Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem Page B

against Alaric— thirty regiments at least.”
    “Will the frontier hold?” I asked, thinking of Maximus who had not cared.
    “Long enough, perhaps.” He smiled. “The Teutons beyond the Rhenus are feeling the pressure of the Huns from the east upon their backs, and they are moving west. In time they will crowd out those already settled along the banks of the river your father once guarded. But things will hold for a while. I have made treaties of peace with the more influential chiefs along the Rhenus. Gold is a good cement for a temporary friendship.”
    “What of the east?” asked Quintus quietly.
    Stilicho frowned. “The Vandals this side of the Danubius—my people—are restless. They wish to migrate also. I have been forced to grant them fresh lands. They are, in theory, under our rule.” He shrugged. “You see, I live from one expedient to the next. I have to.”
    “And Alaric?” I asked.
    His face darkened. “Alaric is a prince of the Visigoths, a member of the family of the Balti. He failed to win a kingdom for himself in Graecia and now marches in search of another.”
    “What are our orders, sir?”
    “You will march to Divodurum where you will find the Army of Gaul. I will join you there.”
    “We are going into Italia?”
    “Yes.” He smiled. “I understand that it has been an ambition of yours to see Rome. Well, pray that we don’t see it. Because if you do it will only be in defeat.”
    A week later, on a hot July day, the Twentieth Legion, six thousand strong, set out on its long march south, towards that country in the sun, whose capital I had never seen.

VI
    O UR FIFTH WINTER in Italia was a wet one, the wettest they had known in ten years. But it was also our last. In the spring of 405 Stilicho, whom I had not seen for eighteen months, came to our camp in the valley of the river Padus. It was a day of high wind and rain. The wind came from the east and it was very cold, and the wind blew in our faces and shook the tents so that even their poles seemed to vibrate like the skin of a beaten drum. He inspected my troops, drank wine with my officers and then, late that night, held a conference with Quintus and myself inside the large leather tent that was my home.
    He carried two flat parcels, wrapped in goatskin, which he put upon a spare stool very gently. He said nothing about them, however, and I did not like to ask. His beard was now quite white and there were shadows under his eyes. He moved restlessly up and down and I realised then that the frictions and jealousies of that insane court at Ravenna were bearing upon him hard. I had been there once. Honorius, I had not seen, but I had met his chancellor, and the court reeked of a eunuch’s rule. I had met his sister, too. Galla Placidia was young and beautiful and she behaved like the cats that she kept in her private apartments. She purred one moment and spat the next. The gods alone knew what secret ambitions she concealed behind a wanton’s smile. I did not like her.
    Stilicho spoke. “I need you on the Rhenus,” he said.
    I was startled. I looked first at Quintus and then at him. The wind had risen and the oil lamps spluttered as their flames were touched by the icy fingers of air that streamed in through the string-holes of the tent.
    “The men that Magnus Maximus took into Gaul never went back. It damaged the defences of our island for years,” I said desperately. “We have been away five years.”
    “And have done good work. Without your aid we should not have held Alaric and forced him to withdraw to Illyricum.”
    “Our return was promised.”
    “Matters have changed.”
    I said to him, “I have never questioned your orders before—”
    “So?”
    “I must do so now.”
    He said, in a tired voice, “The pressure is growing along the Rhenus. I knew it would. I have had reports. The treaties I had made were only a temporary expedient. I didn’t expect them to hold for ever.”
    “But you stripped the Rhenus of