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

“Oh, block up the strong room, of course. If anything goes wrong the money will still be there for our successors. They won’t want to use their own burial fund on us.”

Quintus looked at the sky. “It will be a fine day. We shall not have to shiver for long.”

Later that morning I altered the dispositions of my troops and sent the suspected ones out of camp upon patrols. In the afternoon I began to block up the south portal of the east gate; and all the while the air was thick with a great rasping buzz as the centuries sharpened their swords on the iron rim of the stone tank by the north gate. Then, as night fell, I paraded my few men and we stood to arms along the Wall. I lit the signal fires and they flared up into the night, but no answering flare came from the mile castles to our right and left. Then a glow-worm shone faintly in the west, and I knew that Vindolanda had caught our message; but from the east came no answering signal. The Arcani, faithful in their treachery, waited in silence for their friends.

“At ease,” I said softly, and the men leaned against the parapet and rubbed their hands gently against the hafts of their spears. We had done all that we could. There was nothing left to do now except wait, and the waiting was not for long.

They came at dawn, and the scarlet disc of the rising sun was an omen that foretold the deaths of those who stood against them. The savage violence of their first silent rush carried the defences at many points. Mile castle after mile castle opened its gates and they streamed through to burn huts, destroy the young and old, and make slaves of the women who did not die beneath the violence of their lust. Then they moved on to crush the few forts and towers that dared to stand against them. Their ships came in from the sea like hungry wolves, Scotti on the east coast and Saxons on the west. They outflanked the forts who resisted and their men poured ashore like a spring tide and overwhelmed them. The wounded and the dying, the living and the dead; all were flung contemptuouly from the walls. Their bodies choked every ditch and every well, and there was blood and smoke and fire through the whole land.

We held our fort for two long days of continual fighting, till we were cut off and surrounded by the very men who had once called themselves my soldiers; men whom I had liked and trusted and helped; men whose griefs I had shared and whose happiness had meant the world to me. The fort was a shambles, and somewhere beneath the floor of a gutted hut in the settlement outside lay a woman who had smiled even as I killed her.

Twice I heard his voice outside the walls, crying hoarsely to his men, though I never saw him—this man who had become a god. He cried for our destruction but I was too exhausted to feel hate, too angry to feel pity. Vitalius was gone and Saturninus wounded. The tribesmen were even now burning brushwood against the oak doors of the fort, the granaries had been set on fire and the north wall had been abandoned to the enemy and our crumpled dead. Suddenly I could stand it no longer. I had no stomach to fight for a lost cause, a general who was dead (they showed us his head upon a pole) and a wall that had been betrayed. With the remnants of my men, Saturninus and I cut our way out through the smoke and set off for Eburacum.

The road to the south told its own story. It was lined with bodies, little groups of men who had held on, as we had, and then retreated stubbornly, still fighting until they were overwhelmed. At Bravoniacum we found the supply fort gutted and the remnants of the Ala Petriana, our finest cavalry, among the blackened bodies. It was there that Quintus joined us, riding a tired horse. He was quite alone. At Maglona we made contact with the Second Ala of Astures. They had suffered few casualties and so we marched the rest of the way to Eburacum under their protection.

There we learned that a Saxon fleet had landed in the southeast; the great sea forts that Quintus knew so well had been silenced; betrayed by treachery from within, overcome by violence from without. And somewhere among the broken catapults, Nectaridus, Count of the Saxon Shore, lay silent in the company of his men. In answer to Fullofaudes’ summons the Second Augusta, at Isca, was already marching across Britannia but, harassed by raids and ambushes, their progress was slow. A grey-faced decurion who had pushed on ahead alone told us bluntly that they would never reach us in time. His worst news he kept to the last. The Attacotti, a confederacy of tribes from Hibernia, had landed at Mona, and they were even now pouring through the mountain passes into the undefended centre of the island. The Twentieth, cut to pieces, had fallen back on Viroconium, and behind them Deva, unguarded save for a handful of veterans, was already a wrecked and smoking ruin.