Give Me Back My Legions(112)

Then the pain hit. The warm trickle of blood running down his leg joined the cold trickle of rainwater. Numonius couldn’t even look down to sec just how nasty the wound was, not unless he wanted to unstrap the punctured greave. He wanted nothing less. Suppose he got hit again!

That thought fanned the rising flames of panic inside him - and they already blazed high enough. High enough? No, too high. The torment of his wound and the sight of savages loping along to cut off his men made him shout orders that left the riders staring at him.

“Away!” he screamed. “Save yourselves! The legionaries are lost! Get away if you can!”

He wheeled his own horse and roweled it with his spurs. The animal squealed. It bounded off so powerfully, it almost threw him. But he clung to the handgrips like a burr. After a bit, the horse slowed some and steadied its pace.

Many cavalrymen fled with him. Some shot past him as if launched from a ballista. Maybe they’d get away. Maybe I’ll get away, Numonius thought. The selfishness of fear made him forget everything else.

Other cavalrymen went on doing what they could for their comrades on foot. They had to know they were throwing away their own lives. Vala Numonius looked back over his shoulder. He saw the Germans pull a rider off his horse and, slowly and deliberately, shove spears into the man. He imagined he heard their hoarse, baying laughter. But it was only his imagination - he’d got too far away by then.

Maybe I will get away, he thought again as his horse bucketed north and west. Maybe I will. Maybe. Please, gods. Just let me get away.

Under his cloak, Arminius had an erection. The most beautiful, most sensual woman in all of Germany couldn’t have roused him like this, not if she danced naked in front of him. To plan for years, to see all your plans not only come to fruition but turn out better than you ever dreamt they could ... If that wasn’t enough to put some fire in your balls, you probably didn’t have any.

The Romans did things like that. One of the Latin words Arminius had learned in Pannonia was eunuch. The idea was enough to sicken him. To treat a man as if he were a stallion or a bull or a ram . . . The idea almost made his yard shrink. And one of the Roman officers down there had had such a creature for a slave. Seeing a eunuch, hearing a eunuch - that had put Arminius off his stride for days.

But he’d cut the ballocks off the Romans in Germany! Curse me if I haven’t, he thought. He’d had a bad moment when the cavalry came back to try to rescue the legionaries. Too late for that, though! The Roman horsemen had figured that out themselves. Now they were running. Some of them might even make it back to the Rhine. But his folk would hunt most of them down before they could.

And if a few did escape . . . well, so what? Arminius nodded to himself. That could even turn out for the best. If the refugee Roman cavalrymen spread panic ahead of them, the Rhine garrisons might flee instead of fighting the Germans. In that case, Arminius would have an easier time taking Gaul away from the Empire.

He intended to do just that. He had a victorious army behind him. What else could you do with an army but use it? As long as he led it from one triumph to another, it would stay his. And as long as it stayed his, he could use it for whatever he wanted.

Germany needed a king. Germany might not know that yet, but he did. The Romans had done very well with one man telling them what to do. As long as the Germans followed scores of tribal chieftains and war leaders and petty kings, they’d waste most of their strength fighting one another. Led by somebody like Arminius, they could turn all that strength against foreign foes.

Led by somebody just like me, Arminius thought, nodding. He could do it. He was sure he could. After a victory like this, who would dare stand against him? But for himself, the strongest German king was Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, far off to the southeast. Everyone knew Maroboduus had stirred up the Pannonian rebellion to keep the Romans from invading his lands. That was canny, no doubt. But Maroboduus hadn’t had the nerve to attack the Romans before they came after him.

I did! Arminius exulted. “I did!” he shouted, thrusting his sword up into the air.

A dying legionary groaned. Several Germans stared at Arminius.

“You did what?” one of them asked. He wore a shabby cloak held closed by a bronze fibula tarnished green. He was a nobody, in other words, and had probably never got close enough to Arminius before to have any notion of what he looked like.

“I brought the Romans here,” Arminius answered. “I lured them to destruction!”

“Who do you think you are? One of the big shots?” The other German eyed his cloak of fine wool trimmed with fur, eyed the garnet-studded gold pin that closed it, and eyed the sword. Only rich men carried swords. The spear was the common German weapon. Grudgingly, the fellow went on, “Well, maybe you are.”