Seize the day, p.49
Seize the Day, page 49
Mute, the Germani forces stood paralyzed, watching this procession out of hell pass them. At times they had to open their ranks to let them through. Silent as ghosts, the column passed, led by two blood-spattered elephants. To his surprise Marcus found himself wounded; something had grazed his chest, leaving a long bright wound. He had no memory of it. He wiped the caked-on blood from his skin, wondering. “An arrow missed you and hit me too,” Gitta said and shocked, he turned to her in great alarm. “It skipped off you and skimmed me.” She showed him a line etched into her skin, just off her collarbone nicking the side of her shoulders. They were both very lucky that death had passed them by so narrowly. Dazed, Marcus shook his head. He remembered so many times in the battle when he could have died, but did not. They had both survived as had Septimus and Davo.
At some distance, when it seemed safe to do so, Marcus got off, and freed Jackal’s corpse from the tusks. With relief, Crenah shook her head and complained to him. Marcus apologized to her in placating tones, but the animal keep huffing at him unhappily. Meanwhile the rest grabbed the discarded body and strung him up on a tall tree. Marcus quickly examined the elephants and found a few cuts and bruises but nothing more serious. With great relief he climbed back and the procession continued, but now where to?
Thus the Magori remnant passed through the enemy into the freedom of the open lands to the north. More than half of them had weathered the storm, ninety-two in all. Boyan was among them, with his last remaining son Reka, the youngest of his children. Where was Bika, the eldest?
The Magori had survived yet again. They had only their horses, no food and no supplies and only half their numbers. A sorrowful, dejected group found shelter in a narrow valley in the hills and huddled around a small fire, cold and miserable. They were lucky enough to kill two deer, providing a little something to eat. They made a shelter of tree branches covered with a thatch of dried grass, the best that they could do under the circumstances. Hungry and exhausted, physically and emotionally, with little to look forward to, Boyan sought to console them. “We’ve survived a great storm, and for now, that must be enough. Don’t dwell on the past, on how many we have lost today. That we couldn’t bury them, but had to leave them to the enemy. Don’t think of that! We must look ahead, as if waiting for good weather after the rains. Sometime in our future there will be the joy and laughter of our children. Sometime . . .”
To Marcus he only said, “Your god did only a half job of saving my people . . .” My god? Marcus reflected that it was the god of the Jews and the Christian. But he had promised a life to this One-God.
When news of their achievements seeped through the countryside, sympathetic neighbors sent them supplies; tents, some cattle and sheep, even some clothes. The proud and self-reliant Magori had to accept the charity of others. They settled into the routine of their reduced circumstances, still beset by many uncertainties. The war continued around them, but they seemed no longer a part of it. They had earned themselves the reputation of poison bait, and no one seemed eager to take them on again.
Aquincum stubbornly held on, repelling all attacks. Inside, conditions had deteriorated, and the inhabitants were forced to eat their animals and pets. Sickness took many of the starving population, and the burials could barely keep up with the dying. But still the town held on, preferring hunger and even death to the dubious mercy of the horde outside the walls.
Over the long siege, the Barbarian army lost its patience and roving bands broke away to plunder the countryside, but without much success for it had been picked clean already. The last fruit was Aquincum, and they were forced to return to it, but attack after attack failed to take the place.
In the end, it was not the Helveti who arrived to lift the siege but the Vth Macedonian from Dacia and the VIIIth Germani from the Dalmatian coast. The two legions swept north on both sides of Danuvius, pacifying the countryside. Being veterans, the relief force advanced circumspectly, as it did not want to compel the enemy into a full-scale battle. It preferred to outmanoeuvre the opponent, forcing it to yield the field. Why risk all in a bitter, desperate battle with many casualties? Thus, inexorably, the relief came on, driving the Barbarian horde in front of it.
News of their approach created quite a stir in the besieging enemy camp. The more cautious withdrew across the river right away, while the more daring wagered everything on one last assault. They attacked from all directions, even from the river in a fleet of barges. In bitter fighting they broke through the defences in two places, but their momentum was dissipated in the narrow streets that split the attacking force at each intersection. The holes were closed behind them, and the attacks died in the streets, in a hail of stones and other missiles. The rest withdrew to lick their wounds and to fight among themselves over why the attempt did not succeed. More left, but still some stayed, unable to let go of the prize.
The Roman legions were almost within sight of the city walls before the last of the besiegers withdrew. It was an ironic twist that it was the VIIIth Germani, made up mostly of Germani auxiliaries that liberated the city to the great joy of its inhabitants. Orderly ranks of the army marched through the city gates in a triumphant procession.
Flavonius Veronicus the young Legate of the city and a real hero of its defence, welcomed the arrival of the two legions with restrained joy. Now that they were finally here, he had to feed and supply them. But with what? The city granaries were empty, and the surrounding countryside despoiled. After nearly a hundred days of the siege, nothing was left within the walls. In a war council it was quickly decided to conduct a short punitive reprisal on the enemy. This decision was motivated less by revenge, more by the pragmatic consideration of raiding the enemies’ resources and restocking depleted supplies. Thus the legions left as quickly as they had arrived. They crossed the river and spread out in raiding expeditions.
The conditions on the Barbarians’ side were chaotic. With the death of Emperor Septimius Severus, a door of opportunity had opened, and the Barbarian wave had flooded in, and a new wave of humanity from the East flowed into the freed-up spaces. But once the invasion was forced back, failing to establish a foothold on Empire soil, and the door was closed on their ambitions, the retreating horde found it hard to reassert their former boundary rights. The tribes and nations were hopelessly mixed up with each other. Immediately squabbles broke out among them and in some cases grew into actual fighting. Thus the Roman incursion came at the worst possible time for them, compressing them even more. In a series of disjoined engagements, the Barbarians yielded to the Roman advance. Soon trains of booty and supplies were heading back to Aquincum.
In the far-off hills the Magori had little to do with this stage of the conflict. They heard of the relief of Aquincum and the flight of the hated Germani from its walls, and they rejoiced at the news of a punitive campaign that followed the enemy into his home ground. But it was a distant affair that no longer touched their daily lives. They were concerned with their own survival. They had accumulated a small herd of cattle, goats and sheep, hunted in the forest and fished in the streams and ponds. Winter had passed, and fresh grass was showing as the first sign of hope. The horses were glad of the new growth, and the elephants were ecstatic. They had not done well, losing at least a quarter of their body weight during the privations of winter.
Marcus was concerned about the elephants. Their wounds received in battle had healed but not the injuries to their psyches. The trauma of the battle, the carnage they had waded through, the smell of blood and gore, haunted them still. Particularly Crenah, who bore the final outrage, of the dead weight of a corpse tied to her tusks. She had been forced to carry it for many miles, not knowing, not caring that it was their safe conduct through hostile enemy lines. The smell of death had filled her nose, the blood drenched her head, and the more she tried to shake the horrible thing off, the more it beckoned to her. She still woke at nights whimpering, the recurring vision haunting her.
Marcus had asked for her forgiveness many times, and though she remained loyal and obedient to him, the special bond of trust between them was shaken. She would never again follow him so unconditionally. Marcus was greatly saddened and blamed himself even more, as if the whole thing, the battle, the loss of half the Magori, were all somehow his fault. Gitta tried to deflect him from this morbid preoccupation. “None of us had any choice. We were manoeuvred into it. Want to blame somebody? Blame Zsiga! He wanted to die and he did. He only wanted to take many of the enemy with him, and he did that also!”
The Magori in their search for fresh grass drifted south, unconsciously retracing their steps. In a half-moon they came upon the battlefield still littered by the detritus of the struggle. The corpses of the Magori and their horses, reduced to skeletons, lay about unburied. Only Zsiga was missing, until they found bits of him all over the field, obviously hacked to pieces by an enraged enemy. They buried the bones in a mass grave and planted horsetail banners over the site. Boyan cut off his hair, and slashed his cheeks, in Magori custom, so that he could weep blood for his son. The men and even boys followed suit, mutilating themselves with these unsightly markings of their grief. Without a second thought, Septimus did likewise and Marcus, reluctantly, followed his example.
Gitta mustered him critically then said in the solemn voice of the sad occasion, “Now you have become a Magori!”
From that place of sorrow they quickly moved on, dug up a cache of their possessions and again reverted to their Magori customs of living in yurts, with carpets and soft fur to lie upon. Marcus found himself much richer than before, when the possessions of the half who did not return were divided among the survivors. It was sad to be the beneficiary of such sorrow. But life went on, the living required food, comfort and dreams to nourish them. They headed east, and after a moon found themselves back in their original territory. To their great joy they came across a small herd of their precious cattle that had gotten lost during one of their forced retreats. They set up their yurts, and things appeared as they had been before. Yurts in a sea of fresh grass.
In spite of all the excitement and hardship of their travels, Gitta’s and Davo’s pregnancies seemed to be going well. As their abdomens swelled, they grew more awkward, but insisted on riding patrols.
At about the same time, Tetra Callus, the newly appointed Governor of the province Pannonia Inferior arrived in Aquincum to take possession of his new posting. He was appalled by the conditions he found in a city trying to feed itself. The punitive expedition had come back with provisions plundered from the Barbarian tribes. The Vth Macedonian then returned to Dacia while the VIIIth Germani lingered on.
Tetra Callus was a man of vast energy and good political sensitivity. He inspected the city and its environs. He met the inhabitants; the landowners, merchants, shopkeepers, craftsmen, servants, farmers, and even the day laborers. He took notice of their accomplishments and praised them all. “A brave city,” he said with great frequency, “populated by the most valiant inhabitants.” He well knew that words cost little, yet they greatly boosted morale. At his own expense he organised a feast in which the heroes of the siege were honored, first among them the young Legate Flavonius Veronicus. The young man had important family and business connections in Rome, so he especially needed grooming by the new Governor. After all, this was just a stepping stone on the stairway of success.
A supply column finally reached them from the west and the food situation eased somewhat, but they would not be entirely secure until the supply barges could come down the river after all the spring floods had receded.
There were the usual cries for compensation for damages suffered by the outlying estates. The new Governor could not spend public money on private property but promised to secure good rates from creditors willing to finance the rebuilding. The Governor worked hard, for the glory of the province was the mantle of his own prestige.
Sadly he found the countryside denuded, with a few returning to abandoned homes and finding only ruin and destruction. Whole villages remained nearly empty. Here too, Tetra Callus tried to inject some new enthusiasm into these folks. He invited delegations from the country to be honored and celebrated. Almost desperately he was looking for heroes.
Flavonius Veronicus advised him to the best of his abilities. “There was a Celtic fortified town of Sheertop but the place was completely razed and all its inhabitants killed or sold into slavery. I doubt we can find even one who would be willing to return to such a sad place.”
“But there has to be somebody worthy of some recognition, surely? Any little thing would do. It just has to look heroic.”
“Actually there are some horse-people who live along the river to the south. They fought the barbarians in a running battle the whole time and achieved many victories. They tied down well over two thousand of the enemy.” The Legate knitted his brow. “In fact during the darkest days of the siege when all seemed lost, their exploits rekindled the flames of resistance in our flagging spirits.”
“Those are exactly the people I want . . . I need. Invite them!” The Governor so ordered, and a Tribune was despatched to locate these heroic people.
It took some time, and the Tribune was surprised at how small the band was. How had so few been such a troublesome thorn to the enemy? He conveyed the Governor’s invitation. Boyan, who had just settled into his old existence, did not want to go. But they dared not insult a Governor, so he sent Csala, an older man, and Septimus who dragged a reluctant Marcus with him.
The Magori delegation was received with great pomp in the capital. The Governor was most gracious, wanting to impress his own munificence on his new subjects.
Face to face, Tetrus Calla was taken aback by the fierce look of these people, their cheeks marked by angry gashes just healing. He was even more surprised when two of them spoke fluent Latin as if born to it. He was astonished when that turned out to be the case.
“But what are you doing among the horse-people?” Tetrus Calla asked during a private audience.
“It’s a long, boring story, Excellency,” Septimus temporised, trying to duck the question.
“Let me be the judge of that,” the Governor shot back. He had to find out more about the people he was to govern.
Septimus told him the whole story from beginning to end. The betrayal of justice, the sentence to the galleys, the escape, the long flight, finally their lives among the Magori. He neither added nor subtracted from the story, relating it in a dispassionate tone, but the Governor was still inflamed by the narrative.
“You were wrong,” Tetrus Calla finally said when the telling was over, “it wasn’t boring.” Then he asked many questions, their sensitivity proving the Governor to be an intelligent man yet pragmatic to the core.
On the second day, Tetrus Calla invited Septimus to take a bath with him and his retinue. Septimus was in heaven, switching between the many pools, delighted with the luxuries of an unending flow of water, hot or cold, and then the massage. Afterward he glowed, totally rejuvenated.
“I tell you, Marcus,” he confided to his friend, “the baths alone make it worth while to be Roman.”
But Marcus was worried about their status. “We’re still criminals, officially. Escaped galley slaves. Have you forgotten that?”
“We’re also heroes of the Empire, you must not forget that,” Septimus shot back. “I think the Governor is a good man.”
Two days later the Governor’s private secretary gave Marcus and Septimus a scroll each. “Let it be known to all that, whereas Marcus Aurelius Camponelli of Toscana and Septimus Tallen of Rome were wrongly convicted of crimes that they were wholly innocent of, and whereas they have suffered great physical hardship and loss of status, they be completely exonerated and restored to all rights and privileges of free Roman Citizens. They will be compensated accordingly from the public coffers. If they choose to return to active service with the army, in recognition for their bravery in service of the Empire, they will be entitled to promotion to under-Centurions. By authority of his Excellency Tetrus Calla, Governor of Province of Pannonia Inferior.” There were two small bronze plaques accompanying the text.
“We’re free,” Marcus breathed out, hardly daring to believe his eyes and ears. “Aren’t we?”
“We surely are!” Septimus rejoiced nearly knocking Marcus to the ground with vigorous back slapping.
When both Septimus and Marcus turned down the commission, the Governor offered them positions in his government. Again they declined the offer, but kept the possibility open for the future perhaps. “Well, just come and see me,” the Governor said as they took their leave, “Here or in Rome.” Yes, there was not a doubt that the Governor would go far, if he did not fall out of favor with the Emperors, or run afoul of some powerful enemies. Life was not easy on the bottom, but it was not easy at the top either. In fact, life generally was hard all over.
When Marcus returned he showed Gitta the small bronze plaque. “What does it mean?” Gitta asked, and Marcus was shocked again to learn that she could also read the script.
“It means that our son will be born a Roman citizen,” Marcus said proudly.
“He’ll be fully Magori!” Gitta insisted.
“He’ll be both and can be proud of his lineage from both sides!” Marcus rejoiced, a big smile on his face. He patted her stomach. In half a moon, perhaps, the child would arrive.
The next day he sat down and penned a letter to his sister. He told her all that had happened and of his luck being free again, and a man of some modest means, now that the state had paid compensation to him. It was harder to describe his new family situation to her. These were People-of-the-Horse. He showed the letter to Septimus, who made him write it all over again with all the corrections. A merchant passing through promised to give it to the Governor’s secretary.
