“Do you?”
“I am not afraid, Quintus, if that is what you mean.” I looked up, and saw him watching me with unhappy eyes. I smiled. I said, “You know, I was happy on the Wall. Yes, I mean that. I have never felt at home here in Germania.”
He said, “If I hadn’t ridden to Eburacum that day—only Saturninus knew why I went. I owed so much.”
“I understand.”
He said, “I wish I could believe that.”
“Get some sleep. We shall need all we can get from now on.”
Later, I went the rounds of the camp. I inspected the sentries, cheered the wounded with stupid jokes, and talked with my cohort commanders. On my return, I saw a man being sick in the snow. I went across to him, thinking it was a wounded soldier who had been given too much broth. He straightened up when he heard me coming, and turned awkwardly away. I saw then that it was Artorius. He was bare-headed, and he had his hands to his mouth. I recognised the look on his face only too well, so I called after him.
“No,” I said. “Just a moment.”
He stopped and turned round, hopelessly. He tried to stand to attention, and I knew what it must be like to be the wild beast in the arena when it has cornered its human victim. It would have looked just like Artorius then.
“Something disagreed with me,” he mumbled, and then added a hasty, ‘sir’, as though I might hit him for omitting it.
“Are you very afraid?” I said.
He nodded, his knuckles to his mouth. I could see his face quiver.
“So am I,” I said. “I am too afraid to be sick any more.”
He stared at me incredulously, as though I were laughing at him. “But you are a soldier,” he said.
“Oh, yes, but it doesn’t stop you being afraid. We all are: it is the waiting before-hand. It’s not so bad when the battle line is drawn up, and you watch for the signal to advance. You can smell your own sweat and the sweat of the men beside you. You hug to yourself the feeling that they are there, guarding your left and your right. You bolster yourself up with little jokes out of a dry mouth, and they answer you, and you pretend it’s a game, like all the training exercises that have gone before. You pretend the worst that can happen is a dressing-down from the Legate and an extra fatigue from an irate centurion. Then the advance is sounded and the line moves forward. Inevitably, you spread out to avoid rough ground or a clump of bushes, and your companions are no longer within touching distance. You see the enemy hurl their javelins, and men scream and go down. You don’t worry about being hit; that’s the funny part of it. You have the soldier’s illusion of invulnerability. It is always the other man who will be wounded or killed—never yourself. And the more this happens—even though it is to your friends—the stronger the feeling. If you didn’t have it, you could never advance at all.”
I paused. His face had lost, for the moment any way, that frightened look. He was absorbed in what I was saying.
I said, “But then, as you get closer to the waiting enemy, comes a terrible sense of isolation. The man on your left, five yards away, might as well be five thousand. It grows and grows, this feeling of loneliness, until you are sure that you must be the only man advancing in the whole of your army.
He said, “You make it sound so easy.”
“When it comes to the point, it is.”
He lowered his head. “I thought I had the courage,” he said. “It seemed to be so easy in my room in the Basilica. They were all leaving, and I was ashamed. I knew then that we had let you down, and that somewhere out here you were all risking your lives, just for us. I thought—I thought I must do something too; even though it was so late. I didn’t know I was such a coward.” He tried hard to raise a smile. “It is humiliating,” he said. “You must despise people like me.”
I said, “I was not generous earlier on. I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” I held out my hand and gripped him by the arm. “I know you are not a fighting man,” I said. “That is not so very important. But you have come to help us. That is important.”
He wiped his mouth. He said, “Will it be long? It’s the waiting that is so hard.”
“Two hours at the most, Artorius. If you can endure that two hours, you will never be frightened again.”
XIX
THEY CAME AGAINST us in the early down, and only the startled cawing of the rooks, disturbed at their horrible feast, gave warning of their approach. They were more cautious now, determined to wear us down, as a wolf pack wears dawn a stag that it is hunting. Flights of arrows, a quick charge, a flight of axes, a retreat, silence, and a flight of arrows again. They circled the defences, probing for the weak spots. A sudden rush on the flanks that could only be broken by a charge of horse, a rush through the centre that even the carroballistae could barely check. Hour after hour they kept it up, and hour after hour my men stood at the palisades until they fell or were relieved. By midday Marius was dead, killed leading a desperate counter-attack against the enemy’s barricades; and Agilio had been badly wounded in the chest. In the afternoon it began to snow and they attacked again; grey, ghastly figures looming out of the swirling storm, to throw death with their two hands, or to receive it —it was all one to them. The ditches were choked with their dead and their wounded, and still they came, an endless stream of men, who breathed hatred and envy of all that we stood for. Fire arrows came sizzling out of the darkening sky, to start pools of flame that spluttered along the palisade, burst into roars of white fire when they landed on a waggon, or set a horse screaming with agony when it was hit. There was no respite, no rest of any kind. The hard, relentless pressure was maintained all day, all evening and all night, so that men who were trying to sleep could not do so, because of the sounds of the dying, the exultant cries of the enemy, and the smell of fire upon the snow.
At midnight I held a war council in the signal tower.
“We are out of arrows, nearly,” I said. Julius Optatus nodded, grimly. “The last issue has just been made— thirty to a man. We have issued the last javelins—fifteen to a man. The ballistae are short of missiles, and the carroballistae have about thirty bolts each. When those are gone we shall have only our bare hands.”
No-one spoke. They stood round me in a half circle, gaunt and unsmiling; but they were with me, and I was glad.
“Fabianus, get the waggons hitched up and put the wounded aboard. Those who can walk must drive the waggons or go with them. They are to make for Treverorum and seek shelter where they can find it. I suggest they make for the Temple district. They will be safer there than in houses where there are men and women, food and valuables. Get them out before daylight.”
Quintus, his arm in a sling, said, “What do you want us to do, Maximus? We will do whatever you ask.”
“In a moment,” I said. I turned to Fredegar, who had a bloody bandage about his head. In his thick furs, and with his grey beard, he looked like some fierce and indomitable bear. “This is not your fight,” I said. “Not any longer. I suggest you withdraw your men. Make terms, if you wish, or go into the hills.”
He said, “Are you asking me to go? Or is it an order?”
I touched his shoulder. “It is neither a request nor an order. It is just a suggestion.”
He said, “I served Marcomir’s father and, from the day the boy threw his first spear, I stood always on his left side. I should have stood there on the day he died, but the fates willed it otherwise.” He reached for the wine jug and gulped down a great draught. Spots of wine hung on his beard like blood. “I will tell my men what you said, but I do not think they will hear me. As for myself—” He paused. He said, “I stay.”
I looked at Quintus, who shrugged his shoulder. I turned to Aquila. “Are you sorry now that you did not kill me that day in Treverorum and elect another emperor?”
He flashed a smile. He said, “Afterwards I was ashamed.”
