‘What should I do?’ hissed Proculinus to Tullus.
‘You can’t stop this – it’s like trying to stem the tide. Stay with your men. Try to keep them together, and be ready to answer the summons to rejoin the rest of the army. If you can’t bring them back, Arminius and his warriors will kill you all,’ warned Tullus. Proculinus nodded and hurried off.
Tullus pushed on, into the crowd of jostling legionaries. He had to reach his troops, or they too would copy the rest, the way sheep follow those at the front of the flock.
‘Make way, you filth,’ he roared, clattering his vitis on helmets, arms and backs alike. ‘Make way!’
His own century had just reached the gate when Tullus cleared through the last stragglers of the Sixth Cohort and re-entered the camp. ‘HALT!’ he bellowed in his best parade voice. ‘HALT!’
Fenestela, who was in Tullus’ usual position, repeated the order.
After the slightest hesitation, the front rank stopped. The second came to a halt quicker. After that, things went as smooth as they ever would, each rank coming to a standstill with a one, two stamp of their hobnails. Tullus described the chaotic scene outside the gate to Fenestela, who swore long and hard. ‘Those rebellious pricks will be the death of us all.’
‘Let’s fucking hope not.’ Tullus’ gaze roamed beyond their men, to the troops further down the column. Could he hold back the rest of the legion? He came to a snap decision. ‘The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Cohorts will want to go with the others, not stay here with us. The best chance of stopping the rot is to go to the Twentieth’s primus pilus.’
‘So we move away from the gateway?’
‘Do it now. Keep the men focused. Tell them how we’re about to slaughter the bastard Germans. Come down hard on anyone who even looks as if he wants to follow the rest. See that the other centurions do the same.’ Tullus left Fenestela to it.
He had bigger fish to fry.
Time passed – it had to have been close to an hour, but Tullus had no way of knowing. The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Cohorts of the Fifth had joined the rest of the legion and the First on the flat ground outside the camp. But thanks to his intervention, the Twentieth Legion, which had still been within the walls, had been kept in order on the intervallum. Together with Tullus’ cohort, the Twentieth had waited until Caecina, his officers and the baggage train had followed the still loyal First Legion towards the Rhenus. Then it had set out too, making up the rearguard.
The mutinous Fifth and Twenty-First were to be left where they were, Caecina had ordered. ‘They’ll come to their senses quick enough when they see us marching away,’ he’d said. It was a massive gamble, but no one had had a better suggestion. Delaying – staying behind to try and win the rebellious soldiers over – was far too dangerous. The Germans would attack at any moment.
Tullus had suggested that his cohort precede the Twentieth, and Caecina had agreed. Too late, Tullus realised this would leave him and his men right behind the baggage train. Under normal circumstances, this position would have been unpleasant, aromatic and shit-spattered. Today, it left Tullus’ cohort as the men who would have to help push the wagons if they became stuck in the mud.
If, thought Tullus with a lingering sourness. More like when. The army had travelled perhaps half a mile westward before its snail-like pace ground to a complete halt. He tramped forward to the tail-end wagon, a low-sided vehicle laden with dismantled bolt-throwers. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of the driver, a tiny old man with wispy white hair.
‘Wagons in front have stopped, sir,’ came the obsequious but sly reply.
‘I can see that,’ replied Tullus in an acid tone. ‘Why are they not moving? Because the ones in front of them are at a standstill,’ he said, before White Hair could tell him the same thing.
‘I’d wager that’s the reason, sir.’ White Hair was perched on his seat, the reins to his mule team dangling from one hand. The forefinger of his other hand was buried inside a nostril. He seemed to have not the slightest interest in what was happening around him. ‘Aye.’
Irritated at first, Tullus then decided that the ancient’s attitude was understandable, and practical. He could not shift his wagon until the ones in front moved forward. Frail, old, White Hair was powerless to help with digging out the bogged-down vehicles. He could not run from the Germans, nor even defend himself. Tullus left him to his excavations, and worked his way through the quagmire past a score of wagons. Many were stuck fast.
There was no point continuing, he concluded. Everything with wheels would be axle-deep in mud along the length of the baggage train. It would require his cohort and a good number of legionaries from the Twentieth to dig them out – and it would take time. We couldn’t have handed a better opportunity to Arminius if we tried, thought Tullus with bitterness, and wondered if repairing the road first would have been a better option. Spotting the Twenty-First and most of the Fifth still milling about, he cursed and cursed again. If Arminius was shrewd enough to split his forces and attack both the wagons and the disorganised, mutinous soldiers-
Think like that, and you might as well give up now, Tullus told himself. He retraced his steps, eager to reach his men.
‘Things bad?’ White Hair was still in his position, but he’d given up on the exploration of his nostrils. Now a nasty-looking club, its end studded with sharp pieces of iron, was balanced on his knees.
‘They’re bad enough, aye,’ replied Tullus. He gestured at the club. ‘Planning to fight?’
‘My wife’s twenty-five years younger ’n me. She’s keeping the bed warm in Vetera,’ White Hair disclosed with a wink. ‘That’s worth fighting for, ain’t it?’
‘Without doubt,’ said Tullus, amused and heartened by White Hair’s pluck. ‘I’ll be back. We’ll have your wagon out of the mud in no time.’
Huuuummmmmmmm! Huuuummmmmmmm !
‘Bastards,’ snarled Tullus, already moving past White Hair and studying the slope to his left for signs of the enemy. Before long, he’d picked out the shapes of men in the trees. They would be gathering on the other side of the baggage train too – and the cohorts had had little time to form up. The fighting was going to be disorganised and even more brutal than usual. ‘Fenestela!’ he roared.
‘I’m here, sir!’
‘One in every four or five wagons is stuck,’ said Tullus. ‘It’ll take hundreds of men to shift them.’
‘All to be done while the savages attack us,’ said Fenestela, curling his lip. ‘O, Fortuna, what did we do to piss you off so?’
‘There’s no pleasing that old whore.’
Fenestela’s shoulders went up and down in a fatalistic shrug. ‘What are your orders?’
‘Three centuries to the left and three to the right of the wagons. We need to move up the train as far as possible before the savages strike. That’ll allow legionaries from the Twentieth to follow on and dig out the vehicles at the back.’
‘And if the Germans attack Caecina?’
They exchanged unhappy stares, and Tullus chewed a nail. ‘It’d be just like Arminius to try something like that,’ he said, picturing hundreds of tribesmen descending on the governor and his escort. ‘Gather the century, and do it fast.’
‘Will that be sufficient?’
‘Any more, and we won’t get there quick enough.’
Fenestela nodded and hurried off.
A light rain began to fall. It progressed fast to a constant, driving sheet that soaked a man through within twenty heartbeats. Thunder rumbled overhead. Flashes of lightning tore strips across the sky. The barritus rang out again, a great deal louder than before. The unpleasant scene was all too familiar. Arminius’ warriors were coming, thought Tullus, and in great strength.
They would be fighting not for the wagon train, but for their lives.
Chapter XXXIII