Eagle in the Snow: A Novel of General Maximus and Rome's Last Stand

I looked. The plain, that desolate waste of dead ground between their camp and the foothills, was alive with men, as an anthill is alive with ants. I had never seen such a host before. There were so many that they darkened the ground and the snow was blotted out. One column was making its way steadily across the plain at an angle so that it would reach the river opposite the lower island. Two more columns were moving directly for the upper island, and a fourth column was heading straight towards the broken bridge. Each column was spread over a front of at least four hundred yards, while behind, in the distance, could be seen waggons, mules, ponies and still more people. It was not an army on the move: it was an entire nation.

Fabianus said, “We shall never stop them.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They are weak with starvation, and desperate too. We can stop them if we fight hard enough. They’ve never fought a legion before.”

It was an incredible sight. I knew now why the Huns—so it was said—struck such terror into the hearts of their foes. It was the sheer, massive weight of the numbers; the appalling sight of that remorseless advance, as though the whole world had gathered together in one place, and by the simple act of walking forward, threatened to overwhelm it. The columns came on steadily and without haste. It seemed as though nothing would be able to stop them. On the river’s edge they paused for a fraction of time and then came out slowly onto the ice, onto the surface of that infernal river that had for so long been our friend and which had now betrayed us. The going was difficult for them, men slipped and stumbled and fell, scrambling awkwardly from one frozen patch to the next; and, by straining my eyes, I could see the banners they carried in their advance, long poles to which were fixed the bleached and grinning skulls of their enemies; our own dead, no doubt, from the fight on the east bank.

They were a third of the way across now and the columns facing the islands were flattening out, like the heads of mushrooms, very close to the banks where my legionaries crouched in concealment.

I raised my sword above my head and then dropped it. A ballista fired and its flaming ball was the signal for which my men waited.

The garrisons on the islands opened fire. Balls of glowing flame arched through the air and crashed, one after one, into the massed ranks of the enemy. The arrow hail flew and men dropped with choking grunts, or cowered, screaming, their hands over their heads as the unquenchable fire hit them. The bolts from the carroballistae hammered gaps in the line and men died at the rate of one every three seconds. Our men had the range to a yard and they fired not only at those directly advancing, but at those behind them and at those upon the banks in their rear. It was impossible to miss. It appeared to be equally impossible to check their advance. For every man that died another filled his place, and if the front ranks checked or tried to take cover, they were pressed upon by the weight of men from behind.

For over five hundred days we had halted their march, checked their ambitions, forced them into hunger, made them watch their wives starve and their children die. Every death in that camp of every man, of every woman, and of every child, no matter what the cause might have been, was blamed on us. We were the enemy and they would destroy us out of fear and out of hatred and out of revenge. They were a christian people, and it must be so, though only a pagan, perhaps, could understand.

The south island, closer to the east bank than the others, was quickly surrounded and the worst of the early fighting took place there. It was completely protected by a high palisade and wooden towers, from which our archers shot them down while they beat at the wooden defences with their axes. They reached for it over the piled bodies of their dead, and I knew it would not be long before we were over-run. They had ladders and poles and ballistae of their own, crude affairs, but effective enough, and I could see that these were already in action, from the fireballs that came from the east bank. The northern island was under fire now, and the column advancing on the bridge had been checked by Barbatio and his ballistae. They tried to spread out and encircle him but the fire power of the defenders was too great, and the tribesmen wavered and then broke back to the protection of their own bank.