CHAPTER XV

‘THE WICKEDNESS OF kin,’ Thumelicatz ruminated, each syllable stretched and stressed. ‘How our lives have been blighted by the wickedness of kin, eh, Mother? Betrayed to Germanicus by your own father and given to Rome whilst pregnant with Erminatz’s child in revenge for him taking you away on the day you were due to marry Adgandestrius. Segestes even travelled to Rome two years later as a guest of Tiberius to watch his own daughter and grandson – me, born in captivity – being paraded as trophies in Germanicus’ Triumph. What wickedness to gloat at your own daughter’s misfortune that you have brought about because of your hatred for your cousin’s son and now son-in-law. And then to … but no, that comes at the end of my father’s story; we mustn’t skip that far ahead. But my father’s narrative does jump; it jumps four years to the year before my mother’s betrayal. Aius will read.’

Happiness is not a commodity that’s easy to come by in our world and although we wanted no one else other than each other we were not destined to be together for long. I still pray that one day we will be reunited and I shall meet the son I have never seen, a gift to replace our daughter who was stillborn in the second year of our marriage; but that is, perhaps, for another day.

My supposition that there would be at least a year before any retaliation proved correct; Tiberius raided across the Rhenus two years after Varus’ defeat. However, instead of the weather influencing my story at this point another factor came into play: age. Augustus was ageing and fading; he recalled his heir, Tiberius, to Rome and decreed that the empire should have its border on the Rhenus and go no further. It seemed that we had won and our freedom was now guaranteed, which was just as well seeing as the meeting of the kings that I had called at the Kalk Riese had proved inconclusive since none were willing to accept me as the leader of a united Germania and a suitable alternative acceptable to all could not be found; but Augustus’ decree meant that the need for unity had disappeared. Rome, theoretically, was never going to come back so therefore we were free to return to our old ways. And for three more years that’s what we did.

The mutiny of the Rhenus legions on Tiberius’ ascension further fed our sense of security and so it came as a shock when the news broke in October of that same year that the lands of the Marsi had been ravaged by the new Roman general in the north, my old acquaintance, Germanicus. Thousands had been put to the sword and the Eagle of the Nineteenth had been recovered. The speed of the campaign had been breathtaking and had caught all by surprise; but its timing was the one thing that was in our favour, if we could mobilise. October can be a harsh month on the northern plain along the line of the Lupia and there was a good chance that we could fall on Germanicus’ army as it retreated to its base on the west bank of the Rhenus; a second Teutoburg Wald was possible.

I sent messages to all the kings, begging them to come to the Lupia and set off with as many of my warriors as I could muster in the short time that I had. With less than three hundred men – but with the promise of more to come – I came to the fort of Aliso in the southern lands of the Bructeri to find that what we had left in ruins had been rebuilt. There was no one there to meet me other than Engilram with four thousand of his men; four half-strength legions and the similar amount of auxiliaries faced us. But battle was not on Germanicus’ mind as the weather had closed in and the ground was sodden, winter was nigh and he was withdrawing; a paltry force such as ours was not worth the few lives that it would have taken to defeat us and so he pulled back along the road knowing I was powerless to stop him.

‘No one else will come,’ Engilram said as we watched the last cohort disappear from sight. ‘The Marsi are too battered and the rest of the northern tribes are worried about giving you another victory over Rome.’

I looked at him, incredulous. ‘Giving me another victory? Surely it’s giving us another victory?’

‘That’s not how Adgandestrius sees it; he’s the one who’s been working against you, making the others fear your ambition.’

‘The short-sighted, mean-minded—’

‘Aggrieved and humiliated proud man,’ Engilram interrupted. ‘You were wrong to take Thusnelda from him in such a public way.’

‘Right or wrong, surely the chance of spilling Roman blood outweighs his anger at me?’

‘You know that can never be true. But there’ll be other occasions in the next few years; Germanicus will be back again and that reality will focus a few of the more pragmatic kings. You may well get some unity then; in the meantime my warriors will harry them all the way to the Rhenus just to let them know that we still have teeth.’

I thanked the old king of the Bructeri and, cursing the perfidy of Adgandestrius, returned to the Harzland.

But the gods have a way of bringing a proud man around, for the next year it was the Chatti who were the target; but I was elsewhere.

‘My father, Segestes, came to our settlement after the summer solstice whilst Erminatz was away,’ Thusnelda said, silencing Aius with a sharp hand gesture. ‘He came under a branch of truce, saying that he wanted to talk with me. I thought nothing of it as I hadn’t spoken with him since that day Erminatz stole me from under his nose four years previously. He and his escort were allowed through the gates; there were few warriors around as most were accompanying my husband as he went about the thanes who had some sympathy for my father’s pro-Roman stance, trying to dissuade them of their opinion; and that is what he took advantage of.

‘“You want to talk to me, Father,” I said as he came through the door of our longhouse with two of his warriors behind him.

‘“No, bitch, there’s nothing to say,” he retorted. His two men grabbed me, hitting me across the back of the head, and hauled me, semi-conscious, from the house. Outside the rest of his men had formed a cordon; I was slung across a horse and before I could gather my senses we had ridden down the few warriors who had tried to block the gate and were away back to his settlement that had been recently strengthened judging by the work that had been done on the palisade.

‘For half a moon I was kept prisoner, locked in a storeroom, and it was with the passing of that moon that I realised that I was pregnant again and I wept. But the tears did not last for long for, when I woke the following morning, my love had come for me; from my prison I could see naught but I could hear: from all angles came the sound of shouting. We were surrounded and under siege.’ Thusnelda nodded to Aius. ‘Take it from that point.’

Aius scanned down the scroll.

I grabbed the kneeling captive’s hair, yanking it back, and then prised out his left eye with the tip of my dagger. I waited until his screams subsided. ‘I’ll ask you one more time: where is she being kept?’

‘In a storeroom at the back of the main longhouse.’

I looked in his one remaining eye and could see that he was telling the truth; I gestured to Aldhard to let him grip his sword so that he would gain Walhalla dying with a weapon in his hand, then slit his throat and let him slump to the ground. ‘Aldhard, we’ll dig a ditch all the way around the settlement; no one comes in or out until I have Thusnelda back.’

He looked at me not understanding. ‘But who will do the digging?’

‘My warriors.’

‘You can’t ask them to do slaves’ work; they’ll never countenance it. They’re here to fight not dig.’

And that was just the problem: our men were too proud to be able to bring themselves to conduct a siege in an efficient manner; for them a siege was just lying around outside the gates waiting for the enemy to come out and challenge them to single combat or, as with Aliso, hurling themselves at the walls in a vain attempt to scale them. But I couldn’t afford to do that, not with Thusnelda within those walls.

And so we were at stalemate; no one came in or out during the day but at night supplies were always getting through and the besieged showed no sign of weakening, not even by the middle of September when Germanicus’ army appeared from the west. With fewer than two thousand men I could not stand against him; it was with tears of impotent rage that I ordered our withdrawal and watched from a distant hill as a party left the settlement and joined the Roman ranks. My wife was now a prisoner of Germanicus and I did not know how to get her back. But, as I said, the gods have a way of bringing a proud man around and it was the loss of Thusnelda that brought Adgandestrius to me.

‘They have ravaged my lands, burnt my chief town of Mattium, killed thousands of my people and I want revenge,’ he told me soon after he arrived in the Harzland, with barely five hundred warriors, a few days after Germanicus had left – unfought.

‘And why do you come to me, you who have done all within your power to stop me uniting an army against Rome?’

‘Because the thing that divided us is gone and is now in Rome’s hands.’

‘Thusnelda?’

‘Yes, neither of us have her now; you want her back and I am grateful to her because had Segestes not called Germanicus to his aid to relieve your siege and help him escape, I would most certainly be dead; such was the prize that Segestes offered that Germanicus dropped everything to come for Thusnelda and we were down to our last few days of food and water trapped in some caves in the south of our lands. Because of her capture we have lived. For the present, let us put what is gone behind us and unite our forces.’

I looked at my enemy and although I could see no trace of friendship in his eyes I knew that his intention was honest; for the time being we could be allies. I took him into an embrace. ‘We will muster the tribes at Aliso again. We shall try to do what we did in the Teutoburg Wald, something that we could have done last year had. well, never mind what we could have done last year because we will do it this year. We will make them pay as they attempt the passage of the—

‘The Long Bridges,’ the street-fighter cut in. ‘I was there with the Fifth Alaudae.’

Thumelicatz looked pleased at the admission. ‘Tell us then, Roman; and I’ll have my slaves take notes so that the narrative can be fleshed out, as my father didn’t leave that detailed an account.’

The street-fighter rubbed one of his cauliflower ears and collected his thoughts for a few moments. ‘Well, the year before had been a fraught summer because Tiberius had refused our demands that military service be reduced from twenty years, and five in reserve, back down to sixteen years in the legions and then four years as a reserve; none of the lads was best pleased when the news came through and so we refused to take the oath to the new Emperor. We wanted Germanicus to be emperor; him we loved, whereas Tiberius was dour and distant; but he refused and eventually shamed us into backing down. Once we were back under military discipline, with hardly any warning, he had a bridge built and we crossed the Rhenus into the lands of the Marsi with the more rebellious cohorts of Germania Inferior’s four legions. Germanicus reckoned it best if we take out our frustration on the Germanic tribes rather than each other, and he was probably right. So, we were back in the land of fear and forest and unable to complain about it, as we had only just submitted to his will and couldn’t mutiny a second time without the consequences being far harsher than just handing over the ringleaders for execution.

‘But it seemed that it would not be a repeat of the disaster of five years previously as we caught the population unawares; we ripped through them, burning every homestead and slaughtering all the inhabitants, regardless of sex or age, who we could find. A few of the lads, a very few, who had made it out of Germania after Varus and had been drafted into the Alaudae – you can imagine the thoroughness with which they took to the task, if you take my meaning? Well, after about twenty days of laying waste to anything we came across, the Eagle of the Nineteenth was uncovered and Germanicus felt that would conclude proceedings for that season very nicely and so we headed back to the fortress of Aliso, which had been rebuilt by auxiliaries whilst we’d been off enjoying ourselves, in order to pick up the military road back to the Rhenus and a well-earned rest for the winter. And so we did and had a fine winter of it. The following spring we came east again, this time to give the Chatti a good taste of our iron, and they didn’t like it, that much was for sure. We burnt Mattium, killing or enslaving most of the inhabitants, before chasing the rump of the Chatti army south to a series of caves, high in some cliffs, that they’d fortified so that they were almost impossible to break into; but just as we were about to starve them out Germanicus suddenly lifted the siege and we raced northeast. When we saw why we could understand it.’ He looked at Thusnelda. ‘You were a beautiful young woman and we knew that you would be a great loss for Arminius and a trophy for Germanicus. By that time the season was coming to an end. Germanicus took two of the legions back to the empire by ship, sailing up the Amisia and then out into the Northern Sea – but that’s another story – us along with the Second, Fourteenth and Twentieth were to go back with his number two, Caecina, along the military road following the Lupia.

‘But it didn’t prove to be quite so straightforward; things never are in Germania.

‘“Shit!” my mate Sextus said as we paraded in front of the camp on the morning of our departure. “That don’t look good, Magnus, not good at all.”

‘Now, Sextus isn’t the brightest of the bunch – indeed, of any given bunch there’s a fair probability that he will be the least bright – but this time he was absolutely right: it didn’t look good at all. “Shit indeed, mate,” I said, sucking the wind through my teeth. “There’re a fuck of a lot of them.” And there were; thousands, or so it seemed, lining the crest of a hill a couple of miles to the east of us and looking hungry for some Roman blood. “And we’re two hundred miles and twenty bridges from the Rhenus.”

‘Sextus screwed up his face in the way that he always does on the very rare occasions that he attempts arithmetic. “That’s a bridge every seven miles,” he guessed eventually.

‘“Something like that, Sextus, my old son, something like that.”

‘“And who gave you permission to have an opinion, soldier!” Servius, our optio, screamed, from behind me, into my ear. “Any more talking in the ranks and the only opinion you’ll be having is how much the cane bruises on your back hurt with every shovelload of shit I have you move from one side of the latrine ditch to the other, and then back again.”

‘Sextus and I snapped to attention and pulled on our most earnest military expressions, staring intently somewhere in the middle distance. But Servius’ ire was distracted by a communal groan of anguish from the entire parade of four, almost fullstrength, legions, as if we was all being buggered for the first time. To our left, across the river, in the hills that followed it west, thousands more of the hairy bastards … er, my apologies, noble Germanic warriors appeared and, at some signal unseen, both groups gave a low roar of wicked intent: a nasty sound to say the least, but very chilling when you know you’ve got at least a ten-day march ahead of you with those bastards snapping at you all the time and then running away sharpish every time we turn to offer them a decent toe to toe to be settled by whose got the sharpest iron and the biggest balls.

‘Anyway, the blow-boys started rumbling away on their cornua, standards got waved and then dipped or raised depending on what series of oaths each primus centurion of the cohort roared. Our cohort standard leant left and then dipped once as the cornua rumbled a downwards call; the centurion of our century, Carrinas Balbillus, or the arse-widener as he was affectionately known, due to the novel usage he would put his vine cane to when he felt that a simple beating was not sufficient punishment, politely asked us to turn about and retreat one hundred paces. Once we had done that he requested us to be so kind as to form column. We were facing west; we were not going to offer battle but, rather, make a run for it. From where we were, in the Fifth Alaudae, ninth cohort, seventh century, it was impossible to tell what was going on, but rumour swiftly made it through the ranks that all four legions were forming a hollow square with the baggage in the middle and that we were the left-hand side with the First Germanica at the front, the Twenty-first Rapax on the right and the Twentieth watching our arses, something, Servius observed in a rare display of wit, they should be very good at given their habit of hiding behind us every time a rumble threatened.

‘Mars alone knows how long it took to sort ourselves out but eventually the centurions and optios decided that they had shouted at us enough for the present and we were all in the right place. Out to our flank we could see a couple of the Gallic auxiliary cohorts forming up defensively as if an attack were coming in from a previously unseen source whilst two of the Hispanic light cavalry alae swirled around either flank, no doubt wishing to dissuade the Germanic bastards from trying to claim a few Gallic heads – we all know they hate a Gaul as much as a Gaul hates a German, but a Gaul in the uniform of Rome is a sight so provoking to them that they would trample their own grandmothers to get at such an offensive thing. As you can imagine, we were quite happy to let them sort it out by themselves, if it meant we could just get on with our marching in peace and quiet; eventually, after more rumbling of cornua and dipping of standards, the arse-widener, with the utmost consideration for our sensibilities, suggested that we might like to move forward at the convenient pace of double-quick march. We, of course, were only too willing to oblige him so kindly had been his entreaty, and with our equipment yokes over our shoulders but our shields in hand and not slung behind us, we happily yomped off west.

‘But Germania is not a place renowned for giving us Romans an easy go of it and they have some very anti-Roman gods, one of whom, Donar, seemed to have it in for us in a particularly spiteful way. He has a hammer, I believe, and it was at the same instant that we broke into a quick trot that he brought his hammer down on whatever he brings it down upon and the clouds burst with a rumble that put to shame all the efforts of the blow-boys during our recent manoeuvring. Down it pissed and the wind gusted so that the rain washed by in sheets and swirls, driving into our eyes and through our chainmail – our cohort hadn’t yet been issued with the new segmented armour- so that before we’d gone a mile we were all about as miserable as the arse-widener liked us to be, and it showed in the glee on his face as he gave us playful taps with his cane to help us along the way.

‘Out to our left the rain partially covered the running battle that the Gauls were having with their friends, but with the help of the Hispanic cavalry and a couple of reinforcement cohorts of Aquitanians they seemed to be holding off any attempt at making a meal of our testicles.’ The street-fighter paused and scowled at Thumelicatz’s jar. ‘That just ain’t natural.’ Shaking his head he continued: ‘Anyhow, on we went, gritting our teeth as the miles mounted up, each one harder than the last and, bearing in mind that we were four legions in a hollow square, which was, in fact, a rectangle two hundred paces across and over a mile long, following a road that was only ten paces wide very few of us had any firm footing. Where we were in the exalted heights of the seventh century of the ninth cohort, by the time we got to any given piece of mud a few hundred other lads had been there before so the going weren’t at all good, if you take my meaning, not like a nice canter around the track of the Circus Maximus back in Rome. And then, of course, there was the small matter of the bridges, which only the transport could use seeing as they were on the road; the rest of us had to cross the rivers in whatever way we could, up to our necks often enough, and if we weren’t cold when we splashed in then we certainly were as we scrambled up the opposite bank.

‘On we yomped, our lungs bursting and our throats on fire, despite the rain, with hardly any of the lads able to at least make a quip, which mightily annoyed the arse-widener as the only excuse he had for savaging us was imagined slacking; but no one was going to slack when the choice was between physical torment under the loving strokes of Balbillus’ cane or to be entertained by a nice bunch of lads who are very keen on warming your toes on a cold day above one of their fires.

‘“Halt!” the arse-widener shouted just as I thought that a fire might not be so bad a thing after all. I came out of the nightmare that I’d been subjected to for however long to find that we were all standing still and were now being invited to knock up a marching camp for thirty thousand men.

‘Well, we ain’t never worked so hard so quickly; although each spade-full of earth seemed to be twice the weight it normally was due to the excessive amount of water it contained, we had very soon dug two and a half miles of four-foot-deep ditch and piled the earth up around it in a four-foot-high breastwork. As we worked, the auxiliaries kept the tribes at bay, covering us in long screens on both flanks of the column; but despite their efforts they couldn’t push the bastards back far enough into the forest to either side in order that we could cut the extra wood we needed for the palisade. As a lot of the stakes we carried with us had been lost, the ditch and breastwork were all that we had to shelter behind. But at least we had our tents and were soon taking our cheerless cold meals inside them, grateful to be out of the rain for a short while at least. And it was a short while for after just two hours the arse-widener slams his cane down on the tops of our tents and suggests that we might like to join the tenth cohort in spending the next couple of hours manning the perimeter so that the rest of the legion could sleep safe and sound tucked up in their bedding-rolls knowing that we were watching over them like concerned mother hens. Obviously we told the arse-widener that nothing would give us more pleasure and he and Servius showed their gratitude by thrashing us into position next to the eighth century.

‘And it weren’t nice, not one bit, because the auxiliaries had withdrawn into the camp so that there was nothing to prevent the blood-lusting bastards from coming right up to the ditch and throwing the javelins at us; and they did just that again and again. I had Sextus on my left and on my right this Greek, Cassandros, who had just been transferred into the Fifth from an eastern legion and had brought all those nasty eastern habits with him. We peered into the downpour and through it we could just see the shadow of a mass of men; forward they came, running towards us, halooing and ululating and making all sorts of ghastly sounds. We hunkered down behind our shields, resting on the top of the breastwork. “Brace yourself, Sextus, my lovely,” I muttered as I felt my arsehole clench tight enough to strangle an inquisitive rat. “I don’t think they’re coming to deliver our breakfast and enquire whether or not we slept well.”

‘My mate frowned. “That would be stupid because it ain’t breakfast time yet and they’re the ones who are keeping us awake.”

‘“Never mind, Sextus, never mind.”

‘“He’s not that bright, is he?” Cassandros observed.

‘“He never claimed to be,” I replied.

‘Any further discussion on the subject was curtailed by an influx of javelins. They thumped into our shields all along the line, hollow and resounding, like hail on ox-hide drums. I don’t know how many stuck themselves into my shield but by the time the hairy bastards had started to fling themselves across our nice ditch it felt extremely unwieldy and there was nothing I could do about it.

‘Now, when you first join the legions you’re made to attack a wooden post with a wooden sword day after day for months, when you’re not doing twenty mile route-marches in full kit, that is; well, no one really understands just why the drill-masters favour such a seemingly pointless exercise until the first time you have to make your iron bite. And so it was that night, my blade punching through the gap between mine and Sextus’ shields, stabbing faces and chests as the Germanic tribesmen tried to climb over the breastwork, sometimes using the javelins in our shields as handholds, hauling themselves up and forcing us to pull hard on our grips so our protection wouldn’t be pulled down. Blood spurted from severed arteries and rough-hewn stumps as we worked our blades; now it was automatic, second nature and the hours at the post made sense and the cursing of the drill-masters now seemed like music our strokes could keep time to. Stab, twist, left, right, pull, stab again, all of us in a line, two deep, with the arse-widener at our centre, howling his hatred at the unwashed barbarians for having the cheek to try to break into his camp as he sent warrior after warrior to whatever the Germanic afterlife consists of in payment for such effrontery. Behind us, Servius, with his optio’s rod held to the backs of the second rankers to keep our line straight and also to dissuade any one from thinking that it might just be more comfortable back in the tent, yelled insults at us to keep us cheerful as we flung them back, dead, dying on top of the growing pile in the ditch. And that was just the problem: the more we killed the shallower was the ditch and the easier it became for them to scale the breastwork. I felt my shield being tugged at, hard, and had to squeeze the grip for all I was worth for it not to be ripped away; a quick glance down and I saw fingers wrapped around its rim. With a sideways jerk of the wrist my blade cleaned them off, their former owner’s screams lost in the din, and I felt the pressure release on my shield as, in the corner of my eye, something flashed towards me. Instinctively I raised my shield and blocked, with the top rim, a spear thrust aimed right at my eyes; but the move opened a gap between the breastwork and the bottom rim. I felt the air punched out of me and looked down to see a spear point rammed into my stomach. I cracked my shield back down onto it and, to my relief, it shifted; the thrust hadn’t been enough to break through the chainmail. However, by now I was starting to get cross, as was Sextus and Cassandros to either side; in fact the whole century was not in the best of moods and, much to Balbillus’ glee, we bellowed our defiance and took as many lives as we could before they slunk back off into the pissing rain.

‘Now, the trouble with Germans is that if one German does something then all the other buggers have to do the same thing so that they won’t seem to be deemed lesser men; and so when we beat off that attack that wasn’t the end of it, far from it. Back they came but this time it was fresh ones who’d been sitting out the last effort and now wished to show their beaten comrades how it really should be done. We swapped ranks so that Sextus, Cassandros and me just had to do some pushing whilst holding our shields over the men in front. Only the arse-widener seemed happy to stay in the front rank and we were all happy to see him there in the hope that some barbarian would do us a favour but, contrary as they are, none of them did. By the time we were relieved a couple of hours later he was covered in blood and in fine fettle, having piled up a nice big mound of dead in front of his section of the breastwork, and was more than ready to shout us to sleep. Sleep, however, was not the easiest thing to come by as the raids persisted throughout the night and air was constantly filled with the screams of the maimed and the dying so that they almost drowned out the blow-boys’ reveille an hour before dawn. Down the camp came, tents loaded onto each tent-party’s mule and the bigger items, like the grain-mill and the arse-widener’s tent, loaded onto the century’s cart that also carried the carroballista. The auxiliaries formed up again to shield us whilst we were bawled into the correct order of march, but for some reason the tribes held off, preferring instead to watch us from a distance and jeer and favour us with the sight of their arses as we moved off.

‘It wasn’t until the rear of the column had gone a couple of miles that we realised what they were waiting for: they had been busy overnight and soon our feet began to sink further into the mud and then the mud became very liquid until we were walking through an endless puddle that gradually deepened to ankle-height and then knee-height. The bastards had spent the night, when they weren’t attacking us, damming the next couple of rivers so that the flood-plain between them lived up to its name. Needless to say we were by now really struggling and even Sextus, who could wrestle down an ox, was having trouble moving forward and the column’s pace was reduced to no more than a shuffle as the carts were constantly getting stuck. Then that cunt Donar crashed his hammer down and, just when the arse-widener thought that we couldn’t be more miserable, more water came tipping from above and its arrival heralded a new series of attacks on the auxiliaries. But this time with the water level so high the cavalry couldn’t protect their flanks nearly so effectively and it weren’t long before the first Gallic cohort broke, turning and splashing back towards us in the main column; and then the rest of them turned and the hairy-arsed savages came tearing after them, felling them as they ran, and having a good laugh about it as nothing pleases them more than the sight of a dead Gaul. Even the cavalry were ravaged as the horses weren’t willing to move fast through the water and shied when pushed, so that many of the riders abandoned their mounts to try and make a quicker getaway.

‘With the cover swept away we were open to attack but a toe to toe was not what they had in mind. The javelins fell down on us almost as thickly as the rain and, by now, the image of what had happened to Varus was in all our thoughts for we had heard the four-day battle being recounted many a time and there was not a man in that army who didn’t fear its repeat. And that’s what looked to be happening. Helpless we were as the lethal rain fell, volley after volley down onto our upturned shields, many a missile getting through, such was our disorder; and we were unable to return the favour as all our efforts were concentrated on protecting ourselves and trying to move forward and, besides, we hadn’t been resupplied with pila due to the chaos of the previous night. The few archers we had tried to hold the savages off but they were so small in number that they hardly made any difference as the Germans would just back off when they saw them coming and concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

‘For hours we waded forward, only leaving our dead behind; those unlucky enough to be too wounded to carry on gratefully accepted into their hearts the sword of their comrade rather than be left behind for the fires. But the dead soon caught up with us again as the savages took their heads and hurled them into our midst and we raged at our impotence, not being able to avenge the mutilation of our fallen.

‘The day dragged on and our hunger grew as we could not stop to eat and, besides, there was no way that we could make a fire in the middle of what had become a huge lake. Even when we finally made it onto dryer ground, in other words ground that was just a quagmire rather than being submerged, we knew that there would be no pausing. So we chewed on whatever scraps we could find in our kit, wishing that we could make use of the eleven days’ rations that we were each carrying because the order hadn’t come through to break them out.

‘We made it across another river, one that hadn’t been dammed, and found ourselves on more open ground. The blow-boys started doing their thing and it wasn’t long before the arse-widener was politely requesting that we start digging our share of the ditch for the night’s camp. That camp was no better than the previous night’s and our misery did not let up and neither did the savages, although we were so knackered that no matter how many wounded were screaming their agony to the gods we slept as soon as we had finished our shift at the breastwork. Even Balbillus showed us a bit of consideration and didn’t bellow at us for a full four hours.

‘“I don’t think I can make it through the day,” Cassandros muttered as the bellowing started again soon after reveille and we were trying to make a mush of cold flour and ground chickpeas.

‘“Well, it’s a choice between going on, falling on your sword or warming your toes in the fires,” I said, none too helpfully, “and personally I’ll take the first option as I don’t like fire and I’d rather avoid the serious bollocking that I’d get from the arse-widener for killing myself without permission.”

‘Cassandros grumbled a complaint although acknowledging the truth of the matter whilst Sextus looked painfully confused as he tried to work out how the arse-widener could chase him into the afterlife; he was still working on the problem when we had, once again, formed up and the order to advance in double time was sounded by our legion’s blow-boys.

‘Now, I don’t know what happened because in those days I didn’t query anything; I just followed the last bellowed order unquestioningly to make life easier and to avoid Balbillus demonstrating on me, for all to see, how he got his nickname. And my guess is that the arse-widener himself didn’t know how it occurred; but occur it did and it was nearly the end of us all.

‘Off we went, moaning as much as we dared about being asked to set off at such a pace on a virtually empty stomach and getting no sympathy from the arse-widener other than some encouraging taps with his vine cane. We pressed on, thinking that we were all doing the right thing, over the gradually drying ground as Donar had obviously decided to have a lie-in that day, and we had nothing worse to contend with than a strong, cold, northerly wind that would have caused us considerable misery in our damp clothes had we not been fortunate enough to be sweating with the exertion of jogging in full kit.

‘However, it seemed that no one was paying attention to what the rest of the army was doing for they were certainly not doing the same thing as us – except for the Twenty-first on the left flank, that is, who were doubling away with enthusiasm. The First and the Fourteenth, however, had taken it upon themselves to have a far more leisurely start to the day and were strolling along as if they were on a country ramble with their sweethearts. Well, it didn’t take long before the inevitable happened and we and the Twenty-first outpaced the rest of the column exposing the baggage train, and if there is one thing that a German enjoys more than fucking a dead Gaul it’s an exposed baggage train; and this one was irresistible. Out of the morning mist they came, hallooing and—’

‘My father’s account of this is worth hearing at this point,’ Thumelicatz interjected. He looked over at his two slaves, who had been scrupulously taking notes; they put the styli down on the desk. ‘You can collate your notes later and I’ll decide what to add to my father’s account. Aius, read from the eleventh scroll, from the moment that Erminatz sees the exposed baggage. Tiburtius, refresh the lamps and candles.’

After a few moments Aius had found his place and began to read as Tiburtius went around the tent tending the lit candles and lamps.

How such an order had been given I couldn’t understand; it was madness to me but it was happening and it was an opportunity that I could not pass up: here was my chance to split the Roman column in two, right through the middle and then deal with each half piecemeal. Here was my chance to achieve an even more crushing victory than at the Chalk Giant. I was standing with my father and his household warriors at the head of the Cherusci, to the north of the Roman formation; without hesitation, I raised my sword and cried to the gods our war cry, praising them and reviling our foes. Forward I sprinted, my sword held in both hands over my right shoulder and my eyes fixed upon the junction of the baggage train and the Fourteenth Legion, at the rear of the hollow square not more than four hundred paces distant. My warriors followed gladly, seeing their chance of blood and booty, as before us, the command of the Fourteenth suddenly spotted the danger. But they were advancing in line, five cohorts abreast and two deep now that the ground was more open, so as to seal the fourth wall of the square, but the side walls had now disappeared; with no time to manoeuvre and turn and face us head-on, the best they could do was to halt and turn at right angles, switching their line into a column. At the moment they did so the Chatti and the Bructeri charged from the south and the Chauci joined in behind us.

The panic in the Roman ranks was evident, even at two hundred paces out, as they tried to face both attacks: files became entangled with one another as contradictory orders came in as to which way to turn and so their cohesion began to suffer. The baggage train began to scatter as the drivers all tried to catch up either with the two legions that had so inexplicably left them exposed or the legion closest to them either to their front or rear. But they didn’t make it to safety; our charge went home. Almost four thousand of my warriors hit the Fourteenth in its disorganised flank and then spilled into the rear of the baggage train. Their disorganisation meant that they were unable to launch a timed volley of pila and it was with the loss of very few casualties that we pressed our charge home.

Swiping my sword from over my right shoulder I cleaved my way through the haphazardly formed front rank, sending one and a half heads spinning up into the air, bloodying all around, as, to either side, my father’s household warriors broke the shield wall in many places and began fighting in the way they know best: as individuals. Through them we tore, causing mayhem and mortality, as the ranks and files split and the united war machine became no more than a collection of terrified, unsupported soldiery.

But even in so dire a situation the Roman army can still pull itself together through the discipline instilled into the men over years of training and, more especially, through the professionalism of the centuriate. By the time we had carved apart the first two cohorts on the flank the more central ones had rallied, the centurions realising that not to do so would spell death for them all. We hit their shield wall as a wave hits a cliff and, before long, I realised that it was as far as we would get; to waste my men’s lives in trying to crack a nut that we had never cracked before was a futile aim and, besides, most of the baggage was still there for the plucking. And so the drivers died in droves and bolting mules were brought down with spears as if we were on a hunting trip on a day sacred to one of the gods and for the second time we captured the baggage of an entire army. As we plundered, the three leading legions ran west whilst the Fourteenth closed up and, making its own hollow square, pushed on past us leaving their dead in piles on the bloody ground. I was happy to let them go because I knew that there would be other opportunities to take them in the next few days that it would take them to reach the Rhenus; soon they would be no more and Tiberius, like his predecessor Augustus, would also have legions to mourn.

But it was not to be. Once again it was my family that thwarted me but this time it was not Segestes, now safely in Rome; the man was even closer to me. It was the following morning, as the warriors of the five tribes roused themselves with the leaden heads of men who’ve drunk far too much wine when their normal fare is ale, that I stood with my father, Inguiomer, Adgandestrius and Engilram, watching the Romans break camp. They had built it on open, flat ground about three miles from where we had looted their baggage train; once we had taken everything of value, enslaved the women and children and then sacrificed all the prisoners in thanks to the beneficence of the gods, we followed them. We had made our camp to the east so that they could carry on their journey west in the morning and hopefully make a similar mistake. I knew that their morale was shaky as there had been uproar in the camp during the night and yet we hadn’t gone anywhere near it.

‘Yes,’ Thumelicatz said, halting the narration and looking at the street-fighter, ‘I’ve always wondered what that was about; perhaps you could enlighten me?’

The street-fighter ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head in regret. ‘It weren’t our finest hour, that’s for sure. It was a horse had got loose and then the slaves trying to recapture it spooked the thing so that it ran amok through the Twenty-first’s section of the camp – not that it was really a proper camp as we’d almost all lost our tents. Well, as you can imagine, the lads were very edgy after what they’d been through the previous few days and a lot of them thought that the perimeter had been breached and, I’m sorry to say, many of them panicked. As there were hardly any tents there were no tent-lines and, therefore, very little order so the panic quickly spread as many of the lads tried to get out of the west-facing gate, the one furthest from the enemy. Well, Caecina had been wounded the day before, his horse had been shot from under him, and so he was confined to his bed and unable to do anything to help calm the lads and explain that they were spooked by a spooked horse and shame them into going back to whatever bit of muddy ground they had been fortunate enough to have been given. So, inevitably there was quite a scrimmage at the gate when the duty centurion refused to open it and it weren’t until the legate of the Twenty-first, whose name escapes me, came along and shamed the frightened ladies into accepting the reality of the situation that things began to calm down. By the time they had all dispersed there were eight bodies lying on the ground; all of them had been trampled to death. If I remember rightly I heard that the legate was so ashamed of his men that he punished all those who’d been involved with exclusion from the camp for a whole year. This meant that they weren’t allowed the protection and support of their comrades at night and had to make do as best they could on the outside. None of them made it through that year.’

Thumelicatz smiled in the lamplight, his teeth glowing softly through his beard. ‘How gratifying to hear that Rome’s finest were running scared of a horse by this time; my father would have been most amused, no doubt. But I think amusement was the last thing on his mind that morning. Aius, read on.’

But, to my surprise, Caecina decided not to run but offered battle with his demoralised army instead. I looked at his position and laughed. ‘If he thinks that we would be stupid enough to come and face him head-on when all we have to do is wait for an opportune moment to take apart his flanks and then eat into the rump of his column, then he’s mad.’

But it soon transpired that I was in a minority of one with this opinion. Inguiomer, my own uncle, spat on the ground. ‘You’ve spent too much time away from your homeland, Erminatz; you’ve lost a real sense of Germanic pride, Cheruscian pride. Shall we really carry on sneaking around, taking our enemy in the back and the side, trying to drown him and doing just about everything other than face him like the sons of All Men should be proud to do. He’s offering battle; are we so womanish to refuse?’

I stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re as mad as Caecina. Have you learnt nothing about fighting the Romans? Take them from the side, take them in ambush, rain javelin volleys down on their formations, snip at them here and there and you negate their power; but take them from the front, head on, toe to toe, and they will always win, even against ten times their number. Always!’

‘Not this time they won’t, Erminatz; they’re tired, hungry and dispirited; we will triumph and it will be a triumph of men and not the sneaking ambush of the Teutoburg Pass. This will be a victory of which we can boast with our heads held high. To refuse him now will be to be thought of as lesser men and our women will taunt us.’

My father put a hand on my shoulder. ‘He’s right, my son: we need to show our people that we can defeat our enemy as men and not just sneak-thieves. To rule, one needs respect and that can only be gained in honest combat. That tired, hungry and demoralised army is our chance and we must take it.’

As I looked around the faces of the kings and their thanes behind I could see that this argument had convinced them and I cursed, inwardly, the pride of the Germanic male that makes him do things that are totally illogical. But at that moment I remembered that they had never had the benefit of an education from Lucius Caesar; I would never be able to dissuade them from their suicidal course. It was pointless to argue. ‘Very well, we will take his offer, and may the blood of the warriors we lose today weigh heavy on your heads for there will be much.’

I wanted none of it and yet what option did I have but to fight at the head of my tribe alongside my father and uncle? Our horns sounded and from all about our warriors began to form up in their clan groups and then into their tribes; ale was passed around and they drank themselves some courage as before us Caecina – or so I thought at the time as I was unaware of his injury – completed his disposition. Four legions, albeit all of them under-strength, and almost the same number of auxiliaries, confronted us and our numbers were not much more than theirs. It was a foolhardy decision and now that it had been made nobody could go back on it without losing face. It was with a grim smile that I reflected that a Germanic warrior would rather lose life than face.

And so we moved forward, our men jeering and shouting whilst swigging from skins of ale and captured wine, all the while boasting of their feats and urging their comrades on to great deeds. Closer we got to the Roman line, three legions wide, each three cohorts deep, with the fourth in reserve and supported on the flanks by auxiliary Gauls, Aquitainians and some Iberians, and with light cavalry swirling beyond them, and it did not move; in fact it did not make a sound. Silent they stood there, waiting; and I knew that with every step we took towards them their confidence would grow for this was going to be the way of fighting that they knew best and they were looking forward, with relish, to repaying the indignities we had heaped upon them over the last few days. And so, filled with foreboding, I led the charge.

‘What did it look like, this charge?’ Thumelicatz enquired, with genuine interest.

‘Like any other charge of screaming barbarians,’ the street-fighter replied, refilling his cup. ‘We hadn’t had much sleep and it had been so long since we’d had a hot meal that the last thing we fancied was a toe to toe but we knew that would be our best chance of getting back to the Rhenus. So we stood and none of us uttered a word, not even the arse-widener; even he neglected to growl at us as the massed attack came on. I felt Sextus to my right and Cassandros on my left shoulder; around us our mates were breathing deeply, gulping in the air that they knew, from previous experience, would soon be in short supply. The palm of my right hand was sticky as I gripped the first of my two pila, ready for the order; I glanced down at my left forearm, the muscles bulging as I held my shield firmly to the front, the second pilum grasped in the same hand, and I recalled the shock of the impact of all the other head-on charges I’d faced. But no matter how many times you’ve watched, over the rim of your shield, a mass of sweaty savages, howling for your blood, scrambling over one another to be the first to try and take your head off, it don’t make it any easier. You could smell the piss from some of the less-experienced lads and I hoped for their sake that the arse-widener wouldn’t know the culprits as that was one of his pet hates: pissing on your own ground makes it slipperier and he tended to give a good demonstration of the difference between slippery and dry with his cane afterwards – if the culprit was alive, that was.

‘The cornua rumbled and the arse-widener roared; we stamped forward with our left feet and pulled our right arms back and then, with another roared command, we hurled our pila. Without looking at the results of our handiwork we hefted our second missile into our throwing hands and before four heartbeats had passed they were hurtling at a lower trajectory at the screaming hatred just twenty paces away and we already had our swords drawn. It’s a lovely sight, a pilum volley hitting home; scores of the bastards went down, blood spraying and slopping as faces were pulped and chests were skewered. They came down in scores, they did, and each one would trip at least one of the arseholes behind him. But casualties have never stopped a barbarian charge in my experience. “Brace yourselves, you worthless cunts!” the arse-widener bellowed encouragingly. “Your playmates have arrived. Shoulders down!”

‘It’s easy: weight on the left foot, left shoulder hard on the back of your shield, the top of which is just at eye height, and you feel the shield of the man behind press against your back adding to your weight along with all the other lads in your file. Bearded, long-haired and tattooed, they were a hideous sight as they closed. And then, crash, no more time for thought; they hit you at full pelt and it’s then about timing. Up and forward went our front rank shields, punching the shield bosses onto their chests and blocking the downward slashes of swords or the overarm thrusts of spears with the rims; an instant later you ram your blade through the gap, pray for flesh, and it was there. Right and left I twisted my wrist, just as I had been shown on my first day of training. Blood sprayed up my arm and I pulled it back, feeling the suction of the wound pulling on my blade as, next to me, Sextus began to howl like an unnatural thing as he slammed with his shield and punched with his sword. All along our line we heaved and grunted, hardly ever looking over our rims, as a spear thrust could be the last thing you ever see, working our blades and bosses and not giving a fuck about anything other than keeping our formation for we knew that a solid wall of Roman heavy infantry supported by the weight of the seven ranks behind is the safest place to be in a battle – unless you’re sitting on a horse directing matters from the rear, that is.

‘Now, I was just one soldier in a century somewhere towards the centre of our line so I have no idea what happened, but within the time it takes to fuck a couple of whores, the whole hairy bunch of them were running away leaving the ground carpeted with as many dead and dying as you could wave a sword at. I ain’t ever seen so many after such a comparatively brief ruckus; thousands of them there were, with hundreds more trying to crawl away. On the flanks, the Gallic auxiliaries were following up the rout, enjoying their favourite pastime of sticking Germans, whilst the cavalry swirled around their flanks hefting javelin after javelin into them bringing more down in droves. A lovely sight it was, that’s for sure.

‘“Don’t you fucking dare move, pig-swill,” the arse-widener suggested, the wild grin on his face and the magnitude of his roar indicating that he was thoroughly enjoying himself, “until I tell you to!”

‘But he was wasting his breath as none of us fancied chasing the bastards, let the auxiliaries do that, we reasoned, and we were happy to watch them do so. For about an hour we stood there, reeking of piss and shit, pleased to be doing nothing. And then the blow-boys started up, but it weren’t the cornicerns, it was the buccinators; we were on the march. Gradually the army peeled away and carried on westwards „.’

‘And my father watched it go, unable to do anything to stop it,’ Thumelicatz said. ‘Covered in blood that was more Germanic than Latin, he watched you go as Inguiomer lay on the ground next to him slowly bleeding out through the gaping rent in his belly. I remember this passage almost word for word. “As I watched the legions leave the field, one by one, I looked down at the man who had, through pride, squandered our chance of victory and could not bring myself to blame him as he lay dying: he had acted in the correct way to the Germanic manner of thinking and, however much I hated Rome, that day had shown me just how much Rome had influenced my thinking, how much I was a part of them despite myself. I turned to my father who held his brother’s hand. ‘We’ve let them escape now and there is no way that we can stop them; so now they’ll be back next spring and more of our people will have to die.’ My father shrugged, tears trickled into his beard. ‘Let them come and then perhaps we will do it your way.’ But that would not happen as I knew, watching the rearguard disappear into the west, that we would never be given the opportunity to harry a Roman army on the march again; it was over unless a miracle occurred. But a miracle did occur in the form of a woman on a bridge.”’

The street-fighter frowned. ‘You mean the elder Agrippina, Germanicus’ wife?’

‘Not me, but my father, yes,’ Thumelicatz replied, ‘and he was right. What happened when you reached the Rhenus?’

‘Well, we was knackered; five days since the battle and not a sign of the savages but we were only too happy to go as fast as we could; even the arse-widener seemed content with our progress. The evening of the fifth day we came to the bridge that we’d built to cross the river and on it, at its eastern end, stood a woman. As we got closer we saw it was Agrippina and as we began to cross the rumour flew down the column that the prefect of Castra Vetera had panicked when he had heard that we were under attack as we made our way west along the Road of the Long Bridges and assumed that we would be defeated and that Germania Inferior would be over-run unless he demolished the bridge. But Agrippina refused to let him and stood on it for days holding her newborn daughter of the same name in her arms; as we paraded past her we cheered her for she had saved us from being marooned on the other side, becoming easy prey as we tried to board whatever ships that could be sent to pick us up. How we loved her for what she did.’

‘Of course you did,’ Thumelicatz agreed. ‘But imagine what effect that love of the Rhenus legions for the wife of a general, who was already seen as a dangerous rival, affected the mind of the Emperor brooding in Rome. Imagine the jealousy and fear it inspired when it came to the ears of Tiberius.’