Eagle in the Snow: The Classic Bestseller (Phoenix Press)

by Wallace Breem

YOU THINK I am lucky because I am old, because I knew a world that was not turned upside down. Perhaps

I loved her so

much, but I did not know what she was thinking.

He knew I cared for women like you; women with dark hair and a white skin.

It is a great gift to make others see what you wish them to see, to make others believe what you wish them to believe.

Their bodies choked every ditch and every well, and there was blood and smoke and fire through the whole land.

The barbarian conspiracy was near its end.

Forty thousand men had been killed in an afternoon.

“Of course not. To you, Caesar, the throne; to us the war.”

He tried hard to smile. “In my service you could have had a regiment, or perhaps a legion. You could have gone far.” “To my death in a Gaulish mist?”

“Will you drink with me? Just once, for the sake of forgotten things.” “Of course. Willingly and with all my heart.”

I stood and looked at the shrine that had meant so much to Aelia and wondered, for a moment, if what she had said had been true, and that I would see her again, and that this long, intolerable ache was, indeed, only the symptom of a temporary parting. Then I went out into the sun and inspected my men for the last time.

There had been a curious constraint between them for years that I had never attempted to probe or understand. We, who spent our lives in small communities, had long ago learned that it was wise not to ask too many questions.

I mounted my horse and rode off down the road to Corstopitum. I did not look at the deserted bath-house, the crumbling vallum or the abandoned mile castles. I looked only to my front the whole way.

He expects us to die in a forest in Germania.” He added slowly, “And we probably shall. Oh, Maximus, my friend, we probably shall.”

Two days later I rode south-west in the spring sunshine. Behind me I left my youth, my middle age, my wife and my happiness. I was a general now and I had only defeat or victory to look forward to. There was no middle way any longer, and I did not care.

I would tell them, “learning to march fifteen miles if you are so out of breath at the end of it that you cannot kill a man first try when he is stabbing at you. He will kill you first instead, and your long walk will have been a waste of time.”

He leaned down towards me and said, urgently, “Don’t go, sir. Maximus went and the men he took never came back. It will be the same with you whatever your intentions may be. None of you will come back and all this will have been wasted.” I walked back to my office in silence. He had not smiled when he spoke. He had meant every word he said.

“Nowhere is safe when you are a general.”

Quintus said, curtly, “It took eighty thousand men to hold the Rhenus in the old days. Do you expect us to hold it now with only six?”

The rain crashed upon the roof like a flight of arrows striking a shield and a spattering

of drops came through a worn patch in the leather above my head. I moved away.

Foreshadowing the slaughter of his legion

“You must hold it,” he replied. “We cannot afford any more disasters. One major disaster and the western empire, like a cracked dam, will crumble slowly into pieces.” I said, “If that happens, my general, then be sure of one thing: neither I nor Quintus will be alive to watch it happen.”

And beyond were the green woods, thick and impenetrable, wet with rain in winter and heavy with scent in summer, in whose shelter lived those peoples whom we of Rome had never conquered. This was the road down which Quinctilius Varus had gone to lead three legions to

defeat and death in the Teutoburg forest. It was along this road that countless legates had marched at the head of their men on their way to the east and the barbarian darkness beyond. It was a road to nowhere.

I said, “I doubt if it is much consolation for one christian to be killed by another.”

The insolence in his voice died with the words, upon the look I gave him. I said in a loud voice,

“The Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul is happy in that his government sits at Arelate. It would seem that those who sleep in the sun seldom worry about those who shiver in colder climates.”

The Bishop glared at me. “That would be sacrilege. Only a pagan would suggest such a thing.” “I am a pagan, as you term me.” “I know.”

“I shall do what Stilicho asked. Afterwards, if the spirits are kind, I shall take over the province in the name of Honorius, not for myself, but for Rome.”

“Which province” he asked. “I will tell you that when the time comes.”

I looked at him and sighed. He was the kind of man who would always do his duty by the book. He had no

initiative, no imagination, no understanding. It was hard to blame him. He was, after all, only a civil servant.

“The old camp is too far back,” I said to Quintus. “I want another built, here on the bank to the left of the bridge. My men are going to have to kill wet barbarians, not dry ones.”

Quintus twisted the bracelet on his wrist and said, “This place is like the end of the world.” It was as though he were thinking my thoughts. “Yes,” I said. “It is—the end of our world.”

“Everyone does it,” he muttered. I said, “I am not everyone. Remember that from now on.”

Another letter came; this time from Arelate, but it was full of polite evasions, veiled threats, meaningless assurances and hollow sincerities;

‘Thirty years,’ I thought. ‘He kept that disc for thirty years in hope. And then he was bought and sold by his own people to work for the church. Oh, Mithras, you would not ask that of any man.’

showed this to Quintus and he said, “Shall we ever get relief? I think they will only send more troops when we ourselves are in trouble. And then it will be too late.” “That is what I am afraid of,” I said.

I thought of the words I had carved on the stone. ‘She died but not altogether.’ Saturninus had suggested them. It was what she believed and perhaps she was right. But I found it hard sometimes, to think that it could be so.

“I want men—young men—who are willing to become soldiers. And I need educated young men who can be trained to become their future officers. Is it too much to ask that the people of Gaul learn to defend themselves?”