Raptor (124 page)

My first concern was to track down my own riderless mount, because Velox wore a Roman army saddle and might have been mistaken for one of their horses. But his also wearing the unusual foot-rope perhaps gave pause to the Romans’ horse-collectors. At any rate, I found him safe and unscathed, down to the south of where he and I had fought, grazing on the cleared ground between the bridge and the trees. He was having to choose and pluck his grass-blades most fastidiously, because the grass and ground
everywhere
on this side of the river was soaked and reeking with blood. Velox too was spattered with it, and I was smeared with it, and so was almost every other horse and man on the field, alive or dead. When we survivors later went to wash ourselves and our gear, the Sontius ran red, bright red, for a long time. If there were any persons living between here and the Hadriatic who had been unaware of our armies’ meeting, they soon knew of it, and knew that it had been a carnage.

When the Roman legions departed, they left behind none of their fighting men who were still fit. From those legions there were no defectors, no deserters. But there did remain on the field a number of their medici and capsarii—the physicians of officer grade and their assisting rankers—to tend the wounded also left there. And of course, the wounded enemies this time being men of worth, we victors did not summarily put them to death, but let them be doctored and cared for. Indeed, our own accompanying lekjos officers worked side by side with the Roman medici, and all those physicians impartially treated all the wounded of both sides. I do not know how many of the fallen were kept alive or nursed back to health, but there were at least four thousand of our men already dead, and half again that many more of Odoacer’s. When our burial parties set about interring our slain, several officers suggested that it would save us much time and trouble if we simply dropped the enemies’ corpses into the Sontius and let them go downstream, as their lifeblood was already doing.

“Ne, ni allis!” Theodoric said sternly. “These Roman dead are six thousand fewer impediments on our way to winning the whole land of Italia. And when we have won that land, these men’s widows and children and other kinfolk will be my subjects, our fellow citizens and adopted kin. See to it that every one of the fallen Romans is buried as ceremoniously as we bury our own. Be it so!”

And so it was, though that task took our men many days to complete. At least our corpse-straighteners and gravediggers were spared any necessity of doing different offices for the various dead. That is to say, it would have been impossible to tell which of the corpses were Christians or pagans or Mithraists, except in the rare case where a dead man wore a cross or a Thor’s hammer or a sun-disk somewhere on his person, but that made for no problem. Mithraists, like pagans, have always been buried with heads to the west. And Christians having decided to be buried “with feet to the east,” our men had only to dig identical graves in parallel rows and inter the dead all the same. Anyway, no matter their religion in life, that is what dead men are: all the same.

Meanwhile, our armorers and smiths were also busy, repairing damaged corselets, reshaping dented helmets, straightening bent blades and sharpening blunted ones. Other soldiers were put to work collecting all the usable equipment and supplies and provisions the departing Romans had had to leave behind. Some of those things we made immediate use of—eating our fill of fresh-killed pork and mutton, for example, slathered with the Romans’ good garon sauce—and the other salvaged goods were loaded on the Romans’ discarded carts and wagons for taking along with us. Even our woodcutters who had chopped down all those trees upstream on the eastern bank finally got their chance to make them into rafts. We discovered that the Pons Sontii was too narrow to admit the immense carriages of our siege engines, so those got floated across the river.

Meanwhile, too, some of the speculatores who had gone following Odoacer came riding back to report to Theodoric. They said there was a very large and handsome city just a day’s march to the west of us, Aquileia by name. Because that city sits on Venetia’s flat coastal plain and faces on the open sea and is not at all walled about, its obvious vulnerability to assault had evidently decided Odoacer not to stop there. The speculatores said that his army had taken the fine Roman road that begins at Aquileia and, making good time, had continued along it, westward.

“The road is the Via Postumia,” Theodoric said to us gathered officers. “It leads to Verona, a strong-walled city, two-thirds encircled by a river, therefore eminently defensible. I do not wonder that Odoacer is hastening there. But I am pleased that he abandoned Aquileia to our mercies. It is the capital of this province of Venetia, and is an exceedingly wealthy city—or was, before the Huns trampled through it fifty years ago. However, it still is one of the main bases of the Roman navy, with part of the Hadriatic Fleet stationed at its seaside Grado suburb. It ought to be a comfortable place to refresh ourselves after our year of endeavor, and reward ourselves for the grand victory we have had here. From what I have heard of travelers’ tales, Aquileia has many elegant thermae, tasty Hadriatic seafoods and expert cooks to prepare them, beauteous Roman
and
Veneti women. So we will abide there for a time, but not for too long. As soon as we are all well rested, we will be off after Odoacer. Unless others of our speculatores return to report that he has veered off the Via Postumia, we will find him at Verona. And we must not allow him time to make that city more of a stronghold than it already is. That is where he will make his next stand. And I hope to make it his last.”

We very much enjoyed the several days we spent in Aquileia. Not since my stay in Vindobona had I been in a city where Latin was the everyday language of even the commonfolk. However, since most of the citizens here were Veneti—small, wiry, gray-eyed people with more Celtic than Roman blood—they spoke their Latin rather curiously, using the sounds of
z, k
and
f
instead of the conventional
d, g
and
b.
They glumly saluted Theodoric as “Theozoric,” and they amused him and the rest of us when, meaning to revile us as Gothi barbari, they cursed us as “Kothi farfari.”

And they did curse us, because Aquileia was understandably weary of being invaded by outlanders every generation or so—Alaric’s Visigoths, then Attila’s Huns, now us. The people were not much conciliated when Theodoric demanded of them only tribute of such supplies and commodities as would be of military use to our army. Mindful of this being his own future property, he forbade our troops to do any wanton destruction in the city or any looting for their personal profit. However, the warriors did make free use of the Aquileian women and girls and possibly some few boys. The decent ones did not like that, nor did their kinfolk, and probably the local lupanar and noctiluca females even less liked being used, because they were accustomed to getting
paid
for that.

Not
every
leading citizen of Aquileia held us in total odium. The navarchus of the Hadriatic Fleet, a man named Lentinus, middle-aged but youthfully brisk of movement, came from the Grado docks to converse with Theodoric, He spoke disparagingly of Odoacer (and, being a native of Venetia, he pronounced that name in the local manner).

“I have no reason to love King Ozoacer,” he said. “I watched his army’s unseemly stampede through here, and I am disinclined to be bound in fealty to a king so quickly and thoroughly routed. However, that does not mean, Theozoric, that I will abjectly surrender to you my ships based here or down the coast at Altinum. If your men prepare to board or seize them, I shall have all the vessels put safely to sea. On the other hand, when you demonstrably have vanquished Ozoacer, and have the blessing of Emperor Zeno, from that moment I will acknowledge you as my superior officer, and the Hadriatic Fleet will be yours.”

“Fair enough,” said Theodoric. “I expect to be fighting only land battles to overthrow Odoacer. I should not need any sea forces. By such time as I have use for those, I expect to be your king, and universally recognized as such. I shall then welcome your allegiance, Navarchus Lentinus, but I promise first to earn it.”

Also, while every other female in Aquileia seethed with loathing of us intruders, at least two of them—the exceptionally handsome women appropriated by Theodoric and young Freidereikhs—were absolutely enraptured at being the temporary bedmates of genuine
kings,
even conqueror kings. During their brief tenure as “queens,” those two willingly imparted useful bits of information about the surrounding country, such as: “When you continue along the Via Postumia, twenty miles west of here you will come to Concorzia.” (She meant Concordia.) “It once was a garrison and a manufactory of weapons for the Roman army. Ever since the Huns ravaged it, Concorzia has been in ruins, but it still is an important road juncture. There you will see another good Roman highway forking to the southwestward…”

Thus, when our army finally moved on from Aquileia, and we came to the remains of Concordia, Theodoric summoned forward a cavalry centurio to be given orders, and was able to tell him:

“Centurio Brunjo, that fork to the left is a branch of the Via Aemilia. While the rest of us proceed toward Verona, you and your century of horsemen will take that road yonder. I am reliably informed that you will meet no opposing forces anywhere along it. The road will take you across both the rivers Athesis and Padus, all the way to the city of Bononia, where it joins the Aemilian Way’s
main
road. You will post your men around that city, along that road in both directions and covering every possible roundabout path. Should Odoacer try to communicate with Rome or Ravenna—to call for reinforcements or for any other purpose—his messengers from Verona must travel that Via Aemilia to get to either destination. I want any such messenger intercepted and his message brought to me by a fast-riding messenger of your own. Habái ita swe.”

A hundred Roman miles west of Concordia, our army came to Verona. A very old and a very sightly city, it had had the good fortune, before now, not to have been much mauled by war and warriors. Although Alaric the Visigoth had marched by here more than once, he had always been too much embattled in this vicinity to do any depredation of the city. And the later Huns of Attila, rampaging through Venetia, had stopped short of here. So, until our coming, Verona had not suffered a siege since the time of Constantine, nearly two centuries before. And now Verona was not very well prepared to withstand one.

True, the city was stoutly walled all about, and it was further protected by the Athesis River running swift and turbulent around two of its three sides, and in each of its high side walls there was only a single gate to afford entrance. However, past Roman emperors, out of affection and admiration for Verona’s comeliness, had decided to make its outside as attractive as its inside. Whatever the city’s gateways once had been like—probably forbidding portals flanked by massive towers and abutments—those emperors had replaced them with grandiose triumphal arches, much carved and ornamented. Although the arches were of stone, and sturdy enough, it is flatly impossible to hang and hinge and buttress a door of really impregnable solidity within a decorative monument. Fancy dress is flimsy armor.

All three gateways were vulnerable, but Theodoric ordered that we would besiege only the one in Verona’s landward wall. Our onagri and ballistae were aimed at it and our archers commenced raining arrows on the defending troops ranged all along that wall’s parapet. In the same way that Theodoric had left open an avenue of flight for the opponents who faced us at Andautonia, he left unassailed the other two of Verona’s gates—which gave onto the two bridges spanning the Athesis—for Odoacer’s men to escape through when inevitably they should realize that they were outfought. He dispatched only a few turmae of our cavalry to wait beside those bridges and harry the fugitives as they emerged and fled. Also, because Theodoric himself respected the venerable and handsome city, he commanded that our catapults hurl only unfired missiles—and only at the gate, not over the wall among the buildings—and that our archers shoot only unfired arrows.

Within two days, the pounding of the boulders flung by our siege splintered the gate’s panels, and we brought up a heavy ram. Under a turtle cover of raised shields, our burliest men hefted and swung that ram until it butted through the remaining wood and iron—and our foremost ranks of spearmen and swordsmen were close behind. Odoacer and his General Tufa clearly had realized that the city’s gates were inadequate barricades, and had done what little was possible to prepare against the certainty of their being breached. The defenders atop the wall had plentiful stores of arrows and spears and cobblestones, and they cast those down in such quantity and rapidity that the wall was almost obscured from our view, as by an endless hailstorm. The Roman soldiers also had many vats of melted pitch up there, and they lighted them, and poured down cascades of liquid fire. A man beneath had only to be touched by a single gobbet of that, and it would stick fast and go on burning him.

Scores of our troops advancing toward the broken gate did get pierced or struck or burned by those falling things—many got killed, many more were disabled. But any experienced warrior knows that such defensive weapons are really only weapons of desperate last resort, that far fewer attackers get repelled than succeed in getting past them. Thus it was that our men unhesitatingly swarmed in through the wall to meet the Romans’ second line of defense, the spearmen and swordsmen solidly blocking the city street beyond.

With his fellow king Freidereikhs and several of his chief officers, Theodoric was still standing clear of the action, where he could best do the directing of it. I was there with them when one of our horsemen came galloping around the city wall from one of the other gates, to announce that both those farther gates had already been opened from within, disgorging a torrent of fleeing people.