The tide had turned. A strong attack now would smash the tribesmen facing his soldiers, thought Tullus with rising excitement. He hefted his shield, breathed into the discomfort that radiated from his forearm and let it mix with the needle darts from the torn muscle in his side. I can manage, he decided. It won’t take long. ‘READY, BROTHERS?’ he roared.
‘YES, SIR!’
‘See them, brothers? They’re tired. Scared. Half their inbred friends lie dead, thanks to you. Ready to finish the rest?’ As his soldiers roared back at him, Tullus struck his sword off his shield boss, one, two, three times. ‘Forward!’
He led his men on at a slow but purposeful pace, and the warriors broke before they’d even closed. Pushing and shoving at one another in their panic, they ran to the nearest gate, or scrambled up to the walkway, there to leap over the ramparts. Backs against the earthworks, a few men stayed to fight, too courageous to retreat, Tullus thought, or perhaps giving their lives to save their comrades. He kept his soldiers in formation until those warriors had been cut down, and then he wheeled them to the right, towards the north gate. The intervallum was already a confusion of retreating tribesmen and legionaries from the Fifth’s other cohorts, falling on the enemy from the side. The instant his soldiers entered the maelstrom, control would be lost.
That might happen anyway, Tullus decided, studying the blood-keen faces around him. Gut instinct also told him that the day was theirs. He had seen routs like this before – the surviving tribesmen would be hounded out of the gate and into the bog, where the slaughter would be immense. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help wondering if Arminius still had a trick up his sleeve. Would a hidden force of warriors swoop down on the legionaries as they emerged, disorganised, from the camp?
Tullus wasn’t happy until he had clambered up a ladder and surveyed the surrounding terrain. There any doubts he’d had vanished. All he could see was warriors’ backs as they fled through the mud, and hordes of baying legionaries in hot pursuit. Discarded spears and shields were strewn everywhere. Corpses floated face down in the muddy pools, and lay tangled in the gorse bushes. Trapped in the mud, or too hurt to run any further, wounded tribesmen screamed their distress. Several ravens already hung in the air overhead. How did the corpse-feeders know to arrive so fast? Tullus wondered. There would be a glut of food for the birds; that was certain.
Let Arminius be among the slain, he asked.
Chapter XLI
As Piso and his companions charged headlong after the fleeing tribesmen, they whooped their joy. Tullus and Fenestela followed, but at their own pace. So many legionaries were hunting the warriors that it was soon difficult to find any living within the walls. It seemed, thought Piso, as if every centurion in the army had sent his soldiers after the quarry the way hunters unleash their packs of hunting dogs. Tullus’ century splintered from the outset, but Piso and his comrades stuck together.
Chasing men and stabbing them in the back was brutal, exhausting work, but Piso didn’t care. These were the whoresons who had evaded the army for months, who had hunted him and his brothers through the bog, and who had killed Saxa. Like as not, many had taken part in Arminius’ ambush six years before. As far as Piso was concerned, they deserved whatever was coming to them.
With hundreds of other legionaries, he and his comrades funnelled through the north gate and pursued the warriors outside. The majority of the enemy ran into the marsh, but some tried escaping on the wooden road. Piso and his comrades cheered as they stumbled over broken planking and fell into the pools of water that had formed under the damaged roadway. With a mob of other soldiers, they pounded after this group, hacking them to pieces even as they begged for mercy.
Hearty warriors, greybeards, bare-faced youths, it didn’t matter. They slew them all. Piso chopped down a man old enough to have been his grandfather, and another who could have been his younger brother. He watched Metilius take on a berserker with an injured knee, laughing as the huge warrior tried in vain to strike at his friend from a squatting position. Dancing around the berserker, Metilius stabbed him three, four, five times in the chest and back, wounds that didn’t kill. ‘Come on, big man,’ he taunted in German. ‘You can take me.’ The berserker threw himself forward with a desperate lunge of his spear. Grinning, Metilius let him fall flat on his face, before straddling the warrior and, with a precise thrust, pithing him through the base of his neck.
The chase went on for hours, so long that the legionaries took breaks to rest and to drink water. Once a place to be afraid – of the enemy, the land-scape’s alien appearance and the strange birdcalls – the bog now belonged to them. Deep into it they went, harassing the tribesmen with vicious intent. Every so often, a warrior would stand to fight back, sometimes aided by a comrade. These efforts drew the attention of every legionary within sight the way flies home in on fresh shit. Surrounded on all sides, the warriors died, often without even wounding an attacker.
It was natural – one of the rewards of victory, opined Vitellius to whoever would listen – that soldiers would begin ransacking the dead for valuables. Many of the tribesmen had purses, but much of the yield within was poor, nothing more than a few copper coins. Pleasing everyone, though, bracelets and hammer pendants of silver were common. Vitellius crowed with delight as he pulled a gold torque from around a chieftain’s neck. ‘This is worth a year’s pay!’ He jumped as his victim’s arm moved, and a faint gurgle left his muddy lips. ‘Still alive, are you?’ Grabbing the chieftain by the hair, Vitellius shoved his head under the surface of a nearby pool. Piso watched, aghast. The chieftain soon went limp.
‘You didn’t have to finish him like that,’ said Piso.
Vitellius threw him a jaundiced look. ‘What do you care? He’d have done the same to you, or worse.’
It was true, thought Piso, but the cold-hearted killing had robbed him of his desire for blood. He cast an eye at the sun, which had been making regular appearances from behind the patchy cloud. Mid-afternoon was passing. Dusk was on the way. Piso could see legionaries turning around and beginning the walk back to camp. ‘How far have we come?’ he called out to the group in general.
‘Three miles,’ said Vitellius.
‘Four, maybe five,’ countered Metilius.
A good number of estimates rained down, most of which fell somewhere between three and six miles. ‘Time to think about heading back, eh?’ suggested Piso. ‘I have no desire to spend a night out here.’
The inevitable jibes followed, but heads were also nodding in agreement. Vitellius lifted his torque, letting the sunlight wink off it. ‘I’m with you, Piso. I don’t want to drop this in the dark.’
‘Don’t lose it,’ warned Piso. ‘I plan to take it from you at dice.’
Laughter broke out, and Vitellius made an obscene gesture at them all. He tapped at the torque, which was now around his neck. ‘Once I’ve sold it to a goldsmith, I’m going to buy a new sword. The rest of the money will go on wine and whores. If you’re lucky, you might get a cup of wine each out of me, but that’ll be it!’
Every man in the contubernium had plundered enough valuables to get pissed for a few nights, and some, like Vitellius, had done far better. As they trudged towards their camp, those with least engaged in merciless teasing of their more well-off comrades. The general mood, already buoyant from their welcome victory, was as jovial as that on a four-monthly payday. The legionaries were bone-weary and covered in mud and blood; there was no wine to drink, and little food, but the Germans had been beaten, and the path to the Rhenus lay open before them. Perhaps Arminius would rally his warriors, but given the casualties they’d suffered, it seemed doubtful.