were being abandoned by the side of the track.
Arminius noted that the Roman officers – what few there were – looked no better than their men. This was telling. The centurions, optiones and other officers were the backbone of every century, every cohort and every legion. It was usual for them to lead by example, and if that leadership were absent, the legionaries would soon give up.
Arminius studied the Romans again with care, and decided that that had in fact already happened. To all intents and purposes, the Eighteenth was spent as a fighting force. Once the Seventeenth and Nineteenth had been as well battered, victory would be his.
He could taste it.
Tullus trudged on. A brown-green wall taller than a man – the enemy earthworks – ran alongside the track without end, sometimes as close as twenty paces from the marching legionaries. Behind it were apparently inexhaustible reserves of warriors, every one of whom thirsted for Roman blood. When the bastards weren’t attacking, they were singing their infernal barritus, or showering the legionaries with volleys of frameae from atop the rampart.