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

I said, “Yes. Cavalry are so mobile that everyone forgets their damned horses need ten gallons of water a day on full work as well as thirty pounds of food.”

“What about the aqueduct?”

“Fabianus has instructions to poison the water tanks in the town. Get it broken, not in one place only, but in as many as possible.”

He said, “I dreamed of Rando’s daughter last night. Funny, wasn’t it? And when I woke I kept on thinking of those children across the river. I would like to have had children of my own—once. But not now.”

I said harshly, “Gallus is dead.”

“He was a soldier; that’s different.”

“I shall leave them nothing but the bare earth. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

The signal beacons shone red, and the black smoke drifted upwards, like feathers blown on the wind. A thin column of smoke answered from Moguntiacum, and I waited with my staff on the right hand flank of our position. In front of me were the stakes and the ditches, the bodies sprawled out under a thin sheet of snow, while the ravens circled overhead and cawed pitilessly. Below us the tribes were forming up for another attack on the town. They crouched behind the hummocked snow, behind burnt-out carts and hastily made fences, and behind the carefully piled bodies of their own dead. To my rear the legion began to pull out; waggons were harnessed and the wounded and the stores packed inside them; the carroballistae were hitched to the mule teams, and the men dismantled their tents and fell in by sections. Two squadrons of cavalry alone remained, spread out in a thin line along the length of the palisade, and between them, propped against the timber, staring out with blind eyes through the firing slits, their helmets on their heads and javelins in their nerveless hands, stood the frozen bodies of our dead, keeping their last watch upon the enemy below.

A cohort commander came running towards me, his long sword flapping at his side. “Everything is ready, sir. General Veronius has gone on ahead. We await your orders.”

“Tell the head of the column to march. When they contact our advance-guard they will take their orders from the general. I will join you with the rear-guard as soon as I can. I am only waiting for the tribune, Fabianus.”

He saluted and went back to his men. In a little while I heard the rumble of waggon wheels and the steady tramping of the cohorts as they marched out of earshot.

I waited. The water dripped through the hour-glass in my orderly’s hand until it was all gone. Then he turned it over and it started again. . . . I must have dozed for a while for I found myself yawning and shivering with cold. I turned to speak to him, and then I saw fire, great tongues of flame leaping up from the camp, both from the sides and the centre. Fireballs hurtled outwards into the surrounding town and the huddled rows of wooden shacks caught fire, one by one, as columns of black smoke, thick and oily, spread outwards and hid the flames from our sight. The shrieks and yells of the barbarians came to us, even at that distance, and then out of the smoke I saw what appeared to be a gigantic tortoise, ponderously breaking a way through the surging mass of men outside the gates. The tortoise seemed to flicker with bright pin points of light, and I knew that it was Fabianus and his men, using the testudo formation, and that the lights came from the sun’s reflection on the metal strips upon their shields. At the same time the old camp to our right went up in flames with a great whoof of sound, and there was a sudden wind upon our faces as we felt the blast of the explosion. The tortoise had charged clear, and then it disintegrated, as though at command, and the men who composed it took to their heels and ran towards us across the wet snow. Men were pouring out of the old camp too; legionaries, auxiliaries and seamen; their retreat covered by a handful of horsemen. I sent a troop of horse down the slope to cover the escape of Fabianus and his men, and all the while Moguntiacum blazed with fire until the fort and the town were consumed, and the barbarians were left with nothing but a handful of acres of charred wood and blackened stone as the prize of their conquest.

War bands of the Vandals and the Quadi came up the slope after the retreating legionaries, but the two ballistae left in our lines opened fire and dispersed them in a few moments.

Fabianus came up to me, the sweat dripping from his blackened face. His hair was singed, he had lost his helmet and his eyebrows were burned off. “We got out,” he said, and then grinned.

I smiled. “You got out.”

“It went up like a furnace, sir. With enough men, though, I could have held that fort for ever.”

“What are your casualties?”

“I left two hundred dead in the camp. They were all chest or face wounds.”

I said, “It was well held, but they have broken through further down the river. We’re falling back on Bingium. I’ve got your horses here. Get your men mounted and go on ahead. I stay with the rear-guard.”