‘He says that the one-handed man came half a moon ago and spoke with their King, Adgandestrius,’ Ansigar translated. ‘He doesn’t know what was said but when the man left, the King ordered a hundred warriors to go with him and to obey him in all commands. He led them to the Rhenus, opposite Argentoratum, and told them to wait on the east bank whilst he took two fishing boats with three men in each over to the west.’ Ansigar looked at the man who spoke some more and then carried on the translation: ‘They waited for seven days then one of the boats came back at night with orders to ride north along the river until they met up with the one-handed man.’
‘What’s his name?’ Vespasian asked.
Ansigar asked the question.
‘Gisbert,’ came the reply followed by another stream of the harsh language.
‘When they found Gisbert,’ Ansigar continued, ‘he told them that he had followed a Roman raiding party; what’s more, they were Batavians, who are their enemies, and he proved it by showing them the body of one that he had killed. He said that they should track them and kill one or two every night but to always allow them to be holding a weapon when they died.’ Ansigar paused as the young man carried on his tale and then repeated it: ‘He said you would always be heading just east of north and they were to put the corpses ahead of you every day. They didn’t understand why but they obeyed him as they would their King. Yesterday Gisbert sent a message to Adgandestrius, in Mattium …’
‘What’s Mattium?’ Vespasian asked.
Ansigar asked the question and the young man looked at Vespasian, frowning quizzically before answering.
‘It’s the chief settlement of the Chatti, to the east of here,’ Ansigar translated. ‘The message was for two hundred men to wait on the northern bank of the river and kill you as you tried to swim it but they stupidly gave away their position by shooting at the patrol. Gisbert then told them that we’d come to kill their King in vengeance for the raid across the Rhenus.’
‘Kill their King? Are you sure?’
Ansigar questioned the man again; he answered, nodding, but with a look of puzzlement still on his face.
‘That’s what he said. He ordered them to charge us; they knew that they wouldn’t win because they normally fight as infantry and dislike fighting mounted, but the King had told them to obey so they had no choice.’
‘Ask him what he thought Gisbert was trying to achieve by sacrificing so many of them.’
‘He can only assume that he wanted to kill as many of us as possible,’ Ansigar said after listening to the answer, ‘so we’d have no chance of crossing the river against the two hundred men on the other side.’
‘He’s done a reasonable job of that,’ Paetus observed. ‘We’re down to just over a hundred and thirty troopers now; we won’t be able to force a crossing against those odds.’
‘Then we’ll follow the river until we find another place to cross,’ Sabinus suggested.
Vespasian looked at the force holding the north bank. ‘They’ll just keep pace with us. Ansigar, ask him if there’s a bridge anywhere.’
‘He says that there’s one at Mattium,’ Ansigar said after a brief conversation in German. ‘But it is very well guarded.’
‘I’m sure it is. Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we’re fucked; any suggestions?’
‘It seems to me that we either follow the river east and try and sneak across at night, or we storm the bridge, or we turn back.’
Vespasian and Sabinus looked at each other; they both knew what turning back would mean for Sabinus.
‘We’ll build a pyre for the dead,’ Vespasian said, ‘and then go east and see what Fortuna presents us with.’ He looked down at the Chatti captives. ‘Finish them, Ansigar.’
Ansigar took his sword and placed it on the young man’s throat; his eyes widened in terror and he began speaking with urgency. Ansigar lowered his weapon and the captive looked up at Vespasian, nodding furiously.
‘He says that he can help us cross the river,’ Ansigar informed them.
‘Oh really?’ Vespasian was unimpressed. ‘And just how does he think he can do that? Fly us across?’
‘No, he says that the men on the other side will shadow us wherever we go but they won’t cross because they’ll lose too much time in doing so. He says that the river does a large loop to the north and then curves back, about ten miles east of here; if we follow it until the point that it changes direction and then leave its course and head due east we’ll rejoin it again after three miles across country. The men on the other side will have to travel eight miles following the course, but we’ll have time to cross and be away before they catch up with us.’
Vespasian looked at the young man’s terrified eyes. ‘Do you trust him, Ansigar?’
‘There’s only one way to find out, sir.’
CHAPTER IX
The thick smoke of the funeral pyre climbing high into the air was still visible, four miles behind the Batavian column, as they trotted east towards the curve in the river. They kept to a slow pace, saving their horses for the gallop across country that would put sufficient distance between them and the Chatti for a river crossing to be possible. As predicted, the Chatti were shadowing their movement on the northern bank; their silhouettes could be occasionally glimpsed through the trees that lined both sides of the river, just over an arrow’s flight away.
The landscape had become gradually more agricultural; small, enclosed, family settlements of a few huts surrounding a longhouse were dotted around the gently undulating terrain; wood smoke from their cooking fires wafted skywards, occasionally adding a sweet tang to the air. Older men, boys and some women worked the fields, taking little notice of the column unless it came within a mile or so of them, then they would scuttle away to the relative safety of their settlements.
After a couple of hours’ steady progress they came to the top of a grassy hillock; half a mile before them the river swept north to begin its ponderous loop. Its tree-lined course wove a lazy pattern into the distance before disappearing behind a line of small hills that had forced its diversion.
The Chatti captive gabbled excitedly to Ansigar who then turned to Vespasian, Sabinus and Paetus riding behind him. ‘He says this is it. If we keep going straight we can’t miss the river as it loops back round.’
Vespasian glanced over to the north bank; the trees were too thick to see through but he knew that the Chatti were there. ‘We’d better make this quick, then; if they thrash their horses all the way they can still be at the crossing point a quarter of an hour after us.’
‘Their horses will be blown, though,’ Paetus pointed out.
‘Yeah, but their spears won’t be,’ Magnus grumbled from behind him.
Vespasian ignored the gloomy comment and kicked his horse forward. ‘Let’s get this done.’
The column surged down the gentle slope behind him, hooves thundering and bridles jingling, accelerating along the last half-mile of east-west-flowing river. To their north the occasional flitting shape beyond the trees testified to their shadows keeping pace with them. As the river curved away, Vespasian led the column straight on. He was vaguely aware of some faint shouts from their pursuers as they were forced north away from their quarry; he did not look back but, instead, concentrated on keeping his horse at a gallop that it could sustain for three miles and still be able to swim a river.
The countryside rolled out ahead of them and they began to rise steadily, their mounts forcing their muscles to work harder against gravity as each downward slope led to a longer ascent until they were at the summit of the line of small hills. The great oxbow of the river could be seen in its entirety and Vespasian felt a surge of relief as, directly ahead of him, he saw it return to its original course; the captive had not lied. Then a pall of smoke hovering over a hill on the other side of the river, a mile beyond the curve, made him realise with a jolt that he had also not been completely truthful. The smoke partially concealed a large stockade hilltop town.