Eagle in the Snow

  Eagle in the Snow

  Wallace Breem

  Banished to the Empire’s farthest outpost, veteran warrior Paulinus Maximus defends The Wall of Britannia from the constant onslaught of belligerent barbarian tribes. Bravery, loyalty, experience, and success lead to Maximus’ appointment as “General of the West” by the Roman emperor, the ambition of a lifetime. But with the title comes a caveat: Maximus needs to muster and command a single legion to defend the perilous Rhine frontier.

  On the opposite side of the Rhine River, tribal nations are uniting; hundreds of thousands mass in preparation for the conquest of Gaul, and from there, a sweep down into Rome itself. Only a wide river and a wily general keep them in check.

  With discipline, deception, persuasion, and surprise, Maximus holds the line against an increasingly desperate and innumerable foe. Friends, allies, and even enemies urge Maximus to proclaim himself emperor. He refuses, bound by an oath of duty, honor, and sacrifice to Rome, a city he has never seen. But then circumstance intervenes. Now, Maximus will accept the purple robe of emperor, if his scrappy legion can deliver this last crucial victory against insurmountable odds. The very fate of Rome hangs in the balance.

  Combining the brilliantly realized battle action of Gates of Fire and the masterful characterization of Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine, Eagle in the Snow is nothing less than the novel of the fall of the Roman empire.

  Wallace Breem

  EAGLE IN THE SNOW

  A Novel

  For Rikki, for whom it was written

  Map

  PROLOGUE

  In the deep valleys between the black rain-lashed mountains of the western coast there is little to do of a winter’s night if you belong to a beaten people. Defeated, sick-at-heart and afraid, you sit huddled in a tattered cloak round the great spluttering fires and dream of a to-morrow that will never come. The women nurse their wailing children and long for warm huts and a world in which milk is always plentiful; the young warriors sharpen their dulled spears and pray for just one victory against the men from the sea; while the old remember a time when no fires betrayed a burning village to the night sky, and there was peace in the lands from which they are now exiled for ever.

  The talk of to-morrow dies away with the sparks blown from the hot ash and tales of the past are recounted by the elders of the tribe. Despair and fear recede a little into the darkness and curiosity and hope take their place as the well-loved stories are told again for the hundredth time. Perhaps a fresh tale is told by an old man whom no-one knows, and the defeated listen in silence. They hear of the great conspiracy beyond the Wall and of a man with no hair, who had the misfortune to become a god. They hear of the soldier who carried an emperor’s message across half Europe in his severed hand; and, for the first time, they hear too of how the last of the Eagles was destroyed by a river of ice.

  BRITANNIA

  I

  YOU THINK I am lucky because I am old, because I knew a world that was not turned upside down. Perhaps you are right. As you, too, might have been lucky if the ice had only cracked. You don’t really know what I am talking about, do you? Well then, listen to me and I, Paulinus Gaius Maximus, will tell you.

  I was born and brought up in Gaul, though my ancestors came from Rome herself. As a young child I lived on the outskirts of military camps and, from the very first, my life was regulated by the trumpets that roused the soldiers in the morning and told them when to sleep at night. Then, when I was six, my father was asked to give up command of the Second Flavia at Moguntiacum, and retired to his villa near Arelate.

  We were a large household as I remember it. I had a cousin, Julian, who was brought up with me. His father, Martinus, had been head of a province, but later he became Vicarius of his native Britannia. He was a just man, and was liked by everyone; but he fell foul of a usurping emperor and found himself proscribed. My aunt was with Martinus when he heard the news that he was to be arrested. She took the knife and stabbed herself first. And then she held it out to him, all bloody in her hands. “See,” she said. “It does not hurt, Martinus.” My father told Julian this when he was old enough to understand. He wanted Julian to be proud of his parents and to know what fine people they had been. But it was a mistake; it did not make Julian proud; it only taught him to hate. But that came later. At lessons or at play we were inseparable, and like all children we planned to do great things to help Rome when we were grown men. We were like brothers.

  When I was thirteen my father was appointed Legate of the Twentieth Valeria, stationed in Brittania. He owed this to the young Caesar, Julian, who, like us, worshipped the old gods.

  The day we left Gaul there was an eclipse of the sun. It was uncanny the way the brightness vanished and the day turned into night. It was like the end of the world. Julian shivered, I remember, and said that to sail on such a day would bring bad luck. But my father sacrificed a cock and decided the omens were good. So we went on with our journey.

  When old enough, we went into my father’s legion as equestrian tribunes. We were initiated into the mysteries of our faith in the same temple and on the same day. Together we took the sacred oath: ‘In the name of the God who has divided the earth from the heavens, the light from the darkness, the day from the night, the world from chaos, and life from death….’ And together we came out into the sunlight, carrying the words of our God upon our shoulders. Those were the good times, for we did everything together. We learned to be soldiers at Deva and I learned, too, something that was fast dying out, to take a pride in the legion of which I was a member. In my great-grandfather’s day the legions had been the shock troops of Rome; the best disciplined and the best fighters. But under Diocletian things had changed. A new field army began to grow up, consisting of auxiliary regiments made up from provincials and even barbarians willing to accept Rome’s service. Cavalry became all the fashion and the legions dwindled into becoming mere frontier troops. But here in Britannia the three legions still mattered, and I was glad. I was sorry when the time came for me to leave because it meant parting with Julian who was to remain on my father’s staff. It was three years before I saw him again.

  I did a tour of duty with the Second Augusta at Isca Silurium and then was sent to our army headquarters at Eburacum. There I spent my time doing administrative work, worrying over accounts, pensions, and burial funds. It was dull work.

  One day Fullofaudes sent for me. He was the new Dux Britanniarum; an Aleman from the banks of the Rhenus.

  “A part of the Legion at Deva has tried to mutiny,” he said. “The rebellion has been put down and the ring-leaders arrested. You will go to Deva at once with reinforcements and take charge until I have appointed a new commander.”

  I looked at him in astonishment.

  “The Legate is dead,” he said, harshly. “I am sorry.”

  He picked up a roll of documents from the table. “Three days ago we caught a slave carrying these. They contain details about this plot—and others as well. It is full of names. Much too full of names.”

  “Dead,” I said. I could scarcely hear him.

  “The disaffection is widespread. Too many are involved. Too many think that the province should break with Rome.”

  “They can be arrested and executed.”

  “No. To go further into this affair would do no good. I should have few officers and no men left.” He looked at me hard. “No-one will be executed,” he said. “Do you understand?”

  He gave me a roll of sealed script. “Here are your orders and your authority. As for these—” He bent to the table, picked up the documents and flung them into the fire. “I do not believe that this province should separate from Rome. I want no martyrs whose memories can inflame the dissatisfied. But I do need t
ime to build up loyalty. Do you understand now?”

  “Yes,” I said. But I didn’t really. I only understood that my father was dead.

  I reached Deva a week later. I paraded the legion and they stood for two hours in the rain before I came to them. Decimation was the punishment they expected and they were grey-faced and full of fear. Only at the end when they were wet with suspense did I say that there would be no executions. In their relief they cheered me and I dismissed them. I was hoarse with speaking. I went into the Legate’s quarters—my father’s quarters—and there the eight ringleaders were brought to me in chains. Five were tribunes and three were centurions. The anger of the parade ground had gone. I felt nothing now except a great coldness.

  “You will not be executed,” I said. “But you are convicted of treason and deprived of Roman citizenship by order of the Vicarius. Your status is now that of slaves and as slaves you will be treated. Those of centurion rank will go to the lead mines at Isca Silurium where you will work for Rome till you die. As for the rest—since you have a taste for fighting your own kind, you will have a chance to gratify it further. You will go to the gladiatorial school at Calleva and afterwards be matched against each other in the ring. You may, if you are lucky, survive five years.”

  Before they were taken away I spoke to their leader.

  “Why did you do it, Julian?” I said. “In the name of Mithras, why?”

  “Your emperor killed my father,” he said, in an empty voice.

  “But you—? A Roman officer.”

  “I was,” he said, and he tried to smile.

  “But why? Why?”

  “If you do not understand,” he said, “then I cannot tell you.”

  They took him away and I was left alone in that empty room with its memories of my father and my boyhood memories of Julian. I remembered the quarrels we had had and the fights; I remembered the things that we had enjoyed together; days in the hot sun, learning to drive a chariot; other days spent in hunting and fishing, and the long evenings in Gaul spent in talking and playing draughts, and the fine plans we had made and the dreams that we had dreamed together. I remembered it all with a pain that was indescribable, and a sense of anguish that could not be extinguished. And I wept.

  I went back to Eburacum and I returned to my accounts. I worked hard so that I never had time to think except in the long, lonely nights when I could not sleep. But I never went to the Games and those who did never spoke about them in my presence.

  Three months later I was sent on leave and went to Corinium, which I did not know. I went to the officers’ club, and I drank, and I hunted a little, for they were much troubled by wolves that autumn. Then I met a girl with dark hair, whose name was Aelia, and I married her. For a wedding gift I gave her some gold ear-drops that had belonged to my mother, and she gave me a signet ring with the likeness of Mercury stamped on it. She was a christian, though more tolerant than most.

  It was there I received news that I had been posted to the Wall, to a place called Borcovicum of which I had never heard. It was at the end of the world, or so it seemed to us. A harsh country of heather and rock; bleak and terrible in winter, yet austerely beautiful in summer; a vast lonely land that was pitiless in its climate to both men and animals. Step out of earshot of the camp and you would hear nothing save the forlorn cry of the curlew and feel nothing but the bite of the everlasting wind.

  My fort had some importance. It stood at the junction of several roads and guarded the track that led north into tribal territory. My auxiliaries were the First Cohort of Tungrians, originally from north-east Gaul; a mixed crowd of Iberians, Parthians, Brigantes and Goths, divided by centuries into tribal classes. Only a single century were Tungrians now, but I found their inscriptions all over the camp. There was one, I remember, on the wall of my quarters. It said, “May I do the right thing”, and I used to look at it every day and wonder what that first commandant had been like and what particular need had driven him to carve just those particular words in that particular place.

  My adjutant, Vitalius, was a man of about thirty, anxious faced and solemn. Gaius, my second-in-command, was older. He was a Sarmatian from beyond the Danubius, and from his bitter manner, I think, had hoped for the command for himself. My chief centurion, Saturninus, formerly of the Second Augusta, was a man of great calm, few words, and immense experience. It was a long while before I gained his respect.

  The mile castles and signal towers along the frontier were manned by militia—the Arcani we called them—who were recruited from local tribesmen from either side of the Wall. The frontier then was very quiet; and there was little to do except work; but I was happy enough. Aelia did not like the place for there were few women and she was lonely, but she never complained. She saw little of me during the day except at meals, but at night we were happy, and we would lie awake and listen to the drunks singing in the wine shop in the settlement outside, and smell the goats that grazed under the walls by the west gate if the wind was in the wrong direction.

  Sometimes I used to ride over to a neighbouring fort, Vindolanda, and play draughts with Quintus Veronius, its praefectus, though he got angry when I called him that. “I am a tribune,” he would say haughtily, “even though I do command a rabble of auxiliaries.” He was my own age, always rode a black horse with white feet and was the best cavalry officer I ever met. He had been posted here from the Tenth Gemina in Pannonia following a scandal over some girl, and when he was drunk he would talk excitedly of a troop of Dacian horse he had once commanded and who, he would swear, were the best cavalry in the world. But he never spoke of the girl. His family came from Hispania and he missed the sun and was always hoping for a transfer there. But though he wrote numerous letters to influential relatives nothing ever came of it; and I was selfishly glad.

  Quintus took a great interest in our catapults, which surprised me, for cavalrymen usually thought of little but swords and charges.

  “I was on the Saxon Shore under my countryman, Nectaridus,” he explained. “He is a great fighter.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  He shrugged. “It was so cold standing there on those great flat-roofed towers at Lemanis. The wind howled in your face and your eyes ached as you stared out into the darkness. The Saxons used to slip in quietly if they could, sails lowered, on the midnight tide. If you spotted them you hit them with the ballistae until their ships broke up. Then you killed the survivors with arrows while they struggled in the surf.”

  “Good shooting,” I said. I was impressed.

  “That was Nectaridus. He insisted that we must never fight dry Saxons: we must always kill them while they are still wet.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He said, casually, “I wanted command of the Ala Petriana, but I was turned down. Then, oh—I got drunk and did something stupid.” He looked at me with a smile. “So I was sent here.”

  I said, “It is a good place if you like fighting.”

  “It is also a good place in which to be forgotten. I was always cold on the Saxon Shore, but I would return to-morrow if they would let me.”

  I said, “We must go hunting together some time.”

  He cheered up then and said, “That would be good. It is lonely here, and I am somewhat tired of the company of slave girls who speak bad Latin.”

  I laughed. “Come to Borcovicum and meet Aelia. She is a great talker.”

  He said, “I met her once when I was out riding, I think. You—you are very lucky.”

  “Yes, I think I am.”

  He said, suddenly, “Maximus, why are you here?”

  For a moment I did not answer. Then I said, quietly, “One posting is much like another. I hope I shall not be here always.”

  It was then that he changed the subject.

  When Aelia came back from the birth of Saturninus’ firstborn she was very quiet, after the initial joy women show on these occasions. I took her hand and said, gently, “You are not to worry. There is plenty of time yet. We
shall have a son. You pray to your God and I will pray to mine. That way we shall have two chances of favour instead of one.”

  She laughed, momentarily, and then her face changed. “Perhaps it is a punishment for my sins.” She was very serious now, and I was worried.

  I said, lightly, “There is not much opportunity for committing wrongs at Borcovicum.”

  She said, in a low voice, “With us they can be in thoughts as well as deeds.”

  I returned to my letter. Presently she looked up from the fire. She said, “Do you remember the time that sentry slept at his watch and Saturninus asked you to overlook his offence?”

  “I remember.”

  “I came in when you were discussing what to do with him. And he said—do you remember?—he said, ‘You never had pity, sir, on the other one either.’ What did he mean?”

  My hand shook. I said, “He thought I was being too strict.”

  She said, “You are a good soldier. Even I can see that. But I think Saturninus is right. You can be very hard.”

  “I try to be just.”

  “It is sometimes better to be kind.”

  She was silent then and went on staring into the fire. I stopped writing and looked at her. I loved her so much, but I did not know what she was thinking.

  We had been there two winters when, on a warm spring day, I rode out to the second mile castle east of the camp, where some of our men were repairing the road. After my inspection was over I sat on a boulder, not far from the gate, and chatted with the post commander. As I did so I could see a man walking up the track towards us. I finished my conversation and mounted my horse. There was something in his walk that disturbed me, so I sat still and waited till he came up. I knew that kind of walk well, and when he stopped ten paces away and stared at me with that terrible tight look they always have, and the eyes that watch every flicker of a shadow and yet have no feel in them, no warmth of any kind, I knew who it was.