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

“Do you really think so? He could have been on his way to Arelate and safety by now, with the rest of them. It doesn’t matter about the past. It takes courage, Maximus, to sit alone in a panic-stricken city and decide that the right thing to do is to collect a few men with rusty swords, and go out to help a man who despises you.” He looked at me then. “I should know that. It takes even more courage to admit that you are wrong.”

I did not answer him and he turned his face to the wall.

Presently he said, in a tired voice, “What is the plan far to-morrow?”

“Hold the ditches and the palisade. I shall use the cavalry only for counter-attacks and to relieve pressure, if things get difficult.”

“Maximus?”

“Yes.”

“Do you wish now you had refused Stilicho’s request?”

I was silent.

“Do you?”

“I am not afraid, Quintus, if that is what you mean.” I looked up, and saw him watching me with unhappy eyes. I smiled. I said, “You know, I was happy on the Wall. Yes, I mean that. I have never felt at home here in Germania.”

He said, “If I hadn’t ridden to Eburacum that day—only Saturninus knew why I went. I owed so much.”

“I understand.”

He said, “I wish I could believe that.”

“Get some sleep. We shall need all we can get from now on.”

Later, I went the rounds of the camp. I inspected the sentries, cheered the wounded with stupid jokes, and talked with my cohort commanders. On my return, I saw a man being sick in the snow. I went across to him, thinking it was a wounded soldier who had been given too much broth. He straightened up when he heard me coming, and turned awkwardly away. I saw then that it was Artorius. He was bare-headed, and he had his hands to his mouth. I recognised the look on his face only too well, so I called after him.

“No,” I said. “Just a moment.”

He stopped and turned round, hopelessly. He tried to stand to attention, and I knew what it must be like to be the wild beast in the arena when it has cornered its human victim. It would have looked just like Artorius then.

“Something disagreed with me,” he mumbled, and then added a hasty, ‘sir’, as though I might hit him for omitting it.

“Are you very afraid?” I said.

He nodded, his knuckles to his mouth. I could see his face quiver.

“So am I,” I said. “I am too afraid to be sick any more.”

He stared at me incredulously, as though I were laughing at him. “But you are a soldier,” he said.

“Oh, yes, but it doesn’t stop you being afraid. We all are: it is the waiting before-hand. It’s not so bad when the battle line is drawn up, and you watch for the signal to advance. You can smell your own sweat and the sweat of the men beside you. You hug to yourself the feeling that they are there, guarding your left and your right. You bolster yourself up with little jokes out of a dry mouth, and they answer you, and you pretend it’s a game, like all the training exercises that have gone before. You pretend the worst that can happen is a dressing-down from the Legate and an extra fatigue from an irate centurion. Then the advance is sounded and the line moves forward. Inevitably, you spread out to avoid rough ground or a clump of bushes, and your companions are no longer within touching distance. You see the enemy hurl their javelins, and men scream and go down. You don’t worry about being hit; that’s the funny part of it. You have the soldier’s illusion of invulnerability. It is always the other man who will be wounded or killed—never yourself. And the more this happens—even though it is to your friends—the stronger the feeling. If you didn’t have it, you could never advance at all.”

I paused. His face had lost, for the moment any way, that frightened look. He was absorbed in what I was saying.

I said, “But then, as you get closer to the waiting enemy, comes a terrible sense of isolation. The man on your left, five yards away, might as well be five thousand. It grows and grows, this feeling of loneliness, until you are sure that you must be the only man advancing in the whole of your army. Then, you are afraid, and you want to turn and run. Only a curious sense of pride keeps you going. And then the enemy strikes at you with his spear or his sword, and discipline and training take over, and from that moment on you don’t have time to worry about fear or loneliness any more. You just fight, and you go on fighting until it is all over.”

He said, “You make it sound so easy.”

“When it comes to the point, it is.”

He lowered his head. “I thought I had the courage,” he said. “It seemed to be so easy in my room in the Basilica. They were all leaving, and I was ashamed. I knew then that we had let you down, and that somewhere out here you were all risking your lives, just for us. I thought—I thought I must do something too; even though it was so late. I didn’t know I was such a coward.” He tried hard to raise a smile. “It is humiliating,” he said. “You must despise people like me.”