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

By midday the garrison of the south island were in difficulties. They were completely surrounded; our fireballs were neutralised by the snow and ice, and all our efforts to dislodge them proved a failure. I nodded to a waiting man and a trumpet sounded; and the garrison, who had not lost a man, fired the positions they had held so well and turned and cut their way out and retreated grimly, in testudo formation, back across the ice to the harbour area. Had it been summer, or even a normal winter, the island would have been a furnace, a wall of fire they could not penetrate, but the snow again neutralised the effects of the fire, and though some damage was caused, it was not great. When the flames had died down the tribesmen crowded on to the island and used our broken defences for cover while our ballistae from the camp fired on them without pause.

“Shorten the range,” I said. “The ice is hummocked badly on this side. It will slow them up considerably.”

“We shall never stop them,” said a soldier, panic in his voice.

“Pull yourself together,” I said. “These are only men, not gods.”

The lower island was in difficulties now and the enemy’s losses were enormous.

“Fire,” shouted Fabianus, and the arrow hail flew from the walls at the column climbing the ice ridges once more towards the broken bridge. Even when they reached the bank they would have an outer palisade, a triple row of sunken stakes with iron hard points, between them and the ditches. They would have to climb their own dead to reach the fort at all. I did not think that their ration of courage would last that long.

All afternoon the fighting continued. The enemy were held in check in their efforts to take both the harbour and lower islands. They had failed to storm the positions and crouched behind their own dead, flicking arrows at our men whenever they showed themselves, and waited for their chiefs to make a decision. Their waggons lined the east bank now and groups of horsemen were plunging down the slope onto the ice, while there was a constant movement to and fro, of men carrying arms and bundles of arrows. By now, however, Barbatio was in difficulties. He had been half encircled by the enemy, and the Vandals were moving across the river to his right, keeping out of range and probing the defensive power of the town walls. It would not be long before they outflanked the town altogether.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the movement of horsemen upon the ice. I touched Fabianus upon the arm. “Good luck. May fortune smile on us all. I will see you later.” I ran down the steps, mounted my horse and cantered out of the camp and up the smooth slope towards the road and the ditches where my legion now stood at arms. They cheered me as they saw me coming, and I joined Quintus on the ridge where the cavalry stood in lines, dismounted and shivering a little in the cold. “They cannot keep this up,” I said. “Oh for six legions, Quintus. Give me six legions and I would save Gaul in an afternoon.”

It was beginning to get dark now; even so I could see that the garrisons of the two remaining islands were in difficulties. Fires were burning at several points within the defences, and the enemy, aided by make-shift wooden shields, had closed in on the palisades on the east and were hurling rocks and missiles at them, while others were battering at the timber with a handheld ram.

An hour later darkness fell, and all night long we could see a procession of torches crossing the river as the tribesmen moved backwards and forwards with supplies of food, fuel and weapons. All night they kept up their attacks and I could see the fireballs hurtling outwards from the bridge where Barbatio made his stand, and hear the cries of the legionaries in the fort below me as they manned the walls, hour after hour, in the freezing cold. When dawn came I received a signal to say that the tribesmen had enfiladed the town on the south side, had been repulsed in their attacks on the old camp, but were pressing heavily against the walls of Moguntiacum. A signal from Fabianus informed me that a party of men had crept under the bridge in the night and were trying to get a fire going. Barbatio had made a sortie to dislodge them, but without success. It would not be long before he was forced to retreat.