Give Me Back My Legions(72)

A bear? An aurochs? An elk? He’d never know. Now that silence had returned, he could tell himself it didn’t matter.

He could tell himself, yes. But he couldn’t believe it.

The woods didn’t just seem to squeeze in on either side. Eggius felt, or imagined he felt, the canopy of leaves and branches pressing down on him. Maybe everything would close in, like a great green hand making a fist. And when the fist opened again, he wouldn’t be here anymore. Maybe the whole Roman column wouldn’t be.

He laughed at himself. He told himself that was nothing but nonsense, moonshine. This time, he did manage to convince himself he was right. Some Romans had far more trouble going through these forests than he did. They really believed the trees were closing in on them - they didn’t just have brief vapors about it. Cold sweat dripped off them. They went pale. Their hearts pounded and raced. Only coming out into the open again could cure them.

Eggius wondered how a German would feel out in the Syrian or African desert. Would he think the landscape was too wide? Would he feel tiny and naked under the vast blue dome of the sky? Would he shudder and shake, wishing he could draw forest around him like a cloak? The Roman wouldn’t have been surprised.

Double time. It wasn’t just to give the natives less of a chance to set a trap among the trees. It was also to get out of this horrible place as fast as the Romans could.

Roads. Roman roads crisscrossing Germany. Roman roads arrogantly cutting through forests and swamps. Wonderful Roman roads, with the trees cut back far enough on either side to make bushwhacking impossible. They couldn’t come soon enough, not as far as Lucius Eggius was concerned.

“Bring on the engineers,” he muttered. So what if he was an officer? He would gladly have carried a hod. Anything to make sure the men who came after him didn’t have to endure . . . this.

“What did you say, sir?” a legionary asked.

“Nothing.” Getting overheard embarrassed him.

“I sure am sick of these trees,” the soldier said. “What I wish more than anything is that we had some decent roads through the woods.”

“Well, now that you mention it, so do I.” Eggius shook his head. He might have known his men would be able to see the same thing he did. They weren’t fools. Well, except for the tact that they’d got stuck in Germany they weren’t.

After what seemed like forever, Eggius saw sunlight ahead. Even though he’d been double-timing it through the forest, he broke into a run. Before long, he stood at the edge of a meadow and some fields. He breathed hard, as if he were coming up from underwater.

Some scrawny German cattle grazed in the meadow. Some scrawny German herdsmen kept an eye on them. As soon as Lucius Eggius came out of the woods, the barbarians let out several raucous halloos to warn the village a couple of furlongs away. Then they trotted purposefully toward him, hefting their spears as they came.

More Romans, moving almost as fast as he was, emerged from the forest behind him. “What do those buggers think they’re up to?” one of them asked. He pointed toward the approaching Germans.

“I could be wrong, but I don’t expect they’re bringing us wine and dancing girls.” Eggius’ voice was dry.

By then, the Germans were no longer approaching. Seeing themselves outnumbered, they lost their appetite for murdering strangers. They stopped short; one of them jabbed the butt of his spear into the ground to help himself stop even shorter. Quite suddenly, they all went pelting back the way they’d come. They did some more hallooing as they ran. Now they sounded alarmed, not wolflike.

More Germans came from the fields and out of the village: a surprising number of them. Bastards must breed like flies, Eggius thought. Had he come with an ordinary tax-collecting party, the savages might have overwhelmed them. But he had a real fighting column behind him, a column designed to show the natives that Roman might could penetrate even the deepest, darkest corners of Germany.

“Deploy into line of battle,” he called to the legionaries as they came out of the woods. “Let them see what they’re up against. Maybe that’ll make ‘em think twice before they try anything stupid.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ll clean this miserable place out.” Eggius didn’t see who said that. Whoever he was, he sounded as if he looked forward to it.

Over by the village, the Germans had started to form a battle line of their own. Looking at the swarm of Romans deploying as they debouched from the woods, the locals started arguing among themselves, shaking fists and brandishing spears. Not all of them wanted to commit suicide, anyhow.

Other Germans started running for the trees on the far side of the village. Both sexes here wrapped themselves in cloaks most of the time, so Eggius had trouble being sure, but he guessed those were the women trying to get away. Yes, some of the fleeing shapes were smaller, so they had their brats with them.