The Iron Hand of Mars (30 page)

He was trying to rile me. I knew what he was getting at. Twenty thousand men had perished with Varus—along with the field army's complete equipment, the commander's personal treasure, and boxes of soldiers' pay. Every household between the Ems and the Weser must have been living comfortably for decades off pickings from the massacre. Every time they lost a calf, all they had had to do was brave the whitening stacks of bones and gather up a breastplate to use in barter for a new animal.

I asked evenly, “What do they like to buy? I've heard there's a fairly constant market for good Roman bronze and glass.”

“No tribal chief who takes a pride in his reputation is buried without a silver tray by his head and a full formal Roman drinking set.”

“I expect you can always find buyers for brooches or pins?”

“Trinkets. They like silver. They love coins, though only the old ones with milled edges.” Nero had devalued the currency the year before the Great Fire of Rome. I preferred the old coins, too—they felt more substantial. In Rome the State guarantee held just as good for the new adulterated sesterces, but out here the weight of the metal would count.

“Do the German tribes use money?”

“Only when they barter with traders.”

“Coins are more for status and ornament? And is it true they ban imports of wine?”

Dubnus inclined his head. “Not completely. But this isn't Gaul, where they'd give you their mother in exchange for a drink. Fighting is the serious business.”

“I thought they loved feasting. What do they drink?”

“Mead. Fermented mixes of barley and wayside fruits.”

“Pretty resistible! So, the German tribes tolerate our fancy goods, but Rome hasn't much else to offer them. They hate what we regard as civilised arts: conversation at the bathhouse, harmonious formality—a good binge on the Falernian.”

“They just hate Rome,” said Dubnus.

I gave him a sideways glance. “You're a Ubian. Your tribe came from over the Rhenus once, so you have Germanic roots. What about you?”

“A man has to earn a living.” He let me hear an undertone of contempt.

But the conversation ended there, because we rode into our first group of Frisians. We drew to a halt like polite visitors. They approached us cautiously.

They were bare-headed—
red
-headed—blue-eyed, tunicked, and cloaked in sombre wool, the way they were supposed to be. We had been telling ourselves that chroniclers exaggerated everything. Maybe it was the Germanic angry temperament they had chosen to misreport.

“Step up, Falco!” Justinus commanded cheerfully. “Time for this famous plan of yours.”

We all breathed with more care than normal. I hauled Dubnus forwards. “Please tell these gentlemen we are travelling to pay our respects to Veleda.” He scowled, then said something. I did catch Veleda's name.

The tribune's dog proved our best ally. He rushed up to each Frisian, barking, wagging his rump, and trying to lick faces joyfully. They could see that no one who brought such a hopeless hunting hound could have hostile intentions, and that claiming our scalps would be an insult to their manhood. Fortunately, the pup forgot to nip anyone that day.

The Frisians stared at us. Since they were doing nothing more dramatic, we smiled, saluted, and passed on our way. They followed us at first, like curious cattle, then drifted off.

“Veleda seems to do the trick.”

“You mean, they looked as if they'd never heard of her!” Helvetius scoffed.

“Oh I think we can assume they had,” the tribune reproved him in his grave way. “I believe that explains the pitying looks they all sent after us!”

He rode on, petting the dog, which peered out from a fold of his cloak looking pleased with itself. It was small, smooth, white with black patches, constantly hungry, completely untrainable, and fond of exploring dung. Justinus called him Tigris. It was inappropriate. He was as much like a tiger as my left boot.

*   *   *

Next day we began to encounter stretches of light woodland, and at nightfall we hit the real edge of the forest. From now on we would need all our skills to find paths and keep to the right direction. From here the tree cover continued unbroken across the whole of Europe. Frankly, as a town boy I had always felt the continental arboretum to be excessive. I like foliage—but I like it best when the greenery is leading to a pergola over a stone bench where a freelance wineseller is conveniently hanging about, and I have an appointment to meet my favourite girl under the pergola in about five minutes' time …

Camping for the first night on the damp, prickly forest floor, knowing we now had to endure weeks of this, our spirits flagged and tempers rapidly coarsened.

By now the recruits had worked through all the normal stages that afflict soft lads being taken out camping in rough country to harden their characters. We had run the full gamut of moans, theft of personal treasures, spoiling the evening meal, losing equipment, bedwetting, and black eyes. Whatever the rough communal living was doing for them, the three of us in charge were exhausted, battered, and welded into a strong defensive team.

One evening, after a particularly sour day and a fight where we had caught them with their daggers out, Helvetius laid about him so angrily that he broke his vine stick. Then Camillus Justinus lined them up for a strong dose of tribunal rhetoric.

“Listen, you bastards!”

“Good approach!” Helvetius muttered subversively to me.

“I'm tired. I'm filthy. I'm sick of marching-biscuit and I'm sick of pissing under oak trees in the rain!” His unorthodox address had startled the group into silence. “I hate this country just as much as you do. When you behave like this, I hate you, too. I'd like to say that the next troublemaker will be sent straight home. Unhappily for all of us we have no convenient wagon going to headquarters, or I'd be first on it myself. Face facts. We all have to make the best of it, or
none
of us will be going home.” He let that sink in. “Make up your minds. We all have to pull together—”

“Even Lentullus?” cried Probus.

Justinus scowled. “Except for Lentullus. The rest of us will pull together—and we'll all look after him.”

They laughed. We would spend a quiet night now, and next day everyone would be wonderful.

“He'll do,” Helvetius decided.

“Infinite patience with them,” I agreed.

“Seen it before—they start off thinking he's a worthless snob, and end up dying for him.”

“Camillus won't thank them for that,” I said. “He'll be martyred if he goes home without a single one of them.”

“Even Lentullus?”

I groaned. “Especially bloody Lentullus! So, the tribune's all right, is he?”

“He'll probably keep us out of trouble.”

“Thanks! What about me?”

“Mithras, don't make me laugh, Falco. You'll be the one who gets us into it!”

The next morning everyone was wonderful for about half an hour. Then Lentullus in his amiable way piped up, “Sir, sir, where's Dubnus gone?”

 

XLIV

I drew a heavy breath. “What's that, Lentullus?”

“He's not here, sir. And his pony's gone.”

Justinus sprang up, on the alert. “Anybody know when he left?” No one did.

I was on my feet, too. “First tent, come with me! Helvetius, you keep the second tent, pack the kit, then follow us…”

Helvetius was running at my heels as I raced for a horse. “What's the panic? I know the terrain. I can tell roughly where we are—”

“Use your head! How are we going to converse with Veleda? Dubnus is our interpreter!”

“We'll get by.”

“It's more than that,” I gasped, bridling up frantically. “So far we've been unobtrusive. No unfriendly groups have spotted us. But Dubnus seemed broody. He was plotting, I'm sure of it. We don't want him bringing a war party on our heads!”

“Falco, maybe he just wants to get on with his trade.”

“I told him he could do that…” Now, however, I was afraid the pedlar was hoping to make a packet from a new line: selling hostages. “We can't take the risk that what he's intending to trade with may be us!”

*   *   *

We tracked him northwards for a long way. It was the wrong direction for us; perhaps he was using that knowledge in the belief we would give up, though it only made me stubborn. I hoped he would grow careless. I hoped he might think we were so single-minded about our mission that he was free from pursuit altogether.

My party was the slower of our two tracking groups. We were trying to pick out just one set of hooves among the litter on the forest floor, whereas Helvetius was following our great swathe. He soon caught up with us, and we all went on together, first bending east, then south again.

“What's he up to?”

“Mithras, I don't know.”

“I'm not sure I care.”

Dubnus must have left us early and travelled by night. His start was too great. I decided we would follow until the evening, and then abandon it. We lost the trail by the afternoon.

We were among taller, more thickly growing trees than ever before, in the dense silence of truly ancient woods. A huge horned insect glared at us from the curl of a dead leaf, outraged at this intrusion. There was no other sign of life.

Taking stock, we agreed that the one certainty about our present location was that we had never expected to be in this area. With good luck, no one hostile would expect us here either. Bad luck meant none of our friends would know where to bring a rescue force—but we had ruled that out, anyway. Justinus and I had left behind instructions that if anything went wrong there would be no point in a rescue attempt, so no one was to try.

Our journey from The Island had brought us across most of southern Frisia, but by now we had to be in Bructian territory. Coming this way had been unorthodox, but less exposed. We were a long way from normal trading routes. We were also a long way from both the Roman fieldworks that still survived in the delta area and the old forts that I knew had been planted along the River Lupia. We were approaching the famously hostile Bructeri not from where they were always watching for strangers—along their home river—but by surprise from the north.

During much of our trip we had been about a hundred Roman miles, give or take forty or fifty in this endless hardwood wilderness, above the Lupia's course. That offered some safety, but we had to turn south eventually. The place to change our present easterly direction would be marked by the heights of the Teutoburger ridge. We knew the famous escarpment curved down to the sources of the Lupia. All we had to do was find the northern end, then follow the hills. Helvetius had mentioned an ancient track, but none of us relished taking it. Once there, we would have another forty-mile trip before the heights petered out at the river. By now we had come far enough to be keeping our eyes peeled for the high ground whenever the forest allowed us to scan the countryside.

We began turning south.

Our detour to look for the pedlar had disorientated us slightly. This was easy country in which to lose your way. There were certainly no roads, and forest ways are notoriously aimless. Sometimes the one we took petered out altogether, so that we had to batter through brushwood, perhaps for hours, until we reached a new path. The trees crowded so thickly that though there could have been a much better track only a few strides away, we stood no chance of finding it. Helvetius, who had been near here before for his historical research, reckoned we were still some way from the topmost end of the Teutoburger escarpment, though had we not been in deep forest, the heights might have been visible in the distance. We hacked on through the dismal woods, believing him because we had no choice. Anyway, going south could never be entirely wrong. We would come to the Lupia eventually.

At dusk we stopped. While the tents were pitched, various members of the party vanished on their own for the oak-tree routine. It was cold. The light had sunk but not gone entirely. We were heating mess tins for each tent, but they were nowhere near ready. Helvetius named the night's sentries, whilst his servant groomed his horse. Justinus had a conversation going with Sextus and one of the other lads. They were teaching him some dialect words from the Adriatic coast, since he seemed interested in languages. I was just worried and miserable as usual.

I saw Lentullus creep back after his pee in the woods. He looked furtive, which was nothing unusual. He also looked frightened.

He said nothing to anyone. I decided to ignore it, then found that was impossible. I strolled across to him.

“All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything to tell me?”

“No, sir.”

“That's a relief.”

“Well, sir…”
Oh dear!
“I think I saw something.”

Lentullus was the type who would spend three days wondering whether he ought to mention that a large army of warriors in wicker chariots with war horns and broadswords was heading our way. He never knew what was important. Lentullus would get us killed rather than say anything to worry the command.

“Something alive?” I asked him.

“No, sir.”

“Someone dead?”

Lentullus paused and would not answer me. All the hairs on my neck and arms rose slowly to attention.

“Come along, Lentullus. Let's you and I take the tribune's puppy for a walk.”

*   *   *

We hacked through the woods for about ten minutes. Lentullus was a shy soul. We had lost him twice already when attending to nature had led him so far from the camp that he couldn't find us afterwards. He stopped to take bearings. I kept quiet rather than confuse him completely. The thought struck me that we could be out here all night while Lentullus searched for his treasure again.

I hate forests. With everywhere completely motionless, it would be easy to become terrified. Among these trees bear, wolves, elk, and boar all roamed. The chill air smelt damp, with an evil autumnal unhealthiness. The vegetation was a rank, flowerless kind, with no known herbal use. Fungi like lined faces hung in ancient trees. Undergrowth caught at our clothing and flesh, snagging our tunics and scratching our arms vindictively. My breastplate had become splattered with some sort of insect juice. At this spot we seemed to be the only things breathing apart from eerie watchers from the Celtic spirit world. We could sense a lot of them, both remote and close by.