We would survive the night.
5
We survived longer than the night. In the morning, after being roused by insults and kicks, we were fed and watered by our German masters. The water tasted foul. The meat was tough and stringy.
Never have I enjoyed a meal more in my life.
Stumps smiled, the ghost of his true character rising. ‘Must be my birthday.’ The most basic of medical supplies had come with the food, and Stumps had subdued his pain as I stitched what was left of his ear together.
Funny how the ways in which we find happiness can change so quickly. I’m sure there are filthy-rich senators in Rome whose day is ruined by a stained toga, or too much seasoning on the third course of a meal. I have been guilty of such pettiness in my past, but that morning, for a brief moment at least, my situation was somehow forgotten. I had enough food in my shrunken belly so that I felt like a new man. The sun came from beneath the clouds to warm me with its rays, and beside me were two dear comrades. Yes, for a short time at least, I was a slave and I was happy. Life is strange.
We marched from the campsite with our shoulders a little straighter, our eyes a little more lively. The timbers were left in our wake, to what end I did not know, nor did I care. My near cheerful mind-set remained until we crested a wide ridge, and for the first time, I was given a glimpse at the scale of Arminius’s victorious army.
It was massive. The tribes had gathered and spread like a cloak across their land.
I turned to Brando. The Batavian had become a fixture beside me, and there was a reassurance in his solid presence.
‘The chieftains are lining up behind him,’ I said. ‘He’s shown them that Rome can be beaten.’
Brando nodded. ‘Germans like a strong man.’
And who was stronger than the prince who had destroyed three of Rome’s legions?
‘As long as he’s winning, they’ll stay with him,’ the Batavian added.
I looked at the winding snake of men that stretched ahead of us. It didn’t march with the same rigid formality as a Roman army, but it engendered the same kind of fear. What chance did the forts on the Lippe stand against such numbers? It looked as though nothing could stop Arminius until the Rhine, where numbers would count for far less as he would be forced to face Romans behind stone walls. Should he triumph there… what force would stand between him and Rome itself?
There was none.
Something had to stop Arminius and his army. Someone had to stand and fight.
It was another three days until we found them.
For three more days we marched beside the river. We passed forts reduced by the German vanguard, the pattern familiar: bodies lay in the dirt; screams rang out as men were tortured and women were raped; prisoners were taken; valuables were looted; at times our labour as slaves was called upon, and we dug graves or carried burdens. It was not a happy time, and for the most part men withdrew into themselves. Conversation was stifled as we sought to conserve our energy and minds.
The German army was not so inhibited. They sang as they marched. They sang as they killed. They sang as they looted. This was their hour, and they knew that, should they cross the Rhine, the innards of the Roman Empire were ripe for gutting.
And then, a week after the collapse of Varus’s army, something changed in the ranks of the German tribes. It was a feeling – untouchable, but it was there. The singing died away. There was less laughter. Rigid shoulders showed signs of nerves, not bluster.
‘Something’s happened.’ Brando sensed it also. ‘Bad for them and good for us.’
He made a gesture, and I shuffled with him so that we stood on the outside of the cohort of prisoners. We had been brought to a halt, and I watched as German dispatch riders sped by our flanks on flogged steeds. Brando strained his ears for snippets of conversation. Eventually, he heard enough to smile.
‘A fort’s closed its gates. A big one.’
‘Arminius can’t leave that on his flank,’ I thought out loud. The German prince had proven himself to be a masterful tactician so far. He would not make the blunder of leaving a Roman garrison in his wake, where it could raid his baggage train and supplies.
‘No,’ Brando agreed. ‘He’s going to attack it.’
I bore no witness to that assault, only to its aftermath. The Germans were not singing, now.
They were screaming.
We saw their wounded carried back from a battle that raged a mile away from us, the action obscured by a thin treeline. The fight had begun with a roar from German voices, but that defiance had quickly turned to pain. I saw that many of their wounded had shafts of arrows protruding from their red flesh.
Eventually, the clash of arms died to nothing. The screams of the wounded and the dying continued. I heard one word repeated over and over by the maimed as they passed our position. I asked Brando what it meant.
‘Mother.’
They started to carry the German dead from the field; I stopped counting at a hundred. Brando was smiling. I warned him to hide his emotions if he did not want to join his enemy in whatever afterlife the Germans believed in. He thanked me, suppressing his glee.
‘Germans don’t know how to lay a siege,’ the Batavian said. ‘The fort must have been ready for them, and now they’re fucked.’
But Brando was wrong. The German tribesmen may have been ignorant of siege warfare, but Arminius had served in the Roman ranks as a brilliant staff officer. In Pannonia he had seen war in all of its forms: open battle, skirmish and siege. He knew how to crack a nut, and he had hundreds of other trained men at his disposal – his Roman slaves.
Dusk was falling as we were herded forwards and tools were thrust into our hands. Germans with a grasp of Latin barked orders, and we began to dig. From the positioning of the earthworks, I could see that Arminius was attempting to set a ring of defensive positions around the fort, and of that bastion I now had my first sight.
The river, silver in the dusk, ran close to the southern wall, rendering that flank near impossible to attack. The fort’s palisade was thick and wooden, with guard towers flanking a wide gate that was barred in the face of the enemy. An enemy that lay dead beneath the defences, a thick carpet of the chequered cloaks and painted shields of the tribes.
‘What fort is this?’ I asked aloud.
‘Aliso,’ a veteran of the Nineteenth answered. ‘I’ve been here. This is my legion.’ He spoke with pride.
I looked from him to the German dead, and then to their living. They had been repulsed, but they were not beaten. Battle lines were being drawn, and blood would flow.
I intended to be within the fort’s walls when it did.
It was time to escape.
6
Arminius’s men worked us into the night. By torchlight we scooped out the soil of his growing defensive works, and by that same light I saw the animated faces of my comrades. The labour was hard and jarring, but the presence of a Roman force so near had given our muscles and minds the fuel we needed to go on. Questions burned inside our heads, but we kept them buried whilst our masters were close. They were angry after their first taste of defeat, and we didn’t want to give them an excuse to avenge themselves on Roman flesh. Brando looked cautiously over his shoulder, seeing our guards deep in animated conversation – it was time to talk.
‘What’s the garrison’s size?’ Brando asked the soldier who’d named the garrison as Nineteenth Legion, his parent unit.
‘Don’t ask me stuff like that,’ the man shot back quickly, glancing towards the guards. ‘They could speak Latin for all you know. I’m not looking to be tortured.’