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

For three days and three nights more they kept up a series of attacks, one after one, always using fresh men and never giving us time to rest or recover. We had too little sleep, it was iron cold and the wind blew from the east the whole time. Huddled in a blanket I would doze, shivering inside my tent until the trumpets blew the next alarm, and then I would stagger out, tired, aching and sick, to stand at my post beside the Eagle and direct the fighting once more. After the second day Quintus dismounted his cavalry and they joined ranks with the cohorts. He had used too many of his spare horses and all the animals were blown and needed rest. The loose snow on the slopes slowed his charges and tired both man and beast, so that he could achieve only a limited success each time that he took the offensive. On the fourth night it began to snow and the blizzard blinded us so that we could barely see. The bow strings of the archers got wet and two of the ballistae broke because the damp had rotted the cords. Soldiers who were careless, and many were through tiredness, forgot to dry their swords and awoke after sleeping to find the blades heavily rusted. But many died in their sleep from cold and exhaustion, and these, I think, were the happy ones. It snowed steadily for eight hours during that last day and then the wind got up and a blizzard howled across the plain and they attacked us once more with the ferocity born of despair. They could not reach us across the ditches, but their axes could and men who had been holding shields all day grew tired, till they could hold them no longer; and then had no need to. During that time much happened that I cannot remember. There was no night and there was no day; only a long grey twilight when sleeping and waking were one. I remember a figure on a horse cantering across the snow from the river and riding into our camp, and learning without surprise that it was Marius, who had been wounded and left for dead, who had stolen a horse and escaped. And I remember Quintus holding the wounded boy in his arms and saying, with great pride in his voice, “I told you my cavalry were hard to kill.” I remember messages coming in from the fort commanders, and they were always messages that were full of hope and courage, never of despair. Scudilio had led a counter-attack across the ice and broken the enemy, but had failed to link up with any of Goar’s Alans; Borbetomagus was still holding out, and though Sunno had offered the commander terms, he refused to surrender; Barbatio, the bridge set on fire beneath him, had withdrawn into the town, only ten of his original garrison surviving; Boudobrigo and Salisio had pushed patrols out into the surrounding countryside, and, though all was quiet, were keeping their men under arms, for the heights across the river were held in strength by the Burgundians of Guntiarus. Only from Gallus in the auxiliary camp did I detect a note of strain. He sent me a short note when the blizzard was at its height, scrawled laboriously on a wax tablet. “We are just holding them, but the attacks are coming from the rear now as well as from across the ice. The auxiliaries are splendid and the seamen fight well. It feels strange fighting on land again. We are all very tired.”’

On the morning of the seventh day, when the wind had dropped a little, the Chief Centurion came up to me where I was talking to a group of wounded men. He was unshaven and his eyes were rimmed with black. He said in a low voice, “We have been trying to signal the auxiliary camp, sir, but there is no reply.”

“Keep trying,” I said.

He shook his head. “They have been over-run, sir.”

I walked with him out to the north-east corner of the camp and shaded my eyes. As far as I could judge, the camp still stood but it was half concealed now by a thick pall of black smoke. The ground all round it was dark with men, the living and the dead; but they were not ours. We walked back through a litter of tents, horses, stores and men, to my headquarters. I did not know what to say.

Aquila said, “They are all round Moguntiacum too, sir. They’ve got a big camp to the south of the town. They must have made a fresh crossing higher up, during the night.”

I looked at the map while Quintus played with his sword belt and Aquila chewed at a dry biscuit. “My first meal to-day,” he said, apologetically. My armour bearer squatted in a corner, rubbing the straps of my breast-plate with a greasy rag, and the oil lamp flickered in the cold air. I looked at the map again. The word that the camp had fallen must have spread, for the cohort commanders, Marius among them, came into my tent without waiting to be ordered.

They stood there silently, patiently waiting to be told what to do; waiting for me to deliver a stream of miraculous orders that would set all to right. They had great faith.