Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem Page A

stared at him. “I don’t want the purple,” I said. “Neither here nor in Ravenna. As for the rest, everything that this island is, is Rome. Cut yourself off and you will be nothing; a rotting carcass without a head. We can’t manage without Rome. We are Rome.”
    “You’re wrong,” he said. “We need a strong man here who can establish a strong government and run things properly. Not one of them at Eburacum can do that. Not even my father, though he often thinks—” He checked and said, lightly, “Oh, well, it was worth trying. It is not often that I think of anyone except myself. A pity that. Rather a waste of good intentions.”
    I did not trust him. “I shall bring the legion back when Stilicho lets me. Meanwhile you have the other legions and the auxiliaries. If you need activity, why not work on them? The Wall will not stay quiet for ever.”
    He said, pettishly, “But it’s such a bore working on one’s own.”
    Before he left for the return journey to the north, he said to me from the saddle, “I will make a good report, general.”
    I smiled.
    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.
    A fortnight later we left Segontium for the south, and two months later we were in Gesoriacum. As I came in sight of the camp, the measured tread of the cohorts behind me, I gasped. The road leading to it was, for the last half mile, lined with men; rank upon rank of armoured men on horseback, each holding spear or sword, while Quintus, mounted on a black horse with two white feet, his red cloak spread behind him, the scarlet horse-tail plume of his helmet moving in the breeze, stood motionless by the gates with his hand raised in salutation.
    I rode alongside him and he greeted me as though I had been an emperor.
    “You found your horses?”
    “Yes, I found my horses. Oh, it is good to see you, Maximus. Come and meet the general of Belgica.”
    Late that night, when the camp was sleeping, we sat over a jug of wine in Quintus’ tent and he told me the news.
    “Stilicho arrives to-morrow,” he said. “He is collecting all the troops he can lay his hands on. Apparently Italia is about to be invaded and our beloved emperor, Honorius, has retired discreetly to Ravenna. Rumour has it that he spends his time worrying about the health of his pet chickens and wondering if the marsh air will kill them off. So much for the Emperor. Now, what of our friends at Eburacum?”
    I told him and when I came to the visit of Constans he looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said at length. “Something must be going to happen that the young man doesn’t like or he would never have applied to you.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I think we are both well out of the island. It is not likely to be a safe place for a general.”
    He said, sombrely, “Nowhere is safe when you are a general.”
    We sat in the sun outside my tent and, while Stilicho gave his orders, I watched him closely. This was the man who had helped Theodosius to defeat Maximus, my name-sake, and who had married a niece of his emperor afterwards. This was the man who had warred against the Goths of the Eastern Empire, who had checked Alaric once already at Larissa and who had destroyed the power of the Moorish prince, Gildo. This was Stilicho, the last General of the West; this man who sat so still in his chair and who gave his orders with such confidence and rapidity.
    “I am stripping the frontier of its troops,” he said. “I am pulling out the Thirtieth Ulpia and the First Minerva from Germania Superior, as well as the Eighth Augusta from the lower province. It’s a gamble, but one I must take. I need every trained man who can bear arms if I am to win