Give Me Back My Legions(111)

“We have to save them!” cried the officer who’d exclaimed about the awful noise.

“If we can,” Vala Numonius said. The officer looked at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Face hot with shame, Numonius realized the cavalrymen would have to make the effort. If he didn’t order it, they’d mutiny and go back without him. Easier to lead them in the direction they wanted to go . . if that didn’t get them all killed. Vala Numonius licked his lips before he shouted, “Back! We’ll do all we can for our comrades!”

Cheering, the horsemen turned and rode south and east, in the direction from which they’d come. Numonius drew his sword. Maybe the charge would frighten the Germans away. He hoped so. If it didn’t, the Roman cavalrymen would have their hands full. Vala Numonius knew he would. With the sword in one hand, he would have only the other to use to hang on to his saddle grip. If his left hand slipped, he might go right off his horse’s back.

Mounted spearmen were in the same predicament. They couldn’t charge home with the full weight of their horses behind them. A rider would go over his mount’s tail if he tried anything so harebrained. If only a man’s foot could grip the saddle as well as his hands could! Numonius laughed at himself. Talk about harebrained! If there were a way to do something like that, someone would surely have thought of it by now.

Then the laughter died. Vala Numonius had imagined the Germans attacking the Romans, yes. But he’d never imagined such horrible swarms of them, all thrusting and ululating and having a grand old time. And he’d never imagined that the Roman cavalry wouldn’t be able to stand off and ply the savages with arrows. In this rain, that was hopeless; a wet bowstring was as useless as no bowstring at all.

They would have to close with the Germans, then, if they were going to rescue their friends ... if they could rescue them. How many thousands of barbarians were battening on the legionaries? Numonius led a few hundred horsemen; Roman armies were always stronger in infantry man in cavalry. Riders were fine for scouting and pursuits. For real fighting, you needed men on foot.

So the Romans had always believed, and centuries of experience had taught them they were right. Crassus’ disaster against the Parthian cavalry a lifetime earlier was the exception that tested the rule. But what the Parthians had done meant little to Vala Numonius. They’d had an army of horsemen then. He had a detachment. He somehow had to beat an army with it.

Hoarse yells said the Germans saw the oncoming Romans. So did a shower of spears flying toward the Roman riders. A wounded horse screamed terribly. A wounded cavalryman added his shrieks to the din. The horse with a spear in its barrel staggered and fell, pitching off its rider. The animal just behind tripped over the wounded beast. The man atop it also flew off with a wail of dismay.

Numonius swung his sword at a German. Laughing, the barbarian sprang back out of range. In his excitement, the cavalry commander almost cut off his horse’s right ear. The German picked up a fist-sized rock and flung it at him.

The fellow was too eager. Had he let Numonius ride past and then struck him from behind, he might well have brought him down. As things were, Numonius saw the stone hurtling toward him. He flattened himself against his horse’s neck. The stone brushed his left shoulder as it flew by. He yelped, but it was an involuntary noise. A heartbeat later, he realized he wasn’t hurt.

He also realized his cavalrymen wouldn’t be able to drive the savages away from the Roman infantry. As the fight came to closer quarters, he saw how many legionaries in the front ranks were already down. What had the Germans done? Whatever it was, it meant that a whole great slavering pack of them had interposed themselves between his detachment and the surviving foot soldiers farther back. The riders hadn’t the slightest chance of hacking through so many.

From behind, he slashed a barbarian who was about to spear another Roman horseman. The German leaped in the air in surprise, blood pouring from his right shoulder. He howled like a wolf. A Roman who saved a comrade’s life in battle earned a decoration. Vala Numonius feared he wouldn’t survive to claim it.

Sure as demons, the decoration was the least of his worries. A savage with a sense of tactics was shouting and gesticulating, trying to move his men to surround the Roman riders. Was that Arminius, who’d learned too many lessons from Rome? Numonius couldn’t be sure, not through the rain. It seemed all too likely, though. So Varus was wrong straight down the line. He didn’t do things by halves when he went wrong, did he?

Another German threw a spear that pierced Numonius’ greave and bit into his calf. The wound wasn’t nearly so bad as it would have been were he unarmored. He pulled out the spear and awkwardly threw it back.