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

I said, “I was not generous earlier on. I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” I held out my hand and gripped him by the arm. “I know you are not a fighting man,” I said. “That is not so very important. But you have come to help us. That is important.”

He wiped his mouth. He said, “Will it be long? It’s the waiting that is so hard.”

“Two hours at the most, Artorius. If you can endure that two hours, you will never be frightened again.”

XIX

THEY CAME AGAINST us in the early down, and only the startled cawing of the rooks, disturbed at their horrible feast, gave warning of their approach. They were more cautious now, determined to wear us down, as a wolf pack wears dawn a stag that it is hunting. Flights of arrows, a quick charge, a flight of axes, a retreat, silence, and a flight of arrows again. They circled the defences, probing for the weak spots. A sudden rush on the flanks that could only be broken by a charge of horse, a rush through the centre that even the carroballistae could barely check. Hour after hour they kept it up, and hour after hour my men stood at the palisades until they fell or were relieved. By midday Marius was dead, killed leading a desperate counter-attack against the enemy’s barricades; and Agilio had been badly wounded in the chest. In the afternoon it began to snow and they attacked again; grey, ghastly figures looming out of the swirling storm, to throw death with their two hands, or to receive it—it was all one to them. The ditches were choked with their dead and their wounded, and still they came, an endless stream of men, who breathed hatred and envy of all that we stood for. Fire arrows came sizzling out of the darkening sky, to start pools of flame that spluttered along the palisade, burst into roars of white fire when they landed on a waggon, or set a horse screaming with agony when it was hit. There was no respite, no rest of any kind. The hard, relentless pressure was maintained all day, all evening and all night, so that men who were trying to sleep could not do so, because of the sounds of the dying, the exultant cries of the enemy, and the smell of fire upon the snow.

At midnight I held a war council in the signal tower.

“We are out of arrows, nearly,” I said. Julius Optatus nodded, grimly. “The last issue has just been made—thirty to a man. We have issued the last javelins—fifteen to a man. The ballistae are short of missiles, and the carroballistae have about thirty bolts each. When those are gone we shall have only our bare hands.”

No-one spoke. They stood round me in a half circle, gaunt and unsmiling; but they were with me, and I was glad.

“Fabianus, get the waggons hitched up and put the wounded aboard. Those who can walk must drive the waggons or go with them. They are to make for Treverorum and seek shelter where they can find it. I suggest they make for the Temple district. They will be safer there than in houses where there are men and women, food and valuables. Get them out before daylight.”

Quintus, his arm in a sling, said, “What do you want us to do, Maximus? We will do whatever you ask.”

“In a moment,” I said. I turned to Fredegar, who had a bloody bandage about his head. In his thick furs, and with his grey beard, he looked like some fierce and indomitable bear. “This is not your fight,” I said. “Not any longer. I suggest you withdraw your men. Make terms, if you wish, or go into the hills.”

He said, “Are you asking me to go? Or is it an order?”

I touched his shoulder. “It is neither a request nor an order. It is just a suggestion.”

He said, “I served Marcomir’s father and, from the day the boy threw his first spear, I stood always on his left side. I should have stood there on the day he died, but the fates willed it otherwise.” He reached for the wine jug and gulped down a great draught. Spots of wine hung on his beard like blood. “I will tell my men what you said, but I do not think they will hear me. As for myself—” He paused. He said, “I stay.”

I looked at Quintus, who shrugged his shoulder. I turned to Aquila. “Are you sorry now that you did not kill me that day in Treverorum and elect another emperor?”

He flashed a smile. He said, “Afterwards I was ashamed.”

I said, “I can only repeat what I said before at Moguntiacum. If any man wishes to go, then let him go now— quickly.”

Aquila touched the standard with his big hands. “I carried this many times through many years when it had the right to be ashamed of the soldiers who called it theirs. Now I am not ashamed. I have no wish to be a Vandal slave.”

The door rattled in the wind, and I was reminded of the night when Stilicho came to my tent with an officer, or an order—what it was I could not remember; I was too tired. It did not matter anyway. It had all led to this—this narrow circle of existence: a dozen exhausted men, gathered in a wooden hut on a winter’s night, and planning quite calmly how best they might end their lives.

Aquila said, “We have a thousand men under arms on foot.”

“Eight hundred horse,” said Quintus.