“How long did it take them to discover they had been tricked?”
“I do not know,” he said cheerfully. “We kept a sharp watch but we never saw them following us. How goes it with you?”
“Our trick worked, too. The Burgundians have retreated north into the hills.”
“So!” he said. “And what do we do now?”
“We march,” I said. “Nothing stands between us and Treverorum except fatigue. That is the most difficult enemy of all, that we have to conquer.”
The retreat went on. We were out of the worst of the hills but, all the time, we were climbing upwards to a highland plain that exposed us to the worst of the weather. The wind had fallen, however, there was no more snow, and the sun shone and warmed our spirits. At intervals I would drop a mixed group of soldiers and Franks to make an ambush and, in every instance, my orders were the same. “Hold the position until they look like over-whelming you. Then burn the signal tower, if there is one, and retire behind the next ambush and march on the rear-guard. Keep your casualties as light as possible. Don’t try to be brave. There will be time for that later.”
We marched slowly and in self-imposed silence. There was only the everlasting rumble of the wheels of the ox carts, the monotonous clanging of the cooking pots that hung beneath them, the tired shuffling of feet, and the occasional whimper of a wounded man, tried beyond the point of human endurance. The men held their spears reversed over their shoulders, the blades wrapped in cloth to keep them dry, and the centurions strode stolidy behind their men, swearing softly if a soldier showed signs of falling out. Once, a man, parched with thirst, picked up a handful of snow and raised it to his mouth. I struck him across the back with my stick. “Lick the frozen snow, you idiot, and you may blister your tongue. Be patient. Wait until the next halt.”
The cavalry led their horses. Every hour we stopped for ten minutes, and the section commanders would pass round a flask of vinegar, so that each man might swallow a mouthful; while the mules were off-loaded and their backs examined for gall marks. At midday I went back to the waggon train and spoke to Scudilio. He had a better colour in his face now, and pleaded with me to let him march with his men. “No,” I said. “You will need all your strength at the thirtieth milestone.”
He said, “I let you down. All your plans in retreat depended upon the holding of Bingium.”
I shook my head. “We might not have been able to hold it in any event. Don’t think about it. Remember, I trusted him also. Up to the very last, I trusted him. If there is blame, then let us share it equally. It does not matter now.”
“I should march with my men,” he said. “I know what you think of the auxiliaries. I wanted, so much, to prove you wrong.”
“There is nothing now to prove.”
That afternoon, because of the icy conditions, we made only six miles, even though I took the precaution of continuing the march an hour after sundown, in order to keep our lead on the enemy. The next morning we set out a little after sunrise, as was our custom, and I had cavalry patrols range the countryside, looking for farms, huts or villages where they might pick up food; for the men were suffering acutely from being on half rations in the intense cold. They were more cheerful now, however, and began to sing those tuneless marching songs that all soldiers sing. They were all the same, usually obscene, about girls or a girl, had innumerable verses, and seemed to go on for ever. But I had not heard them sing since that last time when we had marched out of Treverorum, in what seemed to be another life. Then, we had been a legion. We were a legion still, and I was much cheered by the thought.
Two hours later, a messenger rode up from the rear-guard.
“There is the noise of fighting behind us. We are short of two ambush parties, sir.”
“They must have caught up at last. Tell your commander to hold his ground till he has collected the two groups. I want no-one left behind, do you understand.”
He was back again, an hour later. “Their horsemen are in sight,” he said breathlessly. “We picked up one patrol, but the other, so they think, was wiped out.”
I nodded. “Your commander knows what to do.”
By the middle of the afternoon we could see their horsemen coming down the road. They were a great distance away, but they were clearly silhouetted against the white dazzle of the snow. They closed up slowly, for there were not many of them, and then attacked the rear-guard. Their charges were wild and undisciplined, and were beaten off easily enough. Later, more and more horsemen joined them, and they got bolder, and followed us closely, making quick fierce attacks whenever the opportunity occurred. Quintus kept a screen of cavalry either side of the column, for there were heavy drifts on the road, and the marching was slow and painful. Soon our men got so used to watching cavalry fights take place out of bow-shot range that, presently, they took no notice. Occasionally, an enemy horseman would break through and canter up in a flurry of snow, and make a clumsy sweep at a helmeted figure trudging alongside a cart. The legionary might go down, unprotesting, too tired to defend himself, and the Vandal ride off, brandishing his sword in triumph. Sometimes, however, a bowman would hastily string his bow and loose an arrow, so that the man would continue his journey back to his waiting comrades, dying over the neck of his horse.
On the third day, after they caught us, we marched ten miles, and now there were horsemen all about us, in groups ranging from a dozen to twenty or thirty; but of the columns of their infantry there was no sign. That night their cavalry camped within two miles of us, and we were attacked, when the moon rose, by men both on horse and on foot. The enemy were a mixture of Vandals, Quadi and Marcomanni, and their efforts were, as Quintus remarked contemptuously, half-hearted in the extreme. A second attack, just after daybreak, was ended by a high wind and a sharp fall of snow which created a small blizzard; and both sides were compelled to cease fighting because of these conditions. That night I broke camp as soon as it was dark, despite the fact that the men had been on the march for nine hours. Again we made a forced march through fresh snow, the cavalry breaking the trail ahead of us in slow and coldly painful fashion. The pickets that we had left to keep the fires alight caught up with us late the next day, and reported that the enemy had not sent out patrols to the camp until well past daylight, and did not realise they had been tricked until the pickets rode off. We marched again all day, the men singing their tuneless songs, Fredegar limping beside the aquilifer, and Quintus bringing up the rear of the column and looking, as usual, a part of his horse.
In the late afternoon the sky cleared and I could see the sun, a circle of molten gold, just above the tops of the trees that thickened the horizon to our front. We dropped into a hollow, passed an abandoned straggle of huts, and then began to climb up a long slope; and either side of the road the snow lay thick and undisturbed, as far as a man on a horse could see. The legionaries began to quicken their pace, and the cavalry, as though at command, mounted their horses. A stir of expectation ran through the column, and faces began to peer through the slits in the waggon covers. There, ahead of us, between a gap in the trees, black against the sky, stood the framework of a signal tower, and the smoke from it streamed upwards into the cold air, as a message of welcome against our coming. We knew then that we had reached our destination—the thirtieth milestone out of Augusta Treverorum.
It was now the thirteenth day of January. For seven days we had held Moguntiacum against the hatred and envy and greed of five tribes. Then, we had retreated for six days through the hills in the most appalling conditions of ice and snow, fighting a rear-guard action of savage skirmishes over a distance of seventy odd miles. Yet not one man had fallen out who had not previously been injured by the swords or axes of the barbarians. It was still a legion that I commanded. As I went forward to greet the post commander, while my tired men began to bivouac behind the ditches we had prepared all those months before, a raven flew above my head and cawed dismally. I shivered. I knew, in my heart, that the legion had made its last march.
XVIII
INSIDE THE PALISADE I met Agilio, no longer the care-free boy I had last seen a short while ago; his face was strained and he looked anxious the whole time.
“Is everything in order?” I asked.
He nodded dumbly, his eyes wide as he watched my tired men file past towards the site of their camp in the rear. He had not believed me when I had warned him of what might happen; he had not visualised the possibility of
