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

“They cannot stop him. He and his followers are on the north-east side of the camp, and if there is fighting they know that you will cross the river and attack them. They are all terrified of your ships. As well as cattle.” He chuckled again. “All this my spies have told me. Well, they will leave, pretending to return to their old lands; but, a day’s march from the camp, they will wheel round and make for my territory. All will be well.”

I looked from Marcomir to Quintus. “That will give us sixteen thousand men on the east bank,” I said slowly. He knew what I was thinking. He said, “How would we get the legion across? Even foot soldiers in boats would take time; horses would take longer. Without cavalry it would be too great a risk. We would need a bridge and there is no bridge.” He looked at me and said deliberately, “But we could build one, of course.”

“No.”

Marcomir looked at us in turn. I think he sensed that all was not well between us. He said impatiently, “What is your plan then, if you do not intend to cross or cannot cross? Wait for ever till they make the first move?”

I said, “Be patient. For how much longer can they feed themselves in that huge camp? They are nearly a hundred thousand against our thirty. Even with the advantage of surprise our two thousand horsemen would be hardly enough to turn the balance. We should need more than luck to beat them in pitched battle.”

Marcomir scratched his beard. “It is the only chance you will have to attack them. Do you rather wish it that they should attack you?”

Quintus said, “Battles are rarely won on the defensive.”

“It is a great risk,” I said. “Let Goar’s men join us first. I want no paper armies, like other generals. Let them weaken themselves further; it will be to our advantage. We have time on our side.”

“But—”

“No,” I said. “If we lose all, on one throw of the dice, then Gaul is theirs. No more armies will stand in their way.”

Quintus said, “What we need is a strong wind in the right direction. Then we might burn their camp. I think that fire is the only thing that will destroy them without risk to ourselves. Fire knows no fear.”

I ignored the jibe. “Fire or hunger,” I said curtly, and we left the matter as it stood.

Marcomir’s wedding took place in the berg of Guntiarus on a hot day, and the whole area was packed with people. It was as though every Burgundian, east of the Rhenus, was determined to be present at the ceremony. The women wore their finery, and the men their best clothes. The daughter of Rando was there, somewhere, a prisoner in one of the huts, and I told Marcomir she would be better in my hands. I would need her as a bargaining counter—if it ever came to bargaining again. He agreed, readily enough. “She is of no more interest to me now,” he said cheerfully. His mind was full of the wedding; it was not a time for interest in slave girls. I was tired and I remembered little of it all afterwards except as the memory of a dream I had once been part of.

In the King’s Hall I found Marcomir with his arm round an elderly man with a battered face, broken and scarred by years of battle. “This is Fredegar,” he said. “He was my father’s servant and friend, and he taught me to ride and to be a warrior. He has been my sword-brother all my life, and I listen to him because he is wise.”

Fredegar smiled grimly. “I talk and you listen. That is so.” He put his hand on my arm and it was the hardest hand I had ever felt. “I give him advice, oh yes, and he does the opposite. That is how it goes with the young.” He had a hoarse voice and I had difficulty, at times, in understanding him. He spoke in looks rather than words and had the cold blue eyes of his people. He was, I noticed, held in great respect by many Burgundians as well as Franks and had been a great fighter in his time. He was a man to like or be afraid of.

The wedding began with a complicated ceremony of present giving and we all sweated in the heat of the Hall while the girl and the man exchanged gifts, and their relatives examined them and argued about them interminably. Fredegar said, “It is our custom, you see. The husband brings a dower; those oxen outside in the pen, and the horses. The number was fixed a long while ago. Now he gives her a bridle made by our best craftsmen—see how beautiful it is—and a shield and a spear. They are his but he gives them to her. And she—watch now—offers him armour; a helmet and breast-plate that her father has had made.”

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“It is a sign.” He grunted and pulled at his beard. “It signifies that they share the same work, the same happiness and the same danger. Listen, Guntiraus speaks the words.”