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

The archer, who had lain in ambush along the edge of the ditch, was dead with six fire arrows in him. I backed across the plank, holding the dead king before me, while the Vandals roared, and arrows flickered to and fro, and a clamour of arms sounded on both sides. Across the inner ditch I withdrew behind the shields of a dozen men who had come out to help me, and was dragged to safety while a bowman fired at the plank on the outer ditch until it burst into flames.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Yes,” I muttered.

“It was a trick. I warned you.”

“Yes.” I bit my lip. “But a good one.”

“What about the hostage, his brother?”

I looked at him through my pain, standing between his guards, a sword at his throat. I sank to the ground and, while an orderly attended to my damaged shoulder, which was bleeding badly now, said curiously, “How did you expect to escape?”

He said, “You killed my brother.”

“He tried to jump the palisade,” said Aquila.

“Well?”

“It was a risk. I lost.”

“You did, indeed. You are the first Vandal to enter my camp alive.”

“Kill him,” snarled Fredegar.

“Send him back with his brother,” I said.

“Kill him,” said Fredegar again.

“Crucify him,” said Agilio angrily.

“Be quiet, my friends. Do what I tell you, Quintus.”

He started to protest, looked at my face, and then nodded. “Of course,” he said.

Supported by my orderly, I walked to the palisade. “Peoples of the East, listen to me.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Listen to me, I say.” Slowly the noise died down and the firing ceased. “Peoples of the East: I break no truce, I keep faith with my own people and with yours. Go back the way you came, or your women will weep blood for their unborn sons. I will not give you the city of Treverorum, or another yard of land. This land is mine.” I paused, and then cried, more loudly still: “I am Maximus. I give you only death and the body of your king. I give you—Gunderic.”

“Fire,” said a voice. The long arm of the ballista swung up, and there came a long, thin scream, as the two brothers, the one living and the other dead, returned to the earth and to their own kind.

For an hour there was a lull, while they watched us from behind the rough defences they had built within flight range of our arrows. They used movable shields of rough wood, the piled bodies of horses, and sacks of straw, mixed with hard earth or snow. The sun rose, and the cold winds blew again, and they came out of the flying snow like snarling wolves, and attacked us with the same ruthless courage, the same hungry despair, the same cold hatred that they had shown before. Time and again, Quintus and Fabianus led their cavalry out. Swinging right or left handed, they would close up, steady their line, move smoothly into a canter, while Quintus shouted “Steady, steady,” at the top of his voice. Then the gallop over the last two hundred yards, the charge smashed home, the swords red with blood, and men shouting; the break up of the formation, when it was every man for himself, and you had to watch for the man with the knife under your horse’s belly, as well as the man with the axe who tried to take off your thigh; the hasty rally, while horses and men were still warm but not yet blown; and then the charge back, every yard taking you nearer and nearer to safety. Safety was the cold wind, and the sweat on your face, and your horse blowing at the ground. Safety was the silence from barbarian voices, the swinging sword, the flying axe, and the smell of blood that was everywhere.

All day we fought; the men retiring in little groups back to the camp, to squat, exhausted on the ground and eat a hot mess of crumbled biscuit, chopped up veal and beans, with trembling fingers; and swallow wine with mouths dry with fear.

In his second charge, Quintus lost, in two minutes, three tribunes, four decurions, fifty-seven men and thirty-nine horses. And with each charge that followed, our losses grew heavier and heavier. The cavalry, backed by Fredegar’s Franks, held the wings; and the cohorts, and the auxiliaries, held the centre. We tried to save arrows and missiles as much as possible, and volunteers would rush out during a lull to snatch the arrows from the dead, as well as the spears that littered the ground beyond the palisade, like timber in a builder’s yard. They were the only weapons that broke up the terrible rushes of maddened, angry men, who stormed the ditches, now choked and full, climbing the bodies of their own dead, as they had done at Moguntiacum, to reach us behind our thin fence. And, at the end of each fresh assault, I would ride along the crooked rank of dark faced men, black with dirt and sweat, who leaned, panting, upon their swords or their spears, and do my best to encourage them with a smile and a jest. But each time I did so the lines of men in Roman helmets grew thinner, until there were few reserves left, except those who were wounded.