*
The horn blows over the frozen camp.
“Let’s go men!” the Decurion is yelling. “We’re lifting the camp. Legionnaires lift the tents! Twenty five tents, no more. Cohors Prima, prepare the arson. Cohors Secunda, secure the loads. Let’s push, men. There are still bars open in Rome!”
Usually the soldiers would be cheering when they receive the order to lift the camp for retreat. But not this time. The sun sends blinding reflexes over the frozen camp. A flock of ravens is splotching the trees with black. One more horse died over night of exhaustion and cold. Eighteen more soldiers failed to report. Four of the horses are taken by Cohors Secunda to pull the two heavy carts. The dead horse is butchered and packed for the next meal. The fifth is another walking meal. Whatever they cannot take along anymore, the Romans gather in a large pile and set the fire. No useful item should fall in enemy’s hands regardless if is a ballista or a dented chamber pot. The Daci are watching. They hate their horses in a yoke. But they’re dead, anyhow. The Barbarians are not helping. Daci are always carrying everything with them, riding or on foot.
The Centurion waits for his tent to be removed. He sent his stool and his pillows to the burning pile. The campaign’s papyri are sealed in large amphorae and loaded in the carts. With so many things to be abandoned, the fire is huge. Cohors Prima is destroying whatever cannot be burnt. At the end they cremate the dead soldiers, to protect them of desecration. It is almost midday when they finish.
“Legion, in march formation! Centuria Prima, avant-garde! Centuria Secunda, guard the chariots. Cohors Prima, Cohors Secunda, rotate the loads! Cohors Tertia, rearguard.” The column is forming fast. They are veterans. Only Centuria Secunda is carrying spears. All the others hold only the gladius and the square shield. No order comes for the Daci. As Barba stated, they are free men. Loyal free men.
“Centuria Primaaa… Easy march, hay!”
“Hay!” the hundred men answer in the same time. One hundred right feet move forward simultaneously. Then one hundred left feet. The shields are rattling in the same rhythm. Barba have seen this one thousand times: he’s still impressed by the Roman marching formation. Ten decuriae, one centuria. One hundred men, arranged ten by ten, in a perfect square. They’re ready to fight in every moment, just turning right or left. The Decurion counts one hundred paces:
“Centuria Secundaaa… Easy march, hay!”
“Hay!”
“Cohors Prima, push!”
“Hay!”
The auxiliaries are pushing the heavy carts, helping the horses. The men and horses are working together. Otherwise, the horses will collapse after two hundred paces. Steam is jetting out from the horses’ dilated nostrils. Slowly, the whole column moves. Daci stick with the middle of the column. They were not assigned, but their horses are there. The Centurion hurries forward, joining Centuria Prima. The Decurion leads the rearguard. Although they suffered such big losses in the command chain, the Centurion didn’t assigned grades. One commander was enough for less than three hundred men. In decuriae, the first man acts as Decurion. The only Decurion that survived leads Centuria Tertia. Centuria Secunda, in the middle, has no leader, but Barba acts as Legatus Centurionis. The Centurion didn’t want to insult the other Romans, giving Geta a rank. But he knows that, if somebody deserves it, the hirsute bear is the one. He’s strong, he’s courageous and, in top of all, he’s wise.
The column moves slowly thru the valley for couple of days. They ate the last unemployed horse. Daci went hunting, but without success. The beasts are not hiding so low in the forest. Only the ravens are following them all along the slow path. They’re losing one decuria per day to attrition. But is going to be worst. The legionnaires don’t complain. They are brave too, Barba has to admit. Holding the chariots not to slide down the slopes is even more difficult than pushing them. Half of the auxiliaries are injured, but they carry on, towing the carts in common effort with the animals.
After three days eating only snow, the Romans are collapsing. The march is almost impossible. The shields are so heavy; the legionnaires drag them on the snow. They cannot drop the shields. A soldier abandoning his shield is regarded as a coward and executed. The pile of dead they leave behind is growing taller every day. “When ravens are banqueting the men are fasting,” Barba said.
“The River! The River!”
A small tide of disorder rattles the troops, but the Decurion ends it fast with sharp orders. “Centurion, scouting party,” he requests.
“Barba, your men.”
The Decurion is grunting. For the last several days Daci couldn’t hunt anything, but none of them dropped dead of starvation. The Romans are suspecting they held the game meat for themselves.
“Decuria Prima, scouting! Hold you shields! Rearguard for Barbarians. Fast, hay!”
“Hay!”
The Decurion is more content. He has his men in action.
“Keep silent!”
The twelve Daci sneak in the woods. They literally melt under the Roman’s eyes. The Romans know there are twelve men at twenty paces away, but they can see nothing and they hear nothing. Not a branch cracking.
They are waiting until it’s almost dark. Daci are coming back as unseen as they disappeared: they just pop up in the middle of the column.
“It’s clear, Centurion.”
“Why took so long?”
“It should be longer. We waited the dawn to see if there are fires lighted over the river. They’re not. Zapyrion!”
The called Dacus approaches.
“The fish, Zapyrion!”
Zapyrion opens his wolf pelt. At his chest, on willow branches, are hanging some twenty small fish, like scaled fruits. He drops the trout at the Centurion’s feet.
“I banned my men to eat anything,” Barba says, “until we cross the river.”
“On what they live, then?”
“They suck the grease from their pelts.”
The Decurion watches the fish. One fish for twelve men.
“There is a clearance down so,” Barba indicates. “It’s flat like my palm, but protected by woods, not open to the river.”
“Legiooo… easy march, Hay!”
“Hay!”
“We better wait the morning.”
“We need warm food and we need rest.”
The clearance is as Geta told them: completely flat and surrounded by poplars and willows. It looks like a good spot. The smooth surface is frozen and cracks as they advance. The heavy carts are scratching deep trails. The horses are freed and they are chewing snow. Horses are like their masters: enduring over the limit. Small camp fires are set around the carts: one decuria, one fire. The centurion counts twenty fires. They have lost eight hundred legionnaires, and the countdown continues.
Ravens agitate in the trees around. They’re sensing food. Something flies heavy thru the air, and the Centurion has the impression is a white owl. He feels tired. The fish is boiled in thin soup. The soldiers are gulping it fast. The agitation of the ravens increases.
“Mars is hungry too,” the Centurion mumbles. He fell asleep before vigilia prima.
Daci made the own fire a little away, under a willow. The smell of the food is churning their guts. They’re sucking in their wolf pelts. One by one, are falling asleep.
“Alarm! ALARM!” The horn blows. Hurried steps sound on the frozen ground, accompanied by metallic clinks and curses.
The Centurion awake in an instant: soldier reflexes. The alarm was called by Spurius, the commander of vigilia secunda. It must be a little over midnight. The centurion jumps on his feet, grabbing the gladius from the wooden pillar of his tent. Before he rushes outside, he can hear a sloshing sound and a loud crack. As he steps out, the Centurion has the time to see, at the embers’ dim light, one of the carts sinking in the ground, burping. A mighty crack follows. The ground opens. Liquid mud gushes out, breaking the iced surface. They had camped on a frozen marsh. The camp fires around the carts worked the whole night, melting the sur
face. Under the carts’ pressure, finally the crust broke. The warmer mud trapped underneath was set free and pushed upwards by the decaying gases. The whole crust collapses, swallowing tents and soldiers, horses and carts, the Roman Aquila and the papyri. The whole marsh is boiling with foul gases and screams. The men scream, the horses scream, the ravens creak.
Fifty paces away, Barba leaps en garde, the sword ready in his hand. Daci are all sitting under the willow, watching the Roman’s struggle. They cannot help.
“Never kill the Priestess of the Wild,” Zapyrion says.
“Not when she’s wearing the owl,” Barba agrees, sheathing the sword.
The Roman fires are melting in the dark one by one. One last struggling horse screams savagely, and then the silence fell. The surface of the marsh is still, occasionally gas bubbles breaking out. Slowly, the edges are freezing.
Barba stands still and mute with his hand over the sword’s guard. He listens to the forest. A sudden wind arises and blows against the Dacian flag. The head of the wolf howls prolonged. Other howls answer from the deep of the forest. The branches above are fretting. With heavy wing movements, a white owl descends over Barba’s left shoulder. It’s the shoulder of the shield. It’s the shoulder of the peace. Daci kneel and kiss his sword battered hand. All it’s so silent; the wind ceased. The Wild has chosen its priest. It’s not the other way around, as the Romans do.
“My braves,” Geta Barba speaks. “You are free men. You can have your way.”
The small congregation is silent. Still in his knees, Zapyrion answers for all:
“Father, we’ve seen the blood of the world. We draft Roman blood and Celtic blood; we dried Roxolan and Greek blood; we have killed with our right hand and we have killed with our left hand. But we are not wolves. The blood must stop. Please accept our submission into peace.”
“Raise, braves! A free man shall never make such a bond upon his head.”
Geta Barba walks slowly to the dark forest, the white owl swinging easily on his shoulder. Its eyes are glowing in the dark as golden embers.