CHAPTER XIII

‘THEIR ONLY OPTION now was to continue to run in the same direction, even though he knew that Erminatz wasn’t there, as that was the quickest way out of the forest,’ Thumelicatz mused as Aius went about the tent lighting lamps against the fading of the day. ‘What he didn’t know was that to leave the Teutoburg Wald he had to negotiate the Teutoburg Pass. Tiburtius, take it from dawn on the fourth day.’

Squinting in the light of the newly lit lamps the old slave took a few moments to find the right place.

‘They’re on the move,’ Siegimeri, my father, said as we and the kings of all the tribes peered from the forest; the first rays of the sun touched the leaden sky from beneath, slashing its undulations with deep red.

I remember it for in Cheruscian lore a red sky in the morning is a warning from the Thunderer of his intent to swing his hammer that day; the sight of it warmed my heart because with his aid I knew that we would sweep Rome from his lands in but a few hours.

I watched the bedraggled cohorts form up within their makeshift fortifications on the hill in the field of stone and then march northwest in a column that was now less than half as long as it had been four days earlier: no more than fifteen hundred paces, not even a Roman mile. ‘Keep all the tribes moving,’ I said to the kings around me, ‘so that the column doesn’t deviate from its path; as we near the Chalk Giant we shall move ahead of them and be waiting. There the ground will turn the same colour as the sky and that place will be forever sacred, scattered with the bones of the unburied foe.’ Even Adgandestrius muttered into his beard his approval of the sentiment as we disbanded and returned to our waiting men who had all slept and broken their fasts well.

We were ready for the final day.

And so was the Thunderer; before the sun had even reached a hand’s breadth above the horizon Donar’s hammer crashed and again split the heavens asunder and water cascaded down. But we sons of All Men were not weighed down by equipment that grows sodden; once a cloak and a pair of breeks are wet that is that. The Romans, however, had leather shield coverings and leather bags hanging from their marching yokes and they grew heavy with the rain of four days so that the exhausted troops bearing them suffered even more under the strain. The stragglers, and there were many, were being either slaughtered or rounded up for our fires by the time the last element of the column was just half a mile from the hill. Chains of them, roped about the neck, were led away for the celebrations that would follow our victory; and of victory I now had no doubt for it was obvious that, if they were going to head for open ground and then turn and fight us, they had to get through the Teutoburg Pass, and the pass, thanks to Engilram, was now closed.

As the morning drew on, the rain showed no signs of abating; the terrain became more jagged and the forest thicker so that the progress of the Roman column slowed to a crawl. Their pioneers, protected by auxiliary Gauls dismounted for the task, struggled to clear a passage for the column, felling trees and bridging rivers that were, by now, high and fast. But our men kept at them, pelting them with javelins and arrows, many of which got past the shields of the covering auxiliaries, so that their numbers dwindled and progress became even slower. With the main part of the column at a virtual standstill, the remaining legionaries of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth legions were able to bring their shields to bear far easier and their defence became more effective; nothing was more harmful to our cause than our intended victims gaining some hope.

‘Stop the attacks on the pioneers and the vanguard, Vulferam,’ I ordered as it became clear to me what was needed.

Vulferam looked at me, not understanding.

‘We have to let them speed up,’ I explained, ‘so that they are more disordered; we can’t pierce their defences when they’re stationary.’

‘Then how will we deal with them when we get them to the killing ground? They’ll be stationary there.’

I smiled at him. ‘You’ll see; trust me. There’re less than four miles to go now to the ambush site; I’m going to go forward with half our men. You stay here and keep tearing at them as they move off. I’ll see you in the shadow of the Chalk Giant.’

And so I left him and, taking half of the Cherusci with me, slipped through the trees out of sight of the Roman column to join Engilram and his Bructeri warriors waiting at the place chosen for the deaths of so many Romans: the Teutoburg Pass where the forest meets the marsh. Anxious as I was to reach the site, I went ahead, leaving my men in the charge of my father.

‘As you can see, the Chalk Giant funnels the pass ever closer to the marsh,’ Engilram said, as we stood in the teeming rain behind a rough, earthen wall, looking down onto the open ground, mainly pasture, at the base of the Chalk Giant; at its southeastern end, where the column would appear, it was four hundred paces wide, but it gradually narrowed until the mouth of the pass, beyond which lay the open ground where the legions could turn and face us, was little more than a hundred. He pointed beyond it to what looked like a huge area of heathland that went north as far as the eye could see. ‘That is the marsh, and treacherous marsh at that, especially after all this rain. There is no escape through that unless you have the luck and cunning of Loki. A few may get across it but most will be sucked under.’ He then diverted my attention northwest to the narrow far end of the diminishing pass and the trees beyond. ‘My men have cut down much of that wood so that the trunks will impede anyone trying to escape the pass in that direction. I’ve also put five hundred of my men there to defend the barricade should they make a concerted effort to break out.’

I nodded in approval. ‘Well done, my friend; and what of the other matter?’

‘It’s all in hand, come.’

Engilram led me diagonally up the hill, so that we soon lost sight of the pasture through the trees; after a few hundred paces there was a scene that filled me with glee: carts, scores of them and each covered with an ox-hide sheet to protect the contents from the endless rain. He pulled one back to reveal hundreds of javelins. ‘They were hastily made but they will do the job. I estimate that there are five hundred or more in each cart.’

I tried to count the carts.

‘Over sixty,’ Engilram said, reading my thoughts. ‘We have something between thirty-five and forty thousand missiles to hurl at them.’

I grinned at the old king of the Bructeri. ‘That should do it.’

‘I hope so. I’ve placed my nephew in charge of distributing them as the warriors arrive; each man will have four until they run out, and then they will hide behind that earthen wall we were at so that they won’t be seen. The first volley will come as a complete surprise.’

This was what I had wanted to hear; Engilram had not let me down: the way to neutralise the Roman shield wall, before it had time to be deployed, was in position. As my men arrived they were given their javelins and went on to join the Bructeri warriors at the wall in the trees, about ten paces from the bottom of the hill. Crouching there in their hundreds they were invisible from the open ground. The rest stayed further up the hill, in the trees, ready to charge down once the ambush was sprung. I calculated that we had in the region of five thousand warriors on the Chalk Giant with more arriving all the time as the column drew closer. Soon the Chatti and Sugambri came in, having yielded their place at the rear of the column to the Marsi and the Chauci who would be the ones to block off any possible retreat from the killing ground, now lush green with pasture fed by rain but soon to be turned crimson by the blood of men who should not be there.

And so we waited as the shouts and screams from within the forest grew closer for there were still warriors harrying the column, keeping their fear up by killing and maiming as well as taking many prisoners.

Closer came the sound of bloodshed and we waited in silence, each warrior knowing that surprise would be worth many more deaths than if the legions were expecting a javelin-storm. Louder it became until finally the head of the column appeared through the trees at the far end of the open pasture. Immediately they speeded up, almost jogging across the long, uncropped grass. Behind them more emerged, the remnants of the first cohort of the Seventeenth all breaking into a quick march. Suddenly the whole pasture was filling up with legionaries desperate to use the open ground to perhaps pull away from their tormentors, if only for a little while, to gain some respite. On they came and when the head of the Seventeenth was level with me, in my position halfway along the open ground, the Eighteenth’s Eagle appeared from the woods. Cavalry, who had been dismounted as they were worse than useless in the confined space of the forest, now remounted, and began to canter forward, down either side of the column. I watched, hardly daring to breath, as the doomed legions advanced. Soon the Eagle of the Nineteenth was visible and the space of the column had greatly increased, which, in turn, meant that their order was not so tight; ranks were starting to draw apart from one another. Despite the bellowing of centurions and optios to keep a solid formation, the legionaries’ natural fear of what was pursuing them caused them to ignore the shouts and beatings of vine canes.

As the middle cohorts of the Eighteenth Legion drew level with me I pulled down the mask on my helm, muttered a quick prayer to the Thunderer and, leaping to my feet, pulled back my throwing arm to hurl a javelin high into the air. By the time it reached the apex of its flight it was one of thousands cast at the Roman formation and as it slammed through the top of a helm, downing a legionary like a wet sack, the second volley had already been launched and the warriors hiding further up the slope had charged forward and were coming up to us. And so I vaulted the wall; letting loose another javelin and, crying the war cry of our Cheruscian fathers, I led my people forward.

Joy flowed through me as, at last, the opportunity to rid our Fatherland of the men from the south had arrived. There they were, a mere fifty paces away from us, disordered and dying under a hail of javelins that had turned the already slate grey sky the colour of dusk. Ten thousand missiles fell on them in the first ten heartbeats of the ambush and ten thousand fell in the next ten; three thousand lives were reaped in that short time, depleting their numbers by almost a third.

The surprise with which we had ambushed them was complete; just when they thought they had the chance to pull away, just when they were concentrating on what was in front of them, we screamed out of the forest to their left, teeth bared in hatred, death in our eyes: the men of the north, the product of their worst nightmares, manifesting out of the dark northern forest so close to them. Down, the javelin hail continued to storm, felling men as they struggled to raise their sodden shields above their heads; but the endless rain had taken its toll, and the glue that bound the layers of wood together had started to fail, causing the shields to disintegrate under the multiple impacts. And so we raced from the wall, hurling our missiles directly at the column so that the flankers, already disordered from losing formation as they sped across the open ground, were thumped back, impaled, for they could not deploy their shield wall in time so far were they from one another. My last javelin slashed through a centurion’s eye, exploding out of the back of his transverse-plumed helmet, arching him back, shrieking, his sword flying into the air; around him his men wavered as their officer clattered to the ground to expel his last few moaned breaths. Before their optio could shout some order into his men we slammed into them, our swords whirring above our heads, our spines curved back, ready for the downwards blow; and so they came, almost together, blades slashing down, cleaving flesh and bone or spraying plumes of sparks as they scraped across armour. Slamming the boss of my shield forward, knocking the wind from a hysterical youth, I took off his sword arm in a spray of blood, casting him shrieking to the ground to be slashed by the warriors following me.

All along the length of the column we tore into them with javelins hurtling over our heads to rip into the rear ranks; here and there the line buckled, like a writhing snake, but in the main it held firm; the six thousand legionaries still standing did not just wash away under the full force of our tide of hatred. However terrified they were, however surprised and disordered, they managed to stagger a few steps back and then, by the sheer will-power produced by the instinct to survive, they planted their feet firm and the shields started to lock together. But still the warriors kept flooding down the hill, piling in behind us adding their weight to the scrimmage, and I saw, with horror, just what a calamity it would be if the ambush turned into a shoving match with a Roman war machine. ‘Back! Back!’ I shouted, pushing at the man behind me. ‘Back for another charge!’ I barged back, physically pulling those around me after me; away we stepped from them like a wave receding to either side as the message to disengage was passed along. Warily the Romans watched us, breathing deeply, gore-spattered, but their formation still intact, just. We pulled back almost to our wall and readied ourselves to charge again, although this time, we knew, they would be expecting us.

But then something happened that changed the situation; from behind the Roman lines a lituus sounded, high and shrill, and I knew the call, it was for cavalry to retreat. Every one of the legionaries also knew that call and those that could turned to see the remainder of the cavalry under Vala Numonius fleeing northwest, towards the barrier of cut-down trees. They were deserting and a great moan erupted from their erstwhile comrades on foot; and as despair settled on the enemy I led my warriors forward again.

Thumelicatz leant forward in his chair towards his Roman guests. ‘Vala Numonius a coward? Well, that’s certainly the opinion of your historian Velleius Paterculus.’

The elder brother waved a dismissive hand. ‘He had spoken to some of the few who made it back to the empire and they had all said the same thing: Vala deserted.’

‘Did he?’ Thumelicatz turned to his slaves. ‘What do you say?’

A brief glance between them decided that it should be Tiburtius who spoke. ‘Varus had assembled his command behind the Eighteenth Legion; we three aquilifers were also there, to keep our birds as safe as possible. He called a meeting of all his senior officers as the Germanic warriors disengaged after the first attack. He knew this was the end. He turned to Vala: “Go,” he said, “and take the cavalry with you; make for the Amisia, from there you have a chance of getting home.”

‘“I’ll not, for my honour’s sake, desert you,” Vala replied.

‘“You will,” Varus ordered. “What good is it if you die here, because that is certainly what will happen to us. Get out, get back to Rome and tell the Emperor what happened so that he might avenge me and my men. Go, my friend, and tell them I was duped.” He put his hand on his cavalry commander’s shoulder and squeezed it. There was a moment between the two men before Vala nodded once and then turned away. Varus then looked at his remaining officers and spoke. “Gentlemen, for us who remain there are three choices: to surrender to barbarians and we know what that would mean for us, or to die fighting but run the risk of capture and the same torment as if we surrendered. Or we take matters into our own hands.” He paused and looked at the face of each man; only one seemed to disagree.

‘“I’m for surrender,” Ennius, the camp prefect of the Eighteenth, said. “If we lay down our arms now, and prevent any more bloodshed, then Arminius will surely grant us free passage back to the Rhenus.”

‘Varus laughed in the man’s face as a cavalry lituus sounded and hoofs pounded off. “How did a coward get so high in rank? Of course Arminius won’t spare you or any here. I can see that and so I choose death at my own hand.”

‘That was the only option for him now and it was in this frame of mind that he approached the three Eagles that we held aloft still, and with an expression vacant of the pride that normally resided upon his face he unstrapped his breastplate and laid it on the ground. Most of his senior officers came to support him in his final moments, they too readying themselves to escape the fires and blades of the rebel tribes. I and the two other Eagle-bearers stood beneath our birds as the command of the three legions knelt before them, swords in hand, the blades aimed just below their bottom ribs on the left side of their chests. Without a word, Varus pitched forward so that the hilt of his sword rammed against the ground, stopping it dead as the momentum of his body forced the tip up under his rib and into his heart that had no more appetite for life. His breath burst from his lungs but no cry of pain passed his lips as the bloodied point ripped through his shoulder blade and his body twitched in the spasm of death before resting still. Within a few moments of his passing, his officers had followed him on the road to the Ferryman and the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth legions had lost their high command just at the time when they needed it most. The war cries of the tribes were raised again and we knew that even if we could resist them a second time it was a certainty that we would not be able to do so a third.’

Thumelicatz smiled. ‘So, Romans, you see now that Vala was not a coward and actually it was Ennius who comes out the worst from my slave’s recollection. However, Varus doesn’t come out well either. There is never a right time to die but there is certainly a wrong one; and Varus most definitely chose the wrong one. His staff had already been depleted by him sending many officers back to Rome on leave and now he led a large proportion of the remainder in a useless suicide. He killed himself through fear of what would happen to him if he were captured, not to save his honour; it was the suicide of a coward. Up until that point it was still just possible for the Romans to retrieve the situation. My father’s original objective had been to annihilate the column in one day, as he knew that if he was to leave it wounded but intact it would always be able to run for open ground and turn and face the combined tribes; my father did not deceive himself, he knew who would come out best in such an encounter.

‘And here they were, in the pass on open ground; confined ground, unlike what lay beyond the mouth of the pass, granted, but nevertheless reasonably open and with the remainder of his men having survived a charge and still just about in good order. As Tiburtius said: it was what his senior officers had advised the previous night, it was the only sensible thing to do and yet rather than take that decision to try to fight in that place and have a chance of extracting half of his men from Germania he kills himself and condemns three legions to death, for there was no one senior enough left who would command the confidence of so many terrified men. The cavalry’s seeming desertion, the suicide of their commander and so many of their officers spelt an end to whatever small reserves of hope and good morale the legionaries had left; and then, when a new force appeared in the wood through which Vala was trying to flee, cutting him and his men down, their demoralisation was complete. They were surrounded by warriors on three sides and had an impenetrable marsh, made worse by so much heavy rain, to their backs. Carry on, Tiburtius.’

Tiburtius looked down at where his finger still rested on the manuscript.

And as we crashed into them a second time we felt less resistance; the cavalry’s flight had had a profound effect upon the legionaries. Their despair was palpable and they fell back beneath the weight of our blades and the impact of our spear heads. On we hacked, as another, final, full volley of javelins hissed above us and clattered into the rear ranks, many of whom were, by now, desperately trying to dig a makeshift wall in the ridiculous hope that it might shield them from our wrath. Back we ground them, thinning them out, wearing them down. To my right the Chatti were pushing the Nineteenth Legion hard with the Marsi and Chauci taking it from behind; this was the weakest of the three legions having received much punishment as the rearguard. To my left the Bructeri hammered at the Seventeenth whilst the Sugambri roved about behind us charging here and there where gaps appeared. Soon we had pushed them back to their pathetic wall. But this structure caused many to lose their lives as they tried to leap over it in the face of our relentless blades. A mule, already in panic, rushed it and twisted as it jumped to land on its neck, snapping it; it was dead before its back legs hit the ground. Other mules bucked and ran amok, braying ceaselessly, causing havoc in the already fragile formation as the legionaries scrambled over the impediment that had been constructed behind them by their own comrades. Over they tumbled, exposing their backs to us and receiving wounds of dishonour as my warriors targeted the buttocks, laughing in their fury. Although many did not make it back over the wall more than a few did to strengthen the lines manning it. And so we paused and pulled back again to ready ourselves for what would be the final assault on the remnants of the three legions crouching behind their makeshift breastwork.

A stillness fell over the field as if all present were pausing for breath and for a couple of moments the only sounds were the moans of the wounded dampened by the incessant rain.

‘Arminius!’ a voice shouted from behind the Roman lines. ‘Arminius!’

There was a stirring amongst the legionaries and through them came an officer whom I recognised surrounded by a hundred or so rankers. ‘Ennius, are you come to beg for a swift death?’

‘I come to beg for our lives, Arminius; we offer to lay down our arms in return for safe passage to the Rhenus.’

The base lack of dignity in this plea dumbfounded me for an instant and seemed to insult the honour of many of the legionaries as there came shouts of outrage from many of them.

‘What of Roman honour?’ I demanded. ‘Even if I were to let you go how could you ever face your countrymen again?’

‘Let us worry about that when we are west of the Rhenus.’

Again, more shouts of outrage greeted this remark.

‘It would seem that you are in the minority, Ennius. But if you want to surrender, you are more than welcome to, although I can assure you that you will not be going west. Some of you will die in our fires and the rest will remain in servitude for the remainder of your miserable lives. Come now and take your chance or stay there and prepare to die with your honour intact.’

To my surprise, Ennius came forward with most of the rankers that accompanied him to the derision of every other Roman still breathing. As he neared me I raised my mask and spat at his feet. ‘Take him away,’ I ordered Vulferam, ‘and guard him well; he shall be the first to burn.’

Ennius fell to his knees. ‘Arminius, for the friendship that there was once between us, spare me.’

I refused to look him in the eye. ‘There can be no friendship with a coward such as you.’

This, strange to relate, was greeted by some cheers from the Roman line and I felt nothing but respect for those who were about to die because they were willing to die with honour. I lifted my sword and saluted them as Ennius was dragged, pleading, away; to my surprise, many raised their weapons and saluted back.

The time had now come to end it once and for all; down my blade flashed and from the depths of my being came the war cry of the Cherusci, echoed by my followers. The other tribes roared their own challenges as the once-powerful soldiers of Rome crouched, grim and silent, behind their last defence.

Donar’s hammer fell; its sparks streaked across the heavy sky a couple of heartbeats before the Thunderer deafened us and we charged.

Our sodden cloaks and hair billowed behind us as we ran, pointing our weapons at the enemy, and baying for their blood as lightning cracked again above. Javelins, retrieved from the field, came flying back at us but we were too many for them to make much impact. For every warrior punched back there were two more behind him ready to take his place knowing that our gods were showing us favour.

The legionaries braced as we neared them, sprinting our hardest. With a strained effort I pushed off with my left foot and, punching my right foot on the top of the makeshift wall, hurled myself onto the shields of the men behind it. I crashed onto the leather-faced wood, kicking with all my might as I brought my sword clanging down onto the helmet before me, cleaving it open. The sodden, weakened shields fell apart with the weight of my attack and the warriors to either side of me piled in with the same commitment and we were over; we had used their wall against them, exploiting its height to leap down on the men cowering behind in the churned mud.

Now there was to be no respite, now we would show no pity, now we would massacre at will. My blade blurred through the air, droplets of gore tracing its path through streaking rain, to hew through the neck of a second ranker whose scream was cut with the severing of his windpipe. Such was the intensity of our charge and such was the surprise that our daring to leap the wall had caused, that the will to resist the attack was sapped and men who just a few moments earlier had been jeering those who had surrendered for their cowardice now displayed the same weakness: they turned and ran.

All along the line, the will of the legions was broken, as broken as the shield wall that we had hurled ourselves onto, and pandemonium ensued as the sons of All Men slew without mercy those who had tried to take their land and their freedom from them.

And as I reaped lives, ahead of me I saw my objective: the Eagles. Still they stood aloft, presiding over the carnage. With a brutality that surpassed all my other actions in the past few days, I hacked and slashed my way towards them with my warriors about me as the deluge diluted the blood spraying over our forearms and faces. Through the last rank we sliced to see the Eagles surrounded by a guard, some two hundred strong; but that did not daunt us for we knew that soon we would be many more as the cohesion of the legions disintegrated. I did not stop but hurtled on towards the grim men who were about to offer up their lives whilst protecting the sacred symbols given to them by Augustus himself. We converged on them as, behind us, great slaughter was wrought; and then above, as if in approval of our actions, the Thunderer swung his hammer again with a prodigious crash that shook the earth beneath our feet as we raced across it. Buoyed by such a sign of divine favour we felt no fear, just joy as we crunched into the wall of shields. The deadly blades of Rome’s killing machine flashed in and out of the gaps severing the life-threads of many of those around me. But somehow I was spared, my sword, streaming with thinned blood, keeping me safe as it ate its way through the iron and flesh betwixt me and my prize. And then I saw that there were only two Eagles still standing and cursed the man who had beaten me to the honour of being the first to capture the ultimate symbol of Roman oppression. But on I worked, nonetheless, teeth now gritted, muscles protesting at every step or swing of my sword arm, closer and closer as the Eagle guard was thinned down by systematic slaughter.

‘So where were you, Aius?’ Thumelicatz asked. ‘For it was you who had disappeared; my father had not been beaten to his prize after all.’

The slave lowered his head. ‘I tried to save the Eagle of the Seventeenth, but I failed. I had seen your father carving his way towards where we three Eagle-bearers stood and it was obvious what his intentions were. I knew that all was lost and that the reality was that we were soon to be despatched. My only thought was for the safety of my bird; my life was worthless if I couldn’t keep it from enemy hands. There was only one direction in which I stood a chance, so I pulled my bird off its pole, wrapped it in my cloak and ran towards the marsh. All around me my comrades were trying to flee, all dignity had gone but I felt I could at least restore a small fraction of it if I could get away and take the bird back across the Rhenus; if that wasn’t to be possible then I would sink it into the marsh.’

‘But you did neither of those things,’ Thumelicatz said, his voice betraying scorn, ‘did you, Aius?’

‘No, master, I did not. I tried to cross the marsh but the constant rain had made the ground glutinous; my feet were sucked under and, before I had gone more than ten paces in, I was stuck and sinking. Then from behind me I heard a shout. I froze for I knew that voice; I had heard it many times before: it was the voice of Erminatz. I turned and there he was, a thing of horror, blood splattered all over him and streaming off him in rivulets, surrounded by warriors, two of whom held the other legions’ birds. “Marcus Aius, bring me that Eagle, and I shall spare you the fire,” he shouted at me. I struggled to move forward because there was no way that I would voluntarily hand my bird over to the enemy. He saw that I was making no attempt to comply with his wishes and so sent two of his warriors after me. They knew the ways of the marsh; rather than walk they crawled. I panicked and tried to sink the Eagle in the marsh but they were on me quickly; they retrieved it and hauled me out to become Erminatz’s prisoner, and because I had not submitted I knew I was destined for the fires of their gods.’

‘And you, Tiburtius?’ the younger brother asked, his expression one of interest not scorn, ‘how did you survive the capture of your Eagle?’

Thumelicatz nodded at his slave as he looked for permission to speak.

‘They flew at us through the rain, ripping into the first and second centuries of the Eighteenth’s first cohort that were meant to protect us; but nothing could keep us safe from the fury that finally approached after four days of grinding us down. We were lost. Aius had disappeared and as I turned to Graptus, the aquilifer of the Eighteenth, next to me, he drew his sword and, without pausing, rammed it into his own throat. His legs buckled and his fist, clamped about his bird’s pole, slid down its length as the life fled from him, taking his honour with it. The Eagle of the Eighteenth fell forward into the mud as fire seared through my thigh; I looked down to see the haft of a javelin shaking in the meat of my left leg and felt myself tip to the side as the limb collapsed. Instinctively I grabbed at the wound with both hands and then, realising what I’d done, reached back up and caught the bird’s pole. In desperation I tried to support myself with the Eagle but I reacted too late and down I went, splayed in the mud, some of it slopping into my eyes. As I wiped them clear all I could see before me were the trousers and leather boots of our enemy leaping over the bodies of my comrades and racing towards me. I struggled for my sword so that I could go the same way as Graptus and keep my honour intact but, as I attempted to get to my knees to draw it, a crack to the left side of my head sent me to oblivion. When I woke up—’

‘That’s far enough,’ Thumelicatz interrupted, ‘we’ll deal with what happened when you woke up in its place.’ His smile did not reach his eyes as he turned to the Romans. ‘My father had captured the Eagles of three legions and in the next hour was to take all the rest of the legions’ standards: all the cohorts, the centuries as well as the images of the Emperor and the legions’ emblems. He also took over a thousand men prisoner including twenty-four centurions, nine tribunes, another prefect of the camp and, of course, my two slaves here. In addition to them were around three hundred women and children and fifty or so muleteers who were all that was left of the baggage train. If more than a couple of hundred managed to get through our lines or the marsh, I would be surprised. As the enemy wounded were despatched and left where they lay, we harvested the testicles of the fallen along with their chain-mail, swords and any other useful items – although not the newly introduced segmented armour that a few had been issued with as it was of no use to us. Our dead were collected along with their weapons to be borne in honour back to their wives and mothers for cleansing and burial. Soon riders began to come in from all the communities that had pleaded for Varus to leave a garrison: they had all been massacred as well as any merchant or official still on our soil. The Roman occupation of Germania Magna, in the space of four days, now consisted of a few score fugitives, or so we thought. But there was one thing that did not go to plan and we shall hear of that after Tiburtius tells us what he first heard and then saw as he regained consciousness.’