could remember them. The area was however sparsely inhabited, so security shouldn’t be a major problem. With a touch of gallows humour, Gaius reviewed his plan in military fashion.
1.
The Roman fort of Spolicinum on Lacus Brigantinus.
2.
To warn (within four days) Spolicinum’s garrison about the risings of the Burgundians et alii.
3.
i Manpower: one retired general, reasonably fit but aged.
ii Rations: bread, salt beef, and beer — enough to last several days. (Clothilde has been generous with her provisioning.)
iii Weapons: lacking. (Except in areas troubled by Bagaudae, Roman civilians are forbidden by law to carry them.)
iv Base and communications: non-existent.
v Route: south-east across the Schwarzwald from the Rhenus to Lacus Brigantinus. Distance approximately 100 miles.
Gaius woke in the grey dawn, chilled and stiff after his second night in the watchtower. Feeling every one of his seventy-seven years, he rose gingerly from the bed he’d made from last autumn’s fallen leaves, and flexed the stiffness from his joints. What was it Marcus Aurelius (one of Gaius’ heroes) had said about getting up at dawn? ‘When loth to rise, bear this thought in mind: I am rising for a man’s work.’ Very appropriate in the present circumstances, Gaius thought wryly. Shivering beneath his cloak, he ate some of the food Clothilde had provided, washing it down with beer from a leather flagon. A robin whirred down from a gap in the roof, and perched on a fallen beam beside him. Its feathers fluffed up against the cold so that it resembled a tiny red and brown ball, it hopped closer, regarding Gaius hopefully with a bold, bright eye. Smiling, he tossed it some crumbs, and they partook of breakfast together.
Somewhat cheered by the visit of his feathered guest, which — had he still really believed in the old gods — might have seemed a good omen, Gaius left the watchtower and took stock of the terrain. To the west, in Gaul, rolled the long line of the Vosegus Mountains, their crests glowing in the sun’s early rays. Eastwards, across the Rhenus in Germania, loomed the forbidding mass of the Schwarzwald, covered in dark firs, except where isolated peaks broke through the dense pelt of vegetation. Spring had come late that year, and patches of snow speckled the high summits. At the foot of the bluff on which he stood flowed the Rhenus, its broad valley, once chequered by vineyards and fertile farms, now reverting to scrub, the sites of villas marked by roofless ruins and weed-choked fields. In their place had sprung up isolated hamlets, each a score or so of thatched huts encircled by a palisade and surrounded by an untidy jumble of arable plots and pasture.
‘
He paused to rehearse the key features of his route, aware that any miscalculation could be disastrous. He tried to create in his mind a map of the Schwarzwald: a great triangular massif, narrow at the top or northern end, wide at the base demarcated by the Rhenus where the river turned eastwards, and bisected by a chain of mountains running north to south. He combed his memory for the landmarks he must locate to have any hope of tracing his route. Separating the foothills from the massif proper there was, he seemed to remember, a stream called the Gutach, after crossing which he must surmount the steep western flanks of the chain, where it would be fatally easy to become lost in the tangle of valleys that seamed the slopes. Once the height of land was reached, the worst would be over. An ancient trackway, the Hohenweg, followed the ridge, whose main summits were the Kandel and the Feldberg, to a deep ravine called the Hollenthal, running west to east and leading to the valley of the River Alb which debouched into the Rhenus upstream of Lacus Brigantinus.
Reassured at finding the Gutach more or less where he remembered it, Gaius forded the stream at a point where the channel braided. Then, in order to avoid those treacherous ravines, he struck up one of the lateral spurs that ran down from the mountain-chain like ribs projecting from a backbone. Tall, dense-packed, rising from a mossy carpet studded with ferns and berry-bearing plants, the pines closed round Gaius, enshrouding him in a twilight world suffused with a not unpleasant smell of resin and damp mould.
Gradually the slope steepened, at times becoming precipitous; on these pitches Gaius could make progress only by gripping branches and hauling himself bodily upwards. His breath became a series of tortured gasps, his leg-muscles, unaccustomed to this sort of punishment, seemed on fire with pain. More and more frequently he was forced to halt and rest his trembling limbs, while he sucked air into burning lungs. Navigation, by the angle of the slope and occasional glimpses of the sun, was virtually reduced to guesswork. Not until he had climbed above the treeline and reached the summit chain, a matter of ascending some four thousand feet, would he be able to check his bearings by getting a sighting on one of the landmark peaks.
Darkness found him still on the westward-facing slopes. To be benighted in the forest at high altitude was not good. Cold and attack by wild animals presented real risks. However, most large animals — bear, bison, and wild boar — had been hunted almost to extinction by gangs supplying animals for the Roman Games, and had only recently begun to recover. Lynx and wildcat were less rare, and capable of inflicting serious damage, but were shy, and dangerous only when threatened. Which left wolves. Normally, they gave man a wide berth, but they might attack if prompted by hunger.
Making separate piles of dry wood, ranging from tiny twigs to fallen limbs, Gaius scraped some punk from a hollow log and ignited it with his strike-light flint and steel. Blowing steadily on the smouldering tinder until it burst into flame, the old soldier fed it from the fuel he had prepared, until he had a vigorous blaze going. Gratefully, he huddled close to its cheering warmth.
Ribs showing through its matted coat, the old wolf that had been trailing Gaius, halted when it saw the fire flare up. Fires meant danger, searing pain, light that dazzled and confused. He lay down on his belly, eyes fixed on the figure crouching with hands extended towards the flames. He was content to wait, knowing from experience that, come the dawn, the man would kill the fire and begin to move again.
The wolf had seen the passing of twelve winters, none more bitter than the last. He was a huge animal and in his prime had been magnificent, with a glossy pelt of thick grey fur, shading from near-black to whitish on the belly. A successful pack leader for many years, he had fathered many strong cubs, all from the same dam. Then, four winters previously, his life had changed traumatically. His mate had fallen to a hunter’s spear; he pined for her, his leadership had lost its edge and he had been ousted by a younger rival. Forced to hunt alone, he had subsisted well enough until last winter when the red deer and the roe, his staple prey, had become scarce because, unable to dig through the crust of hard-frozen snow to browse on the underlying vegetation, many had died or migrated. He had been reduced to hunting small rodents. Once, in desperation, he had tried to steal the bait from a hunter’s trap; hunger had made him careless, and he set off the deadfall, which collapsed, maiming a forepaw. Now, lame and starving, the wolf had suppressed his instinctive fear of man and, in order to survive, was prepared to hunt and kill this member of their kind. The man, he sensed, was old and weak. He should be easy prey.
Gaius slept in brief snatches throughout the long, long night, tending the fire in the intervals between. As the first grey light filtered through the branches, he kicked out the embers and continued on his way. Gradually, he became aware of a faint booming sound. The noise grew louder, the earth began to tremble, and suddenly, entering a glade, he found himself confronting a mighty waterfall crashing and foaming down hundreds of feet in seven wild leaps from platforms of granite. The Falls of Triberg, he remembered, with a lifting of the spirit; he was now not far below the height of land. He pressed on; soon the trees thinned out, giving place to grassy slopes with here and there an isolated stand of mountain pine, and at last he stood on the summit ridge.
The weather was crisp and clear, so that even distant tops — the Herzogenhorn, the Belchen, the Kandel — stood out sharp-etched against the sky. Anxiously, he scanned the horizon to the southeast, and there it was, his main landmark: round-topped and bare, towering above the other peaks: the Feldberg. Spent but enormously
