He smiled with bared teeth.
“Have you no influence? You know what will happen?”
He spat sideways and shook his head so that the rain drops flew from his beard. “Of course. Yet I have ridden too many years at his side not to know that I cannot change the path his horse walks. He goes where he chooses; I follow.”
“What about her father? Does he know? Will he help?”
He shrugged. He said, “She is of us now. It is our matter. Besides, you are here; you will aid us.”
I glanced at Fabianus and saw him looking at me expectantly. I said, “I am a soldier, not a husband.”
“So.” He stepped aside. “Go in then and let each do what he must.”
I nodded and went in. I pulled back the skins covering the entrance to the inner room and stepped inside. He was standing in the centre by his great fur-lined bed, his arms held out, while two young men dressed him in the apparel fitting to a war lord of the Franks. His face was cold, remote, expressionless, like the stone face of a god upon an altar. Only the black marks round his eyes betrayed the reality of his grief.
I said, “I have heard your news. I would share your sorrow if it would help, oh my brother.”
He said, “You have come to help us. I am glad. Fabianus will have told you.”
“You are going to make war?”
“Yes. I am going to make war.”
I said, “It is best to fight when one is cool. Men who are angry make mistakes.”
“I am not in the mood for making anything but war.”
I sat down upon the bed. I said, slowly, “You made a pact to serve our emperor, whose general I am. It was agreed between us that no attack should be made without my permission. Do you mean to betray my trust in you?”
He said, “It is not your wife who is in their hands.”
I said, “That is understood.” I watched his face, saw him adjusting his sword belt with deliberate care, and realised that he was in the grip of a cold rage that nothing could penetrate.
I said, “You realise what you are doing?”
“Yes. I and my people know.”
“What is your plan?”
“We shall try to rescue her first, secretly. If that fails, then we shall attack the camp.”
“The daughter of Rando is our prisoner. I will be glad to use her as a bargaining counter. That is what I would do in your place.”
“But you are not in my place. She is an Aleman and Douna—my wife—is in the hands of Godigisel. The Alemanni and the Vandals will not help each other in this matter.”
“If you fight, you will destroy yourself and your people.”
He said, “Your men took one prisoner out of their raiding party. He had twisted an ankle and they had left him behind in their haste to escape. You will find what is left of him upon two poles behind this hut. When I have the Vandal king in my hands I shall make him feel that he is dying.”
I said, “I am your friend in this matter, as in all other matters. But I must warn you of one thing. Do not ask me to help. If you go out against the Alemanni and the Vandals I cannot support you with even one man from my legion.”
He said bitterly, “I have not asked you. But if you were my friend I would not have to ask you.”
I said, “If you do this thing, will Goar and his war-band help you?”
He hesitated. “Goar has told me that he will help me as a friend would, but that he will obey you.”
“In this matter?”
“Yes, in this matter and in all matters.” He tightened his belt, slid his sword into its sheath and moved into the outer room.
I followed, and stepped in front of him. “I had a wife—like your wife. Once, a long while ago, I had to leave her in a town abandoned to an enemy while I retreated away from it with my soldiers. It was not an easy thing to do.”
He tried hard to smile. “That is why you became the rulers of the world. I admire your courage. I envy you your sense of duty, but I hate your pride. I am not a Roman, like you.”
“You took my emperor’s money. You promised to obey me. March out with your men and you doom, not only yourselves, but me also.”
He said, “I am sorry. You can still march with me.”
“Marcomir.”
“No,” he said. “It is my wife they have taken. For two nights I have dreamed of what Godigisel has done to her. Now I am going to kill him.”
I remembered the Vandal; his square iron body; the brutal face and the thick lips, and the hairs on the back of the stubby fingers. I knew what he was thinking.
I stepped aside. “Go,” I said. “And in the name of Mithras, do what has to be done.” I gave him my salute and watched him go out into the rain at the head of his men. He was a brave man. As a soldier I could not forgive him, but in his circumstances I might, myself, have done the same thing.
I saw the glint of bronze and went across the mud to the stable. “Fabianus,” I said. “I have failed. Ride to Goar’s berg and tell him what has happened. Ask him to support Marcomir at his discretion. Stay with him and do what you can.”
He saluted. He said, “And do we not help?”
“I am a general,” I said, “not the captain of a robber band.”
On my return I said to Quintus, “There was nothing I could say that would have stopped him. He had that look on his face. I tried, but only because I had to.”
He raised that eyebrow of his. He said, “It seems a pity that we cannot help him.”
“How? We have already talked on the difficulties and danger of moving the legion across the river. To build a good bridge would take too long, and a good bridge is hard to destroy if things go wrong. I cannot even use the fleet. They have put a boom across the mouth of the Moenus. It would take too long to break it down. In any case, they have strengthened their defences at just those points we attacked before. As for the east bank, they have pulled their camp back five hundred yards and are out of range of our catapults.”
The night raid must have been a failure, because Marcomir was compelled to do battle as he had foreseen. He challenged Godigisel to fight and the Vandal king, under pressure from his allies who wanted no attacks on their part of the camp, was compelled to accept. For a long day the two hosts faced each other and Marcomir, on the advice of Fabianus, waited till an hour before sundown before advancing his men. It had been a hot day, the Vandals were hungry for their evening meal, and it was good tactics to tire them with waiting. Marcomir attacked in strength and, aided by three thousand of Goar’s Alans, broke through the enemy centre and cut the Vandals to pieces.
Godigisel was taken alive and his men fled back to their camp. Marcomir then made his mistake. He camped where he had fought, eight hundred yards from the enemy, and, all night long, we on the west bank could see the flicker of his fires and hear the sounds of Godigisel dying. Few of us slept, and in the morning when I met Quintus upon the guard-walk his face looked as sick as my own. Three hours later Respendial led his men out onto the plain and attacked Marcomir as he was striking camp. Outnumbered, the Franks withdrew in disorder to the hills while small bands, who found themselves cut off, were hunted westward to the banks of the Rhenus and drowned in the shallows. Goar watched the fighting from the scrub and did not allow his men to take part. He had no wish to set one half of his tribe against the other. The Franks were routed utterly.
Late that afternoon an embassy crossed the river and asked to see me. I could guess the purpose of their visit, so I ordered Rando’s daughter to be brought to me, and I received them in the courtyard outside my headquarters, surrounded by a guard of honour. Their leader was a wiry man in his fifties, brown eyed and arrogant in his manner.
“I bring for the General of the Romans a present from Respendial, King of the Alans,” he said. He held out a bundle, shook it slightly and the head of Marcomir fell to the ground and grinned at me with sightless eyes. The girl put her hand to her mouth, but said nothing. Quintus dropped his hand to his sword, and Aquila grunted with rage.
I said, coldly, “I am glad that you kill each other. It saves me the work.”
